Shutdown Fullcast - College football's Firefly Funhouse

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

When you have to confront your evil self in a nightmare zone, that's a spring game. Introducing MORON OPERA, America's finest storytelling mode When a rasslin match convinces you the evil clown is the good guy Florida faces its demons in the funhouse NC State faces its horrifying LACK OF A FACE! And a swamplord from USC's past returns with vengeance Also, football coaches, please just read the card and stop ad-libbing about the pandemic, thanks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Shuttown Forecast. That's the sound of magic. Being made here by Banner Society's only college football podcast. I mean, we do have an NFL podcast. Are they still an NFL podcast, Jason? Well, yeah, I mean, the NFL is still truck. going along so there needs to be an NFL podcast and I don't believe it's us because the NFL is just it's business as usual in the NFL because it is a a vital part of our not just economy because

we don't have one of those I think a part of our I think it is our entire civic life now that I think about it the NFL NFL transactions it's the only thing we have I was talking to my dad last night and dad's not particularly talkative but he's in self-isolation so he wanted to talk like a good 45 minutes wow yeah and uh one one of the first things he wanted to talk about was man ESPN needs to put something else on i can't watch adam shefter talk anymore the uh yeah adam shifter is the only person speaking on tv that is not pre-recorded. Everyone else we move forward in today's action

due to time constraints that don't exist because time doesn't exist. But Adam Schaefter, there are no time constraints on Adam Schaefter. I enjoyed the communal outcry when during a replay of Texas, USC, they said we have to move ahead for time constraints. And everyone to a man and woman said,

no! Drag it out! Yeah, and not because we are desperate to see the second quarter of a 14-year-old football game, but more because, you know, now what the fuck are we going to do in the 11 hour? Due to time constraints, there are no time constraints. Yeah, so thank you, NFL, for remaining your demented self and producing, you know, transactions and uniform updates and just all the normal stuff as if we're going to have a football season.

That is weirdly, I don't know, it's like, it's like stupid positive, you know? Like, I know they're not doing it to make anyone happy, but like, at least somebody thinks we're going to get through this, so great. I mean, that's cool. I'm glad people are, I'm glad people are positive about these things, right? I'd like them to be positive about them. I don't want them to be stupid. This is probably where you have a fork in the road for some people.

It's when they go, oh, well, look, Mr. Negative is saying there's a disease. Yeah. Yeah, that's the fact. It's not being negative, you know. Why you got to bring up old stuff? Are you saying facts don't care about their feelings? It's wild. It's wild how facts don't really care about that.

Or when you suggest that a football coach. You know, I'm just going to pull one out of the air. A suggestion like making a labor camp isolated so that you could get the economy running in your state again with your unpaid labor. That's maybe not the comment to make right now. Yeah. Like maybe there's, so there's like there's good positive, you know, which is like, hey, everything sucks. But let's follow the rules and eventually we will get through this, right? Like that's as positive as you can possibly be right now.

Hey, there's like NFL positive, which is like bleep blurt, nothing to see here, business football product being produced, you know. And that's, that's very weird, but it's sort of like a different kind of escapist positive. And then there's like the Gundy-Dabbo kind of thing where it's like, you know, the terrorist virus is taking away our freedoms. You know, we need to, it can't change our way of life. You know, we need to pray the disease away. rub some Jesus on it you know i'm going to vacation in florida yeah me and my me and my mega pastor jumbo jet we're going to go park it in a in a disease-ridden swamp just to demonstrate our faith you know my clean i'm sorry my clean jumbo jet it's it's been sanitized what you ride down

a dirty jet this was the thing that i thought was really funny that nobody picked up on because they were too busy making false equivalencies and bad faith arguments. Davo is making a point there that I'm not sure he intended to make, which is that, oh, look at me, little old Davo, I'm just folks, but always the rich are going to be a little bit safer than the rest of us, even in this situation. A plague is not a great equalizer of any sort because I'm sorry, do you have private jet sanitizing money?

well no you're not little old dabbo dabbo the guy who he loved being at this point he's gone full gravity falls yeah the guy who one of his catchphrases is Roy bus the rest of y'all bus you know there's Alabama and then there's the little old rest of us in our little oh deeply sanitized private jet

oh he's just folks I wonder also what what manner of vehicles he took I'm picturing a righteous gemstone set up of, you know, identical range rovers taking dabbo from the door of his Lakeita ass castle to whatever private jet port was burying him to whatever shitty beach. Speaking of terrible beaches, can we all agree as

current Georgians that maybe the last beach on earth worth dying for is Tybee Island? I mean it's up there It's bad it's a bad I mean I don't want anybody to die for like Coney Island you know I don't want anybody I've never been to Coney Island but I have

Sir I have been to Tivey Island and people risking death to go to Tivey Island I'm like No imagine that being the last thing you ever saw Yeah I got Imagine that being the last vacation you ever took Was it nice? No. Was the sand at least pretty? No. Was the weather good? Not really.

Yeah, but did you show the terrorists who's boss? I'm sure wrong the lives. I mean, Mike, listen, Georgia doesn't have good beaches. I'm sorry. Not on the mainland anyway. Alabama beaches put Georgia's to shame, so Florida. I don't think that's a controversial opinion. It's not, but it's not, but it's coming into my head because all the, the Brunswick County orders being given out and countermanded and all these people are rushing to, of all places to have a flat, weird hill to die on. Tybee? Really? You know that it's not a good beach if it's merits as a wildlife refuge and or its ecological importance are cited.

Do you know what that means? That means it's dirty and filled with reeds and birds. That's what it means. When they say Georgia's coastline is ecologically important and beautiful. Beach is described as loamy? Yeah. Like, no. Absolutely not.

It's a good beach to grow crops on. I might describe Georgia's beaches this way. I am from Georgia. I have never been to a Georgia beach. And I feel fine about that. Like, when we want to go to the beach, we go to any other state that we touch. We got lakes.

Lakes are fine. But, like, yeah. If you want to see the fucking. ocean, I'm not really interested in doing it from the sandy shores of Georgia. Now, now, if you want to go, and now also... If I want a weird mix of sand and dirt, I'll just go in my backyard. It basically kind of just looks like South Georgia dipping its toe in the water, which is this unseen as you can imagine.

Well, if you think of the map of Georgia, right, what part touches the water? The big old belly, just going to lean my belly over the ocean. I got that. I'm going to take my AR-A-R-15, going to plant it in the sand. I'm going to go get calf deep in that water and be like, whoa, life's a beach, y'all! This is now my favorite dumb guy refrain is, whoa, man, I mean, just, it's like life's a beach down here, man. Imagine if the Libs saw me out here with my ankles in the ocean. And by Libs, I mean, the city officials and county officials of Brunswick County who are like, go home.

The people whose economy depends on people showing up are like, no, stop it. Oh, right. Oh, yeah, America's doing great. Have I ever told y'all how I thought due to its poor kerning that salt life said slut life for like 10 years? And I pulled up behind, and it was not until I voiced it aloud that anyone correct me because I pulled up behind a car that had like a, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, the, Georgia educators license plate with a little apple on it. And it says, you know, support Georgia public schools and this big old Salt Life sticker plastered across the back. And I was like,

it is great to see a public school teacher being sex positive in that way. And my mother goes, what? I said, Mom, look, it's a slut. And she just stared. And then she informed me that it said salt life. And I was like, I have to take back so many good feelings about so many. trucks that I've seen. I thought Georgia had a much higher percentage of King Rant driving sex ed proponents. Yeah, who believed in, who believed in who believed in Yetis.

Yeah. I was like, you know, it used to be this little moment of we're not so different, you and I. And now I'm like, no, we're back, we're back to being different. Yeah. I feel like the takeaway from a Salt Life bumper sticker is, sure, they're referring to some beach thing.

but this is also very likely the extent of their spice cabinet. Oh, you also have to remember that the next, whenever they say some beach, you also have to remember that the next line after that is some beach somewhere because it sure it's shit ain't here. Remember, there's two kinds of people who talk about going to the beach. Both of them are liars. They're the kind who claim they like the beach and they don't. It's just that's their only idea of a vacation and they don't want to put any more effort into it.

And there's the people who say, I love going to the beach. And what they actually love is they love going to the really overrated seafood restaurant located next to the beach where they can eat like cheddar biscuits and five pounds of deep fried shrimp and be like, well, the beach is great. I love the ocean. Then let's go to the outlet mall. Also, it took me a longer amount of time than it should have due to the way Clemson fans talk. but I finally last night managed to dig up the tweet exchange from the two dudes online in November of 2018 who were blaming Davo's pastor for his poor understanding of the Bible. What was this about? And now I'm having trouble remembering which exact Davo gaff this.

Oh, it was when, remember, you remember the lament thing? somewhat yeah anyway i we had joked at some point that there was a he learned the word lamented remember in november 18th 2018 there was a press conference when he he learned the word lamented and we joked that there were going to be uh clemson fans who were blaming dabbo's pastor for not keeping him uh more in the fold of such a biblical word um i i I'm going to check out those two guys and see what they think of the latest kerfuffle. Yeah, I don't know. You know, here you think, I'm willing to accept this, by the way,

that Davo knows more about football. One of them's an actual pastor, which I did not know this before. Davo knows a lot about football, and he doesn't know a lot about public health. This dude has been broken down. Pastor Stewart is like, I am so tired of eating sandwiches for lunch. He's broken. Oh, you're down here with the rest of us. You know, I don't have a problem, by the way, with the coach being like,

I think the season's going to start. That's cool. You're not an expert. No one's an expert on this because we don't know. We don't know. It's very, very strange to be in a position where I'm like, can we please listen to Matt Brown? Man, Matt Brown did such a better job on this.

Matt Brown is adhering to his archetype from your own coach taxon. economy. That's right. And Davo, not Davo, Gundy is firing off at the hip because he's a cop, and cops have control issues. That's right. I wish we could just round everybody up. Boy, I bet you do. Well, I bet you do, Gundy. Bet you do. Also, it would save you the trouble of having to hunt them down yourself. You know, and also, by the way, remember, most important American right, you got a right to be stupid. And the counter right to that is this. You got a right to be called stupid and dabble's being stupid guess what everybody does it some people just do it when they are the influential leader of an amateur sports organization who makes millions of dollars a year

to coach a children's game other than that no problem speaking of children's entertainment this past weekend saw the only sporting-ish associate still daring to participate in activities on the mainland now that UFC has started its own C-stead or whatever it was Rassalmania in an empty gym in Orlando and like partially pre-taped

and partially filmed at secret locations and like it was a cemetery set up inside a hobby lobby. I'm sorry, not a cemetery. A bone yard. Mother fucking bone yard. It wasn't a bone yard till they got until AJ got there,

you know what I mean? Yeah. That's right. Float live. So, yeah, it somehow, somehow it was extremely fun, extremely good,

primarily due to them being forced because of the complete lack of an audience to get creative and to say, oh yeah, hey, Matt Hardy, that guy,

the weirdo behind the, the, the, the, the, like, mystical backyard rassland

videos that we hired and couldn't figure out what to do with and let him leave let's uh yeah let's just do his thing so so two of the matches one was the bone yard where undertaker whose entire gimmick is he's a uh a cop who lives in a graveyard he welcomed another guy in to wrestle him in that graveyard and then he murdered him bone yard law hey hey they got they got a they got a good union those cops who live in graveyards good union good benefits yeah let's not talk to taker about unions i don't think he'd Take too kindly to that idea. Oh. But, yeah, his Blue Lives Matter shirt aside, it was a very entertaining match.

I guess you'd call it a match. And then it was followed a night later by John Cena going someplace even weirder to wrestle a character that I don't think the casual wrestling fan is all that super familiar with. But, yeah, he had to go into a nightmare fun house to confront his own demons over the last 20 years. at the hands of an evil man who's sometimes a clown and sometimes demented Mr. Rogers

and it fucking ruled it was, I've been watching wrestling since the fucking 80s and it was the greatest thing I've ever seen in this. Okay, is it the best WWE thing you've ever seen? It is the best wrestling thing I've ever seen.

Okay, I don't know if it was better than Final Deletion because honestly, I watched Final Deletion and I was inspired for like a year. Like, I felt just better about life. I just thought the idea of two grown men with very little budget shooting an actual backyard wrestling match

that had no bearing on reality and no loyalty to it. Man, I don't know. But the Firefly Funhouse match, that's the best WWE thing I've ever seen. I would say, I mean, obviously, it wouldn't exist without the Hardy Boys with a Z final deletion. You know, and a Big Dead is Ode,

not that that was the first cinematic wrestling thing. There's Lucha and then there's a bunch of old other stuff as well. um but it just period it wouldn't exist in the mainstream without that so a big debt is oh to me what they did what uh wyatt and cina did was they took that same level of like home brood insanity and they added like it became an actual full deconstructed history of like not just the two characters that were participating but of like all of wrestling history in america at least you know where you're going from what you start with like Vince McMahon within the story they're telling as like he's the one who he assembles all of it all of these federations under one roof he has one archetype he wants you know he wants he wants he wants the whole cogan guy who can be as mean as stone cold and can be as cool as the rock and he will try to force everyone into that you know into that role and like within the story of the match they're jumping around from era to era from decade to decade look to look and it's all coming back to this

that Sina for his entire career has been willing and able to cram himself into that role no matter how miserable it makes the fans no matter how often he like subtly complains about it in his promos no matter how often he apologizes to other wrestlers in his promos while saying like you didn't snatch the opportunity you know and we all know what that means but yeah like it was a fascinating alternate demented history

of wrestling told through two characters and like it's it's the first wrestling thing I've ever like as soon as it was over like okay let me go watch this again with my with my English degree on you know yeah that was actually like it is it has lore so I knew you would love it because it has lore right it referenced a vast trove of lore and not only referenced it but also played with it a lot right yeah well and like it is so rare in wrestling for at least in double W-D-O-E for them to consciously be aware of their own history, characters' histories with each other with all, like you see, you know, all the time.

It's a trope. It's a trope they actually make fun of while it's happening, where it's like, you know, this tag team, oh, they hated each other two months ago, now they're best friends, now they're turned on each other, now they're best friends again, and there's like no consistency to it at all. This was like the first time we've ever seen a story get told

over the course of 20 years. and it was you know on the one hand it could be like this all the time this is not embarrassing to this is not embarrassing to be watching as a grown up you know um not that i care but like i don't know it to me it was it was it was it was the coolest best smartest thing wrestling has ever done okay so there is a remarkable moment there was a moment that kind of took my head off in the middle of it which is all right so just to go back if you did not see it and are not familiar with it, the psychotic character, The Fiend, aka A.K. A. Bray Wyatt, who has kind of a, kind of a venom thing going on. Yeah. Yeah. He's possessed by a, he's possessed by

this kind of all-seeing, all-powerful, horrifying demon. All right? And when he's not that, he's demented Mr. Rogers, right? Who talks about the Fiend as if the Fiend is in the third person, right? Like, oh, him. I don't know him. He's just the guy in the mask. Yeah, it's you should be nice to me or he will hurt you. Correct. And he hosts things from like the Firefly Fun House.

And in it, John Sinez subjected to this series of psychological horrors from his past, i.e., the revelation that he is just another in a long chain of talents manipulated to fit a non-existent ideal of what wrestling should. should be, right? Is that a pretty fair summary, Jason? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's taken through this and revealed to be a hollow man, a nothing, and is destroyed by the fiend.

Which, Kevin Bacon. That's right. Correct. Like Kevin Bacon. It was contributing. The moment in all of this that blew my mind is when the dumbest gimmick is introduced, right? And the history of the WWE, in short, under Vince McMahon as far as character, character development has been, here are some good ideas, and then inevitably, those good

ideas lose out to big beefy man slapping meat, right? Like, they lose out to... Which when Biggie says it, I say, yes, this is perfect, but... That's right. When Biggie says it, it's perfect. When Vince says it, it ruins things. Because inevitably, if you have a good character, it won't matter if they weigh less than 250 pounds and look like some variation of Hulk Hogan and are either the All-American or are some kind of mega-cool heel

who sometimes actually beats Vince up, right? Those are the two. You got two options if you want to be the man in the WWE, right? Yeah, or if you're Becky Lynch who goes by the man, you're basically Lady Stone Cold. Yes, you can be, now, that's progress. In the WWE, you can be one of two things if you want to be super, super successful.

And now you can be one of two things in two genders, right? Right. Choose your fighter. There are two choices. And then you can, there's also a male, female toggle on each of those. Yeah. After 20, 30 years, they were like, now toggle for male or female. Now you can be Lady Stone Cold or Lady Hulk Hogan.

That's basically your two options. right so they're telling this story and in it they're going through like possible good ideas that sina might have flirted with at one point right and inevitably sina is forced into this like hollow role of being like you know uh i think he turns heel this is when this happened he turns heel and he turns like NWO right like WCW they like cracked out all the old WCW stuff like the logos and they had him do like an NWO promo and they flashed to a puppet, which is Vince McMahon with devil's horns, right? Like a rubbery, terrifying puppet that's Vince McMahon in a suit.

And a suit, by the way, is hilarious because it's the old Vince McMahon suit, the old Mr. McMahon suit with like the double-breasted suit with like the huge shoulder pads, right? And he looks at the camera and goes, oh, that's good shit. Which is the biggest possible wink to the people who have been complaining about bad wrestling storytelling for 10, 15, 20 years. Right. It is code shorthand for dumb shit Vince McMahon likes.

So to have a Vince McMahon character say, in the final fucking hour of WrestleMania, like literally your biggest hour to have a Vince McMahon character making fun of the single dumbest thing about WWE, like, come on, man, this is fucking brilliant. I cannot believe they got him to sign off on this. Yeah, chances are, I bet he didn't understand it. there's also that possibly he probably did not

at that moment that was spectacular in the middle wrapped in the middle of all of that oh and at the very end by the way they vaporized

one of WWE's biggest stars over the last 20 years literally the end of the whole thing John Cena just goes poof and like

and literally what do we have there what is Cina's catchphrase you can't see me right like it's the type of shit like if you got to fucking English degree or whatever.

Like this type of shit, you're just like, oh, my God, I'm going to write 35,000 pages about this. And I was just be like, yeah, fucking get it. You know. Man, I think Brandon Stroud might. Like, I really do. If you want to read the best summary of this at uprocks.com under With Spandex, their wrestling blog, just search, go look for Brandon Stroud, go find his description of the Firefly Funhouse

match. It is exactly the full round. trip, deep dive that you would want on all of this if you have just listened to us discussing this and don't understand it all, go there because it's just actually a good piece of literary criticism about one of the few things in wrestling that could actually be broken down the literary criticism. Can I say something about the Boneyard match? Let us also devote some attention to the Boneyard. Okay. We're in the Bonesome. And it's this. Okay, there is a certain type of entertainment and it transcends wrestling and it includes

a lot of other different formats, movies, TV shows, some comic books, right? I'm sorry, and no graphic novels, by the way. Fuck those. Fuck those. This is a comic book household. Yeah, and you'll understand why I am throwing graphic novels off the boat immediately for this, all right? There's a kind of entertainment that I like to call Moron Opera, all right? Yeah. And I really like, I really think like when you go, well, where do you,

Why do they give this thing wheels? Where do you stake out your claim in terms of like... Zylophones do not need wheels. Disagreed, so the kid can drag it around. It's for mobility. What if there's Zofone on the other side of the room? That's right. It needs someone to kick it to you.

What if you need to go double xylophone? This is unassailable logic. Please continue. Actually, this cuts down on the number of xylophones that are thrown at people. So I think I agree with Holly. For the moment. So, more on opera. Moron Opera is my one contribution to America's intellectual canon.

Okay? Moron opera is... That's not true. You also reconed Shirley Jackson stoning An Rand to death. Oh, Shirley Jackson would beat the hide off, Anne Rand. Three hours. You know, tops. In the Boneyard.

In the Boneyard. This is what you wanted, huh? Iron Rade, meet me in the Bown Yard. Shirley Jackson's like, my happiness is the highest moral imperative. because she has a rock. My moral imperative is hitting and she was running in with a piece of garden edging. Just swinging it like a clock.

Yeah. So more on opera is my umbrella term for a form of entertainment where there will be no serious stretching. There will be very few expectations overcome. And on the whole, it's all done with a kind of loving acceptance of a certain level.

of like but real but stupidity right my best example of this is walker texas ranger okay because i was watching the bone yard match i thought man god this is so awesome and it's so stupid and it has so many conventions which have been passed on for like a hundred years about big man fight and big man fight little man that it all just made me think of walker texas ranger Another sort of thing where, like the Boneyard, I knew who was going to win. I knew that at one point, I would be asked to believe something completely unbelievable and signed off on it ahead of time, right? Like the minute The Undertaker appears in a story, I'm like, well, some sort of spectral shenanigans will probably occur. Yeah, that man's going in a grave and then he's going to come out and then he's going to put the other guy in the grave.

Yeah, that's going to happen, right? the dialogue i'm not looking for some kind of like you know uh extremely constructed artisanal toughness a la you know uh your your hell or high water your high bra western no i'm looking for the big dumb western like tombstone tombstone is also firmly in moron opera by the way right there's a little big leaf of smart guy in there where you know we put we put the smart guy val kimwa as the effeminate intellectual who, who, you know, can still, like, shoot a bird at 500 yards with a pistol, even though he's got tuberculosis, right? No, Tombstone's good moron opera, great moron opera, because, as I quote, in the description,

all mustaches and lightning are real. I think in that movie you have Kurt Russell daring someone to shoot him in the head, so, like, what more do you need? Like, skin that smoke wagon. Yeah. That's what he says. at one point a man is abusing a horse and Kurt Russell rolls over

hits the man in the face with the bridle and says hurts, don't it? Yeah, yeah. That's right, you know? And stupid people, stupid people and moron opera aren't just stupid. They're like grandiosely theatrically stupid. Like Billy Bob Thorne's character, the dealer, the Pharaoh dealer. If you'll remember, who says, God damn, it's like playing with my kids.

He's just vulgar and like throwing bottles everywhere. It's not just that the bad guy. bad or the stupid guy's stupid. They're grandiosely stupid. Crazy people aren't just crazy. They're like crazy beyond their own interest and for no goddamn reason, right? Michael Bean, Michael Bean in that movie, right? Hey, longer. Like, Michael Bean takes no scenes off in that movie and has an intensity that no man alive has ever possessed. And that's the point. So when you get to that, or when you get to an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, where I know Walker's going to end up spinning heel kick somebody,

right where I know in gene in action jeans right is there any other kind unfortunately yes although who wrestled in jeans oh Elias Elias at WrestleMania had some great action jeans on man within this very within the bone yard I believe at least AJ was in jeans was was take cuts and leather AJ Styles died died and boot cut jeans so Pete Georgia it is how he would have wanted to go bury me and boot cuts in the last pro shop. Barry me with my jeans. Like jeans, short but longer. Oh, this is a good one.

Thank you. Also, I was going to yell at him about his prowess of getting the tractor started faster, but, you know, he's dead now. That match would have been over if AJ Stiles had any actual manual labor in his life. He could have started that tractor sooner and put the dead man down. But instead, no, the under. Undertaker rose from the grave without explanation, also with theatrical lighting behind him. Remember, when The Undertaker gets going, this being Moron Opera, everything's on the table, right?

It's one of the great liberating things about the form. Yeah. And I would include, by the way, Final Deletion, classic moron opera. Absolutely. Yeah, that's probably a better category for it. Like, if you compare these two things, you know, in this one you have, why are they fighting? well because AJ Stiles said Undertaker's wife

is mean Yeah Or AJ Stiles must die That's the story Right we've got good like Some really convoluted metaphors About his wife and her careerism Yeah see that's that's the other thing too

Like like you're not asking me to overcome the patriarchy In a in a moron opera right You're not asking me to be like Totally sexist You're just asking me to be like When that guy when somebody goes, hey, man, I said something about your wife. Like, not even, it wasn't even the content.

AJ Stiles just could have looked at Undertaker to make this work, right, in a moron opera. AJ Stiles could have just looked at the Undertaker and gone, wife, wife, wife. You know, and then, like, maybe, maybe. I'm a wife, gull. He could have done that. And that would have been enough, right? Undertaker would have gone, Oh, Wife.

Toward the end of this match when it was clear taker was close to finishing him off. As part of the 100% on-the-fly dialogue, he says to AJ, say something about my wife now. Right, right. He hurled him off a graveyard shed. Yes, and by the way, like other fantastic touches of like classic moron opera, once AJ Styles had his ass good and beat, what did he do? I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Please don't bury me. There was a great warble in there. I know. Like, he's so, like, it should be said, by the way. When the WWE went theatrical... I should say it's, I love AJ without irony. No, he's... Sorry.

He's, like, sorry about it. He's great at this. He's been one of the best wrestlers, period, for the past, what, 15 years? He's an excellent performer, and he's so good at dry humor and just saying the fucking thing, and somehow it's hilarious. Yeah, like, he is inherently... funny to listen to in certain contexts and he killed this you you don't by the way takes real talent to pull this off right in order to sell it taker can i tell you how cool it was to actually

hear taker you never hear taker right and i i i've hated his bit for like the last 10 to 15 years because um it's so slow it's so theatrical and there's no i'm just supposed to accept the credit given for being undertaker and i don't really work like that right I work if you have a mouth, if you're able to talk, right? My favorite wrestler of all time. Jason, you know, who's my favorite wrestler of all time? That's either Stone Cold or Rick Flair. It would be Stone Cold, yeah.

That's the one I have the most emotional reaction to, right? Because Rick Flair wants, you know, to be in the mansion, and Stone Cold wants to burn the mansion. And I'm way more of a burn the mansion, take the beer guy. And the Stone Cold will always be my favorite wrestler. I don't really have control over how I react to him. in terms of appearances in the ring. And what I loved about Taker is that you actually got a character.

You got to hear him. You got to hear him, by the way, undersell. And he's like, that's what you want, huh? Like, it was just, like, legit, like, legit creepy. Also, the cinematic form where it does not need to be a constant live action in front of a crowd

that is sitting there, you can hide the fact that Taker can barely fucking walk. Like, he can still look cool and badass and tough, even though he will, like, openly admit he can barely fucking move. Yeah, if you stuck around, by the way, after part two of WrestleMania, the first thing that they went to was the WWE Network's documentary on Undertaker, which is intriguing, by the way, that, like, if you watch the network, which, hey, if you got the free trial, you got about three weeks, right?

Go ahead, knock yourself out. Watch The Undertaker documentary. his training routine for the better part of 15 years now has been I do WrestleMania, I go get a bunch of surgeries, and then I start preparing for WrestleMania the next year. Yeah. Yeah. So we had, I think you had the two extremes of how to do this kind of cinematic storytelling.

Like you had one where good guy kills bad guy and it rules, right? And it was like heavy on. They're just barking whatever comes into their minds at each other, and it's largely about the stunts, you know. And then you had the other where there was basically one move, completely scripted from the very beginning, no difficulty at all. But it's all about like, all right, the two of us sat down

and we wrote draft after draft after draft to refine all this. And we've got it to the point where like Sina, Mr. Superman, All-America, is believably the bad guy. And like this evil-demented clown is believably the good guy, right? Like the two extremes of storytelling. And by the way, not only like brilliantly constructed and like legit art at that point in the best sense of the word and entertainment also acted their asses off. I know Sina, I mean, everybody knows Sina is a really, really good actor and has proven it, you know, like if you have not seen Train Rack, Train Racks, John Sina is the funniest part of that movie. Is that the Tina Faye one or?

No, that's the, that would be, that would be the one about the people who have the party, right? Which I can't remember. He's also very funny in that and has very, very, very dyed black hair. In train wreck, he plays Amy Schumer's boyfriend who is clearly gay and says things like, hey, buddy, I'll kick your ass. I'll massage that ass. I'll run it down with oil. It says it in really threatening ways. Yeah, it says it like really threatening ways,

but it's saying these very like, very elaborate come-on lines to other men like that. And does it, by the way, without being like, ha-ha, you know, homophobia. No, no, you're just like, oh, this guy's got a problem. Yeah, it's more like he clearly does not realize this about himself. Yeah, yeah, like a complete, and sells the obliviousness, right?

And Sina, by the way, sold like self-doubt and like a real crumbling of the psyche as he realized he had made a deal with the devil because that's the core conceit here, right? Yeah. A demon shows John Sina that he has made a deal with the devil. And like there's a point toward the end

where they take Sina back to like his freestyle rapper gimmick, which gosh, that takes a while to explain, doesn't it? But anyway, Sina was a rapping wrestler for a while. and like it is very awkward to square this dude who would just make like really mean sex jokes about his opponents and then immediately go spend the next six days you know granting make a wish visits for kids right like is this really the same person you know and uh wyatt gives sina he says literally you have the floor you have one more chance basically to say something nice and sina does another d's nuts joke and then it's like okay well you you know you've learned nothing you will now be destroyed um But, like, ultimately, the story they were telling is one of, like, you have to go through this dark night of the soul in order to be, in order to become something better. And that's, like, the story they're telling with The Feen, which is like, you know, he faced Daniel Bryan. Daniel Bryan goes from being a long-haired villain back to being a short-haired good guy.

And I don't think the hair length is really integral to it, but it's, you know, it just signals the immediate character change. Or that character to themselves, which is, you know, this is like going way, way, way down said rabbit hole. It's an admission that WWE screwed up a character. Yes. They screwed up a great character in Bray Wyatt by having him lose to Sina, right? Yes. So what they have now in Feen is basically, and by the way, we're going to make a football point with all this. What they have right now in Fiend is basically in the comic books world, a retcon machine where

like, you fucked up a character. Guess what? Just run him through the fun house and then he's good. With Seth Rollins, who is awesome as a weasily heel, they decided to make him Captain America. And it just was not a fit. He faces the fiend and he comes back as the self-proclaimed Messiah of wrestling, this like awful egotistical heel. And it's perfect. It works. He's great again. so like you go through this horrible process you confront the bullshit you've built up around yourself and you are reborn as what you were supposed to be all along what you know and now going forward we have i assume cina takes a year off till russomania or whatever and then he comes back and that'll be fascinating because it could be either n w-o villain cina which people have wanted for like 15 years

or it could just be funny nice hardworking cina you know like we could see a character closer to what we sort of think his real person, you know, his, his, his, his real, uh, daily persona is like. And either of those would be fascinating, you know, um, so we were sort of thinking, since this happened, you know, in April, since this was, in effect, Sina versus Sina, this was a spring game. This was, uh, you know, one part of, one part of this institution had to face another with the goal of coming out better than they were going in. um so this can be applied to football if we were to book a football fun house match and i believe we each you know picked an example of how this could work yeah mine mine is very you have a very

involved one yes and we just went long on explaining this thing so i'm going to talk i'm going to start short okay yeah yeah give us the uh give us the ladder match okay okay so you're short but effective ladder match is this, that the dark night of the soul here is me. I already looked like Bray Wyatt, right? Yes. Taking Albert the alligator into the fun house, the Firefly Fun House, right?

And going over the past 20 years in the same manner, saying that to sell to, in order to keep up the deal, that they'd originally made to be a good football team, right? With one member of the family, i.e. Steve Spurrier, they had to eventually betray the family and hire an outsider

when things didn't quite work in the order of succession. That brings in Urban Meyer, who as we've seen is the man from Hadleyburg. He is the person who comes in. He is the music man who says, hey, you know what? I can solve all.

all your problems with this here marching band, right? I can, I can sell you a monorail and it'll be great. It's worked before. It worked in Salt Lake and it worked in Bowling Green. And by gum, it'll work here in Gainesville. But I think, I don't know if you people are ready for it here in Gainesville. That's more of a South Bend idea. And all of a sudden, everybody in the town hall goes, no, no, no, we can, we can handle it. We'll pay for it. What is it? And then he says, monorail and unlike the monorail episode in the simpsons by the way this pays off we get two titles back to back one unexpected nobody really thought oh six would happen if you want to know like the miracle by like the little like the one that was actually a surprise that's oh six happened too

fast and then oh eight and then in return what happens when you pay a lot of money for really fast results. Well, some of the time, it crumbles. And then it'll be a hall of mirrors deciding that, no, we're not going to be an offensive powerhouse. We're going to be a defensive powerhouse, but with moral fiber and doing it the right way. Going back to our SEC roots, and then remember, your roots weren't that good to begin with. Right? Like Florida roots, they're going to hit, they're going to hit groundwater real fast. Yeah. Right? You're going to want something you're going to want something aggressive weird and different in order to thrive in this savage environment not say a really big dumb old oak tree like will must champ no oh and then

we'll we'll bounce the other way we'll go and try to do what everybody else is doing shedding the identity we'll go and do what alabama we'll hire someone from alabama that'll work and then again realizing that the thing that made them work was their guy not this mask you bought not this knockoff that you bought. And now finally, trying to come around to something, something that reminds you of the good old days, which were in fact never good because you hired somebody from the man from Hadleyburg's administration, who you believe is the right thing. Florida football, constantly buying a new lie over and over again.

Nice. So what is the ultimate truth that you should hire Steve Spurger again? the ultimate truth is that you should hire steve spur your again smart i like it that's full proof i actually think the ultimate truth is in that environment nothing gold can stay because uh everything rusts there so i would just go ahead and embrace your fate as being the tacky aggressive hard-moving program that occasionally gets popped for things right and has to try new and aggressive things because unlike Ohio State, unlike Alabama, and unlike certain other teams, I'm not going to name one because I believe it infringes on your dark night of the soul.

But unlike certain teams, you don't have built in advantages to get to 10 wins every year. You don't. You can probably live at that 7 to 8 win, right? Say, oh, that's fine. Okay, well, I'm going to take 20% of your net income. I'm going to take 30% of your total output. how do you feel that's what it's like to be a seven and eight team as opposed to like a 10 or 11 win team or a nine win team right if you think this isn't truth go talk to texas you need to go

ahead and you're in florida grow fangs get thorns get toxic so like if you have ohio state say they're the stone cold here they have they've been the same character the same mean-ass character forever it works it will never not work whereas florida that's got to be more of Chris Jericho. Every five years, you scrap everything and start over with a completely new character. Will it work? I don't know. If it doesn't, you try again in two years instead of five. I think that is absolutely correct. I think you need to reboot, and I think your strength needs to be your cunning, right? Chris Jericho and all of his characters, cunning, right? And a list, by the way. Florida football always needs a list, just like Chris Jericho. We always need a grudge.

And we always need a list because you know who doesn't need grudges? Overdogs, right? Institutionalists. They don't need grudges because there will always be right around the 10 win mark if they just keep plugging, right? For a long time, by the way, overdog and that kind of thing, that described Michigan, right? Like, that's completely Michigan football for a very long time. But they became so complacent in doing things the right. so I'm sorry

one way that they eventually fell off that it's possible to lose your spot on the hill right Florida historically has never had that mansion on the hill so what do you do? Man go big but you know go big

get your IPO every five years go bust retool come back go to Japan for a while if you have to like Chris Jericho did do do what you need to do in order to keep that up because you'll never be one of the institutional powers i feel like michigan is one of those uh they're an old uh black and white photo strong man with the bathing suit you know and like they're like wow this huge strapping grappler weighs 170 pounds you know like they're from those days and it's where it's like when you look

back at like ancient ancient ancient wrestling it's like to even the people who are participating know it's fake you know like that that's Michigan's glory run also Michigan's glory run three moves three moves right like oh the camel clutch oh the Boston crab

the spear the spear the spear the form tackle yeah what is what is um Holly do you have a dark night of the for a program?

I had one since we're running up on time here. I had one that's short but disruptive to the concept here because I just want you guys to ponder something because I think it would be a little bit different. What would this look like for NC State? What happens when you, like, what would the,

what does the nightmare team for so many other teams see when it closes its eyes? I'm not sure I know, but I can't stop turning the possibilities over in my head. That you would constantly be, I sort of see... Or is it like their spring game? Yeah, maybe you just... Oh, God. One of the team on the other sideline is, you know,

two Spider-Men and Red and White pointing at each other. This feels like putting, in wrestling terms, the most mid-card guy through the fun house. Yeah. Like, Dolph Ziegler, come on down. No one remembers any of your previous characters. not even you, because they're all the same. They're all seven and five. I think the night.

Or, you know, who ruins the ruiner? I think the nightmare for that is that Dolph Ziegler, when given, if the Dolph Ziegler of football programs, when given a 12, or when given, you know, a 12 game schedule, always gets to eight games and disappears, right? No matter what happens, right? They say, if they have 16 words to say in a sentence, they get to 12 and then they can't at the remaining four out, like you're always operating at like a 60% cap, right?

I think the internet wrestling community would really like NC State because they embrace 50-50 booking. That's an excellent point. Anyway, just turning that over in my head this morning. That's a pretty wild one. um so i decided so we are going to all right first scene of this thing we are entering we have entered the horror zone first thing we see is a sunlit la yellow and orange horizon we're gazing it from up on the hill up on the hollywood hill we learned we pull back and we have USC

mufasa is sitting there talking to USC simba and he says look USC simba look before you at all of Los Angeles, Hollywood, it's all ours. Everything the smog touches is our kingdom. 11 national titles, seven Heismans, it's all our birthright. We're entitled to all of this because we are Trojans. That is the important takeaway from all this, is that we are Trojans, and so this is ours. We go to a country club. Next scene. Seated are Lynn Swan, Pat Hayden, all the, all the long time, people defined by nothing other than being Trojans. And also, people who are associated with all the oldest, best, most athletic, most legitimately scary USC teams. Who should burst in the door at that moment?

But a shadowy swamp cult figure with a big old barrel chest who played linemen in college and got humiliated like a decade ago. We're kind of talking about that. But there's also someone else that calls to mind. He appears before them, and he reminds them that all their success. successes came by hiring from outside the country club, Pete Carroll, who was basically the exact same hiring situation as Arizona State hiring Herm Edwards, you know, a mediocre NFL coach who had not been in college forever. This is the guy who made the last, you know, the last time USC mattered, it was this outsider who did it. Howard Jones, USC's first four

national titles. He came from Duke, John McKay and John Robinson. That's another five national titles. And those guys had spent like a combined two decades at Oregon and one year each at USC before they came on. Hire outside the country club is the lesson. And then our big shadowy swamp lord continues by pointing out USC's dud hires, Helton, Sark, Kiffin, Hackett, Robinson 2.0. They were all hired because they had been Trojans before. And I think those are all like capital letters, right? Been Trojans. That's the whole, that's the whole resume. Um, then we, you know, we pan out, pan down the table. Who is sitting there?

But why, it's Will Farrell, of course. USC's human avatar, Will Ferrell. We go back to the year 2008. This was USC's last, you know, the end of their last really good run. Farrell at that time, of course, had released his, his masterpiece, stepbrothers. Easily the one of the finest films ever made. We all agree. But, by the way, an inspiration for the bone yard map.

It probably really was. Yeah, Undertaker made A.J. Eat the white poop. Yep. So the lesson of this movie, of course, is if your family has a lot of money, you get a million chances to grow up. If your kids are, you know, if you're in this environment and people are failing to grow up, then cut the fucking cord. Leave the family. Go outside the family. We pan further. There's Aunt Becky. The lesson of Aunt Becky, of course, trying to get her kid in the USC and Arizona State is that sometimes it's okay to be good enough for Arizona State.

Herm Edwards was, therefore Pete Carroll was. Next, we cut to the spring game. The Coliseum, there's a hard rain falling. We got swamp conditions in the Coliseum. Then our swamp lord, he's there. He says, you had your chance, Trojans. You were gifted, not a Trojan horse, but a Trojan tiger, who threatened to make your football team a little dirty,

but a little badass too. And what did you do with that tiger? you send him home to the swamps and went back to paying butlers to do your golf for you. So now, Swan, Sark, Kiffin, Helton, Hayden, all the other entitled Trojan family lifers, their fun house penance is they have to suit up for a football game against the stone the builders rejected that has become the cornerstone of college football. The country club boys have to be dragged into the smoking swamps of Louisiana by the tiger paws of Ed the fiend, Ogeron.

And only then, once the Trojan family has learned it must become a family that does not seek to lord over everything the smog touches, but instead welcomes it all of it, onto the hill. Once these pretty boys have been baptized in filth, can they be reborn as the awesome team? They've always supposed to be. USC Simba, this is your painful rebirth. You were born an entitled royal, a spoiled monarch. a lion but you will die a tiger can i tell you one that was brilliant too that whatever piece of metal you hit was perfectly timed yeah it was actually it was even more perfect than you

realized because it was indeed a metal folding chair yes i i hit it with my foot i mean the the ogeron part is my favorite because it's the bray white storyline you could have had this this could have worked and instead no you turn me into this yeah okay to feed fix me yeah so think about a USC consider this for uh you know you there's a chance we won't have football season so maybe just maybe just think about doing this because coach owes you know he's he's free as well come on in the fun house