The Bill Simmons Podcast - Deshaun Vs. Cleveland, and a Mega-Mailbag With Joe House. Plus, UCLA’s Bob Chesney.

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House to answer some mailbag questions. Then, Bill heads out to UCLA to chat with Bruins football coach Bob Chesney about his coaching history, changing the culture at UCLA, and much more! (0:00) Intro (2:43) Mailbag with House (01:27:41) Bob Chesney interview Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Joe House and Bob Chesney Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Jessie Lopez See what boring banking can do for you. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at https://ChatGPT.com by selecting Work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we have a new rewatchable is coming for you on Monday.

We did Apollo 13, a movie that somehow we had not done yet, even though we've done almost 450 movies. So that is coming for you on Monday. It's an action-packed week for me on The Ringer. I'm on Sean Fennessee's Big Picture Podcast doing a movie draft. I am on wait a second with Jason Concepcion this week. on Tuesday, the fantasy football guys, Craig Danny and Danny,

are going to be on this podcast. We're going to do our annual My Guy fantasy draft. And Thursday, we have me and Sal doing NFC overrunners, part one, will be Thursday live on Netflix. And then Friday,

live on Netflix, we are doing the second annual ringer fantasy football draft. Football is here. This will be my last non-NFL podcast for a while. Joe House coming on first to do a mailbag. Bob Chesney, new coach of UCLA for football coming on.

We actually went to UCLA. We filmed like a 45-minute interview with them. My goal is to get you to like UCLA. And at least like, even if you don't care, like kind of secretly hope they win because he has a tall task ahead of him. But I have a lot of belief he's going to pull it off. So that's the pod. We're going to take a break.

Pearl Jam. And then Joe House, mailbag time. This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes. And yet, it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory in banking is no different. While everyone tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle

with steady calculated money moves. And the financial wins, they just keep coming. PNC Bank brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865, is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank National Association member FDIC. I'm recording this part of the podcast.

It is mid-afternoon Pacific Time. I just watched the Red Sox sweep, the Giants. Fenway Park was a live house. Boston was alive, really? The Scots and the Jailenland. Brown trade turned around the Red Sox season and Boston. Fenway's packed. Everybody's happy. The game last night. My dad went. He stayed the whole game with my uncle Chuck. They came back. They won in the ninth. And it's just when you have a good baseball team, it really energizes the city.

It's unbelievable. Yeah. I'd like to invite the Red Sox to eat a fat dick because I bet them consecutive games against the athletics. What was that? Two weeks ago, a week ago? Yeah. Yeah. The worst team in baseball who was openly. We were doing to have a couple bad games. The athletics are trying to lose. I know. I know. But I will say the 12 to 1 to win

the World Series and whatever we have them at to win the pennant for the Red Sox. I'm a rational economic actor, even though it's distasteful. I can't figure out this season anymore. They had a guy that won the game last night who came from Poteca with a 5-eara. I'd never heard of

them. I follow the Red Sox diligently, and I'm in an A.L. Keeper League. And I was like, I don't know who this guy is old. And he won the game. We have Sogarde. We have Mickey Gasper, who's now his nickname as Mickey Gas, came in, just started hitting bombs for like eight days. He might be going down this week. Roman Anthony comes back.

It's just, it's so funny when you have these baseball seasons when random no-name guys get hot. You just don't understand what's happening as it's happening. and then all of a sudden you have a chance in the playoffs. Anyway, enough about the Red So. It's part of the charm. Yeah, well, we're going to miss a whole season of it next year. I know, I'm really sure. It's like two seasons.

We're going to do a mailbag. UCLA coach Bob Chesney is coming up later. So this is ostensibly a Holy Cross. Yeah, let's go. Why not? And then you're coming out here. You're going to be in the Craig-Rewatchable's producer chair for me and house.

U.S. South, doing AFCNNNNC over. And honors. An honor. NFC is going to be live on Netflix on Thursday. And then we're going to be running the AFC one on Sunday. Okay. Before we get into the mailback questions, I got a great one from Brett from D.C. because I was talking with somebody about, yeah, D.C. guy was talking to somebody about what are they going to call if the NFL does any tanking for Arch Manning and the other QBs? What would that be called? And Brett from D.C. says it should be called. Arch Badness. That's very good. Very good. Really good. Because usually we have like the, yeah, there's some sort of, that one's like a little level beyond the level.

I don't know. I like Arch Badness. I listened to you in Pelisara. I was part of my own, you know, rev up for this NFL season. And I was like parched for Arch. I was doing it. I was working on it. I was spitballing.

But Arch Badness is phenomenal. Arch Badness is the leader right now. Okay. Questions. As always, people sent these to BS Podcast 33. I sent you a couple of these because there was a couple like mild prep ones. Didn't send you this one. Came from a lifelong Browns fan named Ryan in Cleveland. He said, I need to know, has a fan base ever hated one of its own players as much as Cleveland hates to Sean Watson? He listed some facts, which I bullet pointed. He's made roughly 12 million for every game he's played as a Brown, which is 19. He's made 12 million per touchdown. pass, also 19. He followed Baker Mayfield, shoved him out of the way, who's the most beloved Brown's QB of my lifetime, he says, I'm 37, made the worst trade in recent history to get him, gave him the worst contract in NFL history, helped waste the back end of Nick Chubbs' prime, burned through most of Miles Garrett's prime before we ended up trading him. Meanwhile, Watson has settled more than 20 civil lawsuits while showing essentially zero public

remorse of accountability. On top of all this, he sucks at football. he he tore his Achilles last year or retore it because apparently even his Achilles had enough of him playing football and now he gets booed at home preseason games and yesterday said it was disrespectful and personal and he says no shit Sherlock. Have you ever been in a situation with a hometown athlete where the entire city turned on them like this? Because I honestly, Boston's had a few where there's been like we really turned on Tony Easton. We really turned on Jack Clark who wasn't there that long. Like there's been blips like this,

but I can't remember anything like this where it's like completely ruined his ability to play football. Yeah, it would have to be somebody from the Redskins and it would have to be Redskins slash commanders. It would have to be during the Daniel Snyder era for it to rival anything at this level that Deshaun has achieved. I mean, really incredible. Well, like, he's one.

Everyone turned out Haynesworth. He was a defensive tackle. Like, he's not going back to pass and just throwing the ball into the ground to wide over the receivers. Yeah, and you can't really boo him individually. Yeah. And really, all of the dissatisfaction around him is he just got that check. It was like, thank you. I'm good.

And that was really the hallmark of the Snyder era. A lot of checks given out to guys pass their prime. Yeah, because there's been a few of these over the years. like Anthony Rendon when he went to the Angels and basically just cash checks for them decided he didn't like playing baseball anymore and had some injuries. You lost him and Strasbourg

from that Nats team, right? And he was paid like a combined half a billion dollars for those two guys and never did anything again. I don't know why anybody gives those giant baseball contracts at this point with how bad some of them are. That's the Boris, Scott Boris

waving his magic juice all over the place. Right. But that was the Angels. This is the Browns who I haven't won in 64 who have always needed a quarterback save for that one Baker thing. It falls apart a little when they're like we got rid of Baker to get him because then Baker bounced around the league

for like two years. And Baker was really bad that last Browns year. The more interesting piece to me about this is what do you do? Like Todd Bonkin said he was going to announce the starter for week one tomorrow. We're taping this on a Sunday, so on Monday. I can't, Shadur was really good yesterday

against somebody's back. and Watson was really awful and got booed the whole time and his body language was awful. I can't imagine Scherder is not going to be the starter, right? So then what do you do with Watson? Do you just make it in the third QB? Because there's all these cap ramifications. You can't wave them. It's actually worse for them. So what do you do? It's like a staring contest trying to get him to like retire or quit, right? Well, and this is the position they were in, you know, the trial run here for the preseason was, is there any possibility of salvaging anything on a football field.

That's it. He's doing that he's in these preseason practices. He's playing these preseason games. Is there any shred of salvageable productive football left? Because they already are prepared to just eat the shit. They have been eating the shit for the entirety of the contract. And it's like if you can give us anything, then it's worth it. By the way, the answer to a place turning that we must include.

in this is Ben Simmons. Ben Simmons is a... In the Sixers. Yes, Ben Simmons on the Sixers. Absolutely needs to be included in this conversation. I was going through some NBA guys. That was a little like the Watson thing where it felt like there was some psychological stuff happening as well. Like a severe confidence loss that people could sense. Yeah, I don't know what they do because I actually think the Browns have some talent. And, you know, they're not, I don't think they're a 10 or 11 win team.

but they could be frisker than they were last year. They won five games last year. The hard thing to assess with them, and this was the challenge of their win total when we were sitting and going through it, is if they aren't very good as the third part of the latter, you know, final six games or so arrived. Yes.

Because like, oh, Shador, you know, he might be just a career backup guy. Now it's time to just turn it off. And, you know. get ready for a college quarterback. I would urge the Browns to go, Browns fans to go half glass full here. You haven't won a title since 64,

but you can now claim making the worst NFL trade of all time. People think Hershal Walker, no. People think the Colts trading the rights to John L.A. for Mark Hinton and Chris Herman and a number of pick, no. Like, you have it. This was the worst one ever, so you won. It was such a bad contract by that ownership, group that the NFL, the remaining owners, openly colluded.

Like, there was discovery. There was an arbitration about this, you know, a couple of years ago where the union and the league ended up settling the arbitration. But like the record says, we are never going to do a goddamn Deshawn Watson contract again. How are we going to avoid this? The owners are talking to each other. Right. You know, openly, you know, working together to never do that.

that again. I mean, that's an positive. That's an achievement. Yeah, they changed the league. I think they've,

they've said a good example for what not to do. People will point to this. I think, I think from a Jimmy Haslam's standpoint, it can't get worse. Like, this was it.

This was rock bottom. That would be his all time legacy. And then the really fun part is if Shudor is even, I mean, we were talking about, with Pell Serra, I was talking about how just C plus Stroud,

please. We didn't even nickname you a C plus stride. Just be a C plus. Shadur can be a C minus and it would feel like the biggest one of all time, right? Absolutely. For a fifth rounder and, you know, the thing that remains with Shadour is he is so good in front of a microphone. He knows what you understand. Yes.

Your boy Warren Sharp, who's not afraid to have some hyperbole on Twitter, was basically making it seem like this was the greatest sideline interview of the history of mankind. So I watched a few minutes. It was fine. He's good. But he's very good with the press. Shador. So if you can be any good, who's their first three games against?

They have, I think they have a, no, I got to go through. God forbid I was more prepared for the mailback. Well, it's just a different document. Okay, I'm going past Pittsburgh. There's, there's, is that, yeah, there's Cleveland. At Jaguars, at Bucks, home panes. home Steelers at Jets is the first five. So if I'm Shador, like,

none of those defenses are scary, save for if the Steelers do the thing where their defense looks pretty good in the first month of the season. But, you know, maybe they don't, then they go Ravens, at Titans, at Steelers, at Saints. They don't really play a scary defense

until the Texans at home in week 10. So a lot of time for old Shadur to get his legs. I thought he looked terrible last year, just for the record. Didn't think he really showed anything, but he was throwing a bad situation. They have a lot of weapons house. They look like they nailed both rookie receivers

in the second round. Fanon's coming back. I really liked Junkins last year. Junkins is solid. Their offensive line isn't as good as it was the last couple years, but maybe it'll be okay, but who knows?

They won that trade, the Miles Garrett trade. I mean, when you consider all the permutations of it, I think that they, it's not that the Rams lost it, but they did very, good in terms of the asset gathering there. So some silver linings for the Browns.

Like this is almost over. The team building is very good. Yeah, but all joking aside. Yeah. I thought Travis Hunter trade was great. You and I both really like Miles Garrett trade. So things are looking up. Maybe that Deshaun Watson trade is rock bottom.

Yeah, my guess is Sanders gets named the starter tomorrow. Watson will be designated third QB. and maybe there's a couple guys like, how much, how high of a draft pick would you give up for Tyson Bayesian? Oh, wow.

Would you give up the third for him? Is he the third quarterback now? No, he's second for the Bears. He is second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I would give up a third for him. I don't think anybody's giving up anything. You know, every team, we see this every single year.

You have to have a super competent backup if you're hoping to content. So the Bears would say, no, thanks. Stets and Bennett is available? Because Ty Simpson could be the Rams. Maybe a little Stets and Bennett action? Yeah, that kind of thing. All right.

Next, mailback question from Justin from Westport, Connecticut. He's been listening and reading for 20 years. Thank you, Justin. First time writing. Really was an important one for him. It's like you. Question. Why couldn't an East contender trade for Brani

for the sole purpose of guarding LeBron during key moments in a playoff series no way he's looking to embarrass his son, right? This is really good. Very good. This is really good. I would have a lot of trouble embarrassing my son in front of a crowd of 20,000 people

in a nationally held by his game, and I know you would too. You know what team, it would be awesome, is Cleveland. Right. And I have to tell you, I think they're Peyton Watson acquisition. That's changed my entire estimation

of the Cleveland Cavalry. is coming into this season. He's in the who they've been missing for a couple of years now. Now, maybe I'm a little high on the supply with Peyton Watson, but I, just to give myself a tiny pad on the back, tried to make a compelling case on our worst contract draft with WOS in March of 2026 that they paid the wrong dude. They overpaid Christian Brown. It wasn't sustainable.

They needed the money for Peyton Watson and they fucked that up. I think Peyton Watson is going to come to the east and really be effective. In Cleveland, I know the Hardin thing. We're going to talk about James Hardin today. He's coming up. Basically, they made a huge mistake

with the DeAndre Hunter contract the year and a half ago. They were able to sort of get out of that with the Schroeder trade, which then they dumped him on Charlotte and got, forget the wing they got back. Who was the wing that got back? Trey Man. No, Washington

got Trey Man. Maybe they didn't get anything. Anyway, they were able to dump Schrooter and then they were able to dump Struis on the Quippers. By the way, Max Trues, come on the ringer podcast network. We can do a pod for the season. Okay. Yeah. I've enjoyed his pot

appearances. They somehow turned Schrooter, I guess Hunter into Schrooter and then Struis, who was an expiring, into Peyton Watson, which... It's pretty good. I like.

The problem is they then gave James Harden three years, $97 million. That's going to be fun. When we sit down and do Tray Young, James Hardin, those contracts are going to be fun to discuss. He's made over $500 million now. He screwed up. There was some contract extension he turned down. I think it was at Brooklyn or Philly,

where he could add this giant max. And he's kind of been chasing the money ever since, but I think he caught up to the money. He passed it. Who am I to judge? He made over $500 million playing basketball. You can't possibly hope to make the finals if he's on your team.

People keep giving him the money. It's amazing. All right. So this LeBron thing. So if you're Cleveland, you would go, you trade like a minimum for Brani, bring him back. Bronny's on the team.

and now he's just kind of lurking as almost like a kryptonite situation for LeBron. Put him on there. And LeBron just has to naturally, it's your parent. You naturally have to ease up. Your instinct is always to protect your kids at all times. I think it's a great idea. Well, let me ask you, though. Let's just ponder that for another 10 seconds.

Yeah. There are times when I'm playing with my 16-year-old where I just want to bust his ass. Okay, but there's not 20,000 people watching, though. Fair enough. Okay. That's right. And his career, like, I mean, whatever, it's, I guess it's a joke to talk about his career because he could do whatever he wants after he stopped playing professional basketball.

He'll be good at golf and he'll be in whatever entertainment realm he wants to be in. They should tell him, let your dad score once and then seem really upset like you're going to break down. And then your dad won't be able to cut straight on the game. This is great. Use the product. Something against him. It's very good. It's very good.

Okay. Next one. From Paul from Chicago. he says in parentheses, former home of the bears. Oh, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. That's not really going to happen, right?

I don't think so, man. How can that happen? How can we live in a country where the Indiana Bears is the thing that happens? The chiefs are really leaving Arrowhead, right? They're really leaving. I know, but the difference of them is nobody can tell the day, nobody knows Kansas, nobody can keep all those states apart.

I don't know where state they're in. Now. Very fair. Very fair. Okay. Paul says, if Fernando Mendoza has an underwhelming NFL career, will there be a Mendoza line named after him for pro football? Like if he hovers around six yards per attempt,

will we be calling six yards per attempt the Mendoza line? I think he'll probably be better than this, but let's play it out. So I had to go back deep into my archives. 2009 mailbag, Dan F in Maryland, and Maryland asked, you know how baseball has the Mendoza line? What if we had it for NFL?

I'm partially using Bobby Brister's career QB rating of 72.3 is the NFL mark. Had a whole thing. So I had a counter. Nobody went, this is just for QB rating. Nobody was lower than 53.9 this decade. So that was the 2000s.

The ideal mega suck rating seems to be right around 63. And I listed guys who did it for a single season who dipped below 63. Kellan Clemens, Andrew Walter, Kyle Orton, A.J. Philly, Kyle Bowler, Cordell Stewart, David Carr and Joey Harrington. Not great.

That's a list. So I offered Jack Trudeau as the person. He played for nine years, lost his first love and starts, 42 TDs, 69 picks, 103 sacks, never played in a playoff game, 63.3 lifetime. And I said it was the Trudeau line.

I have a vague memory of him getting upset about this because he was on a radio show and taking shots of me. Whatever. So I like the Trudeau line. I'd like to keep it. Could we do something with QBR for the Mendoza line? I looked at QBR.

What if 50 was the Mendoza line? Like if Mendoza has it better than a 50 QBR, Jalen Hertz was 50.3 last year. Okay. Tyler Shuck, Bryce Young, Cousins, Rogers, we're all in the 40s. I have a confession. To a JJ, Gino and Cam, we're all under 40.

Could that be the Mendoza line? What's your confession? It's still August, and I have no fucking idea what QBR is measuring as we sit here right now. August, 2006. I don't either. I think it's slightly more reliable than QB ready.

We'll be ready. Football is right around the corner. We are going to be ready for all of it, but like, 50, I don't know what the fuck that means. I don't know either. What are we measuring? I did the research. Here, I had the answer, though, for the Mendoza line.

I think Mendoza himself is the Mendoza line. And each year we just compare other quarterbacks to him, whether they're up and down. So even if Mendoza's like the six quarterback in the league, we'd be like, oh, Josh Allen's above the Mendoza line. And he's just a floating line. For the entirety of his career, what a great gimmick. Yeah. Yes. It's like, oh, is he better?

Is he over the Mendoza line? Because that, if Mendoza is bad, that will give us the same thing. sense of like, oh, he's at least doing better than Mendoza. And Mendoza is really good. Same thing. Oh, this is great. This will help solve a bunch of the challenges. Is this a top 10 quarterback?

Is he a top five quarterback? Is he a top 15 quarterback? Well, where is he in relation to Mendoza? His interviews are really incredible. I have such high hopes. Like when they get better and they're on more nationally TV, then nationally televised games, it's going to be tremendous. Love him.

So you like the floating Mendoza line depending on what happened. And I hope he's awesome. I hope he's a top 10 quarterback and we're doing it. Yeah, because we need more quarterbacks. I don't want to watch shitty quarterbacks. We really need more quarterbacks.

Like watching good quarterbacks. Ryan McQueenie writes, a long time ago when X was Twitter and fantasy basketball leagues were still prevalent among friend groups, I would send you my team names into your replies. Never a response.

Not even for Chris Kamen, pants. That was a team name he said apparently. What's the guy got to do for a pity laugh right here? Chris came in my pants. I'm positive if we were still playing fantasy basketball, that that would have been a team name for you. For sure. I mean, of course, of course. Not too late for football. Chris came in my pants. Well, it's too late. It is too late for football because I have that one that I don't feel like I should share. Yeah, don't share. Inspired by the WMBA. Take that in whatever direction you want. Damon Raleigh said since the NCAA is always talking about expanding March Badness, which is true, they're expanding it again.

I think they're adding more teams. Great. Awesome. I have a half-baked college basketball idea. What if we expand the tournament to 1,024 teams? This would be a 10-round tournament and would include every D-1, D-2, and D-3 team in America, we would still reach the point when it narrows that in the 64, wherever we would. could have a normal March Madness bracket to fill out, but you could see some D3 school playing in a first-round matchup against Duke.

I mean, at this point, why not? What's the difference? Why not? They literally turned the perfect thing, the perfect vehicle into arch badness, just out of sheer fucking greed. No reason to tinker with it. No reason to fuck with it.

No reason to make up some bullshit games on a Tuesday and bullshit games on a Wednesday and Dayton, Ohio, wherever the fuck. The play-in to the play-in. It's a play-in. Yep. Speaking of eat a fat dick. You're out of up today.

You haven't eaten dinner yet. I can tell. I definitely am not eating dinner. He's a hungry Joe house. Good. Adam R. from Indiana. I'm so glad somebody sent this email. Am I wrong to think it's ridiculous that not only is Haliburton's first game back,

not on national television. He goes, parentheses, he's fine, whatever. But it's not even at home. It's hard to imagine any other star who led his team to Game 7 in the NBA finals for tearing their fucking Achilles would have their first game back after missing an entire year. And then that game would be in New Orleans of all places. Just hoping to shine a spotlight on the continued Pacers disrespect. I wholeheartedly agree. I don't understand why they played it this way.

And this is a league that over and over again loves to prioritize. It's 35 and over stars who are all not going to be in the league for much longer over something like Tyrese Hallibur. first home game in Indiana, which is on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, like, what the fuck house? Yeah. And we will be accused because I can tell already from the way that we in the ringer basketball community are talking. The Pacers are going to be beloved by many of us.

We're all sort of on the idea of the Pacers. What's the word? Even Spock Lowe is in on them. Yes. He's in Croatia, watching people jump. off cliffs and he's still like, I like the Pacers. I enjoy that. He's thinking about Zubat's pick and rolls since he's watching clip divers.

Getting themselves back to where they were. And, you know, I'm still pondering the question that came up on the pod that we did where we were talking through Jalen Brunson. And we together made a case and came into agreement on the idea of him as a top 50 all-time player. And Halliburton, if they had won that series, we would have to make that same case for him. And he would be in there. But they didn't win the series. He definitely would have been top 75. But his resume already is stronger than Brunson's resume. Like Tyrese has, you know, I think in terms of all-star appearances and all NBA teams. But there was a very quick aside. I think you did

it with Coppulman. You were going through the last eight NBA. Oh, I did with Derek. Yeah, yeah. Eight legacy titles. Right. Yeah. And there was a place for Brunton to be recognized. And I'm not recalling it, but Brunson has most unlikely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The case, the reason I went with Curry was because I thought it vaulted him into a Kobe Jerry West area. Sure. Where if they hadn't won that title, that's a non-starter. Yeah. And I think that's the difference.

That's fair. All right, we're going to take, have some good ones left, but we're going to take a quick break. This episode is brought to by Chat GPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. That would be a dream of mine. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice.

You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst. Three rounds of back and forth. emails with the agent and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where chat GPT work comes in. It's a new way to use chat GBT for bigger multi-step projects. Give chat GBT work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents. For instance, spreadsheets, slides, structured reports. You can bring all those to your next meeting and when you don't need answers. You need help just getting the work across the finish line. Guess what?

chat gbt work can move your projects forward while you stay in control put chat gpt to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects get started just go to chat gpt com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans all right mailback coming back so mike gordon has summoned conspiracy bill by the way i wanted to give a promotion conspiracy bill is on wait a second with Jason and Tyler Parker this week doing his top 12 conspiracy deep dives that he's done in 226 so far. I wasn't on conspiracy bill was on.

Very good. Anyway, Mike Gordon asked, with all the coverage of what's happening to the Lakers being sold, what may or may not be happening behind the scenes with Mark Walter, does conspiracy bill find it odd that LeBron got out of there

just before the shit hit the fan in Los Angeles as it possibly had Intel that this organization was on the verge of becoming a complete cluster fuck. First of all, thanks for sending that conspiracy bill. We enjoy all conspiracies at all times. This is just a flat no for me. I don't think they wanted LeBron anymore,

and I don't really think they wanted them since last winter. And I think they moved the team away from him. They did not want him to come back. It was spun a certain way, you know, because LeBron has a lot of media people. he's got an agent who has a podcast on the ringer. Like there was a way to spin it to make it.

He deserves the respect. And he's the second best part of all time and deserved all the respect. I don't think they wanted him to come back. And you can see it with Luca this week where he had a team building thing in Slovenia. The entire Lakers team, they were posting photos.

It was dinner in Slovenia. I just feel like it couldn't be Luca's team if LeBron was there. He's too famous. He's too powerful. I think they felt the tug and pull of that all year last year. And I think their intention this entire time was we have to start fresh, as great as LeBron is, thanks for everything.

And I think LeBron knew it. Especially him, he doesn't want to be somewhere where he's not wanted. So I think both sides wanted him to leave. I agree with all of that. And, you know, they had a little bit of a taste of what that combination of Reeves and Luca and the efficiency that those two playing together. But I think I take tiny bit of, you know, a different view. I don't think the Lakers are going to be a cluster fuck.

The ownership situation and everything that led to it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because I think the team, you know, it's a lot of white guys. So you could, you know, maybe point to that. But they'll be competitive. They fit right in in Slovenia.

This is from, oh, another conspiracy, this is from Andrew and Kitchener. He wanted to point out the recent MBA trade deadline. Yonis stays in Milwaukee and then makes his big surprise announcement that he became a shareholder in another gambling company and that's not Fando, I'm not going to promote them. A strange partnership.

And then after months, he was traded to the Miami Heat. But before and after that happened, the Miami Heat accidentally posted and then deleted. It scheduled YouTube live stream LeBron James' introductory press conference. It caused a big spike.

Kalshi, the prediction thing. And LeBron ended up going to Philly, which was, I think, 9% of the bets. And he says, I'm not saying, but I'm just saying, that's an awful lot of money moving a platform.

Yonis is a shareholder. to a team Janice plays for, it's enough to at least do a year and a half long investigation and have a lot of guys in training camp having no comment. I can't quite get there with this, but I did enjoy it.

It's good. I like the connecting of the dots, but for it to matter, there has to be some evidence of the money. The YouTube thing was extremely suspicious. It was like,

oh, I set it up. I didn't realize it was scheduled. It moved the market. when that happened. And if you're doing that, thinking that maybe he wasn't going to go there and then bet the other ones. Anyway, listen, I didn't agree with that one either, but conspiracy bill enjoys all conspiracy bill emails. This one, speaking of prediction gambling platforms,

John from Maine wants to know if they had been around in 1995, what would the odds have been of OJ being guilty in which way would you have bet it? I did send this one to you because I wanted to really talk about this. Yes. I think OJ was probably, I would say, minus 2,000 after the Bronco chase. Maybe it meant off the board. Would you have, what person would have bet the other side on it? So this is what's fascinating about this conversation is that I don't, there's no trial that's rivaled it since, right?

All of America was watching this on a daily basis. And all of America, the ups and downs of opinion around the outcome. of the trial, even though I think the point of view of him being responsible for those crimes, that element didn't really change. I think whatever... Is he going to get off because there's not no bad. Yes. Yeah.

Yes. Or look at how bad this prosecution team is doing. Yeah. Look at the job. That's screwed up. Yeah. Incredible stuff out of the defense team. So if we had texting and gambling in 1995,

the day Chris Darden screwed up the gloves, would we have been on there banging, like doing salvage bets for R.J. Betts? Yeah, because I mean, by the time, the verdict was, it was time for them to go do that thing. I think it was less than 50% of America.

If you go back and look at the polling, thought that he was going to be found guilty. Less than 50%. So, yeah, the Darden, that would have been the time to jump in, for sure. We would have got good numbers. So that's when it flipped.

What do you think it was, like, after the closing statements, who do you think was favored? It was that OJ gets off or OJ goes to jail? I would have said OJ gets off was like minus 180. Oh, I think it was closer. You think it was closer to even? Yeah, I do think it was closer to even. But part of that also is like right down racial lane.

Yeah, it's true. Like, you know. So, of course. Yeah, I was living in Boston that summer. And there wasn't a lot of back and forth dialogue in the trial. I'll say that. People were just like, yeah, he did it. So you think it's like minus 140.

The only thing that really compares, and this was a faster runway, but the 2016 presidential election. Oh, yeah. Which I think Trump was, I don't even know what it was like 25 to 1, 20 to 1. That dipped. They were even.

then it went back up. And Sal and I had that our famous parley that we've talked about many times. The Pats were in the AFC East? Were you in on that too? Yeah, I was, of course. The Pats were the AFC East with Hillary

with the presidency. And we had all these times to hedge and decided not to. But the weekend before the election, Trump was plus 500. So I wonder like if the OJ trial was a swung like that. Right.

Yeah, right. We all decided we couldn't hedge it. Anyway. Scott B. says, after seeing James Hart and just resigning with the Cavs for three years, 97 million. I'm curious. Do GMs actually watch the games at all? This guy will have earned 500 million as perhaps the greatest resume of all-time crappy performances.

And then parentheses, Game 6 Rocket Spurs 2017, the cherry on top of the poop pie. Poop pie. Have we used that one before? Nope. The cherry on top of the poop pie? Pretty good. That's going to be great for us. Who else would you put on the Rushmore?

guys like that. I sent this to you. Do you have any other ones? Because Hardin really stands alone. Well, I don't think he does. And part of this is how you kind of frame it. So the first, for me, it's like, okay, who's made the most money in the NBA, right? So that's

your first kind of review. And some interesting names around James Harden. Now, nobody, James Hardin is now all the way inside the top five, well inside of there. Yeah. And LeBron's number one, but, you know, KD, those guys aren't eligible.

But if you sit down and look at how much money Chris Paul made over his entire career, worth of $400 million. And if you look at Chris Paul's playoff resume and just- He didn't shake that off with the 2021 finals. Well, it was a good performance that they lost. He took them to the finals, though. They, and they lost. And they lost.

Kim down to Devin Booker getting stripped and then the Drew Holiday, Yonah Sal Yop and Yonah scores 50 in game six. I don't know. Hardin never had a run like that. Well, I mean, he Hardin doesn't get credit for being on teams.

He's played in five different conference final situations. Hardin has. I mean, Chris Paul has two of those. And the teams that Hardin was on have a superior postseason record to Chris Paul. He's played in more

playoff games in Chris Paul. If you're comparing those two only, the teammates Hardin had, it's just a completely different class. Chris Paul's best teammates were David West, Blake Griffin. They were teammates. They were teammates.

Right. Yeah, James Hardin. James Hardin was probably Chris Paul's best teammate. The task, though, is to try and come up with the Mount Rushmore. So that's three of their names. That's fine. That's all.

Hard than Chris Paul. This is not surprising. Paul George has made a fuck ton of money in this NBA. Over $405 million and counting. I mean, he's going to be north of $500 million when we're all set and done. So conference finals in 13 and 14 drag the aspiration clippers through the conference finals in 21. And that was the best run that he had. Yes.

It's about it. It's where the train gets on. Nine and 12th in terms of series one. Wow, you did some real research for this house. Well, you said, Rushmore is hard. You have to come up with names. These are good names. I like this.

Yeah, yeah, this is a good. And then I hate to do it. But Russell Westbrook is in this conversation just because. He was where my mind went first. Yeah. Right. Yeah. He's, his playoff game record was 64 and 71, 135 games.

two conference finals, both of them with Oklahoma City and a finals appearance with Oklahoma City. And a couple good flameouts and then after they trade KD, he basically never gets even sniffing close ever again. I don't think he makes round three after that.

Did he make it? Was he on Denver? No. He was on Denver the year after. After. Yeah. So you would have Paul George, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, and then captain of the Mount Rushmore, James Harder. He's like George Washington. I like that.

You wouldn't have Carl Malone on there? I know the money wasn't different back then. That's the problem. My gaining criteria, my first one was who's made a but ton of money over two decades. This is a full poop pie. That is a full, yes. It's a full poop pie.

That's pretty good. I really feel bad for Bradley Beale. I think he was on pins and needles wondering when you were going to mention him. Well, he was in the top 15 of all of the money made. He wasn't inside the top 10. of all the money made. I don't think he understands what else he had to do

to get mentioned. There's still time, Bradley, Bill. A couple of years left. Ryan Dempsey, he writes, he heard about the Caleb Wilson Jizz Room All-Stars. I think people really enjoyed that.

He said, I've not heard the word Jizz since the days of the lunchroom at my Catholic All-Boice High School in the late 90s. Now in the last couple weeks, Luke Jizzed on Nate's sheets became an all-time grade below-deck quote.

I don't know if you watch below-deck, but that was the biggest below-deck moment of the year. Literally below-deck. Deck-Kand Luke did, in fact, Jizz on Bo-Sson-Nate's sheets. It's the thing that happened. Why did he do it? My wife explained it to me.

I was half paying attention. Then you start throwing jizz in relation to Caleb Wilson and the Bulls off-season moves. Australians start sending you any emails about it, and Jizz is becoming a regular thing. It's back in the lexicon like it or not. Hey, we're happy to help.

Welcome back, Jizz. Can we bring back Boner? Oh, Boner never left. I think Boner left. I don't think people say boners the same way that they did. It's in all my text threads with the frequency. What about Boner as a mistake. Like Russell Russel, Russell, Respera committed a boner.

What a boner! Yeah, Boner was right there for years. Fred Merkel's boner, that we always heard about that grown up. Fred Merkel had to be a man. that boner in the world series. Well, let's use it. We have the whole NFL season. I've been trying.

I've been trying to bring boner back. There's going to be a lot of mistakes. All of Deshawn Watson's boners. Jay Taylor said in, he really enjoyed the Russell Westbrook thing I did with Kirk. But I thought I missed. Thought I missed the number one, what if. And he thinks it impacted two NBA championships.

February 2009, forgot about this. The Thunder. Traded for Tyson Chandler. and then rescinded the trade because they were worried about his toe. They sent out Joe Smith, Chris Wilcox, and the rights to Devon Hardin for Tyson Chandler. Because the, I forget, New Orleans Hornets at that point,

were tanking. Thunder's team doctor failed the physical, was the same guy who performed the surgery two years earlier. Two years later, Tyson Chandler wins the title with the Dallas Mavericks. Wow. And then they had to trade Jeff Green for Kendrick Perkins.

They just could have had Tyson Chandler and Jeff Green. It's a pretty good what if. I do think that might have swung a title. Right? 2011 or 12? One of those. Maybe they win.

Going back, was he really hurt? Was Chandler for the following season after they said no to the trade? I mean, he played he was on the Mavs, he was on the Knicks. So I would say no. That was over the life

of his career. Yeah. Yes. It's a good what if. Westbrook had a lot of whiffs. What ifs? David from Iowa, I had that Westbrook stat about usage rate plus assist percentage.

And Westbrook had a 99 one year, which is by far the highest. And I was saying how you can't win that high if you have a Westbrook that high. He wanted to know what was the highest Westbrook while also winning the title. Oh, okay. Winning the title. And the answer is that there was a hard. really a high one for winning that title. It's all the usual suspects you would have anyway

like LeBron, Jordan. But for guys who played 12 plus playoff games, only four people had a Westbrook over 80. 2021, Shrey Young, 80.2. 2018, LeBron. Fucking awesome LeBron season, 81.4. Great.

That was when it was just him and just by himself. 2015 LeBron, when everybody got hurt and they made the finals anyway, 82.8. And then the winner at 86.7, 2016, Russell Westbrook. He holds the regular season and playoff, Westbrook records.

That's amazing. I'm surprised that Alan Iverson didn't crack it. That 2001... They had the assist percentage. She never got an assist like that. When he was scoring like that, he wasn't getting like 15 assists. He would not pass the rock.

One more Resbrook email from C.H. Who said, I coached basketball a long time. A player's glaring weakness cannot be the most important quality for his position. As a point guard leader of a team, decision making is a very important quality that your leader, your point guard, and your best player must have. Russell Westbrook is a walking brain fart with incredible explosiveness and competitive fire. I can't have him at the point guard position if I want to win a title. That's harsh, but I also don't disqualify.

I don't disagree either. I think that was the Westbrook conundrum, right? We loved all this. This was the 90-10. We loved all the stuff he did. But there was that other piece where he just couldn't figure out how to slow himself down in the right time. So there we go.

All right. I'm excited for this one. I didn't send this to you. This is John from Boise, Idaho. He said it's hard to stay excited about all the cool things sports was and is. With all the news about wildly increasing team value, shitty owners, money, scandals, athlete, gambling, etc. Please give me in the sports world some reasons for optimism in this current sports climate.

I would appreciate a pep talk. Oh, okay. I'm happy to do this. Let's do it. I'll start here. The schedule for sports is the best it's ever been. I feel like week after week, weekend after weekend, there's stuff going on. Even last night, there was a good boxing fight.

last night. The baseball was good. I think the WMBA is the best that's ever been. Even in middle of August, there's shit to watch. Premier League started this weekend. Tottenham got absolutely smoked. I had to get a transfer guy from Manchester City United today, one of those. Anyway, I just feel like there's more going on than we've ever had, right? When we were kids and we were teenagers, I don't remember the schedule being stacked like this. It was dead. I mean, there was nothing right now. And no way to watch all this stuff either. Like we complain about the streamers.

Yeah, but it was like today, the base, though, Red Sox game, I go to ESPN, it's not on. Like, what the fuck? Look around. Is it on Pica? Oh, it's the NBC game. And you take that 70 seconds to kind of, you're clicking on stuff and then, oh, there it is.

Better than it was in 1982. I'll tell you that much. That's right. Couldn't find anything. Like, remember when USA started showing? NBA in the early 80s. And it was like, oh, my God. Like, Washington's playing Atlanta.

This is on television. What's happening? Yeah, national cable games. Yeah. National games, like, games, right. And I remember when USA started showing WWE, ESPN had the Sunday night game. They added in the 1980,

like, these were like seminal moments for us. Yes. And now this stuff is available. Like, you're watching golf today. you can go online and watch any version of it. You can watch Nate's brother in whatever tournament he was in. You can do whatever you want. So that's good.

True fact. Yeah, you're right. Good start. Good start. I think the players for the most part are more committed to their craft and being good at it and staying in shape and being aware of the discourse around them and not kind of fucking up their own careers than what we grew up with.

would be my second. Amazing. You unwittingly touched on something that will come up in this conversation today. One of the future mailbag questions we're going to do. I have a candidate that is the epitome of what we grew up with. Right. A person that wasn't able to maintain. How many of those that we have?

Like dating to when we were like young kids. A lot. Like David Thompson, that era. Yeah. And then, you know, I think I wrote about this in my book, but all the guys in the 90s that we loved in college, you know, C-Web, Kenny Anderson, Derek Coleman, these guys that we thought were going to be in our lives in the NBA for 20 years.

And, you know, their careers, Christian Leitner, all these dudes that were like, oh, here's the next group. And like 20% of them made it. Larry Johnson got hurt. But I think in general the guys are in better shape and take care of themselves and just have more wherewithal about what's happening to them. I would say that's the key. They have more wherewithal because the teams are smarter. The teams understand. I was fortunate enough in the last handful of years.

Maybe going pretty far back now to visit Memphis with Verno and they gave me a tour of their facility and walked through all of the rehab stuff that they have, all of the recovery stuff that they have. That's another example. Yeah. All top of the line. and the guys are coming off the court from games and immediately going into your cryotherapy, your whatever, you know, all of the kinds of, you know, let's get inflammation.

Let's address it right away. Super impressive. And that technology continues to just advance, advance. And so for sure, guys are able, because what we want more than anything else is to see the stars play the games. We want the best players to play. Yes. Another one I'd go, the internet.

Like fantasy, the connection you have with people you went to high school, college with, and, you know, like we've been in the ZFL, my buddy Gus's pickball that he's had forever. He used to just mail it out. Come in the mail. They're like, well, who won last week? And now we have a website that we can make picks on, whatever fantasy league we want to be in, we can do, we can find out what happened to guys on our teams? Well, the corollary to that is the text threads that accompany the leagues. Yeah.

Because, you know, the ability to have the in real time shit talking where the entire group can see it right away and participate in it, that really ups the overall enjoyment of all of it from my perspective. Text threads would be another one, I would add. There we go. Text threads. I think you're on my most text threads. We're on text threads for all different kinds of things

with all different kind of groups of people. That's true. That is true. But yeah, we have a bunch of fun ones. And then here's another one that doesn't get talked about enough. You know, I was bitching about the stadiums with Derek Thompson and how the billionaire should build their own fucking stadiums, which they should.

You know what's really nice now? Stadiums and arenas. Remember what we grew up with? Man. Fucking terrible aren'tas. The Patriots football stadium was the worst place than the earth. But literally we had nothing good ever happened there

the entire time, the first 30 years of my life until the tuck world snow game, the Tom Brady game. That was like the first happy moment in the history of that stadium. But, you know, when you think about obstructed views and just 25% of the seats just being the shitting,

as a seat's possible, like, that's gotten better. It's more expensive. Immensely better. The food's better, important for you? The Capitol Center is what I grew up with for the bullets and the caps. And, you know, in the 70s, you could smoke. This thing was subterranean. You would come in and there would be a giant cloud of smoke.

Indescribable. You can't believe it. A cloud of smoke. You couldn't even. It would be. Smoky for the entire third quarter. It's like shooting off fireworks inside the fucking enclosed dome.

The other thing is like, speaking of recognizing the impact of those stadiums on the players, we went to three rivers to see a Pirates game for our buddy Chips wedding. Yeah. I couldn't believe how fucking terrible that place was for baseball. Oh, yeah.

And I couldn't believe they played football in there either. I've been to some awful baseball stadiums and all of them. Like when we went to Camden, where we saw the inside the park home run where the guy got knocked out by the throw as he slid home for the inside of the park home run. Oh, I can't remember his last name was.

Yeah. And Jacko said that's the most unbelievable thing I've seen all weekend. And then somebody were with was like, there was a whole story that I won't tell because it was obscene. But it was a famous story for us. But yeah.

But we were at Camden and we were like, And you were used to it because you lived near there, but Jacko and I couldn't believe how nice Camden was. And now there's probably 15 stadiums better than Camden. Better, yeah. All the baseball stadiums that are coming online. Even Fenway is way nicer now. I mean, some of them are sterile.

Like, I think old Yankee Stadium versus the new one. I don't think it's a contest. The old one was just better. But there's some good ones too. So those are some good things. Those are all good things. I've thrown podcasts, too. I think podcasts have been really fun for a lot.

learning more and not having to be so trapped to kind of the generic network or local sports radio, just you can kind of pick what you want, whatever you care about, you know? I'm not coming in fully prepared, so I don't have the full litany of this, but I feel like we've been really treated to a slew of very good playoff slash, you know, championship outcomes across sports. Oh, like exciting stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yes, because there's a lot of unexpected shit happening. Nobody had Indiana playing Miami for the national championship in college football last year.

And that happened. And that was fucking awesome. And, you know, what we got with the Spurs, the Knicks, nobody at the beginning of last basketball season had the Spurs and the Knicks as the combatants. And then we, that was incredible outcome-wise. And we're having this this flip over in football where immediately, you know, there are no dynasties in football. The chiefs go six and, you know, 11.

And it's the Patriots and the Seahawks in the goddamn Super Bowl. Right. And next year that can change. It's going to change. Yeah. I mean, we're sitting here. It's definitely going to be two different teams, in my opinion. Yeah, sports is great.

And by the way, with these owners, I know I've done a lot of podcast content about it, it's not great that you have teams, you have guys or companies or investors buying teams solely as assets, right? Like I look at, like we, we hung out with Ryan Smith a year ago at the Masters. Yeah. Somebody who bought the jazz

and then really wanted to like build in Utah and understood the fan base and then bought, not to blow smoke up Brian Smith's ass, but bought the hockey team. He really wanted to be part of, the community. He understands. Wanted to grow Utah. The responsibility. Yeah, through the teams. And we either had terrible owners, and we've certainly both have had terrible owners. You have had bad ones. I've had bad ones. Snyder is a good example. Peter Angelos I had.

I had just quit the Orioles. Yeah, you had some horrible ones I did too. Snyder at least was a Redskins fan. When he did that, he was just terrible at owning the team and he was an unlikable guy. Right. My point is that's the part that worries me is if people are buying these teams but don't give a shit about them and it's basically how can I flip this later? That part's scary,

but we've had bad owners our whole lives. It's true. Go back to the 70s and 80s, man. Owners have always been bad. You remember the good ones, you know? So anyway, Mike and Ridgewood Queens wants to say about Denzel Boston, who I've been raving about in the Cleveland camp.

He said, you know how the Equalizer franchise stars Denzel Washington and is set in Boston? Well, his name is basically the movie. Why isn't Denzel Boston's nickname the Equalizer? Okay. So there's been three equalizers. They've all been set in Boston,

starring Denzel. I'm done. I accept this. This guy should be named the Equalizer. How do we get this going? My most successful nickname push ever was PG-13. I single-handly started that. Okay.

Maybe we can start the Equalizer. It's good. I want him to be good. The thing that's got to hold it back is if they're bouncing dirt balls 10, 5 yards in front of them. If the door is or overthrowing him by. Even worse, if it's over his head and he's jumping up and getting nailed. Yes.

Jim in South Pasadena, I never knew this. was one of the craziest emails I've gotten. Do you think it's a big enough deal that the Giants and Dodgers right now are tied all time in their robbery? They each have 1,294 wins with 17 ties. They are dead even. They've been playing since 1890

and they play, what, 17 games a year and they're exactly dead even. How is anything more insane than this? There's nothing more insane. How is that possible? possible. They played almost 2,600 games and they're dead even. That reminds me it's akin to the fact that LeBron never had a 2777, right? That's another one. Wasn't that the stat? Yeah, some nerds came out. Some nerds came out. It was like, oh, that's actually totally

conceivable that that would happen, but I still think it was pretty great. Dodgers and Giants, tied. Terry P. had a two-part question. Did Seattle beat in the Patriots this year, less than the joy in enthusiasm Patriots had from the Malcolm Butler's Super Bowl victory. The answer is fuck no, and that's in all caps. Then he asks, then he asks, are the

Seahawks the first NFL team since the 01 Patriots to have no haters? That's a large thing one. Good one. Who doesn't like the Seahawks? Right. What would the case be? You'd have to have a team that played them or you were rivals with them. You'd have to come up with something

even like at the Mike McDonald hasn't arrived and been a dick like there isn't a note worthy rivalry between McDonald and Shanhan and McVey man it's a pretty good one yeah everyone likes J.S.N.

Legion of Boom had an identity and everybody wanted them to shut the fuck up. Yeah Sherman talked a lot of shit he talked to Brady that time people are like who's this guy. Yeah this one Seahawks don't they just kind of keep their message business. Everybody loves the city of Seattle.

Darnold is a, you know, a very likable reclamation projects out of left field story. By the way, I think we're doing a Seattle Portland swing for live shows. Oh, do tell. Yeah, it's happening. I don't know if you wanted, I know, you might

have to come along. My hands up. Great food in those cities. Yeah. Great food cities. I think we're going to do rewatchables in Seattle and then a sports one in Portland. But yeah, we have the dates. Elizabeth Fairman. Oh, she's on it. Yeah, probably the single most beloved ringer employee.

Yeah. Deservant. Anyway, I think we're doing a Pacific Northwest swing. Speaking of the Pacific Northwest, from Andrew in New York, I know you already have a distaste for Tom Dundon, but were you aware he's also responsible for the growth of your least favorite sport?

Pickleball? He's the majority owner in the Major League Pickleball. Has the whole thing about it. is true. El Chippo is number one pickleball investor. It makes perfect sense. See, I'm torn here because I'm boys with

a guy that has been a champion. No. Of just the expanding popularity of it. And I've never, I've touched a paddle up for it one time ever. I won't do it because I'm not

like popping in Achilles. I'm not playing golf for six months because I've played fucking pickleball. You're lunging back and forth. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it. But I'm just saying I recognize its broad popularity, the demographic that it, you know,

it's seeking. And I like the idea of the tiny, intimate little stadiums they're doing and everything. I get it. I get it. That's all, I'll leave it at that. That was not for me.

That was disgusting. Aaron Reich wrote in with his son, Ezekiel. He said he's been listening to the podcast with my kids. They're 10 at 7. Is he's not. Sorry for all the F-bombs in this pod. Oh, sorry.

I asked my 10-year-old if he could ask a question, what would it be? He thought for a little bit and asked, do you think a healthy Jason Tatum would have led the Celtics to the same regular season record if you switched him with Jalen Brown last season? It's phenomenal. Phenomenal question. Interesting that nobody's ever asked me this one, and I've never really thought about it before.

I think they would have been around. the same. I think that's one of the great things about what Jaywin did last year was he was able to basically match the production of somebody who just made four straight first team OmbAs. But yes, I think they would have had the same record. Maybe even a whiff better because of the rebounding. Well, I'm agreeing because the true architects, the person that deserves credit for this is Missoula. They played a certain way, a certain approach, and they they took no nights off. No. They were going. going hard from jump, you know, first tip back in October 2025.

I haven't told you this, but you knew it was going to happen. I've kind of talked myself into the Paul George trade. Oh, this is so good. August 23rd took over 50 days. It happened this week. Yeah, I was going to tell you. I'm going to have so much fun this basketball season. Yeah, it happened.

The problem is when guys are missing games, we're going to be able to say, well, this is what happens. Guys miss games. This is who these guys are. These guys miss games. Yeah, I've talked myself into it. I knew I would. You knew I would.

I honestly, 50 days was a long time, but now I've talked myself into it. I had to. What else am I going to do? You're going to root for the Celtics this upcoming season. And they have a chip on their shoulder. And, you know, they will, okay, who's the laughing stock now? It's Paul George. Look at Paul George. This defensive stopper out on the wings and all the rest of it.

Paul George. I know what's coming. Ron Harper. Baylor Shireman. We can replace Jalen with bulk. Yeah. All kinds of looks. Paul George, much better fit with Jason Tate.

Good catch and two, three-point shooter. Not going to care about an alpha dog situation and your turn, my turn, because he's in his mid-30s. He's ready to be a supportive guy. The basic question is the chemistry of this team is Jason Tatum plus Mitch Robinson plus Paul George with the guys that got a year older. Right. Can they play, though, the way that Missoula wants them to play?

That's that question. I thought Brad Stevens had this show that only still think fans watch. It's like a YouTube show. And he had some quote in there where he was basically like we had, basically said I felt like we had taken this group as far as he could go. And what he meant was these two guys, I think we had taken as far as it could go. And it was time to figure out a new version of this. And that's why they did it.

And you get one year at a Paul George, and then he's an expiring next year, and you have all these picks, and maybe you can flip him into something legitimate. That particular proposition, I remain immensely skeptical of. I call bullshit on that. I call bullshit. This is why it took 50 days. It took 54 days. How about this?

Why don't you just see, let them play together with Mitch Robinson and let's see what the team is capable of. Let's see that. Because those two fucking guys won an NBA championship together. And you knew that you were going to have Mitch Robinson. Mitch Robinson's been in your plans. I don't say it. I don't say I feel 100% great about this, but I had to talk yourself into things. You're on a long car ride, and then there's two hours to go, and you kind of give

into the car ride, and you're like, there's two hours to go. Let's just, it's going to, that's same thing. I had a, it was a long car ride. You're powering through it. Yeah. You're powering through the Celtics season. And guess what? When I figured out how to justify the trade of my head, it was like when we would drive

to Vegas and you would see the Arby's. Oh. Yeah. It's like, you just need, we weren't probably winning in the title this year. we needed to reset the team, get under, expiring next year, build the team around Tatum.

I tried. I tried, guys. Let's keep wasting Tatum years. Chat from Fresno said, I sent you this one. We've all seen the guy that isn't good at a sport, but he's dripped head to toe

and the best apparel in shoes for that given sport. What about sports apparel items that you can only buy if you meet a certain skill level, like special ping hats for people that are scratch golfers, different tennis shirts or headbands,

or headbands for tennis players above four or five, et cetera, et cetera. You see somebody in a certain hat or shoes, you immediately know they're good. So there's a slight parallel with this with Masters. I know. I knew you're going to go to this place. It's at different stores,

and then Berkman's has like some special swag, but then if you get into the clubhouse store that only the members in, there's really special hats and stuff there, right? So there's like tears. What do you think of this idea? I love it. I have no note.

the problem is it creates, I mean, what's going to stop me from buying one of these things? Oh, your buddy has a ping hat? Right, yeah, yeah. The person earned it, but I'm going to fucking buy it from them because it's the coolest one, and I want to be, you know, the guy walking around. Yeah, that's where it falls apart.

Imprimatur of Excellence. Yes. The same way that we use, I'm not going to say out loud, the way the techniques that are out there. I'm sure people can figure them out. But you can get some great stuff out of the August of Prosh. I got scared.

I just talked about like massage techniques. Not yet, not yet. Augusta Pro Shop, there's ways to sort of get. Our buddy, Chris Chen, has some great strategies he's used over the years. He gets a putter every year out of the- So there would have to be some sort of honor system, almost like when you get your own master's jacket, like Jeff Yang. We know a couple of people on master's jackets.

Jeff, Jeff Yang has. Heidi Euboroth. Why do you have that? What do you have that on? The master's jacket, you wouldn't let like, oh, house, borrow my master's jacket. So maybe these hats are like, maybe they're like $1,200 hats.

Good. I like this. I wouldn't want to give that hat to anybody because it's my only one. You would not lend it there. Okay. All right. Okay. Yes. There's something there.

It should be like, it should be awarded from the PGA tour or the country club. You win the country club. So it's priceless. Yeah. Chad from Fresno. Good job. Cody Larson.

basically wants to know if Miles Garrett is a U-Ating theory candidate. He checks every box. Okay, let me hear it. Superstar, they never want anything with him. Everybody's written off the team without him. That's basically the Ewing theory in a nutshell. Okay. The problem is it's the Browns and their quarterbacks to Sean Watson or Shardor Sanders.

And they've had a lot of suckitude. There were a lot of years of real suck. I can keep my eye on the Ewing theory for that. Okay. All right. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk.

Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk. Luke from North Carolina said the Hornets have acquired around 20 second round picks of the next few years. I think that's pretty close to accurate. My question is if you offered all 20 picks, who is the best player you could acquire for 20 second round picks? Did I send you this one or no? You did.

And I'll have to confess, I didn't get around in the research. This remains one of the most confounding elements of the way that, um, the business of basketball is conducted between teams now. Teams valuing second round picks where you and I could give a shit. Right. We would just trade off. We would have, we would never have second round picks.

But here, take them. I have a one in ten chance after 32. It clearly, it is a lubricant in the machine. It is. It greases all of these deals. All of these deals slide right in very nicely.

They can make things work. to some kind of satisfaction because we constantly see these second round picks added in as sweeteners and elements or something about the way the collective bargaining agreement works or something about the way the cap works

that these second round picks there's something there. So I couldn't get Jalen Duren for 20 second round picks. No, I don't think so. Could I get Herb Jones? See, now we're talking. I think it's like Herb Jones.

Right. that's a great. We got to do, I'm going to do some, some research as the NBA season. I think it's the Herb Jones level. It's like great.

That's a great call. Could I get Nas Reid for 20 second round picks? I don't know, man, sort of have 40 second round picks at that point. Is Alex Caruso? Alex Caruso, we're a 22nd round pick.

At this stage of his where he is and kind of the injury risk, now maybe. And everybody knows, you know, Oklahoma City. Speaking of, traffickers of second round picks.

Could Washington get 20 second round picks for Anthony Davis? I don't know what to do with them. For what? By the way, I'm glad I brought this up. What the fuck was Dallas doing the last nine months? The last nine months? What do you mean? They basically gave Anthony Davis away last year for reasons that remained unclear.

And then he immediately had more value on Washington. Right? Why didn't they just keep them? They just bought out Clay Thompson to save nine million bucks. Why don't you keep them as an expiring? Maybe your team's going to be a little better than you thought. Maybe you could package him in a deal. Instead, now he's just a $9 million sunk. Oh, congrats. You saved $9 million. Your team's tripled since you bought it. Well, I don't understand these teams at all. This is like, but this Dallas team, it goes, I mean, the original sin of the Luca trade. every element of what they've done since. And I'll never forgive the fucking league for giving them Cooper Flag. They could fuck off, continue to fuck off for that. I'll never forgive it.

Peter from, we're almost done. Peter from Chicago said, you in House were talking about how the new Vegas expansion team, which by the way, I know for a fact is in the nine's. Okay. It's in the nine billion range for Vegas team.

It just, there you know. We were talking about, they shouldn't be named the odds. And Peter said, it got me thinking. In the WMBA, they have a new expansion team in Philadelphia. They've yet to come up with a team name. They want to use fan support as input. Using your platform, I think this would be the greatest time to market the idea for them to be named the Philadelphia 70s sisters.

Hey, there's precedent. I kind of like that. There's precedent. To this day in my life, there are more. multiple places where I have the sole S-O-S-S-I-S-T-A-H-S, which was the Miami mascot for the Miami W-N-B-A franchise that does not exist any longer. The sole Sistas, look, I'm into this. The Philadelphia's 70 Sisters.

It's strong. It's really good. We had a couple good ones. Arch madness and the Philadelphia's 70 sisters. Good mailbag. All right. Martin from Estonia asked, who are my all-time driving to the airport, Celtics top five? Estonia. Hi, Martin. Thank you. This comes from Kyrie's last year with the Celtics, which did not go well.

And then I was joking constantly about how I wanted to drive him to the airport to make sure he got on the plane. And then I think we made a social video of me driving Kyrie to the airport. By the way, Kyrie, I'm glad he's figured out. stage of Kyrie. I'm glad he's at a place of life, but he was not a fun something. Were you wearing your seatbelt on that ride? I definitely was not. Nope.

So I asked you for your five bullets. I'm going to give you, you go first and I'll give you my five Celtics after. Okay, so this was tough because I do, there are some sympathy cases in here and then some that I have absolutely no sympathy for whatsoever. Top of the list because of recency bias. I was going to say

Kyle Kuzma because his bags were always packed over the last two years. was in Washington, but I don't really have animosity towards him. He tried and then the circumstances changed and whatever, man. Jordan Poole is a whole other kind of deal. Like after, and really it's not Jordan's Poole's fault. It is the organization that as the rebuild, you know, was arrived upon. They put this dude, they gave him a microphone and let him say, welcome everybody to the state. Like, they put him front and center as a guy that was like a kind of leader thing and it blew my fucking mind.

So Jordan. Didn't they give him the end of the Jumbotron intros? Yes. He was the last guy introduced, all that stuff. Yes. Crazy business. Just insane business. Speaking of crazy business, insane business, and I do have sympathy for this guy,

John Hotplate Williams by the end of his five years here. Now, the story is that he was dealing with an enormous amount of stress and the way that he was handling that stress was eating it. And I understand that. He was an early case. Well, you just like to eat without the stress. Yeah.

Both. I'll eat the stress. But he, they put him, that guy had paycheck skipped by, by both Washington and the clippers where he went, because he could not get the weight thing. Yeah.

By the end of his five years here. He made sense in your team. Yeah. Can we quickly on John Hopplate Williams? Yes. This was Peter Vech. Jesse, who was a really influential MBA writer for the post for years, and we loved reading his hoop de jour. But his two best nicknames ever, he called Joe Barry Carroll, Joe barely cares.

And then there was a John Hot Rod Williams, who was on Tulane and the Cavaliers. Yes. And Peter Vessie called the other John Williams, John Hot Plate Williams, to separate them. And it was just like chef's kiss 10 out of 10. Yeah. Phenomenal. Anyway, all right. So hot plates on there. Yeah. And then some guys from this era in the sort of 2000s, Andre Blotch. Yeah, if you didn't say Andre Blotch, I was going to not even know if I knew you anymore. He was, again, if you wanted to be slightly sympathetic, he did get shot.

Right. He arrived in Washington and got shot in a carjacking effort. But then he got arrested a couple times. There was some solicitation kind of stuff going on. You ended up amissing him. and he was, there's some famous clips of him going for triple doubles in all the wrong ways. Yeah. So by the time, you know, he was done. Yeah, that's right.

These two guys I put together because they were both traded together. And their most famous moment in Washington was attempting the, I mean, I'm not going to use that word. The colossally stupid cinnamon challenge. Nick Young and Javille McGee. Nick Young and Jesus. I did that with Jaylen. Had it from 2008 to 2012, these two big dummies here in Washington

with just incredibly outside, like their connection to reality. So those guys together, I was happy. Now this one, I got to proceed carefully because I don't want there to be any repercussions that might be visited upon me,

but I'm going to whisper it, Javar is crittenden. Fair. Fair. You've got to be careful because, you know, he has, he had connections. So is Brad Beale not on the airport list? Because he was pretty good for you guys at that point. Yeah. And he'll be, you know, he's still at the top of all of the record books.

I thought for sure Brett Price was going to make your list. No, he didn't do anything wrong. He just showed up in his foot. Didn't you overpay him? Yeah, but that's what Washington does. That's what they did. I don't, I don't, I don't bear him any ill. ill will. He didn't, you know, have a gun in the locker room and, and, you know, with the genuine

threat of gun play in a locker room. I thought for sure you were also, who was the, the shooter you had in the mid-2010s that you overpaid? It was like a six-foot-eight, is there one, three-point shooter. God damn, was it, uh, Ersan Elie Sovo's like one of those type of guys. You paid one of those guys. I mean, it sounds right. I could easily go back and pull up. Now I'm going to have to. But was it, John, and they didn't make it for you?

Nah, because again, you liked them. Okay. All right, I'm going to give you my, I did by the decade. I did one per decade.

1970s, Sydney Wicks. It was really him and Curtis wrote together, but the red our back his dumbest move ever, let Paul Silas leave, wouldn't pay Paul Silas,

who was the heart and soul of two title teams, whole Celtic run, won't pay him and then tries to replace him with Sidney Wix and Curtis Rowe. Curtis Rowe had the famous quote who was something like

there aren't any Ws and L's and paycheck, something like that. He was not a popular subject. Sidney Wicks was worse that one and was just a losing player his whole career with good stats but kind of peaked when Calvin Murphy punched him out in a rocket

Celtic game. Calvin Murphy was 5'9 and Sidney Wicks was 6'9 and ended up getting I think of broken or bloody nose. Everyone hated him. So that's one. Rick Robey in the 80s. He was a nice guy, great guy, backup center.

One of the most frustrating, he would just come in, he'd bowl somebody over, he'd be moving on a charge, he'd go over the back on somebody, and then he would have a nice lefty hook, but he was just incredibly frustrating. And I was so delighted

when we traded him for Dennis Johnson. I wanted to drive him to the airport just to make sure he got on. Todd Day in the 90s. Oh, wow. The most selfish player I've ever watched. It was the mid-90s when my dad would always give me the tickets. He had the Fleet Center record for a while because he was just, I mean, he was, if he had the ball over half court, it was going up.

He was one of those guys. And you could just watch him suck the life out of everybody else. He was a good college player, too. He was really good. I love that Arkansas team. Mark Blunt in the 2000s. Sure. I get it.

When we paid him a big contract, I wrote an entire piece using a Phelma Louise analogy of Harvey Citeau at the ending, running toward the cliff as they drove off it because I hated the contract. He suckered them in. He did the Jerome James. He had like six good weeks, suckered him in, and then eventually we dumped him on Minnesota somehow. So he's for the 2000s, and then Kyrie and the, uh, in the 2010.

So we're only halfway through the 2020s. Seems like a nice guy, but Nicola Vucevich in the lead right now for the airport. I did hope he got in the plane. Well, I mean, how long was he in Boston? He wasn't there long enough to, you know. Was him and Evan Fornier are the two leaders for the 2020s right now?

Evan Fornier came in. He was the big 2021. He was like our big trade deadline score off the bench. And he went like three for a hundred. the playoffs. Okay. Last question. From Parker, from Utah. Finding out Joe House played water polo was not on my 2026 bingo card. I wasn't as shocked as when I found out Luca was traded to the Mavericks, but I was definitely more shocked than when I found out Tyler Darden was really the narrator of Fight Club the whole time. I don't have a question. Spoiler. Yeah. I don't know. Can we

spoil that movie or no? No, it's fine. I think it's okay. I think we have to show the photo. I'm still working. I haven't been to my parents to get up into the attic yet. Well, you sent me the photo. I did.

This is the team. Who did you send it to? What do you mean? Now I can't find the photo. I send it to you, just you. Only you. It was just to me only? Me to you.

I didn't send it around to any of our threads. Oh, I found it. Okay. It's just a group of young men. All right, here we go. In bathing suits. The Joe House water polo photo. There it is.

Joe Hass is in the back. Good all my guys. I'm my deal of you guys. Shout out to the feet. Nice full head of hair and skinny body. There we go. Yeah, there you go. The Joe House water polo photo exists.

So you're going to try to find some more for us. I feel like there's some action shots that are out there. Like his, you know, with the water splashing, you're up. caught the ball. So you played all through high school, and then you hid this from us when we were in college together. You were a year ahead of me.

I didn't hide it. I played on the college of the Holy Cross team. You never talked about it. None of us had any idea. It was always in the fall. You and I played basketball five times a week, and I somehow never knew you're in the water polo team until you were a junior.

We were in the Nescacacac League, and we played like Bates and Colby and Trinity. I can't remember everybody. You played all four years at Holy Cross. I did. I missed. So my number one activity at Holy Cross was the radio station, by far my favorite thing. And every year there was a great college, the college music journal, CMJ hosted a weekend down in New York. And the radio station would send people down.

And I was invited. And I couldn't go any of those years. I chose to go to the water polo tournament because that's when the championships were. every year up at Bates where it's fucking freezing cold. Oh my God, that's the worst ride from Holy Cross the Bates. It's like four hours. They let us take a van. The College of the Holy Cross let us, you know.

Is it a water polo van? We had a Holy Cross van. Guess how many cases of beer were? Oh, my God. I mean, it worked out. It was fun. I enjoyed it. But holy cow.

Yeah. There you go. Joe House's Waterpull occur. Amazing stuff. I'm going to see you this week. You're coming in. Thanks for doing the mailbag with me. Thanks to everybody who sent in the questions.

Yeah, I have you a couple dinners. Thanks to everybody who sent the questions. We're going to take a break and come back with the guy who briefly resurrected our Holy Cross football program. And now I'm trying to do the same. And you say, like, Bob Chesney is next right after this. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Whether life serves you an ace or an unexpected backhand, the high-protein yogurt, Oikos Pro, is there to feed your strength and help you turn challenge into a smash. Oikos Pro helps build strong muscles and support muscle recovery with high protein and contains no added sugar because true strength isn't about being able to take the hits.

It's about being able to bounce back. Oikos Pro feed your strength. Visit oikos.Ca for more details. All right. I have not cared about college football since I was in college at Holy Cross. Holy Cross. You coach too, Bob Chesda. But yeah, we were really good once upon a time. Really good. And I grew up in Massachusetts and New England. Yeah. Didn't really have with Doug Flutie for a couple years, but we just wasn't like going,

being in Michigan or, you know, where you're just Texas, where you fall in love. So I never really had a team. And now in my mid-50s, I have a team. Hell yeah. You still have football because you got here. Welcome. Welcome to the team.

Thank you. I'm your unofficial booster. I love it. Walk me through everything. Like so you're at James Madison last year. Yeah. You're in the playoffs. And now eight months later you're here, you're in L.A.

Yeah. And you're in the NIL era. What's the single hardest thing about doing this? Well, I think that you hit the nail on the head. The timing of it was just that was the hardest part about it. Yeah. Because, you know, you don't want to be solely focused. You don't want any distractions in your team as you feel like you got a good team

and you're doing something pretty special, which we felt like we had at JMU. And, you know, you go week after week and then your name starts popping up in something and somewhere else. and you're taking a Zoom or a couple of Zooms during a buy week, and you're trying to fit it in. And, you know, you definitely have interest in places, but at the same point in time, you know that you can't mess up the product that you're, you know,

and that journey that you're currently sharing with that team. So it was one of- And they know too, right? They hear about your name. Like, they know indirectly, and they see stuff out there. Some true, some not, you know. So ultimately, to them, I said, come ask me anything.

I'll tell you the truth. I don't want you to ever feel like, you know, I'm not being honest with you. and there's sort of a business side to this. But whatever we're talking about is talking about next year. Yeah. Not the journey we're on. So, you know, it ultimately went in through, you know,

there's a couple home visits and things of that nature that occurred. And I really started to just see what, you know, UCLA was all about. And you start talking to some of the guys that were on the search committee and you start, you know, talking to Martin. And you start feeling like, man, they want this thing back on track. And you felt the energy from them. And I felt like it was a, you know, a young. crew, but there's, you know, Adam Peters, who's the GM of the commanders, right?

Yeah. There's Bob Myers who did, you know, work magic, obviously, with, you know, the Golden State. And then there's Casey. And then Doc Roberts is calling me on the side. And like every piece of it, I was like, man, these are some like high level, you know, people that have won at the highest level in the sports, right? In the sports world, not just, hey, they're CEO or something else that doesn't know what the team dynamics are.

And I was just so intrigued by that, that it really made me think, you know, more and more about it. And then eventually we make the decision, you know, it goes public and after it goes public, we're still in the championship weekend, right? So we're still trying to play this championship game.

And I did not want to be a distraction. And I remember when it popped, I told the team on the field first. I said, look, something's going to come out later today because guys text me that they got this story and they're going to go with it.

I said, so I just want you to know what they're talking about again is next year. Now, I've said that, and I was like, how do I, like, what's an exercise that I could do to prove to them that I am still solely focused on this? And it's funny enough, once that all came out, you know, probably 400 text messages in the first couple hours. So I end up, you know, holding up my phone the next morning team meeting and I have, you know, 400 or whatever it is text messages. And I said, this, I have 400 text message on her. I took a screenshot of it actually.

And I said, I'm not answering a single one of these. I said, these are all about next year. I said, so you guys need to do the same. And it was cool because by the end of the week, I showed them, it was like 1,200. And I never, I just kept growing. And I was holding true to my word that I'm not interested in talking about this stuff for next year. I'm interested in finishing this with a conference championship, hosting it at home.

And then maybe making the playoffs. And then fortunately enough, we made the playoffs, had a little bit of time off. Got to come out here, do a press conference, meet the team, and figure some things out about the lay to land here. and then, you know, that was really it. Started to develop a staff and put together, you know, our GM role, ultimately, because recruiting was going to be the first thing we had to do. Didn't talk to a single kid at JMU about, hey, you're coming with me.

I wanted that to stay pure and be about, you know, that team that year. And I didn't want to talk to them about any of those things until the season was over. So that only happens in sports movies. Yeah. I've taken you. I'm taking you. Man, it happens because then it was funny because then we waited because I also was, you know, just trying to be.

respectful of the relationship with JMU and I didn't want to technically tamper with any of these guys. So we weren't calling until the portal opened. And then when the portal opened, we start calling them, they're like, where were you? Like, I've been talking to coaches this entire time. And I didn't think you guys were interested. We were like, no, we were trying to play by the rules here and do it the right way. And, you know, and then obviously a chunk of one came with us, a couple didn't. But, you know, I think that what's here with us, we're really proud of, and I think helps set the culture of this program. And it's been really good. But the thing that saved me, It's a long-ass answer too, by the way, right?

I'm along for the right. Yeah, the thing that saved me was probably the fact that this is three hours back, right? So I look at like Stein who went over to Kentucky from here on the West Coast. So you get done with your day at 10 o'clock, you know, it's one in the morning on the East Coast. So he's got to find time during the day and take away from what he's doing, you know, at Oregon. And I'd take anything away from JMU. I got to complete the day, 10, 11 o'clock at night, get on the phone with, you know, GM candidates and start figuring those things out. And you sell three hours at the end of the

day, you know, that you want to normally have. I'm sure your wife was delighted. Yeah, she, I was in the basement. She didn't even know where I was. So she's like, I'll see you in June. Yeah, it's right, pretty much, pretty much. So that's how it all kind of went down. But it was good because I got to stay true to the mission we were on and not take anything away or dilute that in any way. And at the same point in time, do a little extra work. It was harder on me, but really just me, Not on anybody else. I mean, that's always for decades, been one of the worst things about college sports.

Yeah. When a guy that's there is going to leave. And it could go one or two ways. Like you can go in a limbo, it can tear the team apart or, you know, you keep everyone in focus. That's where you put a lot of thought into that. A lot of thought into it.

And I think the way we did it, I was trying to hold off from anything going public until after the championship game. It just didn't work out that way. Once media gets it, they get it. And it's kind of the end of it. I had it for like a month. I just sat on it.

That's right. And you should have. And I appreciate that. you did if you did but uh those are the things that you know were and and then it came down to if we're in the playoffs yeah you know i am coaching in this game and that had to be part of this conversation with any school i was talking to is you know if we're in a bowl game i'm probably coaching in that game like i'm not gonna not going to like leave this team i just it wasn't going to be an option for me to go forward with any other team if they didn't respect that so uh and i knew would put us

at a little bit of a disadvantage in the recruiting class i knew our portal class had to you know then carry a lot of the weight, but is what it is. Like for me, I think, you know, the loyalty to that place that supported me so much and, you know, and had our back, I felt like I had to, you know, really do the same. Yeah, and you know your UCLA, it's a great school. You're on the West Coast. You're still going to get some kids. Correct.

So the JMU thing, ultimately, like, it played out pretty well. Yeah. Made the playoffs. Nobody was expecting that. Yeah. You lose. Then you come here. Yes.

You take over, the last time I talked to you when it was with a bunch of people and you were explaining, I think it was in this spring. I can't remember. It was like March, April somewhere in there. And you were explaining how different it is now to try to get people. Yeah. And dealing with not only you're paying players, which has never really happened. Yes. Above the table before. Correct. But you're also dealing with like weird representatives, people that don't have their credentials to really negotiate. Correct. People that don't understand you give your word to. to somebody and then you just, oh, you're giving me that. I'm going to go here then. That's right. So what, what is this world like? Because from afar, it seems like a nightmare. Yeah, I mean, it's close to a nightmare. I think that, you know, you look at the NFL and the cool thing about the NFL is that you have contracts. There's tampering rules. There's all the things that come with it. There's season completes. Then it opens up to hiring cycle. And everybody, you know, free agency happens. Coaches make moves. All those things go down. They have to have permission to talk to a coach. That's not the case here. You know, obviously it won't be the

here for some time, I think, till 2031. I think the national championship game is already scheduled at the time of the year that it is, which is starting this next school year. So you're still playing through the Christmas break, you're playing into the next semester, and now guys are going to transfer out or transfer in or figure it out.

So I think those teams that are in the playoff hunt, that's probably a really hard juggle because you've got to have official visits during the middle of, you know, preparing for the first round or second or third round of the play. And you're making job interviews, but it's like one-year job interviews. Exactly right.

So that's the stuff that's different. And then, you know, you find a kid. We love you. You know, you love us. It's great. Everything's going good. But shoot, can you just, I love it. I'm going to definitely come visit and everything, but just can you talk to my agent real

quick, you know, and then the agent gets involved. And when the agent gets involved, you know, you goes a whole different direction sometimes and the visit never happens or it does. And you've got to promise money up front sometimes with a kid you never even met or at least promise a ballpark. So you're just walking around with cash? You just have hundreds on you? I just forward out your pockets.

Yeah, that's right. So that's what it feels like. So it's really one of those things that, and then you got to know the market and the market seemed to escalate, you know, significantly this past year. How do you keep track of the market when there's like over 100 teams looking for a left tackle? And really the truth is the market might be the market. It might be set for you. But then there's one other school that's extremely desperate and has money and just raises, you know, your value all of a sudden.

Turns into an eBay auction. Out of nowhere. Yeah. Just a big spike in it. And now you've got to figure out, is that worth. or not for us. And you just have to do a really good job of understanding your own budget, understanding your position allotment and allocation of what you're trying to do. And then you just got to try to stand by it. But you never wanted to do this stuff. No. No, no.

You just want to like coach 11 guys on each side and go. So that's the interesting part. Is that no, but name one coach that got into it to be a GM and to understand this and, you know, have the portal open twice a year, you know, not too long ago, run a budget, raise money. do, I mean, I was always a little bit part of it, but then now you're doing all that. And I realized that JMU, when I was the one talking to all the agents, you know, and we get on a phone call and it would start and then there'd be a, you know, a rebuttal that would come back, you know, minutes later. Then we'd have to go back to that.

It was like four or five, six phone calls with every guy until you could even get near a number. Yeah. Like, why are you doing that? That was at the point of this ain't, this is really hard work. So, you know, obviously having a GM and an assistant GM and a recruiting department, you know, is necessity at this stage of the game. But then the thing that I really don't like about it is that as soon as you put an agent in contact with the GM, it's all business.

And it's not about what's the best fit. Where should he be? What's his playing time like? Does he gel well with the coaches? Is the culture going to fit him? You know, is he going to be happy there? Does he like the area? All those things go out the window.

And that agent, all he cares about is the highest number he could get for the kid. He could throw him in the shittiest situation and he's still happy because he got paid. And that's the thing that this happens in sports. Sports media too, by the way. Does it? There are some good agents that don't do that. And they will be like, this is not worth the extra money

for you to go to this place. And the guys that I think were the NFL guys that are truly credentialed and absolutely know the value of going to a good program or a program that fits their player. There's a long game to be played. And I think a lot of them,

it's really hard to give up a lot of money on the front end, but man, there's a chance if you do it right, to make a whole lot for a whole lot longer. And here, not only with football, but the connections and the education, you know, this is, I always say it to our guys all the time, like, this is your life, this is your football playing life, right? What's happening from here to here? And are you preparing yourself in that small window of football life for the rest of it? And here's a place where you could do it both, you know, do both. And I think that's, you know, that's what I'm most proud. We're not just football. You know, we're helping, you know, mold these young men into becoming great employees and employers and husbands and fathers and all those things. And that's what you get at a place, you're with this type of, you know, education and people around you. Yeah, like in the, this would be like in the NBA if Kauai was a free agent

and his uncle was asking for under the table stuff from multiple teams. Yes. Oh, wait, that happened. Yeah. And here's the number I gave you and then shop that number around and go find another. Oh, wait, did I say that? Hey, how about can you give me more there? You talk about bringing people in a program.

Yeah. But this is 2006. And everybody seems like they're here for a year and then all this side after. Whereas like probably when you got in a football coach, and you're like someday I'll coach in college. Yeah. I'll build a program. I'll get somebody from high school.

He'll be with me for four years unless something horrible happens and transfers. Yes. But now it's like you're just, it's transactional and it's one year apiece. So how do you have a culture when everything's one year? Yeah. So it's interesting that you say that because let's go back to Holy Cross, right? I was there for six years. Yeah.

We had, I think, two transfers. And both of these kids got in on their own and we're like, hey, we just were transferring. We got in on, because you couldn't get it transfer in to Holy Cross. It was nearly impossible. Academically, it was really hard to get into. Oh, thanks for pumping. It's only smart people. Really appreciate that.

So that is really, you know, then you go to JMU. Right. So I go from six years and two transfers in six years. No NIL. No work, but you're working partial scholarships. So it's kind of like NIL. You've got to value people and break up these scholarships and do what you got to do. They earn more.

You give them more all the things that come with it. But they were there. Those kids stayed because that degree mattered to them. They really wanted to stay. they wanted to graduate and they wanted those connections and the mentorship that came from that place, which is second to none. Then you go over to JMU, 67 new transfers we brought in that year, 67. I went from two in six years to all of a sudden 67. Like, imagine what that's like, I don't know about the portal. I don't know about NIL. I don't know about any of these things. And our whole

budget's like $250,000 when I get there. Right? And that's what we're trying to, so we couldn't take anybody based on money. They had to come because they loved the place. They saw the value in it. And they liked everything, that it worked. And then at the end, the final piece of it, all these, majority of those 67 kids we took came and said, I'm in. They never asked about the money. And then later you'd have a conversation of, hey, here's what we're thinking. They're like, great, I'm good.

I said I'm coming there. That's where I want to be. It would be some of those other guys that showed up with a number. You know, agents weren't as prevalent back then. You know, their kids mostly represent themselves, but they show up with a number that they wanted. You'd sit there with them and you'd be like, this is not going to work. This is only about the money for you. wasn't possible for us to buy kids at that time.

Because really, if we acquired them with money, we were going to have to motivate them with more money and we're going to have to retain them with even more money. Well, and then you have the starting sitting thing that too. Like you got this guy. We paid this much. Correct. That's all part. And then he checks out if he's not starting.

That's right. That's right. And then you sell the spring portal too. So you still that spring portal window that happened in there. So 67 new guys. Next year went down a little bit. Our budget went up to, I think, four or 450 or something like that.

You know, so that's what we walked in that Oregon game with a roster of about $400,000. So you made the playoffs with a 450K NIL budget? Yes. And you're competing against, like 30, 40 million that some of these schools are spending? Probably more. Pretty impressive. Probably more. Yeah.

Probably more. So again, it was the right kids, the right kids that had a chip on their shoulder and wanted to go do things that, you know, nobody thought they could do and were maybe passed over, whatever it might be. Those are the guys that work in our program. Is this system better? or was the old system better? Meaning what?

Like, is the system we have now? Is this the right system or it's a better system than what we had? What is it? Oh, I think that players need to be paid. I think I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine back in the day looking up in the stands

and seeing everybody wearing your jersey and you got $0 for that. Especially football of all the sports where you potentially get an injured or all kinds of things. That's right. So I think it was so extreme. You couldn't have a work-study job.

You couldn't have any job if you were on scholarship. Like, that was so limiting and extreme, and everybody was making money on these kids. Yeah. Right? So then it's the way the world works, right? You overcorrect.

So then you overcorrect it. No, you could have all the money you want. And you could have NIL not pay for play, but then it becomes pay for play based in the eyes of NIL. And all those things happen. I think there's a, there's somewhere in the middle. When you look at the NFL model, you know, we're slowly working, you know, towards a, you know,

triple A team for the NFL, right? And we are. We are the feeder program for the NFL. I think that, you know, agents that are actually certified can only take a certain percent. Some guys are taking 15, 20, 25 percent from these guys, right? You shouldn't be able to do that. You know, if you tamper. Well, they're not governing any of it, that.

None of it. If you're tampering, you should be automatically barred from being able to represent anybody again. Just all the things that come with it, you know, like the NFL has is what we really, you know, need to institute a little more multi-year contracts, you know, that kids can't be. I was going to say, could you make it, you can't transfer. for two years and that goes for coaches. Yeah, but then I think you just get into this antitrust things and are they employees and all the stuff that comes with it. There's so many, every move has a, you know, equal and opposite reaction, right?

And then it's just what road do we really want to go down, you know, when it comes down to it? And I think every, every, that's hard because every school, every conference feels differently about things and you're trying to get, you know, unanimous decisions and they're just impossible to find. Yeah, and then everybody's jumping conferences. That also makes it. are defined. All right.

So going backwards, you start at Assumption. That's right. You're there forever. Start Salve, Virginia University in Division III, Rhode Island.

Yeah. Yeah. And then Assumption, which put you in Worcester. Put us in Worcester. Yeah. And Assumption, so Worcester has

Holy Cross, Clark, WPI, Ply Tech, Worcester State, Nichols, Becker. There's like eight of them in there. Yeah.

And you're just, at some point, start killing it at assumption. Yeah. And then Holy Cross hires you. And at that point, we've all given up on Holy Cross football. Yeah. It's just never going to happen again.

I was there when they got rid of scholarships. Yeah. And we've talked about this, but when I was there, it was right as it was transitioning. It was big sports school. Could have potentially, was the first one asked in the Big East. No doubt. And a lot of the people that were there were like jocks and high school athletes. Yes.

And that was such a big part of the school. And we watched it kind of get nudged out as we were there. And then we just kind of all gave up on it. And then you brought it back. And you're winning and you have this great season. And then you stayed for an extra season. Yeah. Which I think we were all like, oh, he's out of here.

He's gone. So why'd you stay? To be honest with you, like I didn't, if I was still there, I'd be happy. Right. That place was very special. My daughter just turned 16 on Monday. All right. So that's all she knew.

She had three years in Newport Road. Island. But my middle daughter and then my son was born in Worcester. And we were there for 11 years in that time. And when you're, I remember being an assumption and I went over to a game, a holy cross game. And I remember sitting up top. We parked in the baseball field and tailgated. Then we went and sat up top because we played a Friday night game at assumption. And they ended up beating New Hampshire, who was like number 15 in the country or 10 in the country at that time. And I was like, oh man, this is a cool place. Like look at this stadium. Look at these people. Like how cool is this? Natural.

grass field, the history in that field, the names up above on the, you know, the, the, in the ring of honor in the stadium. And you're like, damn, someday this would be really cool, you know, and it just happened that that was, you get the call. You know, the final, that was the next year. So I don't think they wanted me. I think they wanted a lot of other people. And I think eventually it felt, you know, to me. And I remember, it's like everywhere I go. When I first became a D3 head coach, it was like, ah, you don't know how to, you never been a head coach. You can't do this. and we won. And then I went to D2. They're like, well, now this is scholarship football. I'll never forget a referee. And I know his name, and I won't say it publicly. But we were at,

Bentley. And I remember, this is an awful call. He knew it was an awful call. And I was on him pretty good. He's like, this ain't D3 football anymore, son. Something like that, he said to me. And I was like, okay. And that's all I was perceived when I got there, which is fine. And then very quickly, we were able to, you know, just become a top five team in the country. Then went to Holy Cross. Same thing. You don't know, this is now full scholarship. Right. Not only is a full scholarship. scholarship. You're talking about this academic index thing that's like the Ivy Leagues. You're going to have to recruit nationally. You've never done any of those things. There's no way you could win here. And we were able to win there. And then I went to JMU and it's the same thing.

But wait, go back. So you won in a huge, huge way. And everybody's like, I'll see he's getting poached. Yeah. Yeah. So why did you stay? Yeah. That was the question. Yeah. Well, you did the politician thing. But the reason why, no, I was saying because of just the history I had in that town. I love that town. There was just some, you know, blue collar, tough people that love football that I got a chance to, you know, everybody knew who you were. It was just one of these. And you had unfinished business too. Unfinished business is what you felt.

I felt like the South Dakota thing was probably the thing that really drove you more than anything is that we got to get these guys, right? And we went out and played them in the COVID year and they got us pretty good. And then we came back and we had that next year where, you know, I look at it all and there's a fourth quarter call that, you know, I just made. Are you the worst luck that season? Yeah. And if I just make this one call, I feel like we got, we're winning that football game.

you know, and we end up, you know, flying back on a plane and it didn't work out. We knew guys were graduating, but we knew we'd still have a good class coming back. And there were some really young guys in there that I knew we were going to have to play with some freshmen. But I felt like we had them and the ones coming in were going to be good ones. It just happened. Then we lost the corner. Then we lost the other corner. Then we lost the backup to the corner.

It's one of those years. And then just it kind of puts you in a spot where you were playing with really young guys, you know. And then at the end of that year, really, you know, I stayed because I still believe. in it. I felt like we could do it. I felt like I'm not walking away from this yet. Like I wanted to win a national championship. But then I'll remember after that next year, all the kids, I'll never forget, like sit in my office looking out in the lobby. One kid came in. And I remember, you know, he said to me, coach, I'm on a quarter of a scholarship. Like I need at least a half or three quarters or full like my, you know, we can't do this anymore as a family. And I was like, how many catches

did you have this year? And the kid started crying. He's like, one. I was like, you can't come ask me for more scholarship money. I said, if you need financial aid, we should go talk to the financial aid office. I said, but we can't do more. And then I looked out in the hallway and I saw like eight kids out there. And I was like, so I stood up.

I said, are you all here for the same reason? And they're like, yeah, I said, let's have a team meeting. So we went to a team meeting. And I realized very quickly that that had turned because of the portal and because of the ability for them to watch all the other guys going places and getting paid and getting scholarships and promises and all these things. And I was like, this is going to be hard to sustain if we don't find a grad program or if we don't open the door more to transfers. And that wasn't, we weren't built that way. So you're not getting transferred, but then you also can't keep gems.

Correct. So that's what it felt like, you know, to me. And then obviously, you know, JMU came about and that was it. Yeah, and it wasn't it initially, like it took a while, you know, and I remember, you know, there's, you know, I remember my wife watching, like, the, you know, these people like track flights of where the AD's driving and flying to and they're flying to. And, you know, I did my interview. They came to my house, everything. I'm like, boy, that was great.

I think we killed it. And then it was like maybe three, four, five days later. And I was out at the Campbell trophy near Campbell Award ceremony. It was called in the Belagio. And I remember coming back on the plane before I was in the airport, I just called my age. let's not do this. I'm just going to stay at Holy Cross. I said, this doesn't, these guys aren't called me back. They don't see it. The way I see it, this ain't going to work. And he, as soon as I hung up with him, this search firm called me. Right. So I didn't even talk to,

he didn't even talk to him. He said, hey, they want to talk to you. You know, can you get on the phone with the president and everybody else? And long and short of it, I was flying back. It was midnight. I put on the shirt and died and sat in my kitchen and accepted the job to Jam you. I mean, the big mistake was Syracuse. I know what they were thinking. Yeah. I thought that's where you're going to go. I like where I did. This all worked out perfectly. One of the things you talked about the last time I saw you when you were explaining to some of the people behind the program about how you come in and how you have to change the culture.

And you were talking about people just competing every day on anything. And I thought it was so fascinating. I just want you to explain it. Like just to explain it the way you explain, like just how your mindset of day after day after day, I want. everybody pitted against each other in some way. Yeah. So I think you always wonder where you stand on a team. You always wonder and you just never get this feedback.

I was talking, actually was in the book, the Cubs way. If you've seen the book, the Cubs way. And it was talking about Madden and what he and Theo did with this team. And he was talking about, you know, in the minor leagues, they'd cut a guy and never really tell him why. And then he'd see him years later and he'd be like, man, it was just you weren't doing this or that. And he's like, he had like sort of a profile moment where the guy was like, why didn't you tell me that when I was there? I would have worked on that.

You know, and I felt like that was, I was like, you know what, that's what this thing has to be. And this started way before, but that just sort of solidified the idea of it. Just constant feedback. Constant feedback. Am I winning? Am I losing? Right. Am I getting better?

And I don't need to compare myself to other people. I need to compare myself to myself a day ago, right? That's ultimately what we're trying to do here on a day-to-day basis. But if you don't put them in situations to succeed and fail, then I think they're guessing. Right. And to me, I say it all the time, the leading cause of success is well-managed failure, right? Well-managed failure.

Any successful thing you did in your life, you probably failed at it first or a couple times at it first. And it's just, you're going to learn that lesson. It's got to cut a little bit, right? And then you get into the part of, you know, the leading cause of failure is mismanaged success, right? So they both, you're successful, but do I forget about the why I got there? Right.

And now am I feeling like I've a ride? I'm entitled to this now and what does that do? and you're going to watch yourself fail pretty quickly. So to me, the other side of this was, I'll never forget playing Southern Columbia was the name of the team. They were all black uniforms at home. Their field was down,

and you had to walk down this blacktop road from the locker room. And you were wearing white because you were the away team, and you heard them come down the thing. And you could just, their cleats hit the ground different than your cleats hit the ground. And then when they walked on that field, like they looked different. They played different.

They felt different. And to them, they didn't think anything of it, right? To us, it felt like this energy and there was like a hurricane, you know, but they were just in the eye of the hurricane. It was good. They were good. But for us, you're like, how do I, I want to break through that thing. And it's not that easy to do.

I think that's no different to me in your personal journey on success and confidence. I don't think that you could have any success if you don't have confidence. And confidence is just a belief initially, right? Yeah. But then you have this confidence, right? you could then start to have success. And then with a little bit of success, might create a little more confidence,

which might create a little more success, which might create a little more confidence. And that's how you start spinning, you know, like in this little vortex, like I said, and you're in the eye of hurricane. And everybody's looking at you like, holy shit, this guy's got it figured out, man. He is unstoppable.

That, to me, is what you're trying to create. But you can't build confidence if you don't give them moments to succeed and have these micro successes over and over and over again every single day. And these failures, these failures so that they could get better and learn and become something that maybe they weren't a day ago.

So that's ultimately what this whole thing's built on. We're not just competing for the hell of it and to keep score and embarrass people. We're doing it to have these micro successes, which will bring more. But you're doing stuff like everybody's split in a weightlifting groups. Everything. Five different groups. Explain some of that stuff. Yeah, yeah.

So we come in in the winter and we'll go through a couple workouts and then we'll have the team. And especially when you came here, it was different because they didn't know. You had to give them a couple weeks with each other. And then we'll pull the fastest, you know, the number one fastest. one through five and then the number one strongest one through five all right so the fastest guy will go with the fifth strongest guy the second fast will go with the fourth strongest guy and it's way that way and then they become the team so we were b r u i n right so we're the bruin's right so as we went through that they draft the whole team which is now kind of cool because we publicized now it's getting

competitive the draft results of who was picked last who was picked first all the things that come with that and then their team is set to compete every single day so we go out on that field and their stations set up. Five different stations might be sled pushes, ropes, tuggle war, whatever it is. But before you go to bed that night, you get a, the email comes out or the text comes out, and it's like Bill against Bob the entire day.

So you're like, oh shit, right? So now I'm measuring myself against you for the next day. That's right. And really what you're doing too is like it's teaching you how to prepare. Like if I know it's going to be a hard day, probably going to go to bed a little bit earlier, probably going to hydrate a little different. I'm going to eat a better breath.

I'm going to figure out what I got to do to be at peak performance because I know I'm going against you. But then there's other moments where I think this will be an easy one. I don't need to really worry about it. But all of that score gets kept, gets publicized, and the team wins based on it. So how many days before people were like, I get what's going on here?

Yeah, I think it happens pretty quick. Yeah. I think it happens really quick for the most fierce competitors. And we break our, like in my mind, our competitors, right? you have guys that just survive and they're just getting through it. And then you got these other guys that are competitors that will be pushed and push up, like not push other people, but be pushed, but you got to kind of outside motivate them. Then you got these dominant competitors. These guys don't need any pushing. They will win all the time. But then you got the other one, the ultimate competitor.

And this is a guy that is the dominant competitor, but brings other people with them, right? And there's a big difference in there. I love Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay. Right. The one, the example I love too is Doug flutie playing for the what the stampede for all those years right and winning gray cup after great cup and he gets traded to the alouettes the worst team and all of canadian four and wins there the one guy goes in there and does that so that that's a dominant competitor right or the ultimate competitor right and then you have the dominant competitor he can do it but he's not bringing other people then you have the competitor that's got to be outside you know motivated and they have the survivor that's just watching the clock and trying to get through the day and they start to fall into these

buckets and they start to understand you know who they are we define that for them so they could self-identify and then eventually correct whatever they got to correct. So, you know, that stuff starts happening right away and you see who kind of rises to the top, you know. I mean, basketball is probably the best. One of the things I love about basketball is you're measuring these guys by stats and all these different things, but the guys who actually won had that extra quality, like when you talk about the ultimate competitor that bring everybody up. And that's like Bill Russell and Duncan and Bird of Magic. 100%. Where you either caught up to them or they got rid of you.

Yeah, you're not, you're not like taking a date. off of Michael Jordan in the, that's not going to happen, you know, and he ain't taking a day off. Yeah, right. He'll send you packing. That's right. So that, that's what you're looking for. And that's hard to find, you know, you don't have a ton of those on any team. Well, so when you show up, or you're like, who's by, who are my, who are my, don't have a couple of these guys? Yeah, you're looking. And you hear people talking and you see people that have clout. It, why do they have the cloud? Are they popular? Or are they, are they the competitor? That's the question. And that's what you're trying to kind of sift through and figure out.

And every day we film it all, we watch it all, we grade it all. Like, that's all part of the process. Yeah, that's, I don't know why more people don't think this way. Because even like my daughter's first club soccer coach, he said these Friday games. And it would be like these three and three games that would be, you know, keep going. And then the winner would win. And some of the parents were like, oh, this is bad. Like my kid, my kid ended up on a bad team.

They lost. It's like, that's not why he's doing this. So he's trying to figure out week after week, who were the two kids that always end up in the finals that it doesn't matter who's on their team. He's trying to teach them certain habits, but that's, it's right. Yeah, it's interesting. And that's where I think it's just honest with us. They got to be vulnerable.

The score pops up and they suck that day. And you got to eat it in front of the team and they got to live with it in front of the team. And that's all just part of it. So is there a moment when you feel, obviously it's like you're rowing and everybody's rowing in different directions where you kind of, there's this one day or one moment where you were like, oh, we're all in the same boat now. I can feel it. those moments, I have screenshots of them. Like I'll never, you know, I'll never forget

an assumption the first time, like the, the centers in his stance pointing at like this linebacker that's fake blitzing who's pointing back at him. And then over there's some kid talking shit to the quarterback from the third level. Then the other kid's coming up. And you just see this thing. You're like, oh, this is it. It's happening. They love this. They love this game. They're buddies. They're talking tons of shit. They're, they are excited to win this, whatever we're doing. And that's when you're like, all right, we got it. Right. So when did that happen here?

You know, I think it's a more recent thing. You know, I think today was really a step that I felt different. Yeah, like I felt. Because I was coming. Yeah, probably. Yeah, we thought you were out there. So I told them all they have to practice. Like Simmons is up there.

That's right. That's right. No, but today felt like it. Today felt like, I mean, the offense is always going to be a little bit behind the defense, right? Because defense just gets to run around with their hair on fire and make plays. And then the offense eventually catches up. And today felt competitive as hell out there. It felt like they were having fun.

and we could have stayed out there and practiced. I brought them up and then we called it. They thought practice was over and we went into an overtime period. So we did the overtime ones, you know, however we did it. And then after, you know, we brought them up again and they're like double over time. Like they didn't want to leave that field today. And to me, that's a good sign. Like we could have stayed out there for three more hours and they would have loved every minute of it.

Can you talk about your quarterback without going into coach speak? Yeah, I can. Okay. Yeah, I sure can. I think, you know, first I empath. thighs with what he went through last year. It was his whole life up to this point in time in his collegiate life. He was the villain in college football for a minute there, right? And he's so far from that. He is an unbelievable young man from an unbelievable family, cares a lot about all of his

eight, I believe, siblings, has a mother and father at home who love him and support him to no end and, you know, a brother on the team. And it's pretty awesome to watch this guy, you know, just go out here and compete every day. He's one of them too. That'll be, you know, hands under you know, ready to snap the ball and talking some shit to somebody else out there. You know, he's a fierce, fierce competitor and a really, you know, unbelievable person that has the attention

of this team. Can you have a quarterback that's not a fierce competitor? It depends on what's around. I mean, it succeed, I guess. Yeah, I think it depends on what's around him. I wouldn't say any names, but there's NFL guys that won Super Bowls that had unbelievable defenses, unbelievable returners in the special teams game, you know, and really

ran the ball and all they wanted to do is try to punt it on fourth down and not turn it over. and the defense and special teams will take care of the rest. You can do that. But it's a lot harder to do that way, and you have to be really buttoned up and dominant on the other sides. When it's pretty even in a league like we play in, where probably teams will be more talented than us

at certain positions in certain moments of the year. You need a guy. You need a guy. Like, you need the guy. Because he's the one every time I tell everybody that you're going to win at least eight games. They're like, oh, and then they're like, what about the quarterback?

And I'm like, well, he's definitely talented. Yes. Right? Yes. And you know, you have all these transfers. That's the other thing people can't figure out.

Yeah. What do you have? How many transfers you ended up with? I think we had 54. I think we ended up with. How many did you think you were going to end up with? Oh, man. I don't.

Did you think it was going to be like over 50? Like, did you have any idea? You know, so this was the interesting part. We showed up here on the third of January. Yeah. Right?

And that's when I think the portal opened on the third. So the portal opened on the third. And later that day, we had 17 kids come and visit on the third. Okay. So, think about it now. We're in school

because we're on the quarter system. Yeah. So the semester started. So the whole team's in here and as the whole team sitting in this room, you're looking like, all right, I got to grab a meeting with this kid and I grab a meeting with that kid.

I got to figure out if they're staying, but you don't have time to really do that a lot because of the fact that you're bringing in 17 other kids and you're parading them around while your team's lifting in the weight room, you know, doing what they're doing. And this guy might not be staying. And you're walking out of 17 guys.

And then the agents are calling and everything else is happening. And eventually, like, we can't, yeah, we're not going to get to his number. He can go. He can go. He can go. I don't understand how you do this and also have a family. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my family wasn't here.

So I was living in that hotel right there. Maybe that's how you do it. Yeah, I was living in that hotel for 60 days, you know, and it was what it was. You don't want your family here at the beginning because you're never going to see him anyway. Yeah. And I think it just was, it's part of it. So that was ultimately, you know, bringing together an entire team and coaches, by the way. Now you're going into an official visit. You met these guys three days ago. Some of them

three days ago. You don't really know them and you're trying to speak the same language through these official visits and figure it all out. And, you know, next thing you know, there you have it. But the number grew when kids laughed or saw how many kids were coming by. Eventually, I remember having to go to the wait room and say to our current team, like, look, stop it. Like, stop having your agents call. Stop worrying about who we're bringing in. We're going to get to 105 guys on this team. Right. I don't care where you go. You're not going somewhere where there's not seven or eight running backs. You're not going somewhere there's not 20 some offense alignment. You're not going somewhere where there's not 10 safeties and, you know, eight corners. You're

not going. Like, that's how these rosters are built. So you can go somewhere, but no, if you go somewhere else, they're probably bringing someone else to. You're not going to go somewhere and be the only running back on the team. So relax. If you like it here, if you value this education, if you like what you see so far from all of us, just stay. If you don't leave. And that was ultimately, you know, what we just had to eventually get to. And then the good and bad of the quarter system is that the kid visits on the third school started already. So they fly back home, pack a bag, and fly right back out. Right. As we got later in that window, we would tell them, if you're coming out here and you like it, just, you know, pack a bag, you got to fly somewhere.

So they have to fly back to their aunt's house somewhere in Arizona or wherever and then come back because they couldn't really stay. They had to fly out and come back. So we had that set up for guys like to be able to understand that uh you know you got to move in quick to school started then the quarter ended you know wherever it ended and guys were still in the portal that allowed us to bring a couple guys in before spring ball started so it's almost like we had two windows you know as an unfortunate because most most of the time i've been at places where school starts on uh january 27th so the portal opened on the third you have all that time to build your team right we start school on the third the same day the portal opens like that's kind of a

Well, you're also, you know, I don't want to say you inherited like a losing culture, but it wasn't going great here. Yeah. And it's like you've got to basically pour disinfectant all over the place and try to reinvigorate stuff and change, make it an optimistic situation and not a pessimistic one. That's right. And I think that's what it's been for a little while. Like if it's going to go wrong, you know, it's probably going to happen here.

It's going to go wrong here with us. And I think coming in and I think being on the outside, looking in, you really see the power of this UCLA, you know, degree, university. I said it a million times. There's first round draft picks and Olympic gold medalists walking around in the athletic department. And then there's future CEOs and lawyers and doctors and everybody else walking around this campus

that are regular students. Like, you have a chance to breathe some pretty rare air as you walk around here. And we're one good football team away from being arguably the most dominant athletic department in the country. We won three national championships this year and eight conference championships.

I don't know. We might already be the most dominant, But if you don't have a good football team, it's hard to say that you are that. So, you know, that's what we're charged with. And that's what we're excited to do. But you're right. The biggest way to win is first stop losing. Stop doing the things that the losing teams do.

Right. And I think that is. Which is being unprepared during the week. Being undisciplined. Not giving up late. Worrying about yourself first, right? Not putting the team first. Do I get credit over the team?

All that stuff. And that's what breaks teams apart. I think we keep identifying it. He only mentioned these three guys in the post-game speech. And meanwhile, I had 70 yards rushing. We just got to keep talking about the team, the team, the team ultimately is what this entire thing, you know, has to be built on. And everybody's got to understand that. And then in the end, for us, we'll treat them how they treat the team.

And if they treat the team well, they'll get it back, you know, well. If they don't, they won't. And I think that's life, though, right? Like, you get whatever you give. You know, if you're kind of a shitty person, you're probably going to have. You're probably going to be shitty. Being of you everybody is like they don't. like me and they're this and they're that.

Well, it's probably what you are, the them. It's kind of the way the world, I believe, works. So our guys understand that and keep fighting that fight every day. Speaking of shitty, people don't realize your abject hatred for USC. You've really concealed that. No, I'm just trying to get in trouble. But you see, USC's your big rival now. Yes, yes.

I'm ready for it to come back. Yeah. I don't feel like it's ever fully been cooking. Yeah. The entire time I've lived there since 2002. where it was like, this is, because the USC, all of those, everybody who went there, all the alumni, they'll hate UCLA and vice versa. Yeah.

And yet we don't really get a chance to battle that much. Yeah, that's healthy, I guess, right? Yeah. We got to change it. It's an underrated rivalry, though, because people think about, like, Duke UNC and, you know, just in general, like for the schools, but I don't think people realize there's a lot of animosity. Yeah, we got to get that back. You know, we got to get it back.

It's got to be a lot more competitive. You want to say something mean about Lincoln Riley or nothing? Nothing. nothing. I enjoyed meeting him. It seems like a great guy. Why do you think you got underestimated over and over again with these coaching searches? I think that you got to, it's going to be, it's easy. It's lazy to do, right? And lazy to say is, hey, he never coached there. That's easy, right? Like, it's a very easy thing for anybody to say. And I think for me, again, from from D3 to D2 to FCS. You always a yeah, but. Yeah, but. That's right. And I think that's always what it's going to be until

until you prove it. So I don't, there's not a minute that I worry about, you know, what anybody on the outside says, because I've lived it so many times over, you know, and to me it's not. You've had a lot of winning in the last 10 years. Yeah, and it's not about any of that. It's about what do we believe in this room? Forget about everybody else, right? And I'd say the other thing that I try to make sure our guys know is that you don't, don't read the good, right? Because then if you read the good right now, because we're great right now, right? We haven't played a game. Like, everybody loves us. It's unbelievable. It's phenomenal. Undefeated. Like, it is all what it is. It's when, you know, the tough times show up.

You know, you're not going to want to hear what they have to say on the outside. And those that were your biggest supporters sometimes become your biggest opposition. And for me, I want to know that we're doing it right in this room. Yeah, that's true. This is like the perfect time right now. Yes. It's like you're on the second date with somebody you might date for like three years. That's right.

Like, this is awesome. Yeah, that no flaws. Let's go to the movies and get some ice cream. That's right. You're perfect right now. It's perfect. What's the number one thing you're getting from UCLA fans? When people meet you and they talk to you, what do they say?

They have energy, man. They got energy. got some juice right now. They're desperate. They are excited. I don't feel desperation. I feel hope. And I feel like gratitude and I feel like excitement. You know, I feel like there's a belief. And what is, you got to believe it long before you ever see it. Right. And it takes all of them. And there's a village of people that we need to support this. And they're doing an unbelievable job. But we just had an event on the over there at the hotel. And I think last year there was 100 people there. There was close to 400, you know, and this donor dinner that we had the other day. And just, you know, the energy they got for this.

the excitement they have for this, you know, this time around, they feel like it's going to be different, and it will be. Well, it's like Lewis Kaye has helped us with PR, The Ringer, and me personally for a year. I haven't seen him in 10 years,

and then he showed up today for this. Yeah. And I just thought that he's locked in. He's UCLA fan. That's it. It was, it was great to finally meet him in person again and see him and talk to him. When's the first game?

September 5th. Are you playing? Cal. That Cal. I think I'm going to the Michigan game. Yeah, do it. Yeah. I got a lot of girls soccer this is my daughter's last season.

So I have a pack schedule, but I'm coming to at least two. I'm coming to a couple of home games too. This is my new team. Yes, you have to. You have to support it. I have a lot at stake here. You got to come true for me. I know you do.

We will. We will do that. And we expect a lot from you too, though. Yeah, you got to tell me what else you expect. Yeah. I'm happy to be like, I'm trying to think of like the positive adult in the sports in the college sports movie. I don't want to be like the J.T. Walsh Blue Chips character that just comes in and screams

at you. No. No. No. We'll talk about it. We'll carve that role. Let's talk about it a little bit more. I want to be like the guy in Hoosiers.

It's just in the stands rooting for everybody. Everybody. Just like happy. Yeah. Yeah. Not the drunk. That fits your personality. Yeah.

Just let me be the happy guy. All right. Good luck. I'm glad you're here. Yeah, man. Thanks for hopefully turning around. Use life football. Yeah.

Well, thanks for being here. And honestly, thanks from the beginning. You know, I remember talking to Casey about the whole thing, and he just said he had a conversation with you. And he sent me the list. Yeah. They had some preliminary list. And I'm like, where's Chesney? The hell is going on.

Right. Right. And then you just kept winning. Right. Right. So it all worked out. I want to be here without you, brother. So I appreciate it.

Well, you'd be here either way. But I was happy to play a small, small tiny part. I appreciate it. Good luck this season. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to the house.

Thanks to Bob Chesney. and everybody at UCLA for helping out. Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. Thanks to Jesse, who somehow joined the pod today, even though the Dodgers are in semi-free fall. I'm glad he was here. I am going to be back on this feed, on Tuesday,

fantasy time, fantasy football. We're doing it. The big preview is going to be on Tuesday. And rewatchable is Monday at Paul 13. See you later in the week. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus

in president in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming, give him a problem, call 100 Gambor or 1,800 by reset. Call 88879-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or MDGamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling help line, ma.org, or call 800-327-50-50 for 24-7-support in Massachusetts or call 8778-Hope-N-Y or text Hope N.

or text Hope, NY in New York for Louisiana call 8777-7-7-8667. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar-raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the first. fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca.