The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 2: DeflateGate, President Trump & MLB w/ JackO

Episode Date: October 1, 2015

Episode 2: HBO's Bill Simmons discusses DeflateGate, Roger Goodell, the 2015 MLB Playoffs, President Trump and grating ESPN personalities with old buddy JackO. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Did you know you could go online, find the right security system for your home, and within a few days have your own new home security up and running? It's true. And with no long-term contract, you can leave anytime. With SimpliSafe, your home is safe and secure 24-7 for just 15 bucks a month. Guess what? My listeners get an exclusive 10% off. Go to simplisafebill.com. Welcome to the Bill Simmons podcast. This is our second podcast of our two podcast extravaganza. We had Cousin Sal on to talk about the NFL before that. And coming up, we have my buddy Jacko. He's been on the podcast since 2007. We had Cousin Sal on to talk about the NFL before that, and coming up we have my buddy Jacko.

He's been on the podcast since 2007. We have a lot of catching up to do. Did want to mention, if you hadn't heard, going to HBO, doing a show for them that launches next spring. Very excited about that. Almost as excited as I am to talk about Jacko, who's on the line.

How are you, Jacko? Good, buddy. How are you? God, long time, no time. It's been far too long. How you been? Do we have enough to talk about? Oh, God, it's a year's worth, practically. Oh, my God. We covered a little with Sal, but where do you want to start? First of all, is this podcast on HBO right now? It's not on HBO. Oh, so there's no tasteful nudity? In that case, let me put my pants back on.

Hold on, let me put my suit back on. There's tasteful nudity on my part, Johnny. I would hope so. We have so many different things to talk about. I don't even know where to start, but why don't we just start with the Flakegate? Because you're a Giants fan. What's this Flakegate you talk about?

I haven't heard anything about that. You love making fun of the Patriots. I do. You love calling them cheaters. I do. You're a veteran of political scandals over the years where there's been cover-ups and lying and then the cover-ups of the lying, and it just keeps going.

Try to be objective. What do you think happened? Well, I think the most, I forget where it was, if it was in Sports Illustrated or who it was now, because there's been so much deflating coverage. But I think the whole thing was really a big makeup call because other NFL owners and were, whether it be out of jealousy or spite, which is the Patriots PR campaign. But whatever the case may be, other owners were disappointed and angry at Goodell for not going hard enough on the Patriots about the whole Spygate thing from 10 years ago. Yeah.

So I think when now there was allegations of, you know, balls being deflated, that Goodell went the opposite direction and went way over the top. Right. In terms of punishment to show, show look I can be tough with the Patriots even though I'm often wind and dined at my buddy Bob Kraft's house and he was one of my biggest supporters and defenders of and all my other scandals yeah so I think he went way over the top and the Patriots I mean did something shady happened to balls I don't know I haven't studied the inert gas law detail that I'm sure you have or whatever gas law it was of physics. But did something shady happen to balls? Who knows? But obviously it didn't make any difference in the game. And the way the Patriots went to the hilt and Tom Brady testified under threats of perjury that he wasn't involved with anything. You have to kind of believe that. And obviously, you know, a judge who then Bob Kraft later winded nine in the Hamptons. Oh, come on.

Stop it. He decided in their favor. The interesting thing to me from a legal standpoint is that the NFL has a collective bargaining agreement wherein it's mandated that Roger Goodell can issue punishments based on the sanctity of the league or whatever it is for the good of the game, whatever the clause was that he used to sanction Brady. And that basically all your due process is thrown out the window, but the players have agreed to that, the collective bargaining agreement. So the interesting thing to me is that a judge would throw that out,

basically when it's been collectively bargained, and just basically overrule that and sort of conduct his own investigation and say this was all bunk and reinstate Brady. And I'd be curious to see what happens with the appellate court. Yeah, I mean, the legal argument is basically if you give somebody the power to decide things like that, what happens if he then abuses that power when there's no actual evidence in the decision he's making? And that's why I think this is going to keep going and going and going because the players union is like, yeah, you have the power to decide stuff, but it's within reason.

You can't just arbitrarily decide this guy did this and then just punish him to the hilt when there's no evidence. Like show us some evidence. Yeah. And I mean the fact that, you know, the Wells report, I mean, I know, you know, I, people say it's unfair. Well, of course they, you know, when you do some sort of investigation and you're paying the guy, I know, you know, people say it's unfair. Well, of course, you know, when you do some sort of investigation, you're paying the guy, you know, he's going to come out with the answer that you want, presumably. So, you know, the Brady side didn't have really a chance to present evidence. I mean, I think he was interviewed and what have you and the whole thing with the cell

phone. And it's all just so, you know, tedious at this point. And believe me, I would love nothing more than to see the Patriots to be revealed as massive cheaters and to have all this success based on cheating and skullduggery. But I think in this case, it's just so overblown to coin a phrase. And it's just so tedious at this point. And the way really the Patriots fans have reacted, I mean, this is like going to Thanksgiving and your uncle's like a, you know, JFK conspiracy buff and you're like ready to pass out because he's going on about so many theories and like, God almighty, enough Patriots fans. Enjoy your four rings. Go on your vengeance tour of going 19 and 0 or whatever. Just shut up about the Flakegate already, my God. I couldn't drive home and listen to like, listen to EEI, which I sometimes enjoy doing. All summer I kept waiting

to hear about how awful the Red Sox were. Every day I would tune in and hear about more deflate gate theories. Oh, my God, I was ready to drive into a bridge abutment. It really tied into everything that makes Boston what it is, the us-against-them mentality. Right, and Boston loves it, by the way. Oh, we love it. It's a chance to be uber parochial.

It's all about us, and the rest of the world hates us. Even though we have four Super Bowl rings and we've been the best team in the past 15 years, we're victims somehow, and nobody likes us. I wish they would just wear that once. Just wear that. We're the best team in the world. You all think Belichick's this evil mastermind, and we're going to win rings, and we're going to throw to Gronk and Edelman and put up 50 points a game and just own it. You demand to be successful and loved. You might not be loved. Trust me, as a Yankees fan, everybody hates the Yankees.

We're okay with it. 27 rings, yada, yada. You can all hate us. It's all good. You guys should adopt the same mindset, I think. I think one of the things that hurts for Patriot fans is there are a couple times when some of us, I don't include myself, some of us wavered and kind of bought into what the evidence was. And the real problem

with this story was that it was reported terribly coming out of the gate. And I think, you know, you could, somebody could write a great book about the media and just how this story was covered from start to finish, how things were swayed a certain way. The big lesson here is just get out early with whatever narrative you want to push. And that's the narrative people believe. because it was reported, so it had to be true by people like Chris Mortensen, who finally deleted the tweet but never retracted his report, was that all of these balls were significantly underinflated and it was 11 of the 12 balls and all this stuff. And when people see that on a ticker and they see it reported and talked about and talked about ad nauseum on all the different sports channels,

they assume it's true. Well, it turned out not to be true. And what's funny is people still think it's true. So then the second time it happens was in July. It comes out that Brady destroyed his cell phone. And then you ask, oh, my God, wow, he destroyed his cell phone? What? They leak it out.

Stuff's getting leaked left and right by the nfl which is by the way one of the reasons he would never want to turn his cell phone over like would you turn your cell phone over to the nfl no but i wouldn't do that give him an opportunity to have his lawyer review it and then turn over relevant texts or emails from there right but they never you know they never dudes could have been kept private presumably they never told him it was going to be like a factor they never told him it was going to actually you know matter in this whole thing and he changes his phone whatever but there's no way he's turning his phone over to the nfl that place leaks stuff left and right nobody in their right mind would ever do that so then that

gets pushed out and all of a sudden becomes a week of brady broke his phone and we're going to call my dad at some point on the podcast or in oct. But let me tell you something. I remember the day I was in Chicago. It was like July 31st. The stuff came out. My dad and I were talking about it. And my dad was really upset about the broken phone. And I was like, no, why do we have to trust the NFL in this? Like these guys have lied this entire time. And my dad's like, I don't know. Like, why would he break it? Like he really turned on Brady for a half hour and now denies the conversation ever happened. He was calling me a homer. He's like, you kind of sound like a homer. I'm like, what? You're turning on me? I think you're guilty as charged on that one. Well, but he did waver.

And he knows it happened, and I know it happened. I'll take it to my deathbed. I know my dad wavered for that one morning. He didn't totally believe in Tom Brady. I don't think you should take him to the Super Bowl this year then. Oh, I'm not. I'm not. That half hour of wavering, he wasn't up there defending the Patriots.

He actually said to me, he said to me, it didn't happen. You don't have it recorded. Oh my God. He said, it was your interpretation of what happened. Like he knows it happened. But I think a lot of people in Boston,

when that broken cell phone thing came out, they freaked out. But, you know, the other thing that was amazing, just watching, granted, I'm a little biased here since,

a little, from what what my experiences at espn were the last two years but um the way everyone else was covering goodell's role in this whole story versus the way espn covered it it was embarrassing and i couldn't believe nobody caught out espn about it because you had like you know dan wetzel at yahoo you had sally jenkins in the washington post you had all the people in boston you had like you know dan wetzel at yahoo you had sally jenkins in the washington post you had all the people in boston you had different radio personalities and people really going after how the nfl was handling this how goodell was handling this all this stuff and

especially in the in the weeks after the broken cell phone thing when it came out that they had obviously leaked stuff that something really legitimately shady was going on and yet if you went to espn you didn't see anything. Charlie Pierce and Grantland was the only person who really went after him. On ESPN, they didn't really do anything until that giant Don Venata, Seth Wickersham, Outside the Lines investigation. But it was just hard to come away from that and not think that the ESPN was in the bag for the NFL, because they were.

Yeah, well, I mean, when you have a billion dollar or whatever the number is, you know, contract with them and four hours of pregame shows before every game, that's probably a big moneymaker for you. You know, you're going to tow the party line, no question about that. Yeah, well. The amazing thing in the media age is that after all this has been going on now for, what is it, almost October. So we're talking like eight months, right?

Almost eight months. And the two guys that were the ball boy and the equipment manager, Yerzelzki or whatever his name was, and the other guy whose name I can't remember right now, they never appeared anywhere. Like I've never even seen a photograph of them. I know. There's more pictures of like Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, who's never been photographed a photograph of them. I know. There's more pictures of, like, Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, who's never been photographed than there are of those two guys. Like, in today's media age, like, why was nobody ever, like, staked out outside of their house?

Or, like, there's never been a comment or, like, a sighting of them. What about Goodell saying that the Patriots suspended him? And then the Patriots had to ask permission from the NFL to rescind the suspension. It was like, oh, because theots suspended him. And then the Patriots had to ask permission from the NFL to rescind the suspension. It was like, oh, because the NFL suspended him. But Goodell was on the record saying, no, no, they suspended him. The Patriots.

It's like that kind of stuff. My big takeaway from all of it was just how powerful the NFL is and how afraid everybody is of them. And if you look at my situation. I was going to say they're the biggest sports league in the world, but I don't know the premier league or, or, you know, some soccer league may be more powerful, but there's certainly the most powerful sports league in America. And, you know, it's a multi billion dollar industry and it's the number one sport,

number one ratings. There's so much riding on it in terms of TV and entertainment dollars and everything else that it's just, you know, you can be the big boy in the room. There's no question about it. Yeah. And I think there's a balance when you're criticizing a partner that you got to find. Um, now what happens if that partner is just acting completely inappropriately and making up its own rules and leaking false information and handling things incorrectly legally and all this stuff, like how far can you go? I said on Thursday, May 7th, I gave an interview on the Dan Patrick show and jokingly talked about how Goodell just didn't have the testicular fortitude to make a decision that he

had leaked out of all of the, the Wells report stuff, but hadn't decided what to do. And it was like he was gauging the public reaction. And the next day was my last day at ESPN. That was it. Look, those are the facts. It's true. Anyway, yeah, the NFL.

I've learned a lot. The biggest takeaway for me is that I'm going to hire the law firm that did the Patriots counter Wells' report, though, just for the part where they wrote about the guy called himself the deflator because he was trying to lose weight. That's great lawyering right there. If I ever get in trouble, I'm hiring those guys. Like, that was great. I'd love to be, I would have loved to have been in the conference room where they like brainstormed that one and came up with, uh, it's kind of a big guy trying to deflate. Yes, that's it. Let's go with that. That was so fantastic. Just in terms of like spin and whatever else happened,

like just the spin of that. I love that. That was fantastic. To write that with a straight face. That takes some testicular fortitude. Brass ones, in fact. It really did seem like those guys got their feelings hurt that Brady yelled at them after the Jets game

when the balls were too inflated. Yeah, yeah. And they were like really mad about it and just kind of bitching about him in text oh the golden boy wants wants looser balls that that's the second lesson I've learned from this please God never let me be involved in anything where my texts have to become even have to become public oh I know because nobody wants that nobody wants to see their texts public I feel bad for those two guys for that. I'm sure Kraft has bought them a house in the south of France, so they're probably doing okay.

The great thing, yeah. A sports bar or somewhere, so they're doing okay. The great thing about Deflategate is how many elements of life it touched beyond just being Deflategate. Even you had Affleck's nanny was in the plane holding the four Brady Super Bowl rings. Yeah. I love that.

That's great. That was hysterical. Poor Ben Affleck. I love that guy. Never hire a, never hire a, well, maybe never hire a nanny. I guess you have to in some cases, but don't hire a tempting nanny, I guess,

maybe is the lesson to be learned, too. I gotta tell you something. My wife gets riled up, you know, every once in a while about stuff. The Affleck nanny was about as angry as I've heard her. Really? Really bugged her. Probably not pro-Affleck, I'm gonna guess. No, actually, it was more like against the nanny and how she was acting afterwards and

getting photographed and stuff. And there was a lot of like, you're not even that cute, honey. Settle down. Like it was a lot of that stuff. Well, that's the thing. I mean, if you're Affleck, you can probably do better than that, no? Well, we don't know what happened. More power to her though, you know? You gotta make it in this world. You gotta get your 15 minutes of fame, whatever you can do, you know?

Johnny, it's like Deflategate to me. There's no proof Ben Affleck did anything. I support Ben Affleck. I think he's been a great husband. That's right. I'm going to recycle a joke I think he's been a great husband. That's right. I'm going to recycle a joke I made on Twitter after that deflator thing. I'm like, honey, all my friends call me the adulterer because I'm the oldest one in the group. Maybe it's a similar thing for Affleck. He should hire that law firm the Patriots had. Do you feel, are you watching this Rams situation?

The Rams moving to Los Angeles? Yeah. As a child of abandonment, of team of franchise abandonment, the Whalers just ditching Hartford, moving to Carolina, becoming the Hurricanes. Do you feel kinship when a team gets ripped away from a city? I do, except that St. Louis already ripped them away from Los Angeles once. So this is kind of like... Oh, that's interesting. This is kind of like a child returning back home after being abandoned,

you know? So this is like... Or like going back to your wife or something after you've cheated and ran away with a girlfriend. So this is like

if Jolie, Angelina Jolie, stole Brad Pitt from Jennifer Aniston. Right. And then... And then he went back to Aniston. God, America then he went back to Aniston.

God, America would eat that up. They would love that. That would be the biggest story, biggest celebrity story of all time. That would literally break the internet. Because the other story was the biggest celebrity story of all time. Right.

So this would be like the Rams going back to L.A. would be, you know, although I can't imagine people in L.A. really care one way or another about the Rams, right? Was there like a big Rams following? the Lakers or the Dodgers? And there's it's more old school. It's actually like people over 40.

But I think people in L.A. want football. They're excited for the stadium. They're excited to have teams. And don't forget about the bandwagon element here. Like somebody like my son, who's seven and a half, who doesn't not really into football yet. Like he doesn't care about the Patriots. Like he's 3,000 miles away. What does he care? Right. But if there was a team here and he went to one game,

he'd get sucked in. It's the same thing that happened with the LA Kings, you know? So what's the latest with the Raiders? Weren't they moving to LA too? The dumbest thing I had ever heard was when it was going to be both the Raiders and the chargers who were rivals and they were going to play in the same stadium. That made no sense to me. I understand you don't want to spend money for your own stadium and split it and all that. It's dumb enough that the Giants and

the Jets play in one stadium. I mean, I understand the logistics of it and why that makes sense. But two rivals, at least the Jets and the Giants are in two different conferences, but to both be in the AFC West and playing in the same stadium, that doesn't make any sense to me. Somebody told me what was going to happen six months ago, and I have not seen any evidence that this person was not right, who was connected, which was LA was going to get two teams, the Rams and the Chargers, with a slight outside chance of the Raiders being the second team. Whichever AFC team didn't go to LA was then going to go to St. Louis. Okay. So it was like Chargers with the Rams

and then the Raiders go to St. Louis. But St. Louis is still going to get it. They're going to end up with a team. It just won't be the Rams. St. Louis Raiders. I couldn't wrap my head around that. I know. But think about all the weird movement.

It would be like the Missouri Raiders. That's weird. I know, but that about all the weird movement. be like the Missouri Raiders. That's weird. I know, but that's true. Maybe they'd have to... They still have to be the Raiders. You can't get rid of the Raiders as like a team name

and colors and all that. I'm not fearing the St. Louis Raiders like I did with the Oakland Raiders. No. No. It doesn't have

the same biker gang feel to it that a Raiders game does now. You know, and one thing with this football stadium, another reason why I think it's going to happen is because LA is making a huge run at this 2024 Olympics. Right. As somebody who enjoys all stuff Boston when Boston people get bent out of shape, I'm sure you love Boston just running out the Olympics, just getting rid of it, just jettisoning any chance. I was hoping they would have the Olympics because I live like an hour and a half away from Boston and I was going to rent my lawn out for parking. Because that's about as close as you would have been able to get to Boston during the Olympics.

Right. Like, there's just, that would have been the big, you can't get around Boston on a regular day, let alone with like the Olympics there. And Boston, as I said earlier, is so parochial and cares only basically about the Red Sox. Well, they don't care about all those professional sports teams. But I mean, I don't even think people care about Boston College, really. No. I get emails now. But I don't think it's really like a college town.

So like an Olympic town with like, you know, foreigners and foreign strange sports. Nobody would have been into that. And it would have just been a logistical nightmare. I grew up there and then I spent 10 years after college there boston people would get mad when like the head of the charles was happening and people would come in for that if you're gonna get upset like oh head of the child these people from outside coming in right the olympics was the worst idea of all time it was really everything boston would hate wrapped into one tidy package, including construction, people benefiting that weren't in it for the right reasons. Just everyone having to flee for four weeks, the city being crowded.

I don't know if you've been to Boston recently, but, you know, because the waterfront took off and seaport and all those places. Like Boston's like a traffic nightmare again. The big big helped it for five years, but now it's terrible again to drive around. So adding the Olympics to that, I can't even imagine what a cluster that would have been. I frankly don't understand why any city bids on the Olympics these days, because it basically just seems like a cost of fortune, only like construction companies and politicians who are skimming off the top make any money. It never does anything to revitalize the city that has it,

because all these sports stadiums that they claim are going to be used for other things always end up just being decaying in a cesspool and of no value whatsoever. So it's like you lose a ton of money and get no benefit whatsoever, except pride, I guess. You get a T-shirt, we hosted the Olympics or whatever. But I don't understand. I mean, the IOC, you get the opportunity to bribe IOC members, and then that's a blind and dying foreign dignitaries.

But I don't quite get the lure of it anymore. So Los Angeles, I think, is the only city that could actually do it. I mean, they've done it before. They have the Coliseum and all the other venues. And it's probably, when they have it in Los Angeles, it's spread out enough all over the county, basically. Right. They have all the venues. They have the beach. They can put things in different places. They have different size stadiums. Um, the, the transport will be in better shape. Like in London, it was great. It really worked. And London basically built this fake little downtown city for the Olympics where they had these structures that then I think they

took down some of them and one of them ended up becoming a soccer stadium. But I thought it was great for London. Like I, I'd never really had an opinion one way or the other on London. And now it's like one of my favorite cities and I would go back so if that's your goal is to bring people to your city and make it make them like it then that worked for london and i actually think it would work for la i can't imagine any other city pulling it off like san francisco's in it or or allegedly was in there until la got the bid and you know i went to San Francisco in May. It's the most crowded. I couldn't believe how crowded it was. One o'clock on a Thursday, it's crowded.

You know, there's just so many people there now. So I think LA is the one place that could lead off. Hey, this gives us a nice segue to politics. Yes. President Trump. Oh, God. Is this the greatest branding excursion that anyone's done in recent memory? Trump was an irrelevant reality TV host, and now he's on 60 Minutes and any interview he wants, and he's the lead guest on late night shows again.

It's kind of brilliant, right? for him to like pull the mask off so to speak and say like i'm dropping out and that and then just like sell books and you know sell trump games or whatever he's going to do would like just put his name on more things but i i have a theory that i think he got into it as kind of like a lark with that in mind is just like a like a reality situation and he could just use it as a branding opportunity and then he started winning in the polls and And now I think he, in his circle of yes men, actually have him believing that he could win. But then part of me is like, I can't believe that he actually would want to be president. Because one, he'd be so horrifically awful at it and embarrassing and just disastrous. And I'd be living in a bomb shelter for four years.

Yeah. Not that he cares about me, but I can't believe that he'd want to put himself out there for embarrassment. Although he seemingly doesn't have the capacity to ever be embarrassed. So that may not be a motivating factor, but you know, he'd have to take a financial hit, I would think, because you, you know, you're supposed to put all your, all your assets in trust to be run by a blind trust. So, you know, there's no allegations or, or seeming appearances of corruption. So I just don't get why he would want to do that. And I think he'd be bored. You know, he would lose interest.

He's completely overwhelmed, even in debates and things. And, you know, it's just the whole thing just gives me an absolute headache. It's an absolute horror show. You know, it's been amazing, though. It's driven more interest in these Republican debates than anything else that could have done it. And it's almost true. They've gotten huge numbers, both on Fox and CNN, like

22 and 24 million viewers that they presumably would not normally get. And as a diehard Republican, I'm sure you've enjoyed just that the other guys seem more, or at least some of the other guys, compared to Trump, it's like, hey, Jeb Bush,

looks pretty good, because he's standing next to Trump. It looked like Abraham Lincoln or Washington or something, right? But it's like, hey, Jeb Bush, looks pretty good, because he's standing next to Trump. Right. It looked like Abraham Lincoln or Washington or something, right? But it's just depressing to see some 25% of the Republican Party would actually vote for him. I mean,

I wouldn't vote for him to be dog catcher in my town. I mean, he's just, if you, I cannot understand how anyone could watch him for more than five seconds and actually envision him as being the president. Well, don't you think that when people do these polls, though, and it's like, it's not really the polls. Yeah, I'm up for Trump. It's like, I've heard him in The Apprentice or whatever.

Yeah. I certainly hope that's the case. But I mean, he does these things that would like, like, not only finish another candidate, but drive them out of public life forever. And he does it and he like goes up in the polls. Yeah. He says about John McCain. I don't love John McCain, but whatever else his faults are, the guy was a genuine hero in the Vietnam War, like tortured for three years. Yeah.

Gotten out early, didn't, you know, got tortured some more. And Trump says, well, I like guys that didn't get captured. It's like such an asinine statement and i'm like well that's going to finish it yeah you can't denigrate a pow and he denigrated a pow and he went up in the polls well i just don't get it i literally can't wrap my head around it he achieved that rarefied state of when people are just you've almost deconditioned people to have reaction to your comments. And it's like, Howard Stern is the good version of this, where it's like, he could say anything about anyone. And it's okay, because it's Howard Stern. And I get it. I'm in on the joke with

Howard Stern. I think Barkley's like that, too. Barkley can say anything at this point. And I don't think he could turn people against him. And Trump it's like just people assume he's gonna say crazy stuff I don't know I just I keep looking around and I'm like am I crazy like am I the crazy one what am I not seeing I just literally I don't know if it's like the closer you live to New York that you've seen him you know for 30 years and maybe we read more about him and he's been in the news more so it's like I just you could just look at him and say he's a con man. He's a total con man. And I'm like, what am I not seeing?

How do people not see that he's a con man? I just don't get it. There's the old Saturday Night Live skit during 88 when Bush was running against Dukakis, and Dana Carvey would do his four more years, and they go to, what's his name, John Lovitz, and Dukakis, and they're like, your rebuttal? And he goes, I can't believe I'm losing to this guy.

It's like, I look at Trump and I'm like, if I was a fellow Republican at the debate, I'd be like, I can't believe I'm losing to this guy. It's a big, big, big boon for Saturday Night Live. And actually, Jim Miller did a good job of writing about this in Vanity Fair. Trump is such a character in his own right, it almost puts more pressure. Like,

Taron Killam's going to play Trump on Saturday Night Live this season. How do you play Trump? You can't make him more of a parody, because Trump's doing that himself, so what do you do? Right. He's already a self-parody, so how do you parody it? I don't get it. He said things more outrageous than writers in Saturday Night life could come up with saying, you know? Yeah. I can't wait. It's going to be a great, great, great season for them. SNL, the 76 was great for them with the election.

88 was great with Dukakis and Bush. 92 was good because then they had Ross Perot and Clinton. 00 was great because you had Gore and you had W. And Will Ferrell's W was probably the best political impersonation they ever had. And then 08, Tina Fey with Sarah Palin, that was great. They got a rise to the occasion in 2016. Yeah, there's certainly been handed material. I mean, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

So if you screw that up, then you ought to retire. Hey, I got a curveball for you. We're going to do a live read. You're not going to do it. You're just going to listen to me. How should you manage your money? Whether you're a multimillion dollar investor or you're just starting out, the answer is Betterment. Five years ago, Betterment created the first automated investing service, an easy, inexpensive way to make better financial decisions, build your wealth, and even stay on track for retirement. Betterment's savvy technology provides personalized investment advice based on your financial goals,

then builds and automatically manages a customized portfolio for every one of those goals. You know what else? It's easy to start investing with them. Just link your bank account or roll over your 401k or your IRA, and you're ready to go. Did you know Betterment is already managing billions of dollars for more than 100,000 customers? It's true. Sign up today on your computer or your smartphone and get up to six months of free automated investing. Get the offer as well as full terms and conditions at betterment.com slash BS. I got my own URL for this one. Betterment. Investing made better. All right, speaking of investing.

If you don't mind, I'm going to do one now for Joe's Sandwich Shop. I worked in some side deals without telling you you don't mind, do you? What's your favorite sandwich place in the Hartford area? We can give them a plug. I like the Wooden Tap.

It's right in West Hartford. There you go. Go to the wooden tap if you're in Connecticut. So speaking of investing, you've invested a lot of emotion, hatred, positivity, hypocrisy in a man named Alex Rodriguez. I have. Now the Yankees are heading to the playoffs. Well, maybe. Maybe.

A-Rod, like, walk me through your A-Rod thoughts first. Because when you talk about self-parodies, he's kind of been way up there, right? Or you talk about somebody who's numbed the American public to having actual emotions about them. He's right there. I don't know. I think he's been rejuvenated. I don't know. I think he's a reconciliation case, A-Rod. Well, he had been until he's been terrible for the past month and a half, two months.

But, I mean, he basically put the Yankees on his back. He and Teixeira, I mean, if you told me in April that he was going to hit whatever he's hit for, I think he's hit 40 home runs or he's knocking on the door. He certainly got over 30 home runs, which I never would have predicted. And he was great. I mean, he had big hits. He had timely hits. He had big home runs, much better than anybody expected because they figured his body was so broken down that, you know, and then with a year off, he just didn't know what to expect from him. And then Teixeira broke his leg, which is mystifying to me because they first said it

was a bone bruise. And then they did like a second MRI and said it was a bone bruise and then they did like a second MRI and said it was a bone bruise again they just wasn't healing and then they did a third MRI and they found a fracture in his leg like did the Yankees buy an MRI machine from like North Korea like I'm not a doctor but how do you not find a broken leg like on the first MRI right you know like we and these are you know highly paid athletes with presumably the Dr. James Andrews of legs, and it takes three MRIs to find a fracture. It's just mystifying to me. So that hurt him, although Greg Bird has been a capable replacement.

But A-Rod, yeah, has just been – he's got 32 home runs. I just looked it up. It was Teixeira that was knocking on the door for him. He's got 32 home runs and 85 RBIs, but unfortunately he's hitting 250, and he's hit like 150 since the middle of August, I read in the paper today. So he's been killing them of late, and they've been getting killed by left-handed pitching because their lineup is so left-handed.

And they count on him, and he's really dying here at the end. So I don't know if it's like fatigue. You know, he didn't play all last year, obviously, for reasons beyond his control. You know, just age or what, but he's been killing them lately down the stretch. Maybe the PDs are wearing off. Maybe that's it.

Maybe he gamed it so that it was the first couple months and then now it's becoming more immune to them. You know, this is just your luck. The Yankees are like flying high all summer the Red Sox are pathetic right you get yourself suspended and don't have a podcast anymore so I can I don't more than suspended it well yeah more than you get yourself released from ESPN I don't get the chance to gloat on podcast after podcast about the greatness of the Yankees and then you get yourself back on a new network just in time for the Yankees to collapse and possibly choke away a playoff spot, while the Red Sox, who were way out of it,

have exciting young players and look good for the future. I played it perfectly. I played it perfectly, John. Good work by you, Billy. Yeah, good job by me. Yeah, it was such an unlikable Red Sox team. It was so horrible. And then all of a sudden it flipped,

and now it's like a super likable team. And like other Red Sox fans, I'm actually following it, and they're under 500. But they have seven or eight guys. You start thinking about the future. It's what they should have done a year ago, is they should have not spent money on people who are probably past their prime. It's going to be an interesting offseason for them because they have, between Hanley and Panda,

they have two completely untradeable, ungiveawayable contracts. Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see, like, what they possibly do to run them out of town or get some sucker to take them off their hands or whether they're just stuck with them. Hopefully they're stuck with them, which would be great.

The Ben Charrington, like, you know, they win the World Series, and then he rips off the worst 18-month executive run in the history of Boston sports. Right. It was just one disaster after another. And the Porcello trade, and he's actually been pitching better lately, but, you know, trading for Suspedes, giving Porcello this giant contract extension,

nobody even had really seen him in Fenway yet. It seemed like a gamble, and then all of a sudden he's terrible. It was strange. It was also hard to complain because we've won three titles this century and you've won one. So it's hard not to think about that. Three-to-one lead this decade, or this century, Johnny. The past four years, you've won a World Series and come in last twice,

and you're going to probably come in fourth or last this year. It's really a strange four-year period there. Well, the good news for you is nobody on the Red Sox ever could have started something as influential, as important as the Players' Tribune. So you have that. Now, off the recent hire of deputy publisher Kevin Durant. Yeah, I love that. That's my favorite part of the players. It's the best.

Is the titles. Ortiz had one about his 500th home run or something, and it was like executive editor David Ortiz or whatever. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Big Papi is sitting there with a red pencil going over Kevin Durant's copy. Okay. It seems like they ran on the joke almost yeah well that's certainly i actually read the players tribune today because i was reading something in the new york post about derrick jeter's thoughts on yogi bera which he published in the players tribune so it had a link to it so i read that and it's very fancy graphics and and the you know the cut the pictures and the way it's set up. It's very, very, very fancy, but I was dying.

It's a founding publisher, Derek Jeter. How would you describe Jeter's writing style? Like a young Jimmy Cannon or maybe a little bit more of an aging Mike Lupica? What would you say? He's like Jimmy Breslin. I really live in New York. You could just tell. The way his agent wrote that was fantastic about his memories of Yogi Berra.

So it's the funniest thing. It's like, does Jeter not know that there's, like, blogs or, like, Twitter? Like, athletes can interact with fans on their own without the media, like, more so now than ever before. But the Players' Tribune, executive editor David Ortiz. I just want to know what these guys are getting paid and who's talking them into it. What are these guys, what does Kevin Love get out of being on the masthead of the Players' Tribune?

I don't know. That's my favorite part. I would never disparage my beloved Derek Jeter, but founding publisher, oh my God. Oh, I'm about to disparage him right now. Of course you are. Can you say Ewing Theory? Oh, I know.

I suggested that back in the summer when the Yanks were ahead of an eight-game lead and were rolling. I was like, I know. Absolutely, you can talk about the Ewing Theory. It's a textbook case of it. I know. I hate to bring that up, but it's true. He doesn't qualify because he won five rings.

So if you win rings, you don't actually qualify. Never won without him, yeah. Or never won with him, rather. Who would you, I mean, I know it's still shaking out, but who would you play in round one? Well, I guess the Angels caught Houston last night, so it would be, well, if you count the play-in game as round one, it's going to be the Yankees against the Angels, it looks like,

because Houston is having a bigger collapse than the Yankees yeah although the yankees have like a three and a half game lead so that game that play-in game will be a yankee stadium for whatever that's worth sal and i like i sometime in early august we we bet made a whole bunch of world series matchup bets and it was basically basically Pirates versus the Blue Jays, Pirates versus the Royals. And I think that's all we did. Yeah. Because the Pirates were

like three games out of having the best record in the NL and they were going to be a wild card team. But the odds just weren't right. They didn't seem like they were fucked. And then we looked at the AL and it was like,

other than the Blue Jays and Royals, who's even conceivably coming out of this all these teams are so flawed you know but now the royals lost their closer yeah that kind of even though way davis is really good it's still you know that their bullpen had a certain hierarchy and structure that really worked and now that's thrown off and i don't know i think the blue jays are the team to be it seems like league with donaldson and and uh batista and price that lineup scares is scary they played the yankees last weekend or the weekend before and like you know that i don't watch the blue jays on regular basis but that lineup was like oh boy it's a tough one to go through and then you have you know when you have a frontline starter like price and then they can throw uh you know they still have burley in the

mix and then they have r.a dickie who can screw up your swing for a week so i think they're i think they're pretty good team i love the david price trade i've always liked that guy he was incredible in the 08 playoff series against the red Sox was the reason we lost. And, uh, I always thought he was like a gamer. Yeah. Some pitchers respond better when they have like an awesome crowd. And this was a guy that was stuck,

you know, in Tampa Bay for years and years and years playing against like half filled state playing in half filled stadiums. Then he goes to Detroit. That's a weird place to play. Um, and now he's in Toronto and it's, and it just seems like I could see him just ripping off wins in October.

Yeah, putting the team on his back. At the trade deadline, I really, really, really wanted the Yankees to do one of two things, which were either throw the kitchen sink at the Tigers to get Price. I don't care what prospects you had to give up, because I thought if you had a front-line starter, that helped a lot, like a big-time ace, that helped a lot of their problems. Or go to Cincinnati and get Chapman and just have an absolutely killer bullpen where you could run

Chapman, Batances, and Miller out there. And basically have the starter go five innings and just get through that. And then you'd have a list of lights out bullpen. Instead, they chose to do nothing. So that was really not an option that I liked, but, uh, you know, cause I figured to share is not getting any younger. A-Rod certainly is not getting any younger. You might as well go all in when you have those guys putting together phenomenal seasons that came from nowhere. You might as well go for it. And then they chose not to do that. So I don't know what their plan is for the future. Who do you root for in a Mets Dodgers series? Uh, I would root for Donnie Baseball and the Dodgers. I figured. Although I don't really hate the Mets. I mean, I don't live in New York. I live in Connecticut. It mystified me when I learned

like 10 years ago or so that the Mets and the Yankee fans hate each other. I guess I learned that longer ago, but I always assumed it was kind of like, well, we're all in the same city and, you know, different leagues, but no, like like the Mets having been the younger brother forever and ever despise the Yankees and just loathe them and I guess that's sort of the Yankees give that back to the Mets so I don't really hate the Mets like people that live in New York do I don't really mind them I find them amusing at times but I gotta root for Downey baseball to get a ring I love you know the mets dodgers with you have the dodger fans which a lot of them were people from brooklyn right you

know that just the bigger question is who does fred wilpon root for in a mets dodger series well that's the thing it's like people either stayed with the dodgers when they left or they switched to the mets right and you have all these cross-relationship things. And then you have the 88 series with Socia, which was great. Right. But it'd just be a really fun series. I feel like at Dodger Stadium, there'll be 35% Mets fans at the playoff games. Yeah, yeah.

And then at whatever they call Shea Stadium now, there's going to be a lot of Dodger fans there because you still have that Brooklyn element. Sure. And they designed the stadium to you still have that Brooklyn element. Sure. And they designed the stadium to look like Emmitt's Field. Right. Well, then the other cool thing is, and I think the Mets are in trouble

because then the Matt Harvey thing is going to kill them. They need five starts from that guy to win the World Series. Absolutely. But one thing I like about this year's playoffs is the ballparks are going to be really cool. I always judge the playoffs by, you know, you're watching at night. And if it's the right ballpark, it's awesome.

So this year you have Wrigley. You have Dodger Stadium. I love the Pirates one. The Yankees and the Mets, like both of those parks are going to be really, you know, they'll be filled for once. So they'll have a real energy. Just going down the line and and uh i don't know it's gonna it's gonna be cool i'm looking forward to the playoffs it was like it looked like there's gonna be a lot of new teams into which would have been cool like if houston got in but it looks like

they're choking it away but right you know when's the last time houston was in the playoffs it's been a while and how the pirates are like a you know juggernaut and you know the cardinals are always there boring everybody to tears. See the Mets in there and the Royals as division winners. It'll be interesting. Hey, we have to do the biggest question of the day. The biggest mailbag question of the day.

I've got to get this recurring one right. This one is sponsored by Igloo. Your typical intranet has stale content, the interface is ugly, and you can't access it on your phone. Am I right? Thank God for Igloo, an easy-to-use collaboration tool that isn't just for traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. With Igloo, you can share files, check the latest version of a presentation, coordinate team calendars,

provide quick comments and status updates from your phone, manage projects with to-dos and tasks. For God's sakes, Igloo does everything short of organizing your office's March Madness pool, and maybe it could do that too. Sign up for Igloo now and get a free trial at igloo-software.com slash Simmons. And here is the question. Johnny. Yes.

This is from Mr. Olivo. And by the way, you can send questions at bspodcast33 at gmail.com. What do you think are the top three dates slash times for the NFL to have its puppet media organization, parentheses, you know who, announce on its flagship highlight show, parentheses, you know what it is, that they have dropped the Deflategate appeal? I'd go with these three in order. 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, 1 a.m. on Christmas Day, and halftime of the Pro Bowl. Which one would you pick for those three? I would go with 1 a.m. on Christmas Day.

That's a good one. Yeah, because nobody pays any attention. Nobody's even watching TV or anything on Christmas. It's about opening presents and family time, so nobody would pay any attention to that. Thanksgiving, you're kind of still watching football, so that would make news. The Pro Bowl one is a pretty good question.

That's pretty good, that too. Do you think they should wait until there's a game at the big bell bottom? They absolutely should. I admire the commitment to beating an unfunny joke into the ground and just beating it like a horse that's dead, buried, dug up, and beaten some more. Good commitment there to that, the big bell bottom. Mixed in with some Jefferson Airplane lyrics, timely references. We did that podcast on ESPN's platform for eight years.

And we always had to kind of bite our tongue with some ESPN people. Right. And now we don't really have to do that. I was wondering if there's anyone out there in the ESPN universe that you've just really been waiting to poke fun at. Because this is all fun. It is what it is but is there anyone out there that you were just like to have we used to have some off-the-air jokes

about mike and mike right but just like their generic like laughter of the dumbest things and yeah when they did a big thing one year because like the mvp race was between pedroia and euclid yeah and they did this thing where it was like to the Jewish tune, Hava Nagila or whatever. And it was about Euclid. It was about because Euclid was Jewish, but somehow it was like Pedroia and they were dancing around on a chair like they do in an Orthodox Jewish wedding and Hava Nagila. And they were like doubled over in laughter. Yeah.

And we were like, but Pedroia is not even Jewish. And they're like, they're like, oh, literally the funniest thing I've ever seen. Like choking with laughter I was just like whoa oh buddy I thought it was hilarious when uh

when Goodell finally decided to give his interview and it was with Mike and Mike yeah hard hitting to

whoa buckle up put some shoulder pads on Roger this one's gonna to get rough. Roger. That was my, that was my imitation of one of the two people. Pretty good.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, now listen, uh, I do not work for them anymore and I like poking fun at media people from time to time. And we're going to be able to do that. People we haven't poked fun at, we were paying homage to almost. Absolutely. Mike Francesa. The great one. The Pope.

The Pope. And for years and years and years and years, I was not allowed on his show. Right. Because of the ESPN policy that they only want you to be on the ESPN radio shows. Which I kind of understand except for the part that if I'm trying to raise my profile in different cities, like say a city like Boston where I grew up and I lived 10 years after college, it maybe might help me in those cities to go on the local radio shows there. Francesa, I can never go on.

And it was always a dream to go on. And I would love to go on the Mike Francesa show. And I'm waiting. Unfortunately, he doesn't listen to podcasts. He doesn't have the Internet. I don't even know if he can text. I'm not sure. But I would love to go on that show and be with the Pope.

It would be a dream come true. You know, speaking of his of him and his old partner, over the summer, maybe like a month or so ago, I was watching a Yankees game and they advertised there's a talk show with Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay. Yeah. Center stage with Michael Kay. I like that show.

And they had Christopher Mad Dog Russo on the center stage. It's like inside the actor's studio with Mad Dog. Exactly. So I excitedly DVR'd the Christopher Russo center stage and watched it. And it was so enjoyable. And he was open to a return with Mike. Right.

And basically you could see that Mad Dog was a little bit wistful. Like he couldn't, you know, he got a godfather offer and got a ton of money to go do his Sirius or whatever satellite network he's on show. And so he couldn't turn that down. But a little wistful, Mad Dog, about the days with Mike.

And, you know, he said, you know, you kind of need somebody to play off of. It's hard to do the show by yourself. So didn't close the door on a return completely. So that was, you know, allowed me to dream, which was great. But someday they might be back together. I don't understand how anyone does a radio show by themselves i think it is a talent for me that it's along the lines of like people like that movie that's coming out joseph gordon levitt where he's walking on the rope from one building to the other and i'm always like how does somebody do that i don't get it how

would you learn how to do that why wouldn't you be scared like it's almost like you're talking about a different species of people right the people that can do radio shows by themselves, I don't get. I just don't understand it. Like I don't think I could talk by myself for five minutes. I know. You got to have at least like if you don't have a partner, you need to have like producers or other people you can bounce stuff off of and like, you know, joke with and whatever.

Like to just do it for five hours a day pontificating and hearing the sound of your own voice, I would run out of a day, pontificating and hearing the sound of your own voice. I would run out of things to say. Even me who loves the sound of his own voice, I'd run out of things to say. I think Coward's the best at it because he goes into every segment with an angle and you might not agree with the angle. Yeah. But he's coming hard.

But it gets dangerous when you have the Coward imitators. The people are like, coming up, I'll explain to you why the NFC East is like season eight of Seinfeld. You're like, what? All right. The Eagles, they're like George. And they're just talking and nobody's stopping it and nobody's making fun of them. And it's just going in this direction. Well, the other thing you can do is you fall danger to being like Mr. Hot

Take. Coming up, I'll explain why Johnny Manziel is better than Joe Montana. What? People pull their car over. What did you just say? The Papelbon Bryce Harper had some great stuff from the Hot Take department. Oh, there's a lot of Hot Takes. After about

18 hours, Papelbon was the Boston Strangler. Oh, he tried to choke him. It's a lot of hot takes. After about 18 hours, Papelbon was the Boston Strangler. He's literally, oh, he tried to choke him. It's like, what? I found it to be the opposite that originally everybody was like,

oh, Papelbon's a bum and he's a douchebag. I don't know if we can say that, but that's the way he was described. Oh, we can absolutely say that.

He's awful. And then afterwards, it was like, well, then you had the backlash from the older guys that were like, well,

Bryce Harper's a punk and he doesn't play the game the right way, and the unwritten rules. Oh, I hate that. And then there was a backlash to that. Then I read Jeff Passan on Yahoo. It was like, yeah, actually, Bryce Harper, he's in the top third for running it out to first base

and his time to the bag. So there was a backlash to the backlash to the backlash. Yeah, I don't know if it's just right anymore. Can we all agree that Papamon didn't try to strangle Bryce Harper? He was standing two steps higher than him and lunged forward, and his hands ended up where his neck was, but he was trying to shove him backwards. My biggest concern was just that future Yankee Bryce Harper

didn't hurt himself in any way, and hopefully he's all right and will be fine to sign a contract with them in a couple years. Yeah, when do I start getting scared about that? What year is that? I think he's got like two or three more years, but now maybe he's a bad guy in the clubhouse. Maybe they'd be open to Greg Bird, Severino, Steven Drew for Bryce Harper trade.

You throw in one of your outfielders that never seems to actually make it? How about, he's going to play center, so we'll give them Ellsbury, Severino, Bird, and Steven Drew, and we'll eat a lot of Ellsbury's salary. I think that's a trade that both teams could wrap their heads around. Boy, it was hard to see this Jacoby Ellsbury thing playing out this way. Yeah, go figure.

Hard to believe. He's killing them, too. What else was on our agenda? Anything? Did we hit everything? I think we hit everything. Yeah. Do you want to talk about Tom Coughlin quickly? Tom Coughlin seems like a, you know, he's, he's won two rings. I can't argue with it, but I think at a certain point the players just need to hear a new voice. You know,

you hear the same thing over and over again. And I think when that voice is red-faced Tom Coughlin, I love when there's a bad play on the field, like their 85th false start, and he does that hands up, and he looks kind of confused, like your grandfather, like he just doesn't know what's going on, and he's angry. Like, oh, my God. His face is red. His face is all red.

So I'm not going to kill Tom Coughlin, but it might be time for a new voice in the room. Do you have any grandparents. So I'm not going to kill Tom Coughlin, but it might be time for a new voice in the room. Do you have any grandparents left? I do not. No, no, not for like 15 years now. So he's kind of like the one grandparent left in your life. That's true. That's why I don't really want Tom put completely out to pasture, but it might be time to make that change. It's time where it's like, you got to have the talk about maybe Tom can't live in the house by himself anymore. Maybe we should get a daytime nurse to stop by. Pretty much.

Cook some meals for him. It might be more relatable for the players. Yeah, maybe. Well, I fully expect to see the Giants in the Super Bowl. They're going to go 7-9. They're going to somehow win the NFC East, and then all of a sudden the Patriots are going to be playing them. And I'm not taking my dad

because he turned on Tom Brady. Absolutely. Even if he turned on him for five minutes, he still turned on him. I'll never forget. I remember where I was. I remember what the elevator looked like. I remember him calling me a homer. It still hurts, Johnny. You're either on the team or you're off the team. Even if you get off for only half an hour.

Deflategate really ripped apart a lot of long-term relationships. Really did. Yeah. It's too bad. Massachusetts against the world. All right, Johnny. All right, buddy. I'm glad you're doing well.

I miss the sound of your voice. Thanks for being the second guest on the Bill Simmons podcast. And then we have two more coming on Friday, including Joe House NFL picks, which is going to be a weekly segment. And during the baseball playoffs, we'll be calling you, Johnny. So make sure you actually watch teams that aren't just the Yankees this year. I'll try to force myself. And for everyone else, you can get the Bill Simmons podcast.

We're going to have a little website. It's thebillsimmonspodcast.com or billsimmonspodcast.com. The new HBO show is going to come next spring. Many more details than that to come. Details on a lot of stuff to come. I didn't want to do it in the first two podcasts. I'm going to parcel it out slowly. Absolutely.

All kinds of info. You got me here for... Yeah, you got a bunch of podcasts coming up for me. Subscribe to it on iTunes. You can subscribe to it on SoundCloud. Go to our website. It has all the links. FeedBurner,

if you like that. And I am excited to be back. We will be back on Friday with more of the Bill Simmons podcast. Thanks again to Betterment for sponsoring today's episode. Get personalized advice and investment management for a fraction of the cost of traditional investment services. Sign up today at Betterment and get up to six months of free automated investing, full terms and conditions at betterment.com slash BS, Betterment, investing made better. And one more time, Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like.

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