The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 73: Dan Wetzel & Bill's Dad

Episode Date: March 7, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons welcomes Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports to discuss the desire for a Rousey-Holm rematch, UFC's growth (15:00), a Deflategate update (27:00), Goodell vs. Brady (30:30), the NFL's narrative (34:00), and Peyton Manning's legacy (44:00). Then, Bill's dad joins to pick the Pats' scariest QB matchup (54:00), say goodbye to Peyton Manning (1:00:00), consider Holy Cross's NCAA hopes (1:07:00), and break down the Celtics' stretch run (1:12:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Subscribe to that, please. I beg you. Okay, we're off. Yeah. Clear enough for you. Okay, we're off. It's a rainy Monday here in Southern California. Dan Wetzel from Yahoo, he brought the rain. He brought the bad weather with you. You're in L.A., and I do not forgive you for the weather right now.

People in L.A., when it rains, they drive like the rest of the country when 8 inches of snow hit. Yeah. Even 18 inches of snow. We should mention you have the Wetzel to 40 podcast on Yahoo, which you do every day. I admire your commitment to that. I can't believe you've never been on the BS podcast before, or even the BS

report or any of those. I guess you couldn't have been on when I was at ESPN, You were at Yahoo. That would have been weird. Yeah, you guys. I was banned. Yeah. It wasn't a ban. It was more of an uneasy coexistence.

An uneasy truce. I've been banned from a lot of places, so it's all right. Yeah. Lots to discuss. UFC, did you go or did you – you wrote about it. You were actually there, right? I was there, yeah. 196 was awesome. Great night. Great final two fights. UFC, did you go or did you wrote about it? You were actually there, right? I was there, yep.

196 was awesome. Great night. Great final two fights. Yeah, every time this happens, everybody says it's a bad thing for the UFC. And you actually wrote that this was the worst case scenario to have these two upsets. Isn't this what the UFC is, though, where it's just every time you think they have these new stars cemented, the stars lose? Well, yeah, what I said was it's the worst case scenario for the short term. But the whole point of what they've done is build a real sport. And that's why it works, because the fans can trust the UFC.

So there's no doubt that this was a short-term bottom line was not good. They were projecting the Rousey home two to be the biggest fight they were ever going to have. Now, maybe UFC would have exclipped that, but there was talk of 2 million pay-per-view buys on the rematch of that fight. Now, let's say they're off a little bit. That's still, their record is 1.5, I think, for UFC 100. I'm i'm guessing i don't need dana being upset with me for getting the wrong numbers but close enough it was a huge fight and all they had to do was wait for ronda rousey to get healthy finish filming movies and train and they had a september or november mega fight that was going to make a fortune so instead of

doing that though which is what boxing would do, which is why we hate, you know, I love boxing, but what drives even the people who cover and love boxing drives us all crazy. It's what another MMA organization would do. Holm wanted to fight. She's a fighter and she didn't want to wait. And the AOC said, all right. And they put her out with Misha Tate, who's a fighter, and she didn't want to wait. And the AOC said, all right, and they put her out with Misha Tate,

who's a terrific fighter. And boom, Misha Tate wins in this dramatic way in the fifth round, and then home Rousey falls apart. Now, they'll fight at some point, but it's not the same as if you had waited. And Tate, Rousey, Rousey's beaten Misha Tate twice. But that's the fight game. You can't predict this stuff. This isn't WWE.

So they lost money, no question, in the short term, but I do think this is why the sport's so good and why there's so many loyal fans, because you go, if you really know the sport, Holly Holm fought a really good fight, and she went out like a champ. I mean, she wouldn't even tap out, which is crazy. And it was actually a really exciting kind of three pronged battle there in the women's bantamweight division, which you never would have thought what you'd say. But

it's a loss for the big money in the fall. Okay. Can I do a counter argument? Sure. Why wouldn't I still get Rousey home? You will, but it won't. It'll still be a big fight, but people love that, or at least the mentality in the business is that, that automatic rematch of sexually, if home stays the champion would be, would be bigger. I don't think it's going to be a small fight when they eventually fight. Isn't it bigger though, that, that she kind of ended the rousing mystique and sent rousing into this tailspin she's talking about how she thought about suicide

briefly right after she got knocked out and she's trying to regroup and i i don't know i i think that's compelling whether or not she whether that home has the belt what happens if rousey fights tate next fall and misha tate beats her you know now rousey's got two losses and i don't know if there is a mystique it i agree most people are going to watch that's what and that's why this works i mean look the last person you want to cry about losing money on saturday night is that usc right he took a two million dollar company made it a couple billion yeah so they're going to make tons of money. It's like, you know, I always hate this, and people talk about it, like,

oh, God, the NBA's in trouble if they don't get the Lakers and the Celtics in the finals. Like, oh, no, what if it's Detroit, San Antonio? They're going to lose a ton of money. Like, what, the NBA's going to shut down shop because with a couple more rating points? No, who cares? So, yeah yeah maybe less people watch because of local markets but when you're obsessed with the local market matchup to get your tv that's like the nhl you want to just be able to say hey this is what happens and sometimes we get the right matchup so it'll still be a big fight but let's say misha tape beats ronda rousey

now now she hasn't beaten her last two rouseyy dominated. But what if Rousey then retires? You had a sure thing laying there, and now it's a little more uncertain. But the UFC is going to be totally fine. Why does Rousey have to fight the champ? Why can't she just fight home first and then fight the champ? Dana wants her fighting Tate, I guess. What do you know? Really?

It's a good point, yeah. See, I would think the revenge fight would be the first fight she would have coming back, right? This is like Tyson Douglas 2. Tyson Douglas 2 never happened because Douglas fell apart pretty much right afterwards. I don't think anybody cares about these belts either. Some people care, but you want to see two people fight. You don't really care what the belt is. It is true, right? It is interesting that the belt seems to matter a little bit less in UFC

because it really just comes down, I guess because it's so much more violent. It's almost like whoever wins, that matters more than the belt just because usually the other person is either choked out or knocked out or whatever. You couldn't watch the fight Saturday night and say Misha Tate dominated. Yeah. Holly Holm was going to win the fight. And she was winning on all the scorecards. She's winning the fifth round.

Misha Tate knows it. And in this absolutely dramatic fashion makes this Hail Mary shot to take her down. And it works. And then holds on. I mean, it was a great fight. It doesn't hurt Holly Holm that she really lost the fight, but it's what keeps you from the cover of Sports Illustrated. It's what keeps you from the hype that takes a fight from really big

to possibly the biggest of all time. It was shades of Vision Quest. Loud and Swain, down five points. One last Hail Mary move. I thought the great thing about, or one of the many great things about UFC and the reason that I find muscle gravitating to it more is you have these moments where somebody's getting choked out and they're just like, I'm not tapping.

I can get out of this. And then they actually pass out. It was awesome. I mean, I feel bad for Holly all night. It's awesome. I watched a woman get bad for Holly all night. It's awesome. I watched a woman get choked out, you know, like 10 feet from me. It was awesome. But that's – let me say this about this, too, because I noticed this Saturday night.

Inside the MGM Grand, it was kind of a dull first three fights on the card. Yeah. And everybody wanted the third fight to end so they could get to the women fighting. Wow. And everybody wanted the third fight to end so they could get to the women fighting. And that fight was organically huge. This was not like, you know, even a couple years ago, this would have been like foxy boxing practically. Or like it's a gimmick. Or people weren't comfortable with it. Or what do they look like?

This was like everybody wanted to see these two fight because it was going to be a great fight and as like female athletes there's nothing like oh they try just as hard or this is almost as good it was every bit as good yeah and this is not like your pc crowd at the it's never been to a fight it's not this is not the pc crowd at the mgm grand on saturday night like this is hardcore and they just love them because they fight hard, and it was a great fight, and that's pretty cool to see. Cousin Sal and I had been batting around if there was some sort of UFC batting strategy

because it seems like, and you know this stuff better than I do, it seems like over and over again, somebody hits to a certain point where they're marketing the hell out of them, and they become like the star du jour. The odds get swung out of whack and it's usually like 4-1, 6-1, 7-1, 8-1 and they lose. And this has been kind of the defining feature of the UFC these last 10 years.

Over and over again, these supposedly invincible new stars just getting upended. Should the odds for these fights, no matter who they are, ever be more than two to one? No, but they end up betting it. Dana said that after. He said the odds makers in this town are crazy. I don't know. Don't take gambling advice from me. And there's probably a really solid analytical look into this somewhere.

Well, did you see McGregor? But my guess is bet the underdogs, always. The McGregor home. Four and a quarter favorite, yeah. Both of them losing, if you had bet the other two, it would have been 17 to one payoff. Yeah, yeah. McGregor, I mean, this is how crazy the odds were.

And I should have bet. I don't think I really, this is how crazy the odds were, and I should have bet. I don't think I really can bet on a fight I'm covering. Probably not. Unethical, yeah. So, I didn't, but McGregor was fighting a guy who's bigger than him. He's up 25 pounds in weight class in two and a half

months, and he's fighting Nate Diaz, who, granted, had no training camp, no sparring, nothing. He's basically just walking in off the who, granted, had no training camp, no sparring, nothing. He's basically just walking in off the street. But he has an incredible chin. You can't knock him. Nobody knocks him out real easy.

And he's superior in jiu-jitsu and wrestling. It's not even close. And yet McGregor goes off of it plus 425. I mean, that's just crazy that it was that high. And sure enough, McGregor beat the crap out of Diaz, but he never hurt him. He cut him, but he never rattled him. Like, the Diazes, both Nate and Nick, they're like, the fight doesn't start until you've punched me 20 times in a row,

and now we'll start fighting. Like, they just spot him like a round or two. Just keep hitting me, Now we'll get going. And sure enough, he was too small. Every shot he was hitting him with would have knocked out a featherweight. He couldn't knock out a guy at 170. And eventually, he just ran out of energy. And McGregor's look in his eye was like, I can't do this. And he stopped even trying to do combos. He's trying to throw these wild haymakers and eventually gets beat. There's no way that is that implausible of an outcome,

that it should have been this huge, unbelievable upset. Yeah, I mean, to put on 25 pounds in 10 weeks, that seemed a little suspicious to me. I just thought, I guess the case against Diaz was just that he didn't have enough time to prepare for it. But, man, to be a 4-1 favorite when you had to put on that much weight. And also, like, they've cracked down on the PED testing, right? So 25 pounds in 10 weeks, I don't even know how you do that.

Well, I mean, he's half the cut weight to get to 145. So he's probably fighting at 155 or 160. And then he fought Saturday night at 168. So it's not quite, but to go up in that scale. So he put on like 12 pounds at least? Yeah, he got much bigger. Take a look at the, if you're really bored, take a look at the weigh-in pictures of McGregor in December and then in March. He doesn't look like the uh the the way in pictures of mcgregor at in december and then in in march

so he doesn't look like the same guy right i just he just filled out he's so skinny back then so he didn't have to make a weight cut but it's really the length makes sense it's it's the length and and the reach and then he fought nate diaz who is impossible to knock out he's just hard and impossible he's been knocked out, but you have to hit him so many times. It was a really weird fight because McGregor was winning. He was dominating the fight for the first round and a half, but he

just couldn't. He has nothing but knockout. Once he realized he couldn't take him down and he was out of energy, eventually Nate Diaz rides his bike like 100 miles a day and is always in good cardio. Diaz said he had no sparring so he just took the first round like sparring yeah and and just got caught up and just kept going so it was uh there were upsets but neither were huge upsets and and tate beating home was kind of a a great just a great play it was

just a great move so it was exciting like i, there were big money got lost in the short term, but this is why I think fans love the UFC, because their guys fight, and there's not hiding them, and it's not all concocted up, and it's not scripted in any way. And so if this is what happens, then so be it. And that's why they have a base of X number of hundreds of thousands of people that will buy every single pay-per-view and have for 15, 16 years. Yeah, and wrestling.

Like wrestling right now, they've had a lot of injuries to main stars. They lost Daniel Bryan. He retired. They lost CM Punk, obviously. They lost John Cena's hurt. Lesnar's part-time. Yeah, Lesnar's part-time. Yeah, Lesnar's part-time. Randy Orton's out.

They just kept losing guys. And wrestling's a sport where you have to have the stars. You have to sell the personalities. And UFC, it just seems like a self-regeneration. Every couple months, it's somebody else. The pool gets bigger and deeper. And that's one of the things that, you know, one of the criticisms I hated after Rouse's one of the things that, you know, one of the criticisms

I hated after Rousey lost was this idea that, oh, Rousey was a fraud or the media made her up. Because Rousey was dominating. She was unbelievable. And we'd never seen a woman fighter that good before.

But the sport grows so quick as these other fighters jump in on it. So, like, if you were, like, if you watched, like, Royce Gracie run UFC 1, Royce Gracie could not have been the champion at UFC 60. And you have the guys that, like, Chuck Liddell, you put him in the ring with Jon Jones right now, like, at their peaks, it's a total mismatch.

The sport grows so fast that every two years it's a whole new level. And I think Rousey hit a little of that where she was great, but all of a sudden like Holly Holm, who's just an unbelievable athlete and, you know, boxing champ, kickboxing. She was a soccer player. She's tall and just all muscle. She spends a year really training. And she improves, you know, five-fold.

So all of a sudden the bar is going up and rousey can only go so far with it so it's not that rousey was a fraud when she was taking everyone out in nine seconds it's that everybody else got better and i guarantee you in two years they're going to be fighters in there that make hollyholm and misha tate these ones look like quaint and that's just the way the sport goes because how many women fight MMA? Well, now if you're sitting there saying, hey, I can make millions of dollars doing it, I'm going to get into that. I'm going to try to do that.

And that's why the whole thing grows bigger and bigger all the time. You've been covering this for a while. I mean, you cover a lot of stuff, but you've always kind of been around this. When did you notice a mainstream kind of shift at, at some of these big fights? Um, well, I don't go to all of them. I mean, you know, I started maybe in like, I don't know what the first one I covered was maybe like in the seventies or something, UFC seventies or something. I can't quite remember. But I think UFC 100 was really big. It stopped, the narrative about it stopped being like, what is all this? And this is wrong to just

like people accepting that it exists. The human cockfighting narrative. That was kind of gone by a hundred. Yeah. And you started seeing guys like Anderson Silva. I think Anderson Silva was really influential because Anderson Silva was so spectacular and the way he would win fights were so dramatic. And you looked at him and were like, this guy's unbelievable. Where, for all of their charm and enjoyment, the Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell era would look like. It looked like a tough man contest, even though those guys were way better than that, you know, Butterbean or whatever those guys were. Yeah, yeah.

But it really separated. I thought Anderson Silva was really influential because nobody could watch Anderson Silva not go, that guy's an unbelievable athlete. Holy cow, I can't believe he just did that. And that was big, and you got to 100. They brought in Lesnar, and lessner didn't last and actually that probably helped mma uh even though he was really good for a while that brought

in a lot of attention and i think people stuck with it but i mean you go back to the old days i mean it was comical like they used to have always joked there was this uh this company that was a big sponsor was condom depot I don't know if you remember the early, they have it on the ring and like guys would wear it on their shorts. Like who needs a Depot? Who's the target audience? Like God bless you, man.

You need a whole Depot. Like that was their sponsor. And then they had like Mickey's wide mouth. They're really excited when Mickey's wide mouth signed up to sponsor it, you know? And then all of a sudden it got to like, all right, we got Budweiser. I don't even know who sponsored them anymore, but it's big companies. And that changed.

That was a big deal too because it just took the comedy out of it, although it was pretty funny to watch. It used to feel like you were watching. It was like I used to go over to my friend Gator Anderson and Trey's house to watch and be like 10 guys crowded in a house watching the pay-per-view. And it felt like this underground thing you're watching, like nobody else in the whole city would want to watch. And so it would just be a couple viewing parties and that would be it. And there was no one to discuss it with. And at some point it just tipped the thing.

Like Mandy Moore was the only celebrity that would go, like the most bizarre celebrity that would go to all the fights was Mandy Moore. I never understood that one. And then at some point, all the bars started showing it. But I think Silva and Lesnar were really big on that. I remember, I think in 2002, I wrote a column about going to a UFC fight, or a pay-per-view. No, it wasn't a pay-per-view. It was just a card. It was in either Mohegan or Foxwoods. Me and my buddy J-Bug drove down.

And yeah, it was definitely a certain type of demo. It was a pretty fascinating night. And I think now it seems like it's branched out more. Do you see kids at these things? You know, there are some, very few. I actually was walking in and there was a dad with his daughter who was probably about 10 and we were coming in early and the undercard is like they fight for like five hours that's the other thing it's pretty if you're really into it and there's

a few thousand there's probably 5 000 people there the whole time they watch like 15 20 fights they just keep going all night and this girl we were waiting because it was in between a round, like the round was going on, so we had to wait. And she said she was looking around, and she saw like a 5-year-old. She goes, look, Adam, not the youngest person here. And he was laughing, and I was like, you've got some courage taking her here. And she loves it. So it's not a lot, but there's some of them there.

It's mainly men, and it's mainly – you don't want to – if someone bumps into you at these things, just accept. Just move on. Because even if he weighs like 112 pounds, he's likely to break your arm. I think it has such a huge advantage over boxing with the consistency of just being able to throw out, you know, 12 pay-per-views

a year. Plus, they do a couple other things, but it's just the consistency of the product versus what you get in boxing where it's like, well, what was the signature boxing fight last year? I can't even remember. You know, last year was Mayweather, Pacquiao. No, but I mean like signature, like I'm going to remember 20 years from now. Right. You know, it's boxing.

Sometimes you get them on HBO, yeah. No, and pay-per-view-wise, you get a whole night of entertainment. I think that was a big thing when you started getting guys to go over people's houses to watch. Yeah. Is you'd get two and a half hours. So it's like watching a game. And there would be five or six. There's normally five fights, and then they throw at least one extra on and sometimes two,

depending on how long the fights are. So if you've got six or seven fights, some of them are going to be good. And even if the main event is bad, you feel like you've got your money's worth because you had a whole night with your friends. Like, I remember buying a, I don't know what it was. I can't even remember which guy beat him. I think it was Floyd Mayweather, Ricky Hatton, or else it was Pacquiao. I can't remember who knocked him out. I bought the the fight and he knocked Ricky Patton out in like one

minute into the second round and I'm like I just paid $60 for four minutes or you know I can't remember who beat Patton that's how bad the fight was and I felt like I turned it off I felt like I got ripped off um you don't get that so it was a lot I think that's always helped it and that kind of brought people in so it's uh it's interesting you made the crucial point sometimes the best fight in these ufc pay-per-views can be in the first hour you just never know so you actually have to watch the whole two and a half three hours i mean i i can tell you we cover you know we're big on analytics at yahoo and what people are reading the reason i've covered this for this many years is because people read it yeah it's not like i like it. So, I mean, I like it, but I'm not like the biggest UFC fan by any

stretch of imagination. I'm not watching every, you know, every fight on FS1 or something like that. It's just people read it. We get huge traffic off of this. So there is a lot of, the fans are probably even bigger than most people recognize. I mean, it's stuff that a lot of the traditional media will cover does not nearly do as well, certainly not on the Internet as MMA does. You're not getting tennis to work like UFC or something like that. It's just not happening. Do you want firmer, stronger abs? Do you want to tone those hard-to-reach core muscles? Do you want to take your ab workouts to the next level? Let me introduce you to Slender Tone Connect Abs. Slender Tone's

abdominal toning belt is controlled via a smart app that creates your personal training plan, tracks workouts, and sends customized tips to keep you motivated. Their EMS technology sends deep pulses that engage your stomach muscles, causing them to flex and contract like in regular exercise, giving you a stronger core. Join the 100 out of 100% of users who reported firmer, more toned abs with real results in six weeks. There's even a money back guarantee. Visit slendertone.com today. Receive 20% off using offer code BS at checkout. Speaking of fitness, it seemed like, is it fair to say UFC had a little bit

of a PD problem there for a while and they've gotten rid of most of it? It's a fair comment, right? A lot of guys' wives were getting HGH shipped to their house. Let's just put it that way. I don't know. Yeah, obviously they were. I mean, they say

that it's solved. Yeah. I have no idea. I'm not naive. It's the one – this and boxing to me are the two sports that the most have to be clean because it's one thing to hit a baseball 500 feet off a guy. It's another to – I mean, you're attacking them. You can kill them.

You can injure them. You know, there can be no tolerance to it. But the idea that there isn't, that isn't going on, they're doing everything they can. They turned over, they outsourced it to USOT. They basically just said, we're not doing it. Here's the federal deal. It's about as good as they can do.

But they could probably do better. I don't know. But I'm not naive to think it's not going on. I'm sure it's going on. Anytime there's money at stake, fame, people are going to cheat. It's human nature. Yeah, and especially if the drugs are ahead of the testing for it. Right, which they always will be.

How many Deflategate columns did you write over the last 15 months? Oh, about 100. I don't know. I wrote in 2015, I wrote, I bet you 60% of the things that I wrote, if not more, and I write a lot, had something to do with the New England Patriots, either between their actual football team and winning a Super Bowl, De the Flategate or the Aaron Hernandez murder trial. It was just like, this was the greatest team. The 30 for 30 or whatever you, whatever you put one out,

whatever your new thing is going to be on the, on that 2015 Patriots is going to be the greatest murderers. The Flategate and the whole thing. I wrote a lot of the Flategate, but again, people are fascinated by it. It's got a, it's got a huge audience. People sit there and go, how can you keep writing about that? I'm like,

well, every time we write it, tons of people read it. I found that thing to be fascinating. I, I'm someone who goes down the rabbit hole on certain stories. And that was one of them, but the swing of how look like almost everybody else at the beginning,

I thought, oh yeah, they totally did it. Right. And then all the stories, all the, oh, yeah, they totally did it, right? And then all the stories, all the leaks come out, and they look even more guilty. And, you know, why wouldn't these guys take a little air out of the ball? And it totally made sense. And then the way the Patriots fought back, you had Belichick doing this just unprecedented press conference,

and he's quoting my cousin Vinny. And then Bob Kraft shows up at the Super Bowl and does this press conference and he's quoting uh my cousin vinny and then bob craft shows up the super bowl and does this press conference where he says by the end of this the nfl is going to apologize to us and storms out like this was this was wrestling right and then the wells report comes out it looks terrible until you actually read the wells report and if you read the wells report and it is not easy to do, because I've always said, I think they purposely wrote that thing terribly. It's really hard to read the Wells report. And these are really smart people. So they know how to write. They purposely

wrote a confusing document to try to hide what they had. It's a sign of weakness. And if you really read it, and you read it over and over, over and you take notes and then the scientists come in, you start going, oh my God, this doesn't really add up. Then Goodell blows the whole case in May when he has the Patriots basically give up and he could have just closed the case and Kraft basically says, take my draft picks. We're just going to fall on our sword. And all Goodell needed to do was take that as a global settlement and let Brady off the hook. And instead, he naively says, no, I'm going to take Brady down too. And then you bring in the NFL PA who's not going to fall on their sword, and you bring in Jeffrey Kessler, who's a great attorney, and then you get Judge Berman, who starts releasing these transcripts and documents,

and now everybody can read even more stuff, and you realize how much the NFL case is a joke, and it just goes on and on, and then you have the oral argument. So it's been an unbelievable soap opera if you really follow it. I get most people are like, this is the boringest story, this is the stupidest story ever. Who cares? But if you're into the if you're into the minutia, it's actually pretty fascinating. And then it flipped again last week, just when I thought the Pats might be able to get their first round pick back and Godel was going to have to apologize. All this stuff now. Now you have the hearing last week.

Three judges need to be convinced one way or the other. And a two to one verdict either way is going to solve whatever the appeal is. And from the way people read how the judges were asking their questions, things they were saying, it seems like they're leaning toward the NFL, which is incredible to me. Explain this. Well, I don't think they're ever getting their first round picked back because even when they make this ruling, it'll be after the draft. I think that thing's gone. And that's a big loss for New England, particularly when they're so close to a Super Bowl again

and the window's so tight to lose a first-round potential difference-maker. That's significant. And it limits their ability to move up, because that second pick is almost you can't miss on the second pick. You're down picks. It's a bad loss for them. And Brady could still end up suspended for four games, which isn't anything anyone wants to deal with either.

So they go into this appeal, and it's a three-judge appeal process, and they were supposed to argue all of the art of the laws of an arbitrator and what role does an arbitrator have and was the law of shop and things like that it is everything that wasn't to do with the deflator go in the bathroom or not so it wasn't supposed to be about the evidence and yet and again this is why this is such a wild case they to be about the evidence. And yet, and again, this is why this is such a wild case, they make it about the evidence, and they start grilling Kessler on this stuff. And some of their proclamations, the judges were crazy, and they're just saying, oh, it's overwhelming.

It seems very convincing evidence or compelling, if not overwhelming evidence, that the balls were deflated. Like every scientist that's looked at this thing says the exact opposite. And the NFL repeats this ridiculous argument that Tom Brady – let me start with this thing. This is one of the more interesting things for any NFL fan, was one of the reasons Goodell upped the punishment on Brady and upped the charges on Brady was he said in

their interview when Brady went to New York to meet with him, Brady claimed that in the days after the deflate gate thing broke, he never talked to John Jastrzemski, the equipment guy. Then all of a sudden the story breaks. They talk like six or seven times. And at no point did Brady say to him that they discussed the news that was floating out there that, oh my God, we're getting, people are saying we're cheating. And Goodell said that it doesn't make any sense, that that feels like a lie. And when he came out with that story, I wrote a column saying that does seem like a lie. Like, how could you not go, what the hell is going on, John?

Like, how could you not discuss it at all? It's just totally ridiculous. But when Judge Berman releases the transcript of the actual hearing, in the transcript, it shows Goodell asked Brady about it, or Brady was asked about it by different guys. And on five different occasions, he mentions that they did discuss all the news floating around and they were talking about that as well as preparing for Super Bowl so Goodell completely misrepresented what Tom Brady said in the transcript and the NFL thought that transcript

would stay under seal and they argued that that transcript should stay under seal and Berman comes out and says now we'll make it public and that was kind of the moment to me last summer when I really was like, this is, this is a really crazy case. I give the commissioner of the NFL inventing testimony on the star player to get him to up the charges against him. And that was amazing. But what was even more amazing is the NFL was still making the argument that Brady and Jastrzemski never discussed Deflategate in the days when Deflategate hit last week at the hearing. And so the idea that this thing is still getting perpetuated just makes no sense.

And I think that's what a lot of people who follow the case closely, and there's this cult of people, it's just New England fans. There's all these lawyers and observers and scientists and all these people around the country, professors, that are fascinated by the other part of the case. Not about did he deflate the ball, but all this other stuff. That's the one everyone was like, oh my God, I can't believe we're still going on that. And what's really crazy is the fact that he broke his cell phone seems to be the go-to point for anyone who's against whatever. And when you look at all the stuff the NFL has done in the last 10 years, I've made this point before, I'm going to make it again. to a league that doesn't always seem to do things on the level, that leaks things to the media, that has intentionally tried to make people look bad that they were going against.

Why would I ever in a million years give my cell phone to Roger Goodell in the NFL? Right. And he was told he didn't have to give his cell phone over. He shouldn't have destroyed it. Like you said, I read a million columns. Big mistake. Should have put it in a safe deposit, I read a million columns. Big mistake. Should have put it in a safe deposit box.

Give it to your lawyer, whatever. I disagree. I would have destroyed it. Why do I want it around? What if it's subpoenaed and now I have all these pictures and texts and emails? And why do I even risk that? I guess you're right. Because if they're going to play on, they're going to find something to attack you on.

They'll just find something else. Right. So when that thing hit, I remember that story came out, and the NFL case was getting wobbly. And all of a sudden, I think it was Stephen A. Smith had the scoop that Brady destroyed the cell phone. And I just was like, oh, here you go. Like, of course they leaked that out to have a whole day of Brady destroyed the cell phone in no context. And that's the NFL is genius at this thing. Yeah.

You know, like we still don't know who was it that reported 11 of the 12 footballs. Someone told Chris Mortensen that he didn't just invent it. And it had to have been, I'm guarantee you, is a really good source. Significantly, significantly deflated by two pounds. Two pounds. It wasn't happened but you go back to the beginnings people say to me the other one people say to me is why would they do this like it doesn't make any sense and i agree doesn't it doesn't in in the grand scheme of things but if you go back to the beginning of the story, the Colts thought the Patriots were deflating footballs. And they intercept the pass, and they give the ball on the sideline to

assistant equipment guy. And he pulls out a measuring device, and he measures the PSI level in the football. And it's below 12.5, of course, because it's 45 degrees up. At that point, this guy had no idea about ideal gas law. I don't know if he didn't take high school physics. I don't know what happened. He immediately alerts everyone on the sideline. Granted, the Colts are all hyped up. So it shouldn't matter what the Colts think.

Of course they're going to think the other team's cheating. They all think they're – they scream holding every single play on the sideline. So also the NFL executives were all at the game because of the AFC title game, including Troy Vincent. They come charging down, and they're going to measure the balls. Apparently, and Vincent said it himself, but apparently none of the people in this knew about ideal gas law either and the fact that the balls naturally deflate in colder weather.

At the time, it seems they thought a football below 12.5 PSI is an automatic cheat. And if you're at 11 or 10 or 10.8 or 11.2, you're significantly cheating because you can't just And buried in the Wells report is the whole exponent thing that has been disputed by a lot of scientists. But even they admit the footballs could be as low as 11.3. So most of those balls they tested weren't even against the rules. But you left out the part that they didn't even really write down what the numbers were before they gave it all that. They didn't even write that down. Who knows? didn't care so they were like close enough so they might have sent a ball out there that was 12.3 or 12.4 also like how do people anyone who's lived in cold weather knows that when it dips below 40 degrees your tires get a little like sometimes the light

will go on that your tires to load because when it gets cold things deflate and that's what belichick said a couple days later because belichick went through the ringer on that and i remember talking to patriots people like he's he's like who cheated you know like i think he had the same idea that that all of us had like what the hell happened here right and you know remember at the time people were saying belichick engineered it and belichick should be barred from the Super Bowl. And, you know, it's so outrageous. But that becomes a thing. So, yeah, how don't you know? There's no science to it.

So you get down to it. If you look at the footballs they tested, again, we have no perfect – I would recommend anyone watch this guy at MIT, Dr. John Leonard, does a whole class on it. And he's an Eagles fan. I know he's at MIT, but he's an Eagles fan. And this guy is – I mean, just listen to him. He's a genius,. And he's an Eagles fan. I was at MIT, but he's an Eagles fan. And this guy, I mean, just listen to him. He's a genius, right? He's an MIT professor. He'll blow the whole thing up on YouTube for you and does it a lot better than I do. And the more scientists you talk to on this that say it didn't happen, the balls weren't deflated. That's when you sit

there and go this whole thing. You're working backwards from it. But that's what they had. They thought, we caught him, you cheated significantly, now we're going to back it up with confirmation bias, and they're looking for stuff. So, hey, the guy goes in the bathroom. Well, that does sound suspicious, but maybe he just went to the bathroom. Eight months before, he called himself the deflator. One of them did. Tom Brady's giving him gifts. I mean, that was something the federal judge was on.

Oh, you know, he's giving inducements, these gifts. Every single player in every professional sport locker room for 50 years has given locker room attendants gifts. Like, that's how they paid the guys. I knew a Boston Red Sox bat boy when I was in high school. And he'd come back with gloves and bats and everything from the visiting team. That's how they paid him. Go get me a McDonald's. He'd come back with gloves and bats and everything from the visiting team. That's how they paid him. Go get me a McDonald's. He'd come back, and they'd give him a baseball.

So, I mean, this has gone on forever. But the judges don't get it. But anyway, back to the thing. They just were so focused on they cheated because there's a cliff. If you're under 12.5, you cheated, when in fact you didn't. And if you even look at what the NFL proposed, there's only a few footballs that are below even their low standard. And again, we have no base measurement. But you would have to have, say, four footballs or something like that

would be instead of 11.32, they're like 11.2, which means the deflator would have gone into the bathroom and taking the most minuscule amount of air out of the football to get from 11.3 to 11.2 it's idiotic it's it's impossible and idiotic you just go that's it and then you go what did that have to do with anything they wouldn't have done it and think about think about all the things brady has to do before a football game. Why would he care that the balls were 7.2% more deflated right after they got checked? I mean, is this really something that's going to enter his brain at any point? It's even 1%, Bill. It's less than that. Of course not. If you get away from the first

wave of narrative and then everybody piling on, you remember those two weeks after the NFC title game, it was like ban Brady from the Super Bowl, ban Belichick, no Hall of Fames. It was over the top. And the NFL plays the media perfect because the media now is like Twitter and people yelling and quick analysis and then oh four months later we put out this completely confusing document that's you know hundreds and hundreds of pages long nobody reads it those that do start having

questions it takes i mean it literally takes i hear people go i read the wells if you know like how long did it take you to read it because it should have taken you a couple days if you really read it and you know i'm doubting that just every single sports take you to read it? Because it should have taken you a couple days if you really read it. And I'm doubting that just every single Sports Talk Radio guy read it like that. And then it takes months later for the scientists to start reconstructing it, and all of a sudden all this time later you kind of have the facts. And what should scare any other NFL fan, I don't know if it's scare, but it should be of note, is this is only still being brought up because we're talking about Tom Brady.

And Tom Brady fought back. And he's famous, and it's the Patriots. If it's just another player on a team, nobody cares. Well, I still wonder if there's a chance he's going to sue the league because I think you could make a 100% accurate case that this has hurt his reputation and his standing like i i watched the first episode of mr robot and in the first 10 minutes brady gets lumped into this cheater bad person montage with like oj and it's like i don't i like this clearly did hurt his reputation people do think he cheated and if he didn't county jury. Suffolk County jury. Yeah. Suffolk County jury. I like my chances.

I'll take the case. I'm not even a lawyer. Yeah, seriously. Totally cheated. We'll put that thing in. That's a great point. He buried the knife. He buried the needle.

So your gut check take, does he get a four game suspension or not? I think he might. I think he might too. I think he might. I just, I'll never, people think I like, I don't know. I think he might, too. I think he might. People think I, like, I don't know. I don't know what to say. People think I got, like, a tinfoil hat on.

I'm like, let me ask you something. Do you want to believe every scientist in the world or Roger Goodell? How are you on the other side of this? I get it's fun that the Patriots got caught cheating. It's a great story. People hate the Patriots. Right. Well, they hate anybody successful. It's why so many people were excited that Peyton Manning got.

You know, we're discussing stuff from Peyton Manning 20 years. Oh, look, he's not as good of a guy. That's our emotional... People consume news through emotion. They want to be confirmed. Oh, no, that guy's not that great. Ha ha. So I get all that. But

all the scientists say it didn't happen. And Roger Goodell says it did. And you really want me to take Roger Goodell's word for it? As Boston fans, we get it. Because if this had happened to the Yankees in the late 1990s and there was some sort of maybe cork bat Jeter thing, but the bats had been replaced and deep down you knew he didn't do it. But Jeter might get screwed over. I would have been like, yeah, give him the chair. Who cares? I would have been so fired up. And they'd be saying, duh, Jeter didn't do it but jeter might get screwed over i would have been like yeah give the chair who cares i would have been so they'd be saying duh jeter did who cares right it was like roger clemens getting everyone's like oh good yeah clemens

cheated it it it so it's emotional and most fans they shouldn't want to read the wells report do something better with your life like this is my job so i did it but you should you should just be like yeah most people are just tuning in on TV. They just hear it a little bit, and that's fine. That's how it should be. But that's why they can manipulate so much stuff. But it was orchestrated. It's fascinating.

I mean, Michael McCann teaches a class of a UNH on it. Yeah. I mean, can you imagine something becoming a class? We're talking about the slight deflation possible, deflations of footballs in a 45 to 7 football game we we have to go but give me we didn't get to talk about trump university or ben simmons give me give me one minute give me one minute about uh about peyton manning no peyton manning okay anything um peyton manning i think that because all the crap lately people are forgetting how

great of a quarterback he was and his ability to change the games he's basically his own offensive coordinator and he would he talked to belichick dick laboe rex ryan all the really great defensive guys he went up against and he drove them nuts because they would have a play called and he'd stand there and yell omaha 400 times and then three seconds left in this play he'd switch the play and get eight yards and first down I don't think that's underrated about Peyton Manning because of all the cartoon the I mean the commercials the Papa John's the the Tennessee stuff like this guy was unbelievable when he was his game, he was so hard to stop. And you talked to the great defensive minds in the NFL,

and they don't put those other quarterbacks in with him. It was like Manning and then all these other guys. I thought Brady had some very nice things to say about him to Peter King, although it bothers me that Brady talks to Peter King when I don't feel like Peter King had his back. I feel like Brady should only talk to you and me. That's it. I don't think he should talk to any other reporters or writers. He should only talk to the people who had his back during Deflategate. But I liked what he said about just how great Manning was and how he changed the game.

I thought it was shocking that he said how many games of Manning's that he's watched. He made it seem like he had watched every Peyton Manning football game. Did you read that? Probably did. He also changed film study. I'll give you a real quick one that I wrote about. I think it was the 2010 AFC title game.

The Jets were beating the Colts like 17-6, and Manning was struggling. Rex Ryan was killing Manning with all these, you know, he would switch up the, who was, this was the start of the D linemen dropping back into coverage, and they just had Manning confused. And Manning got up to the line, and he saw a formation he remembered from watching a 2005 Ravens game when Rex Ryan was the defensive coordinator. He recognized the formation.

Audible hit Colley for a first down. Next play, same thing. Hit Colley for like 46 yards. The next play, hit him for a touchdown. And the whole thing switched, and he won the game, all because he saw something like that. This was like six years earlier in a different team. And he recognized it.

And later, Rex talked about it. And he's just like, I don't know what to do. He's so good that no other quarterback would find that out. And I think he pushed Brady into that. Now every guy is a film geek. There were film geeks before, but there were a lot of guys just out there saying, I got a lot of ability. I'm just going to throw it around.

Now they all study everything. This quote Brady had about him was really illuminating, I thought. He said, the way he played football, the way he was consumed by football, all the mental energy he had to use. And I mean, every day of the year, you're thinking about it. Imagine what he must feel like with all that pressure off. 12 months a year, the time commitment, the mental commitment. I could tell you it never leaves you. You're constantly trying to be better, constantly striving to learn more. Think about how long he's been a great quarterback for Peyton. The pressure's probably off for the first time. Imagine how that feels. And to me, that quote said more about Brady than Manning. Yeah, Brady's jealous.

Well, but I think Brady's like, I don't know what my life would be like if I didn't have that pressure 365 days a year and I'm not ready to find out. I think Brady's like, I don't know what my life would be like if I didn't have that pressure 365 days a year and I'm not ready to find out. I think Brady's going to play until he's like 52. I think we're going to have to carry him out. Yeah, and I think Manning was like that too. When you read the most fascinating part of this whole Manning thing is I don't think he wanted to retire. I think he wanted to keep playing, and I don't think he had a good offer.

I think Denver wanted to get rid of him. Really the LA Rams were the only team that were sniffing around a little bit and they wouldn't even guarantee him a starting job. And he kind of begrudgingly went away. And I just don't believe this was like one of those things where he's like, I'm done. This is great. I really think if anybody had come to him and said, be our quarterback next year, I think he's doing it.

I really do. Almost every single app, no one walks away. No. And none of, including regular people. You just get cut from your high school team, or you get to college, or you don't, you know, you basically get shoved into right field in Little League or something like that. Like, everyone keeps playing as long as they can play. It's just most of us are told to stop playing much earlier than 39.

And I do think he sat out there and just said, don't see what comes in. Maybe someone comes in with a great offer, and I'll take it. I agree with you, because it is. It's all-consuming to these guys. And everyone else that says, oh, just go in the broadcast booth, sell your pizzas, it's not the same. It's just not the same. I feel cheated because I was so excited to watch Peyton Manning on the LA Rams next year

with Jeff Fisher going seven and nine. It's like this Joe Namath kind of ending for him because I'm a diehard Boston fan. I wanted it to end badly for Peyton Manning. Why couldn't it be bad? You would show up just to watch him get sacked five times a game. Oh, I would have loved it.

I would have gone to all the games and rooted for the other team. It was a lost marketing opportunity for the Rams. Yeah. Do you feel like that second Super Bowl changed his legacy at all? Because he really did nothing in that game. I thought the previous game was when he really had an impact against the Pats. I don't think it changed his legacy.

He should go down for all the reasons that he was a great quarterback. He didn't win that thing. Von Miller won it. DeMarcus Ware won it. Those guys won it. He didn't win it. It's great that he did it. I recognize how hard it had to have been for him to say,

I'm going to be a game manager. And in a lot of ways, he did a good job with that. If you're going to have a game manager, you might as well have the smartest QB ever be your game manager and in a lot of ways he did a good job with that is if you're gonna have a game manager you might as well have like the smartest qb ever be your game manager yeah but i don't know that they weren't better off with osweiler in there sometimes in that in that game he couldn't throw the ball so i think it was a like look the media particularly get really excited about you know storybook endings and narratives and all this stuff and i think it's cool that you got to walk out with a Super Bowl. I don't think it was cool.

I didn't find it cool at all. I didn't enjoy it in the least. If only he had thrown it to Gronk on the two-point conversion, right? You'll never forgive Brady for that one. Oh, my gosh. That ends it. So he gets that, but I don't think anyone can look at that second thing and say he had anything to do with winning that Super Bowl.

He had two drives. I played it perfectly because I bet on the Broncos and the under. I had all kinds of Broncos bets. So I really couldn't lose either way. But I do feel like he burned Jamie Collins twice with Owen Daniels in the AFC title game. On two really good passes where he just... Jamie Collins is the best defensive player in the Pats. And he lost the game for the Pats, basically, on those two plays.

And Manning kind of used him and abused him. And that was – to me, that was his biggest contribution. That game, when you go back and look at it, I'm sure you have the tears and your problem and all that. It's still on my DVR. Yeah, it was almost unfathomable how New England lost that game. It's just like so many. I think one of the most underrated or least discussed plays was the third.

It was like third and ten, and Amendola caught the ball like five yards from the five or six yards from the first down. And he makes this gutsy play to get it to one, like dives under and does his Amendola thing. And then it's fourth and one, so they go for it. If he just gets tackled, it's fourth and six and they kick a field goal. It's like little stuff like that. That's why football is awesome.

It's crazy that the Pats won four Super Bowls and yet had like four or five of the worst losses of my life. You're spoiled. Nobody wants to hear you. Nobody. Not one person. Viking fans and Bill's fans and Brad's fans are going crazy right now. Even Belichick would be like,

look at Bill. Just chill out, man. I got you to the MC title game every year. All right, Dan Wetzel, we can read you at Yahoo Sports. We can listen to your podcast, Wetzel to 40, every single day. I'm glad we finally did this. And I look forward to talking to you later in the year as we

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All right. We're bringing out my dad because I know he wants to say goodbye to Peyton Manning. Dad, where did Peyton rank among the scariest QBs we've ever gone against for you? That's exactly what I would have said to that question. Of all my years watching football, teams coming in to play the Patriots or us on the road, nobody came close to scaring me as much as Peyton Manning. Really? Yeah. Not even L.A.?

No, no. It just seemed like, and I know we won some of those games, but I think particularly the last five or six years, I mean, we lost some games we never should have lost, and Manning always seemed to be in the middle of something, a last-minute drive, an improbable pass that we just missed intercepting, that him changing plays at the line of scrimmage. It just drove me crazy,

and I just always thought there was some aspect of him where he was very confident playing the Patriots, and it made me nervous. I would say, for me, the top three are Elway, Manning, and Marino. Yeah, well, Marino. Marino killed us. See, maybe Marino is number one because I can't even ever remember beating Marino until he turned into a mummy near the end.

But the first 10 years, we never beat him ever. The difference for me with Marino, and certainly I agree, I always felt Marino had a number. And what he and Manning certainly had in common, the quickness of their release, getting rid of the ball before we could get to them. I mean, we had very few sacks against either of those guys. The difference for me with Marino was our teams weren't very good back then. And I don't, you know, Marino, yeah, he was scary, but our teams weren't very good,

and I'm not sure that Marino was necessarily the difference. We weren't good. We beat them once. We beat them in the AFC title game in the 85 season before the Bears beat us by 36 points. Yeah, so once. But I don't think Miami's team was as strong as it was earlier in Marino's career. But again, that's the big difference for me. But I don't think Miami's team was as strong as it was earlier in Marino's career.

But again, that's a big difference for me. I didn't have confidence in those Patriot teams, and that was exacerbated by how good Marino was against us. For me, Manning, I feel Manning's play probably cost us two or three Super Bowl visits. And you look back at some of those games, and sometimes they'll have them on the NFL network. I still don't know how we lost those games. He pulled rabbits out of hats. And we never could get to him.

It kind of reminded me of that 08 Super Bowl when we had his brother wrapped up and we should have sacked in the fourth quarter and it didn't happen. Constantly that happened against Peyton Manning. We almost got him. We were just there ready to pull him down, gets the pass off, open running back, runs for 30 yards. In my lifetime, he's just the quarterback that most impacted me negatively.

I want to remind you of a stat. Do you know what John Elway's record was against the Patriots? But we weren't very good in those years. Do you know the answer to this question? No, I don't know the answer. He was 10-0. We never beat him. But we

stuck. Yeah, but do you remember when we made the Super Bowl in 96 when Jacksonville beat Denver? That was about as excited as I've ever been about a non-Patriots football game. Remember that? Because it was like, oh, they took out O-Way! We never would have beaten O-Way, and then all of a sudden we were

in the Super Bowl. That's a good point. We probably wouldn't have beaten Elway. No, he owned us. I would go Elway won. The thing with Manning is I really felt like we could beat him those first few years. Remember

Brady beat him the first season that he became the starter then we beat him in the playoffs twice and i was like oh we own this guy and then from that point on he started beating us yeah that's why i clarified the last five or six years you know and you and i have talked about this there's always it seems like a defining moment that changes things and for me it was that AFC championship game when, when we were up 18, going into the third quarter.

And I think it was Belichick did the fourth down and fourth and two. And I could still see the, no, that was a different game. You're mixing games. Okay. Well that, that one too,

but the one you're talking about, the fourth and two was like in a, that was, that was a Sunday night game. Okay, well that one too. But the one you're talking about is well... No, the fourth and two was like in, that was a Sunday night game. Okay. Which is the one you're referring to? Well, the 06 AFC title game, that was the, we beat San Diego

in San Diego the week before when we were underdogs. That was the Rashay Caldwell season. We had nobody. Brady had nobody on the team. Oh yeah, we had no receivers. We had no running backs. We had no anybody. That was the Rasheed Caldwell season. We had nobody. Brady had nobody on the team. Oh, yeah. We had no wide receivers. We had no running backs. We had no anybody.

That was Brady's greatest year. Lawrence Maroney, Rasheed Caldwell, Jabbar Gaffney, and Ben Watson. And we still should have won. Well, see, because ESPN hates the Patriots, they never show any Patriot. You know they have those ESPN2 greatest games. There's never been a Patriot win. It's always like Super Bowl 42. It's always the Colts AFC

title game. It's like whatever the five worst Patriot losses ever, they're always on ESPN2. I agree wholeheartedly that it's always a game where Manning pulled it out at the end and we lost. Yeah, you never see the game when we beat Manning 20- out at the end and we lost. Yeah. You never see the game when we beat Manning 20-3 in the snow in the AFC title game.

That's not on, or whatever round that was. That's never on ESPN2. My list would have Peyton Manning, Dan Marino, and John Elway. So Elway's like, I beat you 10 out of 10 times. What else do I have to do? Well, again, the key for me was we probably had one good team in those 10 years. So we should have beat us. Whereas for Manning, in the last six, seven years, you know, after the 0-4 Super Bowl,

we had good teams. And always standing in our way was Peyton Manning. And, yeah, we beat him a couple times. But putting aside the first few years, if you look at the record from 06 to 16, there were games that I just think we should have won, and he was the difference maker in one way or the other. Hence, whenever either the Colts or Denver had the ball and Manning was behind center and yelling out his play-calling changes at the line.

See, I'm going the other way. I think it's like the 86 Lakers. Our best team in 86, the Lakers just, they intentionally threw the series before so they wouldn't have the playoffs in the Western Finals. They intentionally lost to the Rockets.

They didn't want to get their asses kicked. I'm not sure if they intentionally lost to the Rockets. Well didn't want to get their asses kicked. Well, I'm not sure if they intentionally lost to the Rockets. Well, just bear with me. Okay. And then in 07, when we had our best Patriots team, guess who decides to lose the week before he's about to play the Patriots? Guess who gets upset by Phil Rivers and the San Diego Chargers? Oh, yeah, Peyton Manning.

He didn't want any part of the 07, Pats. That's my narrative, and that's the narrative I'm sticking to whether it's right or wrong. That's what makes me feel better when I fall asleep at night. The 86 Lakers and the 07 Colts, cowards. Total cowards. Didn't want any part of us. You don't like that narrative? It could have been in the back of Peyton's mind. I'm not disputing it.

He didn't want to lose to Brady. I really don't think a Magic Johnson team purposely avoided the Celtics and allowed Houston to win that series. No, I think they rolled over. Subconsciously, they didn't want to pass.

Now, it's funny. When I used to do TV with Magic, when we'd be sitting in that room for eight hours, at least 10 different times, I started in on how the 86 Lakers didn't want any part of the Celtics in the finals. What was his response? He would get so mad.

He was like, oh, you're lucky. You're lucky we weren't there because we matched up. We would have beaten you guys. He was like, you weren't there. We'll never know. We were getting these arguments. He had a good sense of humor about it.

Unfortunately, Magic could always respond with, during that five-year period, we did meet you three times, and we won two of those three times. Yeah, but as my point to him was always, well, it was a four-year battle, and we each won two titles. It's not our fault that you forfeited 1986, which is a hard one to refute. I'm sure that went over real well. But yeah, so in 07, when they were the defending champs, and then San Diego snuck in,

that was like a weirdly dissatisfying AFC title game. Remember Phil Rivers was playing on a bad knee? Right. And the Pats eked it out. Yeah. Anyway. Well, Peyton Manning, hey, while I still have you on here, I disagree. I think Elway was the scariest guy.

The more I'm thinking about it, I never ever in a million years felt like we were ever going to beat John Elway. What was I scared about? If Matt Castle was quarterbacking. I never ever in a million years felt like we were ever going to beat John Elway. What was I scared about? Because we sucked? If Matt Castle was quarterbacking those teams, Patriots still would have lost. For me, the quarterback didn't make the difference in those years. And then later on in the last five, six years, meaning did have an impact in games against good Patriots teams and therefore scared me more than either Manning or Elway did in the earlier years. All right, well, great.

I'll get you a framed Peyton Manning picture. You can put it up in your den. You liked him so much. I don't like either Manning, by the way. It's not just Peyton Manning. And I don't like the father. I know. I mean... It's my just Peyton Manning. And I don't like the father. I know. I mean...

It's my least favorite family. You really... I blame the father. I mean, obviously, you've become successful and people like you. And it's all because of your father's influence. Look at Peyton and Eli. So we can blame the father, right? That was one of the best mailbag questions I ever got

was this guy who came up with this fake movie about two Patriot fans going back in time to try to kill Archie Manning before he had Peyton and Eli. It's a great idea for a movie. We would have had ten Super Bowls. Yeah. Brady would have just millions of trophies. Really?

I like that idea. It's a good movie. Yeah. While I have you on here, just very quickly, Holy Cross is in the Patriot League finals on Wednesday. You didn't have to text me and tell me, by the way. I already had it on my TV and I was watching it. Yeah, I forgot. You're retired. It was circled. have to text me and tell me by the way i already had it on my tv and i was watching it yeah you

were i forgot you're retired it was circled it was uh although i have to admit uh holding army to 38 points it was a weird game wasn't it they're playing a one three one the best thing about watching basketball like that after you you know i i just watch mostly nba and watching like the warriors and all these these slashing kick teams that have just mastered offense and then you watch you know the patriot league semifinals and army is just completely flustered by a one three one nobody knows what to do they don't know how to attack it i was thinking like if you played a one three one against the warriors step Steph Curry would have 120 points. It helped that Army missed 15 layups.

Right. I really enjoyed when they scanned the crowd and they showed the small section of Holy Cross Rooters. That was great. Those are the parents, right? Oh, yeah. I don't know if they were parents or they were just fans who followed the team. They were all the ex-athletes who, when they played at Holy Cross,

they weighed 180 and now they weigh 380. It was a very interesting crowd with their purple shirts on. A good rooting section. I liked it. What are our chances against Lehigh? So Lehigh was only—Lehigh's record is 17-14, and they won twice, which means they were a 500 team during the season. I'm feeling pretty good. Well, they beat us twice in the regular season.

I did look that up. Well, it takes a while for Bill Carmody's offense to really set in. Also, I think one of our key players missed 18, 16 games, something like that. We had a couple of really good-looking players out there. That freshman point guard, the lefty, he was very good. And that Malachi kid, he could really leap. I'm optimistic about a chance this Wednesday night. We've been watching Holy Cross basketball

because that's where you went to college and that's where I eventually went to college. But we used to watch the games on Channel 27 when I was a kid. So it's been, I don't know, it's been 40 years of Holy Cross basketball for me. And we've never really had a good coach. I hate to put it that way and put it so bluntly, but never have really watched Holy.

Even when Ralph Willard, when they made the tournament a couple times, I never felt 100% comfortable with the in-game stuff. Did you? No. Which, you know, and I like they interviewed the coach after the game, and I was impressed with his poise and the comments that he made. Not having seen them play all year long, I'm puzzled by how they lost 19 games.

Because they were well coached yesterday. They were very well coached. I was impressed. How do you lose 19 games? That must have taken a while. Maybe with the freshman point guard. They had another freshman. It took a while to get them acclimated.

But they certainly looked cohesive yesterday. freshman point guard and they had another freshman took a while to get them acclimated but they certainly looked um cohesive yesterday and i look forward to the game on it would be i mean holy cross could make the ncaa playoffs with a 14 and 19 record i think we're going to be a 16 seed the good news is there's really no good college basketball team. So, Tate, are there four scary one seeds? No. No, not really. No. So you like our chances.

Yeah, I like the 16-1 upset. The Holy Cross is shocking the world. It would be the greatest moment of my life. It really would. If we were the first team to go 16 seed over one seed, that would be it. I'd retire from sports. I do have one bitter sports moment to, that would be it. I'd retire from sports. I do have one bitter sports moment to share

that involves Holy Cross. I don't remember the year. We were playing a team with Tayshaun Prince on it. Oh yeah, that was in 2003. A very winnable game. Actually, it came down for the last

couple minutes. Tayshaun Prince, I never liked him afterwards. Can't believe he played for the Celtics. Yeah. We couldn't stop him. Kept making that corner jump shot. Yeah, that was one of those Ralph Willard seasons. It's the same thing with Dwayne Wade.

I mean, these are great players that ended up playing in the NBA, but I always felt like those were winnable games. The Marquette game, you're right. That was the other game. Remember that? We were like, who's this Dwayne Wade? This Dwayne Wade's really good. Is this guy going to be a good pro?

Both of us were. I think anyone who watched that game thought that that guy had some major potential. Right. Hey, the Nets keep winning, and every time they win, it breaks your heart and you hate Brook Lopez. If you saw Brook Lopez, would you try to trip him so he could miss the last 20 games? Well, I mean, in the beginning of the season, we said, when is the stress fracture in his leg going to occur? To be fair, we weren't. Hold on. But from a Schadenfreude purpose, we weren't rooting for this.

We just assumed he was going to play not 82 games because his history would suggest that he goes down from time to time. We weren't wishing you a willow, man. No, no. But his history showed us, told us that most likely he'd play about 35 games. Yeah, we penciled him in from between 35 to 55 games. And he's played every game this year until Saturday night they rested him. I hate to admit this because I'm probably the only person in America who was on his computer following the game. Not watching the game, but following the written description of each play.

And it comes down to Brooklyn's down by a point. Oh, this is against Denver. Yeah, against Denver. The backup Larkin point guard, Larkin misses a layup. I think the game's over. And then it scrolls on. Lopez tips it in. Nets win.

Oh, that's what it said? It said Larkin missed it and then it said Lopez tipped it in? Yeah, I thought the game was over. And you were watching this on your Gamecast because you don't have league pass. Yeah, I don't have league pass because I'm on a fixed income and

my son hasn't been helping me out. This is terrible. I was watching Gamecast. It's the saddest thing I've ever heard. It sounds like you're in a nursing home. You and your roommate were watching Gamecast. So we have, let's see, Brooklyn is 18-45. Phoenix won last night.

They're only one game behind Brooklyn. No, Phoenix is 17 wins. Brooklyn has 18 wins. I know. They're one game. So Phoenix is, how do we say, behind or ahead? I don't know. Behind because, well, it's...

Well, Brooklyn's four. That's a good point. It's our perspective. They're behind because Phoenix needs to win two more games. Right. In Phoenix, Alex Lenn's been playing well lately.

And then Minnesota's at 20 wins. Well, that was a big game for them to rest Lopez and Young because they're playing Minnesota. And then the Lakers are getting a little bit frisky. Just a tiny bit. A little bit frisky.

A little bit. They beat the Warriors? That was an amazing game yesterday. Yeah. Crazy game. If the Warriors are going to go 4 for 30 from three-point land, I think Holy Cross could beat them. I think Curry was, what, one for ten?

It was the classic day game after a Saturday night in L.A. for the road team. I don't know where they went the night before, but I can't imagine. It was an early night. I personally, if we could just stay in the top five, I'd be happy. Because I'm not positive that you could get the fifth pick in this draft and you might end up getting the best player. I think it's one of those. It would really, well, yeah, you're right. The ping pong balls.

If somebody beyond the top five, one or two teams, leapfrogs, then you're stuck with the sixth or seventh pick. That's happened to us with Marcus Smart. We had the fourth spot and we went back two spots, remember? Didn't we? Or we lost it. We had a coin flip for the fourth spot, which we lost, which you were the only person on the internet watching the coin flip live.

Somehow you had a live stream. You had a GoPro camera in the coin flip. You mean there wasn't a large audience for that? No, so we lost that, and then somebody leap large audience for that no so we lost that and then somebody leapfrogged us and we went from four to six but

I actually like Marcus Smart I mean I'm happy with it quickly and then we have to go this is a really likable Celtics team you went on Friday night you saw them beat the Knicks

very likable you said the fans stood for the last three minutes, just old school standing up. I just can't remember the last time that happened except a Cleveland playoff game. And certainly I hadn't seen it happen in the regular season this year. But it was about two minutes and 45 seconds to go.

It was back and forth. We had come back uh uh we scored a basket the crowd stood and never sat down and uh and was really loud and very supportive and it was a great crowd uh uh it was interesting because there were a lot of nick fans there as you know when the knicks come in to play boston were a lot of Knicks fans there when the Knicks come in to play Boston. A lot of the blue shirts in the crowd, people who bought scalping tickets or season ticket holders put the tickets online

and the Knicks fans bought them. That's your move. They were kind of loud and obnoxious as you would expect them to be so it was nice to shut them up. Hey, can you troll the Knicks fans really quickly and tell them how unimpressed you were with Porzingis? Well, I was impressed with him in the first quarter.

And then I forgot he was even playing. Oh. He did nothing out there after the first quarter. Oh, my God. But I did read the next day that he hurt his leg somehow. Oh, that was a disappointing ending. He's very impressive physically. You don't realize how big a man he is.

Yeah. Like he was standing next to Zella, who's a good 7'1", and he made Zella look small. And certainly you can't block his jump shot. So I'm impressed. I'd love to have him on my team. I have to be candid. I mean, what is he, 19 years old?

See, that didn't go how I wanted it to go. You were way too complimentary. I'm sorry. I really like Porzingis, too. I'm all in. I think if they do the draft over again he's second oh you know you talk about this year's draft and get the fourth or fifth pick boy can you imagine the celtics getting him and adding him to our team well what about what about last year when we were rooting for them to make the playoffs

and then they made the playoffs and then it turns out that draft one through 13 was about as loaded as it got. Actually, one through 14, because Cameron Payne's really good on OKC. We had the 16th pick in a 14-player awesome draft. Yeah, that's true. That was a bummer. I mean, that book has been terrific. A couple of those, you know, even Winslow not putting up big numbers, but he, if you look at his stat line, he does a lot of assists you know even Winslow not putting up big numbers but he

he does a lot of assists and rebounds I like that guy I like that Miami team I think that team's starting to feel a little sleepery but I like Winslow a lot I think he's going to be excellent I didn't like they picked up Joe Johnson because I think he really helps that team

playing the forward spot they didn't just pick him up. I think they resuscitated him. He was like a walking corpse for this whole season, and he actually looks like Joe Johnson a little bit again. That team's a little scary. I don't think we would see them in round one. It depends.

I mean, they're a half game behind us right now. Right, but it's three-seed, four-seed. We're going to play one of those crappy Charlotte, Indiana type teams that will probably beat us in six. We just can't go on a three or four game losing streak because if you look at how tightly the teams are bunched, it looks like we're pretty set in terms of getting in the playoffs. But you go on a three or four game losing streak

and suddenly you're the seventh seed. Right. And that's what would worry me a little bit. Did you watch the Cavs game on Saturday night where we didn't get a call for two straight quarters? It was incredible. No, we were not home, so I didn't see that game. It was good.

It was like toe-to-toe, toe-to-toe, toe-to-toe, and then 13 straight calls went against us and everyone on the Celtics lost their composure. And I include myself because I had like four tweets getting very upset about it. I can't handle when... And then the Cleveland fans seem to think that LeBron never gets any calls. I don't think I've ever watched a Cleveland game

where he goes to the basket and doesn't get the call. So I don't know what the truth is on that. Well, it's kind of funny because I did read on Sunday that, like, smart guard technical and the players were whining too much. So I made a guess who one of the three referees was, and I was right. Scott Foster? Scott Foster. Yeah, Celtic killer.

I just made a guess, and he was one of the three refs. Yeah, he's been killing us forever. How did that happen? Yeah. Scott Foster, every time I see him, I think of 2008 NBA Finals, Game 5 in L.A., when he basically just put a Laker jersey on. It was incredible. In fact, when he retires, you could make a case the Lakers should retire his number

just for that Game 5 performance. He must have had a Cleveland jersey on Saturday night because he's the lead ref, if I recall. Yeah, I saw him. I was like, oh, no. Yeah, it's one of those. Him and Bill Kennedy. Although I don't know if Bill Kennedy still has it out for us.

But Scott Foster, you just see him and you're like, oh, no. Oh, boy. Well, I think it's pretty bad when somebody who doesn't watch the game simply reads that the players lost it. There were technicals called. And you just assumed Scott Foster or Tony Brothers must have been involved. Tony Brothers is another one. Although he's not just bad for us.

He's bad for every single team in the league. He doesn't discriminate. I don't think Tony Brothers has it out for you. No. I think he's just incompetent. He has it out for the sport of basketball. Whereas Scott Foster has this stellar reputation. No, not really anymore.

Not anymore? No, he's not good. Well, not really anymore. Not anymore? No, he's not good. Well, because of our podcast, probably. Yeah, well. He's probably going to listen this afternoon. I look forward to us leading the Cavs 2-1 in the playoff series and then seeing him for game four in Boston and just being like, oh, no.

Oh, God. Here we go. Well, I love Brad Stevens, and I'm going to vote for him for the presidency. You know, when I voted for the primary last week, I almost wrote his name in. You just wrote Brad Stevens Belichick? No, Brad Stevens.

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and I'm going to write a letter this afternoon to Callaway saying that they sponsored me on the podcast, and therefore I would like them to sponsor me with the NBA League Pass. Maybe they should do that. Instead of a driver, maybe they spot... It's like $30 for the rest of the season, you cheapskate. I'm just gonna send you a check. Maybe for

your BS podcast today, your appearance today. Alright, Dad, I'll talk to you during the week. Thanks. Take care. Bye. We about this bitch. Anytime y'all wanna see me again, rewind this track right here Close your eyes

And picture me rollin'