The Bill Simmons Podcast - When Will the NFL Come Back? Plus: ’86 Celts vs. ‘96 Bulls, Jarett Stidham’s Big Chance, and True Crime Docs With Peter Schrager, Kevin O’Connor, Joe House, and JackO | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Peter Schrager of NFL Network and Fox Sports to discuss the uncertainty around the start of the 2020 NFL season, the Patriots' QB situation, NFL draft highlights, and more (5:07), before talking with the Ringer's Kevin O'Connor about the NBA "hiatus," how the coronavirus pandemic may affect next season's salary cap, as well as the NBA draft, the 1986 Celtics vs. the 1996 Bulls, and much more (40:00). Finally Bill talks with his old friends Joe House and JackO about life in quarantine, the Pentagon's recently released UFO footage, HBO's 1990s documentary programming, early 2000s Red Sox–Yankees rivalry and more (1:15:10). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com where we broke down a ton of reality TV stuff this week. We did best real-world seasons, best reality characters ever. We are just trying to make content for everybody. Two new additions to The Ringer Podcast Network. One is called TV Concierge. It is exclusive to Spotify,

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Every Sunday night after Billions is on Showtime, they'll be breaking down the episode with a podcast. They'll even have a little special guest at the end. They're going to do the seven-episode season, and then they're going to go backwards and talk about how they created the show and then go season by season, some of the choices that they made, things they regret, things that worked, all that stuff. So it's going to be, I think, a 12-episode season. Koppelman and Levine, they're back on the Ringer Podcast Network.

Very excited about that. Coming up, we have Peter Schrager from the NFL Network and from Fox. We're going to talk about when the hell is football coming back. Then Kevin O'Connor from the NFL Network and from Fox. We're going to talk about when the hell is football coming back. Then Kevin O'Connor from The Ringer talking about the NBA and the latest stuff that we've heard

when the playoffs could come back and MJ versus LeBron. And then my buddy Jacko, my buddy House. We're just doing a little three-man Zoom. Now, here's where I apologize to you because here's the thing. There's some human error that is happening now. We're all working remotely. And I've been feeling pretty good about taping stuff from my end as an old guy, making sure everything worked on the

recorder, making sure things were plugged in, sending the file to Kyle after the pod's done. I've been pretty good. We haven't really had any disasters, but we did have one today because I taped this entire two-hour podcast in three segments and thought everything was working, recorded from my end, did everything, and came to find out the cord

that went into my Zoom 6 recorder from my microphone. I never actually plugged that cord in. So I did two hours of a podcast and I wasn't actually recording into anything. I was recording into a microphone that had nothing attached to it. So I don't know what to tell you other than I apologize. So my audio for this podcast,

you're going to be hearing the Zoom version of my audio, which is basically me talking to my computer. It's just not as good, but you can hear it now. This is what it's supposed to sound like. So I apologize. I'm an idiot. You knew that already, but the BS podcast is coming up right now. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. Peter Schrager is here. He's on the Good Morning Football show on the NFL Network. He's on Fox.

He's on a whole bunch of things. Is football coming back? I'm starting to get worried. We got through the draft. Now it's going to be May. And normally minicamps will be coming soon. Can't have those. The NBA is trying to figure out this bubble concept for, you know,

the playoffs and things like that, which makes a lot more sense when you have 15-player teams and small coaching staffs. You don't have to have a ton of medical personnel in the field. I'm trying to rack my brain to think, how does football come back with 53 players, 12 coaches, a huge training staff, hospital and ambulance personnel on the side, two sidelines. You can't do a little bubble tiny stadium. You need at least somewhat of a big stadium. You have 32 teams and you'd have to play a regular season. How does this happen? What have you heard? Look, I think the last touch with football was the draft bill. And I think there wasn't a single person who didn't love having football. Even the most cynical anti-NFL person came out of that being like,

that was pretty cool. The NFL wants football. And on May 9th, they're going to be announcing the schedule and they're going to have a couple of contingency plans, but they're forging forward. But I've spoken with several people and I know there's a bunch of conversations being had. I know you've said that Adam Silver on the NBA side has his brain trust and they're coming up with a million different contingency plans. The NFL is doing the same. What becomes interesting is these owners are only going to have eight home games that they make a lot of income and revenue from. So you think about what they're missing out if there's no football season, it could be brutal for them economically too. I think everyone's incentive is to get football

going. As far as these wild plans that you're hearing with the dome and the bubble and all that stuff, someone brought up to me like, let's go out to Iowa or North Dakota and play in a bunch of high school fields. But even that seems difficult because all it takes in a 53-man roster or in training camp, a 90-man roster is one guy shows up and tests positive. And then one team is out for 14 days and all has to be quarantined. There are so many questions. And until there's testing and tracing and potentially treatment, I don't think there's any firm answer on what the NFL can do. And I don't think any professional sports league at that matter.

Who do you think is Goodell's brain trust with this? Ultimately, you have an inner circle of five, six guys. I'm sure he's got at least one right-hand man at the NFL, maybe two. And then I'm sure there's three, four, five owners with some major influence. We saw when Trump talked to the commissioners and then a couple of owners, like Jerry Jones was in there, Bob Kraft. Do you still feel like those are the decision makers for the league here? I think he does have a good network of owners

of men who are very successful in their respective businesses. And it is Kraft and it is obviously, you mentioned Jerry Jones, but like Arthur Blank plays a big role and the new owners, David Tepper of the Carolina Panthers, who's, who's made a ton of money in the finance world is a big voice and a new voice. And I think he relies on those guys, but I also think he has with league partners, like they have a large network of CEOs and health leaders from all the stuff they've been doing

on the health and safety side that kind of lends a voice also. The question is, does he end up having to speak with 50 different state governors and going into that level at the local level? Because what might be good for the Kansas City Chiefs and Clark Hunt and their organization might be a totally different deal with John Mara and Christopher Johnson with the Jets in New Jersey, which has a whole different deal. And I think that's going to be the crux of this. Can the Giants and Jets play home games? I'm not sure that's a possibility if this is still raging that area. Meanwhile, we have very few cases in certain

states out in the Midwest that very conceivably could have home games. One thing I was thinking about, I was really trying to rack my brain. I think the NBA, as we talked with Kevin O'Connor about it before you came on, that makes sense to me. There's a logic to how it could work, especially if you have less teams and you could put people in Orlando or Vegas, as we covered with Rosillo on Sunday night. Football with 32 teams and the football stadium aspect of it, you couldn't just put everyone in one place. Could there be a world, and I wonder if they're talking about this, where maybe there's eight locations, or maybe there's four locations,

however you do it, and maybe you just spread the games out maybe it's not all on sundays maybe it's monday tuesday wednesday thursday something like that and you just continue to play them throughout the week is that i mean because that's that's something that could be considered but you'd have to consider the schedule and that one team shouldn't have to play another team on six days notice and this team traveled like it is there's all sorts of contingencies with the schedule. And that would be Howard Katz's group who does all the scheduling stuff.

And they're doing contingencies right now. The one thing that came out today, which was fascinating from the New York Post, was that they might have Saturday game possibilities if by chance the college game isn't ready to start up, but the pro game is. So there are all these questions. To me, I find it-

Well, wait, hold on a second. Hold that thought for a second. I don't think college comes back because first of all, the campuses aren't even going to be open. I just don't see it. If college football comes back, I think it's 2021. Maybe they do it in the spring. Maybe they wait, but the college football teams would have to show up there in August. The campuses won't even be open. I think that's completely unrealistic. They also don't have, the players don't have the same economic incentives that the players would have in the NFL. But I think if you did a Saturday, Sunday, Monday thing in different locations, and you didn't do 17 weeks, maybe it's a 12-week schedule or 14-week schedule because you'd have to build in some breaks. And let's say it's four locations with eight teams in each location. And the eight teams all play each other over the course of seven weeks, right? And then you just reset. You take two weeks off, and then you play the next seven games

where the eight teams play each other again. And that's just kind of how you do it. And you have eight teams in one location. So if it was like, I don't know, let's say San Francisco is one location. Okay. Is that a good one? Yeah. Or let's say Chicago because Chicago has a lot of hotels.

So Chicago is one of the four locations. You have eight teams there, and they just stay there and they're quarantined in some way. And there's only one way in, one way out from hotels and people shuttling back and forth in a couple of practice fields. All right. Let me ask you, because this is- That's the only way I see it working, where you'd have to designate four to eight locations. All right. So 16 game schedule. Is that what you're thinking? No, I'm saying 14 games, 14 games or, or 12 games. One of those, I think says 16 game schedules out. So altruistically and like the world needs football and American, it's all great. If you're an owner of, say, the Buffalo Bills and you're a New York team, what do you do with all your season ticket holders? What do you tell them?

Do you just refund them completely? Yeah, you refund. You refund. You refund. Okay, fine. I'm replaying tickets for everything. Your players still hit all their incentives and are paid in full? I think they'd have to figure that part out.

You'd have to do some sort of percentage. Because there is an economic question here, and I shudder to think about it. I'm just saying, without any income coming in from a home game, and you're refunding every person their PSL and their ticket, the owners of teams that necessarily don't have those host sites are making $0, but they're still paying their full payroll and all their employees full money.

The NFL owners would take a bath. And I know you don't want to cry for them, but they would take a bath financially from that. Right. Here'd be my counter for the revenue. We just saw it with the NFL draft, right? Biggest audience ever by far, by far, not even close. Biggest ever. So could you argue that maybe if it's TV only for 2021, you could actually make more money? Because you're still getting the media rights and you're still selling the ads and it's a captivated audience where there's literally no competition. You're watching on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever it is, that they would make enough money. I mean, it's certainly- Well, hold on, but hold that thought. So let's say they have Saturday games. So they've already sold the media rights, but at the same time,

they can basically do whatever they want, right? So if they just said, hey, we have to replace the season ticket revenue, we're adding two Saturday games. Highest bidder, one season only. Amazon. Everyone's in it. Amazon, Netflix, Apple

you guys are all in if you want Saturday programming we'll have live football on those days we're pulling two games out of our Sundays or four games out of our Sunday package

and we're putting it here then you could replace some of the revenue that's the only way I feel like TV only sport TV only okay

fans or no fans? no fans we don't have fans at these games. Okay. So I think certain, I do think that like, and just working with Fox, like they are smart enough

to like figure out a virtual fan situation where it would be awesome and like cool and different. Like, and I think the NBA would be able to figure that out too. ESPN, ABC, TNT. It would be cool. It'd feel like there's actually fans there.

I'm trying to, I know I keep on talking about economics, butNT. It would be cool. It'd feel like there's actually fans there. I'm trying to, I know I keep on talking about economics, but this is how these conversations go. And if you were to sell some giant, you know, Saturday package for billions of dollars and say, split it amongst the owners, this is going to take care of the revenue you're going to lose on concessions and ticket sales. And of course, it's certainly, it's certainly intriguing. Well, think about this. Think about how much is loaded on a Sunday, right? Where you have, I don't know, you have the early games.

You have eight one o'clock games. You're taking six of those out and you're just distributing them into other things. So Saturday, conceivably, you could have four games in a row starting at 1 o'clock East Coast time. Yeah. And then Sunday, same thing. Only maybe that would be more then. And then Monday, you have three games. People are home anyway. Start the first game at 4 o'clock ET and you just go.

And you could get to the 16 games if you spread it out. And you could maximize the revenue because the red, so who gets the direct, like the direct TV that in the red zone, that money. Yeah. That's all split. It's like direct TV fits that. And then the cable and whatever.

So you'd lose that. Maybe you refund it. Yeah. And, and you start over the other way. I think it's doable. The part I can't figure out is how you would actually have the players be safe, how you would bubble it.

So first of all, this sounds crazy, but the players union would say, well, the quality of the field has to be up to their likes. So it can't just be at a high school field somewhere in the middle of whatever. So I'm thinking about Jerry Jones created this star complex where there's four state-of-the-art high school fields that are NFL-level quality that are just stacked up, one, two, three, four, in Frisco, Texas. I could see Jerry Jones loving to put on that Superman cape and suggesting, hey, why don't

we just play these games here? Save the day. Let's go. Let's have football. You would need the players' union to agree to it. You would need the health and safety folks, Dr. Sills, all these folks to agree to it. So that's four fields, state of the art.

There's four fields, state of the art in the complex that they have the, the Cowboys facility. That's interesting. I don't see, you wouldn't have the hotels would be the issue now. You wouldn't be able to have. You could have, I mean, Dallas is not too far away, but you know, it's not true. You'd have buses and things like that. But I'm sure there's four locations like that

where they could figure that piece out. Otherwise, I don't see it. You're just not going to be able to keep everyone safe if people are just flying from location to location. It's not happening. What about the broadcast? It falls apart. Do you think they would send broadcasters

or they call the games on a monitor in their own living rooms? The broadcast presentation part I think is the easiest piece of this. That's all virtual? I mean, the fact that we're putting on an NFL draft from 600 locations, they could put a game on. If anything, it could allow

you to have some fun with some of the presentation stuff. Like maybe you do make the sidelines a little bit better. You put the games on a minute long delay or whatever. I just think there's way too much money at stake. They're going to figure this out. And you also have smart, rich people who are rich and successful for a reason who are just going to be like, no, we're no, we're not just punting on the 2021 season. That's insane. So before the latest CBA was signed, which really happened the day this started, it was right before free agency and before this whole thing went down, I had a conversation with

an owner and he said two things. He's like, these players should want to sign this deal. And I'm like, all right, I don't want to hear the owner speak. And he's like, no, no, no. This coronavirus is going to knock the economy on its ass and we're not going to be as generous in the conversations after we all lose billions of dollars. Because here's the thing with these owners, a lot of them own the buildings and their entire spring is set up for a Taylor Swift concert, canceled. It's MLS soccer games, canceled. These owners are getting absolutely zero revenue coming in. So whereas we don't cry for the billionaire and all this stuff, like they're used to making money

and a lot of them, this is their primary line of business and are losing a lot of money right now. I think they're very incentivized to finding a solution and they're surrounded by a lot of smart advisors. They want football. I think everyone wants it. Players, owners, the media deals. And that's the last part. The NFL media rights, they come up at the end of this season. And as this thing was going down, there were a lot of conversations at the end of the road. And now it's all kind of been put on pause as all these media companies have to look at their balance sheets and see what, what, what are we dealing with here?

Can we still offer the, the, the money that we were going to offer on February 20th that we can now with after this in a post coronavirus world, it's all fascinating to me. And the money is something that no one's talking about and all these things about these great ideas, but like the finances are what have to make sense for everyone and as well the nfl draft to me was what got me thinking about this because i watched every minute of the nfl draft i really had it on the entire time i've never watched you said your son was watching a teenage son was watching day three yeah he we were all in wondering if the pats were going to take Jake Fromm. I got excited about Anthony Gordon at one point.

We're in the sixth round. And I just think if football's on, people are going to watch it because they're home and there's nothing else to do. And you think of 55 million people over the course of a three-day draft, what would that mean if there's 16 football games a weekend over the course of three days? Would people watch every moment of all three of the games? It's very possible. We'd have fantasy leagues, we'd have gambling, we'd have daily fantasy. All this stuff would be a lifesaver for people who are just bored out of their minds right now, not to mention the economic parts of it. And could you figure out, you could get some hotels back involved

and some of the restaurants and the local destinations and things like that. It's a small debt and a big problem. The small set, which they could also add a philanthropic aspect to this because the NFL had this draft-a-thon,

which was right up your alley. I don't know if you saw any of this, but it was like, you'd have a box of like Darius Rucker and Machine Gun Kelly and, oh wait, there's John Randall in the box. And like, they're doing a Zoom. Like it was bizarre,

but they raised a ton of money. They raised like $10 million. If you could find a way to cannibalize all of America's attention on these games and then also do a fundraising element, like there's a nice altruistic part to this. And I'll just give you a small sample size. We do a show on NFL network. That's a cable channel that maybe, you know, not everyone gets in their house draft week. Our ratings were great. The interest in our

show was insane. And a lot of it was like female voices, you know, watching like everyone was involved in the draft. Everyone was watching the draft. And I think it's a great sample size of what the attention that football can bring to an entertainment thing, but also just that people were looking for a light, like anything to talk about besides seeing the same doctors on Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow every night.

Right. And the philanthropic part, I hesitated to bring that up because this is the NFL. Ultimately, money is going to be the deciding factor for every decision they make for themselves. But let's say they sold that Saturday package and it's four games and it's just a bonus package they pulled out. And as part of the deal, they say, half of this money is going to go to COVID-19 charities and to food banks and to all these great places of like, well, that'll be cool. Sign me up. And it's like, you know, I've said

this before and I hesitate to say it publicly, but it's like, you know, the NFL could hire a million PR firms and consulting firms. They would never have gotten the goodwill that they got from the draft of just having, you know, Belichick's dog and a couple kids. Like, it was a human element to it that was like, gosh, like,

this is organic. It's real. Like, Goodell's in a t-shirt on a Barca lounge. Like, it's kind of cool. Like,

and the NFL was so buttoned up usually. I think everyone enjoyed seeing that side of it. And I think they can lean into that a little bit if we were to find a way to have a season too. All right.

Some quick hitter stuff. Yeah. Patriots quarterback, they let Jameis go. Now, Jameis took a discount to have a season too. All right. Some quick hitter stuff. Yeah. Patriots quarterback. They let Jameis go. Now Jameis took a discount to go to the Saints because he must've thought to himself, Breeze has one year left, maybe two. I can finally see now that I have LASIK surgery,

I'll get in with Sean Payton. I could rejuvenate my career here. I was shocked that the Patriots didn't get him. I thought that was the, I know they don't have a lot of cap space. There's there's gotta be two reasons. One, they don't like them to, they're just screwed with the cap anyway. Why not throw Stidham into the fire for a year? See if it works. Now, today we're taping this it's a noon PT. Andy Dalton got released. Ken Newton is still out there. It seems like Stidham's their guy. They haven't come out and really said that.

And Belichick even had a cryptic quote after the draft. Like it wasn't the right time for us to take a quarterback, but that doesn't mean we weren't looking or whatever he said. Do you feel like Stidham's the guy? I do. I think they went through an entire draft and there was rumors and all that. They took three defensive players, as you know, to start the draft. One of them from Lenore Ryan. But Stidham, I did a lot of work on Stidham the past few weeks and you'll like this backstory.

So he's a high school kid, number one high school prospect in Texas, the whole deal. And Cliff Kingsbury is the coach at Texas Tech and goes to one of his games and it's on ESPN and Kingsbury's on the sideline. And it's a big deal. He commits to Texas Tech. So then Stidham is invited to go to the Texas Tech-Baylor game back when Mahomes was a true freshman. He goes to the game and it's in Jerry World. It's a whole deal. Mahomes throws for about 550 yards and Stidham immediately decommits and goes to Baylor instead where Art Bryles is the head coach at the time. And Art Bryles went to the same high school and was a high school legend where Stidham went. Commits to Baylor. Baylor falls apart with their scandal and it's horrible. And he transfers to Auburn, goes to Auburn,

gets a cup of coffee here and there, then goes to the Patriot. Stidham has never been the guy. He's never had that opportunity to be the dude. And he thought he was going to be the guy, but saw Mahomes throw for 500 yards in front of him. And he was like, I'm never going to be that guy there. Baylor doesn't happen. And then Auburn, it's kind of a cup of coffee with Gus Malzahn. There's still this mystery about Stidham. But everyone I talk to is like, he can spin it. Like, he can throw it. And he can move. And he can move around. That's the thing that they love.

Yeah. He can run. He could do things that they've never been able to do. And part of me wonders if McDaniels and Belichick, to which I think you've mentioned quite a few times with Russillo on your podcast, like, is there sort of this creativity that they haven't been able to unleash?

And he'll never be Brady, obviously. but that they can run some of the cool stuff that you're seeing being run in Baltimore, in Kansas city, in Seattle for years, that this kind of gives them an opportunity. And as a fourth round pick that no one has seen, they have seen them. And I know there are players who are with the Patriots who have watched them in practice over the last 12 months and have come back and been like, this guy can throw the freaking football. I think they feel much more confident about Stidham and they're convincing themselves a little bit more on Stidham as this

thing goes on. But I don't see them for Andy Dalton and I don't see them for Cam Newton. I think it's going to be Stidham for all intents and purposes. That might be the guy. And there are shades, a little bit, of Brady in 2000 when he didn't play and he was buried in the backup chart, but just impressed everybody that whole year. And it got to the point where they thought they got rid of the second stringer, made him the full backup heading into the second season he had there.

But I think everybody was like, if anything happens to Bledsoe, we'll actually be okay. And there was no reason for the outside world to know that I think everybody was like, if anything happens to Bledsoe, we'll actually be okay. Yeah. And there was no reason for the outside world to know that or think that was true. But they were really convinced just watching him day to day.

I don't know if they feel that strongly about Stidham, but it does seem like they like him. There's been some signs. Yeah. And I think with Brady, and you've done,

you've read all this, like they kept four quarterbacks active on the roster in 2000 when he was drafted, including Damon Huard. And I think Michael Bishop and him might've been Rohan Davey, one of those guys, but they knew and Stidham,

they put Stidham into that Jets game. It was a pick six. Everyone made their jokes and all this stuff. Like they know though, like they wouldn't have kept Stidham. They would have had a different backup last year. They liked Stidham and he was a rookie last year. So the fact that there are interesting

parallels with Brady, that Drew Henson got a lot of snaps and it wasn't Brady in Michigan at times. Stidham has never been a darling of anybody's eye and I think that almost up Belichick's alley more than anything. A little chip on the shoulder actually. I'm in on that too.

I don't love his name. Jarrett? No, just Jarrett Stidham doesn't sound like that too. I don't love his name. Jarrett? No, just Jarrett Stidham doesn't sound like – it's the same thing that problem that Jared Goff had, right? It was like, is Jared Goff going to win a Super Bowl? Just somebody with that name. Stid the kid. That's it. Patrick – Pat Mahomes is another one where it's like,

is that the right name for QB? And it didn't matter with him. Didn't matter. So maybe that's the best thing. Figured it out. Most fun storyline of the last five days is the Rodgers-Green Bay, just all that stuff. And there seems like there's some animosity toward him within the league

about what a diva he is. And I never know what's true and not true, but everybody's reaction was the same about like, oh, man, he's not going to like that. And then it was a lot of – and who knows? You're sifting through half-acts, people writing hot take pieces or whatever, but there does seem a lot of stuff out there like Green Bay's telling him, like, you're not the boss of us. All right. We'll do whatever the F we want.

How much of this is true? Yeah. So the big story was that Bob McKinn, who is a legendary writer in that market, came out and was like, this was a message clear. I could also tell you that he doesn't necessarily go in the locker room every day anymore. There's not that same kind of feel as far as here's the dynamics with the coach and the quarterback. It's easy to assume that stuff. I would go back and say this, LeFleur and Rodgers have a good relationship. I know that from both sides, they have a good relationship and this wasn't a quarterback they took with a top five or top 10 pick. And I know it's easy to say, yeah, but it's the first round and they were one game away. Like Bill, if they took Michael Pittman

jr. Or, uh, you know, Jonathan Taylor, a running back, or if they took Denzel Mims with that 26th pick or the 31st pick or 30th pick, are they now Super Bowl bound? I think the way they saw it, and I could tell this from talking to people in Green Bay, he was so far and away the number one player on their board, their best player available. And they said, let's go get the guy. And in three years, if he's the guy, fine. If he's not, great also. But let's get the quarterback that he's number one best player available at the 26th pick as opposed to never doing it, sitting around and doing it.

And the alternative is we ask Rodgers for his permission. And we, or we even just give him a heads up and Rodgers goes ballistic and says, no, you can't do that. So then we're listening and taking cues from Rodgers and he's trampling over us. And he's the one deciding whether we make a pick or not. They thought this out. And they also thought that he's a mature enough leader. And he's a 35 year old guy who got just absolutely a terrible experience as a rookie when he came to Favre. And I can tell you there was bullying. There was stuff that he has spoken about that Favre has come out can tell you, there was bullying. There was stuff that he has spoken about

that Favre has come out and talked about. And they've come full circle. He would be as big a hypocrite as there would be if he came in and treated Jordan Love that way and wasn't open to the idea of at least having a younger quarterback in the room. The last point I would give on this, it hasn't been made public,

but I know that Rodgers has reached out to Jordan Love and has done so privately. And I think that's all I need to know. Like if he wanted to stiff the kid and wanted to treat himself like at arm's length distance, I wouldn't have blamed him. And I would say, okay, here we go. An off season where the storylines, but he reached out to him. To me, it's hard to think he's furious.

If he reached out to a 20 year old rookie who was just drafted to eventually maybe be his heir apparent. Yeah. out to a 20-year-old rookie who was just drafted to eventually maybe be his heir apparent yeah i think if they did that pick in the top 16 before it dropped off there was 16 like blue chip guys in this draft and then i think it dropped off and if they traded up to get him like at 15 they turned up at 26 it just it dropped off and then was super deep from that point on and allowed a situation where if they felt like Jordan Love was by far their best guy on the board, that makes sense to me. Because I'm sure the Ravens felt that way about Patrick Green. Oh my God, I can't believe he fell to us at 28. I think a lot of people were in that situation.

But the reality is, it's not like they took him over Henry Ruggs. No. Or they took him over CeeDee Lamb. It wasn't the same level of talent at 26. And if you really want to do a draft analysis, and you guys at the Patriots are firsthand like, all right, did Nikhil Harry put you over the top last year? No, it's such a crapshoot with wide receiver.

In fact, A.J. Brown and D.K. Metcalf and Deebo Samuel were all drafted after Nikhil Harry last year. So you don't know the first round wide receiver. In fact, AJ Brown and DK Metcalf and Debo Samuel were all drafted after Nikhil Harry last year. So you don't know the first round wide receiver. I look at the Cardinals last year, they trade Josh Rosen. They get a second round pick. They draft Andy Isabella at a UMass who has maybe one play. DK Metcalf was taken after Andy Isabella. Like it is such a crap shoot with wide receiver. Quarterback is the most valuable position in the entire, forget NFL, I would say in any sport at all. The quarterback position.

So if you really like one and he's there, whether or not everyone else liked him or not, who cares? You really liked him and you've done the work on him. You could make a case Miami should have taken him with their third first rounder. Sure.

What did they have, 25 or 27? They had 26. They traded back with Green Bay. Green Bay came up and got him. But you could, I'd always, I remember there was one year where somebody could have done this, but. Take two quarterbacks? Yeah, well, it's 50-50, right? If you take quarterback in the first round, the math over the last 20 years say you have a 50% chance of hitting on the guy. And there are all these factors. There's no way to know for sure.

It's just going to be 50, 50. Let's look at the real math, the money you hire. You draft a quarterback in the first round. You have them for five years at this paltry rookie contract. Okay. So, so you don't take them because you're worried about what the fans say. And maybe you think drafting a wide receiver helps you down the line in a big game. Okay, fine. Then what are you going to do for your backup position? Because I, I challenge anyone to tell me who the Packers backup is right now. If it's not Jordan love, it's no one significant. And you'd probably have to go out and get a veteran. Who's going to make more as your backup than Jordan love will for the next five seasons. It makes a lot of sense. The only reason you wouldn't would be through fear of walking on

eggshells with Rodgers. And I think they said, you know what? He's a good boy. He can handle this. Yeah. It's not his decision. They were more of a running team last year. I actually thought the more problem... I like the Jordan Lowe pick. The more problematic one was they took a running back. It's like, what the fuck? So one place you definitely

don't need anyone is running back. Like a 1980s running back too. That was weird. And the draft was so deep at receiver. That was weird. Before we go, any other tidbits coming out of last weekend that you felt like, oh man, didn't realize that? Yeah.

The Broncos had an interesting strategy here, which I kind of commend um getting both jerry judy and kj hamler like remember when the packers used to just draft cornerbacks all the time to stop randy moss like first round second round they drafted two wide receivers and the philosophy that i'm hearing from the denver guys was like we're gonna go speed like we like what kansas city did we're gonna do it also and we're gonna do it with drew lock and we're going to go speed. We like what Kansas city did. We're going to do it also. And we're going to do it with drew lock and we're going to try to out throw you and try to do it with speed. Hamler's a real interesting prospect out of Penn state was injured a bit at the combine. So we didn't get to show off everything, but like burner and Jerry Judy, a lot of people had as the number

one wide receiver. I think Denver gets real interesting in San Francisco, just, just being chess masters. I know everyone's praising John Lynch to the high heavens, but I kind of look at it and Kinlaw going to that defensive line and trading back to get him still is fantastic. And then Brandon Ayuk, who I don't know if he's full of it or not, but Kyle Shanahan said the day afterwards, he had Brandon Ayuk as their number one wide receiver, higher than CeeDee Lamb, higher than Jerry Judy,

higher than Henry Ruggs, and they got him in the 20s. So they were thrilled with what they did. The head scratcher was Philly. But to the same point that I would make about Belichick, I would say about Howie Roseman. Howie Roseman has his team in the playoffs the last three years. He's got a Super Bowl ring and has kind of a pretty good resume. We're all bank on his scouting department. If they want to take Jalen Rager in the first round over some of these other wide receivers and take Hurts in the second round. If their scouts say it and how he thought it was worth doing, I would bank on that rather than what the mock drafts had Jalen Rager ranked

and what the draft pundits were saying in their draft grades the next day. I'm pro QBs first two rounds. Me too. Taking flyers on them. I feel like you can get a lot of these other guys later and especially like the Patriots history

with D-backs and wide receivers specifically has been pretty tortured. And you just think like, like Garoppolo was a great pick. He was.

Right? And they probably should have been able to trade him for at least the first. I think there was some fuck you when he traded him when he did.

But like, for the Jalen Hurts thing, I don't know. He's an asset. And what if he looks really good? And what if you can spin him into something two years from now? What if you're basically turning him into a first-round pick two years from now or however it plays out? I'm also not sold on Carson Wentz from a longevity standpoint. That guy's been hurt every year. He hasn't finished a season in three years. And like, you know, my co-host on the Good Morning Football Show, Kyle Brandt says, we treat these mock drafts like they're Moses in the tablets. Like, oh, well, the mock draft had this player higher. So why would you take Jalen Rager? Do you think that the scouts full-time who have done all the work are just taking a name,

throwing a dart? No, they like Jalen Rager. They like what he does and they think he fits their offense. One more note on Philly. Everyone says, well, they ended the season and they had freaking Greg Ward Jr. as their top wide receiver. Isn't that a testament to the front office finding Greg Ward Jr.? I think we have to give more credit to the guys who do this professionally than the mock drafts and the pundits. And I would just hold judgment on any GM taking a pick that might be a little outside the box than what everyone else had in their mock drafts for the past three months. Who's the clown show champion right now out of the 32 teams? Who's the team the other teams make fun of? Is it the Texans? They're the team I make fun of the most. Yeah. And you know, but you look at it like the net result of it,

they get Laramie Tunzel, who might be the best left tackle in football right now. And then they, they paid him 4 million a year further. They had to, cause they didn't lock them down before they made the trade. Didn't have an agent is another interesting thing. Did that himself,

which I think is pretty fascinating, but not a clown show, but a team that's kind of zigging while everyone else is zagging. Like the Raiders took a guy at the 19th pick. Yeah, that seemed bad. Out of a cornerback who I know one team at least said like, immature because he had some issues at Ohio State when he was younger, not even on our draft board.

And there were a lot of corners and they took him at 19. And then you're putting them in Vegas. And I hope it all works out. But like teams scratch their heads at picks, but there's no clown show where it's like the NBA, when you're taking Johnny Flynn and Ricky Ruby over Steph Curry in the same draft. Like there's none of that.

Yeah. Thank God for the NBA. They always have a couple of clown show teams. All right. Say hi to everybody at good morning football for us. Thanks for coming on as always. Talk to you soon. I will.

Thanks for having me on, dude. Okay, Kevin O'Connor is coming up in one second. Notice how much better I sound? God, I'm an idiot. Let's talk about the hit Showtime series, Billions, starring Emmy Award winners Paul Giamatti and Damian Lillis. This season, the battle between Chuck and Axe reignites. The ultimate

game of one-upmanship. No one stays at the top for long. Scheming, sabotage, loyalty shifting, opposing forces colliding. Don't miss the new season of Billions starting Sunday, May 3rd at 9 p.m. only on Showtime. To try a free month of Showtime, go to Showtime.com, enter code BS. This offer is for first-time subscribers only. It expires May 31st. Showtime.com with the code BS. They also have a streaming app called Showtime Anywhere that I think is great because they have a ton of movies.

So if you get this, the Showtime.com, enter code BS, you'll also get access to that. And you can just go to town on their great movie library. Don't forget about, speaking of billions, on the Recapables feed that we have behind the billions, Brian Koppman, David Levine, the showrunners of billions breaking down every episode right after the episode ends, that podcast will go up director's commentary on everything that just happened. All right,

we're going to bring in Kevin O'Connor and my audio is about to get 60% worse. I apologize. All right. Kevin O'Connor is joining us from the ringer. I can't even describe the look he has going right now. You look like somebody who fought in the Civil War in the 1860s. I'm not sure what side, but you're a beloved lieutenant or a colonel. You're a colonel. And they named a bridge after you. That's the look you have going. What a beard.

Thank you. It's been going since December. Sometimes I glance at myself in the mirror and I'm like, who's that? I just laugh. you that's the look you have going what a beard thank you it's been going since december sometimes i glance at myself in the mirror and i'm like who's that i just laugh it doesn't look like me i'm not used to this person but i'm enjoying it just gonna keep it going bill and you yourself though too with your slicked back hair that you posted on instagram the other night that was awesome that should be your look i put a pat riley i'm half Italian. So it's like half Italian, Pat Riley haircut. My hair is like, there's no coming back.

There's no amount of gel I can put in it that can tame it at this point. The NBA, every day there's a weird story. There was one today, we're taping this one o'clock Thursday. And there's this weird story from cnbc about agents and execs pushing to cancel the season i've heard the opposite i i have heard for a couple weeks now we talked about it on the bs podcast on sunday with priscilla about the orlando versus vegas and them sketching all that out i'm like really optimistic that the NBA is going to come back in some form. Why is this stuff coming out? Jabari Young reported that. I'm sure he has his trusted sources who are against it.

But everybody I've talked to from players, I talked to Larry Nance last week, and he said he and all his teammates, despite the Cavs being a bad team, are antsy to get back out there. Every agent I've talked to, they want their clients to get as paid as much as they can. Uh, every executive and coach I've talked to, it seems to be a pretty strong consensus that people want to get back out there. Uh, and the league office itself, uh, obviously their intentions are to have basketball being played again in July and August. And, you know, for the NBA, like this is an opportunity to test things out to see what works because next season

we might not be able to have people in the stands. We might have to have some sort of isolated, you know, four or five teams at one place next season. So this is sort of an opportunity to do a test run to figure out what might work starting at the beginning of the next season when that'll be the greatest challenge when you have 82 games in the playoffs that need to be played as well so there's a lot of incentive here besides financial reasons for the NBA to have games going in July or

August I was surprised the Orlando thing became a news story yesterday because Sham Sarania wrote a small piece about it Rasul and I talked about it on Sunday for seven, eight minutes. I don't know how that, that just, I felt like, I feel like people listen to my podcast. Like the Orlando thing's been a real thing for a while.

And you have this synergy with Disney and all that stuff. I feel like podcast stuff. When like stuff gets reported on podcasts, it doesn't always get picked up. I know like sometimes aggregators, but yeah, yeah. A lot of stuff does, but then a lot of stuff doesn't always get picked up i know like sometimes like the aggregators but yeah yeah a lot of stuff does but then a lot of stuff doesn't i mean there's been stuff that i've said in the past about the draft that doesn't get picked up but just some stuff does some stuff doesn't it's the

written word that always seems to you know still always get traction when it comes to you know news news outlets picking stuff up well maybe we should do little ringer transcripts things when we feel like we have news. Because we wanted to talk about the Orlando stuff on Sunday. Sure. Because we had heard a lot of stuff about that they really feel like this bubble thing can work. Ultimately, players, owners, networks,

those three chess masters on this chess board will be the ones determining what happens. So when you hear stuff about agents and team executives, like ultimately they're not going to be factors. And if the big superstars like LeBron coming out and did that tweet today was huge. Oh, no doubt about it. I wasn't even totally sure how he felt about that. Cause you could have told me that he could have gone the other way and maybe said, you know, I really, you know, I'm a family guy. I'm near the end of my career. I'm not going to risk my life to play basketball unless I'm a hundred percent. But he

was the opposite way. He was like, Hey, we want to play basketball. We're ready to come back. And I thought that was very telling. Oh, no doubt. Especially someone that has as much power and pull as he does for the NBA player association. You know, I would assume, you know, Chris Paul has talked about it before as well in the article. I think Royce Young interviewed him, and CP3 expressed some of the concerns and the challenges of playing,

but he also did make it clear that the intention is to play moving forward. And again, I haven't talked to a single person that has made a push for canceling games at the end of the season. I'm sure there are a handful out there. Are you ready? I feel like you need to be ready for this because it's going to come back in a big way. And I think you should start to model yourself after Rocky and Rocky IV before the

big Drago fight. You might need to go to a remote location, have some props to train, and just really get in ridiculous podcasting blogging shape. Just be really big physical power in July. I got a crappy stationary bike here with a seat that hurts, but maybe I'll have to start using that to get ready. That's about all I got. And resistance bands, too. Maybe you need a training camp. Maybe we should have all our ringer NBA people go to Maine to some compound. I mean, we could do the Zoom workouts.

You can lead a workout for us, Bill. That would be awesome. We could get Headspace, one of those apps about the mind wellness apps. Yeah, we could have a whole program. Do you do any of those? Are you into, you know? I tried it once. I'm not that kind of guy.

I am not a sit still and zone out person. I feel like the thoughts always race in my mind. I mean, I can relax, but thoughts full race. I have a hard time getting into that zen state. How have you handled an hour in the last day, April? April, my favorite month, other than the pollen which was one of the reasons i left the east coast that the pollen just destroyed me how have you handled no nba these past two weeks this unbelievable that second second half of april which was just

basketball every day i i really miss it like i like really genuinely like feel it every day it's so weird to me it's the end of april it's odd i mean i i i miss it i mean i knew i was gonna miss it a lot i miss it even more than i expected to i mean like you know watching clips of old games is great watching last dance is is great you know thinking about you know we're doing our best moments or defining moments series on the ringer with articles and videos and that's great but it just doesn't feel the same as watching a live game and seeing the story unfold especially because this season there were so many freaking interesting stories that were happening with really you know lebron at his age making another

run but then janice going for potentially his first ring. Zion trying to push Ja, two of the best young players in the league, for their first playoff appearance. Luka and KP, I mean, the Houston Rockets with small ball. With P.J. Tucker playing the five, how would that unfold? I was looking forward to all this. And, you know, we're not getting to see that story. Hopefully we do get something great, though, in July or August, but we'll see.

Rosillo has an idea that if the season somehow gets canceled, we should just have sports writers vote on the champion like they used to do in college football. That would be great. That's a bad idea. People wouldn't get mad at that at all. That would be awesome. I would have my rankings outrank the Lakers like 10th. Trying to screw them over. What have you heard from a draft standpoint? That was one of the reasons I wanted to have you on because it seems like James Wiseman

now getting some run. I know all these teams, they don't have a lot to do. They're just crunching the draft. They're probably able to prepare for the draft at a whole other level. Like Steve Kerr talked about on Flying Coach, that normally he's not involved in the draft at all. They're in the playoffs. The playoffs are going from mid-April all the way to, for them, it was the finals every year. And then the drafts five days later, it's not like he had in his spare time, he was able to go through 50 prospects, but now you have all these teams that are all in and using their coaches and using their staff. So do you think it's true that Wiseman has emerged? I mean, he hasn't necessarily emerged.

James Wiseman, depending on who you talk to, there may be some people that think he's the first or second best prospect. There's others who don't have him in their top seven or top eight prospects. Uh, and this year, it is wide open. I mean, whether it's Wiseman or LaMelo ball or Anthony Edwards, there is a wide range of opinions on these top guys more than other years

than I can remember, especially recently. Cause we've had, you know, some really great standout prospects in recent years, but this year there's not as much that consensus up top but nba teams are are gonna have time at least my impression from talking to executives is that the draft will move the lottery and the draft will move from this coming may for the lottery in june for the draft until august or september yeah that's not a non-official, but because of the,

as you mentioned, I mean, yeah, it's, it's like official, but non-official. It's officially unofficial. Yeah.

Yes. And, you know, for the NBA, like it's because the season's not over and you, you can't do the draft lottery until the standings are finished. You can't, you know,

do the draft until trades happen and trades can't happen until after the season is over. You can't do the draft lottery for that. And trades can't happen until after the season is over. You can't do the draft lottery, for that matter, until the salary cap has some type of estimate for next season. And right now, they don't have that either to determine the rookie scale. So there's just always... Hold that thought, because that's the most important piece of this. Everyone I've talked to is so freaked out by what could happen with the cap here.

We talked about it a little on the mismatch with Chris Verna last week when I went on. The cap is based on revenue. We have no idea how much the revenue is going to go down. There are scenarios here where the cap could go down by like 15 million a team, something like that. And in a weird way, could organically solve this whole problem of stars jumping from team to team every couple of years. Because if you're Giannis in the summer of 2021 and the cap has gone backwards to the point that it's just worth way more money for you to stay in Milwaukee and they could just kind of squeeze you in because you're already there at the cap figure versus trying to slide into Miami's cap space, which is 25% lower than it was two years before. Everyone I've talked to has said, this is the great unknown,

and there's no way to even consider figuring out what it will be. Yeah. I mean, I wonder, are they going to do something out of the ordinary? I mean, will they just drop the cap by 10 million,15 million, or will they keep it the same somehow so it doesn't screw over teams that were in the luxury tax that would have to then therefore pay significantly more if the cap were dropped much more than anybody could have ever anticipated when it was expected to go up? Will they do something a bit different by keeping the cap the same? I don't know it's impossible to predict what's going to happen moving forward because revenue next season that's what the cap is based on projected revenue and if that cap number if they aren't expecting there to be fans in the crowd for until february or march or april and who knows maybe longer if that's the

case obviously cap projection is going to be much lower, but will a one-season dip make them drop the cap or will they do something artificially to keep it the same because of this unusual situation? It's just unpredictable, as you said. Well, what's crazy is it's the bizarro version of what happened in 2016, right? Where the cap jumped way up and teams both figured out that it was going to jump way up, but then played it completely wrong after it jumped up. I include myself. I was totally

fine with some of those contracts because it seemed like the dawn of a new era. It was like, oh, the Lakers gave Luol Deng 60 million a year. So what? Everybody has the money now. And what you realize is they really only had the money that one year and then it leveled off a little bit. And I think Silver's talked about this a little bit that I don't think they feel like they handled that correctly. I think that they think the money's going to the players anyway, but maybe there is a way to stagger it so competitively. Should have been smoothing? Yeah. In other words yeah so it wasn't so geared toward who had cap space for that one summer that maybe there is a way to even if the money is the

same that's being split between the players and owners maybe from a cap standpoint you can have a little chicanery to it you know and maybe it only counts 90 against cap even if you're paying 100 so i wonder going forward i wonder if it'll be the same thing where it's like, yeah, we're paying the players this amount, but from a cap standpoint, we have to keep the integrity of the cap somewhere close to where it was. I don't know. I mean, they're much smarter than we are with this stuff. And when it could just be a one year drop in one year two year including this year but you

know for the start of a season it could be just one year we hope just just one year you know at the start um but again like it's hard to predict except for the fact that obviously revenue will be down just a matter of how much that affects what they do with the cap it's one of those things that if belichick was in the NBA, he would have figured out all the variables, what kind of cap they'd be working with over the next three years. And I'm sure there's a couple of smart NBA teams figuring that out too. But the teams that figure it out in some form will, I think, have a huge competitive advantage if they don't come up with some sort of system to put some checks and balances. I think it's going to be really confusing. And I don't know how they're going to figure it out. Now, we talked with Peter Schrager

before about there's also a possibility, even though you lose attendance and you might lose some games, you also have the possibility of more media revenue coming in short term. If you stagger playoff games a little differently or you do whatever um you could add a extra day you could cut extra deals with espn and tnt to get even more money for the games you already have and things like that um and you could argue like having a game of the like a tuesday game of the week on abc ABC could get a way bigger rating than maybe normally it would when there's way more content. So who knows? And that could happen with a shortened playoff tournament too. You know, if you have a three game series and Daryl, Daryl Morris talked about

that in the past that he's in favor of one game playoffs and that's never going to happen, but it could happen, you know, potentially the summer by necessity. Right. Who knows, who knows how that would do in the ratings. It could be a dud. It could be one of the best things, you know, from a rating standpoint that the NBA just happens to stumble upon because of this unfortunate pandemic that we're all facing. So it's very possible that this summer, the NBA will find something that works for them during a normal year. I mean, if there's a three-game playoff tournament

in the first, second, and third round before a five-game finals or something like that, and people love it, a ratings hit, if the players all approve, if networks approve, then maybe they install that as their in-season tournament in the future.

Well, we've argued on this podcast for the following idea, which was that the first round should be best of five. And, you know, it solves a couple issues. One is that the series that are over after three games where it's a three nothing lead and there's no reason to even continue going. Yeah, just like get it over, keep moving. If I think one of the fears they've had in that was just competitively, you play this whole season and then a one seats playing an eight seat,

all of a sudden they're down to one and the eight seat has a home game in game four. I think you could stagger it. So if you had a one eight matchup, the eight seat only gets one home game out of the four. And that would be your reward advantage for in the season. It's like, all right, you're the one seed. Best of five first round. You have four of the five games at home.

If you can't win, you don't deserve to advance anyway. A 2-1-2 first round. Yeah, just for the one seed and the eight seed. And then the other piece of that would be the seven versus ten, eight versus nine, whether it's a one-game playoff or best two out of three or however. This would be the year to

do that. If you're going to say we're dumping the rest of the regular season, but we also don't think it's fair to a couple of the teams that were on the fringe, you could do it that way. The problem is on the East, the 9 and 10 seeds were like six games behind the 8 seed. On the West, it's a little more packed, so they'd probably have to figure out that component.

But this really is a time for them to experiment with some of this stuff. Guess what? One-game playoffs, 7 versus 10, 8 versus 9, would be fucking cool. People would look at that. It would be the playoff seven versus ten eight versus nine would be fucking cool if people would look at that it would be it would be the playoff drama we'd want best of five first round solves a lot of problems i would argue you could even consider best of five second round but i think they'd be too scared to do that they wouldn't want to lose the revenue in a normal year you mean yeah they're normally yeah of course and this year could be three. Right. But by the way, like you did mention, you know, like Washington was five and a half back of Orlando. They're not totally out of it, though. You know, they're still 17 games. Yeah. Yeah. I

mean, they still could catch Orlando. It had there been a regular finish to the season, but even though it's unlikely, but at least, you know, you could still try out the seven, eight, nine, 10 plan tournament. And that could be your way to resolve the regular season and get to, you know, what,

what is the number 70 ish games where local TV networks get their money? I don't know how, if it's possible to get there. There was info that came out this week that I'd never heard before. And now I don't know what to believe where it has to be games that were played for local not national so like if it's an ABC game there's no local like if the Celtics are on ABC there's no CSN New England telecast of that Celtic game it's just an ABC game that's. So that game wouldn't count toward the 70. What about the games that are on two channels at once? There's an ESPN game and a local game. Yeah, see, that's the part.

Nobody, for some reason, has written the definitive reported story of how this works. And I'm not even positive the NBA knows because they've never had to even think about this scenario. But I think they have to guarantee the 70 games for the RSNs, but it might not necessarily mean that they might still have to go to 82 games to get them. Because if you think about it, up to 12 games can be on national TV for each team, right?

So the Lakers can be on national TV 12 times. So they'd be 70 local games. And do these, do these past rules even matter now? Right. Do you throw them out? Do you just kind of look the other way on some of them? Before we go,

I wanted to ask you about the MJ doc. Cause your generation, your generation noticed the disdain. I said with that, come on, your generation had just adopted LeBron as the go. Okay. Boomer. Come on. Your generation had just adopted LeBron as the GOAT. Okay, boomer.

You just adopted LeBron as the GOAT because he was your guy. He's your generation. And now after four parts of this MJ doc, I feel some unrest. I feel some unease with the LeBron GOAT camp. You weren't there for the Jordan experience, but at the same time, you're somebody that cares about the history. You've watched a ton of games. You're an unusual basketball fan for your age group, but what have you learned from this MJ doc that you didn't know? I mean, everybody knew about the competitive aspects with Michael Jordan and how much of a killer he was on and off the court. But I do think, for me, seeing it in this form has just really hammered at home what a higher, different level that he was on in terms of his competitiveness.

And that's not necessarily what makes you great in whatever field that it is, but it is part of what made michael jordan great and and just seeing it presented in this manner uh it's a bit different than me than reading about it or just hearing about it or just watching a video and seeing him pump his fists on the court because you're hearing stories from the people the contemporaries at the time who covered him the people he played, the people he played against, the people who coached him, the people who coached against him. And that really has made it clear just what a higher level he was on in that regard. Well, the next four parts really hammers that home even better.

Really? Yeah, yeah. Team USA stuff probably must be coming up pretty soon because they did 91 finals before the 92 coming next, I would assume. And then team USA happened in 92. Yeah. I feel like by the end of this, we won't be debating the goat thing anymore. And I, why?

Because LeBron's story is still being written, Bill. It's still being written. And that's one reason why I've had a hard time competing, arguing about the goats because I was born in 1990. I didn't live through Michael Jordan and fully experience it. And I, so I feel like I have a hard time taking part in that conversation, but also on the flip side of it,

LeBron James isn't done yet. Like I mentioned that longevity is what can work as an argument for LeBron James and as it should, but we don't know how many championships he's going to end up with, how many MVPs, what type of accolades said and done for lebron so i i don't feel like you can we can debate we will debate but i don't think it's over for lebron yet his only chance the longevity thing to at least like split the vote where it's like if you're going ceiling and impact and force of nature stuff mj is always going to beat him he just is but if you're going're going, oh, my God, LeBron played for 23 years, and he just starts adding up from a math standpoint, this is a little like what happened with Brady.

Brady already had the resume to be in the conversation with all those other guys, right? Manning, Joe Montana, whoever you wanted to list. But then when they had that run where he wins the three more Super Bowls starting in 2015, by the Atlanta one, everyone's like, oh my God, all right. But he was also going up a level too.

Like what he did in the Atlanta thing was the best moment of his career. So you're right. If LeBron was able to pull something like that out, you know, at the tail end of his second decade as a basketball player. Again, after the 3-1 comeback, you know, a second time. Because that was sort of his 28-3 comeback, the 3-1 comeback against the Warriors. So doing that again, I mean, it's not over.

To me, it's like him versus Kareem. And I'm starting to think like I gave Kareem too much of the short shrift in my book where you just look at him in the 70s and he wins six MVPs and he's just the dominant player for 12 straight years, like dominant, where there's no question year after year who the best player in the league is, except for the one time Bill Walton with the Blazers like went toe-to-toe

with them they end up winning it when the finals other than that you just go through year by year by year he's the consensus there's no question this was the best guy i'm not sure lebron's had that in the same way over the course of his career because people thought kobe was better than him really all the way through until he won the first miami title i never i didn't by the way agree with that but um it definitely kind of went from duncan to kobe and then people begrudgingly finally lebron then it went to lebron and then all of a sudden he loses the throne a little bit to the warriors teams and there's some Durant 2017. Durant just goes toe-to-toe with them. It was always a question.

Kawhi last year, it wasn't as definitive as it was with Kareem. It just goes to show you that the longer you stop playing, the more people forget. I was shocked. There's some bird stuff in the

I think it was part two of the MJ doc where the 86 Celtics and MJ's lighting up the 86 Celtics. I don't think people realized how momentous it was just from the standpoint of how great the 86 Celtics was. That was probably the best team of all time still. And he's just slicing and dicing them, getting the 63 points. What makes the 86 Celtics the best team ever over some of these Bulls teams? Well, so for me,

I had a whole greatest teams chapter in my book and really went all in trying to figure it out. You could really make the case that those first three 90s Bulls teams were better than the second three. You're talking about so much expansion dilution by the time you get into the mid-90s,

where if you had three good guys on a team, it was just this enormous advantage. Nobody had anything close to that. The stuff like, just go watch the games from 92 93 jordan's jordan's just better than i mean he's probably smarter as it went along he was a little like ali trying to figuring out how to compensate for the loss of his athleticism whatever but um that 92 93 jordan which you'll see in the fifth and sixth episode it's like he unbelievable. Like he's just 55 points in playoff games. Just like, it's nothing. You know, Clyde Drexler who people said is similar to Jordan at the time.

Right. And if you go, you can just go look at his basketball reference game log from the mid nineties playoffs. Like most of his great playoff games happen before the baseball. We comes back from the baseball. He's just at a different level. He's smarter.

He's got the force of nature stuff. But I think the 72 wins, I never thought it was as impressive as people thought in the moment just because of how weak the league was. It's really like, I think there were six teams that had 20 wins or less that year.

It's really bad. For you, it's partially about comparing the teams or the players to their competition at the time when you get that evaluation rather than the players on the team itself and the performance of those players themselves. Of course, it's that too, but you know, it's, it's everything collectively. Cause I remember the 86 outs, they went like 67 and 15 in the regular season. Then they went 15 and three in the playoffs. And out of those 15 losses in the regular season, half of them were just like garbage schedule losses where they, you know, forgot to show up for a Nets game.

The team, the good teams that they played, I think they were like 18-2 against all the teams that won 50 wins or more. And then they destroyed everybody in the playoffs. And they had Hall of Famers everywhere. They could go big and small. The question for me is, how do you even compare that team to the teams from the last 10 years?

The 2017 Warriors, if we're just saying we're having a tournament and you get with a time machine I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't beat any everybody oh no doubt about it defense play any style in any era

right matchup against any team they would be able to score 10 points more game than the other team from the threes the celtics were taking making three threes a game so they they would just be getting an extra 30 points a game from threes i don't know how you would beat that didn't michael jordan at one point hold the record for most threes in the finals and it was like five or six something like that i mean that sort of just puts into perspective uh how much that's changed i mean if those teams played those 80s celtics would have to start

shooting more threes to keep up with golden state so that's where it becomes that's where your brain breaks right because so if you had the 86 celtics but you could train them for two years with all the stuff we know now with basketball and birds taking eight threes a game. And you just go on down the line and they, they would just play differently. But if you just pulled them in a time machine and they played the words, the words were shooting threes like that. I don't think they would know what to do.

You know, I think Paris would, Paris would just have to come out. Get played off the floor. He would. You'd play McHale at center. You'd have Bird at power forward. You'd play Wedman at small forward.

You would go smaller, and you'd probably try to spread the floor a little bit and try to get McHale posting up on it. But I think they would be just so confused. In the mid-80s, teams are shooting like six threes a game. So to go from that to the Warriors going 15 for 45 against them for three, I think they'd be like, what the fuck is going on? I mean, I'm confused. It's confusing for me sometimes looking back at 70s, 80s basketball. I mean, the game has changed so dramatically

decade to decade. I can't help but wonder what's it going to look like another 10 years from now. Well, and some of the decisions, Russel and I did the Suns-Bulls 93 on Sunday's pod. And we were talking about the entire game, it's a must-win game for the Suns. And they don't want a single high screen with KJ and Charles Barkley. And you'd just be like, if you came in from a time machine to advise them, you'd be like, hey, here's an idea. You should run this play.

It will work every single time, no matter how they defend it. And just put three shooters there and you guys are good. You'll score every time. And they don't run at once. So when I, and even like you see the show in the games from the 2000s a lot,

and you see like the Duncan Parker screen and roll, or Ginobili and Duncan. Duncan, the perfect guy for those because he had such great hands. He was such a good screener. And they would kind of begrudgingly run it. And it seems like it was sitting there all the time. Same thing for Detroit with Billups and Rashid.

That's the perfect play to run with those guys. Or even Ben Wallace as a rim runner. Oh, yeah. With a heavy pick and roll offense. She Wallace as your floor spacing four. Obviously, they could do some of that. But with today's style, it would probably even be far more dynamic than they already were.

Yeah, there was just a mentality back then to pound it down low and try to get layups. And you watch even the 99 Knicks, which had the perfect small ball team. Canby at center after Ewing goes down. You watch the playoff games from that year, and they're just taking turns posting people up. And it's like, just run

a high screen with Sprewell and Canby. It's going to be good. Canby just rolled to the rim with his hands up. But for whatever reason, they figured it out late. That's why when I did my book in 2009, I felt really strongly the 86 Celts were still the best team. And I think basketball changed so much last decade. It's almost like a before and after. It's almost like you look at the NFL and how nobody threw the ball in the 70s. Sure. Cliff Branch is leading the league in receiving with 50 catches for 800 yards or something. And then it just changes.

And then it's a different sport. It's fun, though. You can't compare Johnny Unitas against any quarterback today. No. How do you do it? Have you been watching a lot of the old games or no? A little bit here and there. Not a ton of the old games or no? A little bit here and there. Not a ton of it, but when it's on, I'll put it on the TV.

But I'm not necessarily watching or studying incredibly closely right now. I'm still thinking about this season. I can't get my mind away from this current season happening. Just thinking about what teams are going to do moving forward. I'm deep in the draft right now as well. So that's been my primary focus. Who before we go, who do you think would have won the finals of the season never stops? I don't think I remember your answer on this. I picked the Lakers before the season. I'll stick with them.

So you think as we headed into that Gobert game week coming out where the Lakers won the two that they were prohibitive favorites at that point yeah because that's how i felt i i just i came out of that weekend i was like those guys are winning the title unless somebody gets hurt they're just too big and too physical and i'd still pick them i mean they they check a lot of those boxes we're talking about with like you mentioned the 17 warriors ability to play any style these lakers can also play any style as well. And I mean,

that's, that's what makes the league for me so interesting now, because people talk about how everybody shoots threes, but you have such dramatically different styles and the way teams are getting those points or the way they're building their rosters and the way they're defending with switching some teams dropping. I mean, it's a lot of variety and range with the way teams are playing right now.

All right. KFC, good luck in the battle of Gettysburg this weekend. Say hi to the troops. Thank you, Bill. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good one, Bill. All right. We're bringing in Jack Owen House in one second. First, turn your dream into reality with Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easier than ever to launch your passion project. Whether you're looking to start a new business, showcase your work, publish content, sell products, and more. Squarespace, the tool for you. Beautiful templates created by world-class designers. The ability to customize just about anything with a few clicks. You can easily make

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Offer code BS. All right, we're going to bring in Jacko and House. And the irony here is that we finally got Jacko awesome recording equipment. So all of us could sound good when we did a three-person Zoom. And then I screwed up for my end. So again, my audio is good when we did a three-person Zoom. And then I screwed up for my end. So again, my audio is about to get 40% to 60% worse. Here they are. All right. My buddies, House and Jacko are here. We're on a three-way Zoom. We sent Jacko some real equipment. It's been a long time coming, Jacko. It's been since 07. We've been on the pod. Now you finally have like a little device and, uh, and you have a beautiful setup behind you. A lot of bobbleheads, probably the best setup of anyone we've had. Meanwhile, I don't know what's going on with house's beard.

Oh, here's my, I need some, I need some guidance. I hate it. I don't like facial hair. I've only done this once in my life previously. I'm going to bring the camera up close so you can see how unwieldy it's become. Kenny Rogers vibe from house. Give us a little gambler house. You got to know when to hold them the only point at this stage right now to continue this madness this facial hair madness is to have the opportunity to shave it down and reconstruct the scene from the sopranos i love you johnny cakes so i i need to know who's going to be who's going to do that scene with me.

Oh, Jacko will do that in a heartbeat. Jacko will do it with me. He loved Johnny Cakes. I don't know what nationality you look like, House, but it's no longer American. What country you look like you're from. But you kind of look like Argentinian.

You look like you should be in Manu's entourage Or something I'll do it, don't think for a second that I won't Go that direction I also like this opportunity and I saw that You took it This week BS for the slick back hair Now right now I have a hat

So I can't do it, but I have enough hair to go Slick back, is that just A middle age Crisis kind of thing at this stage? so I can't do it, but I have enough hair to go slick back. Is that just a middle-aged crisis kind of thing at this stage? Yeah, it's pure boredom. It's, it's, I had never had, my hair had never been long enough to try to do the Pat Riley. It's, and you know, it, it's not correct because the sides are too long, but I, I, I have the formation now. So if I want to do it, I think the only way to do it though, is just to wear black suits i i love it jacko's got a little bit working though look at jacko he's got a little bit of that slick back i have had i've had an urge to do the greed is good

speech when you slick it all the way back you know i get out of the shower and comb my hair straight back and i just start doing the greed is good. It's fantastic. Let's talk about life during the quarantine. Jacko, family situation, better or worse at this point as we head into week eight, week nine, whatever it is. Well, it's I mean, it's week nine. We're starting to wear on everybody. You know, everybody's kind of reached their breaking point. I mean, everybody's a trooper about this thing,

but usually you have an outlet of where the wife and the kids or I kind of go off and do our own thing or whatever. The wife is not really politically correct. My wife, my beloved wife, will go out with some friends or I'll go out with some friends. You get a little break from things, but now it's like 24 you know, 24 seven togetherness with the kids and like trying to teach the kids, you know, be the distance learning and the school between the school and 24 seven with the kids. It's rough. I have two daughters aged 14 and aged eight, eight, yes,

eight. And so they get along fairly well, but everybody is sort of wearing on everybody's nerves at this point. So we're rolling with it. We have our moments. Unfortunately, the weather is not really cooperating in Connecticut because we have not really had spring so much yet.

So it's been cold and it's been rainy, but when there's a few sunny days, you can get outside. It's good to be outside and at least within the confines of our yard and get a little fresh air. So we're doing the best we can. But it's enough at this point, really. Are you treating yourself with splitting up the laundry?

Exactly. I mowed the lawn. Yeah, yesterday I mowed the lawn. That was a big treat for me. I got to go outside and mow the lawn. That was good. Really was looking forward to that. So that was good. Yeah. Splitting up the laundry. My wife's been baking a lot of bread. So like a lot of bread baking, a lot of baking of cookies and cakes. And we, let's see, we painted our bedroom and our bathroom and in our bedroom.

That was good. Now my wife is like needs another project so she's been out in the yard doing a lot of like yard work when when the weather permits and um looking for stuff to do trying to you know organizing closets attics basements running out of things to organize really so it sounds like you have about two months left before you start getting into some real role play to try to mix it up yeah i've ordered some wigs but they haven't come yet so you know soon soon house house how are things on your end well that this is the other uh benefit of the facial hair i don't look anything like what i've looked like most of my life. So it is a built-in role

play kind of vibe. Yeah. Um, it makes me look older. So I just tell my wife, you know, you're having an affair with an older man. Congratulations. Older Argentinian hitman. Yeah, that's right. Um, but I will say in, in order to preserve, um, comity in my household and uh harmony i have been leaving i leave my house every day for at least six hours uh my office is downtown and situated in a place where i i can um uh honor the most stringent social distancing uh requirements, requirements. Cause I am on a floor in a building where there are no other tenants and I go directly from the garage to my office. And there is a kind of a rhythm to being out of the house. I try and help in the morning, like get my little guy situated most days and kind of ready to pretend like he's going to do

schoolwork. And then he does no schoolwork whatsoever. And I come home and we try to have like some kind of basketball practice every day or baseball practice, something. So he's out of the house for some extended period of time. And then, you know, take a little responsibility for dinner. And, you know, the only times I get yelled at are the one in the morning, uh, you know, bottle and a half in, uh, you know, break, break down moments. Like you asshole, you're leaving the house. You, you know, it's too much. I'm here all the time. Right. Right. You just get

to go. Right. I got to say that like the distance learning thing I'm with house. Cause my kids, you know, my kids go to Catholic school, so we pay for school. And it's like we pay for them to go for a full day. And my eight-year-old, who's in third grade, they start at 8 o'clock at 9.30. She's like, I'm done. I'm like, no, no, no. You cannot possibly be done in an hour and a half.

We send you to a normal school day. It's eight hours a day. And now you're telling me you're done in an hour and a half. Like we send you to a normal school day. It's eight hours a day. And now you're telling me you're done in an hour and a half. This is ridiculous. And then we get emails from the teacher like, well, Bridget needs to redo number five, number seven, number 23. Like Bridget, what are you doing? Because she's in a hurry to like, she has a thing where she can like play video games with her friend while talking with them on her nook or whatever device she has. So it's always like, well, we're in a hurry to speed through this work and then get to it. So the distance learning thing is really like a farce at this point. Cause my wife and I are both like, we have admitted to ourselves how lax we are with

this, like not sitting there with them and going over it and like, you know, making sure everything is good to go and you've done everything. And nine weeks in, it's like, I'm just not going to give it this level of dedication that I really should. in my life. Really? But BS, what are your kids doing? Ben Simmons has really gotten into the NFL. That's been, that's been the big win. He's just all in, you know, how he moves from phase to phase. Well, I meant about school. Oh, well, it's the same thing. School. These virtual learning schools, my son claims he has a lot of homework, but somehow it's always done within like three, four hours. My daughter's got more, but it kind of shines a light on how much wasted time there is in the whole school day

between traveling to the school, coming back from the school, these different recesses and stuff. And when you condense it into a few hours, it's not nearly as many hours as you think. So I don't know if they're going to end up rethinking. The thing that's crazy to me is, you know, and I think a lot of different schools have done this where they, the schools took the spring break anyway. And, and then it's like, you come back and it's like, well, couldn't we have just kept school going during the spring break? Nobody can go anywhere. Like maybe fix the schedule a little bit. It's like, no, that makes too much sense. So, um, I don't know.

Teachers probably deserved a break from making lesson plans too. So. Maybe, but it seems like an opportunity to get everything done while nobody can go anywhere. And then there's like a longer summer or whatever. Yeah, trying to finish it. The DC public school system, God bless them, they grabbed the spring break that was supposed to be off in the future and pulled it all the way back to the onset of stay-at-home learning and used that time to figure out the game plan they were going to use. And also, to their credit, very sensible,

at least for a third grader, there is a check-in in the morning with the class that's basically social, a check-in at the end of the day that's also social, and then a set of online challenges that my son, there's probably like six to eight a day. And we, we feel pretty good if he gets through two.

Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a W our school has the check-in in the morning, but no checkout at the afternoon. So they just check in and like you answer some basic question that only you would know or whatever, or it shows you're there and alive.

And then that's all she wrote. So then my kids are like, well, that's good. Now, now to play kids are like, well, that's good. Now to play Roblox. Right. Roblox. My kid and your kid should be friends on that.

Absolutely. We should link them up. Right. It's all day long. It's always good to give small, small non-adults who just want to get out of doing work the choice to stop the work as soon as possible. That's a great idea. They're always going to make the

right choices there i have a i feel bad just one just one thing back to your son getting into the nfl yeah i mean really your son getting into the nfl at this point is a little bit like rowing out to the titanic after it hit the iceberg i mean brady brady's gone and gronk's gone and he's like now i'm interested now let's see what happens here. He's a little late to that party, no? Well, he used to watch the playoff games with me, but the thing that's been fascinating is he's learning about the history.

And you can really crash dive it because you watch all these different shows on YouTube and he's playing the video games. That's what really got him into it. And now he has all these opinions where he's playing the video games. That's what really got him into it. And now he has all these opinions where he's like, Dad, Lawrence Taylor was the best defensive player ever, right?

I'm like, yeah, that actually is true. He definitely was the best. I think he was the best. He has no idea what he's talking about. Hot take. Why? Because that's a rating in Madden? He has the best Madden rating? Is that why?

Yeah, and he watched a Football Life episode with Lawrence Taylor where everybody was like, that guy is the best defensive player. So he's been really obsessed with trying to figure out who the best players ever were and how many people are on the list. And like Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor, Tom Brady, how long does that list go? And he's been kind of catching up on all these old games and he was doing this big school project on it so that part's been kind of fun but you know like my daughter turns 15 this weekend it's just weird it's just any sort of event that normally would

be like oh cool what are we doing we're gonna have a thing we'll go out to dinner like whatever now it's like all right well i guess maybe we'll order from a really special place. It's nuts. Zoom or whatever. Then my mom, who I don't know what's going on with her, but she just won't come over. We think it's because she can't get her hair done. We don't even know if she's coming over.

She's just out. She's out. She stayed away from everybody. She does her walk once a day, and that's it. The parent conversations are pretty hilarious. My dad's like, I'm so bored. I'm like, you were home every day anyways. Like, yeah, but now there's no sports. It's different. But, uh, so those conversations are, uh, what, what's it like for Dick house house? I will say my parents are winners out of this whole thing.

You know, notwithstanding the fact that they really ought not to come into contact with any other human beings. And they've been pretty scrupulous about that. But the amount of contact they get with their four kids now. I mean, I'm on a weekly call with my parents where, you know, previously we were talking at best like once every two, three weeks. And a lot of that just, you know, I'm embarrassed to confess it was calling over there to get my mom to come babysit. But we're on a schedule now where you have a whole thing and they're just rotating amongst

my two brothers and my sister. They're getting a lot of direct time with their kids and grandkids now. We have a whole thing and they're just rotating amongst my two brothers and my sister. They're getting a lot of direct time with their kids and grandkids now. Yeah, the friend Zooms and the family Zooms have been, I guess, one good outcome. I think another awesome outcome has, you know, I think all of us had some questions about our president. You know, whether if anything bad happened, could he rise to the occasion, make some good choices, really be a leader? And I think that's been answered.

I was just out for my daily dose of injecting sunshine up my ass, and it really made me feel so much better. It really took care of a lot of things for me, so that was good, per his recommendations to somehow enter sunlight and through the body which well i mean a way to do that we could give him credit you know we there is that whole thing and i maybe i shouldn't say this we have a classmate that i think might have explored this the whole bleaching your asshole thing what was like a thing that was that was that's out there true and you know uh well, like the Kardashians invented that, right?

They innovated that. And look, if the president wants to explore whether or not that can be applied more generally and get the Rona behind us, who am I?

I mean, I'm not going to ingest it myself, but look, we're all spitballing here. We're all spitballing. I liked when, when he had that legendary press conference about the disinfectant and just complete insanity. And they had that shot of the one scientist on this side who just,

who looked like me after the Aaron Boone home run game. And then after that, there were these articles after about uh they've decided maybe these are aren't a great idea these daily briefings maybe we'll cut these short maybe him speaking extemporaneously for an hour um is it a great move and i don't know how it goes going forward because he clearly loves the attention but he just makes it worse every single time he says anything it's it's honestly the most it's we're gonna look back when we're on our deathbeds being like what was the craziest time to be alive the entire time we were alive it'll be right now this is this is it actually this is this is it this is

the peak it's i mean you know what's crazy is like you know he came out and he's just sort of spitballing out there about like injecting disinfectant and getting sunlight into your body or whatever just sort of spitballing it and see, you know, throw it against the wall and see what sticks. And people are just like, and then even like, you know, typically hardcore Trumpites were like, eh, maybe we should cut these press conferences short. Maybe no moss on the old press conferences, you know? And then like things like the other day, like they tried to sort of switch gears and there was this thing about like this, this UFO video from these, these fighter jets and the Navy confirmed it. They're like, yeah, we don't know what that was. And America just sort of like shrugged and moved on. It's

like, we're living in the craziest timeline where you've, you've essentially, you know, they may not be alien or something, but there is some sort of a flying device, which the government, the greatest military in the world cannot account for and keep up with and know what it's from and america's like eh what's next it's just crazy well it's it's not just uh it's like okay that's cool bro when can i get a haircut exactly right where can i go get a haircut i read all those i as you guys know, I like to go to the Reddit conspiracy board. And they had a lot of articles about that. And at first, I thought it was like a Reddit conspiracy.

Like, you got to take it with a grain of salt. And then you look at who's writing the articles. And it's the New York Times, CNN. And it's like Pentagon. So I did the deep dive on it. I couldn't believe it. They were like, yeah, there's no way a flying object can drop like that with the g-force the pilot would just immediately die it's moving way too

fast i followed it i've never seen anything like it none of us knew what to do like this definitely happened this was some fucking weird thing that was in the sky and some of our best pilots had no idea what the fuck it was i mean there's no there's no good answer because either it's an alien it's it's from another world and we can't keep up with it or if it's from earth it's it's something from like some other country that we can't keep up with which is equally as bad or it's some unknown technology from some you know private billionaire or something that's screwing around with something that we also, we as a government or as a military, can't keep up with. Also not great.

And we're all just like, eh, what am I going to door dash tonight? What else is on TV? What's on the next channel? It's crazy. I hate to diminish or demean the importance of this and the seriousness of it all but i have to tell you just watching it it looked like a fly was on the camera it looked like a fly it was like only a like a like a fly flew in into the the image and then dropped out of sight and they're like well if you you know if it really was a genuine object on the horizon and you measured, you used physics to determine what the hell is going on with the thing.

But I'm just saying. You think it was a fly in the camera? Looked like a fly in the camera to me. What do I know? That'll help me sleep better at night. I'll go with that. That's fine. Do you guys believe in UFOs?

Sure. Yes. Undoubtedly. Without hesitation or reservation i believed in them a lot more until the last 10 years when everybody had their own cell phone cameras because you would have thought like the times that when we saw stuff was so rare was like oh this one time in new mexico this guy was able to film this but now it's like everybody can film anything at all times and i feel like all this stuff we

wondered whether it was true or not now we would just be able to film it and prove it so like there's a big foot there's big foot it's like we somebody would have seen it camping and if there's more ufos or ufos a certain area we'd see them and we just have it and then this pentagon video happened i was like oh wait a second there we go now we're back but who knows i i i have always been a believer in ufos and ghosts as you guys know wouldn't it be wouldn't it really be something if like you know you think back to all these movies from the 50s where like a flying saucer lands on the mall of washington dc and you know the president has to go out and meet it and i think the aliens

finally land after you know 100 years of speculation and the president they meet is donald j trump and they're like you have to go out and meet the aliens mr president they're the hugest aliens they're the best they waited for the best president they wouldn't have come if i wasn't the president this is the representative of humanity on Earth, Donald J. Trump. And the aliens are just like, what the fuck? You know, I like the stories about him where they're they're like people are worried about the president because he's getting restless. It's like that. It sounds like they're talking about my 12 year old son.

Exactly. Like Bill's parents are worried about Ben. He's getting restless. You could just put my son in any of the Trump articles. It'd be the same. Or how old is he? 76? Your 76-year-old father.

Same idea. Right. Right? And Trump likes sports. There's no sports to distract him. He's extra bored. I think if he's looking for ways to deflect and distract this is the time for the jfk assassination like just empty the fucking mother load let's see it let's do it trump they like

let's have one good outcome from your presidency let's let's dust it off let's see exactly what happened what else would you want to see johnny well Well, I was going to say UFO stuff, but I guess they kind of emptied the vaults on that. The JFK stuff. Yeah, JFK would be good. What else would the government be hiding that I'd like to see? I don't know. That's pretty much, you know, UFOs

and JFK. I can't think of anything else I'm really curious about, government-wise. House? No, I feel the same way it's it's not a long list those are the big two at this stage of our lives now i did very much enjoy there's a story that appeared oh it's the crooked media guys um are doing a deep dive on the role the cia played in the song by who is the band did you see this no oh by like an 80s uh rock ballad band uh and I'm I'm gonna it's a famous song and a famous band and because I'm so fucking old I

can't remember either one there's a whole political backstory with it yeah there's a lot of CIA stuff I'd like to see some of the CIA stuff that that would be... I mean, they had a role in the lyrics, and they had a role in making it popular worldwide, and it contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. That's the thesis of this thing. Wow. But the CIA helping with rock lyrics. It's kind of funny.

Was it Rock Me Amadeus? I can't remember remember i'll look it up while we're talking this is the time that does stop all that stuff yeah i because from a distraction standpoint although i guess if the ufo thing didn't work maybe they're out of out of moves jfk jfk is the last thing i i wonder though if anyone under 30 would i maybe it stops with our generation caring about what happened to jfk maybe there's a cutoff yeah probably i mean they had a thing the other day about like our generation like obviously we have this covid situation we had 9 11 and then

somebody on twitter was like what's the other big thing from from gen x you know or we remember as a big event i remember when the challenger blew up that that was a huge deal. I was like a junior in high school. That was like the big one. Everybody was like, you know, you'll remember where you were when the Challenger blew up. That was like a huge deal. But I, you know, other people were like the fall of the Berlin wall, the Berlin wall fell. We were in college and I think we were kind of drunk through it. Like we just woke up one day and we're like, wait, there's no Berlin wall anymore? We didn't have really TVs at the time to watch the news. So there was no social media. So it was kind of like you sort of heard about it after the fact. I don't feel like, for me anyway, that was a huge deal, obviously, historically. But I don't feel like we really lived through

that because we were in college and probably at a keg party. The two biggest things that I remember happening to us in college were, one was when the Gulf War started. It was a Friday night, remember? And we were watching CNN. Yeah. And we didn't know what the fuck was going on. And we were all eligible to get drafted. Yeah.

We just ended up getting like bombed and watched CNN. And then the other one was when Macho Man turned on Hulk Hogan, which we were in wheeler two at the time. And just shocking, troubling. Well, remember we were all together for the Buster Douglas, Mike Tyson fight. That was pretty bad. Oh, that was a good one. We didn't know that was going to be big at the time, but yeah. We had a party.

That was, we were having a party. We were an off-campus apartment party. Yes. And then by the 10th round, we looked around and every girl was gone. Right. Shocking. Just like 45 guys holding $5 cups. That was all that happened.

Yeah. Just, we used to call that Saturday night and Friday night and Thursday night. It was the Scorpions and the, it was the band I was thinking of and the song winds of change. The Scorpions. Oh really? Yeah.

That brought down the Berlin wall, huh? Apparently. Wow. The CIA wrote it. That brought down the Berlin Wall, huh? Apparently. Wow. The CIA wrote it. I was thinking from sporting events, the one that was the most vivid for me was when we watched the Kentucky Duke game.

Because they showed that on CBS on a Sunday, and I was just like, I remember, I think House had graduated. Yeah, I was gone. Yeah, you were gone but I remember we we all watched that entire game and just like lost our minds and then I think I had Kentucky in our pool or whatever so I was bummed out remember the Princeton Georgetown game was another one like that because that was St. Patrick's Day and we were all out and that was like a big one but yeah

so this generation I think the previous one probably had 9-11 and this generation will have this. Rona. This the fucking Rona. House, what TV are you consuming? So I have been on this pretty steady binge of HGTV and the Food Network because in my cable package, they're immediately adjacent to one another. Mine too. I think that must be in all of America.

Yes. Yeah, maybe so. So I just bounce back and forth. So I have all the HGTV shows because my wife and I can watch them peacefully together and not yell at it. It's a terrific escape mechanism. There's absolutely nothing about the real world that comes in watching the HGTV or the Food Network.

And I have to tell you, the single biggest upset, the biggest surprise of my TV viewing in terms of those channels, I am unabashedly a Guy Fieri truther. I love Guy Fieri. Wow. Triple G, triple D, all of his stuff I'm in. How about this?

That guy was so far ahead of the curve propping up independent restaurants, restaurants that don't get the limelight. And here we are in this moment. And so watching, I have this appreciation for him, for all that work that he's been doing for 20 some years, taking us to Flavortown with all those beautiful independent restaurants that we need to survive on the backside. Guy Fieri, truth or I'm stunned by that. What have you been watching? When you said Guy Fieri, truth or I thought there was going to be like some deep conspiracy about Guy Fieri there. side guy fieri truther i'm stunned by that what have you been when you say guy fieri truther i

thought there was going to be like some deep conspiracy about guy fieri there like he was he was driving the ufo well he's been lampooned for so many years now i agree i like guy fieri too like we we watch an inordinate amount of hgtTV and Food Network as well. I've been trying to get my wife to watch. We watched the first season of Ozark a couple months ago. I freaking love Ozark. So I've been trying to get my wife to watch season two of Ozark. And she's like, oh, I need something uplifting now.

And I'm not ready to watch something depressing because of the situation and everything. So I've been clamoring to watch Ozark. We watch HGTV. My younger daughter is obsessed with the office and we are now watching it for like the third time through i literally i could recite lines like you you play an episode i could probably recite 90 of the lines from episode because we watched like watched it three times in a row through how old is she she's eight right my my nine-year-old also adores the office why is that what's going on yesterday she told me she wants an office themed birthday party for her for her ninth birthday party it's unbelievable i don't get it and like you know some of the you know that's what she said jokes like mercifully go over her head and i don't know

she knows why it's funny but there's something about there's something about the office that the kids absolutely love like she is obsessed with it so every night she's like dad office and we watch the office on netflix that's so much smarter than any show we would have watched when we were eight like we were looking at charlie's angels of the love boat and three's company that's right so my daughter is obsessed with the office and of course you know this seems like a hundred years ago but early on in the quarantine like every other american i did my duty and watched tiger king which really you had to do right i i got into one day and yet i was flipping around and on oxygen network they had some documentary which takes me back to your days with your days back in charleston about the west

memphis three oh yeah oh this guy is not trying to exonerate them because they're out of prison but it was to try to solve the crime and that led me down a west memphis three rabbit hole that lasted a good week or so and it's just like there's no coming back from that one we we know the answer the stepdad did it oh yeah the guy took his teeth out right no no not that guy no no that that guy that guy is exonerated but there's another stepfather that had there's they found his hair in the knot and everything else and there's a little something a little weird about that so i'm sorry i got my stepfather suspects mixed up arkansas stepdad's confused he could be but back when you used to live

in charleston remember we used to watch those hbo documentaries like oh yeah east of west of paradise or whatever what paradise lost or whatever it was i mean we enjoyed that time so much we ran it back we we got together for bs's uh you know momentous birthday in November, what was the documentary we watched? We watched a documentary by John Demjanyuk. Right. Oh, the Nazi that might have been the Nazi wartime concentration camp. The concentration camp manager. Yeah, but in our defense, there was foreign substances involved that probably steered

us towards at least some of that decision. But in retrospect, I was like, there was four of us staying in a house on the beach in California and ample bars and restaurants and whatever we could have walked to. And we decided to stay inside and watch a thing about a guy, a documentary about a guy

that might have been a Holocaust guard. And we still don't know. Some mistakes were made. Mistakes were made. That was the second dummy for me. Exactly. I do feel like the three of us were like the first people who loved

shit like Tiger King that we knew. Now, not realizing because we don't have the internet or whatever, that there's people like us all around the country. Right, right, right. With the West Memphis Three, as far as we knew, we were the only three people that even knew about that doc

or had consumed it or talked about it. We were, like, obsessed with it. There was... Remember we used to love that HBO autopsy show? Yes. The one with... You don't remember that show, House? I remember it.

It was ahead of its time. It's all these true crime podcasts now dr michael bader and it would just be like dot mutt baden and he would have the two people and i i just i have a vague memory of one of them ended with the the guy had killed his wife but he embalmed her and she was just living in the attic with him for 25 years but there's a lot of stuff like that and this was like during mid-90s, right, as DNA evidence and stuff was starting.

We were starting to understand what it was, and that was what that whole show was. Now there's like, I would say, 50 versions of that show on probably 20 different channels. That was the only... Every time they had a new one, it was like, oh my god, they have a new autopsy. The other one House and I used to love, I don't know know if jack goes in as much was all the the hooker shows

oh yeah the ones were like the hookers in atlantic city or all those we watch all of those what was it called in the hopes of maintaining my future political career i'm going to say no i wasn't into the hooker stuff no just for the record no hookers for me they used to have the hidden camera ones with the with the hookers it was like hookers on hooker point or whatever no right right it was something point that's right you're absolutely right and we would watch all this whoever was programming hbo in the late 90s was doing an exemplary job. Hookers at the point. Hookers at the point, yeah. And then they tried to follow it up with

a pimps one that I didn't like as much. It was harder to get behind the pimps. It was very easy to be sympathetic towards the hookers. Much easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope they can work their way out of this. The pimps were way less... Yeah, we had that, and then we had Oz we got into.

Ready for Oz to come back. That wasn't a documentary, fortunately. A lot of times it felt like one. Yeah, but all that true crime stuff that is now like one of the biggest industries we have for content. Johnny, speaking of true crime. This Oprah channel, like I'm never home during the day. So if you flip around, the Oprah channel does like Oxygen Network or whatever. It's like all crime all the time.

Right. Because I think it's geared towards women. I don't say this to be offensive, but I think women love the true crime stuff. They're like nuts for it. It might have been The Ringer actually that did a thing about a true crime convention. And it was like 80% of the people that go to this thing are women. And either women feel like they could be victims or they want to solve the crime or they emphasize with the victims and it's like empathize with the victims. And they, that's

the true crime is big. It's a huge market. And for me, apparently. So I will say, I hadn't thought about it. The first three people to recommend the podcast Serial to Me were all women from different walks of my life. Totally unrelated. They didn't know each other. But all women who recommended Serial to Me. Yeah. Well, one of the most popular podcasts is that one where the two ladies that talk about serial killers every episode. And they turn it into a live show.

Can't remember the name of it. But I think it's one of the 10 biggest podcasts now. And they basically deep dive, break down a live show. Can't remember the name of it, but it's, I think it's one of the 10 biggest podcasts now. And they just like, they basically deep dive breakdown of Syracuse. Jacko, I felt like you could have had that corner 20 years ago. Damn it. Nobody loves serial killers more than you.

Shit. Damn it. I really missed out there. Ah, there's still time. Still time. Maybe, maybe bring it back.

Speaking of true crime. Uh, I watched 2003 game seven ALCS on ESPN. And I don't know if you know this, but the guy who runs ESPN, Jimmy Pataro, huge Yankee fan. Oh, is he really? Okay. The new guy, yeah. So my guess is we won't be seeing the 2004 ALCS on ESPN.

That was my concern because I saw on Twitter that game seven of 2003 was on. So I turned it on and I watched a little bit. I watched bits and pieces of it. I watched a little bit, but I was afraid that maybe the next night would be game seven of 2004. And there was no chance of me tuning into that. No chance. I can't believe how bummed out I,

first of all, I watched the whole game because what the fuck else are we going to do? It's a quarantine. I couldn't believe how bummed out I of all, I watched the whole game Because what the fuck else are we going to do? It's a quarantine I couldn't believe how bummed out I got We were up 4-0 We knocked out that fat fuckface Clemens We knocked his ass out He had third and first, no outs in the fourth

We're up 4-0, top of the fourth And And Messina comes in and just shuts us down shuts us down for three innings Giambi who if he like bled at that point

like plutonium would have come out of his veins he knows what he was thinking that year he goes deep on Pedro it's 4-1 by the way I hadn't seen this game since it happened. I watched it. I wrote a column about it for eSpin.com that night and then tried to block it out of my

mind. Then Giambi hits another homer. It's 4-2. But then Ortiz hits a homer, which I forgot. We're 5-2. Yeah. Then we go. Pedro gets out of the 7th, goes into the 8th, and he's clearly dragging. Jeter's on, like all that stuff.

And fucking Matsui comes up, who kills us. Just seeing his face, I was getting the fucking hives from it. Honestly, I was like, oh my God, that guy. And then it's like such an obvious bring in the lefty, Allen Embry. Our whole bullpen lights out that whole series. And Grady comes out and just leaves Pedro in. He pitches to Embry and

Posada. All of a sudden, it's 5-5. It was 17 years ago. I was so mad watching it. I was like, I can't believe he didn't put Embry in. Then it goes in. Then Rivera comes in and is just like a hero. Right. Of course. Then Wakefield comes in. I'll never blame Wake. Right. Of course. And then, and then Wakefield,

I'll never blame Wakefield because he was awesome. That whole season. Absolutely. Gives up a thing or two Aaron Boone. But one of the funniest things is it's a three man booth with Joe Buck, McCarver and Brett Boone. Who's there just one year. And he's there one year for a reason,

because he brings as little to the table as I think we've ever heard in a baseball game. The last four innings, he's just like, he's just not talking anymore. I don't know whether he was nervous for his brother. Yeah, I think he was. And Joe Buck's like, boy, uh, bread, uh, you know, the Yankees are going to have to, and he's like, yeah, this is some game. And then Aaron Boone hits the game winner. And you have one of the great scenes ever,

like this iconic Yankee team that has just pulled Big Joe out from the jaws of defeat yet again. The Red Sox now, their fans, it's just like, oh my God, we should just never watch baseball again. This is never happening. They're showing the guys dugout. And then they're cutting a fucking Brett Boone who's just staring at the field with this

dumb smile on his face. He's like, what does anyone care what Brett Boone's reaction to this is? Is he related to the guy at the Homer? They were probably hoping he'd be emotional and be a little tear in his eye. Oh, my brother, I can't believe it. Is he Yankee hero or whatever? But he just gave him nothing. Just nothing. So people wonder

why the Red sox fans were so insane and why we're still insane but like they do the brett they do the aaron boot interview at the end and he's and they were like well were you nervous they're down five two and he's like yeah you know jeter told us the ghosts were gonna show up at some point and i guess they did and i'm like this is why i was a fucking lunatic for the first 35 years of my life. You have Jeter on the other side who's killed us for his entire career. They're down 5-2 against the best pitcher of that era. Jeter's like, we're good. The ghosts have come out.

It's all good. And we all got it. I don't know what my life would have been like if we never won. I remember a Yankees World Series DVD, I think, from when they won in 99 and they played the Red Sox in 99 in the playoffs. And the Red Sox had Pedro and, you know, he was lights out at the height of his powers. And there was a there's a scene in the DVD where Bernie Williams is like, you know, talking. He's like, geez, the Red Sox are pretty good. You know, I forget if they don't know if they had Manny or Big Papi then, but whoever they had, you know, they were decent.

They were a good team. And they had Pedro. And he's like, oh, I'm a little nervous. And nervous and yogi barrow was like oh we've been beating these guys for 80 years what's the problem and bernie's like yeah he was right that's right absolutely so that was that was the mentality that we you know grew up with in our formative years and not so much anymore but that ever since 2004 but that was the mindset at the time it almost broke me i was not at game seven of 2003 but i was at the game in that series when the pedro zimmer game i've probably told this before i was at the pedro you know when when pedro threw down zimmer and you

know clemens and everything else and that was literally the closest i've ever been to like the roman coliseum i mean that that red side I was at Fenway for that game. It was game three. That game, you know, there was throwing at people and everything else and the Pedro Zimmer thing. They shut down beer sales very early. I remember that distinctly. And that crowd was like out for blood. I mean, I didn't, I was not wearing anything Yankees related cause I was smart enough to know like I could be lynched here.

So I knew better than that. But that crowd was like the, you could just feel it, like to feel it in the air of like how that crowd was like, we haven't won in 80 years. We fucking hate these Yankees. We hate them so much. And there was Clemens and Clemens and everything else. And like, there was violence in the air. Like I, that was the most uncomfortable I've ever felt at a sporting event in my life.

And then, you know, the next year magic happened and it's been a different world since then. But that was like really like that was rough. You know, House, I was thinking as I was watching this. I just don't think baseball ever mean anything to that level again. Like just the drama and the intensity, but also like the, what the crowd was like in the old stadium and things like that. But it makes sense because you think everybody that was there had grown up with baseball.

Right. And that generation really late starting in the mid nineties, do you have all these kids that these games are like that game ended the Aaron Boone game ended after midnight. Yeah. So you're basically losing out, you know, and this point's been made a million times, but everyone under 12 years old, odds are they didn't stay up past midnight and watch these games. Whereas our generation, I feel like we saw the big baseball games, right. That grew up on this stuff. And now I think you feel it with MLB now that we're in 2020. I mean, there might not be a season this year,

but to lose out on all those kids and then they became adults, why would they care about baseball the way we did? It's just now, it seems, a function of whichever fan bases are in the ALCS and NLCS and then the, and the world series, those communities are engaged. But like your point is, is the right one. I had 30 years, 25 to 30 years of experience with the red Sox and the Yankees in my life, even at all.

I was just an Orioles fan, right? Baseball was so prominent in my life for all that time. I had built up equity. I hated the Yankees and I hated the red socks. I especially hated the Yankees, um, in that, that era, um, because they, they cheated, uh, the Orioles, uh, in, in, uh, with the Jeffrey Meyer thing. Yeah, so I had it in, and it was easy to sort of root for the Red Sox, and I was invested. It wasn't akin to watching Houston and the Dodgers

a couple of years ago where it's a curiosity. I'll put on the World Series because it's the World Series. I'm not invested. I barely care who wins. I was a fan rooting against the Yankees, even as an Orioles guy back then. Right. Well, there's so many stars, too, where you had Rivera and Jeter and Clemens and Bernie Williams and just these guys that had been in big games for

year after year after year. On the Red Sox side, you had Manny, you had Poppy, you had Pedro. It's like watching an All-Star game just watch that year. And it just felt really significant. And look, baseball's had significant moments since. But there was so much equity just in that Red Sox-Yankees rivalry that had built from the late 90s on. Like when the Red Sox really started in 97, Pedro shows up, but the Yankees are winning World Series

and there's this big brother, little brother thing developing. And it all kind of crested in 03 and 04. But I just wonder, will baseball, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry will never have been anything like that again. I don't, do you think that, Jacko? I don't see it ever coming back like that.

No, no, it's never going to be like that because the Red don't, but do you think that Jacko, I don't see it ever coming back like that. No, no, it's never going to be like that because the Red Sox fan had, you know, 80 years of accumulated angst and everything else and like hatred. Yeah. And it's never going to be like that because the Red Sox have had a, you know, unprecedented for them,

certainly run of success. And the tables have kind of turned. I'll tell you why game seven in 2003, it has a special memory for me because I was living with my now wife, who was my then girlfriend at the time. And the Yankees were down five, nothing. And I had an absolute shit fit in the living room, kicking the coffee table and fucking swearing a blue streak and going ape shit because they're going to lose and the Red Sox are about to go to the World Series. And she got disgusted and she went to bed and she was like you're ridiculous and went to bed it was a big fight i watched the end of the game the yankees come back

win the game and i'm all happy go to bed try to make up yes the yankees won they're going to the world series she didn't give a shit the next day she gets up before me and she's all pissed off because i had bought like a 12 pack of like amstel light or something and i put it in the fridge and she couldn't see it in the fridge because it was in like a vegetable container of like Amstel light or something. And I put it in the fridge and she couldn't see it in the fridge because it was in like a vegetable container. And she got up the next day and she goes, I can't believe you drank 12 beers last night. And I opened up the drawer and it was completely full. All the beers. I'm like, they're right here. And she didn't know how to respond. It was the last time I won an argument. So I read the special memory for 2003. The last,

that's the last time I won an argument with her. I was like, no, here it is. Look, they're full. Probably because I had moved on to the Jameson, but she didn't know that. So it was really like, it was great memories. So the Yankees were in the World Series and I had like won an argument with my girlfriend. It was fantastic. It's so weird they lost to Florida.

It was such a weird outcome. I know, right. You had this incredible ALCS and then the NLCS was equally incredible. Exactly. And then it just kind of ends with this weird Florida versus the Yankees series. Right. And they had like

Florida classic Marlins. They brought in all these ringers and then they like dumped them all the next year. It was just like their previous World Series and that was the end of baseball in Miami. But yeah, it was ridiculous, because it was like 2001 with 9-11, and you know, I was at the game when Brocious hits the home run,

the Yankees are up 3-2, they go back to Arizona, you're like, the Yankees have this in the bag, and they lost that. And then 2003, you figure the way they came back against the Red Sox, they have this in the bag, and they coughed that away too. So, unfortunately. You know it was fun i really genuinely hated some of the yankees sure i i don't and i was younger at that point

younger more rational yeah no i like like really i hated joe tory joe tory was one of those where i was like fuck that guy you know his he cares about his players. He can fuck himself. Hated Clemens. Giambi was just offensive anytime he did something. You just go through the team. He just would work up, which I just think because we get older,

you don't think about sports the same way. Plus, now that the players are so much more in our lives with social media and stuff, they're more human beings beings we didn't think of them as human beings no three they were just these people that were in our way these villains these objects of hatred a ton tons right yeah but even seeing joe tory like pretending to be near tears after the boone home run even in 2003 it's like oh that guy the same thing like Coach K. I always felt like he had that Coach K side. It's like, oh, shut up.

For a little bit. Yeah. All right. Anything else or should we go? I think we're good. All right. House. Yes.

Say hi to the Argentinians. Let us know how it goes with them when Maynard's retirement ceremony. We're going to have a nice roasted carne asada. We're going to do a giant fire pit with beef, try and make sure everybody's well-fed through the stretch run here. When are you going to invite him on the House of Carbs pantry party

or whatever it's called on House of Carbs? When are you going to invite Jack up? Oh, I mean, we have to keep it going. We've done two episodes. There's a lot of people to tap. I love going into people's kitchens. Chris Ryan has the most incredible liquor cabinet. Have you seen this thing?

No. Well, you might have to watch it. We're going to put up some video of this stuff. Unbelievable. Explains a lot. Explains a lot about that Chris Ryan character. Giacco, this is a pleasure as always. I hope your recording equipment works. I hope this

was a success. I will talk to you guys soon. See you, buddy. See ya. Alright, thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget about ZipRecruiter.com slash work together. Thanks to Showtime and Billions.

The hit Showtime series, it's back Sunday night, May 3rd, 9pm only on Showtime and Billions, the hit Showtime series. It's back Sunday night, May 3rd, 9 p.m. Only on Showtime. And then you can go right to the Recapables feed that we have and listen to Behind the Billions with Brian Koppelman and David Levine. Rasella and I will be back on Sunday night doing our usual thing. I'm sure we'll do another episode of MJ's Rewatchables. I'm positive my auto will be working.

I apologize. Hope you're staying safe out there. Hope you're listening to the doctors and the experts and hope everything is good on your end. We'll see you on Sunday night. I don't have feelings within on the wayside

on the wayside I don't have feelings