The Kevin Sheehan Show - Smile

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

Kevin opened with an exciting Facebook friend request and Thom opened with SMILE chalked out on a nearby sidewalk. They talked about the current states of play for the NBA and MLB. They also discussed the McGwire-Sosa 30 For 30 and Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy's "OAN" tee-shirt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You want it. You need it. It's what everyone's talking about. The Kevin Sheehan Show. Now here's Kevin. You're listening to The Sports Fix. A Sports Fix Tuesday, Tommy by phone. I'm in studio. Aaron continues to work from home. Sorry about yesterday. Intended to do a show. Had a personal matter. Had to take care of. Back today with Tommy by my side, figuratively. As we approach another day with a lot of, lot of news and stories and opinion, but not many sports results to talk about. Nope. And maybe not for a long time. I want to start off by mentioning the following to you. I got a text from a friend of mine who said, are you following this whole thing on Twitter? And it was, I'm not even going to get into what the issue was, because it's actually completely immaterial to this.

And I said, no, I'm not. I actually really, I've been on Twitter for one reason for a while now, and that is to promote show stuff. Right. And I have not, and I went back just to make sure that I was right about that, because I'm like, I don't think I have responded. I have not been on Twitter. You know, I don't do a lot of reading notifications anyway. I do that occasionally, and I'll respond to like four or five that I see real quickly to interact with those that would like to interact with me. But over the last, you know, three weeks, two weeks or I just have felt like, and I mentioned this on the podcast, I think on Friday, when I said, I'm just not going to get into a Twitter battle with anybody.

I have a three-hour radio show and I do a daily podcast. and twice a week I do it with you. And so that just gives me a longer form medium to talk about what I want to talk about, the issues that are of interest to us, and put it in context and put the right tone to it and use the correct number of words and not be limited to, you know, what's going on on Twitter and on social media in particular, which to me a couple of weeks ago just seemed like an insane asylum.

And I just thought it was too much of a time. So I have literally not been engaged on social media for a while now until, Tommy, until last night when I got a Facebook friend request. I've been on Facebook in forever. But I got a Facebook friend request. You know how they pop up in your email. Somebody, you know, and I appreciate, and hopefully most of you know that I'm just not active on Facebook. I'm not. And in recent weeks, I haven't really been active on Twitter other than to tweet out an upcoming segment or a guest or to retweet an hour on the show that I did or to tell you here's something interesting from the podcast.

It's been all show promotional stuff. Last night I noticed on, you know, I get them through email, Facebook friend requests that I got a Facebook friend request. from Michael Graham. And I'm like, I wonder if that's the Georgetown Michael Graham. And it is. It's the Georgetown Michael Graham. I don't know why that made me smile and happy. But because, I mean, I'm sure you have gotten a lot of friend requests

or a lot of people that you find interesting have followed you on Twitter over the years. But I don't know why, like, I'm reading through all of these Facebook friend requests. and usually what I'll do is like once every couple months I'll go on there and just confirm all the friends. Because I don't want people to think that I'm, they should know that I'm not active on Facebook, which is why they don't get an immediate confirmation of it. But I don't know why that made me smile and made me pleased, but I just thought, wow, a Georgetown guy in the height of the 80s, a national champion, by the way, if I recall, too, a two-time lottery winner.

Right? Do you remember those stories about Michael Graham? I don't know. I remember he was a lottery winner, yeah. I think he won big prizes in the lottery two different times. I think that's true. But anyway, I will, when I get on Facebook next time, Michael, lefty, just imposing figure. As much as I couldn't stand Georgetown because I was a Maryland fan, I've mentioned this many times in the past. I loved the way they played, and I loved the way Coach Thompson coached them.

I always loved that style of play. But anyway, I've not – for those of you wondering why I haven't responded on Twitter, if you are wondering, you're probably not. I just haven't been on it, really, and I'm very happy that Michael Graham asked me to be his friend on Facebook. Well, here's the deal. I've gotten to know Michael a little bit over the years. Really? Yes, he's been a friend of mine on Facebook.

Well, then that's why he friended me, I'm sure. No, I think he used to listen to our show. Okay. And he really liked it. And I actually had him as a guest on my podcast, Cigars and Curveballs for an episode. Interesting. He'd be a great guest, you know, for your show. Oh, was he good on the podcast that you did?

Yes. Really? Yes. I'm writing that down right now. Yeah, and all you got to do is accept him on Facebook. and send him a Facebook message. Right. About coming on the show.

I can do that. I can do that, or I can get his number from CJ and call him or text him. He's done some podcast work on his own and things like that. So, no, he's very good. And I'm not saying we're good friends, but I know him a little, and I really like interacting with him. Here's a story real quickly. in 2013 he won a $1 million prize on Powerball through the D.C. lottery.

I believe, now, I'd have to find this. I think he won another big prize. I remember talking about that at some point, that it was his second big lottery result. But I could be wrong. Former George House. This $1 million price keeps popping up. I don't see the second one, but maybe it happened. For your own product, you should be more active on Facebook with your Facebook page.

Yeah, I know. I know you've suggested that to me many times. Well, I'm not the only one who suggested it. I mean, The Washington Post has tried to drill it into their reporters about the importance of Facebook. Right. You know, so it's not just little old me doing it. I'm just getting sick of social media. Is that an age thing or not?

I don't, I find it so, I find that you can just be so easily misinterpreted, and it then becomes a time suck as you try to explain in 280 characters or 280 characters times three different, you know, responses on Twitter, you know, rather than, you know, I much prefer taking calls as you. you know. Then you have a conversation. I don't feel like social media that there's a real conversation there. No, there's not, but I have to admit, I enjoy the fight sometimes. No, I know that. I know you enjoy it. I get a kick out of the fight sometimes. I would rather be doing something else. Okay. I would just seriously, because I recall many sports arguments with a couple of different people over the years where I'd be sitting there and be like an hour later, and I would look at it, and I'd be like, I've responded six times, and he's responded seven, and he still doesn't get what I'm trying to say, and maybe it's that I'm not getting what he's trying to say.

And I'd be like, I just wasted 45 minutes to an hour. I could have been doing something else. Well, what you see, what you've got to do is you have to strike the knockout blow early. so they don't feel compelled to basically come back. Well, I've seen some of your knockout punches, and some of them are really good, and some of them, I believe you believe are knockout punches and in your own mind, and then you just stop and you move on to the next one, because you're always going to believe that your response is a knockout blow.

Not always. Not always. I posted something very nice on Twitter. Twitter and Facebook and Instagram about a half hour ago. What did you post? I was on my daily walk yesterday afternoon, and somebody had written in sidewalk shock on the sidewalk, the big letters, you know, the words smile in big letters. So I took a picture. Is that an acronym for something that we should know about?

I posted it on Twitter, and I said, what is this? Propaganda. See, that's funny. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty funny. What the hell? What are you guys doing? Keep this propaganda off my sidewalk.

If you're going to do it, print it out and post it, and then the rain will wash it away. Well, I guess rain would wash the chalk away, too. I don't know. Smile. You know what? There should be more smiling going on, but these are very serious times, too. So you don't want to smile flippantly. You know, let's get into interpreting smiles, because there are different kinds of smiles.

But here's the other thing. And I'm not saying that you're in a different place, but you are, okay? I've got nothing to lose, you know. They can, they can hang, they can stop me to the ground, and it won't matter. What do I care? Well, I know. You've got nothing to lose. And I mean, I usually don't think in those terms, but I would be lying if I said that the last few weeks have been delicate. You know, I think that the, I think we're living through a very interesting time. You've, you know, we've had this conversation, so we won't go into it in great detail today. But alternative views aren't, you know, being received very well by those. those that are really adamant that their position is 100% right, you know, that the entire mission statement is right.

Oh, people are getting fired left and right for that. People get fired left and right. I'd prefer not to get fired. Well, you see, I'm not at that state. I understand. I'm at the finish line, and there's nothing they can do to me. Yeah. So have added, everybody.

Anyway, I'm really excited that Michael Graham friended me, or requested that he be my friend on Facebook. but now my feeling is after you said that you've got a relationship with him, is that he did it because he's a fan of yours. And oh, by the way, I just come along for the ride. And so he's like, yeah, this Sheehan guy that's always on with Laverro on this podcast. That's the radio show I used to listen to. Love Laverro.

I would have thought you would have gotten over that by now. Because it happens so much. You know what I just want you to smile today. I want you to smile. I want you to be happy. I don't want it to be, you know, an embarrassed smile. I'm going to the list of smiles right now. You want to hear the list of smiles, according to healthline.com.

There are 10 types of smiles. There is the reward smile. The reward smiles like a parent with a kid when they do something right, smiling, saying, that's what I'm talking, or with your pet. I've been doing that a lot with my puppy. The reward smile and my tone of being approving. There's the affirmative smile. which to me is somewhat the same as the reward smile.

There's the dominant smile. Like, hey, yeah, I got it to figure out. There's the lying smile. That's a deceitful smile, Tommy. There's the wistful smile. There's the polite smile, which I do to you a lot. There's a lot of polite smiling in your direction and a lot of things you say. There's the flirtatious smile.

I haven't seen one of those in years. There's the embarrassed smile. There's the Pan Am smile. The smile gets its name from the Pan Am flight attendants who are required to keep smiling, even when customers in circumstances made them want to throw peanut packets across the cabin. Hey, the plane's going down, but keep smiling. You know, that's one thing I do when I'm on a plane. Don't you do the same thing?

When there's some turbulence or it's a little bit shaky, don't you immediately? You look at the flight attendants and see their reaction? I think if it's really bad, I do for sort of confirmation that all's going to be right. I can't remember the last time I did that. Yes, but I mean, I do. I do. I look at them, and if I don't sense any panic in their faith or any concern, then I say, well, we're fine. Yeah, until, like, then all of a sudden the phone rings, and one of the flight attendants picks up the phone,

and then there's a concerned look, and then you just close your eyes. Oh, God, yeah. What's the worst flight experience you've ever had? I've never had a real bad one. I've never, like, dropped, like, 1,000 feet in the air, like some people have. I've had some shaky flight. I remember flying from Boston to New York during the playoffs. I think it was in 2004.

And that's a short flight from Logan to LaGuardia. and there were barf bags all over the place. I mean, it was so shaky and so windy, and that might have been the worst one. Also, I remember taking off from Dallas once during a thunderstorm and just thinking, this is absolutely nuts. What are we doing here? And that was gripping the arm of the chair, really.

Those are the only two. I've had very easy flight situations. I've never seen a fight on a plane. I watch all these videos of airplane fights. I've never seen anything close to one. Yeah, I think everybody, if you've flown enough, has been on a real rocky, turbulent flight,

you know, that can be unnerving, definitely. I had a true, terrifying experience on a flight. This was 25 years ago, every bit of it, certainly 20 years ago. 20 years ago at this point would be 2000. It was somewhere in the mid to late 90s, more likely than not. And I was on a flight from Portland, Oregon home, but it was going through Chicago. United. I think I told you that there was a stretch there in the mid-90s where I was in Portland, Oregon a lot.

And I actually liked Portland, Oregon. And I loved Seattle, too. I loved the Pacific Northwest. I don't know that I would want to live in Seattle these days. But anyway, I was flying from Portland back home through Chicago. And on the Portland to Chicago stretch, there was an alarming, you know, couple of minutes, like more than a couple of minutes. It was probably, you know, five to ten minutes.

The flight immediately dropped several thousand feet. The oxygen masks came down. the flight attendants were white as ghosts. They were frightened by the incident. And, you know, for a few minutes, I thought this is it. I definitely thought this was it. You know, the first thing is you get the oxygen mask on. I think it's the only time I've ever had the oxygen masks drop during a flight

was this particular flight. And Tommy, for like a 10, 10, 15 year period, I was flying close to 100,000 miles a year on United. Like I had Red Carpet Club treatment, the whole thing, you know, top member on United in particular. And U.S. Air pretty close to it as well. It was not for radio. It was for a different business. But anyway, it was terrifying.

And the plane was basically going nose down. Oh, my God. They had lost, you know, basically the ability to keep the cabin pressurized correctly, so they had to get to an altitude that was safer. Now, after about five minutes, you could see that the flight attendants were calm, and they said, we're going to be okay. And you heard from a flight attendant saying, the pilot will explain, but everything's fine.

But that was it. Never another word. The flight landed. people got off the flight. The cabin, the cockpit doors were shut. They never opened up. None of the pilots came out. They never got onto the speaker to tell us what had happened. And I just, and I remember asking the flight attendant, so what was it? She said, we needed to get, the cabin became depressurized, I guess. We lost pressure in the cabin and we needed to get down to, you know, from third. 37,000 feet to 20,000 feet or whatever it was, or to 15,000 feet. But that was terrifying for every bit of like five minutes minimum. And maybe it was longer than that. But I remember trying to call the airline to say what happened on the flight I was in.

There was no explanation from the pilot. There was no apology. There was nothing. I wasn't looking for an apology. I was just looking for like a real explanation. and the doors of the cockpit never opened up. They didn't want to talk to anybody about what happened. That was by far in a way the most terrifying incident for me on a flight

because there was an unknown there for too long. And then on another flight, I'll never forget flying into National. And it was, you know, runway 13, I think it is. It's the one that wraps around, you know, the Kennedy Center and what used to be the USA Today building. it's one of the more beautiful landings at any airport in the country, really, where you see D.C. If you come from the south, you don't see all the monuments. You don't see the beauty as much of Washington.

But we landed and immediately went right back up into the air. Landed and then immediately took off again. Yeah, I think a lot of people have... Yeah, there was clearly a plane in the path or was approaching the path, and they had to get the plane back in the air or there would have been a disease. disaster on the ground. Yeah, I did have one of those, but I never had anything as bad as what you described. Yeah, that was, that was wild. I do remember thinking, Jesus, do I want to get back onto another plane to get home? Like, I wish it had happened to Chicago to D.C., but I had to get

right back onto another plane and fly home after that. I think I did the mathematical odds in my mind of, okay, this happened, but it hasn't happened in the previous, you know, 2,000 flights that I've been on. So I got another 2,000 flights before it happens again. You have to admit, there's nothing like being the top dog in the rewards program of an airline. Is it great? Oh, yeah. For several years, I was reaching those numbers. I was traveling four to five days a week for about eight, nine, 10 years, and I had status on Delta, U.S. Air, and United. Those were the three that I think I flew more than anything else. It's funny in recent years, I fly a lot of Southwest.

Yeah, so do I now, too. When I was covering baseball, I was top of the line, U.S. Air. Yeah, I bet. And, you know, I'm flying first class all the time. You know, the times that they wouldn't have first class available, I'd be like, like crushed. No, especially on a long flight. Coach, yeah.

But usually there was a first class available. And I took between hotel points and airline points. Oh, vacations. Oh, yeah, we did the same thing. Yeah. To Spain, airfare all paid for four and five days in a five-star hotel in Barcelona, all with points. Yeah, well, you know, not every company would allow you to keep those points, you know,

but mine did, and it sounds like yours did, and we did a lot of vacations as well, off of, you know, points for not only airlines, but, you know, when you're traveling and staying in hotels, credit cards, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, it was, I'm so glad I don't, and haven't had that lifestyle in a long time. One of the reasons I ended up getting out of that and trying to get into broadcasting 16, 17 years ago, whatever it was, is I, you know, I had young children and I didn't want to be on the road three, four, five days a week. I hated that. I got to the point where I hated it, hated it, especially. Well, it's so much more stressful now than it was then.

Oh, yeah, no doubt. Yeah. Yeah, because for, you know, let's just say if I had an 8 a.m. from Reagan, which was National Airport then, I could leave my house at 715 and be on the flight, easily. You know, because Nationals basically 15 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, 25 with traffic, but really 15 to 20 without it. And I would have time to park and get to the gate without, with plenty of time. And now...

And I can remember the days where... National, by the way, the most... convenient airport in town by far. I was in Columbia, so I used to fly in and out of BWI. Right. And the days where you'd get on a flight, and there'd be 30 people on the flight, you rarely, I rarely had a full flight. That's true, too.

I remember that. Yes. You know, now they're all full. Well, not now. Yeah. Before the pandemic, yes. Right. You're right about that.

The glory days of. The glory days of not having to worry about what somebody was carrying onto a plane. And I can only imagine what was probably on a plane back then. But yeah, it was so easy. And, you know, D.C. is served, really, by three airports, Dulles, BWI, and Reagan National. You know, not every city has three, you know, big airports. Obviously, it's because Baltimore and Washington are so close to one another. but Reagan has always been one of the most convenient in-and-out airports in the country.

My experience. It's the easiest to get in, park, get to your gate. Now, since 2001, you know, there can be long security lines, but it just, from car to gate was always so easy. It is. I always thought BWI was, too. BWI is pretty easy. Dulles was always the worst until their recent.

you know, shuttle and tram and whatever upgrades. All right, let me read real quickly something about Roman, and then we'll get to a couple of sports slash social topics, I guess, for the day. If you were to guess on average how many days people in the U.S. have to wait to see a doctor, what would you say? A week maybe, actually on average, people have to wait nearly a month, 29 days on average. If you're dealing with a condition like erectile dysfunction,

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is 100%. Last night on this show that ESPN did called Sports Returns or something like that, I didn't watch it, return of sports, I think it was. They had a bunch of different people on. Goodell was on. Manford was on. Adam Silver was on. Manford said he's not confident that there's going to be a 2020 baseball season. Meantime with the NBA, while Adam Silver believes that a lot of these issues that were sort of initiated by Kyrie Irving over the weekend where Kyrie Irving led a group of people saying, you know, right now is not the right time for us to be playing basketball. There are too many issues of importance and we want to be a part of that. You know, he said, essentially, I'm paraphrasing here, you know, this is not about, you know, athletes and entertainers during this

period of time. This is about, you know, being focused on real issues. like racial injustice, etc. Then you had, so you had the baseball situation, you had the Kyrie Irving-led group in the NBA threatening that, and then in the NFL, a bunch of cowboys tested positive for coronavirus, a bunch of Texans tested positive for coronavirus. Zeke Elliott tested positive for coronavirus. Apparently he's doing well, according to his agent.

And so, you know, the question comes up again, not that it's new, and that is, are we going to get live sports, professional sports, you know, the sports that can't socially distance. Baseball can't socially distance, really. Basketball and football definitely can't. Are we going to get these sports or not? What do you say? What's your reaction to all of this from over the weekend?

Well, you know, I've been very skeptical of how they're going to pull this off all along. I mean, I've said that they can argue about money and logistics all they want, but I just think just as big as issue is how are they going to implement health and safety standards realistically and still be able to compete in these games. I don't understand how they're going to do it. I mean, that's just one of the reasons. You know, it's interesting. Kyrie Irvin, I'm sure, you know, I'm not questioning his sincerity about so many issues.

I'm sure that there's a lot of athletes right now who are thinking this might be. not be a good time to start playing games, given the severity of the protests that are going on in the country. But I'll bet you there's some athletes that are sitting there thinking some NBA players that are sitting there thinking three months locked in Disney World, where are my road friends? Yeah, there's no doubt about that. This is a big... Where are my road friends?

You know what I mean by road friends. Of course. Of course, there are road friends in every city they go to. Yes, yes. And they're very friendly. And many of them very pleasant to look at. But many, and many mouths is going to get awfully tired. But in the world they're living in right now, there are no road friends.

Yes, that's true. So they're not looking to go to. That's true. I mean, I wonder that that is a whole other dynamic. I don't think anyone has written about is the certain industries that have been impacted. Yes. Yes. Yeah, because Tommy, I saw last week or the week before when Vegas reopened, all these people, no masks, you know, casinos going crazy, thriving. And then I thought about the other part of Vegas. What's going on at some of those favorite places?

You know, because there's not a lot of social distancing typically at the rhino. No, no, there's not. So, yeah. I've been very skeptical all along of the reality of pulling this off. I've said that they've got to try. They have to figure out a way to try. But until they do it, they don't know if it'll work. And I just don't think it's going to work.

This is why I say all the sports that start will not finish their season. Yeah, I think it's important to note that, you know, what you've been claiming and what you've been, you know, thinking will be the issue isn't really what's being reported here. It's a little bit a part of it. I'm not suggesting that it's been completely excluded, which is the fear of COVID-19 and whether or not these leagues have properly accounted for it from a safety standpoint. In baseball, it's primarily about the economics. In basketball, it appears to be that this group led by Kyrie Irving is feels like it would be too trivial to play NBA basketball while, you know, so many are protesting

for something so much more serious. In football, we don't even know where they are right now. Right. So we're so far away from that right now. But I do agree with you, and I've said this before on the podcast, that I really think that the whole notion that some of the reality of being essentially quarantined in one city for like a minimum of two months and maybe as many as four months just started to hit them as they got closer in the NBA to a return. And it's like, what? You mean like for a team like Washington, we probably won't make the playoffs, but I got to go there for two weeks of training and then another two weeks of the game and then another two weeks

before I, you know, can leave? All of a sudden, I've been there for 35 days in one place. Like, What am I going to do? And the real life of, you know, it's one thing for me to go on a West Coast swing for 10 days. It's quite another to be away from my young family, maybe, a wife and young kids for some of these players, for a minimum of a month, if not three to four months. And not just be away from them, them being away from you during the virus. Right. They're probably all a little bit more scared, whether they're,

should be or not. I believe that baseball is going to play. I don't, you know, Rob Manfred, Tommy, you could tell me whether or not you think he's doing a good job or a bad job during all this. He's a terrible commissioner. There is too much, I want you to elaborate on that in a moment. There is too much money at stake in both of these situations for the NBA not to resume and for Major League Baseball, not too.

start. I just think it will get done. It may be that they, you know, they play 48 games or 50 games and get to a postseason where the money is ridiculous, you know, where the revenue is, you know, ridiculous. But I do think that the NBA is going to restart and finish. Now, I don't know if finish because of the, you know, the unpredictability of COVID-19 and how that will play out. No one can predict that right now. But I, despite what Manford said, I would, wager heavily that baseball has a season that gets to a postseason, or has the intention of getting to a postseason? Why is he such a terrible commissioner? Well, one thing, he hasn't, I mean, look, I mean, he took over for Bud Seelig, and Bud Seleick,

I think was a better commissioner of people giving credit for, but he came across as not very dynamic, not a very strong leader, and Rob Manfred, it's a lawyer who's cut from pretty much the same mold. You know, he was a baseball lawyer for all these years, and he acts like a lawyer. And look, the commissioner works for the owners, you know, but the commissioner is also supposed to be the leader of the industry in terms of the public faith that people can believe in. And, you know, I mean, Adam Silver, I think Adam Silver is the prototype right now for. a commissioner that I think most people have confidence in faith in, you know, and he's not a particularly dynamic-looking person, but he's been very decisive, and I think he's been intelligent.

Goodell has been a disaster except for the owner who he protects them and they make money. And Manfred, I just think, is overmatched. Now, the union has got the same problem. Tony Clark. a former baseball player overmatch. I mean, he shouldn't be in the job. I had one general manager tell me once that of all the players that he had, the guy he would have played for him, the guy he would have least expected to run the union

would be Tony Clark. So, I mean, you've got a situation where you've got poor leadership on both sides. The latest, you know, thoughts from Manfred said that basically the Players Association ended good faith negotiations. So he's putting it on the players. The players are responded with, just tell us when and where and we'll be there. Now, there isn't an agreement yet with the union on the health and safety protocols. I really wonder whether or not they can get to an agreement on this stuff. This is the thing that I've mentioned to you.

I don't know how you can put certain policies in place when you don't know what the guidelines are going to be when you get there. This is the problem. Who's baseball to say this is how it will be handled if we have more than three people test positive? This is how it will be handled. if there is an outbreak. This is, you know, they don't, like,

our health people don't even know what the answers to those questions are right now. I mean, this is why, I mean, people say it's about the money. Well, there's no point in negotiating to. But there's no point in negotiating the second part until you get past the first part. Well, what is your first part, the health? Well, the first part is the money.

Oh, yeah. Once you say, okay, we're going to all, agree to play. Now, how are we going to do it? And that, I think, is going to be more challenging than the money. But there has to be some common sense applied here. Like if you're the Players Association and you're the owners saying, look, we want to put certain things in here. We're going to put some things down like the amount of testing that's going to be available, how we're going to test, what the requirements from players are going to be. We have to test everybody. We can't let people knowingly go out, you know, and play a game with, you know, a hundred, you know, a

101 temperature and testing positive for COVID-19. We can't allow that to happen so we can plan for testing, but we can't plan for, you know, an outbreak or a serious sickness or, you know, we don't know what the guidelines will be at that point. For all we know, old Dr. Fauci might say at the end of July, hey, if you test positive, however, you're asymptomatic, you can go wherever you want to go. and do whatever you want to do. Or, you know, for all we know, it might be if you test positive,

but you don't have these underlying conditions or your temperature doesn't reach this, who knows what it's going to be? So it's hard to really put anything into an agreement, into a negotiation, when you don't know where to start from. And, I mean, the latest projections are not encouraging. No, they're not. So, like, I mean, I think September, October, October, November, October, November, particularly, I think are going to be really rough months.

And all these sports are going to be playing supposedly in October and November. You know, one of the things, just as a complete digression, but it's associated, colleges that have committed to opening up in the fall, which my youngest son, who goes to Penn State, he got the notice yesterday or the day before, that Penn State would be open in the fall for students to be back physically on campus and to take classes. There seems to be a feeling that there will be a next step to this, which will be when they go home for fall break or Thanksgiving break, that the rest of the semester after that point will be done online.

Because of the expectation of changing weather could mean, you know, an increase in cases. So, you know, I never understood why they make kids come back after the Thanksgiving break. I mean, they're only usually back for like two weeks. A week or two, yeah. Yeah, two to three weeks, depending on Thanksgiving is. So I never quite understood why they do that in the first place. You know, I teach at Georgetown. I don't know if I'm going to be doing it online yet or actually being asked to go in to classrooms this fall.

I haven't heard yet. Georgetown hasn't made the decision. Yeah, I don't know. No. You know, back to the NBA here for a moment. I've listened here over the last 24 hours or certainly read the different opinions. You know, Kyrie Irving apparently had 80 people on this initial call on Friday, and then yesterday had half that many sort of siding with his position,

which is basketball's trivial compared to the important. stuff. It's the important stuff that we need to be focused on as, you know, primarily African-American men in a majority African-American business, the NBA. But the opposing view is that this is exactly the platform that these players can use to bring even more attention, which makes a lot of sense to me. You know, playing the games for the purposes of creating a diversion during these very serious times can be viewed cynically, if you want. and I understand that. You know, oh, the people just need their diversion from all these, you know, issues of social change

and trying to change racial, you know, create more racial equality, et cetera. But at the same time, if the goal is to bring more attention to this issue, to bring more people, you know, under the tent, so to speak, Well, playing games and having that forum and having that platform would be the right way to do it, I would think. I can see both sides. I think that it does offer them a platform to be able to get their message out, although I got in trouble for actually suggesting that athletes might want to talk to reporters when they have a chance to about this issue.

Who am I to say when they should be able to talk to reporters? But I understand, too. Yeah. I understand, too, that the feeling right now of, you know, playing basketball when there's seemingly lives at stake, I understand the feeling. But I agree with you. I think that if it were me, I feel like I can do more from the pulpit of playing than from being on the sideline. And let's face it, and other people have said this, too. This is no surprise.

If LeBron says they're playing, they're playing. See, there's another part of this, too. And this is where, you know, they have a responsibility. They have a commitment that they haven't finished yet for a lot of reasons. There is a lot of lives and livelihoods at stake with completing this season. It's not just the players and the owners that benefit from a return to the NBA. there are thousands of employees, you know, with NBA teams, within the league, within businesses that support the NBA, sponsors that support the NBA. Obviously, you don't have live, you know, arena employees.

But all of these sports create, you know, an incredible number of jobs that go far beyond the highest paying jobs. And those people have been out of work. They've either been furloughed or they've been laid off completely. and you have, it would be one thing to think selfishly, which is, you know, there's a lot at stake here. If you don't, you know, if you're unable to generate that billion dollars plus in revenue because you don't go back and play, you know, that's a lot of revenue loss. That puts a lot of the league and maybe some of the teams into a very difficult financial position. I'll never forget this, Tommy. and I mentioned this, I think, on the radio show last week.

When you and I had Ted Leonces on, it's 10 years ago now. It's a different NBA, I understand that, or it's eight years ago, whatever it was. It's a different NBA. But I remember him saying specifically that a lot of NBA teams don't make money. You know, they have to get to the playoffs and have a couple of home games just to threaten the break-even mark. Now, the league's different now, but still,

there are a lot of teams that aren't year-in-year-out wildly profitable. You know, it would be one thing to acknowledge that the loss of $1.3 billion or whatever it is in NBA revenue is money out of the players' pockets. And Kyrie Irving can say there are more important things. But lots of that money goes to a lot of people that don't make anywhere near that amount of money and have been out of work for several months. And so there's that piece of it too. There is the, you know, it's better for everybody in this country, regardless of your beliefs, and most of us believe on the big issues, that we get this country back to a better place economically and get more people back to work.

And the NBA going back to play, even if it's imperfect, is going to be better for the economy than it not playing. And, again, I think what goes hand in hand with that is the platform they have. What happens if they can't finish the season? And what happens? Well, if they don't make an attempt to finish the season and you leave that much money on the table, I don't know what happens. It's not good.

You know, the NFL can absorb that kind of a loss. You know, there aren't a lot of sports leagues. I mean, the XFL missed two weeks, and they were out of business with a guy that was willing to throw a half billion dollars at it. You know, to think that every team and every owner on a pure profit and loss basis is flushed with cash because of these leagues. Isn't necessarily true. These are very expensive sports to run.

There are thin margins of profit with a lot of these teams. I wrote a column a couple of weeks ago pointing out that what you're going to start seeing is a lot of minority ownership being brought in to something. some of these teams, teams that are going to look for cash and infusion of cash and are going to start selling minority ownership to outside investors. One of the things Ted did that was smart was a few years back. He sold 20% of monumental sports to Steve Jobs' widow. Lorraine Powell Jobs, I think that's her name.

Yeah. And that brought in $500 million to monumental sports. you're going to see a lot more teams do that because they're going to need an infusion of cash. Well, I don't know if they're going to need an infusion of cash or not. It would be really nice if these teams, hopefully they don't have to raise money. You want the health of these sports leagues to continue. But if they do have to raise capital to offset the loss of a lost season, it would be great to have more minority investors and more minority owners

in these sports leagues. I think everybody would be in favor of that. Now, what would be interesting... But I don't mean minority. I mean, minority. Smaller investors. Oh, you were talking about actual stake, you know, equity hold. Yeah. I thought you're talking about... I think these teams are going to have to.

A lot of these teams, particularly the NBA, and maybe baseball, are going to have to open up their shares to outside investors to get some money. I don't know what the economics are, and every team probably different, you know, in terms of their financial situation. But if a team does have to raise capital to offset a loss, what would be really interesting is to see how that that team is valued after not playing a season. I know the Spurs have brought in, sold a share to a minority investor with the latest team. Yeah. I would expect a year of not making a billion plus dollars, if that's the way it plays out, will impact valuations, which means it'll be a better time to be an investor,

as long as they're going to continue to play. I mean, you know, getting involved in these sports right now, there's some risk to it. I'm not suggesting sports are going to end, but the revenue generation from these sports could change. that whole structure could change. I mean, what if you go two years without spectators? What if the games aren't as enjoyable and the TV ratings drop? And therefore, the networks have to pay less. There's a lot that, you know, we're going to figure out here that is, you know, put it this way.

If you're raising money for an NBA team right now in that prospectus, the risk section where you list the risks associated with the business is about. 15 pages longer today than it was five months ago. Yes, it is. On the other hand, these are small clubs, and everybody, you know, not many people get a chance to join up with them. And for a lot of guys, a minority ownership is open to the door for them to maybe purchase a full ownership of another team in the league down the line. I think David, who's the guy who bought the Panthers from Jerry Richardson?

Yeah, yeah, I know. I know you're talking about. Well, he was a minority investor in the Steelers. Right. You know, so this opens the door a lot of, so even though there's still a lot of risk, people with money, once the door opens to this private clubs for them to get in, I think they're still going to jump through it. In 2017, I just found this article, 14 NBA teams lost money in 2017.

One of those was the Wizards. So that's 14 of what? 30 teams lost money three years ago. Now, does that mean that a team is going to file bankruptcy or a team's going to go out of business? No, because the ownership groups, you know, like you said, it's a small club and it's a small club of very wealthy guys that are willing to write the check to offset the losses to keep the team. And by the way, the valuations of those teams have been going up, even though, you know, on an annual basis, they might be losing money. I know that the two don't seem, they seem at odds with each other, but that's just the way it works, because basically, you know, your franchise is worth what someone's willing to pay for it.

And, you know, it's a small club, like Tommy said. But here's where I'd like to know what the current situation is. When Adam Silver and the 30 owners are talking about giving up potentially or having to answer a Kyrie Irving with 39 other players about not playing, are they able to sit down and say, do you know that three years ago we could offset the small losses that 14 teams had? But now all 30 teams are going to have a loss and 14 of them are going to have major losses and now we may be at risk at losing to losing a few teams in the process. I wonder if that's a possibility.

I'll bet it's a fear. I'll bet it's disgust. But whether or not they could get that across to players who always believe that they're being lied to, who always believe that these billionaire owners are nowhere near close to losing their teams, I'll tell you what they will be close to. they'll be close to basically tearing up the current CBA and paying the players a lot less for the next few years until they get back to some level of footing that they had previous to this period.

That whole thing would be really interesting. I don't know where, if anybody's written in great detail. I was searching it here as you were talking to see whether or not teams could potentially be in trouble of going out of business if players don't go back and play. Because I believe the TV money, you know, for the regular season and the playoffs, like there's a basically like a billion dollars plus or minus a couple hundred thousand is at stake here. A couple hundred million, excuse me, is at stake here?

Well, you know, I mean, and this may go, this may be a difficult pill for management to swallow, but the one way to gain the trust of the players, that you are hurting, if you are hurting, is to open up your books. Yeah. You know? Yeah. What typically happens when you ask people to open up their books is that they can be complete, you have to sit down almost in a classroom and explain.

Look, here's this business. This other stuff is separate businesses that I have that contribute to my wealth. But this business as a standalone needs this much in revenue to offset this much in cost to create a profit margin that we're comfortable with. Or even just a break-even. Three years ago, 14 teams willing to move forward losing money. I always think that that I'm not saying that that's why they aren't, you know, opening up their books. But I think even when they do, it's tough to explain. I'm reading something right here that was...

Oh, that's on the union to then explain it. Yeah. If the NBA season is canceled, the ticket revenue alone is a $500 million loss. Now... Fred over how many teams? Over 30 teams. But by the way, ticket revenue is going to be lost anyway. That money is going to be lost, which makes the TV revenue

that they're still owed so much more critical. They've got to get that TV money because they're not getting the gate receipts. And the NBA player has already been paid the significant majority of their 2019, 2020 salary because they've played 84 or 85 games. Yes. We've been spending time here talking about it.

It would be great to really know what the true economics of the NBA are. I can just tell you, I think, with a high level of confidence, that over a billion dollars will be lost if the NBA doesn't come back, a lot of people whose jobs have already been furloughed or lost will never get them back. And there will be at least a few teams in true dire trouble. That's my guess, to me, an educated guess as to what the fallout. I think that's a reasonable, I think that's a reasonable guess. And at the same time, Kyrie Irving and the 39 other. players, which by the way includes some WNBA players. And again, I read this morning that the

conference call that he initiated on Friday was close to 100 participants and the one that happened yesterday was closer to 40 participants. What happened to the rest of them? Did they fall off the end of the earth? Maybe they understood what we've talked about is the economic damage that would come from it. And oh, by the way, this is a pretty good platform to bring attention and to help affect, you know, change. This incredible platform that they'll have, by the way, Tommy, maybe even a bigger platform than they would have had because there's so much pent-up demand for live sports. These games will be played where they'll be looking for additional content, you know,

with interviews with players in-game, after game. I don't know. Seems to me to be a little bit short-sighted. And at the same time, like you said, I mean, I do understand right now for everybody in the world has come to grips with what's really important. You know, in sports which we've lived in and been a part of for so long, are really frivolous compared to these important issues. And not that we didn't know that before. I'm not suggesting that it just became obvious. that sports aren't as important as real-world things.

But I think when you live through what we've lived through the last four months, you realize the insignificance and how inconsequential they are compared to other things, like making sure you're healthy enough to live. Yes. Well, that's always been the attraction of sports, is the emotional investment is fun because you're not really invested in anything important. you know yeah yeah that that's part of the joy but yet we've taken them so seriously you can live and die with your team and wake up the next day and say hey I'm still healthy no big deal yet you know people are so emotionally

invested in all of them and I think that's the part like you're going to still be into sports but maybe for a short period of time you won't be as emotionally invested in them I think it all depends on on your life perspective and where you are in your life too. I mean, you know, a lot of people have lost people that they've loved. You know, over the last four months, a lot of people have lived in legitimate fear. You know, early on, I remember a lot of you criticized the interview. You criticized Adam Schefter, who came on radio, and you thought, many of you thought, was just way too hyperbolic and way too fearful.

And, you know, he had really sounded the alarm bell that the NFL was making a big mistake moving forward with the draft and free agency. And I mentioned, I'm like, I don't agree with Adam. I think it's important that the NFL move forward with these things. I'm looking forward to it. But at the same time, his perspective was much different than mine. He was at ground zero living in New York where everybody was getting it and a lot of people were dying from it and there was a lot of unknown about it in March and April. You know, we didn't have that in D.C. We didn't have that in most areas of the country. There are a lot of areas in this country where a lot of you have not heard or don't know

one person that's tested positive or gotten COVID-19. In New York, my friends that live in New York in Connecticut and family members in New Jersey, they all know many people who have gotten it. And several of those people know people that have gotten either seriously ill or died from it. We didn't live through that or haven't lived through that experience that he lived through, being, you know, there. Yes, I agree. All right, guys, quick word about hawthorne.co, hawthorne with an e.cotechon, not dot com. If smelling good is important to you, Hawthorne smells really good. Getting Hawthorne cologne is so easy.

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That's Hawthorne with an e and dot co, not dot com. Hawthorne.co, use my promo code for this one. It's Kevin D.C., K-E-V-I-N-D-C, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. That's hawthorn.co, use my promo code, Kevin D.C. to get 10% off your first purchase, Hawthorne.co. All right, you wanted to talk about the 30 for 30 on McGuire and Sosa long gone summer. It's called I actually watched half of it last night and then fell asleep. I'll watch the other half of it if you tell me it's worth it to watch the other half of it today.

I had Bob Carpenter on the show. He was on the call for a lot of those games as the Voice of the Cardinals in 1998. This was obviously, you know, a big deal for you. you know, as a Hall of Fame voter, as a baseball writer during this time, what do you want to say about it? Did you like it, first of all? Well, no, I didn't like it. And what was disturbing about it is that we don't seem to have learned nothing from, you know, more than 20 years later, of one of the biggest frauds are perpetrated on the American sports public. not only have and we haven't, we haven't learned anything, we seem to be blissfully ignorant of it.

We're happy. I've heard this criticism, yes. I mean, you know, I mean, the summer of 98 does not happen without steroids. And Mark McGuire has admitted he's used steroids, and he used a lot of them, for steroids, all kinds of steroids. Sosa has refused to admit it, but he tested positive in that 2003 testing program that was supposed to remain anonymous. that was reported by the New York Times. Neither of these guys are chasing Roger Maris's record without steroid.

So the whole thing was based on a fraud. So we didn't learn that from this 30 for 30. In the first hour of it, which I watched, there was the discovery by a reporter in the locker room of creatine and Andrew whatever in McGuire's locker. and that, you know, basically people thought that they were just legal supplements. So you're telling me that if I go back and watch the second hour, I'm not going to get how terrible 1998 was and what a big fraud it was.

I'm not going to get that. It's almost like an addendum at the end. They address it. One thing, the Andro and creatine were legal substances. I know they were. I mean, I'm not even talking about that. I know they were legal, yes. I mean, and McGuire, I mean, when.

he talked about it, he says this. Quote, there were no rules, there were no regulations. Now, heaven forbid, the filmmakers point out that, for one, steroids obtained illegally have been against the federal law since 1991. Right.

So it was against federal law, for one thing. And as soon as that law was passed in 91, the commissioner of baseball, Faye Vincent, issued a memorandum to all the clubs declaring that steroids were banned from baseball. Okay, the issue, everyone always says, is testing. You know, here's what McGuire said. If there had been drug testing back then,

none of this would have happened. Well, what kind of bullshit is that? So, if somebody had tried to catch me, I wouldn't have done this. I mean, that's ridiculous. And there's a lot of blame for the whole steroid error and the fraud that led to 98. But the first place people should look is the union that represented McGuire, the Players Association,

fought every attempt to institute stricter drug testing until their members got tired of being dragged before Congress on Capitol Hill and asked the union for stricter testing themselves. You barely hear about the players' union role in this. in the movie. And look, I covered this thing. I had a lot of fun covering it. I was with McGuire from home runs 55 through 62.

And then again, the last weekend of the season from 66 through 70. And I went back and read some of my stuff, and I'm embarrassed for some of the crap. I'm embarrassed for what I wrote. Why? It was terrible. Because you were enjoying it? Yeah, I bought into the whole thing. Well, what should you have known?

What should you have known? Well, I should have asked questions. Like what? I should have said, like, you know, I mean, you know, isn't this unusual to have these kind of numbers all of a sudden out of the blue? You know, I mean, I've never standing next to McGuire so many times, and he's seen so inflated that if he stuck a pin in him, he seemed like he would pop. You know, I mean, I mean.

The stuff I wrote was garbage then, and I was a big part of it. You know, so, but I've learned. Were you guys talking about it? I mean, what was the conversation like among reporters covering that era and those teams? Oh, they were just, they were just back in the glow of being part of this thing. I mean, you know. Well, wasn't there skepticism? Did anybody, was anybody skeptical?

Not much at the time. But one thing, the reporter, Steve Wilson for AP, who wrote the Andrews story, was so vilified for writing it that I wouldn't be surprised that that kept a lot of other people from suggesting. And there were probably articles written that suggested performance enhancing substances stuff. But they weren't by me. I bought into it hook, lion's sinker. But I don't buy into it anymore. and here's the other part of this myth, that it saved baseball somehow. This was a big part of the documentary.

Right. That is saved baseball. Because baseball was floundering since that strike year cost him season. Right. Well, and baseball attendance in 98 with 70 million fans. That's 7 million more than the previous year. That's a pretty impressive jump. The only problem is baseball added two teams in 1998.

The Arizona Diamondbacks in the Tampa Bay Devil Range. Right. What was their attendance? 6.1 million. Oh, wow. So it was basically up 900,000. A million. A million jump.

Where compared to the year before, from 96 to 97, attendance jumped pre-million spans. Yeah. So it was already rebounding. Right. And then let's have television ratings. ESPN reported, ESPN said that their regular season ratings

were up 21% that year, more than any other season in the history of the network. Oh, yeah, of course they were. People were watching McGuire and Sosa. When all they broadcasts were Cardinals and Cubs games, particularly the second half of the season.

Of course, everybody was watching this. But did it go beyond that? Did it go beyond St. Louis and Chicago? You know, one measure I used for TV ratings, World Series ratings in 97 compared to 98. The rating for the Cleveland Indians and the Florida Marlins in 97. A team that existed for five years was 16.7 compared to 14.1 between the Yankees and the Padres. in 98, the Sosa-McGuire year.

Well, but the Cleveland Marlins series went to a game seven, too, right? Let me finish. Okay. Not a fair comparison because the Yankees Padres was a four-game sweep. That's right. So let's just compare game one rating. 97 Indians Marlins game one through 24.5. Game one of the Yankees and the Padres, the Yankees coming back to the World Series,

after winning the 96th title, it was 16.6 rating. And this is just a couple weeks after the McGuire's So, but real quickly, what were the two numbers again? Sorry. 24.5 and 97 for game one. Wow, 24.5 for Florida, Cleveland, game one? 16.6 for Yankees Padres in game one.

So there's no proof that this spread beyond St. Louis and Chicago in terms. Here's what happened to Baylorne. baseball. Here's what saved baseball. And I know you've heard this lots of time, but people don't seem to realize it. Over 20 years from Camden Yards in 92 to Marlins Park in 2012, 20 new ballparks opened, drawing record crowds.

That's what saved baseball. 20 ballparks in 20 years. So I just expected more intelligence and realization as to how we were fooled. And everybody wants to stick their head in the ground. Everyone wants to be an ostrich. Yeah. It was a sickening documentary.

Absolutely sickening. So we've had one great one, the last dance, and one terrible one, 30 for 30, the long summer. Long gone summer. This was propaganda. That's what this was. Just real quickly, Sosa just always was very likable and, you know, a guy that seemed to be happy, go lucky. McGuire always seemed uptight. And in the first hour of the episode I watched last night was, I don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy, you can tell me that.

But he did not like the attention. Maybe part of it was because of what he was doing to generate the results. Maybe he was uncomfortable with it. I think he was And that may be Maybe he knew secretly what he was doing Of course he knew

But I just think he was not comfortable With attention I don't know Mark McGuire from Adam The little contact It's funny because Earlier in the season

When they were in Milwaukee About to go to Chicago I went to I went up there To see him play And In Milwaukee the Cardinals. And I got to talk to McGuire for a long time. It was just him and me.

This is before all the procession started. He was very relaxed, very nice guy, good to talk to then. But yeah, I don't think he liked the attention. And that rightfully so I think Sosa helped McGuire in terms of the attention. Sosa took some pressure off him because Sosa was so likable and it wasn't all about McGuire when they were doing like the press conferences together in that weekend when they were both chasing Roger Marrith and they were both playing each other. So I think that McGuire does not like the attention.

I don't think he's a bad guy, but he's dishonest. He finally admitted in 2010 that he used performance-enhancing substance. And like I said, he used the, He used substances to help horses run, baby. Yeah. All right, real quickly, tomorrow on the radio show, Joe Thysman will be the guest at 8 a.m. And if you miss Bob Carpenter, he weighed in on the documentary and was there calling all of the McGuire Games in St. Louis from today's show.

Did Joe send you a book? Joe hasn't sent me a book, but he said he would. So. Okay. Yeah. So we'll... Because, I mean, I'm sure he would. Oh, yeah. He would send me one if I asked for it. Yeah. I'll ask him for it. Do you need one? I mean, you can ask him for one.

I could ask him for one if I want one. I'm sure I will ask him for one. Okay, very good. Are you going to read it? Well, I got a lot of books I've got to read. You know, I'll read it, but it'll take a while to get to. Right. I'm sure. You know, actually, actually I'm reading right now the Jesse Dockertie book, Budstaw, about the national season, the Nationals World Series championship season. I recommend that to any Nats fan. It's a lot of good stuff in it.

Jesse, Jesse covered the team for the Post. For the Post. You know, what's really interesting is that, tell me if I'm wrong about this. if you are on the beat and you cover a championship team, it's an absolute lock that you can write a book and sell a book, right? Like there's too much pent-up demand for more and more about that team in the championship season. And it seems to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that it's typically the beat reporter of maybe the major newspaper in town that writes the book.

That's a reasonable assumption, absolutely. So he's right place, right time. That does typically happen. Yes. Yeah. What's the book called? Buzzoff. Now, you know, I'm three-quarters of the way true,

and I'm a little disappointed because I haven't come across my name in it yet. And why would you assume that you would? Well, I mean, I don't see how you could write about the Washington Nationals and not include me in it somehow. But, you know, maybe it's somewhere in the end. You know, I looked at the acknowledgement. and it wasn't there either, which really disappointed me. But then I have a review copy, so maybe a later edition has me listed in the acknowledgments.

I'm not sure. Yeah, my guess is that you're not in it. That's my guess. But I don't know. I didn't even know the book was out. I actually think that that's a book that I would enjoy reading. So I may get it and read it. And then have them on your show.

Yeah, and then I'll have them on the show. All right. Last subject real quickly is this Mike Gundy situation at Oklahoma State. For those that don't know, Mike Gundy, the head coach at Oklahoma State since 2005, the man that 12 years ago said, I'm a man, I'm 40. He's now 52 years old. That's 12 years ago. Mike Gundy took a picture, somebody took a picture of himself with his boys on a fishing trip,

with an O-A-N T-shirt. Now, real quickly, did you know what O-A-N was before reading this story? Oh, yeah. Really? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, my God, yeah. Have you watched O-A-N?

It may, no, I haven't watched it. I've watched reporters from O-A-N asked questions at press conferences. They make Fox News look like MSNBC. So O-A-N, you want to talk about fake news. Yeah, I don't have a capital F and a capital A and a capital K and a capital E. I don't even know if OAN is on Comcast. I have Comcast cable.

I don't even know that it's on there. I knew what OAN was. I've never watched it before. Never watched it. Anyway, he had an OAN t-shirt on. Now, there's a little bit of background on this. A few months back, he had a statement before we get to what happened yesterday. Mike Gundy did.

He said, I was flipping through stations. I found one. I don't even know if anyone knows about this. It's called OAN. It's called One America News. And it was so refreshing. They just report the news. There's no commentary.

There's no opinions. There's no left. There's no right. They just reported the news. Anyway, some people suggested that with that endorsement, OAN, may have sent him some t-shirts and hats and everything else, and maybe he just had the t-shirt on and didn't know. But he's already admitted that he's a fan of what is,

and Tommy's telling you through experience, I can't tell you because I haven't watched it. That is, it's a far-right-wing cable channel. So yesterday, he tweeted out that picture, and then Chuba Hubbard, who is his best player, or certainly one of the best players he has on his team, He was the leading rusher in the country last year, rushed for over 2,000 yards as a sophomore. He would be the returning favorite to be the Heisman Trophy winner if Trevor Lawrence wasn't playing in college football Clemson.

But he's a big name in college football, and he'll probably have a big year upcoming. But he saw the picture of his head coach in the OAN t-shirt, and he tweeted out, I will not stand for this. This is completely insensitive to everything. going on in society, and it's unacceptable. And he then said that he will not be doing anything with Oklahoma State until things change in capital letters, C-H-A-N-G-E. Well, by the time they got to the end of the day, Hubbard and Mike Gundy had spoken, and they put out a short, you know, collaborative video, Mike Gundy saying that he's going to work on things and has really tried to understand

the issues and Hubbard apologizing actually for going public rather than going to his coach directly. I asked the following question, and Tommy, I took calls for over an hour on this and could have taken calls for another two hours on this. And the question simply put was, does anybody care about what your favorite coach's politics are. Now, let me just say this as it relates to Gundy. How stupid is he? If he... Oh, he's pretty... He's a meathead, Kevin. He's pretty dense. No doubt.

He's a meat head. Tell you what, he can scheme up in offense. I can tell you that. Yes, okay. But he is a meathead. Yeah. He is that. You know what's interesting? Actually, I just thought of this. Gundy, Urban Meyer, Mike Leach, some of the real innovative, out-of-the-box, open-minded football thinkers. When it comes to offensive football, they're all super conservative. Meyer is, Leach is, Gundy is. I don't know, that's just the short list of college football innovators. You really, for football coaches, you really got to dig hard to see.

liberal football coaches. I think Mike Holmgren is the one that comes to mind. Well, I don't know about that. Pete Carroll. I mean, in the NFL, I can't come up with the list. I can't come up with the list right now. I bet more than you would think. Okay. Many more than you would think. Mike Tomlin, Ron Rivera. God, I can't think about the animal coaches. I don't know if these guys are. I don't either. I don't either. Good point. I don't either. Anyway, it was a stupid thing to do.

I don't know what the intent was. Given his history, I think it was a little bit defiant and insensitive. I think he knew that he had the T-shirt on. He's taken a T-shirt with two of his sons after a fishing trip. And I said this this morning, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think at a lot of universities, Tommy, in this environment, there would have been severe, you know, repercussions to what he did. You know, think about what we've talked about last week.

You know, you can't even have an alternative opinion if you're in journalism right now without the threat of being fired and losing your job. And this guy wore, I know it's a T-shirt. It's a T-shirt that would be reflective of somebody who right now isn't aware or doesn't care about what the country is going through and what people of color are protesting about. Not just people of color, all people are protesting about. I think if he had been at certain universities, he would have been in big trouble. Yeah.

Fortunately, he did it at Oklahoma State. Right. There was a statement from the AD, I'm paraphrasing at this point, where he just said, this afternoon's been a very disturbing afternoon, but I'm glad that two of them got together and got everything right. And Hubbard, after the video came out, said, don't get it twisted. My foot is still on the gas on this. It's not over.

I think what happened with Hubbard after this video is he took a pounding. Like, you know, he basically, you know, was wishy-washy and didn't hold his coach more accountable. But so it's, I don't care. A month ago, I wouldn't have cared about my coach's politics at all. A month later, I think the one thing that I would have been concerned about before, even though I never thought about it, that now I would be aware of more now, and I would care, is I certainly wouldn't want one of my favorite coaches to be somebody who I thought intuitively that it wasn't just about politics.

It was about a moral compass that lacked... empathy and sensitivity towards, you know, serious issues or towards any group of people. That that would bother me, even though I've always said about sports, I don't really give a shit about what people's beliefs are. This is a diversion for me. But, you know, I'm not saying that if I had come to the conclusion about a favorite coach prior to the last couple of weeks, I wouldn't have felt the same way. I think I would just be more in tune of learning what someone's,

one's politics are and then taking it a step further to find out what kind of person they are. I don't know if that makes sense. Well, I mean, one thing is it's a slippery slope. The more you know about your heroes, sometimes it could be, or the people you root for, sometimes it could be pretty unnerving. You know, I've often wondered, I wonder now, if, let's say the baseball comes back and the nationals come back, what will be the reaction to

Ryan Zimmerman being a Trump supporter Ryan Zimmerman saying those words at the White House thank you Mr. President for making this the safest country or the best country in the world for keeping us safe their little golf outing in February

down in West Palm Beach well in this environment Ryan Zimmerman if he if he echoed the same sentiments he would be called a racist if he wasn't already by a lot of people. I mean, this is why I think it wasn't just Zimmerman, right, Tommy?

There were a lot of other players. Well, there was Kurt Suzuki put on the MAGA hat. Kurt Suzuki trying to be funny, funny, jokey put it on the MAGA hat. I forgot about that. I think that, I mean, I just assume I don't think the reaction would be too good

right now. And like said at the time. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a lot of baseball players are Trump supporters because they're millionaires. I mean, it shouldn't be a surprise. You know what's funny? I remember Jonathan Papelban,

who was a horrible human being, I thought, but his teammates loved him. Let me point that out. Jonathan Papelban's national teammates like him a lot more than they like Bryce Harper. Okay? So at the end, at one point, I guess it was there in 2016, when Papal Bond was still on the team,

pregame, he puts on this song on the clubhouse loudspeaker, the audio system, where it's a song that sings the praises of Donald Trump. And he did it just to get a reaction from people who were in the clubhouse. The writers were there. He knew they were there. and I remember looking at the Latin players, and they looked really angry, you know, because this was the height of the, when he was campaigning and talking about building the wall, and keeping out, you know, illegal immigrants. And it was such a bizarre scene, but I'm thinking there's a lot of people in that clubhouse

that probably agreed with Jonathan Papalbant. and we're Trump supporters. Hey, by the way, I've got some good news for you today. Smile. I want you to smile. I just saw this because I had my TV on. And have you heard about this new drug proving to be the first COVID-19 life-saving drug? Dexamethosone?

It's a steroid. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard about it. People in all corners of the world and society, this doesn't appear to be a political response. This appears to be something legit. Am I right or not? Are you familiar with this? Because I've been working all morning.

Yes, I am. And yes, I think you're right. Dexamethosone, a cheap and widely used steroid, has become the first drug shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients and what scientists hailed as a major breakthrough. You know, I'm beyond the save lives part now, though. Because, I mean, one of the guys I follow is the guy from Harvard, the scientist from Harvard. Dr. Eric Ding, I think his name is. And I'm just as much concerned about long-term health damage, even if you do recover, particularly to your lungs.

And the damage there, I think that gets underplayed a little bit. But obviously, the first scare is death. But, you know, I don't know how rosy recovery is either. Well, anyway, I mean, we don't know a lot about it, but it seems like some good news to end the show with. It's something to smile about is the way I would describe it. All right, have a good day. I'm done with you. I'll talk to you on Thursday. Okay, I'll talk to you Thursday. All right, that's it for the day. Enjoy the day back tomorrow.