The Kevin Sheehan Show - Thom Has Dan Snyder News

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Kevin and Thom today with a ton on the Wizards' exit from the playoffs, Coach K's legacy, and, the boys opened the show with Thom's interesting news on Dan Snyder's buyout of his minority investors.   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 don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Cheon Show. Here's Kevin. Tommy's here today. Subscribe. If you haven't done that, that really helps us out.

Rate us and review us as well. That helps us. Listen to the podcast lots of times. That helps us. And by the way, when we mention advertisers on this show, when I endorse advertisers on this show, if it makes sense, use their product. Because that really helps more than

anything else. Tommy's with us. He wrote a column that I retweeted last night. Not with any prodding. Actually, I would have retweeted it anyway. We have the wizards to get to. Listen, do you know that the whole retweeting issue of my column now there are followers who are retweeting it in place of you before you do it? Why? Because they know the issue of me being late in retweeting. Yes. So I tell you, I say, I'm retweeting this because Kevin hasn't. Kevin hasn't done it yet.

I got to it. Well, it's funny because yesterday I had Liz Clark on the radio show talking about the Naomi Osaka thing. And I asked, you had tweeted me something during the show about retweeting the story. Your column. And I said, I'm going to retweet it. I'll do it a little bit later on. And I accidentally.

sent it to Liz because I'd been texting back and forth with her. And she said, oh, thank you so much. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, that wasn't meant for you. I didn't actually presume to think that me retweeting your post story was like a big deal to you. This was actually meant for Tom. And she said, oh, oh, well, if you want to retweet it, go ahead. So I think I did. Good for you.

I mean, we love Liz. Absolutely. And so I think I retweeted it. I know I read it. It was really good. But anyway, it started a back and forth texting with Liz after she had been on the radio show. And she said something like, you know, that's funny. And I said, well, Tommy asks me to retweet his columns, but I only like to do it if I think the column's good.

Wink, wink, wink. She said, that's funny. And I said, yeah, but I usually do. See, you ask me to retweet even when I haven't read it. What if it's like a story that I completely disagree with? I retweet your podcast when I'm not on them. That doesn't mean I listen to them. I know.

I have faith in endorsing what you do. I have faith in endorsing what you do as well. And I do, but first of all, we're not going to get into the differences between you retweeting the podcast. podcast and me retweeting your column. However, I have total trust and you know this is true because I tell other people this that I am a big fan of Tommy the columnist. I am as big a fan of Tommy the talk show host. And you know, and I love both of those things. I was actually sitting around my kitchen in the kitchen with one of my sons and a couple of his friends only a few nights ago, and I forget, it was over the weekend, over the holiday weekend.

And one of the guys was asking me about you. You know, what's Tommy like in real person? I said, he's the best. And, of course, they said, what did he do before he started doing talk radio in your podcast? And I said, well, he's been a columnist in town forever. And they said, oh, I never see his columns. And I'm like, well, that's because he writes for the Washington Times. And somebody said, what's that?

And they said, it's the other paper. It's just not a paper anymore. It's just an online version. No, there's a paper. There's a hard copy. There is? Yes, there is. Where can I get the hard copy?

At most, most supermarkets, 7-11, places like that, yeah. Is it free? No, it's not free. You got to pay for it. It's a newspaper. I know that. a shopper. It's not a shopper. Anyway, I said, no, no, no, Tommy is everything you like about him on the podcast, and this one particular friend of my sons really likes you. I said, you will like as much, if not more,

if you read his columns, because he is, to me, one of the fearless columnists in town and has been for a long time. So I'd have total faith in your columns. And let me explain about retweeting the columns. I don't ask you to retweet every column because there's some columns that I don't, I would, that, you know, that maybe weren't as good as others. I don't ask you to retweet all the columns, just so you know that. There are some columns that once they appear, I say, yeah, that's not that great, you know. Read it if you want, you know. Look, not every podcast is a home run, is it?

No, in fact, you know, I realized recently that, you know, the podcast gets sent out via various social media ways by Aaron. He does a lot of that in post-production, and there is a Kevin Sheehan show Twitter page, which Aaron basically runs, and he tweets out the show from that. And, you know, there are days when we get done where I'm like, I want people to listen to this show. I really want them to listen to this show. And many times, you know, especially going into a weekend when there are extra days to listen to, you know, the Thursday show or the Friday show, I will tweet it out more than once. But typically, I retweet it once and that's it. And I've noticed in recent weeks I've actually forgotten on occasion to retweet it. Now it's going out.

It's available. And that's one of the reasons why subscribing is so important to any podcast. because then it doesn't take a reminder to people, hey, the new show is out. It automatically gets delivered and gets counted as what we call a download. And that's helpful to us because the more downloads you have along with sort of a combination of ratings and reviews leads to more interest from advertisers and then to be, you know, brass tax, higher rates that you can charge advertisers. So all of that matters. Anyway, you know, one of these days, every, by the way, this is inside baseball stuff. I have been asked multiple times to consider a subscriber, pay subscribe,

a pay site for the podcast. And I have resisted because we've done fairly well, knock on wood, being able to generate more, you know, enough revenue to make it worthwhile. But, you know, if the day ever came where it wasn't enough, you're going to see a lot of podcasters, I think, in the next year or two, really make an attempt to go to a pay-only format. You know, the problem with that is you really limit your audience. Now, what people have told me before is you and your podcast with the relationship that you have with Tommy and with Cooley and the various people you have on, that you have a loyal audience, and people will pay for it. But I've resisted that.

And I don't plan on doing any of that. Now, they've asked me to do, like, additional stuff, like premium subscriber stuff. But we just haven't done that, in part because we haven't had the time. Like, you've got a column. I've got a radio show. I love doing this. But right now, it's a passion. And, you know, obviously we wouldn't be doing it if we weren't generating, you know, enough revenue to cover the costs.

plus, but I like it, and I want more people to be able to listen to it rather than less. And when you think of this whole idea of premium content, that's inferring that the content that you put out there wasn't your best. Well, it's actually not. It's additional categories of content. As an example, I've had many people in sort of this podcast world, you know, that I've had many conversations with, like, right now we do a lot of work with the athletic. And we do some work with other people.

And they have said, you know, with gambling being so popular, look at the gambling advertisers, you know, everywhere. Yeah. That makes sense. If I were to do just a straight gambling show, that that would be, you know, payworthy. I don't think it would. I've argued against that. You know, Tommy, I think we had, I think you know this, a couple of,

years ago when I had that year off where I wasn't doing radio and I was just doing the podcast. I got a couple of offers for radio, one of which was to host a national gambling-based three-hour afternoon drive show. And I, first of all, the compensation wasn't anywhere near having it makes sense for me. So that scratched it off the list immediately. But to be honest with you, I think those things are so niche, and I don't think you can do, and I know, look, Tim Murray's doing a really good job with the Visan network and all those guys with the Musburger Network out there doing, you know, a contest. I just personally, as much as I love to talk about gambling, to do it three hours a day, every day, five days a week, you know, 50 weeks out of the year, I think it's really niche. I think even gamblers, and I'm one of them, would not consume that content enough. But here's the thing about pay podcasts.

You don't need a lot of people to make some money. You don't. You don't. You don't need a lot of people. It's the idea of everyone sends in their five hours a month. And if you're talking four or five thousand people, You don't need a lot. Yeah, it's just right now, the ad model, which is still employed by 95% of the podcasters out there,

which, by the way, there's 5%, not even 5% of all podcasts that actually generate any revenue at all. You know, I think the hardest thing and people have asked me about, you know, doing podcasts, and our advantage was that we brought an audience to the table. from being on radio for so long, or in your case, having a column for as long as you've had it. If you have to start from scratch without an audience, it's basically impossible. You have to be, like, just extraordinary, or have an extraordinary idea, or be an extraordinary talent, or be doing something really unique. You know, it's one out of, you know, 100,000 that are actually going to generate an audience

from scratch. the advantage we had is that we had an audience in radio, that we brought some of that to the podcast, which immediately made it monetizable. Most podcasts don't generate a nickel in revenue. Because you have to get to a certain, and we're not going to talk numbers here, but you have to get to a certain threshold. You have to get to a certain number of people that are listening to the podcast on an episode by episode basis before advertisers will even pay attention. If you're not at that level, you're just

not going to do it. Now, there are some people out there that have, you know, Uncle Phil who loves, you know, nephew Sam and Sam's idea for podcasts, and Uncle Phil's got a business and Uncle Phil's going to put some money into this thing. Or there's a local advertiser that somebody's really good friends with. But in terms of attracting the people who have really focused in on the podcast world, advertisers, you have to get to a certain level of audience size before they even pay attention. And we would have never been able to do that had we just started from scratch without having done a radio show together for seven and a half years. Or with Cooley not having done a radio show with him for two years.

Now, Cooley would have been able to bring an audience. But even if you look at some of the things that some of the former players have done with podcasts on their own, without having sort of a consistent audience in that sort of format for a period of time, it's been tough for them to generate an audience. It's much better when they're sort of as, you know, a co-host or a guest consistently, or if they're doing something very unique. Or if they've got such a big name and such a massive following, that they can just get a percentage of those people. It's a very, not everybody's interested in this, and so we'll cut it off here after 10 more seconds. It's a very interesting media business right now, podcasting, the way it's

developing and growing. And there's a lot of predictions as to what it's going to become and whether or not, it will replace something like radio altogether. I think you're already seeing it become very competitive, especially in a lot of different categories. But anyway, that's enough of that. I did want to say about your column from the other day titled Dan Snyder could be forced out by the NFL if no stadium deal is reached, that I think you broke news here in this column. Don't you think you did? I did too. Several things. I think the fact that of the money, the debt that they approved for him to go into, to buy out his partners, they loaned him $200 million to that money. The NFL did. Okay. Yeah. I don't think anyone's reported that. They haven't. Let me just make sure everybody understands that. So they waived the debt limit. Okay. The debt limit was.

was the percentage of your overall equity that you could raise his debt. And they raised that limit so that he could buy out his minority shareholders. Now, not only did they raise that debt limit, but you reported that $200 million of the additional $450 million needed to buy out the minority partners came from the NFL itself in the form of a loan. Yeah. So he raised the debt with the league providing the loan. I hadn't heard that.

Yeah, no. And that essentially, as you know, anyone who has a mortgage, that means in part. They're the bank. You know, yeah, they own part of the team right now until that debt is paid. And as I understand it from very good sources, you know, that that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's been reported. The New York Times has, that, you know, that has to, he has to get that debt down by 2028. Right. I think that if, uh, as I understand it, if that's not done, if there's no stadium in place by then or no stadium deal in place by then, it's goodbye, Danny. But the only thing, Tommy, is that he can just sell the minority shares equal to 200 million to pay off the league loan.

He doesn't need the stadium ultimately to pay off the loan. He just needs to sell equity, which, by the way, at $200 million, you're basically, you know, talking about maybe 5% of, you know, of the business. business because many people think it's worth four plus billion dollars. Yeah, and it may be. I mean, when it's run right, it probably is. Yeah. But I think it goes beyond him just simply paying the bill. I think this is pressured for him to get a stadium deal done, you know, as I understand it.

There's a lot of pressure on him to get this done. There was no coincidence that he was running around the country looking at stadiums short way after all this was approved. So basically netting it out, you reported two things. One being that the league loaned him $200 million as part of the $875 million buyout of the Fred Smith, Dwight Schar, Robert Rothman, minority stake in the football team. After they had waived the $450 million debt waivers so that he could take on more debt to buy him out. And then you're also reporting that if he doesn't have a new stadium by 2028, that may be the end of Danny. Yes.

I mean, and the other nuance in this is, and I don't know if it'll be something that's visible, and it seems kind of ridiculous in a way. But as I understand it, this gives them more control over Snyder, the fact that he's in debt to them. I mean, I don't know if that's going to make any difference in moving forward. You know, the Wilkinson report is up in the air. You've talked about that as to what the contents released will actually be and what kind of impact that could have on all this. You know, all this may get blown up. If there's a huge public outcry over the Wilkinson report,

that somehow steamrolls everyone. but the idea, as I would describe by somebody who's pretty well connected to all this, this also gives the NFL more control over Snyder. The fact that he's in debt to them now. Yeah, I just think that, you know, we're talking about seven years from now, if that 200 millions to be paid back, the team more likely than not is going to be worth even more on paper. and that, you know, the $200 million will be easy to raise.

By then. To buy him out. But the fact is, you know, he might not have been able to buy out his partners if it wasn't for the NFL. He wouldn't have been. I think, apparently. I don't know this. I do think that part of this, part of this availability to him to, you know, approve that, you know, debt waiver. and then you're reporting that the league actually loaned him $200 million of the money.

I think it's, I think that the quid pro quo is that he take on new minority investors that are minorities. And I think that's where the Jay-Z thing, you know, came from. And I think that there are others probably out there as well. I think the league wants some minority ownership and that this is an organization over the last year, let's be honest, has been as progressive as any other in the sport. And what would be great for the league in a franchise that's been such a dismal failure and such an embarrassment to the other 31 owners in the league is if it becomes the first team, well, that's not, I mean, Shad Khan and then Kim Pagula, right,

are the other two minority owners in the league. but if Washington becomes the third team with significant minority ownership stake. No voting stock, I'm sure Snyder's not giving up any voting stock. He's not giving up a majority of the team. And it really wouldn't even matter if he did sell a majority of the team if he had 100% of the voting stock. But I think that that's part of this. To me, that makes sense. I don't know that for sure, but that makes sense to me.

You're probably right. you're a better versed in these things than I am. It was just my first guess that, and then the Jay-Z thing came out, which actually Burgundy blog broke the news, and he and I talked about that on yesterday's podcast. Go listen to it if you didn't hear it. Did he think that the NFL would approve an owner who has stabbed the guy in his past? You know, I didn't specifically get into that.

Nobody wants to talk about that. Well, because he's already been approved by one league. You're interviewing somebody You're interviewing somebody in front of you for a job And at the bottom of the resume This little thing pops out That you pled guilty to assault for stabbing a guy once And when did that happen?

Well, what does it matter when it happened? I'm asking you the question It matters to me as the interview When did it happen? 20 years ago So what have you done with your life since? Tell me about your life since the NBA approved him as an owner.

I know it did. I know it did. But that's the NBA. The NFL is the varsity. Okay, but the bottom line is it may not be Jay-Z. My point is that immediately when they waive that debt limit and they allowed him to buy out when now I know that they even loaned him $200 million of the $875 million that it took to buy him out, I think that there's some sort of, you know, something for something there. I think the league is helping him for some reason. And I think the reason is they want more minority ownership in the league.

And this is the guy that's going to do it for him because they're going to keep him, regardless of what's in that Wilkinson report. They're going to allow him to continue to own the team. But, you know, he's going to start behaving a little bit differently and he's going to start helping the league out because all he's done really, for the most part, is hurt. the league. Yes. Although early on, he was part of the Jerry Jones, you know, pairing that, you know, taught the

NFL in many ways how to make a lot more money in marketing and merchandising. He was a passenger on that. He was. Jerry was the leader, no doubt. Yeah. That's why Jerry's in the Hall of Fame. And Dan will never be in the Hall of Fame. All right.

So go read Tommy's column. I retweeted it. You can find it on Tommy's Twitter page as well. but I thought that that was interesting stuff that you found. By the way, are you still hearing that D.C., Virginia, and Maryland want nothing to do with him and that he's going to have to build the new stadium on the land oversight? I haven't heard anything new. Nothing new?

I mean, I haven't heard anything new other than that, you know, he hasn't made any connections in D.C. that yet that would help him. Well, Jason Wright seems to think they have. Who? Jason Wright seems to think they have. They've got a lot of friends in these three jurisdictions. Oh, yeah. Oh, in the interview.

Yeah. Look, like I said in the end of the column, I mean, they should start surveying the parking lot next to FedEx field. And you know what? That's not, I mean, look, that's not the worst thing in the world. The Giants built their stadium next to their old stadium. I know. The Eagles built their stadium next to their old stadium.

A lot of people do it. Downtown stadium for them, right, with action. access right off in 95. Not downtown. It's not a downtown. I know it's not downtown, but it's so accessible. It is so easy. It is very accessible.

On the other hand, I mean, Philly's screwed up by not building their stadiums along a river somewhere in the middle of town. That's where they should have built them. I don't want to get into that. Okay. I mean, all those stadiums are are stadiums. And you want, in this day and age, you want a stadium to be much more than that. That's true.

Because there's nothing around those stadiums that would drive people to go there other than the games itself. We have three things to get to today in addition to what we were just talking about. One, the Wizards. Two, Coach K. And three, the Washington football team wrapping up OTAs today. There's some quotes coming out. And there's a fourth thing. What?

The D.C. Grace. But we'll get that to at the end. Okay. Do you have your night auction night planned? No, no, no, but the D.C. Grace opener is Monday night, June 7th. But this was typically the time of year where you had the auction. Yes, it is. Yes, it is.

But, you know, I mean, COVID has played havoc with all. We're still hoping to do something in the fall. Okay. Let's start with the Wizards. So I thought it was an embarrassing display last night. It was about as meek and exit as you'll see. I hate to take it to the extreme of calling it gutless, because I do think that they gave some effort.

I thought that they seemed, you know, they were competing. It was such a disappointment for me last night, and I don't know why I care, but I do. I wanted, first of all, I did wager on them last night. I took them plus seven and I took them on the money line. I played both of them before the Embedd news because I had a feeling Embed was going to be out. And I thought if Embed was out, they were going to win the game in Force Game 6. I really did.

I just thought, Joel Embed is so great. He's such a factor. We've seen what they look like without him on the floor and the wizards are better than the 76ers without him on the floor. And I thought they would win. I was dead wrong. They were so horrible on defense. That's not a surprise. They were so bad offensively, especially in the half court. That wasn't a surprise. And they turned the ball over a lot, primarily with their two-star players. And that's not so much of a surprise. But I'm telling you, Tommy, the way all of it was done was so painful. It was so painful to watch them. defensively. What in God's name is Daniel Gafford doing guarding Ben Simmons at the top of the key? Ben Simmons is a great player. And Tommy, you know what? He's a really unique player.

Oh, he is. He is very unique. He played center last night for the entire game. And he is a great defender. And he can guard any position. And he was playing center on offense with him beat out of the game. I mean, the last time we saw a point guard play center, you do remember. I don't know if it was the last time, but it was Magic Johnson game 6, 1980, at the Philadelphia Spectrum, in fact, in the same city, different building. I, who would, Ben Simmons can't shoot. I promise you, I could walk out into a gym today with Ben Simmons and crush him in a game of horse as long as it didn't include dunking. Crush him. He is a terrible shooter.

And yet... He hit his foul shots last night, though. He did. And I didn't tell you this because we had the show on Tuesday. No, I did tell you this. I think I did. That I thought he got into a rhythm at the end of the last game through the Hacah Simmons strategy,

and I thought it might carry over. I still liked the strategy in the last game, but I thought I saw him getting into a bit of a rhythm and getting more confidence. Why would Daniel Gafford or anybody cover Ben Simmons at the top of the key to watch him just go right by him and dunk or make a play for someone else to dunk. Look, there's a lot of truth in what you just said.

It really was, it was a very disappointing. It was, it was an undisciplined performance in every way you can imagine, offensively and defensively. There was no discipline. They're a bad defensive team for a lot of reasons that I've pointed out before. First of all, I've never seen a team over the years,

you know, especially the last five, have more guys stand up playing defense. Like anybody that's ever played any level of basketball that was taught anything, you play defense low, you don't play standing up, you play defense more with your feet than any other part of your body. They play it with every other part of their body before they play it with their feet. They can't stay in front of anybody. It just, it's an embarrassment. And then, by the way,

They stand up more than any other team. They have their two best players that are disinterested at times, distracted at times. How many times do you have to see what's his face? Cork Maws go back door against Russ and Russ. Oh, shoot, I lost him again. Beal sometimes is arguing so much on one end of the court that he's not even in frame as the 76ers are scoring on the other end. They're undisciplined. They're poorly coached defensively. They have bad ideas. That's not the big surprise. We knew that. They have been a really good at times offensive team this year, especially with pace, primarily with pace.

When the game slows down, they're not a very good half-court team. In fact, they're a dreadful half-court team. They lead the league in ISOs. And last night, Philadelphia employed a strategy primarily for, I don't know, I'd call it 70% of the team. the time that Bradley Beal was in the game, to double Bradley Beal. And it was so effective. Now, it's effective in part because Washington doesn't have like a regular half-court offense. It's all ISO. And ISO doesn't work against double teams. What works against a double team is to properly align the floor from a spacing standpoint. And there has to be a first pass after you invite the double team to the player whose defender, went to double-team the player.

I watched a team that honestly, youth basketball coaches at district heights in PG County right down the street from McNamara High School in a tournament on a long weekend, you would see 50 youth coaches in that building handle a trapping of one player better than the Wizards handled it last night. It was amateur hour. Beal trying to dribble through traps and then. You know, dribbling into another defender where he was naturally, based on the stupid decision or the unstructured nature of what they were trying to do, would invite a third defender into the mix? No, you invite the trap.

You make one pass to the middle of the floor, and then if the defense reacts to that, you make another pass. And if the defense reacts to that, you make the third pass. And it's a dunk or a wide open three. See, what happens, Tommy, when two people are guarding one, is that you end up with four against three. And that's usually an advantage. They apparently did not understand that. I just sat there, and by the way, Glenn Consor is such a good analyst. I don't, I'm going to be honest, I don't listen to the games.

And Consor has been a big part of the radio team with Dave Johnson for years. It's not that I've never listened to the games, but usually that time and night when the games are on, I'm at home. And if I'm at home, I'm watching the games. But I know Glenn and Dave have been a team together for years, and I've heard Glenn enough, and I've had him on the show enough to know that he really knows the game. Well, last night he was on the broadcast with Justin Coucher, Drew Gooden, was off. He's excellent. He's so good.

He's a coach calling the game because Glenn has coached in recent years, and he's been involved in basketball. basketball in a lot of recent years. And he has seen, you know, what was going on last night. And he's like, no, they've got to make the pass. There's passing to beat that double team. And then you got to be ready when you catch it to take that open three or to attack. Netto catches it. And it's like, what do I do now? Well, you're wide open. Shoot the fucking three. watching them in the half court was more painful for me than the defense. The defense was terrible. But that's been the case all year long.

Their half court offense sucks, and it's all ISO. But last night they faced a team that decided to take the ball out of Bradley Beal's hands. By the way, Tommy, Beal is so elite offensively as a scorer. He beat the double team many times by himself and scored. You know, he did it. But it's not the way to do it. You end up with too many turnovers when you don't handle traps or double teams like that. He had five.

Westbrook had four. They had 10 in the first half. They had 11 fewer shot attempts in the first half than a 76ers team that I promise you, most of the rest of the playoff teams would have destroyed last night. Probably. And Philly, I'll tell you what, they played hard, they played defense. They've got some players, even without him beat on the floor. In Harris and Curry had a big night, Curry torch Netto.

I said something about Netto three or four weeks ago. I said he is being attacked because he's not a good defender. And a lot of people said, she and he leads the team and steals. Have you been watching them? Yeah, I know he leads a team in steals or is up there, but his steals come from off the ball. He's not a strong on-ball defender. He gets attacked. He gets targeted.

And they targeted him last night, man, with Seth Curry. And another thing, it's like, okay, are we going to just watch Curry just score on every possession against Netto? Or are we going to pull Netto out or are we going to do something else here, coach? I don't know what to say, man. that was that was pathetic a couple of observations and this is an annoying observation as much as anything i mean the two stars of the team they are such whiner oh my god oh it's so off-putting to see to watch westbrook every time like he puts his head down and drive into the lane and then screaming at the referee that he's got no call feels the same way when he doesn't

get the call to two of them. Oh, one of my callers this morning said, watching Beal bitch after every single shot attempt, make or miss, and it's every single one is unsightly. Yes. And it is. It's annoying more than anything else. And trust me, I watch the league, and I know you don't.

It's prevalent. Luca Donchich is great. He's insufferable to watch. he complains after every single shot attempt. Bradley Beale decided, I guess at some point last year, that he was an elite player, that he was a superstar player, and that he was deserving of, you know, LeBron, Kobe, Steph Curry kind of calls, you know, and he's not. He's not that player. And I mentioned this, I've mentioned this before in the podcast. The worst thing about Brad is it totally, impacts his defense. I can't tell you how many times just in this series. He's not even in frame.

Right. He's on the other end. He's down there arguing. Yeah. By the way, LeBron does that all the time too. I mean, Barstall just crucifies LeBron for, you know, the flopping and then being, essentially not even running down court. But Beal, the thing about Beal, Westbrook, to be honest with you, the way he plays, which is out of control, and it's not very smart at times. But he seeks out contact and he gets fouled a lot. He's gone to the free throw line of shitload in this series and I think that there have been some plays that he's made that he got foul that they didn't call it. Beale, I'm telling you, this has not been audited here. Okay. I would guess 80% of the time he is 100% wrong when he's sitting there complaining. He's looking for like

the guy may have breathed on him in his shooting motion. Or maybe there was just a slight bit of contact, you know, with a hand on a hip or something. Nothing impacting the shot itself. You know, when you go down the lane, there's going to be some contact. He is wrong 80% of the time. It's infuriating to watch it. It's really, it's off-putting. And it's one thing if it's occasional and you're setting it up to get the call, the next call.

but there's no next call. Bradley Beale complains about every call. And Westbrook screams and won after every shot, except he doesn't make most of the shots. Here's the thing, the other thing that I, a couple of things, but one thing that I felt after watching it, watching the series and watching Westbrook a lot more with this team, Westbrook couldn't play with a third player. Well, Hachamura is the third player right now. I know. And they basically, they freeze them out most of the time. I think they freeze him out too much. I mean, he had 21 last night and he had a great game the other day. But I think he could have been used more. I do.

Yeah. And I just don't think West, I don't think there's enough touches for three guys when Westbrook is on the team. Well, that leads us to this. Not three stars. Yeah. That leads us to this. And it'll be the last part of this conversation on them. By the way, I think they missed Bertons last night for all of you. Bertons haters. I think they missed him a lot, especially with Beale being trapped, although he probably wouldn't have benefited from that because they didn't know how to handle the trap. But Bertons would have been the perfect guy with Beale being trapped to just shred it. Anyway, it leads to this, what's next? And the two big issues are Scott Brooks and then Bradley Beal. So today or this morning,

just moments ago, Tommy Shepard spoke, and we're actually recording this podcast as Scott Brooks is scheduled to speak. But Tommy Shepard said to the media today, the general manager, he said, now is not the time to discuss Scott Brooks's future. We're not doing anything about that today. He said Brooks did a hell of a job keeping the team together during those rough patches, but the team also has higher goals. He said making the playoffs is no longer acceptable

and that we have to be much better next season and we will. By the way, there was a ringing endorsement from Westbrook for Brooks, but not a ringing endorsement necessarily from Bradley Beale for Brooks. We don't even know if Beale's going to be here in the future. Well, you know, that's what I would have. to get to next. But on Brooks, I actually believe that he's going. I don't think I felt that way a couple of weeks ago, but I, last night, Tommy Shepard knows basketball, man. He's been around in his whole life. He had to be screaming inside about just elementary sort of things. Like,

this is what you do when your best player gets doubled. You don't. have your best player trying to dribble through two and then maybe three people and turning it over and sometimes scoring. By the way, I want to make sure people are clear on this. I think Bradley Beale's an elite score. I enjoy watching him score. Score the ball, as they say these days. He has gotten much better. If he's the best player on your team, however, eighth, seventh, sixth place maybe is the best you're ever going to be. Maybe winning a series. Maybe you'll finish fifth one year and win a series. He is not the lead dog on a championship caliber team. He isn't. He's in number two and on a really good team, maybe like a number three, he's an elite elite

score and he really is. I think, you know, for his for his sake, he may now want to move on and put himself into a position to win. I think from the Wizards standpoint, Tommy, it is time to recognize that what you have isn't championship caliber and there's no future in it becoming championship caliber. And so the choice is stay the course or blow it up. And I think because you have an asset in Beale who would bring you back a haul of picks and give you the chance. chance at rebuilding. There's no guarantee you can rebuild. It's the NBA, right? You almost have to get lucky, but it would give you a chance to take a couple of years and fire away at players coming out of the draft. And a lot of people love the draft upcoming. I think they're hard to predict. But,

you know, there's no guarantee that it's going to result in a championship caliber team, and you're probably going to miss the playoffs for two, three, four years in a row before that happens. But it's my opinion. If you're Tommy Shepard, you've been, waiting years for this opportunity. Yep. I mean, this is what you want to do. You have ideas about constructing a team. You want the opportunity to do that. You have ideas about who you want to coach the team and the way it should be coached. You want that chance to do both of those things. Well, so the comment that he made today, making the playoffs is no longer acceptable and that we have to be much better next

season and we will would indicate that they're not thinking about moving Beal. They may be thinking about moving Brooks, moving on from Brooks, but they're not thinking about moving on from Beal. Because you know, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, you go ahead. So here's the problem with Brooks. And I don't think he's a good coach.

And I think they should move on. And I have operating under the premise that Tommy Shepard being a smart guy, probably has a list of. five guys he liked to hire his coach of the team. He's probably got it in his wallet somewhere. But are you going to get that guy to come coach your team? You know? How much is it going to cost? The Celtics are now looking for a coach. Brad Stevens just got promoted to the front office. Yeah. And now you're competing with the Boston Celtics head coaching job. And it's a much better job. I mean, with Jason Tatum over there.

And James Brown. Much better situation, yes. Yes, so, I mean, and you don't want to give, if you feel like you can't get your guy now, I mean, Brooks at least is a known entity. Westbrook likes him. If you can get away with extending him by two more years, not more than that. Maybe that's what you live with. Extending who for two more years? Sorry. Brooks.

No, that's, and I don't see. Well, look, he's not going to have a lot of other options. You know, they'll have the leverage. He says he wants to come back. And, you know, there is some truth in him keeping this team together through a very tumultuous season. He's not a, and he wasn't at Oklahoma City, his strength is not X's and O's.

His strength is something else, which is he has great relationships with his players, you know, and he, and players really like him, and they like playing for him. And, you know, in a player first league, players are more important than the coach in this league, you know, without question. Because if you don't have great players, you've got zero chance no matter how great your coach is. I mean, there's some really good coaches like Pop. Look, he didn't have a great team this year, done, not in the postseason. You know, you've got great coaches like Spolstra who had a great player last year in Butler, and they did make the finals. You know, Brad Stevens, pretty damn good coach out in five games because he loses a great player in Jalen Brown.

I have no idea whether they would have won that series anyway. They probably wouldn't have. The Beale thing to me, it's time to take a swing at three or four picks a year, using three or four picks to move up to get the, the best player or one of the best players in the draft. Obviously, it hurts that they're not in the lottery this year, that they made the postseason. Yes, it does. But I think that as a longtime fan, and as someone, you remember how excited I was about the Beal Wall Cornerstone and the whole thing, and we're going to be in the playoffs for the next 10 years and maybe not championships, but we got a chance to make deep runs.

And maybe if we can get LeBron out of the east. And that finally, I mean, I see it now as this is going nowhere. It's going nowhere. I mean, next year, they'll be fun on nights to watch in the regular season. And if they stay healthy and they play 82 games, they'll win 46, 47, and maybe they'll be the five seed. Maybe, you know, maybe they could get a home court advantage in a first round series by winning 49. But they're not a championship caliber team, especially in their. conference that they're in right now.

I mean, they've got no chance in the conference they're in right now to making a championship run. The 76ers' nets and bucks are going to be much better than them for several years to come. So under, and by the way, Boston should be, and maybe Atlanta should be as well. So, I don't know. I would, I would, you know, I would do the blow it up thing that people always talk about. That would mean you've got one major asset that could bring you back a chance to start a legitimate rebuild, and that's Bradley Beale, and I would trade him.

I would. I can't disagree with any of that. All right. Let's do some Coach K and some Washington football team talk right after this word from two of our sponsors. Yesterday after the podcast, the news broke that Mike Shishowski is hanging it up after the upcoming season. The 2021-2020 season will be his last. 41 years, five national championships, the most wins ever. He's a Mount Rushmore coach.

I don't think there's any doubt about it in the sport. I think John Wooden, Dean Smith, and Mike Shoshchewski are the three locks on the Mount Rushmore. And then we can debate the fourth one over, you know, 15 to 20 guys if you want. But he's part of that group. What was your reaction to the news? Well, I've always liked Coach Kay. I have no skin in the Duke game. And, you know, I know for Maryland fans, it's, you know, always a sore spot.

But to sustain the excellence that he had over the years and then to turn around and to establish another identity as coach of the national team at the Olympics, which can't be as easy as it looks, a guy with no NBA. experience winning over the hearts and minds of those NBA players. He had good assistance, guys like Popovich and others who helped him. But his legacy, I think his legacy among the greatest of all time in basketball is heightened by his Olympic success. It sort of separates him from the rest of the other college coaches.

It's interesting. It never even occurs to me. I just, I know what he was as an Olympic coach, and I know how he resuscitated things, but that doesn't even factor into the way I think about him as a college basketball coach or as a coach in general. I'm not saying that it's wrong. I'm just saying for me, someone who is a college basketball devotee and an ACC guy his whole life, and have probably watched as many Coach K coached college games at Duke

as any non-Duke fan over the years. I don't think about him that way. I'll tell you what, he's not, and I've seen this on social media, because this is what we do. He's not the greatest coach of all time. Okay. I think I agree with you.

No, I do agree with you. Who's the greatest coach of all time? Well, no, no, not the greatest coach, period, in all sports. Oh, in all sports. Oh, people are saying that. Yeah, in all sports. So Lombardi's one for you. No.

Who? It's Gibbs. Oh, it's Gibbs. Okay. I wrote that column. Oh, right. I remember. You know, about a year ago, I mean, the guy, not only won three Super Bowls,

he won five NASCAR championships. Yes. And for Daytona 500s. He took what he did and transferred it to a whole other sport. There's nobody in the ballpark for that. As an owner. Yeah, but the owner is the coach in NASCAR. I mean, he's the coach.

He's the guy who runs the team, who sets the agenda for them. So even though there's no coaches, there's no coaches to NASCAR. There's a proofee. Yeah. Yeah. I know that. But it's Gibbs. I mean, to me, it's an easy answer, but nobody ever thinks of it.

Well, for me, as far as college basketball goes, Dean Smith is the greatest basketball college basketball coach of all time. I think he was a much better coach than Shoshchowski. I'm not saying the accomplishments are the same, but I just thought in watching him he was a better coach. Look, you know, you don't have any skin in the game, and to a certain extent, I have more. You know, I will start with just an admission, you know, as a lifelong terp and as an alum. I'm going to miss Coach Kay. I'm I mean, you know, despising Coach K was like part of the, you know, Maryland slash ACC DNA, Tommy. It wasn't just Maryland.

It was the rest of the league. Maryland, like, as a Maryland fan, I can't tell you how many times at ACC tournaments, you know, back in the day, or in various other circumstances, a Carolina fan or a UVA fan or an NC State fan, we would sit there and we'd commiserate together about Coach K. he was the guy that was despised by everybody in the league. Now, the funny thing is he was the up-and-comer when everybody sort of despised Dean, but Dean was never despised in the same way Coach Kay was. Dean was like this old gentleman, you know, sage.

Like he was just, he was great and he was respected. You hated to lose to him. But Coach Kay, when you lost to him, had that way of saying, Juan Dixon is special. Maryland is a special, special place. Man, I, that environment tonight, you know, after he beat you, and it always seemed sort of patronizing. Anyway, despising him is sort of part of the Maryland or ACC thing.

It's part of the DNA. But that's only because he wasn't my school's coach. Not that I would have ever traded Coach K for Gary. But if he had been my coach, I wouldn't have to reluctantly admit that I'm going to miss him. You know, I was thinking about this. Nothing, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson, Bill Parcells, and thinking about all of the rival coaches in the NFC East, you know, when they retired or when they left the division or whatever, it's not the same as the way I felt hearing this news. I don't think it was. I mean, I remember feeling great respect for Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson in particular and not really liking Tom Landry.

Because that was really, I was the heart of the rivalry, man, the Landry years. But I think there are three things that I wrote down that I wanted to mention. The first part is it is very personal in a weird way for people that felt intimately attacking. to the ACC. And I'm talking about players, coaches, fans, more so than it is for just college basketball fans and other coaches and other people that followed the sport. Shoshchevsky coached his entire career after Army, but that wasn't a major league, in the ACC. And he was the dean of the ACC after Dean Smith actually retired himself. and there was this incredible development of a program that became rock starish.

Like I was telling Jimmy Patsos this morning that, you know, basically Duke in Georgetown are the two programs that literally were a traveling, you know, roadshow. Like they could play anywhere and you'd sell out the building in a second. He built something that was so incredibly special. It really was. Anyway, I say that because it feels very personal in the same way I described it feeling very personal when Maryland left the ACC. There was a bond between fans of ACC basketball schools, coaches, players, the whole thing, the stories, the memories, the traditions. You know, and it wasn't just in the games that he coached against Maryland, which were two a year, if not three a year, if not four a year, for, you know, 35 years or 30-something years.

It was the Duke Carolina games. NC State fans, Virginia fans, Maryland fans, Wake Forest fans, we all watch those Duke Carolina games. We all watch Duke play Kentucky, you know, in the tournament. but it benefited the rest of the league that Duke was such a brand. And I think that there was an appreciation, a jealousy, yes, but there was an appreciation for it. But the first thing that I wanted to say is him retiring, it's a personal thing for a lot of us, because there's been an intimate connection to Duke for any ACC school player, coach, or fan. he's been part of your sports watching and fandom life, a big part of it.

The second thing that came to mind yesterday was the reaction to him and the reaction was similar to Roy Williams, and the reaction will be somewhat similar to Jim Beheim, which I would guess is the next one, and it's the changing of an era. But it reminds me of the conversation that you and I have had before. and I've had many times on the air by myself or with somebody else, the whole argument about college athletes should be paid. And I've said many times that, you know, I don't think that they should be.

First of all, most schools can't afford it. So you're going to separate the haves from the have-nots and college sports won't look the same ever again if you actually start to pay. And I'm not talking about what they're about to start earning off their name and likeness and all of that. I'm talking about the people that really believe that they should be paid like salaries.

What yesterday reminded me of is what I've always felt very strongly about, that college sports are not about the players. The players come and go, sometimes very quickly. College sports are about the coaches. College sports are about the venues, the traditions, the schools, the colors, but more than anything else, you know, especially in the case of like a Duke, it's about Mike Shoshchewski. and the players that come to play for him should be paying him for the marketing platform that they're getting.

Now, I'm saying that sarcastically, I don't think they should be paying him, and I think that room, board, tuition, and everything else that they get. Plus, the marketing platform is massive. Do you know how many of these players, Tommy, if they didn't go to these big-time college football or college basketball programs, and they didn't play in the ACC or the Big Ten or the SEC, how many of those contracts year one would be the same value? You're right.

You're right. You're right. If they weren't known. They're known because they play in these college sports, which are very popular in this country in basketball and football. Mike Shoshchevsky is the one that people have paid to see year in and year out over the years. There's the occasional Zion Williamson, and Zion really was a player that brought eyeballs to the sport a couple of years ago.

But the players, you can't even remember most of the one-in-duns that go through Duke and Carolina and Kentucky, in Kansas, and all these places. That's not what people are paying for when they consume college sports. It's about the traditions, the venues, the coaches, so much more than it is about the players. You're right. That's my opinion anyway.

And then the third and last thought I had was that a lot of people, you know, so John Shire is going to be, you know, he's the coach in waiting. Shire played for Duke. There was great, you know, videos going around of a lot of the big games Shire had against Maryland in various places. I'm sure every ACC school had some Shire, you know, highlights because Shire was a good player. He was, but there was a game, there was a game one night at Xfinity Center where Marilyn went nuts and Jordan Williams had a dunk over John Shire on a fast break where the place was Bedlam and that video was going around forever. But what I was

going to say is, is that I think a lot of people for whatever reason for many years have thought, you know, places, smaller places like Duke and Georgetown, like once Coach Thompson left, Georgetown would never be the same again. And for the most part, it's true. I mean, Craig Eschrick certainly couldn't, you know, replicate what he had. And that Duke was never, you know, Duke before Shoshchewski, which isn't true. Duke had many winning eras before Shoshchewski got there. You know, it's funny.

I met Bill Foster, the guy who was the coach. Took them to a national championship game. Yeah, he took him to the title game against Kentucky. Right. He was running a basketball camp of a coach. the Poconos in 77, and I was working for the weekly Pocono Mountaineer, and went up there and did a story about him. He was very gracious, very nice guy for a goofy college kid working for a weekly newspaper. So yeah, Bill Foster, that was the Gene Banks team.

The Gene Banks, Kenny DeNard, Mike Jiminsky team. Yeah. Yeah. They lost to Jack Givens in Kentucky. In the title game, Givens went for 41, I think it was. And Kevin Grevy. No, Kevin Grevy was on an early. team. Kevin Grevy was on the team that played Wooden's last game and lost the UCLA in the final. I think I'm right about that. But I started thinking about, you know, you never want to be the guy to replace

the legend. You know, there's always that thought, right? The guy that replaced Lombardi, Phil Bankston, right? The guy that replaced John Wooden was Gene Bartow, who actually took UCLA to a final four and then got fired after two years because he couldn't win the national championship. You know, and then it was that guy Cunningham that followed, and then it was Larry Brown, and, you know, Larry Brown ended up getting him to the title game as well. Richie Pettibone following Joe Gibbs, talking about Joe Gibbs, and that it just usually doesn't necessarily work out. Now, Rick Petino following like Joe B. Hall or whatever it was, I mean, there have been

instances where it's worked out. I think Duke, even without Coach K, is going to continue to have the chance to you know, elevate themselves to Duke again. And I think that because while K was so important, I mentioned some of the other things that are important too. Venue. Cameron Indoor is a shrine in college basketball. Yes, it is.

It recruits almost as much as Coach K recruits. You know, being in the ACC in basketball is a big deal. It's not what it, it's not like being in the Big Ten. Big Ten's a better league, Tommy. But it's, you're playing heavyweight schedules, you know, in conference. You're going to be on TV. It's a great school. It's got, you know, this passionate fan base, which, by the way, is also a New York fan base.

It's a big city. It's a big East Coast city fan base. Duke has a lot. For those that don't understand this, the state of North Carolina, if you're a college basketball fan, which if you live and grew up in the state of North Carolina, you almost assuredly are. You're a North Carolina fan unless you went to Duke. North Carolina is like 90% of what people root for in the state of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And then it's like NC State 2 and then maybe Duke or Wake third or fourth.

But Duke has this incredible national following. And they put a ton of alum into big jobs in New York. in D.C. and Boston. And one of the reasons they started playing games at Madison Square Garden is there's a whole big sort of Duke subway. It's not Notre Dame sized because it's a smaller school. But, you know, you weren't trying to fill up a football stadium. You're trying to fill up Madison Square Garden, which they did on the regular all the time.

I just think that there's a lot going on with Duke. And maybe Shire won't be the guy. I'm actually surprised that Jeff Capel wasn't the guy. I think he would have been a better selection personally. And Brad Stevens, you know, for a couple of years, was thought to be the guy that would eventually replace Kay. It was interesting that in the same day that Stevens leaves coaching to take over the team president position with the Celtics,

Kay, you know, says, I'm leaving college basketball. That doesn't mean that after next, you know, that if it doesn't work out with Shire, that Stevens wouldn't come back. Anyway, I guess the net of it is it's not going to surprise me if it works out with Shire. and that if Duke continues to be a power. I don't think they're going to go like into, you know, I don't think they're going to become,

well, what the Redskins became after Joe Gibbs left the first time, as an example, or what the Packers became when Lombardi left for all of those years. I don't see that happening with them. You're probably right. I mean, I don't know. This is your bailiwick, not mine. All I know is that you've spoken to Coach K a few times,

over the years, haven't you? Not a few times, that one time. That one time when I recorded an interview with him for the show, you weren't there. He was doing some sort of promotional thing for some product, and I'll never forget it because it wasn't live. We had to record it because they couldn't do it until, you know, like four o'clock in the afternoon or whatever, and our show was over. And I go into that, you know, side studio, our 1260 studio, and the PR guy jumps on the phone and says, Coach K has four minutes. I thought, okay, four minutes. We've been told that before, right, over the years. Right. And we never really stick to it, but he's like he's on a very tight schedule. He's got four minutes. Well, 30 minutes later, I was still talking to him.

I know. And the interview itself was like 17 minutes, which we aired in several things. things made news. It was right after Maryland had committed to leave the ACC to go to the Big Ten. And I'll never forget, you know, talking, the whole interview wasn't about that. It was about a lot of other things, but I brought it up and we ended up talking. And I told him about what it was like for me as a fan when Duke came into the building and having been there on so many of those nights and being an ACC. And he immediately just started talking about how he thought it was so wrong, that they weren't transparent enough, that the ACC would have helped them, that Maryland is the ACC, and that losing them is a big blow. And he'll never remember the first time he ever said,

he'll never play Maryland was in that interview. And it ran on the ESPN crawl, the whole next day, et cetera. And so then the interview ended, and I said, coach, really appreciate it. And he said, I could hear the passion in your voice about how much this hurts. He said, I want you to know how much it hurts me and everybody else, not to be able to come up to College Park once a year for those games that we had. They're so memorable. And, you know, he went on and on about Gary. And we ended up talking for like another 10, 15 minutes.

Yeah. And then that was great. It was great. And I think, you know, and when I said earlier, like for ACC fans, like, really you felt it's weird. I think the only comparison for most of you is the same way we feel about the NFC East over the years. Not recently, but like in its heyday, there was like a badge of honor. There was like a feeling like you were a part of like a club, a very small club.

And you knew everything, you knew as much about the competitor and the major players in the league on other teams as you did about your own team. You knew the referees in the ACC. You knew the coaches, you knew the assistant coaches, you knew everything. You had a sense of the history. I think the NFC East, there's a similar thing. Because over the years, the NFC East probably is the biggest brand in terms of a division in the history of the NFL. The Cowboys Giants Eagle Skins as a division has been well known. If you ask a general football fan, who's in the Cowboys Division, they'll be able to name the teams.

If you ask who's in Houston's division, they may struggle a little bit. That's true. That's a good point. And I think that the ACC with basketball was the same thing. It was a major, major deal for a lot of us for so long. And he is, you know, he's on the Mount Rushmore of all-time college coaches in terms of the ACCC figures. You know, he and Dean are at the top of it. You know, there's no football coach that's on, that's anywhere.

near that elevation because this has always been a basketball league. Anyway, uh, did, um, did Chase Young show up today? Uh, and what it's Scott, that show up?

And what did Scott Turner say? More on that right after these words from these two sponsors. All right. No Chase Young for the last day of OTAs. You want to make a big deal about it today? I think we've already done enough on it, but do you have any other thoughts? Well, we, we were, instructed on Twitter. I don't know if you saw it by a follower named Tim Meek. I don't know who that.

Who basically, did you see it? No. The issue isn't Chase missing OTAs. This is on the NFL and the NFLPA to remedy by making any team training mandatory. It's an unnecessary black eye on the league and it's star players when they miss something that is voluntary. to which I responded, I knew it wasn't Chase Young's fault. How did I know that? I agree with both of you.

Of course, this is right. But what does that say to the other 75 guys who were there? Well, it was actually 86 that were there last week. I don't know what the numbers were this week. I mean, are they all morons for showing up? Apparently, they're chumps. They're chumps. You can't be an intelligent human being and not recognize that the position here is this.

It's not a big deal that he's not there in the scheme of things. But it's troublesome when your biggest star and team captain does not show up at a voluntary work, at voluntary workouts where everyone else shows up. That's troublesome. Uh, yes. Yes. I feel like I've talked about this a lot, so I'm just being repetitive. But the bottom line is that, is it going to impact the kind of player?

Chase Young is next year or in the future? I don't think so. Um, would everybody involved out there have, have preferred him to have been there? I would say absolutely yes. Um, so, uh, both of those things are true. And I do think that it is a whiff on his part. I personally do. But, you know, again, and I've read the things that Doc texted me a couple of times now,

so I won't read him again. But the bottom line is there's certain, if you want to be a leader, there is a line that you have to sort of understand unless he's trying to make some statement to the rest of the team on behalf of leadership. Like, guys, we shouldn't be here. But I don't think that's what we heard. Like that would have been more impressive than not posting and working out and essentially saying, yeah, this isn't for me. It's for you guys. It's not for me.

If he had come out and said, I don't, and be the, and had been the leader in saying, you know, a lot of other teams aren't doing these because of COVID concerns, etc. I don't think we should either. I think that we should all take a team vote. I'd like to lead this, you know, a movement and I'll, you know, and I'll deal with the results. You know, if the majority says let's go, then I'll do that. If the majority says don't go and you agree with me, we'll do that. But that's not what happened here. You know, Del Rio, by the way, said, you know, I spoke with him.

He's going to be joining us shortly. He's been working out and taking care of business. You're not going to hear anybody publicly criticize him for this. No. They actually really can't publicly criticize because this is voluntary per the CBA. So making it appear to be something that isn't contractually, they're not allowed to do. But as Nikki Javala from the Washington Post told me last week on the radio show, there's no doubt that in talking to people out there,

there's a sense that all 86 of the 90 or 87 of the 90 players that showed up realized that Rivera didn't really consider it to be voluntary. That in his mind these were mandatory. But apparently not for Chase Young. Whatever. This is one of those things that you, you know, you either really understand the nuance of, okay, we get it. It's not going to impact how many sacks he has next year.

But at the same time, if he's a leader on this team, why are 87 out of the 90 there and he's not one of the 87? Yes. You can't understand that there's a preference for him to have been there by not just people, fans or media people, but by the coaching staff, I guarantee you that. Then I think, you know, you're missing part of this too. Scott Turner said today, and I want to read this quote exactly, because I thought it was interesting. Hold on for one second.

I had it up here a second ago. It was something about the backup quarterback position, which basically in my mind's eye confirms, you know, what we already know. he said, by the way, Kyle Allen said that it's very doable to be full go by training camp. So there's even a possibility that Kyle Allen isn't going to be full go. He's not full go yet. Scott Turner said in terms of the backup job, it's very important to backup job.

We need two things. We need, you know, good decision making and accuracy. So that's what he's looking for from Kyle Allen or Taylor Heineke. he's not talking about Ryan Fitzpatrick. The other thing, too, he said, is the bottom line is we've got to be more explosive next year. We need to create more big plays. And if we do that, everything else will take care of itself offensively. Well, that's what Ryan Fitzpatrick does.

Well, that's what Taylor Heineke does, too. Taylor Heineke made some big plays when he was on the field. Anything else for today? What did you want to say about the D.C. Grace? Well, the D.C. Grace, the volunteer organization that I support that promotes baseball opportunities for inner city kids. We feel the team in the Cal Ripkin Collegiate Summer Baseball League every year. Right. And we play our games at the National Youth Baseball Academy, and the home opener is Monday, June 7th at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

this is high quality college baseball. Where's the game? You get a chance to see at the National's Youth Baseball category. I mean, Dusty Baker's son, when Dusty was in town, Dusty Baker's son, Darren, played for the Grays. Jeff Kent's son played for the Grays for a while. This is good college baseball that doesn't cost a dime, and it supports an organization that in turn,

And what the Grays also do is we run the RBI program in Washington. Right, D.C. Grace R.B.A.A. Which provides more than 300 kids with coaching, uniform, gloves, bats, balls. We take care of all of that for 300 kids in the poorer neighborhoods in the district. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. You can find out all the information about what the D.C. Grays do, and including their schedule at D.C. Grays, G-R-A-Y-S.com. Not everybody feels gray the same way.

Right. And I will be there Monday night, so come by and say hello. They're playing the T-Bolts on Monday night. 7 p.m. So get out to the Nationals Youth Academy and watch the game. All right, Tommy. That's it for today. Everybody have a great day. Back tomorrow. Thank you.