The Pat McAfee Show - PMS 2.0 689 - Gronk Officially Retires, Deshaun Watson Settles, Dr. Myron Rolle, Elliotte Friedman, Ian Rapoport, & Dan Rapaport

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

On today's show, Pat and the boys chat about the breaking news that Deshaun Watson is going to settle in 20 of his 24 current cases, and what impact that has on his upcoming punishment, and the breaking news that Rob Gronkowski has officially retired from the Buccaneers at age 33. Joining the program to chat about his new book, is former NFL player, Rhodes Scholar, Brain Surgeon at Harvard Medical Center, Dr. Myron Rolle, for an incredible conversation (16:59-46:02). Later, the preeminent NHL Insider, Elliotte Friedman joins the progrum to chat about the NHL Finals, what he's hearing about the offseason trade market, where Pasta is going, and much more (1:04:00-1:24:56). Later, Ian Rapoport joins the progrum to dive a little deeper into what Deshaun Watson settling means in a larger sense and if this will have an impact on the impending suspension for Watson (1:24:58-1:33:04). Lastly, PGA Insider for Golf Digest, Dan Rapaport joins the show to chat about where we're at right now with LIV versus the PGA Tour, and if the names are going to continue to move over (1:33:06-1:38:42). Make sure you subscribe to youtube.com/thepatmcafeeshow to watch the show, and listen on Sirius XM Channel 82, Mad Dog Radio. We appreciate the hell out of all you. See you tomorrow, cheers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello beautiful people. It is Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 and this sports show with massive breaking news starts now. Let's ride. That's right. Big news coming out of the NFL right before we went live here at youtube.com forward slash the Pat McAfee show and Sirius X xm channel 82 mad dog sports radio mad dog up for a hall of fame good all right for a long time congratulations breaking news before we came live on air we found out via ari mirov's twitter account deshaun watson has settled 20 of 24 cases against him uh going into the season here now We don't know what the settlement price is. We have no idea what happened with the other four, why they did not settle. And I also thought there was 26.

So is there two missing from that? Or did we just have stats and facts wrong until this was kind of put out? So all but four have been settled for Deshaun Watson, which you would have to think this would be good news for Deshaun Watson and the Cleveland Browns when just like 10, 15 years ago, the entire world would probably say, oh, settlement means worst possible news for the person doing the settlement. Now we're in a world, I believe, and I might be misreading the entire thing, but now we're in a world where it's like, okay, we've seen this happen before. Does this mean he's definitely guilty? Something probably happened. Did it mean that it was going to end up going to court? And

was all of them going to get guilty pleas on it? Maybe. Who knows with the evidence and everything that was happening before. So I think the truth will obviously be out there for a long, long time for us to find and pick through. But there has already been a narrative painted that we all will judge Deshaun Watson. Vastly different, I believe, going forward. But I think the NFL appreciates this move. I think the Cleveland Browns will appreciate this move. I bet you Browns fans will appreciate this move.

And to be honest, as a society, it was getting, you know, every new piece of information that was coming out, it was just like getting more and more heartbreaking. I can't believe this is happening to somebody in the biggest league on earth. And they did this, and they're getting the biggest contract in the NFL. So I don't know how this came to be. We don't know why this didn't happen like a year and a half ago when everybody would have expected this to happen. We don't know why the alternative was chose where we would learn all this stuff. And we don't know what happened with the other four cases

that are still pending and ongoing with a civil trial happening, I believe, starting in March of 2023 or something like that. Yeah. That is where the current thing is. So massive news coming out of this Tuesday, June 21st, at Ty Schmidt, at Boston Connor. Tone Diggs is here as well. Tone, I'll lead off with you, pal.

What does this do for the rest of the AFC North? What does this mean for the pending suspension? And how long do you think this is in the works for? Maybe two years, I would say at this point. Great question on what it does for the AFC North. I think we won't know until the suspension comes down, whether it's six games, eight games, maybe a year, whatever. But as far as the suspension goes, I think it's good or it's

good for the NFL because I think no new information is going to be coming out or anything like that. They're not going to get blindsided by anything you would think. So like they're not going to give a suspension and then someone something else is going to come out where they look horrendous for for if it was too little or too or whatever so i think it maybe gives the nfl maybe a clearer picture on the suspension okay maybe i would think but also with four still happening what does that mean ari mirov has another update to terms and amounts of the sediments will remain confidential okay um nda remember allegedly in the past there was almost an agreement, but Deshaun Watson wanted to be able to speak about it as opposed to not being able to speak about it

because he has contended his innocence since the very beginning. So the terms and amounts and settlements will remain confidential. Busby adds that the first plaintiff, Ashley Salas, and three other plaintiffs are continuing to move forward. The NFL's investigation is also still ongoing. Okay, so the original filer to Busby says, I'm going to keep going. We've already come this far. There's been a lot of information that's been learned.

I think at this point, a lot of people that have heard some of the information and stories that I have believe he is a predator, so she's going to keep going. Will this also end up as a financial settlement in the end? Who knows, but this has been something that the NFL world has been waiting on for like a year now. We thought it would have come much sooner, them fighting and fighting and fighting, and then us hearing Rusty Hardin go on the radio two weeks ago and say, well, you know, actually, if you go in there and get to myself,

Well, you know, actually, if you go in there and get your massage, and you happen to explode children from your penis, but you don't pay any extra for that particular act, it's just a part of the massage, and what you did, sir, is not illegal. No, no. And although people might morally disapprove, but legally that is not a problem at all. And everybody heard that and was like,

this is what the defense has been this entire time? This has been what it is? It almost made the whole situation worse. So I wonder if because Deshaun was so adamant about his innocence and not doing anything, plus his lawyer who's never lost, I don't think in Texas. I think he has like a never lost something,

like something absurd like that. He's saying now, Deshaunun you're telling me that was there every time where you guys said all right give you a little whoopty woo that'll be an extra 35 before the bucks anything like that deshaun was like nope it was always everything in there he's well we're good yeah we're good we ain't taking a settlement either we are doing this entire thing and as soon as he came public and everybody was like, what are you talking about? He was like, we got to get a, we got to settle this thing. Okay. Because maybe my defense is going to have a little crack in it every once in a while, because that might've been an already agreed to term beforehand that I might not have even

referred to. Whatever the case, I think it's because the lawyer started getting some heat. Right. And then every day it felt like it just kept going at this point i think um sue robinson the new third party judge for the nfl yeah that is the person who's going to hear the hearing from the nflpa defending deshaun watson and how much his penalty should be in the nfl uh laying down the case for what deshaun watson's penalty should be and then she takes in all that information,

then she calculates the punishment, then she tells Roger Goodell what she thinks the punishment should be, then Roger Goodell can add to it or subtract from it. It's in the readings. Goodell can take away from the recommended penalty or add to the recommended penalty. It's like, okay, so Sue is just a recommendation. This is not a ruling.

Well, the ruling, she does make a ruling because the case is the NFLPA versus the NFL. But they're going to a judge that ultimately doesn't have any of the power. So that is quite an interesting thing. But Sue here is now, how does this make her view the entire situation versus how it doesn't? She's a former federal judge. She's obviously been there, done that with this whole thing. What's her recommendation going to be?

And that's what all eyes are sitting on. Everybody's assuming it's going to be like right before July 4th right there. They're thinking like July 2nd probably when this news is going to come out. Well, that is what the interesting part – I mean, when you look at that, it's like in terms of the suspension, like you mentioned, I think everyone's kind of on the same page with Deshaun Watson at this point. There was kind of some gray area but like do you think that him settling and we it might be bullshit but the nfl said they were looking for a season suspension

like does how much does this impact i don't know you know like i really don't i think the damage is kind of already done and granted it's not like a personal thing for sue robinson or any but like all the settlements are just viewed interestingly now than maybe back whenever back in the day it you know what i mean like back in the day settlements were happening but they were never broadcasted because there's only like what six channels yeah so they were picking and choosing what was happening then as the settlement we kind of got baptized into the oh settlements happen type thing not just in this type of situation by the way in a lot of business situations settlements are happening like at all times and it used to just automatically be an announcement of defeat almost i feel like we

have a different view upon it now but in this case i don't think anybody you know what i mean whereas if he if he would have settled from the beginning then it would be in that situation but now it is to the point where everything's out of the bottle like it's you know i don't think anyone's still thinking oh you know tougher to sean watson like i where everything's out of the bottle. Like, you know, I don't think anyone's still thinking, oh, you know, tough for Deshaun Watson. Like, I think it's kind of universal how everyone feels about it now. What happens at stadiums, you think, whenever he's going to be terrible? Yeah, brutal.

Terrible. He's going to get eviscerated. I mean, we saw what happened with Big Ben, and this wasn't even close to the extent. 2010 was when the Big Ben stuff happened. And, you know, we talked about this last week. People are coming after us for talking about this, the Sean Watson case.

Where were you when Big Ben was going on? Well, I was in the league. I don't know how old Connor was. Yeah, I was in college. We didn't have a show yet. I wish we did. We would have chatted about it. But the day he retired 12 years later,

I mean, you're talking about hashtag big rape was trending. Oh, yeah. So everybody's talking about nobody really gave Ben his. No, people did. This is one of those things where when this type of thing happens in your life, your life is going to be different forever. Whenever you put yourself in a situation where this happens, your life is going to be different forever.

And I guess Deshaun has just got to a point mentally where he's going to get past it. He obviously just tries to, I don't know if he isolates himself or somehow, but forever this is going to be talked about. He obviously just tries to, I don't know if he isolates himself or somehow, but forever this is going to be talked about. And the Cleveland Browns are going to have to you know what I mean? Like the dog pond. Now, I guess the only other alternative is what? He would have gone to

26 civil trials and won them all? Is that what they were going to think about? That's what they were thinking about doing from the beginning? Starting in March, though. So it would be the first one in March, possibly going for the next three years. Not settling, though.

So them choosing not to settle as the cases were mounting. Was it like, we'll go to court? Yeah, I go sit in the courtroom every time. 26. 26. Was that the thought they were going to do as it was continuing to come out? Maybe. Like, all right, it's 15.

Remember? Because it was coming like. Yeah. It was coming like it said 15. Well, we'll do 15 in case. 16. Yeah. I'll sit there.

16. Each one of them probably six weeks long. Start doing the math. That's a few years you're going to be doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Anything from my innocence or whatever. 18.

20. 21. 22. Lost four. 18. Oh, four more. 22. 23. 24, 26. And then in the New York Times, they're 66 in 17 months, they're saying.

So was his plan from the beginning just going to be, like settlement was the only option at any, right? Settlement was the only option. And did it get to a point where someone was like, hey, Deshaun, in public eye, I don't know if anything's going to change if you go through. And you talk about him laying low and the dog pound and stuff like that. He did say that he went out to the movies and some Cleveland Browns fans bought him and his girlfriend or wife

or whatever some big things of popcorn. So they're behind him. Okay. Have some popcorn, pal. You've been through enough. You'll be all right. You're a Cleveland Brown now. It's about to get worse.

Yeah. I'm joking. I'm joking. Four is still a lot i feel like we're probably desensitized by the number being 26 or 24 for as long as it was but even to sit through four trials in one summer is a lot so johnny depp amber heard was about six weeks and they had a recess in there because how long that's right fire their pr for then yeah well both i think I think Amber did. Amber did. Yeah, Amber did in the middle of that thing. But whenever, is that the standard for those? So you start doing the math, that's 24 weeks. That's what?

Half a year. Six months. That's your off season. And that's just if the courts just so happen to be able to line those up concurrently. Yeah. I don't understand how the settlement thing didn't happen much. I don't know what the, were they just going to do it? And the lawyer was like, oh, yeah, we'll go.

That's a lot of bill of allowers. You kidding me? Two years straight. We'll go for three years straight. We'll go. Every single one of them will go. Don't you worry about that. We'll get you on the other side of that.

You'll be out of your prime in football. You won't be able to play football anymore, but there will be some people that think you're innocent because they paid attention to three years worth of – you know what i mean like i i don't know what other option there ever was at this point it doesn't feel like there was any and now do you think that any of the if there are a similar case where one of the 66 times he got a massage in the last 17 months like they're alleged alleged there might be other people that come forward now because if they see that he's settling it's like okay maybe there's a chance that you know i could either continue on with the lawsuit like the other

four or i could at least state my case on how i felt because i assume some were probably still scared this is just like and i don't mean to bring this up because this person has moved past this and is a much better place now well when tiger was going through his thing remember yeah then his waitresses were coming out. It was like every day. It was like every day. Every day. Somebody, well, I had a gas station one time. We stopped to get our hands washed.

And it was like, maybe, maybe, maybe. Absolutely, at the time, it is. You're right, though. We hope everybody learns from this whole thing. I hope the world is a better place now. And those four, that is a lot to still unpack. Who knows how it plays out. Deshaun Watson makes a decision here that everybody would have expected a year or two ago.

But what would Sue Robinson recommend to Judge Roger Goodell? I don't know. What do you think the NFLPA is even talking down? Do you think the NFL is just going in full season and they're just going to go from there? Yeah, so what? I don't know enough about how court cases go. I did watch Judge Judy for a good amount of time.

Normally one of those things is, I need $2,000 for blah, blah, blah. I'm not paying it all. And Judge goes, actually, you know what? It's going to be $800 because that is the actual amount. You go in there. I wonder if that's the game plan. That's why the NFL is going in for a full season. And the NFLPA is like, no, just go in for a fine.

And then they'll be battling against each other the entire time. And then Judge Sue Robinson swings the hammer and says, here's my recommendation. And then walks that thing up to Roger Goodell. Yeah. Because their whole argument is like the Robert Kraft situation and some of the other situations with like the – Well, I'm happy you brought that up because I didn't want to bring up

everybody's transgressions in the past. But there is some precedent of what happened in the NFL when something – by the way, 26 is vastly different than a lot of things that have happened in the past. But that's a lot of very serious allegations. I do not want to be in the chair that has to rule on that, because no matter what you do, it's going to be wrong. You give one season

and there's people that aren't happy about it. You think he should be able to come back next season. You know, like, I mean, there is not a right answer in this at all. In all eyes are on the dog pound, as they have promised him $1 million in salary next year. And we'll find out here in, what, 10 days? $ one million dollars in salary next year and we'll find out here in what 10 days one one million dollars is his salary next year yeah i wonder what they thought

the suspension was going to be yeah that's just a pretty that's a pretty like okay so this one is one million dollars it's for the salary gap obviously for the salary gap then the next year jumps to like 50 million or 40 million or something the next year after that after that so you know everybody knows suspension or game checks like that's kind of yeah that's what you're missing out on well and they were pretty into the stuff that he wrote to them right because wasn't that what we talked about last week where he actually like had a statement to the browns about what there possibly could come of this and how many there possibly could be and that was kind of where if he wasn't honest with them, they could just void his entire salary.

And then Andrew Brandt told us that his insight has said this year and the next year the contract are basically locked in regardless, no matter what you just said. I guess the last two or three years had the ability to be opted out of that. Will we see Deshaunatson play football in the next two years i think yes right yeah definitely so because people were comparing it to the ben roethlisberger case if you look at it now this was granted 12 years ago ben had two accusations one went to court in a civil suit and was settled and he was suspended six games that was later reduced to four.

So just simple math, he should probably get 12 times four. 48. Probably 48 in 48 games. That feels about right to me. They're never going to get it right. I don't know if he's going to play next year. I don't think he's going to play this upcoming year. So then it's the Baker Mayfield, Jacoby Brissett situation.

$18.5 million guaranteed. And, you know, Jocena Anderson said yesterday, is Baker willing to take a pay cut to go play somewhere else because that's what it's going to take? Or is he going to take his $18.5 million and just start for the Browns and make it uncomfortable? Maybe he won't be the starter. Maybe Jacoby Brissett will beat him out.

Maybe he'll be the backup for Jacoby Brissett in Cleveland. That is quite a scene over there. Just a year removed from making the playoffs and beating Steelers in the playoffs after not winning forever. Yeah, forever. Forever. A year ago, we're talking about them going to the Super Bowl. Oh, well.

Dog pound made their bed. Joining us now is a man that not only was so damn good on a football field he made to the NFL, was drafted in the sixth round, but that's after taking a year off, being an absolute sensation. He would go on to become a Rhodes Scholar. Wow. A neurosurgeon. Jeez. And go to Oxford while playing football for Florida State, the Tennessee Titans, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Harvard neurosurgeon, now author of the book, The 2% Way, How a Philosophy of Small Improvements Took Me to Oxford, the NFL, and Neurosurgery. It is out now. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Myron Rowe. Yeah, Doc! What's up, man? How you doing? Hey, Doc, how are you?

I'm doing well, doing well. Thanks for having me. Look at that. You got a goddamn book up over your shoulder, dude. Let's go. Hey, let's go. Look at you, man. Could you have ever imagined all this?

I mean, I assume at some point you had to have dreams and aspirations, which is why you worked your ass off and everything like that. But there's no way you could. I just read up. Did you hear me read off your accolades? That is that is not what not one human normally accomplishes. Right. That's like a family. That's like a town. Not one human. Did you ever could you ever imagine this, Doc? Could you ever imagine it? You know, probably not my parents were incredible incredible visionaries for me and my brothers coming from the bahamas and really laying it out for us to say look if you want to achieve something great in this in this uh in this country and in this world

uh you need to focus on your school focus on education be good citizens good humans and doors will open up for you and as i I matriculated through school, through life, through football, meeting different people, forming networks, immersing myself in culture, and trying to just be the best I possibly can be, doors opened up to write a book and to inspire people and to motivate and to mentor, and now to do brain surgery at Harvard here in Boston. So it's just been a phenomenal ride, and I'm very grateful. Yeah, what you just said there. Yeah, to motivate people and inspire people and write a book

and do brain surgery. Yeah, obviously. It's unbelievable. You're a special dude. I hope you obviously remain humble because you are doing brain surgery, but I hope at some point you look in the mirror and say, I'm a badass motherfucker. And I'm intrigued by the book here,

The 2% Way, How a Philosophy of Small Improvements Took Me to Oxford, the NFL, and Neurosurgery, out now. I read in the, did you write this, this bio thing that I got? Yes. Oh, my. Hey, this is one of the most. I don't read books. Okay, not my thing.

I read a lot of tweets, though. So normally the type of language that I read and the word choices that I read, very elementary. I say, what's that reader's scale? The Scholastic Accelerator Reader's Program. Normally third, fourth grade stuff. This thing, one of the most well-written. I was reading it aloud. Who'd you say?

Did Spielberg fucking? Yeah, I said Stephen King right there. Yeah, Stephen King right there. stuff this thing one of the most well-written i was reading it aloud who'd you say did spielberg yeah i said stephen king right yeah stephen king right this thing it's unbelievably well put together but here how you found your two percent way that you've taken to your life um it was from florida state university defense coordinator mickey andrews and he's from the bear bryant tree and he said someone in alabama or clemson is working just as hard as you i need you to be two percent better than them in some way. And you've kind of taken that to your entire life. One thing from a coach in practice, and you've taken it to your entire life. What does that mean?

Because, you know, like the Colts right now are 1% better every day. I've heard people do the 2% better. How do you actually piece that together? Is that just mentally saying, I need to get a little bit better? But whenever you put a number on it, how do you decide what the hell the number is and is that number changing literally every single day because two percent of something that is two percent added the day before is bigger than the two percent that was one week ago so I'm just need to figure this out for me uh this would be great if you could break it down for me Myron because I've been wondering for some time now

no I appreciate that's a really good question so So you're right. It started from Coach Andrews. He was the originator of this thought, this idea to all of my teammates. He wanted us to get a little bit better every day in practice, whether it be our stamina, our ability to disguise blitz packages, our ability to high point the football, whatever it was. He wanted us to get a little bit better and had those small incremental growths. Because if you get 100% better tomorrow, it's almost impractical. No one really can do that. But so we wanted it to feel real, manageable, realistic. And so I took this thought process, brought it to life, as you mentioned. And now I use it in my professional life as a physician, my personal life as a father, as a husband, my relational life, my spiritual life,

just trying to stack the days and win each day. And so when we say 2%, the number two is not as important as just the manageable small bites that you take, right? If you can do something just a little bit better and just move forward just a little bit more, you focus more on your progress than your deficits. You focus more on your growth than what's going on around you. To me, it quiets down the background noise, allows you to focus and lock in to your purpose, your goal, whatever it is. I wanted to always be a better nurse. I've always wanted to be a better community advocate. I've always wanted to be a better son, a better brother, a better husband to my wife, doing all these things. But if I felt

like I was rushing or out of pace by moving too fast, too soon, too quick, then I knew it wouldn't work. But if I just take small steps and self-reflect every day after each day and say, you know what? I did a little bit more today. I communicated a little bit better today. I read a little bit more today. I prayed a little bit more today. I worked out a little bit more. Whatever the case would be, you look back a month, six months, a year from now, and you can see the growth you've made. You see the steps you've made, and you know you're a better version of yourself. So that's what he wrote about in this book, and we're excited to share it with everyone for sure. I can't wait for people to read it and learn about it because it gives people purpose too, doesn't it?

I mean, whenever you – Oh, no. Oh, no. We lost him? Nope. Hey, welcome back. Hospital? Great to see you. Yeah, was that the hospital?

If somebody needs brain surgery right now yeah we obviously understand you would have been gone already because you're a great doctor so you wouldn't even need it to uh for us to say that but i think having the two percent thing and then reflecting it gives people purpose right it gives you like a goal because i think for friends of mine that maybe got out of the nfl and i don't know if it happens with doctors and stuff like that. But whenever they wake up with nothing, no agenda, no plan, no goal, no nothing. That's when everybody starts to spiral, right? So in the 2% way, also like a big advocate

of like having a purpose with your day, accomplishing something and really looking forward to things so that you can not worry about the lack of shit going on in your life and not having any purpose on this. Fulfill on this fulfillment i think is really comes from it all fulfillment reward no question we have these lobes in our brain pat we have a frontal lobe parietal occipital whatever we also have a limbic lobe right and this limbic lobe is in front of is controls their reward system right

so if you do something well if you achieve a goal if you meet a task if you accomplish something you get these excitatory neurotransmitters that get released, make you feel really good, give you that euphoric feeling. And even a small win, a small pat on the back, a small step forward is enough for you to feel real good and feel satisfied that you've made that reward, that you're driving through that purpose like you're speaking about. It gives your days a sense of order and structure. through that purpose like you're speaking about. It gives your days a sense of order and structure. And as you mentioned, guys who have finished playing, sometimes they lack that structure, lack that sort of focus in what's next for them. And so having that 2% process that you can systematically walk through life and move forward in whatever you want to be, physician, outstanding entertainer, personality, musician, lawyer, law enforcement officer, whatever it may be. You have the design to do it. You can do it well. And we really try to

push that message through in this book. So we're fired up. Doc, that's awesome. I'm happy you're doing that for people, man. You're giving like an elite mind to people. You're breaking it down like, hey, this is how we become better humans as a whole. Hey, where's the medulla ambungata whenever you were breaking the entire thing? Is that a real thing? It's a real thing. You got the medulla as part of your brainstem. That's the last part of your brainstem before your brain turns into your spinal cord. And it has a lot of different cranial nerves in there.

It controls your ability to swallow, ability to speak. Some of your major corticosp spinal tracts run through there so it's a very important part of the brain for sure shout out to my medulla um how'd you find time to write this book we were talking about this when you're a brain surgeon obviously your hours i think they're very long and then you get a couple days off then you're back on then you're back off so in your off time to spend time to write a book i've heard from people writing a book is miserable now i don't know if brain surgery is miserable as well or whatever the case, but how did you find time to do this? And are you a super regimented guy every single day?

Is it like, are you, are you, I don't want to say robot, but are you pretty systematic with every single day, like Mark Wahlberg and The Rock and them? Well, the blessings that my program here at Harvard provide is that we have some time for research, where we have no clinical responsibility for about a year or so. So during that time, I was over in Africa, in Zambia, doing pediatric neurosurgery. I went back home to the Bahamas, went to the Caribbean, other parts, Guyana, Trinidad, Montserrat, Antigua, just helped uplift neurosurgical care there. But that wasn't a 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. sort of work. And so it gave me some time to really just dedicate each day, maybe an hour or

two hours, writing things down, putting pen to paper. And also, Pat, I wrote some of these stories that I mentioned in this book years ago, and I saved them on Word documents. So when it was time to write a book, I could pull them and I could know what I had in front of me and I was able to put it together that way. So I had a lot of support. And thankfully, I had a little bit of time with this research here in these elective years to sort of, you know, really put my thoughts to be vulnerable on paper and to hopefully inspire somebody. You know, I read books when I was younger. Ben Carson's book, Gifted Hands, it inspired me to want to do neurosurgery. He planted the seed of being a black neurosurgeon,

and that really opened up the world for me, exposing me to that. Even knowing that Samari and Antron, these other guys, played football before me, I knew I wanted to get to the league, but I knew that wasn't the end goal. And so thinking about Dr. Carson's story, reading that in the fifth grade,

knowing that unlocked my future, hopefully my book and others can do that for some young person who may see themselves in my story. Man. Hey, you're going to be president someday, dude. You know that? That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. You're going to be a sitting president. Well, I can't, I guess, born in the Bahamas. No, no, we'll change that. That'll be changed. Hopefully Nija is president someday. You just sound everything you say. There's never a flaw, never a flub. And in this thing that you wrote to describe the book, we read through it. Great work writing that. I would like to let you know, we didn't disrespect your work writing that you talked about how playing in front of like 70,

80,000 people has actually benefited you whenever you're doing brain surgery or whatever, because the pressure that that has felt, is that something that happens in the surgery world that maybe the doctors aren't ready for as much as somebody who has played in big time games and how do normal surgeons get through that and like is that because when you mentioned that i'm like yeah what happens if a doctor has been to school for however many years it take, however much money, and then they get there and then in the big moment, oh shit, you kind of got to be, you got to be a clutch person. That had to feel good that you kind of naturally just jumped in there and did the nerves get you ever? And how do you calm those down? Yeah, it's a great point. You know, I think sports has helped me tremendously in this walk of being a physician and definitely the

pressure aspects of it. You know, you get the brain where uh you have one millimeter to the left and you're in the speech center one millimeter to the right and you can affect how someone hears no way dude i'm not fucking in there i'm not no way dude seriously though seriously i'm so sorry you're just like in my head i'm like oh you're just you. Oh, this is somebody's life right here. Here you go. Go on. The amount of pressure that is is next level. I'm sorry I cut you off.

No, it's OK. It's OK. I mean, the brain is a beautiful thing. And one day you come to Harvard and you come to Boston. I'd love to take you to the hospital. You can scrub into the case and we get some signed consent and you can see the actual brain pulsating right in front of you. It's a beautiful thing. But yes, it is. It's life or death is right in front of you. And you know, there's some very

intricate structures that really can take away someone's meaning, meaningful life and their ability to function in daily life. So, you know, when you're able to go back to your football days, when you're playing against Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators, you know, and they're driving on you and you think about, look, your back's on the wall, you're in the tight zone, you have to make this stop. You calm yourself down, take a few heartbeats, you know, relax yourself and go back to your fundamentals. It's the same sort of process that I've used now when we get into some bleeding or we get a little seizure during the case or maybe we nick a vessel that we shouldn't have. Calm down, go back to your fundamentals, and remember that this patient on the table, they expect you to do

well and perform at your optimum. So you have to save their life and do everything you can. Everyone in the room has to do that. Not just you as a surgeon, scrub techs, anesthesia, circulating nurse, everyone's got to be on the same page. It's a team environment. And so being an athlete has certainly helped me now being a physician, especially a neurosurgeon. Hell, yes. But just explaining. Now, this is the medulla omgata right here. Okay?

This is, I do believe, if, you know, I don't need to go into the surgery room. If you guys want to send me a Harvard shirt, though, I'll wear it. You know what I mean? I'll wear it. This is the medulla omgata right here, right? Yeah, yeah. Yep, right over there. Yeah, yeah.

That's about right. And then this is the, which one of the, how come I'm always told that I'm only using like 20% of my brain or something? Is that real? And how do I get the rest of it to fucking operate and stop being so lazy? And which part of it is being lazy, just so I know? Are you right or left-handed? That's one question I got, Pat. Right-handed, but I bat lefty. True. I bat lefty in baseball, but I am right-handed. Okay, a little bit of

everything. Well, your speech center is probably in the left side, you know, your left part of your brain. And so, yeah, right. And the finger frontal lobe, that's where your speech would be produced. Yeah, right around there. That's right. And then you have your occipital lobe in the back is your visual cortex in the back there. Yep. Yep yep yep so that controls you know how how you see things then your temporal lobe down in the bottom there if you can bring your hand down just a little bit nope a little bit more forward yeah temporal lobe that's a little bit more memory right and you have some speech there as well shout out shout out to this one here. And those big sort of, you know, tongues in the back, that's your cerebellum. And that controls your coordination, your balance, you know, and sort of how you can punt the football so well by making sure the ball goes down and hits your foot.

That cerebellum is really important for that. Shout out to the fucking cerebellum, dude. Shout out. And then what's going on on this side? Nothing? Nothing's going on on this side over here? That's also the occipital lobe. That's all part of the occipital lobe it's all even though you have that hemisphere in the middle that sort of fissure that splits it in the middle your

occipital lobe is on the back and what's this this is this the part of my brain that they say i'm not using right now unless i go into acid or ayahuasca or dmt or any of that other stuff is that this part of the brain the right side yes So your right frontal lobe is what we call the body's natural airbag. You don't really need it as much, especially if you're left-handed. However, I will say the important part of the frontal lobe, especially with you and I, Pat, and other athletes, for CTE, that is where proteins are deposited right in the frontal lobe because it affects executive functioning, personality, decision-making. You get suicidality, you get aggression, violence. So when they study brains,

Aaron Hernandez and other guys who have had CTE, a lot of the deposits happen in the frontal lobe. And so that's a common area where you see it, the damage. Hey, are you going to dive it? That feels like that's your intersection, right? Yeah, no question. I'd love to. I mean, I love football. Obviously, I still watch it. And I love to have a foot into that and a foot into my science, what I do in the operating room. And, you know, I've been called to talk to the Chargers and the Rams and the Colts, my team, the Titans.

I've spoken to Florida State, University of Arizona about COVID and about some medical conditions that can happen when you play football. So I love the intersectionality between what i do for a day daily life and and also the the chapter of my life that i just uh i just left being an athlete so i honestly if you and obviously you know this because you have a lot of friends who played football still which i'm assuming there's not a lot of doctors that have a lot of friends that are in football i've i've been around those types the doctors type they actually make fun of the football the sports guys a lot i understand that you know that more than i do because the amount of things are said about you

probably in that group even though you can hold your own if somebody was able to create some sort of something to slow that down i mean i've had teammates that have had at least 15 concussions i mean and they're just sitting on deck you know they're just like waiting and then and very scared about what the future is. Somebody could get clarity on that and hopefully help out in the future, as opposed to it just being viewed as something that's going to take down the sport that we all love. If it was something that could help the gladiators that play in the sport that we love, I think we'd all be very grateful.

And so, you know, I know you know that as well. It'd be dope if we could get there from a neuroscience point of view, you know? Yeah, I believe 100 percent. I think we're working towards that. And I think there's multidisciplinary sort of approach to try to affect change in CTE from neurosurgeons, neurologists, sports psychologists, all different elements. And one thing that I tell former teammates of mine when they ask me, what can I do to help my brain, right? I tell them, one, eat a lot of vitamin E. I think that's important. Pumpkin seeds, all these different vitamin E rich foods. I say, get a lot of rest. What is vitamin E? I've never heard of this. How come this is the first time I'm hearing of this? Vitamin E, I'm sorry,

hold on, okay? Vitamin E is important. Mocha is important, right? So, you know, you can get that from coffee eggs, right? You got it. You got it going, no question. I say, getting a lot of rest is important. People often think that you got to grind all the time. But when you rest, you have this glymphatic system that sort of takes away the metabolic waste and sort of drains it away when you sleep. And it's most active when you do get good quality rest. So that's important. Staying hydrated is important, Pat. So you've got to stay tanked up, right? Blood volume, body fluid, got to keep it up so that nutrients and minerals can get to your brain tissue.

volume, body fluid, got to keep it up so that nutrients and minerals can get to your brain tissue. And then I tell my teammates all the time, you should do maybe 10, 15 minutes of brain teasers, crossword puzzles, some sort of activity for your brain, for your mind to keep it active, to keep it moving, just like any muscle. So I give that advice all the time to my boys, because I think it's important. You got these young men who've given their life to this sport, and you've seen the degeneration processes that have happened so early in some of these players that we're trying to avoid that. They need to preserve life because they're valuable members of the community and of their families too, and we need to keep that going. Yeah, and their stories are worth being heard too. I think every ex-player has a story that

could make them money if they figure out how to use it, but that's a conversation for another day um so the brain is actually a muscle that i can work and make better no question we got this thing called neuroplasticity right so you can have different cells that learn and rework and rewire find different ways to learn things right let's take for instance we have patients who have strokes, for instance. And sometimes these strokes can cause brain cells to be lost, essentially. But the cells that border where those cells that have just died, those new cells can say, you know what? I'm going to learn how to speak. I'm going to learn how to see this way or see that way. The brain cell used to be able to do that.

But now I'm going to take over that role and sort of learn it. It takes some time. Neuroplasticity is not something that happens overnight, but the brain is a beautiful thing. It's better than any computer, man-made computer we can think of. That's why I love going into it and I love operating on it and hopefully saving lives through the process of my enjoyment of the science for sure. Yeah, hell yeah. I'm enjoying the hell out of this conversation about what's inside my ears here, and I'm learning a lot. Yeah, hell yeah.

I'm enjoying the hell out of this conversation about what's inside my ears here, and I'm learning a lot. I need you and everybody that's listening to know that Dr. Myron Rolt was the one that said the brain is smarter than any AI or anything. That was not me. That was not us. That was not us. So that was Dr. Myron Rolt. That's right. Harvard neurosurgeon. That was you.

Sorry, because the AI is listening to us right now. So they are not going to be happy with what you just said. Or she. Or she. You sexist. I'm sorry. Lambda. Lambda.

How dare you? Boom. See? That's your problem. What do you mean? Ty, your question for Dr. A. We appreciate this. This is an incredible conversation that we never have on this show.

And I don't think I get to hear enough of, although incredibly interested in the brain, because you only have one. And I use mine way too much much and it never shuts down. So I would like to learn about it a little bit more. And I only know one neurosurgeon. Yeah. Believe it or not. Go ahead. Dr.

How hard was it when you have something like COVID where it's kind of all hands on deck and that isn't necessarily what you're trying to do with the you know neurosurgery but like how hard was it when i mean i assume most of your time was dedicated to that do you ever feel like you had to kind of like double up on because i assume there's like a path that you have to stay on here to make sure you're on top of your ship but how difficult was it balancing the two when covid came yeah it was very difficult it's a great question you know i think our hospital mass general is the the main feeder um for everywhere else in the New England area. I mean, people just came to us. And if they had COVID, if they had suspected COVID, theygeons, orthopedics, OB-GYN, plastic, no matter what you did, that was put on hold. And we needed bodies actually to man the surge clinics so that you can triage patients and

take care of them. It was a steep learning curve to try to figure out this respiratory illness, learn about it, learn what infectious disease consults I needed, what sort of imaging was necessary, how to flip patients prone, how to think about COVID and how to protect myself because my wife was pregnant at the time. So I wanted to make sure I wasn't passing anything on to her and our unborn child at the time. So what, again, I think helped me during that moment was football. And I keep going back to it, learning how to be flexible and adaptable, how to adjust on the fly, knowing that, yes, I came in to do brain surgery, spine surgery, but

I'm needed now. And we're all needed in the emergency department to help out with these very vulnerable and sick patients. So difficult time. Now, thankfully, we're back to our normal pace at our hospital where we're able to do surgeries that we love. And I'm able to help people in the science that, you know, I've grown to be a part of. So it's exciting. You just brought it up there. And I don't mean to change subjects too much, but I feel like as somebody who, you know, hopefully I'll be able to have a child someday, and when I do, I feel like it should be mandatory

that every kid has to play in a team sport. Like, I honestly, the people that I've met that haven't played in a team sport, I almost immediately recognize whenever a situation arises, like, hey, not everything's going to work out for you. Like, not everything is going to be awesome. There's going to be terrible times where you're going to rely on other people. You have to trust people to do stuff.

Like, I feel like team sports really teach some things that I think are vital to the success of a human. Now, I'm just saying that strictly because I grew up in all team sports, but it's nice to hear you talking about it as well because that's from a completely different place in society almost that doesn't do sports at all. I think that is – I'm happy to hear you talk about team sport like that, though. Honestly. You're absolutely right. Communication. How do you communicate with people who are different than you?

How do you take coaching? How do you understand when you're being told a good instruction, maybe in a firm voice, but you've got to sift through some of the maybe coarse language and get to how is this person trying to improve me? And then knowing how to lose, right? You have to know how to lose and how to bounce back from that. Not all brain surgery or spine surgery ends up well, right? Some outcomes are poor, some are less desired, and it's a difficult time. And sometimes it's life or death in those instances. But you have to find a resolve within you. You have to find a way

to be better the next time because the next patient is expecting your utmost. They're expecting you to deliver. They're not expecting you to still wallow in sorrow from the past defeat that you just had. And so, yes, I agree. Team sports helps you be a better human, a better civilian, a better leader for sure, a better employer. All around, I think it has so much value. And so I tell my mentees all the time, especially the ones who do participate in sports, keep it up, take what you're learning in practice, in the weight room, on a game field, because it can translate to what you want to do the next chapter of your life, the next phase of your life when you're going to have a valuable impact in the community. Go ahead, Connor.

Yeah, Doctor. Speaking of the next chapter, actually, you played in the NFL. You became a brain surgeon. Now you're an author. Are you going to like go to space next? Here we go. Be like a Navy SEAL maybe? Space doctor.

What do you think? Yeah. Oh, man. You know, I've always thought about how policy can help. And I don't know if it's, you know, it's in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean. I'm not sure if it's here. But how can you affect change in many lives, many generations? And I'm not sure if that's in public office or what.

But I feel that there's, you know, after neurosurgery or, you know, whenever neurosurgery is done with me, or, you know, whenever neurosurgery is done with me, that there could be an opportunity to try to affect change through, you know, driving systematic changes where you're just shifting the way people think about health or access to health, equitable, timely access to health. Think about those individuals on the margins. They're educated. So there's, you know, they have resources to do what they need to do. I know my family, my story, origin story coming from the Bahamas and coming to this great country of America, having this opportunity to do well. It just the doors opened up for me because I grinded. I worked hard. I had great support system. I had a few breaks here and there, but the opportunities are presented and not everyone has that. And I just want to try to provide that for the most people as possible. And if it's through policy, if it's through a larger organization that can spread that sort

of goodness around the world, that would be, that would be fantastic. That may be the next chapter, but I think we're a ways away from that. I'm still in love with the brain. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. We need you on the brain for at least until you cure CTE. Go ahead, Tom. Doctor, I've also studied a lot of medicine in my day. And the one thing that I've noticed in my studies, and you talked about, you know, taking criticism and stuff like that. But when you're going through your residency and specifically surgical residency, is it as competitive as I've noticed between you and

the other residents, you know, trying to get surgeries and attention from the lead doctors and stuff like that? Yeah, you know, definitely. It could be difficult when you're trying to manage personalities, but at the end of the day, you're trying to figure out how you're going to help this patient the best they possibly can. You know, when you're in an elite place like Harvard, where people are coming from Dartmouth, Princeton, they're all sort of cerebral. They all come with a lab and they come with research papers of 10, 15 times published in some of the best journals around the world. And then you come in as a six foot two black jock who's like, oh, you look like a football player. Are you really a neurosurgeon? So you kind of have to prove your worth at each time. But I that pressure. And I love those moments. I love being tested, being tried. Dr. Rowe, do you know what you're going to do here? Dr. Rowe, do you know what you're going to do

here? What if A and B fails? What is C, D, and E? What are the other options? And I'm ready to hit it every single time because I know those questions are coming. I anticipate it just like I anticipate a slant ride. If you're lined up at a certain part of the numbers. I know what you're going to do. And I cherish those moments to be able to step forward and say, I'm here. I'm here as a representative. I'm here as somebody who can be a conduit for other people who look like me to be the next neurosurgeon at Harvard. It's exciting to hold that role. And so it's been a great ride. I've enjoyed my colleagues my attendings this hospital is one of the best we get some of the most complex pathologies people fly from all over the world so I'm seeing some of the most rarest tumors the most rare spinal deformities and it's just it's

fascinating to be able to work on that sort of stuff well we're all very thankful that you're representing our sports in such a beautiful fashion you're obviously an anomaly and hopefully in the future it won't be, I think is what you're saying. And with the 2% way in living your life by it, you can make every day a little bit better than the day before. I appreciate the hell out of you for your time, Doc. I seem to get to save a life this afternoon. So thank you for taking a small break to chit chat with us and make us seem a lot smarter than we actually are. Thank you. thank you guys i

appreciate y'all all the time hey vitamin e mocha hydration rest 10 to 15 minutes of brain teasers block trail and your brain can become stronger let's go hell yeah thank you ladies and gentlemen Thank you, Thank you, Coffer. Let's ride. Did you see, obviously, the remix video done by comedian Cuzzy and Lady B and Ciara and that entire thing? Uh-huh. So I do believe that Let's Ride, whenever it's first played in that Broncos stadium at 5,280 feet above sea level, it is going to break the internet. Yeah.

Which Let's Ride with the Broncos pick? We do not know. We eagerly watch along just like everybody else. The Let's Ride that these boys pick every single day is the one that giddy-ups us right into an hour of incredible sports conversation. Hell yeah. The Toxic Table at Ty Schmidt at Boston Connor. One half of the hammer.

Dad. Cowboys 10 digs is here. And I would like everybody to take a minute and think about how much smarter Dr. Myron Rowe is than all of us. Eight times. Eight? Eight times four. 32. Great math.

You just wanted to showcase. Sorry. What's up, doctor? You do that math? Huh? That quick? Yeah. He is so much smarter than every human I've encountered in some time. Andrew Luck will probably hold his own in the conversation, but it's two different maths. Yeah. Or two different convos. It's like an architectural engineering thing.

And then doctor brain is just like the doctor brain diagnosis things whenever they're chit chatting. So it's a breakdown, then a follow up, then a conclusion. The engineers just use a massive words and can piece things together in beautiful fashion i don't understand either of them i'm right here in the middle but that one is always a good convo to get into i think i feel much better about myself after chatting with dr myron roll than most other guests that we have on this show yeah i mean he's talking about doing brain surgery and moving stuff a millimeter. How

intelligent you have to be to do all of that. Grant, like you said, luck is probably pretty smart, but there's how many fucking people? He's literally one of one. A thousand percent. Thanks for coming on the show, Doc. Thank you, Doctor.

Okay, there's some things going on in the NFL that doesn't involve future NFL players becoming neurosurgeons. No, definitely not. Okay, I don't know if that story's going to come around a lot, but when it does, we will have to talk about it.

And when we do so, we'll be incredibly proud of the NFL having a fucking neurosurgeon at Harvard. Everybody can eat shit, by the way. Has the NHL got that? No. Has the NBA got that? No. Has the NHL got that? No. No. Has the NBA got that?

No. Has the MLB got that? No. Has the MLS got that? No. They don't. Maybe. They don't.

Who? Who? I don't know. Taylor Twellerman's on ESPN. He ain't a fucking neurosurgeon. Twellerman's pounding a lot of drums these days, but he's not pounding the medical drum. We know that's for sure. What does that mean?

You know what it means. What is that all about? You know what it means. There is people incredibly upset about Brooks Koepka going over to the Liv Golf Tour. Just because three years ago, he chatted about money not mattering. His happiness is what matters most to him. And now three years later, he is taking a deal with Liv,

which was broken by Sky Sports and Telegraph. And Joe Pompliano, in beautiful fashion, says the four-time major winner will reportedly make his Live debut at next week's tournament in Portland, Oregon. Now, we have chatted about Live and how bad everybody has gotten about this. It has now gotten to the point where reporting about which players are going to live you're being described as uh defecting to now there is multiple definitions of defect uh most of them involve being like a traitor to a country it also does say like going to a rival or something like that so a force to forsake one cause party party, or nation for another, often because of a change in ideology, to leave one situation, such as a job, often to go over to a rival defect. Now, we had to look deep into the definitions to find this particular definition of defect, because everyone that I thought was,

if you're talking about leaving a country that's in war to go to another side. So I thought the way it was being described was obviously intentional, a strategy by people. And I think it's all interesting because from the beginning we've chatted about the Live Golf Tour. I understand that people are upset about things that have been done

in the country in which the money is coming for this league. But said country that I would assume you're still upset about, about the things that they've done and don't want to accept their benefit or their input in anything, are involved in every single company that you are using right now, basically. And I'm not saying that it's all just Saudi money, but if you look into the beginnings of the company that hired Schefter, who put out the defect tweet, and how that money came to be, I think people are going to be alarmed.

If you look into where money is coming from, most of the companies that you utilize on your day-to-day to make your day better, you are going to be alarmed. started thinking about this like normally the worst situations and the worst places whenever the history conversations talked about the reason why we talk about them being the worst is because they were bigger and the reason why they're able to become bigger is because the money that they garner and that money doesn't just disappear they don't light it on fire like that money sticks around and goes to other places and it's reshuffled around. If you were to look at where money comes from for almost every single place, there is about a 95% chance it's going to come from a terrible place. So what we have been saying since the beginning is, A, don't love that the athletes, the golfers are the first people to be publicly commended on how terrible of humans they are.

Whenever a round of investment happens for a company that we use and they're certainly taking money from a place that isn't great with human rights and people and they're celebrated for it so i don't like that the athletes are getting attacked by people that have done business in this particular fashion for a long time and also made a lot more money greg norman the guy who is obviously leading the charge with live the one who's in charge of getting the players, and a person who has tried to change the way the PGA has been for some time. The PGA, by the way, not paying their players shit ever. And they're somehow taking the moral high ground over everybody else when the companies that they are showing their broadcasts on

have probably taken money from an incredibly terrible place. So if you talk about hypocrisy, it is at an all-time high whenever we're doing this. I don't think that people should feel bad for being upset about how a country acts and feeling as if what that country has done or any of these countries has done is unacceptable because I think we're getting to a place in society where more people want to take a stand and make the world a much better place. But I just feel like in the reality of the world, there's not a lot of people that have that view of, let's make sure we make this world as fair and as good as possible to everybody. In reality, there's a lot of powerful places out

there outside of our bubble that are not like that. So if you're going to, like Qatar is where the World Cup is. It just came out that if you're not married and you have sex on your trip to the World Cup, you're going to go to jail for seven years. That sounds like a free country. That sounds like a country that does a lot of good things. Everybody will promote the shit out of Qatar. The FIFA people took a big paycheck from them. Everybody's not stopped talking about FIFA and everything like that. Every single big thing has potentially taken

money at some point from a terrible, terrible place. And I just, I don't know how and why the athletes are the first ones to be attacked for this. But it's continued here with Brooks Koepka making the move today. Now, Brooks Koepka is obviously contradicting what he said three years ago about money not mattering. And he's just here to chase majors and his happiness and all that. A lot can happen in three years, by the way. And also, if it's $100 and some million, that's interesting. Greg Norman, the man who is running this entire thing, asked this question to the PGA Tour in a tweet about everything. Why does the PGA Tour have 23 sponsors doing 40 plus billion dollars worth of business with Saudi Arabia? Why is it okay for

the sponsors? Will Jay Monahan go to each and every one of those 23 companies and suspend them and ban them? I think that's a great question. And by the way, $40 billion in business is a lot more than we all expected. I thought it was going to be in the billions, 40 plus billion with 23 of the sponsors of the PGA. Now, is this 100% accurate? Who knows? But Saudi money is basically in every single publicly traded company, every single one of them, basically, in our stock market.

The United States is doing business with Saudi Arabia every single week, every single day. So if we're just going to grandstand, you know, about against athletes being morally incomprehensible or whatever the fuck that term is, are we, should we do it for everything else? And if we do, what is the $1.2 trillion they're sitting on? What is that? Did you stay with them? Did you stay with them forever? I don't, I don't't know what the right answer is but i don't like that it's just the golfers getting attacked and just the athletes getting attacked when it's celebrated and literally every other aspect of business i i just don't i don't fully comprehend it especially when it is the media who you know like the a lot of these guys who are still playing in the pga are saying you know every everywhere they go this is all they're

getting talked about. Like, it really is the media who's really stirring it up and making these guys, like, big-time villains. Well, and the media is tweeting on a Saudi platform currently. I mean, it hasn't sold. But Saudi Arabia benefits directly off of the amount of tweets that happen and the amount of action that happens on tweets due to the advertising and the amount of impressions and everything that they can sell to people.

So are you going to stop tweeting as well? I just don't know, you know? It's an awesome thing that we know more than we've ever known in the past. But we can't just selectively take information and pick and choose what's not good and what is good. And if we are going to do that, then your argument is basically sitting on a foundation of sand

because it's tough to take serious whenever you're not doing it for everything sand because it's tough to take serious whenever you're not doing it for everything so it's just i don't like i don't i do not like the players getting attacked i don't like it now i don't love what has happened in these countries people think that i'm backing what has gone on and stuff not at all i'm just i don't like the um completely ass backwards coverage of golfers getting money from these places and how businesses most of them who these people work for get their money and not talk i just i don't know why this is the case i have no idea why we've gotten to this point here but i guess it's the world we

currently live in yeah it feels like phil was one of those like elder statesmen who was one of the first to actually go to live and his whole thing was know, if I have a chance to change the PGA Tour, how can I say no to that? And now they are changing the PGA Tour where I think, what is it, the FedEx Cup? The top 50 players will be playing in their own tournaments. 60, yeah, so there will be three tournaments in the fall, allegedly, that was announced this morning for those that are in the top 60 official world golf rankings. for those that are in the top 60 official world golf rankings.

So now the Live Golf Tour has pitched to the OWGR, the official world golf rankings, to see if they would calculate and take Live Golfers' rounds into comparison for the official rankings. Like, could a Live Golfer who plays incredibly well and wins a bunch become the number one WGR golfer? That's what Liv's looking for. Greg Norman says he makes a compelling case that PGA now has found an extra $75 million sitting around to be able to give to players for three new tournaments that have just been announced this upcoming fall.

So obviously the archaic tendency of the PGA Tour to not pay any of their players any contracts and have the players have to pay out of their own pocket to travel and stay and golf, even if they win or do not win. That is changing, it feels like. And they're going to have to because if not, Brooks Koepka goes. And I don't think anybody didn't expect Brooks Koepka to go. I think everyone who's gone has been expected. Bingo.

Like Brooks Koepka, we were talking about this off air. He wasn't even really on the PGA Tour. He played in, like, one event a year that wasn't a major. He even openly said, I'm just here to play majors, bro, or whatever. He just goes out there and golfs. So him going over there, people were acting like they were surprised because of what he said three years ago about money and happiness. And maybe he's gotten to a point in his life where he's like,

yeah, money can give me happiness actually now, which will never be the case. But maybe, you know, some things have changed in three years ago about money and happiness and maybe he's got no point in his life where he's like yeah money can give me happiness actually now which will never be the case but maybe you know some things have changed in three years i just the the i had the reaction is just in my eyes it's tough to take serious from people it's just it's tough for me to take serious but i guess i should because these people are making the world a better place we talk about it and um it boggles our minds or whatever when fans normally it seems like they always side with the organization like in football and stuff like that it seems like they're siding with the organization which is the pga tour versus these individual players i don't think so though by the way i don't i think some people on twitter are massachusetts i I mean, they were loving Phil.

Oh, yeah. There was tweets that on Twitter, what's happening on Twitter is not what's happening in real life, which, I mean, is a lot. Which we know. Yeah. Which follows up to even more of the point, like the reality versus what happens.

No one really cares. Yeah, exactly. Like in reality, it's much different, though. So I just hope we get to the point where we all maintain our anger for real change. And it's not just selective, you know, because once you get selective, then the people are on the opposite side of you can just say, what about this? Oh, this doesn't matter. Oh, it does matter. Oh, so does it matter just as much as this?

Why are you trying to take this out? But you're not trying to take that out. Well, we don't have enough time or effort. That's been around for like 30, 40, 50, 60 years, though. And why just now out of nowhere this is it? Is it potentially because all the media people that have direct rights and are in competition of this are telling you to believe that? Is that potentially what you're thinking?

No, that's not how you would act, right? No, that's basically how it goes. And they're saying more names are coming. Morikawa came out and said, it is categorically false. I am not joining the LIV Tour because he was training this morning. People said Fitzpatrick might go over after winning the US Open.

He said, I'm here with the PGA Tour or whatever. I mean, he just won a few million bucks. So he's their current reigning major champion going into the PGA Tour events. But if everybody's going to go, I don't know how you... I don't think everybody's gonna go well yeah the only problem is dude and hundreds of millions of dollars i know but i feel like if

you can still compete in majors like well that's that's the big thing because we saw on sunday at the u.s open like that ain't a fucking live golf tournament that's the u.s open that's a major that all the guys who are playing there understand that matters more and i think it is kind of just the it's the guys who are not necessarily in the twilight of their career like the young guys who still have a stake in the game and like actually want to build a legacy and and all that kind of stuff like the kind of faces of golf right now those younger guys like i don't think they're going anywhere why would they i mean because because guess what in 10 in five years 300 million dollars

in five years though that's probably still there if this is still around. If you're winning golf tournaments over here, your sponsorship money's good. They call it you have to think about the long-term success of Liv. Will it be around?

Will the PGA Tour be able to adapt? They're already bringing out $75 million in cash money, Just like that. They just found it. Where does that money go before, by the way? Right in the pockets of the people that are calling the golfers morally. Whatever. I can't.

It's not just the money, too, though. Be a professional. Be a professional. Be a professional. Maybe the PGA Tour will be able to change, and nobody will want to go to live, right? Because they won't have to. So maybe live is just a splash in the pan

or whatever here for like three, four years. If it isn't around in five years from now, what will the conversation be about the guys who were offered $600 million to do this, turned it down, played for this. They made 10 million instead or 11 million, which by the way, great money to play golf. None of us were saying that's not, but I don't know how many times you're offered $200,

$150 million, $100 million. That is an insane amount of cash to any human being out there. Well, I guess the super yups that have just grown up in it don't have that. But if you did not, and you grew up actually wondering about a check and what's going to happen next week. And whenever you go to buy something at a store, that credit card bounces and that whole awkward situation that takes place. Whenever you see a check that says like 115 million or 120 million guaranteed in front of you, I think it's going to be difficult for guys to continue to say no to if they can compete in majors as well. Personally. Now, Nick, you're about to say it's not just about the money the tradition the history and everything

like that is that what you're going to go no i was going to talk about the freedom that the live tour oh yeah you'll play wherever you want 40 weeks way less work too you're only doing three day tournaments you're out of there by saturday night on a plane somewhere wherever you want to go shotgun start 54 holes that's why the people were bashing Kupka. My only problem, and it's not with the money or them going or a player there or whatever, I think somebody said it last week, is that you can't watch all the guys play against each other in one place now. You now have to, like, I liked being able to watch the tour

because, you know, all the best guys were at one place. So now if, like, 10 to 12 of more of the top guys go over there, it's going to be like, well, what the – you know what I mean? The PGA Tour tone over here. That's fine. I'm cool with that. You don't want to see guys get paid? You want guys to lose money going week to week?

Guys who sacrificed their entire beings for this tour to collect $75 million at least and put it in their pockets so these players don't get a fucking thing? I'm selfish. When I turn the TV on on Sunday, I want to see all the best players in one so these players don't get a fucking thing. I'm selfish. When I turn the TV on on Sunday, I want to see all the best players in one place. I don't give a fuck what they do. I love watching golf on the weekend. It does carry me right through a nap or two on Saturday and Sunday. I'm not sure that the lift or whoever will be able to get that.

They're going to have to figure that whole thing out. Joining us now is a man from a completely different sport. One that is in the middle of its championship right now. A man who's been a champion of insider information for the National Hockey League for how long, Nick? How many years has this guy been doing this, do you think? Decades? Longer than I can count.

Canadian sports journalist, hockey reporter for Sportsnet, and analyst for NHL Network. He's a panelist on Hockey Night in Canada, which is where Football Night in America got its name. Ladies and gentlemen, Elliot Friedman. You look awesome. What's up? You know, first of all, this is an honor. I'm really flattered.

And my buddies who are all watching right now said, Elliot, if you're going to come on this show, you can't be a phony. You can't clean up your hair. You can't clean up your hair. You can't clean up your sideburns. Your hotel bed's got to be unmade. If you're going to be on this show, you've got to be real because this show can spot a phony a mile away. So I hope this works. Elliot, I appreciate your friends.

The lads probably delivered the right remarks there. Your hair looks unbelievable. Yeah, we would have never known that it wasn't kept. Do you take that thing straight back when you're on TV? Is that what you go with? I do that. I try to do a different one every show. And, you know, there's people

who, like, they send me tweets. They're like, you know, you look like you just stepped out of a wind tunnel. Worse stuff than that stuff. I'm not sure I can repeat. And you know what you do? You like them all, right? Because you want the audience to feel included and that they're in on the joke. And Jeff O'Neill, who was a former great player,

he texted me the other night before game three and he said, Elliot, for bleep's sake, cut down those sideburns. And I said, it's like a playoff beer, Jeff. They're not going anywhere until after the playoffs. Hey, keep those things growing. Do you use blow dryer on that hair? No, this is au naturel, Pat.

This is au naturel. What a legend, not just on the ice, but in the goddamn bathroom. Elliot, thank you for joining us. How long have you been in the NHL game? I've been at Hockey Night in Canada, I think this is 18 years. I've been a sports reporter overall i think 30 i think this is my 30th year so uh you know a bit of time i i'm old and creaky i guess that's the fairest way to say it now just experience and wise and obviously as an insider the longer you're in the game the better have you enjoyed kind of the hockey boom that's almost taken place over the last year

with the new contract rights here in the United States of America, or can you tell in Canada at all? No, you can definitely tell. Like, you know, it's a great game. I'm not a big please-like-my-sport guy. I don't like comparing hockey to other sports. I really, when people say, well, hockey's better than basketball for this, or basketball's better than football for this, I hate that stuff.

I love all sports, but I think it's a great game. And I think that the thing we got to do is we got to get people into the building to see it. Because I think once you see it, you love it. We have to make it more accessible to young people. Hockey's expensive. That's a big challenge we have. We have to make sure that more people can get in there to play it when they're young, and that's always a challenge for us, but look, I mean, the more

people that watch it, the better, and I also think there's plenty of different ways to cover it, Pat. We can always be more fun. Watching Barkley on both networks last night, calling my co-worker Kyle Bukowskis the Tom Brady of Canada and the best-looking man

in the country. We need that stuff. People love that stuff. I think so, too. I think it's breaking through. I honestly believe everybody's breaking through, plus since the fact that we can gamble on it. The most everybody sees is the playoffs, and the playoffs are such a faster version of the regular season not that the regular season isn't incredible to begin with i was very lucky to grow up in pittsburgh love the sport of hockey

excited to see it continue to grow now let's talk about the finals real quick here before we dive into the offseason news tampa bay came back last night and everybody i thought they were potentially dead in Colorado because of how fast the avalanche looked versus how Tampa looked whenever they were in Colorado. Last night, complete flip. Is this normal in hockey? Is this something that everybody should look forward to? Or do you think the Avs are kind of just going to have to find their way down the humidity of Tampa?

And what has happened in the past in these types of situations? Well, one thing that we've shown in all of these series so far this year is that as the series goes on, the better Tampa gets. They've started slow in three of their series now, and in all three of those series they won because as it got on, they were better than Toronto, than the Rangers, and we'll see about Colorado. So I'm not surprised to see this.

I think as series go on, the Lightning get better. The one thing, you know, the one thing I really like for, I would be concerned about for Colorado is just, hey, if you give, Kemper struggled last night and I was talking to a coach today, he said the only, like he really likes Kemper as a goalie. The only thing that concerns him about Kemper is, is that when Kemper gives up goals or has a bad day, his body language isn't great. He worries about sometimes Kemper's

confidence in-game. If you saw last night, once Tampa scored once, they really started going and pumping them by him. He says if you look at Vasilevsky for Tampa, he got smoked 7-0, but he was making big saves at the end of that game.

He was like, you got me tonight, but I'll be back. And I think those are the two things people look at. And the other thing is we're still waiting for McKinnon time. I still think Nathan McKinnon has to arrive in this series, and if he does, that's big for the Avalanche. Hate to break it to McKinnon, but Patty Maroon has arrived in thisalanche hate to break it to mckinnon but patty maroon has arrived in this hate to break it big rig with the big dangles last night backhand top chad how you doing on the blockers i mean that was awesome to watch it felt like all of tampa got their mojo back almost

they're 14 and one in home playoff games or whatever what is it about that place is it the weather is it the crowd what is it about home ice advantage in that sport you think well i i think that you know the one thing though colorado hadn't lost on the road in the playoffs until last night you know they were the best road team in the playoffs that they had a chance to become the first team ever in nhl history since we went to expansion that's 1967 to go unbeaten on the road in the playoffs. And I thought that was pretty incredible of them. You know what I think? I think Tampa got overwhelmed the first two games, and I just think they're too mature and they're too smart,

and they kind of just said, okay, we're going to fix something. And one of the things they fixed, Pat, if you watched the game last night or you watch it tomorrow, Tampa couldn't get out of their zone with the puck. They couldn't. Colorado was swarming them and overwhelming them. So what they did, they flipped it in the air and created races for it. And they won a lot of those races. It's a tiny thing, but last night it was a big thing.

A lot less we're going to carry the puck out of our zone because we were in trouble and flip it in the air and race for it. I love that. A little dump and run type situation um uh last question for me before the boys have some questions for you elliot um when patty maroon wins his fourth straight stanley cup will you guys in canada call him the best player of all time will you say hey an american won four straight lordos an american not even something Gretzky was able to do. Mario wasn't able to do. Sid wasn't able to do.

This American out of St. Louis, first guy ever, four straight Stanley Cup championships. Is that going to be just a headline in Canada every single night talking hockey or no, you think? Believe me, he's going to get his attention. If he wins his fourth, not only is it four in a row, but he's going to have as many Stanley Cups as Gretzky has. You're going to look at the list and you're going to see Stanley Cups one, Wayne Gretzky, Pat Maroon. They're going to be right there. And I'll tell you this, after the game last night, I got a DM from a fan

and he said to me, please tell me my team is getting pat maroon next year because i'm 55 years old and i've waited too long to see my team win the stanley cup so you you can guess what team that was and uh and uh they're it's it's toronto and so they want maroon there next year so that they can finally win sorry about it he's staying in america he's coming to the pittsburgh penguins actually now this leads to the off season here, and we know you're the insider. We have a joke in this show that every—well, it's not really a joke. It's my fact, but it has become a joke a little bit. If you want to be a real player in the NHL, you have to play for the Penguins at some point.

If you want to be an actual player, two of the top three players of all time, Pittsburgh Penguins. No big deal. Kind of a big deal uh is pasta going to pittsburgh are they doing a full rebuild in boston fire the coach uh you know everything's kind of looking upside down is pasta on his way out and why is he going to the pittsburgh penguins and with the pittsburgh penguins gino malkin cannot go to the Capitals. What is happening? That is being chatted about right now on the internet. How about the free agency of Pittsburgh? And when should we start hearing some concrete shit? Okay, so this is what I think you're looking at here. So first of all, Pasternak, the Bruins and him are going to have a meeting in early July. And the Bruins are going to are going to present free agency date this year is July 13th that's the

first day that the Bruins are eligible to sign David Pasternak to an extension the Bruins are going to meet with Pasternak with him in early July and I believe at that time they're going to talk to him about extension and I do believe they're going to come at him with one I think Boston's number one plan is we're going to sign David Pasternak. But if all these rumors are true and Pasternak says, I don't want to stay here, then I think they're going to trade him. And I think they could trade him

sooner rather than later. We'll see, because you want to maximize whatever you can do here. So I think that meeting in early July is going to tell where we're going here with David Pasternak. He's going to the Pens if he's traded? Do you think the Pens are going to have enough to be able to make that deal, Pat? They don't have a lot of draft picks.

They don't have a ton of prospects. Everybody relax. Crosby? Crosby for pasta? No way. That's not how it works. It's not happening. It's going to be Gensi, Sidney, Kotski, and Pastaski.

Boom. That's our top line how you doing That's a Stanley Cup factory Add Patty Maroon Big Rig onto the team You might as well just give us Lordo before anybody takes the ice It's not happening you don't have enough capital You heard what Elliot said Wait wait wait hold on

There's another solution There's another solution to this What if I'm going to put something for you here What if David Pasternak says, you know what, I don't know if I want to sign with anybody now and I want to go test free agency in here. Some guys do that. That's fine.

So he could play it out. No, we don't want that. We want him in Pittsburgh. That's fine. You want him now? Yeah. We want him now. We don't know how long, how much, listen, Sidney Crosby can only be the greatest player

of all time for how long? You know, everybody, how long are we going to take advantage of this guy being in pittsburgh we need it next year are the red wings still part of the nhl elliot elliot who are the red wings gonna hire how about that one geez nobody cares so everybody is waiting to see if he's going to hire one of these two assistant coaches from Tampa, Jeff Halpern or Derek Lalonde. And so they're two guys that Iserman knows really well. I do think Iserman's interviewed Barry Trotz.

I do think it's possible he interviewed Peter DeBoer. DeBoer's about to get hired in Dallas. I think he's looked at some other young coaches as well. But a lot of the smart money right now is on the two assistant coaches in Tampa. And what's he going to do after Tampa's knocked out? But I think he's interviewed older and younger. And I'll tell you one thing about Iserman. People are terrified of him.

So I've told this story before. He scares people. So earlier this year, I called a guy who I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure eyes are an interview and the guy answered the phone says I'm not answering any of your questions I'm not even talking to you I go why not he goes if Steve Iserman finds out that you spoke to me I've got no shot at this job. So I'm not answering any questions, and I beg you not to use my name. Steve Eichmann's like, nobody talk about the Red Wings, please. Do not talk about the Red Wings, please.

Nobody. That's what Steve Eichmann is saying. No, he's saying you guys should all be afraid of the Red Wings for years to come. No, no, no, no, no. Be scared to go to the Red Wings. And then it sounds like we get the Tampa Lightning assistant coach and Big Riggs come to Detroit, too. Well, that would have made sense.

Don't ruin Big Riggs' career. He does not need that. Sorry about this, Elliot. This is a lot of inside stuff going on. Nick, your question for Frege? Frege, kind of follow-up off of Pat's question, too, off the Pittsburgh thing. There was a lot of turmoil this offseason in Pittsburgh. There was even questions of will Ron Hextall, the GM, keep his job,

and now we've got Gino Malkin needs a decision. He's a free agent. Chris Letang is also a pending free agent. Have we heard any updates on those guys? Well, I think with Malkin, I think the biggest issue was dollars. I think they were kind of willing

to agree on term. I think they really talked about he would sign for three years to fit in with the same term as Crosby, but I just heard the money wasn't close. Ah, shit! I don't know where that's going to go. It's going to be a yogurt situation.

Oh, no! He's got it on the floor! Oh, no. Oh, no. You know what? I got to tell you, Pat, I don't know if I see that. Like Fleury, I think there's a chance Fleury's coming back to Pittsburgh. I think it's possible.

What a story! Forget everything else. How come we didn't lead with this, Elliot? Well, last year, Washington wanted Fleury really bad, and he wouldn't be traded to the Capitals because he was like, I might want to go back to Pittsburgh, and I don't think I could play for the Capitals. Yeah, that's a good decision, Fleur.

That's a good decision, Fleur. So I don't know if I see, like, I do think there's going to be interest in Malkin. Obviously, it depends on the numbers. Letang, like, I heard the issue there was they were, on the numbers. LeTang, I heard the issue there was someone told me they thought they were about a million

.25 a part a year on a deal. That's a hundred million in the NFL. No, it's not. No, it's exactly what he said it was. You don't know shit about Boston. You don't know anything. You're going to disrespect Freed with these sideburns right now

and say stupidity? No disrespect to Freed. I sideburns right now and say stupidity? No disrespect to Freed. David's the best player in the league. He's getting eight million bucks a year. You're right. One million is. You're 100% right. Anyways, tell LeBron to fork up some more cash. Isn't he a part of the Fenway

group? Let's get LeBron. Yes, he is. Awesome. Ty, this is a question for you, Freed. Appreciate you, bub. Elliot, are we going to get like an actual hot stove where like guys might be getting traded? I'm a diehard Golden Knights fan, and I've been saying since they got eliminated, we got to fucking beef up that line with Stoner. I don't know if it means shipping Jackie Aces out of town

because I didn't love what I saw out of him last year, but will we actually see some big-name guys maybe move team to team, possibly to Vegas to play on the line with Stoner. You know, I gotta tell you, Ty, I've had people saying to me that this summer could be crazy. Because the cap is so tight

and because a lot of teams obviously whenever there's 31 teams that don't win. One team I think is going to be really interesting seattle a lot of cap room didn't have a great year don't want to have a repeat of it but i think there's a lot of other teams out there um who kind of look at it and people have said to me the names that are going to be tossed around this year so there might be five players in the league who aren't mentioned in trade rumors like you said it's going to be it doesn't necessarily mean everything's

going to happen but they said the talking is is crazy like just what teams are willing to consider doing is wild out there do you think that is just all sports generational like the you can't be perceived as being content with a team that isn't a winner nowadays because social media and because of it. Do you think it's going to become more active in hockey as opposed to the more conservative moving that has happened in the past? Because normally it's like, what, 10-year deals? Long contracts.

11-year deals. There isn't much. Do you think that's going to change just like every other sport that's currently doing? I do. I do. You know, one of the things, Pat pat is that there's a number of teams out there like san jose for example they're they're talking to a lot of their you know their candidates for gm is we have too many long-term deals like how are you gonna what are you gonna

do about that how are you gonna prevent us from getting an unlocked long-term deals and there's other teams talking about that all the time now the superstars will always get their deals but i i think it happens all the time the teams talk the superstars will always get their deals, but I think it happens all the time. The teams talk about, can we shorten it? Now, the other thing that's happened too is we're coming out of COVID, and you've got to sell tickets, especially in places like Canada where a lot of these teams didn't have fans for chunks of this year and lost money.

So you've got to have something that fans want to watch, and I think they're going to be active for those reasons. Did you say about a couple times there on purpose because of how much you know us? Stooge Americans love it. I mean, there's an invisible line between our country and yours, and you guys just speak so much cooler than us. Yeah, what the hell?

None of it makes any sense. Champion. Yeah. Lods. Hobbit. About. Oat. Oat. God god it's so much cooler than us hey gumpy we miss you pal uh telling your question for elliot hey freeds since i assume he's not gonna enjoy uh playing in front of 2 000 people a night any chance if flurry comes back phil castle's coming back home too? Well, you know,

I gotta tell you, I haven't heard that one yet. You know what? I can ask. You know what? The least I can do is I can ask and send a note and see if it's at all a possibility. You know, I gotta tell you, I didn't even think about that one. What? Start thinking about it. What are we even doing?

Are we trying to figure it out or not? This is a bunch of bullshit, Elliot. I thought you were supposed to have all the information. I guess not. Phil Kessel's future, please. Next time you come in here, that is something. You got a deal. You got a deal.

Hey, Elliot, how come you guys just let that hot dog story go on Phil and kind of ruin his entire name? That was the Fugues, right? Wasn't it? That was all one big lie. What happened in the hockey community there, Elliot? Well, as a guy who loves a good hot dog, I didn't take any

offense that he likes his hot dogs too, so it didn't bother me. Yeah, me neither. I guess that's a tough one to dive into because we're all like, that makes sense. And it feels like that is not true at all. I'm not the hot dog guy. Although it appears that way, you're body shaming me. It's a bunch of bullshit. Connie, your last question here for Elliot. Yeah, Elliot,

everyone and their mother on the Bruins are out for about seven to eight months. Are they just not going to have a head coach this year because no one wants to coach them? Or maybe are you thinking about throwing your hat in the ring and maybe moving to Boston and coaching the Bruins? I've got to tell you, if you want to finish 32nd and get the

hot prospect next year, Connor Bedard hiring me as a coach would be the best possible move. Let's fucking do it. I think they're doing interviews this week. I still think that they're doing some. I think the Bruins are going to go... There's been a couple guys already hired who've been

head coaches before. I think they're going to go newer and different. That's the expectation. I think David Quinn and Jim Montgomery are the only two guys they might be looking at who have been head coaches before. Jay Leach hasn't been a head coach before. I think there's some other guys on their radar. Nate Leeman from Providence, who's never been an NHL head coach before. But the one thing about the Bruins is they seem to be pretty confident that if they can tread water for a couple of months,

all those guys are going to come back healthy and they're going to be pretty confident that if they can tread water for a couple of months all those guys are going to come back healthy and they're going to be fine and number one someone said to me they said marchand's out six months someone said you really think that todd marchand's gonna let himself be out six months they guarantee he'll be back or brad marshall excuse me he'll be todd marchand used to play brad marshand still plays different players different style brad marshall he says do you think he's going to be out six months? They said, no way. He'll be back soon. He's a dog. Elliot, we hope we have you back

sooner than Brad Marchand gets back. We appreciate you so much for all the hockey information. You look fantastic, and hopefully your lads enjoyed the stop-by, pal. You know what, guys? It's been an honor. It's really been. I admire what you guys have done, and it's the future of the business, and it's a real honor to be invited here. Listen, we don't need the Canadian bullshit,

but we are very grateful that an icon like you stopped by. You're the best. Ladies and gentlemen, Elliot Free. Joining us now is a man who maybe has more information than we obviously have because the settlement that Deshaun Watson made earlier today happened moments before we went live, and we haven't been able to keep up with it all. To do such a thing, senior NFL insider for the NFL Network and the league as a whole, host of the weekly wrap-up with Rap Sheet and Friends,

us being the Friends, he being the Rap Sheet. Ladies and gentlemen, Ian Rapoport. What's up, dude? What's up? What's going on? Hey, thank you for joining us here at the last minute. Really appreciate it. No problem. No problem.

I got back from the beach, so I was able to find time in my piece. It was a third grade trip to the beach. I was helping. Sound like a weirdo. I was able to find time in my schedule. All right. So I'm happy you got to do that. Thanks for coming back.

Let's dive into it. Deshaun Watson has settled all the four cases now people are reporting that's 20 of 24 we thought there was 26 cases because two more were added so would that mean that there's six cases that aren't resolved and what are we missing here does this affect anything for sue robinson's judgment of the nfl NFLPA NFL that she will take to Roger Goodell? What have we learned today, basically, with this announcement of the settlement that we all thought would maybe happen two years ago? It almost did happen a couple of years ago. I mean, where they are at right now, which is almost all of the cases settled, 20 of 24, I believe, 20 of 24 that have been officially filed, I believe is the proper way to say that. 20 of 24 that have been officially filed.

This is like almost where things were when a trade to the Miami Dolphins nearly went down. Like this could have happened, it wasn't two years ago, but it was, you know, seven or eight months ago, whenever that was, in October before the trade deadline. Had he been traded to the Dolphins, if that was about to go through, it would have been because he had settled all of these lawsuits. They were not quite there yet. The trade did not happen. Where they are now, I would say is significant. I'm not sure it'll actually affect the discipline that the NFL gives him. Like, I don't think whether or not Deshaun Watson settles will alter what the punishment ends up being.

But what it does mean is that whenever the punishment comes, and we are expecting it before training camp, so in the next, say, three weeks to a month, it will mean that this is all wrapped up. It will mean whatever discipline it is, likely suspension. It will mean, you know mean the cases have been settled, assuming these next four at some point get settled, and then that will basically be it.

He will serve whatever it is, and then the league will go on. We don't know shit about fuck when it comes to this particular world, but all I can really lean on in information is the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, libel slander. Right, that's fair. That was very public. That was like six weeks long. So the fact that there is still four official allegations against him with two potentially more on the way, that is still six very serious things that are all going to, are those all going to go to civil trial? And how long is that? That's months and

months and months right at this point. Yeah. I mean, in his statement, Busby said today that the four cases have still not yet been settled and they are moving forward. And I think that is possible. I'm not, you know, lawyers obviously say a lot of things. We'll see if that happens. I think the fact that, you know, four of these cases were, 20 of these cases were settled today, four remain unsettled, means that these four could be settled. Would not surprise me if they were eventually. I would say, you know, that makes sense. And this is all a, you know, in some ways, this is just to boil down the not important part of it, but in some ways it is a negotiation because, you know, money does change hands. So we'll see if they get there and are able to settle those final four cases

to at least wrap up the civil part of it. So here's what this would mean. Legal, the criminal situation is over with two grand juries declining to indict. The civil situation is almost nearly over with 20 of 24 settled. If the other four get settled at some point soon that'll be just the league discipline is all we're waiting for okay and what do you think the reason is for this happening now as opposed to back then did they plan it did deshaun watson's camp because he has been steadfast from the beginning that he was innocent then we heard a little bit of what rusty harden was pitching when he went on that Friday radio show in Houston and explained why there was no indictment and everything like that. Why were they going to go to 24 civil cases?

Was that the plan? Like, we'll just go to every single court. Did they think that they were going to be able to get out of every single one? They meaning Deshaun's side or Busby's side? Deshaun's side. Did Deshaun's side say, we will go to court for every single one? Wasn't settlement basically going to be the outcome regardless? Or was there a real thought that he was going to go to 24 civil cases in a row? Yeah, that's hard to fathom. And I think a settlement makes sense for a lot of reasons. make sense for a lot of reasons. It makes sense in this case because, you know, while each of the victims have separate stories, there are some similarities, I would say, between them. So

if you settle one for, you know, an amount that is not yet been, an amount and maybe some stipulations that have not yet been made public that it would make sense to settle all of them. And I know it's not about the money, but these are civil cases. And that is what that's what the currency is, for lack of a better way of saying it. For criminal, it's is there jail time or not? For civil, it's is there money or not? And in this case, obviously there is. It was the agreed upon amount was was okay enough to settle 20 of these and we will see if the final four gets settled but to answer your question like I think a settlement has always made sense if everyone could you know find the right terms to do it and

the fact that they got so close last October at least had me thinking that this would be the eventual outcome we've learned a lot since last October about Deshaun and everything in there. And I'm not sure the court of public opinion would ever change. And I wonder if that's why they decided to settle or if it was just so much evidence against it that was just like, hey, this all seems to be boom, boom, boom. The NFL happy about what happened though here, right? Not happy that it happened as a whole. These are very serious allegations.

It's terrible that somebody in the NFL is being alleged to doing these things. Yeah, but I want to make sure if people hear this out of context, they don't think that that's the case. So I got to, but this is good for all parties here, I think, right? I think so. I mean, assuming that if the victims accepted the settlement, then I would say take that at face value and say that is an outcome that at least they are monetarily okay with. Nobody wants any of this to happen. I'm not saying any of this is good. It is all bad, and this doesn't make it okay.

We concur. We concur. Yes, but the fact that they reached a settlement means in some ways it is okay for the victims. you know, they reach a settlement means in some ways it is, you know, okay for the victims. I think for Deshaun Watson and his side, this made sense to move on. Now he has been, you're right, steadfast in proclaiming his innocence. I know he has been very consistent throughout, but, you know, at least this basically will end one chapter of this, right? I mean, assuming the other four get settled at some point soon, you know, this will stop this right here. And then after the, you know, discipline is served,

then there will be no more, I don't like to say loose ends, but I don't know another way to describe it. No more, you know, outstanding situations to monitor. This will simply end. All right. We will continue to keep an eye on everything awaiting the NFL's ruling for how many games he will be suspended from the NFL. Biggest contract in the history of the NFL,

which is the biggest league on earth. One chapter coming to a close. We'll see what happens in the next one. We can't thank you enough for making time out of your beach day to chit-chat with us about the biggest story that has happened in a couple months, Ian Rapoport. Thank you very much, Ian. Joining us now is a man who is a golf insider for golf digest I believe I mean it broke the news this morning that

at the meeting at the travelers Jay Monahan said that there will be eight tournaments this upcoming fall that only top 50 players of the OWGR are able to play in. And each will have $20 million in purses, which is more than any other tournaments. That's another $160 million they offered up for purses, just like that, because a little bit of pressure from the live golf tournament. Feels like all parties are benefiting from this. With more information from the inside,

a man who's been friends with a u.s open champion basically since he was in high school dan rapaport what's up dude how you doing how you doing it's drama drama drama drama hey it's controversy but it's good for golf this eight tournaments with 20 million dollar purse that the pga just announced is massive for all the golfers right and where does this money come from they've just been sitting on this for the last 50 years dan so i'm not entirely sure where the money comes from but i do want to clarify so these eight events it's not going to be this fall it's going to start next year and i actually think it's going to be someone from the tour reached out to say that it's going to be spread out around the year

it's not just going to be in the fall so there's going to be basically at the end of the fedex cup season you're going to qualify for eight events for the next year uh that are going to be 50 players which is you know the live events are 48 players and they're going to have 20 or 25 million dollar purses which are going to look a lot like the live events so i think some of these will be new events that come up maybe there'll be someone some in the fall that'll be like around the world and australia and asia but i think the other events will be probably more money into existing events so like some of the bigger events on the PGA tour, because obviously they don't have the majors, but they have big events like at Riviera or like Jack Nicklaus' tournament,

Arnold Palmer's tournament. Instead of trying to start all new tournaments, they can sort of use the legacy of those tournaments, right, and the history and then pump money into them and make them bigger purses with less players and more elevated than they already are. So are the golfers on the PGA saying thank you to Greg Norman, Phil, and Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka and Kevin Na and Sergio Garcia,

who said that this is why they were going to do what they are doing? Now, aside from getting nine figures guaranteed to them, they also said they wanted to change the PGA. This has certainly done such a thing, right? This is a massive change for the PGA Tour that all golfers will benefit from probably forever now. Definitely. Definitely the stars. I'll say the stars will definitely benefit. And that's sort of, you know, the way I've described this is like golf has sort of been hit in the face with a really cold, unforgiving case of capitalism, right? That's just what this is, right? Like the guys who are between 100 and

200 in the world rankings, great golfers. A lot of them are really nice guys. They're just not bringing that much attention to the game. But those guys have been benefiting kind of on the coattails of the other guys for a lot of years. That's sort of been the – I mean, think about it when Tiger was there. Like if Tiger left the PGA Tour in 2007, the PGA Tour would have collapsed. So he was basically paying the bills for 100 guys. Now that money is being funneled more and more to the top. And, look, I've had a lot of players who I've talked to guys who aren't going,

who they're just sitting back there. And a lot of them have sent me that same meme with the popcorn. Cause they're just loving it. They're sitting back. They're watching all this drama and they're like, yeah, we're just going to get more money at the end of this. That's really what it is. I mean,

if you're one of these young guys, who's not going Justin Thomas, Colin Morikawa, Matt Fitzpatrick, Scotty Scheffler, you're watching all this drama play out. Everyone's telling you how good of a guy you are for not really doing anything,

and you're going to get a lot richer. Yeah, but not as rich as somebody getting 100 M's. Do you think they're, like, do you see a day where one of these young guns who are trying to protect the PGA Tour, because if they protect the PGA Tour, then their legacies will be fairly and accurately judged against all the greats of the past, which is a massive thing in the golf world.

But who you think these guys are going to continue to say no to nine figure signing bonuses whenever live guys are going to continue to be able to play in the majors? Do you think that'll become a thing with the PGA's competition and raising the purse at these eight events? I think I actually think the PGA Tour is finally starting to take enough steps in the right direction where these guys won't feel as much pressure to do it. Because like, if you look at the numbers, if you look at how much money you can make on the PGA Tour with all these new events and with the FedEx Cup, which is only going up and

up and up, and there's all these new bonus programs now, like the money's not going to be all that different. One of the ones guaranteed. So yes, I guess if colin morikawa you know tore his knee up he wouldn't get his money from the pj tour but like injuries aren't that they give a risk in golf a lot of these guys know that they're going to be around for 20 30 years they're not willing to risk the reputational hit if they feel like okay maybe i'm giving up five or ten million dollars and not you know 50 million dollars um but yeah i think you know what you said million. Um, but yeah, I think, you know, what you said earlier is a hundred percent, right. This is knocked the PGA tour off its high horse. They realize that they can't just coast and they're going to have to listen to some of

these guys. Um, when they say, look, give us more money, give us this, give us that. And now they're starting to get the answers that they want. I think this is good for golf, Dan, and I can't thank you enough for joining us and all your reporting has been fantastic, even though I assume there is some people over your head asking you not to report everything the way that you were reporting them. So we appreciate the hell out of you kind of, you know, floating in the water. I'm doing what I can. Yeah. You got to do what you got to do because you're friends with a lot of these guys. But the league that, you know, has basically made you your business is in the middle of real competition right now.

Excited to see how it plays out. Can't thank you enough, Dan. Yeah, happy to do it. Thanks, boys. Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Rappaport. While we're on with Dan Rappaport

and learning that incredible piece of information about the PGA Tour, answering Liv's, you know, fight in this entire golf supremacy game,

there has been breaking news out of the NFL. A man who has been described as having toilet seats for hands. A man that we have called a nimble Clydesdale. A man who is a ninja on the field while being taller, faster, and more powerful than everybody else, has officially retired from the NFL. Now, this would be his second retirement, but this one seems like it's a little bit more steadfast than the one from the past. Rob Gronkowski officially retiring from the NFL via a Jordan Schultz report tweet.

Now, the future first ballot Hall of Famer won four Super Bowls while earning a spot on the NFL's 100th anniversary team and the 2010's all-decade team. An all-time great officially hangs him up at 33 years old. Congrats to Gronk on both chapters of his career, both whenever he came into the NFL with the New England Patriots and asserted dominance quickly with how damn fast he was, how quick he was, and his football IQ being on a completely different level than anybody would

ever give him the credit for. Then whenever he retires, dabbles in the sports media world, does well, comes back with Tampa, has the legendary tale about him training in different shirts one day. So he tells Tampa he's been working his ass off, loses 15 to 20 pounds to get back in shape, then goes on to score two touchdowns in another Super Bowl, do his thing in an entire another city. Congratulations to Western Pennsylvania high school grad, Buffalo native Rob Gronkowski.

We're all very lucky to watch Gronk play. We're all very lucky to kind of see Gronk be Gronk and never change from being Gronk and Gronking around at all times. I'm pumped for the guy. I can't wait to see what he does next. Yeah, I mean, probably goes down as the greatest of all time, even though he didn't play as long as some other guys. He was on the NFL. He was one of the only

active players that won on the all-time 100th anniversary team. He was out there with Tom wearing a jacket, then he comes back out and plays. And there's other tight ends that have jacket, and then he comes back out and plays. And there's other tight ends that have incredible numbers and have done great things. Gronkowski, he's a road grader, as well as the number one option for Tom Brady basically throughout the entirety of his career.

There's obviously George Kittle and Kelsey and Ditka and Gonzalez and everybody from the past. I don't want to leave anybody off there. Gates is obviously in the conversation and Witten. And Mercedes Lewis is about to play 18 years at tight end. But I think, personally, I view him as the best football player I've seen live because of what he's been able to do and how fucking big he is first compared to everybody else.

Yeah, he's definitely the most decorated out of all those guys that you just listed. Like, he won four Super Bowls. He scored in every single Super Bowl that he played in, too, I believe, except for the Rams. He set them up at the one-yard line to basically win that Super Bowl. Over the shoulder there. Yeah. And that was the only touchdown that got scored that game.

But, I mean, he was obviously a legend for the Patriots. In the biggest moments, Rob Gronkowski made the biggest plays. Yeah. Now, obviously, Julian Edelman has that scoop against Atlanta that people will remember forever, but it felt like in the big games, whether it's just the playoffs or home field clinching,

or something, Tom Brady was looking for Rob Gronkowski. Tom Brady, greatest quarterback of all time, probably not greatest quarterback of all time, if he didn't have Rob Gronkowski in his life, I assume he will go on to say that at some point. And although Gronk is super relaxed and chill and ha-ha,

I've heard the way he practices is 100 miles an hour, full go, finishing every single fucking rep. He's admirable at practice off the field and on the field. I'm a big fan of the big son of a bitch, and I'm happy he's hopefully found happiness and contentment in retiring for good and doing his thing in his next step congrats to fucking obviously there are other guys but i think he was like one of those guys who really accelerated like what the top tier tight ends are doing right now we're like he is an incredible blocker but you could also like split him out wide and like i mean he like i said like jimmy graham kelsey some of those other guys who are around there but like he really did like accelerate

what a lot of these guys are doing now and obviously immense amount of credit for belichick and josh mcdaniels whenever they decided remember when he was lined up goal line and then they would just flank him out yeah and it was like are you who you put on the corner no put a linebacker on him no put a safety on him whatever it was they would just flank a linebacker on him? No. Put a safety on him? Whatever it was, they would just flank him out and it would be one-on-one and it was an immediate, well, if it's a small body, we're just going to throw it up high. If it's a big body, he can shake

him and get inside of it. And if it's a safety, we'll just run a little out so he can body him and speed him. I mean, it was an unstoppable thing at the goal line and I assume Tom Brady had thoughts about it and Gronk had thoughts about it. But what McDaniels and Bill and Tom and then even towards the end there down in Tampa, the way he had been used is like perfect, it felt like.

He was the guy at all times. And what a joy to fucking watch. I'm going to miss him on a football field. I feel like Gronk, comparable, was like Shaq in the NBA. Bingo. Bingo. Never been talked about as Shaq in the NBA. Bingo. Bingo. Never been talked about as greatest player of all time. But unstoppable.

Unstoppable. And I've seen some, obviously against the Colts, he has some legendary moments. Of course. But I've seen him pick up one of my friends and block all the way to the... Toss him out the club. Yeah, all the way to the sideline too. Wasn't scared to get dirty in there. No.

That's why I thought, I mean, with the running block, obviously, and the pass catching. But as much as he got hurt, his ability to come back from the back surgeries and the elbow and the knee was incredible, too. Rob Gronkowski's Instagram has made it official. His statement, if we can zoom in there. In college, I was asked to write about a dream job opportunity that I wanted to pursue and where the location would be. Every time I had to go write about my future, no matter what, I picked being a professional football player. For that assignment, though, we had to pick the location. So I wrote that I wanted to play in Tampa Bay for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for many reasons, the sunny weather being number one. I completely forgot about writing this report until two years ago when I had the opportunity

to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And let me tell you, the journey in Tampa over the last two years has blown away what I originally wrote about in college, big time. And for this, I want to thank the whole entire first class Buccaneers organization for an amazing ride, trusting me to come back to play and help build a championship team. I will now be going back into my retirement home, walking away from football again with my head held high, knowing I gave it everything I had, good or bad, every time I stepped out on the field.

The friendships and relationships I've made will last forever, and I appreciate every single one of my teammates and coaches for giving everything they had as well. From retirement, back to football and winning another championship and now back to chilling out. Thank you to all. Buccaneers fans, the crew, without you guys, none of this is possible. All of you brought it every game. Thank you for all you do.

Cheers to what's next. Maybe sailing the seas. Whoa. Arr. Oh, no. Pirate. Captain Gronk being a pirate. Here we go.

First Tom and now Gronk. They both retired. No mention of the Patriots in either one. Well, he retired from the Patriots. I appreciate it, Tony. I don't know. Yeah, he did kind of spit in your face a little bit. Ah, you know.

No, I'm joking. I'm joking. He did. He was talking about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This is just like what Tom had to do because they already retired from the Patriots a couple different times and left the Patriots. Whatever the case. Happy for Gronk.

Today's video is... Excuse me. Today's show is sponsored by the best ticket app on planet Earth and... The Moon. Hell yeah. Seat Geek. Show, not video. This is your weekly reminder that listeners of this show get 10% off at the link in our

description. The Stanley Cup Finals are still going on thanks to the Boach. Go Boach. Baseball is doing what baseball does. Plus, there are concerts happening all summer long. Get tickets to it all on SeatGeek. Their seating chart will make sure you're getting the best value every single time. Just remember to hit the link in the description of this show.

Next time you buy some tickets, mailed it. What are the talking points right before you read that? The talking points right before I read it was the first two words. Instead of saying the second word, say show. And I didn't. You came in so confident to this video.

And then he got so disappointed. It kind of ruined the mood of the entire read. Well, it ruined my mood, for sure. I mean, I love talking about baseball, and here we are. Yeah, but hey, team sports. Sometimes you're going to fuck up. You've got to bounce back. You can't let that second word affect the thirds all the way.

You kind of did. No, I rolled through it. What are you talking about? No, there's no fucking flop. There was a flop. There was a defeatist attitude in that entire thing. There was no defeatist attitude. Shout out to SeatGeek, by the way.

How could you feel like a defeatist whenever you got fucking SeatGeek on here? I can't. They've been the greatest for a long time. O'Neal? O'Neal Cruz. Yeah. He'll be gone. That's what I said.

He's named after Paul O'Neal, too. Yankee legend. Yankees will have this guy in three years. Three years? Probably by the end of this year. Maybe Yankee legend. Yankees will have this guy in three years. Three years? Probably by the end of this year. Maybe. I saw a highlight on the internet of this guy. You put a highlight on the internet and you're a Pittsburgh Pirate.

You are no longer a Pittsburgh Pirate. Bye-bye. In his first game, he recorded the hardest thrown ball from an infield position ever. Yeah, I heard. He's got an absolute hose. 6'7". 6'7". Short'7 shortstop? Yeah, might need to move him to the outfield.

Why? 6'7"? That's big. Back issues. He's bending over a lot. You need that guy just standing up, catching fly balls. Maybe put him at first. He's a good athlete. Put him out in center field. Very fast. We'll have him playing catcher at no time.

No. Destroy his knees. Kendall's there. He ain't going to let that happen. Yeah, Jason Kendall's back with the team, right? Yeah, I think so. Who knows? The Pirates suck.

They're not in the cellar. Huh? They're not in the cellar. We're about to sell this guy, and we'll be fucking done. All right, that's the show, dude. We talked about a lot today. Oh, yeah. We had brain conversation. Uh-huh. Pretty good brain convo. Very good. That's the show, dude. We talked about a lot today. Oh, yeah. We had brain conversation.

Uh-huh. Pretty good brain convo. Very good. A lot of breaking news. Yep. I mean, today was a big time day. Yeah. We did golf.

Dove deep. Zeke and Elias. We did Zeke and Elias. Yep. Freed stopped by. There's my younger brother. Rap sheet with four guests today. Four guests.

Wow. That's no joke. All right. Look at us. Here we go. Sports. Hell sheet with four guests today. Four guests. Wow. That's no joke. All right. Look at us. Here we go. Sports. Hell of a Tuesday, June. Hashtag PMS hell of a Tuesday.

Hell yeah. Take a screenshot right now. Or now. Or now. Oh, you should bounce around. Or now. Say something nice to somebody. Put your cash tag in there.

And you can be one of 10 winners of $599. Wow. Maybe 15 winners. Wow, really? Maybe 20 winners. No, no, no, no, no. All right, 10. Okay, perfect.

No, 15. What? I didn't mean to. 15 winners of $599 will be randomly selected for those that had a screenshot from just moments ago. Their cash tag and said something nice to somebody. It is a hell of a Tuesday. We need a little bit more positivity.

Let's continue to try to live our best lives because guess what? You only get one shot at this thing. So be nice to people. Let's keep it moving. We'll see you, Mignogna, with more sports talk. And A.J. Hawk will be off the fucking vacation he takes every other day. About time. Allegedly. We're keep it moving. We'll see you manana with more sports talk and AJ Hawk will be off the fucking vacation. He takes every other day about time.

We're off on Friday. We're kind of bumps. I guess we just kind of went after him and then we're taking off a day. No, it's different. He just took off a day last week and the week before that. You're right. We're not taking six day weekends like some interns do. Exactly. Just one day.

But we are taking off one day. That's July 4th. That doesn't count. That's pre-planned. We got a deal. That doesn't count. And we got a deal. That whole deal going on at the thing. Right.

Plus, I mean, you got a leisure. NFL's off. So what are we supposed to do? Yeah. All right. We're back tomorrow. You are the best. Hashtag PMS.

Hell of a Tuesday. Because that's what it was today. Yep. Hopefully we'll have an incredible Wednesday as well. Cheers. សូវាប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់� Thank you. Thank you. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបាូវាប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់� Thank you. សូវាប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Thank you.