The Ryen Russillo Podcast - A Lesson on NBA Trade Demands, an NFL Betting Primer With Chad Millman, Plus SlamBall Creator Mason Gordon

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

Russillo shares his thoughts on the NBA trade requests of James Harden and Damian Lillard, as well as their respective teams' responses (0:44). Then Ryen is joined by Chad Millman, chief content officer of Action Network, to discuss sports gambling's entrance into mainstream media, finding value in futures bets, predicting the NFC, the state of magazines, ESPN layoffs, and more (14:22). Then Ryen talks with SlamBall cofounder Mason Gordon about the inception of SlamBall in the early 2000s, developing it on the fly, having it televised on SpikeTV, the league's return this year after a long hiatus, and more (56:33). Finally, Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:15:52). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Chad Millman and Mason Gordon Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's podcast we're going to talk with chad millman about trying to figure out betting on some of these nfl futures also his story work together randy has been the magazine espn.com some fun stuff there slam Slam ball. Do you remember it? You do if you're my age. It's back and it's back Friday. Mason Gordon is the founder, creator, and a former player. So we'll chat with him about slam ball coming back, life advice, and an open about maybe reminding ourselves that every NBA decision

doesn't have to be made as soon as we learn about the story. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine, that's no. A bottle of wine, yeah. And a snow day, again, no.

But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping, total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. I didn't think I had another open in me about James Harden and Damian Lillard, but I do. I have one. So I'm going to share it with you now. Daryl Morey has some quotes that we'll get to hear from Tuesday at the Philadelphia Radio interview, which I think plays into kind of this whole thing. So look,

when I do this podcast, when I do the monologue specifically, and I have an opinion, I usually have pretty strong conviction with that opinion. It's based on putting it together, some thoughts, looking up some stuff, and then I share it with you.

And that's kind of the formula. But I think there are different times in sports where I'll, I'll wonder like, wait, should I hold off on thinking this is already done? Should I remind myself that we potentially could be going through something where it's just a little reminder or perhaps a lesson about how things can still work? And for Harden and Lillard, we could be in that right now. We could be. we could be in that right now we could be and i think it's a good reminder for not only me but for all of us that when the player asks out we shouldn't expect that it's going to happen within hours right because the lillard thing's been three plus week the hardened thing's been right before

he picked up the option which was weird but again he picked up that option knowing it was going to be easier for him to be traded to the team that he wanted to go to instead of just being a straight free agent and then signing somewhere else for likely less money than even the option was in the first year, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. You're like, well, wait, if you wanted freedom, you picked up the option. It's like, no, no, no. I expect things to go my way so well that I'm going to pick up the option and demand a trade and then be able to sign an extension off of this option. So yeah, I want all of those things. You're like, wait, is that how it works? Like, yeah, it kind of works that way. Right. So I'm just asking without knowing the

answer, if we're in the beginning of a lesson here of understanding that maybe we shouldn't close the door on all these other potential options when these demands are being made in late June and early July for a season that again, I think starts a little bit later this year. When you look at Daryl Morey's quote, again, this is from Tuesday, talking about potentially trading hard, and he says this, quote, if we do look at a trade, it's going to be for one of two things, a player who's going to help us be right there like we were last year, or we're going to trade for picks that we can use to turn into a player that could going to help us be right there like we were last year, or we're going to trade for picks that we can use to turn into a player that could be a running mate with Joel.

If we can't get that, then we are not going to do it. Now, this comment is also backed up with other different stories all over the place this week where other teams are telling insiders that basically based on Maury's demands for what he'd want in a hardened trade, that they don't really want to move hard. First of all, what's Maury supposed to say? He's not going to go on radio being like, you know what? We think his best days are behind him. You get a declining asset and he's going to be expensive and he's going to want a new contract. We'd probably just move him for a guy who just cracks our top eight. You're not going to say that about your own asset. And we also know with Maury's history, now granted, whatever my own BS with

him is, I respect the hell out of him as a GM. I think he's terrific. And I think for the most part, when it's these bigger ticket items, he's not going to give in. I mean, he'd even said before two years ago when Ben Simmons was there and the fear was with Ben Simmons it's like no he's going to say he has a back injury right because that's always the fear of the teams that the player decides that they want to hold out they can certainly just say yeah you know what I got a second opinion and I'm not clear and you still have to pay them but in the case of Simmons he went with a mental health part of it and I'm not I don't really feel like talking about that part of it anymore but Maury had even said that talking about that part of it anymore. But Maury

had even said that if we have to wait out the entire four years remaining on the contract, we'll do that. Now, I don't think that was going to happen. But what Maury did is he flipped him for Harden because of Harden's own issues in Brooklyn. And he waited. He waited. That was a great example of a GM where I think lesser GMs would have gone like, okay, Ben Simmons wants out. I know he's got all these years left in his contract, but he's with a powerful agency in clutch. And you know what? Like, I just got to move them. I'll just move them for pieces that I know I don't really want in a Ben Simmons trade.

Because still, Ben Simmons' value was, the perception of it was still a lot higher than it is now. But Maury didn't give in right away. The Harden situation presents itself that was not there in the beginning of the year because the Brooklyn thing had to go bad for Harden to say, you know what? I'm out of here. I don't want to play with Kyrie. And the opportunities, the options, however you want to frame it, those things changed. Okay?

So that's kind of what I'm asking here. What if we actually distill a line from Simmons? What if we are having a moment? What if we're having a moment where we're seeing the beginning of teams saying, you know what, you're not just going to get everything you want, especially as we explore an area with Lillard where it's four years remaining, we're hard and we know it's just a player option. But Philadelphia is looking at it differently than Portland is because they're like, hey, we feel like we are in the conversation, which I think is completely fair and accurate about who they are potentially coming out of the East if things were to break their way. I think it was very specific that Daryl Morey, when he talked about last season,

said we were up 3-2 on one of the best teams in the NBA. So that's him selling the idea. And I think there's a little part of that that's self-serving too, is that, hey, we were right there. We were up a game. Now, the reason why did you lose game six and seven, I think you can reference any of my previous podcasts to go back and understand how I feel about that. I don't even know if we are in the beginning of anything. It could just be, as I also like to say, just because something

happens, it doesn't mean it's actually something. But I think it's just a nice reminder. Okay? What if Maury changes the way he feels, not in July, but October? Then maybe Harden gets his way. What if Harden?

I mean, it's easy to do this shit when it's July. There aren't any games. What if Harden goes, all right, I tried. I said everything I could say. I told every reporter, every dude in the mix that I was never going back to Philadelphia, but guess what? I got to get that next contract. I got to come back and play and I've got to play well. And this isn't just about Philadelphia and what we're trying to accomplish. Selfishly, it's about what I'm trying to accomplish because Harden's already cost himself so much money not picking up previous extensions that he could have had. Like he screwed this up.

But what if his mind changes? You ever change your mind? You ever you are you ever emphatic that you will not do this? Not on my watch, not on my boat. And then the thing that you said that you'd never do, you're like, ah, shit. I guess I got to do this. I mean, you're lying.

You haven't ever done that before. Now, it can feel a little different when we're talking about pro athletes because they're used to getting their way because they're so special at what they do, so much more special than what we do most of the time, our day to day. But I think we've closed the door on what's a normal practice and decision making. We've kind of collectively in the NBA world closed the door on the concept of just people involved going, yeah, actually, I tried

and it didn't work out. I don't know if that would happen with Harden. I don't know if it would happen with Maury, but why can't we wait until October until that happens? I just think it's a really common mistake of thinking that it's days away from happening once a request is made.

Now, if we were to learn something about Harden, and this is kind of leaking out there a bit, that Harden was promised something a year ago. That's why he took the pay cut. That's why they were able to build out the rest of the roster. Harden even said numerous times this season that he almost felt like he wasn't getting enough credit for the pay cut. Nobody really cared. But if Harden were promised something in Philadelphia, it didn't live up to that promise in the negotiations

leading up to Harden demanding the trade, then I will 100% be on Harden's side. Probably didn't expect to hear me say that today. I don't know what information we'll get. I don't know if we'll get it. I don't know if we'll find out. Probably. But then again, will it be accurate? Will you trust the person that's presenting that information? But here's the other part of the hardened bet you're trying to figure out as you enter the season okay go back to when he didn't want to be in houston uh shows up completely out of shape then was going to get in trouble for not reporting on time but then there

was the covid part of it which actually cleared him from it so he kind of lucked out the way he played in brooklyn at the end we've been over all these things before. But entering the season, I've heard a lot of people say, well, you know what? Harden's the worst guy you could have going into a season without not wanting to be there because we've already seen it two times before. Okay, but he was younger then, figured he was still always going to get his money no matter where he was going to go. Is that really the bet? going to get his money no matter where he was going to go. The bet is almost like you have to

bet on his contract desire versus his desire to leave the team. And it does kind of suck too when the guy who is a concern ends up being rewarded because he's a concern. I don't think Daryl's going to necessarily do that, right? But it reminds me of Shackleton when they get stuck in the Arctic and they've made it over to this island, but they know it's not sustainable. It's abandoned. There's not enough resources. Guys are getting sicker and sicker and they still have this boat that they feel like they can navigate to one of the islands that has an outpost. Incredible navigation skills on this thing. 22 feet, I think, ballast full of rocks, just trying to keep the thing from flipping over, breaking off ice like the deadliest catch,

except they're not catching anything. And there was this one guy who just sucked, real, real, didn't understand positive vibes at all. And the better option was to be in the boat instead of being left behind. Because if you were left behind, there's a better chance you were going to die. At least in the boat, you'd feel like you were, if you made it, and they did, sorry, spoiler alert, if they make it to the outpost that they're trying to head towards, those guys would receive food and they would be in a better position sooner. But they end up taking the shitty guy with them because they didn't want to leave him behind even though he sucked and he didn't work

and he was just a malcontent the entire time. But they were like, if we leave him behind on the camp, he's such a bad vibes guy that it'll ruin the entire deal for them. So let's bring him with us. So he benefited from being an asshole the whole time. Unfortunately, that seems to happen a lot. The difference that I've referenced a couple different times here, Dame has the four years left, right? And he's picking one team, Mayim. Weird that

people had said that deal was done three weeks ago. Because I don't think it's done. I don't think that trade went through today. That's my issue with Dame. If Harden had three years left, I'd be more inclined to probably trade him because of the history they've already talked about. But I got to wonder,

would he actually come in out of shape and play like shit on purpose like he has two other times just to get out if Daryl doesn't change his mind? That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for a guy that wants to have a contract. If Lillard were traded to a different team other than Miami, would he fake an injury? Would he not play? Would he risk losing 50 million a year? That doesn't seem like that's

going to happen. And it kind of gets back to the general theme of what I'm talking about here. Like, wait, it's easy to say and take a stand and say all these things that you're going to do and not going to do when you don't have to make that decision. You're not going to have to actually execute your decision for months here. If you want to do a tale of the tape on the arguments, contract situation, Harden clearly has more of legit beef. of legit beef um i'd say the current situation roster wise arguments in dame's favor that one actually dings hard in a little bit it's like you say you're about the right things which you're not but you say you say you are like your team's going to be good next year it's not going to be the best in the east could be i don't think it is right now your team's going to be good sure the clipper's

going to be kind of good but you care about LA and you care about the contract extension more than you do about winning. So that's in favor of Dame's argument. The rep of the two players, Dame. Destination? It depends. Are both guys going to

in two months say it's still only that one team? Sympathy? I'd actually say I'd have more sympathy for Harden if we find out that, in fact, there was a contract that he thought he was getting that was not brought back to him a year later preceding this most recent offseason.

So what if both don't get their number one option? Okay, will it mean anything? Will it mean that, wait a minute, you know, maybe player empowerment, maybe it's not as powerful? No, I don't. Look, I'm not even ready to say that. It's the NBA, right? I'm not that crazy. So I'm not ready to come to that conclusion. But the beginning of this, I talked about a lesson. And I think the lesson can be the next time there's a trade demand, especially for a player that the team doesn't want to trade demand, especially for a player that the

team doesn't want to trade, especially with somebody with a lot of time left, that maybe we shouldn't trade that request or we shouldn't treat that trade request as if it's imminent, as if it has to happen in a matter of days, especially when the NBA is not even open for business right now. And that's something I'm going to remind myself of the next time it happens. He is the chief content officer of the Action Network. He's also a former colleague and I would say continues to be a friend. It's Chad Millman.

It's good to catch up. I think that's a fair assessment. You can say we continue to be friends. I would say we have spoken more about non-sports stuff and career stuff and off-the-field stuff than we have about sports stuff. Yeah, I think that's fair. Look, I'm impressed because I remember when all of us were trying to figure out like the next move, you were positioned really well with your background in gambling, with your Vegas years, and you kind of saw it. You saw it before a lot of people saw it. And instead of going just straight

content company, the broad scope of things, you were like, I'm going to start something else. And you called me about it. You started the Action Network. And I know there's been a few transactions since then. You're still with the company because you're valuable. And you were ahead of people on it. And I always admire people that do that. Thanks, buddy. Yeah, it would have been great if we could have had Ryan Rosillo come join Action Network.

But listen, you're so freaking expensive. And you're so popular and so famous. You know, we were just a small startup at the time. It just wasn't in the cards for us. But I just, I knew that I was like, can I go all the way in on this now? But I look, I mean, you and I have talked about it enough and I appreciate your overflowing comments there.

But yeah, look, did you know? Did you know that this would happen? Did you think, okay, hey, look, here's what's going to happen legally here. This is the move. Because you had done so many different things at ESPN. I mean, hell, you were in charge of the magazine. You made your presence with.com. And for you to kind of go back to your roots, or maybe it was just a passion plate for you. I'm just wondering how much of that was baked into the decision and how much vision you had on the future. It was all of it. I definitely believed it was going to be legal. I definitely believed it was the direction that sports was going to go. I mean, remember, I had started,

I'd written a book about this stuff 20 years ago, right? I wrote this book called The Odds in 1999. It came out in 2001. And I had lived in Vegas. I had tracked guys who bet on sports for a living. I was deep in this world. And then when I was finished with the book and was at ESPN, I was writing columns about how professional bettors are thinking about the point spreads and what they're betting on and how bookmakers are setting lines and how that's impacting this shadow world that was worth hundreds of billions of dollars and really impacted how sports fans were thinking about sports.

And in this window is when fantasy became as relevant as it did. And Moneyball became such an ethos for sports fans, right? It really became analytically driven. And fans started to think opportunistically, not is my team going to win, but how do I win? And how do I make something out of everything I know, out of the democratization of data that is accessible on the internet? So it was becoming clear that sports betting was sort of at the tip of the sword on all of this.

It was just a matter of time before it became legal and part of my coverage at ESPN when I was sort of moving up the executive ranks. And my side hustle was forward-facing sports betting reporter. And I knew from the industry, these are the court cases that are moving through And these are the ones that are getting attention. And there was a case that involved New Jersey. And in 2017, we were both at ESPN. And it was a hard time there. We were constantly firing people. And you could feel the business contracting. And I know you felt a lot of this. I felt a lot of this. business contracting. And I know you felt a lot of this. I felt a lot of this. It felt like organizational chess, right? You were constantly trying to understand, where do I fit in? What is

my role? The leadership was changing constantly. So you never knew just because you were in with one person doesn't mean you were going to be in with the next person. And it felt like you didn't control your own destiny. And that's right when someone reached out to me, the Chernin group reached out to me. They wanted to start a sports betting business and a media company focused on this. And it's what I always want to do at ESPN. And I had all these memos that I was sending around and people just weren't into going all in on sports betting. And the Churnin folks wanted to do what I wanted to do, only so much bigger. They were so much smarter about it. And right in that moment, in that exact moment when they called me, I remember about two

weeks after my first conversation with them, this was in May of 2017, I got an alert from ESPN. I was in the city. I was in the Time Warner building in New York City. I'm going to alert from ESPN. The Supreme Court decides to hear the case that New Jersey had brought to legalize sports betting and overturn the federal sports betting ban. And this is the answer to your question. In that moment, I knew it was going to be illegal.

I knew that there was a two-thirds chance that it was either going to be, the Supreme Court would say, forget it. Sports betting, the ban is legal. It can stay. New Jersey, which was filing the case on its own behalf to get sports betting legal in its state, can have it. And if New Jersey got it, every other state was going to follow the New Jersey roadmap or they were going to overturn the ban completely. We launched in January of 2018. Sports betting became legal completely in May of 2018. So I felt it.

I understood it from tracking it. I played the odds, for lack of a better term. And then we sold three years later. When you were going through, you know, writing the book, the odds and everything. Like I think anytime, like I can always remember my phases of it where you might, if you get lucky in the beginning, you're like, I've, I've got this nail. Like, I can't, I've got this nail. I can't believe people struggle with this. Then you hang around for long enough and you go, okay, wait a minute.

Wait a minute. And then I think there's kind of that next level. It's fun. I actually do believe this and not just because FanDuel is a sponsor, but there was an entertainment purpose of throwing 25 bucks on a game that I didn't care about because now I really care, especially if that 25 bucks was important. And I always kind of thought of it as a price to now feel completely different about the next three and a half hours of this Monday nighter. That's how I would process it. And to me, it was always worth it because now I care way more. Um, but then there becomes this moment where you like, there's a much, much less traveled path of, of the player. Who's like, okay, how does this actually work? Like, I've got to know what the real people are seeing here. You know, Van Pelt was really into it when we were doing the show. I had my own reasons for not being as into it back then because I felt like I was talking in front offices all the time.

And I was like, I just don't, there was still a stigma of it. I was like, I just don't know that I feel right about going like, Hey, the Pistons are in a bad place right now. No, because I just, I didn't want to ever have that conversation now. Like the stigma was gone overnight by the way. But what did you learn? And maybe it was a selfish quest of you going like, how do the people who really understand this, how do they see this world? Yeah, I actually did it completely opposite. I knew nothing about this world. So when I started The Odds, it started because I had written a story for ESPN Magazine, where I was working, about the guys in Vegas. Remember, this is before everybody was betting online. This is late 90s. It was just starting to become a thing. who set the tone for the point spreads. And they were disseminated from there throughout the rest of the world.

Then they were disseminated into the online outfits that were starting to pop up in what we call the offshore and like Costa Rica. And so I focused on the bookmaker at the Stardust Hotel for this story who was setting the point spread for the NCAA tournament. And just wrote about how this guy sort of was the first domino to fall in this massive industry.

And it was one dude, two dudes sitting in a back room at the Stardust Hotel. And what would happen is the professional bettors in college basketball, and you sort of downplay a little bit how much you know about this because I know when we spoke about this years ago, I know you didn't want to get into it because of what you said, but you and Scott, you guys were the best show to go on because you knew it so well. You were not schmucks who didn't understand the language.

And professional bettors would come and bet these point spreads and that's how these things got beaten into shape and then everybody picked them up, right. So I just thought that was fascinating. And I thought their lives were fascinating. And I'm a romantic. So I love the language. I love the psychology. I love the narrative. I love the math. I could care less about the betting. It wasn't what I got into it for. And when I was in Vegas for those six months, I made like five bets the entire time I was out there because it was something that just scared me so much. And one of the bigger bets I made, I bet like 300 bucks during March Madness at the end of my run there. And I bet on, I think it was Utah State to cover against UConn, like plus nine.

And I think Rick Mahoran's nephew hit a three-pointer with no time left to turn the game from Utah State being down by 11 to losing by eight. I won the bet. I was so sick to my stomach. I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. I never want to do it again.

And the guy who I was writing about, this guy, Alan Boston, who at the time was the best college basketball better in the world, he was betting millions of dollars a day. And he won about $100,000 on that game. He casually picked up the phone and just put it back in play. And I'm like, these guys are playing a different level. But it was after that that I sort of became consumed with that world. And I still wouldn't say, like, I'm an amazing bettor, right? And I know the industry really well. I know the keys to pick up on.

I know when there is an advantage in a game, in a point spread. I know when, I know you like to talk about fading the public. I know when to fade the public. But I work with guys. I talk to guys who are betting tens of thousands of dollars on a game. That's not me. That's never going to be me. My risk comes in a lot of different ways. I feel really good about what I know, but I am not that comfortable betting huge, huge, huge amounts of money. Yeah, that was Scott's fade the public thing. And then the big joke with me is I basically

always would end up around 500 whenever we would do it. And then this past year is one of the worst years I've had because I think I was being too specific and I was going to the Action Network and looking for the public money. But the public money versus the number of wagers publicly are two different things. And then I thought like, wait, if I'm trying to like thread this needle, I can't just pick one. I've got to pick like three and hope I'm going two for three more often than I'm going one for three on it. You put those numbers up for a very specific reason. And some people are completely married to that theory. It just feels awful when you're always going to be betting on the worst teams in the NFL every week when you go with that. Why is that number so important though? Why is that such

a strong philosophy for so many gamblers? It is truly disgusting. I talk about this all the time with the guys at Action and on my podcast, like, what are we going to do that is so disgusting and so uncomfortable? And it just works, right? You are constantly looking at the teams that really make you sick. And the problem here that a lot of people don't understand is that the majority of money that comes in, that bookmakers are looking at, is from people who don't know anything. They are completely square. That is what they who don't know anything. They are completely square. That is what they are called in the industry. They are called squares.

And they come in, they'll bet $10, $20, $100, $500, whatever it is, but they bet on emotion, they bet on their favorite team, they like to bet on the favorite. So the money to be made, if you're betting on the NFL, is usually fading the public, is usually betting on the bad teams. It's betting on underdogs. It's doing things that constantly make you uncomfortable. It's betting on the Texans when they're double digit dogs against the Jaguars at some point during this season. And the Texans, by the way, consistently sort of last

year kept the betters' heart in their throat because they would find a way to sort of sneak down the field and get that backdoor cover. We saw last year the Chiefs and the Broncos, right? The Chiefs were double-digit favorites against the Broncos late in the year. The Broncos were a pitiful, pitiful team. The Chiefs start up by like 27 points. I had the Broncos in that game. And of course, the Broncos come back And the public is sort of where the tickets are. So you get a lot of tickets. Like I said, $10, $20, $30, right? That's the ticket percentage. The money percentage is where you're getting a significant amount of professional action. And so when we put those two in the app, in the Action Network app, that's what you're sort of trying to determine is where's the professional money going to be? That's the side that I want to be on.

Now, whenever I see like, all right, just me watching, right? Because I just think about it. I'll think about it. And I'll go, okay, the bubble, nobody's playing in any defense. And you're like, wait, okay, is there play here? The guys that know are already on it, and they're not telling anybody, right? I love that that exists, even if I can't understand. Because I think I know a lot about the NBA, but I don't know enough, or I don't think in a way where I'd go,

oh, wait, bubble, no crowds, apathetic, overs, overs all day until they get the number right. Yeah, I think that's accurate. Here's the thing that's hard about the NBA. And here's the thing that's hard about the NFL. And it's very specific. And it's also for college basketball and college football. And it's called getting the best of the number. And so bettors will always talk about you want to bet. You might feel great about overs in the NBA during the bubble. But if you feel great about overs and a line opens at 215 and a half and you missed it and now you're betting it at 217

and a half, inevitably it's going to land at 216. It just is. And you're going to lose your bet or it's going to land at 217. You will have been right. All of your theories will have been right, but you didn't get the best of the number. And that's what makes gambling so hard. of your theories will have been right, but you didn't get the best of the number. And that's what makes gambling so hard. And you talk about winning at 50%. Dude, you win 53% of the time and you are a massively globally successful bettor. That is how people make their money. That is the very narrow margin in betting, 53% of the time. It is a stunningly small percentage. It means that you are right as a bettor 5.3 times out of 10.

Now think about this. As an executive at ESPN, my gift, my superpower was supposed to be my ability to make the right decision almost every single time. Like when you are moving up the ladder, that is how you are judged. You can't be judged on, you know, how good was my show today, right? You're only judged on how did I manage this situation? Did I make the right decision? At ESPN, if you said to someone, you are making the right decision only five and a half times

out of 10, they would think they're failing. But in reality, that is astounding to be able to make the right decision five and a half times out of 10. You should be rewarded for that. Because in that case, like bettors who are doing this with huge amounts of money at stake. They are the best in the world at that. So I always feel really good if I'm at 53%. I feel fantastic as an executive at action. If I'm making the right decision 50% of the time, I'm brilliant. All right, so let's get to it then. Do you like to play the futures?

Do you like to play them for value? Are you looking at that middle pack going, this is where I want to put my money. I'm not messing with the favorites and I'm not putting down a hundred dollars to win 18 grand if the Texans win it all. So yes to the first part, a little bit yes and no to the second part. I generally, if I'm looking at futures, I'm looking at 20 to 40 to one. And when I'm doing that, it's starting from February until we get into training camp. There are always caveats, right? Even though I'm from Chicago, I love the Bears. When the futures markets opened after the Super Bowl, I was looking at the numbers, the Bears were 100 to 1.

All right? I knew the Bears had Justin Fields. I knew they had the number one pick. I knew they had more salary cap than anybody. And I know they have one of the youngest rosters. So even though I'm a homer, and of course I love the Bears, at 100 to 1, of course I'm going to play that. That's ridiculous. It's like I had friends last year playing the Jags at 100 to 1 because you know it's not going to happen, but you also know the number is about twice as big as it should be. So the Bears, almost immediately, I got them at 100 to 1. They're now at about 50 to 60 to 1, right? Because everybody started seeing the same thing. So you are looking for value, but I tend to think about who can I get in that 20 to 40 range. And inevitably, I'm a sucker for the Ravens, right? The Ravens right

now are at about 18 to 1. I'm always a sucker for the Ravens. I love Harbaugh. I love Lamar Jackson. I love the tools that they have put around Lamar Jackson for the first time in, it seems like, his entire career. Their defense is always amazing. Roquan Smith, like the fact that Bears decided he couldn't anchor their defense is actually heartbreaking to me because the Ravens deciding he was so good, they would give him that contract extension and build the defense around him. They're as good at determining what is great at building a defense as anybody. So I will be high on the Ravens this year in all markets. And I think the Dolphins are interesting. I think there's still some moves potentially to be made.

But I'm not looking at anything. I'm not looking at the Chiefs. I'm not looking at the Bengals. I'm not looking at the Eagles. I'm not looking at the Bills. Those are the teams that you want to ignore. And you want to think about, okay, when the season starts, who are the Bengals playing early in the year?

Will they lose a couple of those games? And then who are they playing later in the year? How is their schedule going to play out? You kind of want to hold your powder right now until the season starts if you only want to play the bigger teams, because you might get an opportunity to bet some of these teams at longer odds if they lose a few games early and they don't pick up steam until later in the year are you thinking of any nfc play where okay the eagles are the best team but you look at the lack of quarterback depth in that conference it may not have ever had this big of a gap between

quarterback talent in the afc and the nfc in my lifetime i don't know when i would have to reference it where you're going it's not so much that I love the team. I just love the path where if you go through the odds on FanDuel right now, I would say, although San Francisco is in there at 10 to one, like the next best odds for an NFC team. I don't know. The last time we've said this is Detroit at 22 to one. I know. That's what's freaky, right? If you look at the odds overall, and I think I did this exercise,

I can do it with you right now, looking at FanDuel, it's like seven of the top 10 teams are all AFC and it's entirely quarterback dependent. And if you look at the NFC, that is, by the way, that is the betting story of the offseason, is the quarterback discrepancy between the AFC and the NFC.

Name the best quarterback in the NFC right now. I mean, I know I'm supposed to say Jalen Hurts. right now? I mean, I know I'm supposed to say Jalen Hurts. I don't know that that's the slam dunk that everybody thinks it is. I'd have to see another year of him. After the Tennessee game, I was like, okay, I'm in. All the doubts feel like I'm not worried about it. But if I'm going to say just straight up, he's the best quarterback in the NFC, I'd like to see it another year. But then who am I going to pick? Dak? I'm not picking Jared Goff. I'm not picking Kirk Cousins. Dude, I guess it is Jalen

Hurts. It's Jalen Hurts. And you can't, it's astonishing, right? Because another reason why I got onto the Bears early is because I thought about their path in the division. Like, am I convinced that the Lions won't regress because there's so much love for the Lions that you almost have to fade them at this point? Am I a buyer on Jordan Love? Do I believe that the Vikings, who had a miraculous season of winning one-score games and Kirk Cousins doing what he did on a consistent basis, or Justin Jefferson making miraculous catches, is that going to happen again? These teams, is it a Brock Purdy show

in San Francisco? Can he recover? Is Matthew Stafford going to come back? By the way, if Matthew Stafford plays, I'm buying the Rams. Like, they are so undervalued in the division. Their season win total is so low. How are you not thinking about

the Rams? But I'm looking at the same thing you are right now in the FanDuel odds. Right now, to win the Super Bowl, you have Kansas City, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Cincy, San Francisco, Dallas. By the way, what a compliment to Shanahan. They have the fifth best odds. Well, listen, I will tell you right now. I'll tell you right now. There are probably five coaches in the NFL that betters take seriously when it comes to the point spread, right? Like people that they actually believe have an impact on the point spread. And it's sometimes it's overall, sometimes it's in very specific spots. But Bill Belichick is going to be one of those guys. John Harbaugh is going to be one of those guys.

Kyle Shanahan is going to be one of those guys. Mike Vrabel is one of those guys. Mike Tomlin is one of those guys. There are certain coaches that get a lot of respect from bettors because they consistently win in spots where they aren't supposed to win. They do the miraculous thing as underdogs. You don't want to bet against Mike Vable and the Tennessee Titans when they're underdogs. You don't want to bet against Mike Tomlin, by the way. We're talking about week one, right? Pittsburgh is a three-point underdog at

home against San Francisco. That's how much respect Shanahan gets. We don't know who the guy's quarterback is going to be, but people are so convinced he's a genius, he's a three-point favorite on the road with TJ White healthy against a Steelers team

that is on the make. Another team that I love, love for next year. I was looking at some of the win totals here. Tampa's at six and a half. And you go, okay, it was such a weird year last year. And now Brady's not there. So you're like, wait, is that number too high? But just with the way... Oh, so you think it's an under? Oh, I totally think it's an under oh i totally think it's an under yeah i think that team is going to be in complete rebuilding mode it's a it's an the tom brady era is so over uh yeah i wouldn't i would not be a buyer on that team uh in in any

single way not even close uh because when you brought up the Rams and I was looking through the NFC teams, I'm like, who's got what feels like a low number? And again, Tampa was so one-dimensional last year. But I don't think the roster is like this. I don't look at their roster and go like, oh, this is this terrible roster devoid of any NFL talent because it just isn't. But then when you spin it back to the Rams, they're with Vegas and Washington.

And then after that, there's only four teams with worse Super Bowl odds than the Rams. Sorry, do you have any other Rams-type teams there? It sounds like the Bears for you as a future. It sounds like a Bears, what, over under 6.5? Or is it 7.5? The Bears might have prepped up. It's 7.5.

But the over is minus 122 on fanduel right now i'd still buy it like it's it's a little bit more juice than you'd normally want to pay but i'm a huge buyer on the bears again take it with a grain of salt um i'd also like, I'd be betting the Jaguars either over, that's minus 150. That's a huge price to pay. But you got to think about they're playing in a division that now has potentially three rookie quarterbacks

if Will Levis ends up getting any time as a Titans quarterback. So that's why it's juiced to such a high number. I will tell you right now, the one team that I'm fading, I'm going to fade like my life depends on it, the New York J-E-T-S Jets, Jets, Jets. I'm fading them in every way that I possibly can.

I'm scrolling here. It's nine and a half. Nine and a half. And I believe the Jets under nine and a half right now, it's at plus 100. So it's basically even money. You're not paying any commission to bet the Jets under nine and a half.

Because Aaron Rodgers, you know what QBR last year was? I know it was terrible. It was terrible. Was it in the high 30s? High 30s. You know some other quarterbacks who had comparable QBRs to Aaron Rodgers last year? Yeah, I mean, it's always the worst guys.

Like when you're in the 30s, it's bad. It's Zach Wilson, Mike White, Joe Flacco. Now they're friends. Yeah, right? And so Aaron Rodgers had two incredible MVP years doing exactly what Matt LaFleur told him to do. Before that, he was in a significant downward spiral. So are we going to be getting Tom Brady going to the Bucs? I'm not a buyer in that theory. I'm also not a buyer that the Jets all of a sudden, because they have Aaron Rodgers, are going to be better than the

Buffalo Bills, are going to be better than the Miami Dolphins. I'm not entirely sure they're going to be better than the New England Patriots, who, by the way, had one of the best defensive lines in football and can only be better offensively after the tragedy of last season's coaching debacle. So they might not even be the best team in their division, yet they're going to win 10 games. This just feels, when we talk about fading the public, this is when you're fading the public. The Jets' number is exploding because they are one of the biggest liabilities in season win totals for the books. I always love when the number from Vegas reflects my emotion

about a team or about a season. Because when you look at Minnesota, the reason this number is even this good for them at 35 to one for the Super Bowl is just because of the NFC. When you watched them last year, you went, this team isn't good. I know what they're doing. I know the comebacks. It's an incredible run. I'm so not afraid of this team. But good. I know what they're doing. I know the comebacks. It's an incredible run. I'm so not afraid of this team. But then if you were the Giants and you're going, like, do they beat anybody good? And their number's even worse at 45 to one, and they win that playoff game. But then you're like, yeah, but because they kind of won the playoff game against the other team that I don't really believe in. It reminds me a lot of this Miami Heat run where I ended up being incredibly wrong until they ran out of time to make us all wrong again. But every time I'd watch them and I'm a big roster guy and I'd see the number come out from Vegas, I was like, yeah, right, we're on the same page. And then both Vegas and I would be wrong about Miami until of course the NBA finals but

I always I always will look at that I'll be like oh wait who's the team last year that that did well that people kind of like talked themselves into it's the Tebow phenomenon Tebow would win the game and on Monday we'd all have the talk shows and it got really tough after like six or seven weird games where they won again where you couldn't come in on Monday being like, I still think he isn't good. You had guys just giving up. It's hard to ignore what you're seeing in front of you. But that's also what bettors do, right? And a lot of bettors don't watch the games. A lot of bettors will, after it's over, they'll look at the box scores and then they'll watch the all 22s.

And they'll see if they can match up sort of significant moments in the game that impacted how the game turned out, but aren't impacting how they feel about a team going forward. And so you have to look at sort of a, when you're betting on the NFL specifically, you almost have to look at it the a, when you're betting on the NFL specifically, you almost have to look at it

the way coaches do, right? They think about the season in quadrants of four, right? So when it was a 16 game season, it was four, four, four, four. And how is your team improving? How are you winning those quadrants of four? Betters think about it the same way. They're like, all right, what has this team done in the past four weeks? Who have they played? How are they progressing? What do they have coming up? How is that going to mentally impact them? And they take all of that when they're managing their bets and are they overvalued this week because they had a great comeback against a good team? Or is the good team undervalued because they lost the game they shouldn't have lost and now they're going on the road and the public thinks, oh, they're not as good as we thought, so now the number isn't as big. It's a lot of sort of mental gymnastics and math that goes on.

And what's interesting is these guys do it almost instinctively. Like, honestly, I could look at the week two spreads off of week one and immediately know, without having to do any research, without having to talk to anybody, immediately know the games I'm going to want to bet because of what happened in week one.

Weeks one and two are actually two of the more fun weeks to bet in the NFL season. And then it gets a little tricky, but early in the season, it's fun to sort of play against what the public is overreacting to. On top of all this and your background, being

in charge of ESPN the magazine and I know ESPN obviously very public another round of layoffs and you know a few of the names are really really close friends. I mean the whole reason

I even got a job at ESPN was because of Todd McShay and you know I know going back to our conversations like in 17 because there were layoffs then and losing friends

and I think to be fair to ESPN too, which I think is always important because I think sometimes I can, I can, you know, tell a story where it's not the most glowing. But that's my own personal experience is that, you know, this,

this model just keeps changing. It keeps changing over and over again. I remember even talking with Bill, like when he was gone and I was still there, he's like, I think it's a live rights company now. I just, I just think that it is. And I don't really blame him. You know, I don't

really blame him on the live rights part of it and making that the number one important thing. And with the way the costs keep going up, you're going to have to figure out a way to move the numbers around, even if we both know how much it sucks. But like knowing that you were part of something, I remember ordering the first ESPN, the mag, like being excited about my subscription, being excited about it sitting. I still like physically having it in my hand and reading. Um, I know there can be like a real writer's thing where it can turn into like, Oh, they don't get it. And then I'll, I don't think that's what your answer is going to be, but what's it been like for you having a front row seat and then watching it from further away, seeing a company that we both were really proud of being part of? Well, it runs the gamut, right? I actually, I loved my experience at ESPN. I still have great friends there. I think there are incredibly smart

people there. I do agree with what you just said and what Bill has said in the past. It's a rights company. And that is what, in theory, is supposed to drive the direct-to-consumer product. It's not going to be the shoulder programming of studio shows or anything else. No one's going to pay for that. They're going to pay to see games. anything else. No one's going to pay for that. They're going to pay to see games. And the challenge ESPN had and what made them brilliant 12, 13, 14 years ago is going in on the live rights and making this cable subscription so valuable that none of the cable companies could get rid of it. It made ESPN essentially a utility, right? No different than the electric company. You had to have ESPN if you wanted to watch any live event. But the competition has become so incredible.

And the money that the other companies have is just so much bigger. It's left it sort of as a very small player. And it's hard to say that, but it's a smaller player compared to the people who have all the money that they are competing against. But thinking about magazines and the impact it had, I loved working at the magazine. I still say to my wife all the time,

being editor-in-chief of the magazine, it's as good a job as there could ever be. You are, every two weeks, youchief of the magazine, it's as good a job as there could ever be. Like you are, every two weeks, you're in the trenches, putting out a singular product. Every picture matters. Every headline matters.

Every word gets poured over. It's a manufacturing business. You can't undo what's done. And so you really think about what the cover, what kind of impact the cover can have. You're planning stories three, four, five months in advance. And that's a real investment, right? The money that you put into that,

you have to think hard, is it going to be worth something that stays on a page and is tangible and lasts sort of in a physical form. That's fantastic. But I'm also, I'm not a Luddite and I'm not overly nostalgic. You know, I was in an airport on, I guess on Saturday and walking through a newsstand

and seeing how there were no magazines underneath the labels of all the magazines. Like they have the banner that runs across like the top is decoration that has Vogue or Bizarre or Time. They don't have any of those magazines on newsstands. There was like one thinity Fair, and I picked it out. I read it for a second, and I'm like, I don't need it. I have two magazine subscriptions.

And I worked in magazines for close to 25 years. And I love magazines. It's all I ever wanted to do. But they're not vital to my media consumption. And it's kind of sad, but I don't lose sleep over it. Yeah, I remember going through 20 years ago being like, ooh, this is a new subscription offer. I'll get these four magazines.

And I would read them. I would read them. And the idea of getting four magazine subscriptions now and going, would i actually read these things or would i just have them stack up because i feel bad about throwing them out because i haven't read them and it's like hey i know what the solution is don't get it uh which sucks because i was certainly one of those guys last thought here because you mentioned the moment of like every picture every headline every word and i'd had something earlier this year where I was working with somebody on an edit of something and I just said, hey, we could just keep editing.

We could. We could just keep changing words around. We could keep changing this sentence and then change that. We could fucking change this forever if we want to. And then it felt like we were for a while. But it's kind of great that you have a deadline with a magazine because this was non-deadline stuff knowing that yeah right sure like you almost had to accept that it's never going to be perfect in the way you want it to be perfect and if that's your goal you can't have

that job no we you know you can't let perfect be the enemy of good. And you know that there's going to be some stuff that it's just a profile, man. Like it's not going to win a Pulitzer. We just don't want to get sued. We want it to entertain people. And then there are the stories that you know are going to be magical. And you do want to like bring every ounce of blood out of that story. And you do want to stay up until four in the morning to make sure it's perfect. And you are nervous when you press send. But a lot of times, we're just making shoots. And you're just trying to put the thing out so it gets into the inboxes.

So we keep getting the money so we can go and do it again. And that's probably 80% of it. And then 20% of the time, you're hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. Yeah, it's funny, though, because I sit here and I go, I miss it. I miss it all. And I totally get it. Oh, yeah. It's not I miss it and what went wrong, because that's the part where I'll push back.

Even if it's something that I'm critical of, there'll be other criticisms where I go, well, you're not being realistic. You're not being realistic. Because I think there are times... Go ahead. Go ahead. No, no. I remember, look, I remember the writing was on the wall for magazines throughout, like from 2008 through, say, all of the 2010s, right? And I became editor-in-chief of the magazine in 2011. And I remember in, and I loved it. It was so much fun. We moved the magazine from New York to Bristol. It was such a fire drill. 70% of the staff left. We didn't know what we were doing. And we were changing the wheels on the truck as it was moving. And it was amazing, right? But you also knew revenue was going down and it was harder to sell.

And even if it was a stickier product and more people who bought it, they had higher salaries, the demographics were better than online. It's just everything was going online. And I remember saying to my bosses at the time, John Kozen or John Skipper, like, I love the magazine, but like, I can't just be doing the magazine because I'm worried you guys are going to shut it down. And like, we need to figure out what we're doing

for all of us to move into the next phase. And that's when I became editor-in-chief of the magazine and ESPN.com. And I was always afraid that I was going to have to be the editor who shut down the magazine and felt really anxious about that for a couple of years

because you don't want to be the person who's presiding over the end. Well, you have great instincts and we both know it works out for you. Let's do this again when the season gets cranking, all right? I'd love to, brother. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you.

All right. There you go, Chad Millman. Before we introduce our guest here, I want to give a little backstory. I remember 2002 sitting in a living room with my father, Spike TV, and I was like, this Slam Ball stuff's the next big thing. I'm like, I'm in. I can't wait to see the ads.

And Mason Gordon, the founder, the inventor, and Slam Ball is back. So he joins us now. What's up, man? Ryan, Slam Ball is back. So he joins us now. What's up, man? Ryan, Slam Ball is back, baby. I'm so excited. I'm sorry I'm so caffeinated so early in the morning, but I'm on the ringer and I can't believe it. This is so cool. Yeah, look, I just remember that moment so well because we weren't used to as many new options as we have now and you know to say like okay is this how like what is the sustainability of this sport but before we get kind of like into that story that part of the story uh just just take us back to the beginning because i know your

story but share with the audience of like who you are how this, inventing this thing, and then actually getting it on TV in 2002. Yeah. The really formative thing with Slam Ball was that I stole my mom's credit card to watch the first UFC. What are we on? UFC 293 or something like that. I'm talking about UFC 1. And I watched the very first UFC and they took all these different fighting styles and they blended them together into something that young people absolutely gravitated to. And when I saw that, this thought started in my head, which was, I'm not a martial artist. I'm a team sports guy. And could I take the best elements of basketball, football, hockey, blend them all together into something that actually worked and was actually functional? And that was the first kind of ideas for slam ball.

And I remember in 2000, I sketched out the first thing on a napkin on what the slam ball court would look like. And I tried to combine all my passions, all these different team sports, the physicality of football, the fluidity and athleticism of basketball, and then the kind of over-the-top nature of video games because I played, and here's a blast from the past for you, NFL Blitz and NBA Jam. And I was like, do those things fit together somehow?

And that was really kind of the beginning ideas of it. And then I had it down on paper. Wow. Okay. So you played basketball, obviously, though, growing up too, right? Yeah, I was a gym rat. People ask me all the time, did you invent slam ball because you couldn't dunk as like a white guy power fantasy? And I was always and I think that's hilarious. No, I, I knew enough about dunking. And I loved dunking. I was the guy that would like drive two hours away from my house to play in a game where nobody knew me so I could sneak in another couple dunks. So I knew enough about dunking and the mechanics of it that I could build a whole sport around it. and the mechanics of it that I could build a whole sport around it.

So what were the moments between sketching this out and thinking of it to actually getting it on TV? The trial and error of that. And I know there's a bit of a backstory in this warehouse where you were trying to figure out just the technical part of that. What was that like? And how long did that take? Yeah., originally it was kind of a bad idea. It was fight club basketball, right? I had this notion that if you played a new sport on a gymnastic spring floor, it would make you jump really high because I would watch Simone Biles type athletes do round off back handsprings and then jump like bounce like 15 feet in the air. So I was like, that's what everybody's going to be able to jump like that. So I actually built the thing and invited all my friends down that could have 40 inch verticals and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, this is going to be amazing.

And they went to jump off the spring floor off two feet and it collapsed underneath them. So of course, they only got about 16 feet off the ground. It's like the coefficient of restitution, right? If the floor is falling away as you're pushing off of it, you don't get any vertical. So I was about just not sitting down about to cry. And then one of my buddies took off from one off of one foot and his whole head was over the rim and and the concept was oh okay i get it i need somebody to jump off the spring floor off one foot land in something else in two feet and go to the rim and that's where the competition level spring beds came into place. We went and got these Olympic grade trampolines and we built them right into the floor. And that's really where the magic started to happen.

And the hardest part of this whole thing, Ryan, was getting basketball and football players to be able to play the same sport together because the football guys would pancake the basketball players and the basketball players would just want to fight. So we were constantly breaking up fights. And that was the biggest challenge in the beginning was getting them to blend together. Now, you also, you changed the pattern, right, of the trampolines because originally you felt like there was no chance

for anybody on defense, right? It was kind of a it was kind of a disaster when i first built it because i'm not an engineer i had all these like highfalutin ideas but then i was the one actually building this thing with like hammers and and uh and nails and stuff like that so uh we had this horrible particle board from home dep. Guys were getting splinters all up and down their arm. And one guy actually fell through the floor on my first court. So it was really bad, but it was just cool enough that we were able to get backing to do the full court in East LA. And that's really where Slam Bowl born um the football guys were were trucking the basketball guys it was really a problem so i like checked myself into the game and i grabbed the football

guys the one the one guy everybody had a problem with and i was like hey man i want you to hit me as hard as you can like harder than you've hit anybody in your life and i want to make sure everybody sees it and when he hit me from about 25 feet away, and I didn't see him coming, I cracked like three ribs, but I got back up and I kept playing. And the basketball guys were like, Oh, okay, if he can do it, and he's cutting our checks, we can do it. So that's really where things started started going crazy. Now was the belief that you were always going to be playing in the league if it ever got off the ground? No, no, I didn't want to like, you know, I wanted to be Dana White with

hair. That was that was my concept. And, and, but there was this thing where if I was out there, there was kind of this, I was kind of the glue of the social contract right um because everyone wanted to hit me like visualize your boss right now ryan and then imagine like running from 25 feet away and being able to knock him over the boards into the team box and i have that piece of video like that was some weird galvanizing thing that all the athletes uh could just kind of rally around that notion that if I was out there, if I was playing a rough and tumble sport and I was getting it worse than anybody and I've got the video to prove it, then everybody was buying in.

But I wasn't the kind of athlete that some of these guys were. I was good enough to be able to go out there and do a few cool things, but mostly I'm just getting... My career highlight reel is me getting beat up by bigger, stronger people. As you talk about this, I think the speed of evolution of something that's new is amazing. Seriously, I'm just thinking about being a little kid and being outside, having nothing to do, and then inventing some kind of game. And like after a day of it somebody else would figure out a better way to do what you're doing and then you're like oh my god we're like at rapid speed here of of whatever this concept that we have of like figuring out because we had like our starting point was

zero and in all the sports that we talk about all the time like that pace can't be the same because they've been playing these sports for decades but i'd imagine the very beginning of slam ball the stuff happening out of east la like there would be something maybe every week or maybe every day where you'd see especially these athletes going wait if i do it this way like what were those moments like in the beginning uh there's a great story about that. So it was light speed and you're absolutely right. Once we got the football and basketball guys to blend together, magic really started to happen on the court because we had this huge vertical canvas. The slam ball court gets you up to 18 feet off the floor. So you're talking about all this creative space to express

yourself as an athlete. And so the guys really started... And because they come from different backgrounds, they had different ways to impact the sport. We had guys that had this daredevil, Travis Pastrana-type attitude that were throwing flip dunks on people. Didn't care what happened. They just wanted to pull it off and check the box. But what was cool is that a couple people walked in off the street and we didn't really want to ask them to leave.

So we just let them hang out and then they left and then they came back with five friends the next day. So within a week, organically, we had hundreds of people in this warehouse watching Slam Ball get developed in real time. And it was somehow very entertaining and they're selling churros and bootleg slam ball merchandise. And that was, that was really an amazing thing to see. And my co-founder and partner, Mike Tolan, who had some shows on cable television, invited some people down and they were just blown away by the reaction of the crowd. The action on the court was intermittently spectacular, but also kind of janky. But the reaction from the crowd was unbelievable. And that's what started this social contract. Slam Ball is a social contract with the

audience that, hey, if you stick with us for a few minutes, something incredible is going to happen. And that's the exact same mechanism that people have while scrolling through social media. So we think that there's something really special about what we've got to offer on ESPN come Friday night. Okay. So, and for those that don't know your full scope, like Redeem team, you're a producer as well, know your full scope like redeem team you're a producer as well a director uh you did the mellow doc as well that's right um so you understand how hard it is to get anyone to say yes to something creatively okay absolutely yeah and so what was the yes moment from spike tv going hey mason we're in we're putting this on tv. Yeah. So they were launching Spike TV as

the network for men. And it's funny because Spike TV has become this sort of amazing thing that people remember as having this incredible lineup of cool stuff. And they looked at this and they were like, slam ball, that's our sport. And they wanted to make it their signature sport. They wanted to tick that box, right? And what was amazing about rolling it out on Spike TV is the sport was only a few months old. And we didn't have access to the slam ball court. So we were playing the game in our head and trying to figure out everything that when we finally did get the court with just a few weeks to put it together before a national television debut, we had to have it all right. We had to do, I guess, how they train AI now and do

millions and millions of permutations in our head so that we'd be ready for this very, very short window. And we were able to put a pretty amazing product in front of people on Spike TV. And back then, millions and millions of people sought out Slam Ball on late night, Spike TV, and we pressed the button in their hearts and minds that never really got unpressed. So what happened? Because then it was gone. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the thing. People accepted slam ball as a real sport, which it was, and a real league, which it was not. We were a television show. We'd get all the teams together, we would film all the games, and we'd release the games three months later.

That is no way to build a sport. Sports have to be immediate. Sports have to be engageable. And we were this canned product. And because of that, we didn't really have the immediacy with it. with it. So we couldn't compete with in the economics of cable television because law and order rerun would do a better number. So that's how you get by

in cable television. So we did two series on Spike TV. And then we thought like, oh, we don't want to make this like wrestling. We don't want to make this fake. We don't want to make it an entertainment product just to stay on the air. We're sports guys. Mike Tolan and I are sports guys. So we figured, hey, let's go get the rights back. And then we'll put it on a sports channel. And we thought that would take like six months. And it ended up taking like five years to get the rights back. And we thought that would take like six months. And it ended up taking like five years to get the rights, the rights back. And when we did get the rights back,

there were people waiting to partner with us. So how does the I mean, you know, I'm not trying to get into your bank statements here. But like, how do the finances of that work? I imagine there's a bit of a windfall when the Spike TV part of it happens. But then whatever, whatever happens after that to get the rights back, like, I guess I'm just asking probably because of the audience are when the Spike TV part of it happens, but then whatever happens after that to get the rights back. I guess I'm just asking probably because of the audience, you're like, wait, if you founded this thing

and then it got on TV, but it got on TV early, like, I don't know. I mean, what are the finances of it? Yeah, the finances were not pretty. Cable television was not a very lucrative endeavor back in the day. So I actually did a calculation one time and I think I've

worked for all the hours I put into slam balls, like 33 cents an hour or something like that. So, and we're talking about the long-term. People ask all the time, like, you know, how do I create my own sport? And I tell them, listen, if you can do anything else with your life and be happy, do that. Because this is not for the faint of heart. This is about banging your head against a brick wall, not for a week, not for a year, in this case, decades. And it's taken us decades to get to where it's live, bettable, engageable. And that was our vision right from the start. Okay. So then, as you mentioned, this Friday on ESPN.

Friday night, 7 p.m. Eastern time. Slam ball is back, baby. And we're on ESPN, the mothership, the worldwide leader of sports. We couldn't be happier. You know, Ryan, we went out to the capital markets and found that people were really, really interested in this thing. And we were oversubscribed in just a handful of months. And for that to happen, it really put a lot of wind in our sails. What we didn't expect to happen is that we went out to all the broadcasters and we were like, hey, man, Slam Ball is cool. Somebody's going to give this thing a shot. But what we didn't expect is to get offers from every single sports broadcaster.

Every single one made an offer and the top ones improved their offer three and four times over. So we were able to call our partner, our broadcast partner on Slam Ball, which was a dream. And to be able to say that Slam Ball is on ESPN, that is a conversation ender with respect to, is this a legitimate sport? Is it worthy of live broadcast coverage? Is it worthy of blog coverage? And is it worthy of podcast coverage? All that is in our rearview mirror. And we can just focus on giving people what they always accepted slam ball as, which is a legitimate sport, legitimate league. What was it like going through the tryouts versus when you were actually playing 20 years ago?

The tryouts for slam ball? For now. Yeah. Yeah. These guys. These guys are unbelievable. It's actually kind of been overwhelming because we reached out to really high level athletes from major college football and basketball programs, as well as pro overseas programs. And we thought we'd have to have this whole sales pitch, right? There was this thing that started in a warehouse on a court made out of spare parts. They're like, Hey, stop talking. I've been trying to play slam ball for the last three or four years because slam ball stays in

my social media feed. And that's the craziest part of this whole thing. A couple of years ago, people started posting 20 year old highlights of slam ball on the internet with the hashtag bring back slam ball and media associated with that garnered half a billion views and we weren't posting it it was overtime elite it was barstool sports it was espn's instagram it was jason tatum and these are the people that were clamoring for slam ball to come back and millions and millions and millions of people piled into that so that's why we're back here today and these athletes that showed up are by far the best athletes that have ever played slam ball. These guys are extremely high

level, extremely talented, and very skilled. Since the three-point revolution, you've got a lot of shooting out there, high level, professional caliber shooting out there. So if there was a knock against slam ball back in the day, it's that I think is legitimate. It was like you saw the same play over and over again. And I think you're going to see a better mix of action on the court this time around. And I think that's going to make it much more engageable and followable. Mason, hearing your story and reading about it, and then knowing you're not giving up in the creative world and how easy it is to give up. And here we are 21 years since it happened. It's going to be on ESPN this Friday against seven Eastern. Uh, you deserve a lot of credit for maintaining this kind of commitment to it, man, because most people would not have been able to do that. Thank you so much.

That's so great to hear. And that's, that's kind of what keeps me going. The thing that I've learned through the years is that the world will take things away from you. But the one thing it can't take away is your choice never to give up. And that's what I've kind of held on to all this time. Also, with this like sneaking suspicion that I might be right and this might actually have legs. The big swing here is that we're the UFC of team sports. And I'm going to keep saying that until it's true. Well, looking forward to it again. Congrats on getting the relaunch of this. And like I said, I can't wait. Thank you, Ryan. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house

in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. The email address is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Just a reminder for Friday Feedback, that email address is fridayfeedbackrr.com. So far, it feels a bit like a complaint box, which was not shocking. But if you have maybe a

follow-up on a life advice or something like that, some sort of forum where this experiment could be very short-lived. If you want to soft launch a topic, maybe, I don't know. You guys should talk about this thing that happened in the news.

I don't know. Just stuff that you find interesting. We're not opposed to criticism, but it shouldn't all be criticism. Yeah, not even asking for positive feedback. You're just like, don't shit all over everything

in the inbox. That's all. No, I want criticism i just don't want it to be pointless so there's just there's a few in there that you're just like wait is this what it is and so far uh there's a couple good things in there so we'll we'll do that episode we'll kind of see where it goes. An announcement to make. Yes, I am an actor. Pause for applause. If you saw Buddy Games' Spring Awakening, good friend Josh Duhamel.

I'm in the beginning of it. And there's some heavy hitters. Some heavy hitters in that one. And it's pretty funny because everybody that they run through this montage, I mean, it's the very beginning of the movie. I mean, usually they put the beginning of the movie. I mean, usually put the stars in the beginning, so it makes sense.

But, um, they've run through all of these news people announcing the death of this character. And then there's me in a blue Jays hat in my kitchen with like a blender and a toaster in the background. So like full blown Dan Patrick studio, uh, Seacrest is going there. Uh, and a toaster in the background. So like full blown Dan Patrick studio,

uh, Seacrest is going there. Uh, this guy's from Fox news. That's there like all in their studios. And then I'm just sort of in my kitchen and I was like, you guys use this. So thank you. Check it out.

So you, you got out of the, you got out of the, the, uh, the guest room for that one. You were like, let me just work with what I got here.

Yeah. The guest room really bums. Well, I actually think the guest room for that one? You were like, let me just work with what I got here? Yeah, the guest room really bummed. Well, I actually think the guest room made a lot of people happy. Yeah, in a different way, though. Yeah. So, yeah, I went up to the kitchen. I think the audio was better in the kitchen anyway, too. So that's where we were and that's what we were doing at the time. But we've since added an office.

So we're good. Things are good now. So I'm in that. Go ahead. You on strike now? Obviously. Nice. Stay strong.

Not many times you can have a guy strike two different industries at the same time. He's been on strike, dude. Yeah, come on. That's true. You know, that's my bet. Recognize what's going on out there, Sruti. Another small announcement, too. It's a bit of a

life advice thing, but I was at the gym yesterday. Got some shots up. And I noticed another guy at the other end kind of going through a routine. I wasn't really paying attention to his game. I wasn't familiar with his game. But he looked like, you know, he's all right.

And then he set up a tripod over by where I was shooting and started filming. And I wasn't 100% sure. I was like, let me make sure this is on. And I went over to the corner and I looked. I was like, it's recording. And then I just went up to i looked i was like it's recording and then i just went up to him i was like are you recording this and he's like yeah and he was nice he's like yeah i'm about to start dunking it was a bit like you know bobby sura style right like i was like oh okay because i hadn't seen him dunk yet so i was like are you gonna film these i'll just say like

i didn't i don't know if he had that in him i didn't stick. So I was like, are you going to film these? I'll just say, like, I didn't, I don't know if he had that in him. I didn't stick around because he was like, yeah, don't worry about it. You won't be in it. Mostly. Yeah, right. Exactly, Kyle. The most important word, mostly.

And I went, so you are videotaping. He's like, yeah. He's like, why? I was like, I don't want to be in it. Is why? And he kind of just looked at me. So just another lesson. Stop fucking taping people at the fucking gym. We don't want to be in your fucking

content that nobody watches. Unless you're really hot. It's so annoying. Stop. This isn't your home studio. Rant over. Need to be said.

Was the guy hot? No, it was totally cordial. I left my back hurt anyway so we can but uh yeah i just i mean he might even listen to the pot i don't know because he gave me a little glimmer little glimmer but you just bummed him out average looking dude like are we talking hot or no like could he be could he have a little following or no uh i don't know i don't have a problem he wasn't objectively handsome you're saying all right i'm just asking well it wasn't john ham out there but yeah i wouldn't say he was unattractive but i just i think the freedom i feel like he was older than 20s. I think he was like 30.

I'm trying to think of what the purpose would be. Was he just doing this? Was he actually trying to put a workout tape out there somewhere? Or is he just like, I'm going to put this on Instagram to see if I can get some dates? I don't know. He might be awesome at basketball. He might be awesome at dunking. It might be really fun for him. But the point is, figure out a place where you can do it when nobody else is around. Because the

other people don't want to be in your videos. We don't want to be in the background working out while you're doing your shit. You know? This whole tripod shit to see how your deadlifts are going. You know? Fucking deadlift in your garage if you're going to film everything. Oh, I don't have expensive weights. Stop fucking

filming us is my counter-argument to you not being able to buy a barbell. That's bullshit, man. It's totally, totally out of control. The freedom that people think that it's like, no, Jim, my membership. I've got to see how these rope pull downs are going. I'm getting all the way down. I got the right angle.

Am I staying engaged the entire time? I'm going check check tape later i think there's been a lot of issues at my gym because there's signs now it's like just so you know when you're in here you're consenting to being filmed by anyone and everyone what people because i think it says that yeah yeah like in the actual like the main part of the gym it's just like you know you can't go up to people and tell them not to you know film their shit basically so they're just like it's like it's by the water fountains. Cause I think enough people have probably, you know, came almost to blows and then went and found a manager and the manager's like, well, our bylaws say that we can't

stop people from doing or whatever. So now there's, there's some, there's some, uh, you know, and the bathrooms and locker rooms, it says the exact opposite thing, but on the, on the outside of like, you know, the shared space, it's just like, just so you know, there's, there's cell phones and cameras rolling here, so you can't really make a big stink about it. But maybe that's what you get when you go to Equinox. You get that little bit of extra policy

there. But yeah, Gold's is camera friendly, apparently. All right. That's all I have on the topic. Let's read some emails. Girls keep thinking I'm a loser, but I'm not. All right.

Let's find out. Yeah, right. Love the show. Born and raised Colorado. Nuggets fan. Massive Nuggets fan. Still bathing in glory. Late 20s.

Actually born the exact same day as Jokic. It's almost like your buddies. 5'11", 170, comp is like Kyle Korver, maybe Jimmy Fredette. Sounds like this guy's white. Pretty textbook form and I could always shoot from anywhere. Not exactly winding athleticism though. I'm still in pretty good shape and I try to work out

every other day. This may be relevant to your advice. I'm a pretty solid eight. If I'm just giving myself the most honest assessment possible eight's up there pal that's pretty high yeah eight's fucking hot eight's up there yeah eight is like a weathered nine right like if you're in your like 40s and nines could be tens they'd be only because there's a few people out there they have to call in your 40s. Nines could be tens only because there's a few people out there that you have to call a ten. There's some nines that should be tens

and if you're a weathered nine, eight's high. I think eight's probably high. You know what? Just for exercise purposes here, who's a male ten? Saruti, you want to go first? Can you even narrow the list down to one? He's the perfect guy to ask. It's pretty subjective though, right? It sure is. You know I perfect guy to ask. Well, I mean, it's pretty subjective, though, right?

I mean, it sure is, but... You know, I like my guy, Chalamet, but I know that he's not going to be your two guys type. So it's just, okay, if I think he's higher, you wouldn't say that guy's a 10, whereas other people might say he's a 10. I think you have to be a little strong to be a 10. Like, just a little strong. I kind of agree with you on that,

actually. I don't know if he is a 10. I think Idris Elba's probably an easy 10. I don't know who'd have a problem with that. Mixing it up. I don't hate that. You know, a little gray. A little salt and pepper action? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Come on. That's my type of dude.

I mean, look, DiCaprio's not a 10? DiCaprio's definitely not a 10. No. No, I don't think so. Have you seen him out and about, dude? I don't know. Bradford is pretty good out and about.

Prime DiCaprio? I don't think so. Black Tux? Movie set DiCaprio, maybe? I don't know. If you see that guy out and about, you're like, what the fuck is he up to? He's kind of got a gut.

Yeah, and this is no disrespect to him. He's obviously a great actor. I wasn't even going know yeah no the the squirt gun videos he needs to tighten it up but he could have been i mean right right i don't know some people really like the dad bods i think you'd have to have like a decent level of like body attractiveness to also be a 10 and i feel like chalamet just doesn't have it in the chest at At least not now. No, but he shows a lot of chest. He shows a lot of chest. He's a big blazer with no undershirt guy. Yeah, but I feel like spindly shoulders.

I just don't. I'm not saying he's not hot. I'm just saying, is Tom Hardy? I mean, Gyllenhaal is the number one. I mean, I keep going back to this. But like Gyllenhaal, he's got gray hair. He looks kind of older while still looking he's got gray hair. He looks kind of older while still looking a little bit youthful. He's muscular. I would say

he's probably one. Hardy is I feel like a little bit too... He's a little bit too rugged, and I like that, but he's a little too rugged. Too rugged? Well, too rugged for you. He's also sneaky short.

He's also sneaky short. He's also sneaky short. Isn't he like 5'8"? What about Jon Hamm then? Jon Hamm's a great looking guy. He's not a 10 though. He might be a 10 and then a 10 walks by and you're like, oh, fuck, that's why we have a 10 because that guy's hotter than Jon Hamm. That's what I'm saying. Nines could be 10s.

What about Skarsgård? Skarsgård? No. Tall. I don't think he's a 10. Okay. I don't think he's a 10. Okay. I don't think he's a 10. I mean, I don't know.

Maybe there isn't a 10. But this guy's just a 10. Hey, look. Here's what we need to know about the email. He's just a step below these guys. Yeah. And he's having trouble with the ladies. You ever see that?

There's like this thing on Instagram now. It's probably on TikTok too. I'm just old. Is that like they'll go up to somebody and ask and ask them hey like what do you think you are on a scale one to ten and they'll be like you know i'm an eight or i'm a nine right and then they show like it say it's a girl and they'll show dudes just big up two and other people just absolutely crush them so because everyone obviously always thinks that they're way hotter than them and it just throws it right in their face it It's pretty great. Kind of mean, but great.

Look, there's a lot of self-described sevens out there. Yeah, seven's like a safe number. And because of that, I would say I'm a six. Because there's a lot of sevens, I'd be a six. And you're tall. Really tall. Okay. Alright, here we go.

Six and a half. So our guy's an eight anyway i've been blessed enough to not work uh nine to five not super loaded or anything but not a big spender house car paid off well in 20s house car and paid off that's i mean car is one thing but to have the house paid off that's pretty great no debt enough money to be comfortable in my simple life i do have a smaller youtube channel um he's got a decent subscriber number here. So a lot of my time is spent working on that. It's mostly just for fun.

Although I'm, maybe this guy is hot. I mean, that's why he's got all the subs. Although I'm somewhat passionate about it, but my big passion is helping cats. Fake alarm, fake email alert going off here. But my real passion is helping cats. All right, let's stay with it. I'm actually a lot like Kyle's wife from what I've heard in regard to having massive compassion for animals.

So, yeah, I'm kind of like a freelance cat helper. I kind of unofficially work with various organizations, helping cats in need, rescuing, helping them find homes, etc. Other than that, I do normal life stuff like taking care of the house errands, all the daily crap, taking care of my own cats. Biggest hobby is betting on and watching sports. NBA is my fave. I basically study it for fun. Also really into gaming. I'm single.

I haven't had a girlfriend for like three years. I'm not desperate at all. I really like my life and I'm not sitting here depressed over not having a girlfriend, but still in a perfect world. I would like to date if I could find someone I like. So I went out with this girl I met randomly. She was very cool, pretty. We were getting along until she asked me what I do.

I think I said something like, quote, I do a lot of things, trying to deflect and keep it light. But she kept asking follow-up questions. I could tell she was waiting for me to say I work for such and such company and my title is what, you know, fill in the blank X. I didn't want to just say, oh, I'm rich enough to not have to work a traditional job. I also didn't want to give her the impression I was some big YouTuber or a failing YouTuber. Neither are really true. So I stumbled over my words, but eventually I ended up telling her I don't have a standard job or career. I could see her whole vibe shift. I could just tell she was thinking, okay, how do I get out of this state with this unemployed deadbeat loser? I tried to

explain, but probably, probably made it worse. Yep. The day ended. I guarantee I'll never hear from her again. I'm not sitting here heartbroken or anything, but I'm worried about this going forward. I'm not sure how to deal with this on future dates when they inevitably ask what I do. Any advice on how I can do this without lying and without coming off like an unemployed deadbeat loser?

I'm confident in who I am, and I love my life, and I do have a college degree if that matters. I'm not insecure about what I've done and who I am. This story is building. I love it. Here we go cat rescue to like here's here's me i'm gonna open my shirt unless i'm shallowing i'm just having trouble with the presentation any advice i'm just having trouble with the presentation that's what i was gonna say any advice would be appreciated i'm just hoping you guys don't hit me with the bs crazy cat person stereotype we won't do that.

You didn't make it that far. I was gonna, but he didn't make it that far. Yeah, there was a chance that was going to happen, but we'll pivot away from that. It's not like that at all. I do have four cats, but my house is very clean, organized, and does not smell. I've just always had a big heart for animals, especially cats. I'm not even worried about that

when it comes to dating because I wouldn't want to date a girl who doesn't like cats anyway it doesn't well good news good news a lot of girls like cats uh yeah but i know i is a little bit of a red flag and and it's hard to make like when you walk into like somebody's crib that has a cat it's like 50 it's like a coin toss whether the cat's gonna like you and you got four coin tosses going you might not feel safe in that place i don't feel safe around a bunch of cats totally get it totally get it uh but here's the thing if his house is paid off he's making enough money that he doesn't have to really work the traditional job he's got the college degree if he's an eight uh you're going to meet somebody and it appears that you're

basing your whole doubt in your presentation off of one date that didn't go well, because it sounds like you have pretty good insights, like you have good reads on the other date and it's not working out, all this stuff. Look, man, unfortunately for the guys out there, it's kind of up to us to sell ourselves whenever this interaction happens. I mean, eventually the selling kind of goes both ways, but in the beginning, it always feels like the guy has to sell himself a little bit. And I would notice with some of my more successful friends, both on and off the field, that they were just good at creating whatever version of them they needed to. And it doesn't mean it was a lie. And I'm not telling you to lie.

I'm not telling everybody to go out and lying, but like, there's a way I could tell you what I do. Um, maybe like, Hey, what do you do? Oh,

I do a sports podcast. Oh, you do a sports podcast. Like, okay. What else do you do? Yeah. Right.

Oh, you do. I mean, honestly, I don't know if big cat had this line but it's like there needs to be another like definition of podcasting for ones that are like i mean it sounds like a dick thing to say but there should be like an an oral blue check of podcasts yeah i do a monetized podcast yeah i do it's not a hobby um uh yeah so anyway that's that's an aside but like yeah hey i do a sports podcast be like oh you used to be at espn and now you're just doing a sports podcast yep you know or if i were meeting somebody be like hey what do you do like well i don't know that doesn't sound like i'm fucking being arrogant to the audience here which i don't really want to do, but you understand the point. You are giving the shitty version. You are giving them because you're somehow trying to hide it or you're not

as proud of as you should be. You need to take what it is that you're doing and learn a better way to present it where you say, Hey, look, I went to college. I studied this. I knew right away it wasn't for me. I had this idea for this YouTube channel and it works. And you don't have to go, hey, here's how much money I make every year. But dropping in for the one girl that thinks it's a little arrogant that you said you already paid off your house, there's going to be 10 that think it's awesome. I think it's awesome and I'm not trying to date you. I'm proud of you. I don't know you good for fucking you that you have a thing that's monetized enough that you can pay off where you live. These are all great things, right? So you need to take what

you don't need to change anything about you. You have a good story to tell. You have to be better at telling the story. So the vibes that you're getting as you downplay yourself, you're fucking downplaying yourself in the date. Why is she going to talk you up? She doesn't know you yet. That's what relationships are for when you come home and you're down on yourself. And then she's supposed to build you up, even if she thinks you're delusional, then eventually break up anyway. But the point is you're doing a bad job of telling your story and you have a great story to tell. So shave the edges off, right? Put a little polish on, put a of telling your story and you have a great story to tell. So shave the edges off, right? Put a little polish on it. Put a polish on your story. Figure out what it is like, hey,

I found this lane. It's been really cool. I don't have to work a normal job. My long-term play is this. It's been really great so far and it's fun because it allows me to be creative and we're doing that. And again, I don't know what your channel is. I'm not interested in it. I'm just telling you there's a way to make the same thing that you're doing sound way better than you almost apologizing for it. Because when you apologize for it, it shows maybe a vagueness that she doesn't understand it. So now she can't go back and tell her friends

what it is that you do, because that's a big part of it. Fair or not, it's the truth. Women don't like people that are insecure. They don't. Now, maybe you met one that does. Save us the email. The confidence thing is real. So if you're also selling a lack of confidence in that day because you're trying to downplay what it is that you do as opposed to being proud about it. That's another thing. That has nothing to do with even what your job is. But if you're projecting a lack of confidence, it's going to fuck you up, especially in those first impression moments

that you can't ever get them back. It's almost impossible to get those back unless your first impression is so bad. Then it becomes a great second impression story intro because you have some sort of like, hey, remember that? Whatever. Boom. You got to be a rare breed to pull those off, but I've seen it happen. So I think it's pretty simple. Figure out a way to tell your story a lot better than you're telling it because it actually could be packaged as a really cool thing and would seem attractive as opposed to like sketchy, weird, and not impressive. Yeah. I mean, punch up your resume for all sorts of different situations. This one, absolutely. And the other thing I was thinking, if you've got some disposable funds and you want to pass the lie detector test,

why don't you just set up a little E-Trade thing? And then you buy Amazon at this and you sell it when it goes to this. And you could say, I'm doing a little trading. I'm doing a little this. I'm doing a little of that. And then you're actually doing something. You could say you're actually... So you're a writer.

Yeah, whatever. Whatever you want. But you wouldn't be lying if you're like, I'm doing some trading. Watching the Amazons fluctuate or something. Well, whatever. No offense, Kyle. That seems like a massive waste of time. Like to set up an E-Trade to prevent the lie.

Well, I've been day trading. Well, I mean, it sounds like it's actually working pretty well for some of my buddies. So it's because tech's on fire right now. Get back to me in the next swing. Okay. All right. I'm just. No, I just know. Yeah. No. A bunch of geniuses. I got it. get back to me in the next swing okay all right i'm just uh no i'm just saying like yeah i just

know yeah no a bunch of geniuses i got it if if you're if you're um if you're saying like if you don't like the way it sounds that you're only doing that i'm just saying like you know do something easy that you could say you're also uh doing that to make money but i mean he's doing i'm sorry like kyle i guess by the way is his is his youtube was causing all this windfall of cash because he was just like he was like i also have a youtube channel but like where did does that where the money came from no the subscriber number apparently uh this number is a good number like it it it means you could make some money and clearly he's making so it is all from youtube it wasn't like he's got this other money that's like there.

You know what else I'm realizing here is like the same time, like when I meet somebody and then I'm like, oh, what do you do? And it's like, oh, I'm a podcaster. That person, if they don't know anything about me, they're going to be like, cool, man. Like double thumbs up. Like, fuck off. I imagine it's the same for YouTubers.

Gotta be. Where it's like oh i'm a youtuber even worse are you they think more adults listen to podcasts i think i just feel like don't don't girls usually like that too like if if you kind of have an exotic job they want to tell their friends like hey i met this guy and he has like this youtube channel even if it's not something that they're interested in it's just it's like that's that you you should use that as a selling point. As Ryan was saying, you have to reframe what you're, uh, you know, kind of what your, what your vibe is, I guess,

or what you're, you know, what you're putting out to the world, because that's, that could be a huge plus for you, even if, you know, or, or if you just be super vague about it, just say, Hey, I work in like video, YouTube, whatever, and don't even have to say you're a host. That's great to know them a little bit more. And then as you go on more dates, you kind of explain what you actually do. And then you actually let your personality come out a little bit more. And then she's less likely to just like meet you for a half an hour and then say, fuck this guy, I'm out.

She's actually a little bit more invested in you. And you can kind of explain the long term of what you do and what you want to do. So maybe on the first day, you just kind of keep it super vague. Say I'm in videos. I'm in YouTubing. In the media. Yeah, I'm in new media. Exactly.

And then she'll be like, oh, that's cool. And then, you know, she knows your house is paid off. And then she'll be like, oh, that's cool. And then she knows your house is paid off. You got all these, obviously you got a good setup going. So there aren't really many red flags about you. And then you can kind of soft

sort of introduce the rest of what your gig is and what your long-term plan is. But I think either way, it's either a good thing right up front or just be vague about it. And also I day trade.

I don't know about that. And I also know that was such a great soft spot for Ryan to hit because you probably listened to, I remember Canel in the studio trading during the show, and Ryan used to get so pissed off about that. No, that goes all the way back to Van Pelt. Yeah, but I used to day trade during the show with Van Pelt and then Canel. Yeah.

I would not advise that if you want to be a talk show host. Nope. To be doing that. Because I had some bad days. And want to be a talk show host. Nope. To be doing that. Because I had some bad days. And they'd be like, coming up next is Ben Roethlisberger in the first tier of Hall of Fame quarterbacks for his era on ESPN Radio. Fuck. And I would just be like, motherfucker. Fuck.

Hey, some good days, some bad days. All right, but you just, you remember the losses more than the wins. This is the way it is. It was great. Once I got desensitized to it, it was an awesome feeling. I was like, wow, now I don't even, just a full-blown, yeah, I'm a full-blown user now. I don't know if that's a good thing, but yeah. Hey, you got to get your ass kicked a few times before you can figure out if you can fight right so uh sure let's see here i think i think we have

it kyle though saying the day trade part makes me think of like what would be the best like three sentences of what your resume is to be the biggest turnoff even if some of the things are real and going well for you be like i'm a youtuber i podcast i day trade yeah it's pretty basic i tag a man this guy he's a youtuber and a podcaster he day trades a little bit and he mostly focuses some content on health and wellness. Well, you got thrown the cats part too. Yeah. And he's got, and he's got four cats.

Leave that part out. I would say. Yep. Okay. Uh, here we go. Travel. Let's finish this one quick here.

Uh, solo traveler etiquette. Hello, gentlemen. 35, five, 10, one 80 was a mini pistol Pete on the fourth grade traveling B team.

Gone downhill athletically ever since. Thought this would be a good dilemma for a fellow solo traveler, Ryan, to solve. I was on Amtrak recently by myself, per usual, going home to see family. Was sitting next to a middle-aged woman. Little to no interaction between the two of us. Kept just keeping to ourselves. About an hour into a six hour trip she started to get up and asked me if i would watch her suitcase without much debate in my mind

i said no sorry yes she made she made i loves it she made a huff grabbed her suitcase and muttered unbelievable didn't see her the rest of the trip on the one hand i understand her annoyance as she uh too appeared to be a solo traveler. And I know how frustrating it can be to even just use a restroom while traveling alone and having to lug everything with you. On the other hand, I have no idea who she is, where she's going, how long she'll be gone. I don't want a George Costanza situation. There was also a non-zero fear that this was some kind of setup. Like she gets back and says, hey, what happened to my insert expensive item here? So she gave off zero concerning vibes and you still said no.

I told my family about the incident. They thought I was a total jerk. I know it would have been the nice thing to say yes, but I don't think I'm automatically a jerk by saying no. Given the horrible situation I've seen out of fellow travelers in past years, my general feeling is I don't know any of these people anything, though I'm always very courteous and respectful to train flight attendants gate agents except if you work in the industry i got your back if you're another traveler fuck yourself fuck you um so was this a jerk move uh yeah i don't even think this is debatable i can't believe you said

no i would say yes but i applaud you saying no you literally could have asked all the questions to this woman that you asked us like how long are you gonna be gone my stop's coming up in a couple like just give her a couple what else are you doing too you're on a fucking train guy like what are you like it's not like you got a lot of things going on at the moment just watch your freaking suitcase i i hate this no i think if you don't want to do it don't do it and don't explain why either why would you not want to do it though if you're not to saruti's point if you're't want to do it, don't do it. And don't explain why either. Why would you not want to do it, though? To Saruti's point, if you're going to be sitting there, where do you think she's going? How long do you think she's going to be gone?

Yes, there are versions of this. You don't have to send us the emails about how annoying it could get if the person didn't come back or whatever. But guess what? If they don't come back, does it mean you can't have a move? Yeah, find an attendant.

Just say, hey hey this woman left this bag she sat here I gotta get off it is what it is I can't believe you said no yeah I'm a little surprised but I'm happy for you man I hope you say no like for anything else to inconvenience you like that that's great don't trade seats on planes

you are the normalized no guy so you know I do I understand why you have to take this stance, but you're wrong. Yeah, I know. It's hard, but I'll get over it. It's important to me, though. Also, acting like she's going to come back and say, hey, I had two bags here, actually,

and then all of a sudden sue you. What are we doing? I actually hate people that live their life that way, too, that are constantly thinking that people are going to pull one over on them. I don't know, man. Just help somebody out. It's not that hard. Usually, I'm on the other side of this, but I think this is

a dick move. Yeah, I think we agree. I don't know why Kyle, salt of the earth Kyle over here, loves the move because you say yes. I don't love it. I would say yes, but I think it's your right to say no and not explain why. It's definitely your right, but it's also the right of mine to tell you you're an idiot. Well, you know what?

This is just going to open a list of hypotheticals of like, well, one time actually when I was trapped. Okay. But for the most of us, right? You're a stranger and I don't want anything more to do with you than just ending this conversation right now with a no. That's it. It's like the Gladwell book.

Imagine how unproductive it would be if we defaulted at the opposite of trust or truth, right? Like we default to truth. If everything we thought was like, oh, this guy's out to get me. Which again, I'm pretty guilty of, to be honest with you, myself. But more in business, more in business. Not just your fellow man who's just looking to, or woman trying to help, you know, trying a little bit of help. Maybe she had a lot of shit going on. Maybe she really had a bathroom incident that she needed to get to and

you just create a shit crappy day for her. I'm getting a bracket installed for a television. What if I asked those guys, is this made of aluminum? Did you guys mount this the right way? Oh, I got to double check what your pricing was for this. If you just did that with everything all the time,

that's not even the worst example. It's just there has to be some compromise. There's some contract we have with strangers that if we didn't, I don't know, I think he was in the wrong and I think your family was right. I think there was an easy solution. You could have just asked, hey, how long are you going to be gone? Yeah, she wasn't like, hey, watch my kid.

You know, like it's a bag. It's not that big of a deal. I would have. Like, I love kids. Yeah, sure. What's his name? What are his interests? Hi, I'm a YouTuber and a day trader.

All right. What's up? All right, that's it for us. We'll be back. Actually, some things are getting moved around here. So I'll be back with a full week next week. And I can't tell you how excited I am about it because we actually have some awesome guest shit moved around here. So, uh, I'll be back with a full week next week. And I can't tell you how excited I am about it. Cause we actually have some awesome guest shit lined up here.

Uh, so thanks to Steve. Thanks to Kyle, Ron Rusillo podcast. Please subscribe. Bring your Spotify. Outro Music