The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Herbert Over Mahomes Anyone? Wrapping Up the NFL With Damien Woody, CFB Playoff Scenarios, Plus The FTX Collapse With WSJ’s Greg Zuckerman

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Russillo gives out his five takeaways from NFL Week 11 (0:40), before talking with two-time Super Bowl champion Damien Woody about Zach Wilson’s terrible game in the Jets’ loss to the Patriots, Chargers-Chiefs, the new top tier of NFL pass rushers, and more (13:08). Then Ryen hits on some college football results and possible CFP scenarios (32:53), before he talks to Greg Zuckerman of the Wall Street Journal about the fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (44:35). Finally Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:14:44). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Damien Woody and Greg Zuckerman Producer: Kyle Crichto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's podcast the most important things from another week in the nfl including a predictable chiefs win we're going to talk a bunch of stuff with damian woody telling some stories ftx sbf ever heard of it if you have we, we have the Wall Street Journal's Greg Zuckerman. If you haven't, you'll enjoy this story. I also do a college football thing that just sort of goes. So some of you will like it, some of you will skip it. And life advice, a personal one this week. 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. Here are my five most important things from NFL's Week 11. I'm going to run it through. I'm going to run these through my thought process, how it went last night for Sunday night's main event,

Kansas City at the LA Chargers. Kansas City wins at 30-27. But going up to it, if you watch enough sports, and if you do it for a living, you'll have these moments where you're thinking, hey, what about this scenario? And last night for me, I kind of went, I think the Chargers is just due for one of these wins.

Why not? Division game, prime time, whole deal, they're at home. Like, why not? Yeah, I think the Chiefs are better. And maybe I'm going to pick the Chiefs for everything again this season. But it kicked off, and I started thinking to myself, what if tonight's tonight? And guess what? Chargers are up early, 20-13 at half. They're moving the football started thinking to myself, what if tonight's tonight? And guess what?

Chargers are up early, 20-13 at half. They're moving the football. I'm like, what if it is tonight? They did play them close at Kansas City. Remember? Pick six the other way as Herbert felt like he was going into the end zone. They're moving the ball. I keep telling myself the Chargers are due.

It's 20-16 Chargers. It's third and 17 at the seven for Kansas City at their own 7, 3rd-17. Make more sense. And they convert it. And then four minutes later, it's a touchdown. Kansas City's up 23-20. Mike Williams, receiver out. Keenan Allen on a snap count.

Kenneth Murray, linebacker out. Nasir Adelaide heading to the locker room. And then Keenan Allen fumbles. And I'm like, what the fuck was I thinking? This team is going to win? So a big swing the other way. But then guess what happens? and then Keenan Allen fumbles, and I'm like, what the fuck was I thinking? This team is going to win? So a big swing the other way. But then guess what happens?

Herbert puts together one of those incredible, incredible runs. They go up 27-23 after the McKinnon fumble, where I looked at it live, and I thought he was dancing a bit. If you're catching a screen that's behind the line of scrimmage, it's not out in the flats either. You can't screw around. You better start getting upfield even if there's nothing there or bouncing it somewhere

because there's going to be these huge, huge defensive linemen that are behind you and close in proximity. But the more I watched it, I don't know that that's entirely fair to get on McKinnon with that fumble. But then the Chargers answer.

And I'm thinking, this is real. It happened. And then you look up at the clock, realize there's some time left. And Mahomes goes sixth place for 75 yards for Kelsey's third touchdown in a minute 15. And you're like, this thing's over. But the Chargers still have time. And they're the least sacked team in the NFL coming in, allowing only 14.

Well, they gave up five last night. Chris Jones got the sack on first down on Herbert, where it looked like it might have been some sort of quarterback draw, similar to what Mahomes had done in the previous series. And then the interception to close the thing out was because of Jones and his pressure. I seriously think only Aaron Donald is ahead of Chris Jones as an interior defensive lineman. That's it. So now we're going to be left with,

you don't hear a lot of the Jimmy Johnsons in the world suggesting they take Herbert over Mahomes. That's not a surprise. People run out of stuff with Mahomes, and then it turns into like, are we taking him for granted? No, it's just not new anymore. It's just not new. He's incredible.

It goes without saying. And the Chargers are a 500-football team that I'm sick of making excuses for. Number two, the NSC East. Well, we knew the strength of schedule projections were going to be rather light. Okay? So we knew that part of it. And the biggest reason is because of who they played in their cross matches, right? And we'll get to that in a second.

Philly survives against the Colts. The turnover things, which I kept bringing up here, and I'll admit it's a little petty because I suggested, I don't know that they can keep up this pace, and then some Philly media member tweeted at me with signs inside the Eagles facility, being like, Rosillo thinks it's just luck. Look at these signs.

Hey, man, if every football program was representative of the signs that I've seen hanging in the building, then there'd be no bad football teams. And you would have the most motivated human beings on the planet would be football players, specifically because the signs that they worked at well. So they had three total giveaways in their first eight games, two against the Colts, four against Washington, which again was kind of a survival game. But I think the good part is that the Eagles are tested,

kind of like that TCU stuff I talked about last week. Just, all right, you lost to Washington. Washington's a different team. We're going to get to them in a second. But here against the Colts on the road, you had to make something happen there at the end, and they actually got back to that by running the football, which doesn't happen very often.

So I think that's actually a positive for Philadelphia instead of saying, hey, what's going on with you fighting with the Colts at the very last minute? So there you go. Dallas, 7-3. Their only losses are at Green Bay in overtime. We're fresh off of that one. The week one stuff that doesn't seem to matter all that much,

and then week six at Philly with Cooper Rush. They stomped Minnesota. I don't know that there's any debate anymore about this. Pollard goes off 100 yards. Was it receiving? Then 50 rushing or the other way around. First time since Emmitt Smith. The only reason we're even bringing up any of this Ezekiel Elliott stuff,

again, to remind you, is Jerry Jones is the only guy that would have paid him all of this money, so I think he just has to justify the cost, right? It's like, you know, we don't use the beach house much, but we just like that we have it. So there's really no debate there, and I just thought it was really impressive considering. I know there's a couple, the whole left side of the offensive line

for Minnesota was out of the mix towards the end of the game, and Cousins, who's been getting blasted lately, who I actually think is doing really good against some of the pressure, where I feel like especially one of those Buffalo throws. Anyway, this isn't about Kirk Cousins right now. Let's talk Washington. The best of times, the worst of times. 1-4 to 5-1.

They are, if you look at their stats defensively, now remember two years ago this was a top five defense was still a lot of the same similar personnel than last year it was a disaster and you know just kind of fell apart you're like wait I thought this team at least had a good defense well they're trending in the right direction now you can make some

argument here that they're a top ten defense and boy did they show it at least in the first half they held the Texans to five total yards that's the last time a team has it at least in the first half. They held the Texans to five total yards. That's the last time a team has only had five yards in the first half of the game in 11 years. Staying with number two here, Giants to finish out the NFC East. They've lost two of three.

They weren't even close in this Lions game this weekend. They're over or under win total. I believe the number going in before the season started, of course, was 8.5. And they start tearing it up. And I'm like, man, that's going to go over. Now remember, the NFC East is also, their strength of schedule is because they're playing

the AFC South and the NFC North. Two of those eight teams in those divisions have a winning record. Their combined records for the two divisions are 34 and 47. But the Giants are in a spot here where, look, I don't think they're going to go under the total at 7-3, but how many more games

are they favored in the rest of the way? At the Cowboys? No. Washington at home? I don't know. Eagles at home? No. At Washington? No. At Minnesota? No. Colts at home, okay, maybe. And then at the Eagles. So I'll give you one,

maybe two games. They'll be favored in the rest of the way. The NFL isn't going to work that way. I don't think they're going to lose every single game now. But I wonder if you're sweating a bit for an offense that just still isn't that good. Number three. Speaking of numbers, Dallas crushing Minnesota. There are 15

teams in the NFL with a positive point differential. Minnesota is not one of them. That seems hard to do. It's hard to do to be the two seed in your conference to be eight and two as a football team. And you actually have a negative point differential, but the Vikings have pulled it off. Now look,

point differential. Is it everything? No, but it's not nothing. And sometimes it's a better sign of like how you're doing as a football team or basketball. Anybody that just wants to look at it, it could be skewed probably more in football with less sampling

because of less games. But again, that's very hard. It's hard to be a two seed and have 15 teams to point differential that's positive and you're not one of them. Number four, totally unfair take time. I made that mistake week one, post Tua. Felt it was justified. Even set it up.

I was like, I don't really want to say this because I don't really do it, but I'm going to say it. Things I don't want to say out loud, but I'm going to. This kind of feels like the same thing. I don't think I have an open mind about Zach Wilson anymore. I'm not quick to dismiss. I'm not quick to annoy. You know that.

But it feels like it's getting real close to dismissing time. Zach Wilson, NFL starting caliber quarterback. He was awful yesterday. I mean, I don't know which throw you want it to... He was throwing it to guys in the flats like you didn't know which buttons were which. The McCourty

pick was a layup. McCourty dropped it high over the middle. Always dangerous. He almost threw a pick six in the comeback route. I don't know if that was on the receiver trying to get better position there. Then it looked like he was freaked out. There were multiple throws in the same game yesterday where you're thinking, what's going on? 9-22. Looked terrible. He has four total touchdowns on the season. Flacco actually has five. He has four games with a QBR under 50. This defense is awesome. I know he's getting trashed for saying

that he didn't think he'd let the defense down. If I'm allowing him in out without knowing him, is it possible he just thought he was saying the right thing to exude confidence for that side of the football? Maybe. Or maybe he's a dick. I don't know.

Never hung out with him. I got two things for you. One's this stat from Sando. 20 starts in for Wilson. His negative EPA per pass play in the last 20 starts is last out of 41 quarterbacks drafted since 2012. That's not good.

The other problem for Zach Wilson, and this is where we kind of get into the fair-unfair, like if he's winning, he's cute. When you're losing and you're at the podium and you look like you're not talking about losing a football game, but you're apologizing for leaving the hose on overnight, it just doesn't work.

Last week. Do you realize how good Denver's defense is? I kind of knew, but then I wasn't sure. They lose to the Raiders yesterday, and in a complete non-emotional attachment, I kind of felt good for Derek Carr getting a close one there.

Denver is third in opponent scoring. They're third in yards per play allowed. Opponent's yard per play allowed. They're third in yards per play allowed. Opponents yard per play allowed. They're third in yards per game allowed. They're fourth against third down. They are a top three defense by almost any measure that matters. They score 14.7 points per game, last in the NFL and the worst since 2018.

I'm preparing you, though, for the end of the season DVD narration. Despite going 4 and 13 the Denver Broncos had 12 losses by only one score 6 of their 7 losses are by one score they're going to talk about that we're actually pretty close we're going to figure

this thing out we're going to make it work yeah I don't know, dude. I mean, the Raiders also have six one-score losses, and I feel better about them. The Jets had a one-score loss yesterday. You feel good about that team? Get more kicks out of every World Soccer match with FanDuel. Soccer fans, now is the perfect time to give FanDuel a shot

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Every other week, Damian Woody joins us here on the podcast. Damian Woody of ESPN. All right, let's get to it. Zach Wilson, I'm with you. I talked about it a bit in the open. I'm to the point where I think, I don't like doing this with young guys, especially top picks, where I go, I don't really know if this is ever going to work out.

Although I did get into trouble with saying that about Tua potentially, even though I didn't want to say it out loud, I did. But here we are with Zach Wilson. I saw your tweet. What was it this morning where it just dawned on you he had four touchdowns all season? So what's up? Yeah.

Yeah, man, I was kind of in uh kind of had like a tweet storm this morning about that about the game yesterday because you know for everyone out there it was one of the ugliest games that you could ever witness i can't get back the three plus hours watching that game but i like i think zach is like 20 games into his career, something like that. And I know he's young. He's 23. But I just raised a question like, has he improved at all? Like, has he improved at all? Last year, he was the worst quarterback statistically in the league,

completion percentage. Like, all the different statistical categories. And then fast forward to this year, and he's in the very same position. Like, I don't see tangibly where he has gotten better. And for you to say, oh, well, he's not turned the ball over as much. Okay, so now we're asking a bare minimum out of the number two pick overall in a 2021 draft. Like, that's not good enough, especially for a Jets team that, quite honestly, the rebuild has been, has accelerated.

No one thought the Jets want to be six and, you know, six and four this year. They thought maybe in 2023 that the Jets might be, you know, flip it. But they flipped it earlier, sooner than a lot of people thought.

So the one person holding this team back is a quarterback right now okay so his quote is not going over well um once you end up in the richard sherman yeah yeah so again i brought it up in the beginning of the show where it's like you know do you feel like it's you're letting the defense down or whatever he's like, do you feel like you're letting the defense down or whatever? He's like, no. I tried to think of different ways that maybe he just was trying to show confidence. That bullshit way so many athletes, this younger generation in a way, I have some sympathy because they think they're programmed the right way

to say all these things, but it doesn't feel genuine ever because it's just like, all I care about is winning championships. Especially in the NBA side of it. It's like, no, all I care about is winning championships. All I care about, like, especially in the NBA side of it, it's like, no, all you care about is getting the first rookie max extension. And then when you're 27, 28, then you can start worrying about rings a little bit. So I don't know. Maybe he sucks.

Maybe he is a guy nobody gets along with. What are you supposed to do in that spot if you're Zach Wilson, considering what this offense has been like? You got to be a thumb pointer. You got to be a thumb pointer. You got to be a thumb pointer. You got to be a me guy. Like, I have to take responsibility for the way I play. Like, we've seen it from other quarterbacks.

Hell, two weeks ago, when the Jets played, when the Jets beat Buffalo at MetLife, Josh Allen, first thing he said was like, dude, I sucked. Like, this game is on me completely. Like, I'm the reason that we lost this game. And so for you to go out there in a post-game press conference where the defense played their ass off. Like, they had shitty field position most of the game because the offense

couldn't do shit and they could, New England couldn't score. New England. I mean, New England didn't score a touchdown the whole game. And for you to come out there and say, yeah, you know,

I'm not, I wasn't the reason, you know, the defense, like I shouldn't feel sorry that the defense put their effort out there and i couldn't contribute more but that's bullshit and i can tell you right now without you know mentioning certain guys that shit is really affecting the locker room like guys are wrong right now what's that like what's it like when you're on the side of the ball and not getting it done?

I mean, New England wasn't really much of an issue for you, but when you go to the Detroit Lions, although you could argue both sides of the football at that point, but what's the worst it's been for you in a locker room? Well, I mean, listen, like when I was with the Jets, man, there were certain points where, like, I'll give you an example, like 2009, like our defense was really great. We were, you know, we had the top rushing attack

in the National Football League, but we had Mark Sanchez, who was a rookie. He was struggling. And so there were games where, I remember one game, we rushed for 300 yards and lost. Like, that's unheard of when you rushed for over 300 yards and lose because your rookie quarterback was turning the

ball over like crazy so that's probably like the closest that i've really experienced anything like that but i i think that the jets right now in a situation it's a it's a very sensitive situation where everyone knows what's holding this team back. The defense is playing outstanding. They got players on offense. It's the quarterback. It's a touchy situation, bro. He was so bad yesterday. You can always tell

when the ball hits the ground in an NFL game a bunch of times. That's always a bad sign. Usually incompletions are off the hands or a little bit. I'm telling you, it's a very simple thing, but when you see it happen like 10 times where the ball is hitting the ground before it hits anybody else, you're like, this is a mess. And the defense, as you pointed out, that front was balling all day.

The corners are terrific. It's really, really impressive. But I'd add that history seems to tell us that it's okay for the defense to blast the offense publicly where I don't remember too many quarterbacks being like hey we're putting up 28 a game if these fucking guys could get a stop maybe

on third down we'd be good you don't see that very often so whatever the rules are in the locker room dynamic probably because the defensive guys are considered tougher one through whatever no disrespect to the defensive guys are considered tougher, one through whatever. No disrespect to the offensive linemen, but it always seems like it's okay when the defense calls out the offense. You don't hear it the other way around very often.

Yeah, you don't. You really don't because I think the offense has to play with this controlled aggression, and the defense can just, you know, it's all gas, no brakes for them. They just go balls to balls out. So I know it's all gas no brakes for them they just go balls the balls out so i think it's just a different mentality okay i wanted to touch on tennessee this is really interesting from the athletic and mike sandoz piece which i is a must read for me every monday morning i get ready to do the show um no secret there but he was talking about

vrabel and tennessee and like i think all of us collectively watch this team and go, we like a lot of stuff they do. Talent-wise, it's just not the same. Tannehill is a ceiling guy where it feels like a lot of times the other quarterbacks he'd be going up against in the playoffs, the AFC, all of us would pick all of the other guys, whether it's Lamar, it's Josh, it's Mahomes, maybe even a longer list there.

But when you played for Bill, there was always these things that it felt like he prepped you on. And it feels like the exact same thing is happening with Rabel, whether it's defensive tendencies, whether it's, they were talking about defensive holding, which by the way,

if D lines, I don't know why they don't do it all the time. Maybe they do do it all the time on those stunts. NFL refs do not want to call defensive holding along the defensive line. Justin Smith used to just make money every single week with that with the Niners. Every now and then he'd get an app for one of those. But what

is that extra level of preparation that maybe other teams are oblivious to? Yeah, I think Braves is like the closest thing to you know, everyone talks about like Bill's tree, like protege. Braves is like the closest to come, you know is the closest one to really watch it come into fruition. The thing about it is, I was teammates with Braves.

You knew this dude was destined to be a head coach because his attention to detail, smart, coachable. Dude just got along so well with his teammates. He had all the characteristics. And now when I watch the Tennessee Titans, I'm like, man, that's like watching like the early Patriots, like the, like situationally, they don't hurt themselves. They're very well coached. They do all the little things right. We know they're not the most talented team.

We know that their quarterback is limited, but they are very, very well coached, and they're extremely tough. I mean, think about this, Ryan. That team went into Kansas City, and it took overtime for Patrick Mahomes and company to beat the Tennessee Titans with Malik Willis starting at quarterback. Think about how well coached and how you got to get your guys prepared in order to almost pull that off in Kansas City. That, to me, tells me everything I need to know

about the type of coach that Mike Brable is. Overtime at KC with Malik Willis completing five passes. There you go. There you go. You just said something that makes me want to follow up. From the outside, it'd be like, well, that team's not. It'd be weird to think a bunch of NFL players aren't tough. But going back to your playing days,

give me an example of tough versus not tough, where you were like, ah, these guys this week, as opposed to like, oh, we're going to play these dudes, these guys, these guys run out of the tunnel, talk all this shit. But third quarter, like no problem. Yeah, I like. I remember like when I was with the Jets, we played the then San Diego Chargers in the divisional round. They were really good. I think they were like 14-2. Man, they had a bunch of, you know, Pro Bowl guys.

But we knew, like, coming out of the locker, they were talking all types of trash to us, Rex, everybody. But we just knew, like, they never seen a team like us. And I remember during the game, you know, we had like the top rushing attack and we were running the ball. They were kind of shutting us down. They were yapping and all this stuff. And I just remember us, you know, we told them like, look,

come see us in the third quarter. This is a full four quarter game. You can talk shit all you want in the first and second quarter, but we're going to keep hitting y'all with these body blows. Y'all going to fold. It's exactly what happened in that game. We just kept hitting them with body blow, one body blow, two body

blows, then all of a sudden the whole dam just broke and they just shut the hell up. You can easily see the contenders from the pretenders when you get between the white lines. On the flip side, let's see. Man, there was a few teams that, like when I was with the Patriots,

we always had a problem with the Broncos. Broncos were a tough team. Like, they were tough. Like, they were well-coached, and they were tough, and they always gave us fits, always gave us fits. They weren't out there talking a whole bunch of trash, but they were just really good and just a tough football team. Last night, Chiefs come back, beat the Chargers, six lead changes.

I kind of was hoping it was going to be maybe this Chargers moment where they gave us something to maybe keep us or keep ourselves continuing to trick ourselves. And I'm thinking like they actually do have this, this crazy ceiling. We know they're dealing with injuries, but you know, like there's not really much sympathy.

Everybody's done with it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, it feels like some of the times their, their injuries are, are the top,

top tier of their players. I think Herbert's going to be terrific, but I can't it feels like some of the times their injuries are the top tier of their players. I think Herbert's going to be terrific, but I can't help it. It feels like he keeps losing every other week, that there's a bit of a tide turning against him, which I'm not going to do. I'm going to let that wave pass me by. I'm not ready for that one yet. Where are you on the idea that maybe he could be this physically gifted guy who is not – like we had Jimmy Johnson last year saying he'd rather have Herbert than Mahomes.

I haven't heard too many more Herbert over Mahomes guys this season, but there was a weird push for Justin Herbert to be considered maybe the best at some point when it could be just the physical part. But again, look, his defense gave up 30 points last night, so it wasn't like they didn't score. I'm just wondering where you are cautiously with Herbert in his future. Listen, I will be the first one to tell you,

I've been on the Herbert train from the beginning. I've always been a Herbert guy. But I think what happens is when you're in a division with Patrick Mahomes, that's the top dog, right? That's the top dog. Like, you got to go – if you want to ascend yourself to the next level, you got to go through him. You got to find a way to deal with that guy, deal with that animal.

And they've had – you know, listen, Justin Herbert has had wins against Kansas City, but when it matters most in big games, it seemed like Patrick Mahomes does just enough to put himself over the top of Justin Herbert. And so listen, there's no denying the dude's talent. Like that dude is a top three talent in this league at the quarterback position. There's no question about that. But I think when you keep losing these games, even with the stat lines that that dude puts up,

your luster, a little bit of your luster comes, starts rubbing off of you as far as where people think you are ranking the top quarterback. So I don't know what it's going to have to do. Maybe it's going to be a coaching change or something like that, but I believe in the talent. I believe in the player,

but they got to start winning these big games, especially in the division. That's what's going to happen. But by some metrics, you could argue they're the second worst defense in the NFL behind Detroit. Staley's going to get more shit because he's different in

his approach. But look, when you have this much talent, I'm worried about the training staff being able to stick around considering what's happened with so many of these guys. So I'm not there yet, but there's going to be a weird... It's starting to happen. It's starting to similar a little bit on the idea that

maybe this guy's a little bit overrated. At the end of that game, it was Chris Jones. It was Chris Jones up the middle. He got the sack. He forced the pressure that led to the interception. Where's the gap between Aaron Donald and Chris Jones? Still significant? I think for the first time in a while,

there's like three or four guys that are all in the same boat as Aaron Donald. I got Aaron Donald, Chris Jones, Justice Simmons, and Quentin Williams. I think they're all in the same boat. They're all playing like all

pro defensive tackles right now. I think the gap between Aaron Donald and the rest of these guys is closed. That's what I think itles right now. I think the gap between Aaron Donald and the rest of these guys is closed. That's what I think it is right now. It feels like you can't say it because it's Aaron Donald, but I'm not telling you you're wrong. I know. It's almost

unthinkable to say, but just go with what your eyes are telling you. I would say it feels like Donald is more every play still, though. Maybe that was the knock on Chris Jones a little bit. At times, I know they've lined him up differently here. I think Simmons is the meanest out of the group. Then Quinn, I'm not as locked in, but those guys were on one yesterday.

It felt like every play, you had a different Jets front seven guy getting up, losing his mind at midfield after another play. That defense, Robert Sala deserves credit for at least that because there's an attitude with the Jets that it just feels real. It feels like a carry, and that's, you know, back to the beginning. It's why it's so frustrating if you're a Jets fan.

It's just like we have this really awesome element. It's kind of the same thing, like on a much lower key awareness part. It's like Denver. Like you look at some of Denver's stuff defensively and you're going, are you serious? I would be sick. Like, just being,

like that place could be the ultimate fracture. Like, if you're a different defense and you're watching that dog shit, you know, Broncos offense, I would – like, coaching-wise, you could easily lose a locker room over that. Easy. Last thing, a couple more minutes here. Was there ever a time in Big Woods' career where you were

admonished in film room for celebrating? For something you did on the field? Was there ever a time where it was like, hey, I can't imagine anybody in Detroit would say anything to you, and certainly not Rex. Oh, man. No, never, man. No, never, never.

O-Lyman, yeah, you guys don't celebrate, first of all. So, I mean, it was a shot in the dark. Yeah, like O-Lyman, first of all, we're looking to conserve energy. Like, you celebrating and doing all that, it expends energy. So, if we do it, you know it means a lot to us for us to really have an outburst of celebration. Okay. Because I've had it with corners.

I once said cornerbacks must be the worst boyfriends ever. I'll leave husbands out of it. They take zero responsibility for anything they do wrong, and they also celebrate things they had nothing to do with. It is getting so out of hand now in the league where you get guys doing the logo 50-yard line Jesus pose after an out misses the receiver by 10 yards. And I think, like, I have rules.

Like, Derwin James can wear the Batman visor other guys can't like what's where are you like you got to be good you got to be really special same as the defensive lineman if you want a single digit if you're a receiver you want the single digit like how many Pro Bowls have you been to and I don't mean as an alternate so i think we got to tighten up some of this shit in the league man i and listen right now you are preaching the gospel as far as all this concern because there's too many guys who have no swag to their game that's out here acting like they've they've been all pros for years and it's just ridiculous it's like dudes you're a middle of the road like back of the roster type guy and you're saying ridiculous shit in the introductions like calm down like

know your place on the roster okay buddy like know your place and yeah you're absolutely right man too much of the shit is going on it's it's really out of control with the incomplete past celebration stuff where i'm like you you did, you did nothing. And you're on your, you were picked up off the practice team. So maybe he's just trying to get a little bit of that shine. I mean, people can be annoyed by the Ohio state university.

You know what? It can't be, it can't be the Yukon, right? We can't have guys introducing themselves as the Yukon, no diss to Connecticut. It just, it just can't happen.

I'm glad we're on the same page. I'm just trying to raise awareness here on the podcast. Yeah, man. We're eye to eye on this one. I appreciate you bringing that one up. All right. Thanks, Woody.

Talk to you soon. Yeah. All right, man. These aren't rankings for college football. I just want to talk about this weekend and kind of everything gearing up for the next week as well. I am going to warn you, this is probably going to be a little long.

I just couldn't stop taking notes, gang. Okay, so we had number two, three, four, and five in trouble. Let's start with number two, Ohio State. I had them number one in the country until, and I knew after the Georgia-Tennessee winner, I was going to switch it. I certainly don't feel like that was the wrong thing to do. I'm consistently reminding everyone and myself that I'm guilty of the benefit of the doubt for Ohio State. It is impossible to not have benefit of the doubt for some program somewhere. I don't know how you do it. It's impossible. They were in a fight with Maryland

yesterday. I like Maryland. I know the previous couple weeks, wasn't that great? Talia was bad against Wisconsin. They lost to Penn State 30-0 last week. I would argue that I still think there are moments where he's pretty

talented and losing to Maryland isn't awful. It just isn't. They're an okay football team. I don't know if good is too much praise, but that's how I feel about them. And we also realized they got up from Michigan too. So a tough win on the road. It's dirty Terps. You say it's a good win.

It's just it's okay. You know, like, I guess I'm not saying like, oh, this is so battle-tested. I just am trying to stick up for Maryland a little bit based on what I've seen in some of the games. Granted, if you go through the entire schedule, you're like, okay, all right, enough on Maryland.

I don't have a ton of sympathy for Ohio State and the injuries, Smith and Jigba out, the running back issues, because Dallin Hayden goes off. But I'll admit, as I look at them and project this out of the playoffs, I can't help but think they've gone two months without having to worry about anybody, other than technically a ranked team in Penn State.

They are number one in scoring margin in the country, 29.5 points per game. Last year, Georgia, this dominant, dominant football team that won a national championship. Just to remind you, Georgia was plus 26.9. So scoring margin, I think it's Ohio State one and then Michigan number two. Let's talk about Michigan.

Number three, Michigan hosts Illinois. They needed a last second field goal to beat them. We know that the Illinois defense is great, but they also had just lost to Michigan State and Purdue at home. Illinois' defense is still great after this game as well. Fourth on opponents' yards per play. I think

the Big Ten West absolutely sucks. A team winning that division, yo Iowa, means nothing to me. Michigan has the number one statistical defense. I know Blake Horne was hurt. They were still struggling while he was in the game.

The J.J. McCarthy stuff is real. If you're a Michigan fan, you've been worried about the deep ball issues. There were bigger plays from a yardage standpoint in this game than other games. I do think some of that was yards after the catch. The fact is, and this is not being harsh, this is, okay, if Michigan is in the conversation now with Georgia, with Ohio State, prior to Tennessee's loss, which we'll get to with Hooker, Bama, you can throw him in there as well, maybe even Max Duggan, that JJ McCarthy is not those guys. He's athletic. He has some nice runs.

The deep ball stuff is a real issue. And if you're looking at Michigan, not just as running through a really light schedule, but a team you're going, can they win a national championship? It changes the conversation. And then you start asking some really tough questions about who your quarterback is. And I didn't see anything in the Illinois game, yes, against a really good defense. I just didn't see anything that jumped out at me

as something that gets me excited. If you look at the top schools in the FPI rankings, you got to go like 16, 17 deep before you get to a schedule that's worse than Michigan's so far. So could they win the whole thing? I'm reluctant to go that far with it. Ohio State feels like a different game

because of how much that matters, but they don't win at that point. I think it's 22 years since they've won at the shoe. I'll look that up again. Number three, TCU, last second field goal at Baylor. Max Duggan should be in New York for the Heisman ceremony.

I wouldn't vote him number one. I might vote him number two. Don't have a vote. They were number one in ESPN's FPI prior to this weekend. You have to watch them to appreciate what they're doing. The shootout of Kansas. I know Kansas, they lost their quarterback. They were a competitive're doing. The shootout of Kansas. Now, I know Kansas, look, they lost their quarterback. They were a competitive football team.

The comeback against Oklahoma State, which felt like no chance. They beat K-State. Martinez didn't play for almost all that game. Four-and-a-half point dogs at Texas. That's when I was like, hey, they're going to lose this game. This is the one they're going to lose. And they stomped what we thought was a more physical Texas team because of TCU's lack of defensive statistics.

And now they're down 28-10 at Baylor, six and a half minutes to go. His running back's out. One of the top receivers in the country, Johnson's out of the game. They're missing another weapon. And Duggan basically does it all on his own. When I tweeted out that TCU's the most tested, I don't mean that's because they have the toughest schedule. I'm just telling you, if you've been watching them the last two months, it's two months

of battles. Against some of the Big Ten teams where I'm like, how often are you even tested? Maybe it's just a factor that you're so good, but with TCU, I just feel like that tested part is really important. Maybe you think they stink. I'm not

going to pick them against Ohio State. I wouldn't pick them against Georgia. I don't even know if I pick them against Ohio State. I wouldn't pick him against Georgia. Don't even know if I pick him against Bama. It doesn't really matter anymore. But these last two months matter as far as the heart and determination and the dug-in part of this and the fact that he's missing all those guys. I thought that was actually, despite what you

think of Baylor, and again, if you don't like the Big 12 or you don't watch any of these things, you're just sitting there disagreeing with me. I think those are nice wins. I just do. I like that middle of the... I like that meaty part of their resume better than the two Big Ten teams I just got done talking about.

Georgia. If I wanted to really sell the segment, I could say, hey, all top five are in trouble. Georgia was not in trouble against Kentucky yesterday. I know the final score is 16-6. Don't let that fool you Kentucky's a mess they're 3-5 in the SEC

you look at the sack numbers for Will Levis they're scary Kentucky's a weird, they were ranked 7th they lost at Ole Miss in a close one which turned some into thinking or trick some people into thinking that Ole Miss was really good they weren't, we've seen what happens to Ole Miss Kentucky's behind South Carolina right now some of the thinking or tricks on people into thinking that Ole Miss was really good. They weren't. We've seen what happens to Ole Miss.

Kentucky's behind South Carolina right now. Kentucky's lost five of seven, and that means Stoop gets a new contract, $8.6 million per year through 2031. Kentucky is the Iowa of the SEC when it comes out to giving coaches new contracts. Like, did you do something good, sort of, that one time? Yeah. All right. Done.

Eight more years. Boom. But Georgia, you know, I'm not going to worry about that one because I thought that they were actually pretty much in control. Tennessee, the two SEC schools, two Big Ten schools in the playoff. We can rule that one out. Tennessee stomped at South Carolina. Now, think about Tennessee's resume. They beat Bama and crushed LSU at LSU.

Not many teams get to do that over the course of a season. And now they're done. South Carolina had lost 38-6 to Florida, to 6-5 Florida. Rattler had eight touchdowns and nine interceptions on the season. Then he turned back into Netflix Rattler, 30-37, 4-38, six touchdowns.

We knew Tennessee's defense wasn't great, but they just keep throwing deep ball after deep ball. They tire you out. They're going to win the shootout. They're going to find a way. And South Carolina just had a moment. They had one of those moments that every campus has maybe once a decade where you're like, there's just nothing you can do with us tonight.

And that's what happened. And that eliminates Tennessee from the playoffs. I can't see any scenario where that would work out unless, I don't know. I mean, I guess. I don't even know if that would happen. All right. USC, last one here. They jumped LSU in the AP poll.

They should. They deserve it. in the AP poll. They should. They deserve it. That's one of the best games of the season last Saturday, this past Saturday night against UCLA in the Rose Bowl. Caleb Williams is a superhero. Without him, would USC even be a 500 football team? That's why I think that he should win the Heisman

at this point. They're still alive for the playoffs, certainly. They're in the Pac-12 title game against maybe Oregon. I was going to do a bunch of the scenarios on what it would be, and then I wrote them all out, and it was awful to look at, so I'm not going to do that and have you guys go through the whole deal

because there's a few different scenarios for different options there. Utah losing to Oregon basically solidified it for Oregon and Utah still has some weird way to get in there. These Pac-12 defenses, other than Oregon State, God, they're bad. SC's 95th in opponent's yards per play.

Utah's 94th. UCLA's 89th. Oregon's 111th. Oregon State's playing some defense. The rest of the teams are not at the top. But to finish this up, if you're still with me, I think what you have to do is run through the exercise of like,

okay, what about the two teams from the Big Ten? If Ohio State's clean, if Georgia's clean, if USC's clean, so that's 12-1 against, say, Oregon, Pac-12 championship, they're all in. TCU, if they're clean. So that would be your four. Michigan loses to Ohio State. Ohio State beats, say, Iowa in the Big Ten championship. AgainCU, if they're clean. So that would be your four. Michigan loses to Ohio State.

Ohio State beats, say, Iowa in the Big Ten Championship. Again, ultimate scenarios there, too. Not going to go through all of them. There's no way Michigan, in a close loss to Ohio State, should jump TCU-USC. This is all about the second team in thing. What if Ohio State's clean? Georgia's clean. TCU-USC. This is all about the second team end thing. What if Ohio State's clean, Georgia's clean,

TCU's clean, USC loses to Oregon? Would Michigan... This is what happens, so you're going to hear it a million times. What if Michigan plays a close one, it's the last second field goal, whatever. Do they deserve to get back in? I'd like to see more for that schedule.

I'd like to see more from that.. I'd like to see more from that. And every time you ask that question, you can't ask it in a vacuum because you have to follow it up immediately with, okay, but what else happened? And if it's Ohio State, Georgia, TCU, I think it might be Michigan if it's a close loss to Ohio State.

The weird one would be, what happens if LSU beats Georgia? I think Georgia would still be in, and I don't think they'd leave out a two-loss SEC champ and the fact that LSU will have beaten Georgia and Bama on their resume. If Michigan loses to Ohio State, is there any way the committee would go, yeah, Hawaii, Connecticut, one ranked team in conference play, because Illinois wasn't ranked when they played them.

They were like 26th, you know, others getting votes. That's kind of the out loud scenario. Would LSU SEC champ be left out for one loss Michigan? I don't think they would be. So the two, the SEC, Tennessee and Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State thing, clearly the Big Ten part of it's far more alive. I'd say the SEC part of it is done unless LSU were to pull an upset against Georgia, which not really many people are going to pick.

If you're in the financial world, you've been paying attention to what's been going on with FTX and the founder, Sam Bankman Freed. Joining us now from Wall Street Journal, somebody who's been all over this, has written books on the topic. It's Greg Zuckerman. Thanks a lot for joining us, man. What's going on? Oh, it's a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. Okay, let's start at the beginning, or at least the beginning of what we understand.

So those that are not as familiar with the story can play along, can come along for the ride. SBF, as he's known, very vocal on Twitter, a lot of followers, younger guy, he's 30, goes to MIT, works at Jane Street. He starts trading, and then he's like, now I'm going to go ahead and do this all on my own. Who was he at the origin of putting together FTX and the coin and everything that led to this massive downfall here recently? Sure. So this guy, Sam Bankman Freed, who people at his company

and his friends call him Sam, but everybody else refers to him as SPF. He's a quant. He's a mathematically inclined young guy. He goes to, and he's got these different impulses. He wants to help the world. He wants to help animals. And he's thinking, how do I best do it? And he meets a guy who says, you know what? The best thing you should be doing is making a

ton of money. Why? Because then you can eventually give it all away later on. And he's like, you know what? You should go to this company called Jane Street. Jane Street is a really well-respected trading firm on Wall Street. It's kind of private and secretive, but really well-known among those serious traders. And he goes there, he spends a few years there. He's known as kind of a hard charging, serious-minded guy. Odd odd a lot of people there are odd and then he leaves and he gets into crypto and trying to make money on crypto and he says i'm gonna go start my own firm to do that okay so he starts his own firm and it appeared whatever that magic is that founders have,

that people love, that are always looking for, what was it about him and FTX that immediately was seen, not just successful, but everybody wanted in after meeting with SBF? Yeah, so SBF starts this firm. First, it's called Alameda Trading, and the idea is just to make some money trading markets. And then they say, you know what, let's also start an exchange. We're talking 2019 at this point, and that exchange is FTX.

And to their credit, FTX is a well-respected exchange. It's easy to navigate. It's got good technology. It becomes popular. It's not the most popular one. There's an exchange called Binance that's bigger, but it becomes one of the most popular and fastest growing of the exchanges. But it's also led by a guy named SBF. And he is charismatic. He is a good talkatched onto of the really super smart, nerdy, quanty computer guy. And we all sort of have seen the movies.

And we're talking all of us. We're talking you and I, but also the venture capital firms, the big money in Wall Street, but especially Silicon Valley. They've got this image in their mind of who can conquer the world of technology. And it kind of looks like a guy like Sam Bankman Freed, meaning he's kind of disheveled. He wears shorts, barely wears shoes sometimes. He's not just wears t-shirts, but they're kind of ratty t-shirts. He doesn't care. He's having meetings with investors. And while he's having meetings asking for hundreds of millions of

dollars, he's playing video games, like intense games of video games. And instead of like pissing these guys off and like, how dare you not wear a clean shirt when you're meeting with me in Silicon Valley? They love it. They eat that stuff up because it fits their image. And they're like, geez, we got to get on board. We're writing checks left and right. So I think there was like this kind of image, a shtick that he developed and it worked. He kind of leaned into it. Yeah, does he like wearing shorts and cargo shorts and ratty t-shirts all the time?

Probably and sleeping on beanbags and the hair, wild mane of hair. I think that's probably what he was comfortable doing. That's kind of where he came from, that background, that Jane Street that I told you about. But I also think he kind of leaned into that that image it kind of works yeah no it definitely worked and i feel like you know there's a part of it me being from the outside of the world you're like all right so just be a dork and get a vest and then all of a

sudden you know like it's just you're in you're in and then you get one firm one house back to you and then everybody else is worried about and it's completely dismissive of all the people that do it i don't want to say the right way but in the way that we don't see it in the movies you know what i mean like i feel like there's been this real push that i've admitted a few times here on this podcast that i'm guilty of of just dismissing the entire industry because we see like the prototypical sbf type you know whether it's the adam newman or like jay low the malaysian fun where you read that book and be like, all this fucking guy did was he was clever with a few emails. And then it turned

into billions and billions of dollars because he got right in with the people that mattered. So I don't want to be dismissive at all, but I mean, he is absolutely the prototypical figure of mysterious. Oh, wow, he wore a dad hat. This guy's awesome. Like it's laughable at times to think what the smartest money can fall for. Yeah, it is fascinating. I mean, listen, I don't want to,

got to give him some credit. The guy is super smart and he had a vision for a crypto exchange early on and for trading crypto when it was still just getting going. And you do have to give them credit for that. But a lot of it is sort of the big money, the deep-pocketed people are a little bit older.

They don't quite get crypto in this new world, but they know they should. And they see this guy wearing with his image and wearing the t-shirts and he doesn't care. And they kind of have FOMO like you and I have it. And they kind of say, well, geez, we're missing out. We're missing out on a revolution here, or we might be. And like you said, Sequoia, they're one of the most well-respected,

deep-pocketed venture capital firms out in Silicon Valley. They're investing in this guy. Well, geez, they must have done the due diligence. And when you talk to Sequoia, you realize they didn't do that much due diligence themselves. And to them, it's a few percentage points of their overall portfolio. So they're playing a little bit,

but guys like SBF and others will use that. We use that sort of good housekeeping seal, either consciously or unconsciously. Oh, well, Sequoia wrote us a big check. You better get involved soon. You better get on board. Oh, really? Okay. Maybe I won't put as much due diligence into the investment that I would have. Okay. All right. So now in a very short amount of time at the peak for FTX, the valuation was $32 billion. And to cover everything here, you've mentioned Alameda. They then have this other company that's not supposed to be connected, but it's basically connected, which is Alameda, the research part of it. The other part of this is that FTX created their own token, FTT, which depending on how you look at the market, it was

considered in the space of coins, certainly not even close to the most valuable, but real value because it was linked to Sam, because it was linked to FDX and you have all these investors. So people will all start figuring this whole thing out of like, okay, these all seem like great ideas. Sam is now donating, what, almost $40 million to the Democratic Party. He's going to DC to try to influence legislation. It's the reason why he went to the bahamas ultimately because he felt like the crypto rules were far more forgiving same thing coming off of hong kong all this is happening in a very short amount of time what happened this fall that knocked over this house of cards yes so as you said early this year he's valued at 32 billion

dollars by the fall he's the face of the crypto world. And they embraced him because he's got that kind of persona. There's another superstar guy who runs the top exchange who's Chinese, and he hardly ever comes to America. It's not clear he can come to America. This is Binance. SBF. Exactly.

Whereas SBF, this guy Sam Bankman-Reed is somebody you can get behind. He's got that persona, lovable, quanti, nerdy computer guy, and they're huge. FTX and they're taking out the Miami Stadium, and

they're taking out their advertising left and right. The Super Bowl, they they're taking out their advertising left to right. The Super Bowl, they got Tom Brady and Gisele. They're all coming out to hang out with Sam Bankman Freed. And then, lo and behold, all this time, the side trading firm that we mentioned, that Alameda, has been losing money. And what are they doing to plug the hole? They're taking customer money from FTX, which is a huge no-no.

I mean, we all know that. You don't have to be in the markets to realize you can't take customer money from FTX, which is a huge no-no. I mean, we all know that. You don't have to be in the markets to realize you can't take customer money. The customers have entrusted you with their cash and they took that to fill a gap or fill a hole in their trading firm. And I've talked to people within the firm. Many, if not most, were not aware of what was going on. It was a small handful of people, this guy Sam Bankerfried and a few others that apparently didn't know that. And it finally caught up to them. Okay. So just so we're very clear on that. So FTX is basically presenting themselves as the savior of the industry. Like, oh, you're in trouble. We're going to fix this. We're going

to fix that. And like a lot of stuff, it's like, okay, you're in trouble. We're going to fix this. We're going to fix that. And like a lot of stuff, it's like, okay, but how liquid are you? And you start looking at the paperwork. You're like, wait, how much money are you lending to Alameda? Okay. But Alameda's valuation is based on the value of the FTT token, which maybe doesn't really mean anything. And then as you point out, to handle some of this, they're taking the positions of customers and using that as money, which is the big fuck up here, obviously, that led to all this. And then once Binance and CZ sees that, wait, what's going on? What are you guys doing? He gets mad at Sam for a tweet.

He goes, I'm going to tweet and get out of ftx so that tanks the value of all these moving parts where i think you're left at least from the layman's interpretation of what was the actual value what was the position that actually was value other than the customer's own deposits which is where he's in a lot of trouble yeah so what happened was earlier this month um they were on top of the world at the beginning of the month, but then- This month, right. We're talking about this month, just a few weeks ago. It's crazy how fast it is. Crazy. You go from the top of the world to nothing so quickly. So basically it was revealed, there was a leak

about what their balance sheet was, what the FTX and alamina balance sheets were and it was filled with a lot less reliable stuff than we had expected that we had realized including as you suggest this ftc coin they produced their own crypto coin and it was part of their balance sheet and we kind of knew it was probably part of it but we didn't realize so much was reliant on this token. But another crappy one too, they call them shit coins. These were coins that you and I would not depend a whole company on, and yet they did. And they created it themselves. And there were other reasons for suspicion too. So once the balance sheet was leaked out, we all could see, whoa, this thing is a house of cards

then their biggest rival this company binance run by a guy we call cz he sees donnie says hey we're selling our ftt that and he tweets they created and he tweets it and the suggestion is that he does it on purpose because he was pissed at sbf for all of these like sbf was poking the bear with binance he was poking the bear with czance. He was poking the bear with CZ. As you said earlier in the interview, hey, can he even come into the country because he doesn't have citizenship? Look, the balance sheet's the motivator behind it, but then to make sure everybody knows what you're doing as soon as you're doing it, it felt like that was a little bit extra

and justified too. Exactly. That was a little bit extra and justified. Exactly. They have a rivalry, number one versus number two, CZ versus SPF. And CZ jumps on this opportunity to take down his rival is the assumption. And for good reason. He's holding this FTT because they'd once owned a stake, a big stake in the company FTX.

So they got out of it. What'd they get in exchange? Part of it was getting this FTT token. And then they're like, then CZ is like, well, FTT tokens are what you guys are basing the balance sheet on. I'm selling my tokens.

But like you said, he told the world he's selling the tokens, obviously sending a signal that people should be worried about this company, FTX. And that started the ball rolling. And then everyone, clients, hedge funds, other investors, people that have been using FTX got scared. And there was a run on the bank. Like any other bank, it's all about confidence. It's all about the reputation that it has. And within days, within moments, it was shot. And people said, we're pulling our money out.

Once you got money pulling out, it all started crumbling. And FTX goes from on top of the world where this guy, Sam Bankman Freed, is cavorting and hanging out with, again, Tom Brady and Gisele and Bill Clinton and world leaders. And he's going to D.C., as you suggest. And he was a savior. He was saving other companies. He was the one left and right this spring and summer and now you say to yourself well he's probably saving them because he knew that if they went down the whole crypto complex goes down and pulls them down with it but yeah he goes from a savior it goes from really a hero in the industry to an outright villain okay and just to clear up like the connection why that was so dicey

is that ftx continued to prop up alameda that was essentially run by somebody too that he also had a love interest with and from an accounting standpoint like spf is really like new york times article like man i don't even i won't even get started on it because it was just like you know yeah there was some accounting I wasn't aware of. There was some messy accounting. He comes off in his tweets as if he's like, hey, I love when guys screw up. And he said, quote, that's on me and me alone. No shit.

Like, what do you want to parade for suggesting that it's your fault? Because it is your fault. And when he started to relay and share, which I thought it was pretty surprising they would even share these publicly with tweets, but he was suggesting there was some dark accounting that he wasn't aware of. And it's like, no, you created a coin in your own exchange that people didn't really know what it was worth and then kept lending all this money to a separate company that had no value. Their value was based on the value of something that we didn't even know what it was. I mean, again, correct me at any point here if I'm

screwing up the thing, but that dynamic between the two, it isn't just, hey, our coin has no value and I screwed up. It's consistently flushing money out into something else that was supposed to be disconnected, but was clearly very connected. Yeah, Ryan. So listen, I think you can make comparisons here to Madoff, to Enron, to Lehman Brothers, to some of the biggest crooks and frauds in history. Now, was there a screw up on their part? Were they trying to go really fast and they went too fast and they didn't pay attention to accounting? I'm going through the history of talking to people that work there. And yeah, I think that's the case. So part of it was just a major screw up, but they also made a decision not to care about that stuff. And they made the decision,

as you suggest, to take money from customers and pull it from this FDX exchange to their trading firm. And you don't have to be some veteran, some sophisticated person in finance to realize you can't take customers' money and use it for your own benefit. So I don't want to hear about some innocence. Someone tweeted that scene in Seinfeld where George is busted for sleeping with the cleaning lady. And he's like, wait, I did not know. Are you not supposed to do that? Had I known, I definitely would not have slept with the cleaning lady. That's what George Costanza says. And he's kind of saying the same thing.

Wait, whoa, I did not know. You can't base the whole company on these shit coins or that you can't take customers' money. No, you can't get away with that. That's also, by the way, Jason Alexander's favorite line of George Costanza in the history of Seinfeld is that. Oh, is that true? Where he's like, oh, I've had I been told that that was frowned upon. It's great.

It's great. Because of the murky regulations, what are they really? If this were a bank, it's handled differently because it's crypto. There's a lot of unknown. Is SBF actually in trouble? He's in trouble. Now the question is,

as you suggest, these aren't investments. These aren't banks. Banks, you know, you go to the bank, you give them your money, you know they're going to do something with the money, right? I mean, on some level, you kind of know that. It's not just sitting there, they're going to invest it, they're going to lend it. But you've got FDIC protection. You know the government's going to step in if the bank goes under, et cetera. This isn't the case. So you could argue, hey, you're in crypto. You know, this is dangerous. This is a Wild West kind of thing. But at the end of the day, fraud is fraud.

Taking customer money is taking customer money. So you would think there's a good legal argument that what it did was wrong. Now there's later reports here that there were these sort of blind withdrawals, these backdoor ways of withdrawing. We're talking about brilliant people here where SBF may have actually taken 300, 400 million out in his own. What do we know about that latest report? Yes, there are two different things to be concerned about. One is that he built, so they didn't have great systems, accounting, and otherwise risk within the company. They were kind of winging it, but they had some systems.

And there are reports that he built a way to get around their own internal systems, risk systems, such that he could take money from this FTX exchange and move it to Alameda without setting off alarms within his company. And if that's the case, that shows he set out to do something wrong. He knew it was wrong also, as it suggests. So that would hurt his case. And yes, we've reported also

that he took a lot of money off the table. And you could say, well, founders do that. You start a company. You don't want your founder to be all in a hundred percent. You want to be a lot in, but you want, it's okay to take some money off the table, but they're going to go after all that money. They're going to try to get off to go after a lot of the money, the money that went to guys like Larry David for these commercials and Giselle and Brady, they're going to try to go after that money too, I assume. You said at the beginning, when he was at college, and I think when he went out to the Bay Area too, he started really getting into this effect of altruism where essentially

it's like, in his interpretation from what I've read, it's like, let me make all of this money so they can give it away. It's described at times as's like a generational movement, but I mean, hell, like you can, you can look at a lot of people throughout history of financial history, well over,

you know, the last few centuries of people that have done stuff like this. Um, is it effective altruism to maybe bag 300, 400 million on your own or spend $40 million on a condo in the Bahamas? Uh, that's not their credo. No, that's not the goal. Listen, I've talked to a lot of people in that world. They're pretty serious minded. It's fascinating. A lot of young people who want to do good. Are they naive sometimes? Sure. Are some of them cynical and pretending. Yeah, sure. But a lot of them are good-hearted people that believe,

the idea of effective altruism is to give more effectively, to give charity, change the world. And the idea sometimes is to make a lot of money, but eventually to give it down the road. And you can be cynical and say, hey, I also want to give charity. I have millions of dollars down the road. But if you talk to them,

a lot of them are heartbroken about what happened. And they don't believe that this guy, SBF, represents their ideals, the way they practice. And some of them say this is just a huge black eye on this whole movement. And I do think that he, part of him, wanted to give a lot of money and change the world for the better. This guy, SPF. But another part of him, maybe a bigger part of him, just wanted power. And this was a means to the end. A lot of it is a means to the end.

It's sort of like a Robin Hood kind of feel to a lot of the people there. Well, yes, maybe I'm cheating or I'm committing fraud, potentially. They don't look at it as fraud. But I'm doing something improper. But down the road, I'm going to do a lot lot of good and that gets you into a lot of trouble yeah this is by no way uh like i by no means am i saying like this whole concept is is fraud because one guy here um you know went through all of this stuff but he clearly liked all this stuff he liked this stuff when he went to dc and i was looking at some of the pictures you have in the Wall Street Journal stuff running back,

like an aide trying to make sure she's in the way of the camera shot. It's like he's a crypto guy heading to DC to help influence legislation. He can't have his picture taken? Let me fucking break. And then the story about him pitching Sequoia while he's on a headset playing um a

video game that story gets out for one reason because he wants it to get out the way he tweets as soon as this all goes down on this massive threat i don't know this world i don't pretend to know this world i've read two books on it i still don't fucking know okay Okay. But there's no doubt that you, you start to get to this, this level of importance and you can't help, but start to kind of believe that you're capable of doing whatever you want to do. And no one's going to knock anybody for deciding like, Hey, my goal is to make a lot of money so I can give it away and make the world a better place. That's terrific. But there's plenty of movements here. There's plenty of pieces in the timeline here where I'm like, nah, you actually kind of loved being this rock star tech guy. You played it up the entire time.

And I think it really sucks. You know, crypto is a weird spot. I'm far from an expert on it. I completely understand its value because of its attachment from government influence. You know, it's the origin of it i'm like hey that makes a lot of sense the lessons behind it why would this matter it's this one thing but if i were to ever sit there with my buddies greg and say hey money's pretty popular do you want to just make our own version like we'd get laughed out of the room and the other part of this is watching cnbc which again is my own fault because when Rick Santelli comes on,

I'm still not sure necessarily what the hell he's talking about, but I'll see the crypto guys with big positions come on and say, oh, this actually makes Bitcoin, the actual, the coin, it makes Bitcoin more valuable, whatever.

And it's like, maybe, but I also realized your position, you can't come on TV and say anything other than this. And the fact that even though I understand the utility of it, I would say if I put together a list of the five people I wouldn't lend money to, all five of those guys are heavily into crypto at some point. So I don't know that it's the end. Other people could say, hey, FTX, you're just like a big brokerage house that goes under and your house went under, your coin went under or whatever, but it doesn't really affect

Bitcoin big picture. So I guess I'm rambling a bit to kind of get a summary from you on what this really means long term, because there's a chance it might not really mean anything. So you've made a couple of interesting points. The first is about his hunger for power. And I think that's behind all this. You could be really well-meaning. I'm a big believer in sort of having mixed motivations.

You could be well-meaning and want to give a shitload of money away and still be hungry for power and control and notoriety. Once you get a taste of it and you're like, wait, this is way more fun than just sitting in a cubicle. Yeah, Ryan, I've talked to people internally and they're like, why is he going on Twitter? Why is he tweeting this? Why is he going TV? Why is he?

Shut the fuck up already. Keep it down. This was weeks and months ago. In other words, he was calling attention to himself and making himself a little bit of a target. And he picked a fight with the top guy and the top firm in the business, in the crypto business. And it came back to haunt him and he couldn't help himself. That's my view anyway. He couldn't help himself. No, I didn't know about this until it became a story. Okay. I didn't. So when I started following along, because it's really interesting, I go, wait, this guy can't stop tweeting. And without knowing anything about him until I got prepped up for this and reading

everything, I was like, oh, so I completely agree is my point. I completely agree. The fact that he was like, well, let me just tweet about this entire thing, tweet through all of it, and it'll be fine. Like, dude, you lost billions of dollars, maybe 10 billion. And Grant, fuck the valuation of $32, $36 billion, but you may have lost like $8 to $10 billion in customer deposits. And you're just going to tweet through it? Hey, folks, yeah, there's some accounting mishaps. Yeah. Part of it is sort of being that geeky computer guy and geez, I can't believe I made that mistake. But part of it is coming from privilege and not having to deal probably with real people so much in your life. And listen, I'm not an elitist per se. I work for the Wall Street Journal. People say I'm elitist. But, you know, he's got academic parents and I don't know if he's dealt with average people.

And yeah, I screwed up. And then in the high tech world and Silicon Valley, you break things fast. It's encouraged. So, hey, you broke things, messed up, screwed it up. Hey, I'm onto the next one. And Adam Neumann of WeWork's already starting something new. And I've covered Wall Street for a long time. You lose a lot of money. Believe it or not, it's shocking. You get some cred. It's a weird thing where, well, you lost a ton now, but maybe next time you'll make a lot. And when you're dealing with average people, sometimes these are average people with accounts, you can't really do that. You can't be so flippant about this kind of stuff. And yeah, ego gets involved.

You can be really well-meaning and trying to help the world. And yeah, I don't have any evidence of him buying Maseratis and throwing it at women and stuff like that. But yeah, they have some real estate, expensive real estate, but I don't think it was out of selfishness and materialism per se. But yeah, even those guys can have egos and power and it gets to them. And he kept, right, kept tweeting along the whole way. And people were like, why? What's the goal? What's there? But that's also a new generation too. You're just tweeting things and you're sharing, oversharing. Maybe that's part of it too. And your earlier

question is, what does it all mean? Well, it means that in the world of crypto, you can't trust anyone. You really can't anymore. That's the lesson. It doesn't mean that there's no value in Bitcoin or other cryptos. I'm not going to say that. And there are reasons to think that maybe long-term this thing will rebound. But who can you trust? You're telling me you can't trust FTX. They were the most trustworthy in some ways. They were the fates, um, the cuddly kind of, um, geeky kind of person leading things. They were the people that were, we were relying on to lead, not we, the crypto world, uh, to lead it. And now they can't be trusted. Who can you trust?

Last thing real quick. I'm glad you brought up Adam Newman because, you know, when you look at the exit of what happened with him, that number was between 500 million and 1 billion. And there are updated reports that the, whatever the agreement was, was not fulfilled, but he still,

it feels like he walked away with a few hundred million dollars. And it seems disgusting. But it reminded me of Newman when I heard about the SBF withdrawal of $300 million, $400 million. Again, if that's true. Is that as bad as you can screw this up and screw so many people out of money and let so many people down that you as the founder can feel like, yeah, but I'm still owed a few hundred million. Like I, I put all the hours in, I invented this thing, you know, had this, this, or this happened, this all would have worked. So there's no reason I, like if anybody should make money, it still should be me. Now, granted, if you can get away with

doing it, these people are going to do it every single time. But I thought there were some real similarities there on the exit part of it. Again, if this SBF stuff is true about whether you withdrew, I don't know what the final number is from Adam Newman. Again, we think it's a lot less than it was initially reported, but I can certainly see somebody bending their mind in a pretzel in a way where they're completely justified and they feel like they're right for still getting a huge bag on the exit of a massive failure. Yes. In this case, I think he took the money out along the way without telling anyone, saying he was taking money out of this thing. I don't know if he's getting money a la Adam Neumann on the way out as he's getting fired.

Right. Different timelines. Right. But Ryan, listen, I've written about these financial guys for years. You'd be surprised how many people screw up, um, do something improper, get some check on the way out that you and I would be stunned by for them. It's not, let's say it's five, 20,

$30 million. Hey, it's nothing compared to they were worth 10, 20 billion before, but dude, that's a lot of money for, for anybody to be after you've screwed things up. Um,

you know, if you're going to take the pain like everybody else, that's one thing, but to be getting a big check things up. Um, you know, if, if you're going to take the pain like everybody else, that's one thing, but to be getting a big check on the way out, uh, is, is quite frustrating for, for the average people like you and me. I want to keep up with the story, read Greg Zuckerman in the wall street journal. They have an awesome, uh, subscription promo going on right now. It's like a buck a week for a year, um, which I jumped on as well. So, Hey, thanks a lot for this and looking forward to the updates. All right. It was a lot of fun. Nice job. 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 can 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 Okay, here we go. Six foot, 155, 24 years old. I made the decision last year to just go for skinny

instead of skinny fat. I think I pretty much there. Don't lift, in good cardio shape. Bike often and play pickup basketball like a homeless man's Tyrese Halliburton. I know poor man's. Is that just worse than poor man's? Well, you're supposed to say you're not supposed to say homeless anymore.

I learned that unhoused. Yeah. Comedy comedy show where there's usually not a ton of sympathy but that kind of stuff I I mean if you're

if you're downgrading poor mans that means you just make a good pass every now and then I guess is what he's saying here probably shouldn't even

yeah if you're downgrading poor mans you probably shouldn't even have comps like yeah like there was somebody who gave us a comp

we may not have read the email where there was just like I'm sort of like a sga like oh that's it's like impossible to stay in front of understands every single angle gets a shot off against people like that's what's going on with sga he's so good at working these angles let's get to the email i don't know how close you follow the taylor swift beat i don't but i am aware uh but she's touring to the email. I don't know how close you follow the Taylor Swift beat. I don't, but I am aware. Uh,

but she's touring for the first time in several years. The tickets to her shows are hot commodity. There's insane demand and ticket master fucked it up to make it worse. The ringers, Nathan Hubbard could explain it better than I could. Very smart guy. I would agree. He could explain a lot of this stuff better.

I'm a big Hubbard fan. How about you, Kyle? Oh, you don't like him, right? I will say I managed a fantasy team with him, and he liked to put all the bad decisions on my plate, it seemed like.

Maybe I wasn't off. He seems like a nice guy, but I was like, wait a second. Did I say that out loud? I'm kidding. He's really smart. I've noticed in the few interactions I've had with him on different things, he just understands these worlds better than I do. Anyway,

not what the email is about. Suffice to say, it's a seller's market right now. And if you didn't get tickets during the presale, which was a de facto lottery for the chance to buy at face value, you're looking at a five time markup on the resale value. My fiance and I were among the lucky ones. We each got six tickets at face value to concerts in Tampa on back to back

nights, six on Saturday and six on Sunday. That sounds like a dirty dozen of Taylor Swift weekend right there. I was watching a Nikki Glaser roast of Jewel, and she called her Trailer Swift. Yep, saw it, liked it a lot. Yeah, that's one of the all-time great lines. I'll tell you what, I like Jewel.

Always have, had a thing for her. I mean, that goes back to like Rosillo on a college couch. Being like, what's going on with her? What's her story, man? Yeah, what's her story? Then he... Nikki Glaser just started chilling her. But Jewel's having a good laugh. She was enjoying it.

Again, back to the email. He owns the Sunday tickets. The fiancé owns the Saturday tickets. Because of my work, because of our work, my fiancé wants to go on Saturday with four of her friends instead of Sunday. So that would be fiance, fiance, and then her four friends.

Okay. We have about a four-hour drive to get to Tampa, so Saturday is much easier. She has four people she wants to take with her, and we will take the last two, so all Saturday. Okay, we covered that. My question is about my tickets for the Sunday show.

Before the presale lottery, my older brother and his wife agreed with me to share the tickets we get at face value with each other if one of us got them and the other didn't. They tried and failed to get tickets during the presale,

but I'll sell them two at face value for Sunday show as agreed. Plus my younger sister and her boyfriend, neither of whom put any effort into obtaining presale tickets, but I'll let it slide because I'm a nice guy. I want to go. So I'll let them have two at face value as well. That's

four of the six Sunday tickets accounted for. So he's not going with his fiance to the Sunday tickets. He's getting those. He's giving those to his people and then there's two extra so far, right? Right, right. So younger sister and her boyfriend, older brother and the wife. There's four

of the six. Now, as a big fan of Taylor Swift as my fiance, she doesn't feel the need to go to consecutive nights. Man, this could have been a lot quicker to write this. Like, we get it, dude. But that's alright. You know what? He's passionate about the topic so we'll let it go. We'll keep riding along with him.

She's a terrific songwriter. Alright. Especially with work on Monday, no back-to-back. That's two tickets left over from the Sunday show that are unused by immediate family. I can already anticipate the pressure from my family to sell the last two tickets at face value to an extended family

member or a family friend instead of cashing in on StubHub. Unfortunately, my family already knows about my tickets and if I know them at all, they're already putting out feelers for people who might want to see at the concert. My question is, how big of a dick move if at all would it be to refuse to sell tickets

face value to, say, my siblings' friends and instead resell them on the open market? What about if it's my cousin asking for tickets or my mom's co-worker or is it automatically okay no matter who it is? This guy is really nice. Your mom's co- or is it automatically okay no matter who it is this guy is really nice i'm at your mom's coworker face value ticket fuck judy yeah i i are we you know i i think i already know where we're going with this one uh is this a situation where you should meet in the

middle and sell them for six hundred dollars to friends if bought if i bought them for 200 and get a thousand on the open market it doesn't seem like it would feel any less gross for either part of the transaction because I'm still making good profit off a friend family member, even if it's objectively a good discount compared to the prices they would get anywhere else. I'm a grad student who does have a good job lined up after graduation, but I'm not there yet.

I can't say I'm struggling to make ends meet for my next meal, but the money isn't exactly flowing either. I would really appreciate the $1,000 plus profit I would probably be able to make on these tickets. Plus, they're my tickets and letting my sister have them at face value scratches my altruistic impulse enough for me. Would there be any bad karma generated by

refusing to sell these tickets at cost? If not, what is the wisest way to approach this without getting blowback from all the Swifties in my life that will soon rise out of the woodwork begging to buy these tickets, these last two tickets at face value. Okay, look, you're already doing a lot of good stuff. Like you mentioned, the altruistic itch has been scratched. Kyle, let's face it.

After Saturday's show, all six of those would be going up in StubHub for you, right? 100%. Yeah. 1000%. I'd be like, hey, actually, are you sure you don't have one more friend that wants to go instead of me? Oh, wait, because you're talking about Taylor Swift. Yeah, we're not talking about John Mayer here. We're talking about Taylor Swift.

Let's pretend it's prime Judas Priest. Okay, sure um all right now you can't you can't you have let's in this scenario you're going to the conch you can't sell your own ticket yeah yeah all right so would you you have a sister right yeah okay she's the biggest taylor swiss fan in the world in this scenario you would sell her her ticket at face value right her and her significant other when we're saying face value we're saying what I paid for it yes 200 bucks a ticket right yeah

okay I would and what if she had a best friend no and a husband and you said hey 200 bucks she said 200 bucks for them too no no if she's got a person that's going with her to this concert outside of the other people that would be cool if they could go, I'm probably

not going to dispute. Yeah, everyone can have the $200 price. I mean, at the end of the day, you won a lottery. You did win a lottery. Shouldn't just be like, all right. Because that never happens. It almost never happens. Some people go through their life, never win anything. So you should

be able to enjoy the fruits of winning the lottery every once in a while, I think, because it's a lottery. It's hard to win. Right. And the guy admits he's not flowing with cash. The money would make a difference. You'd feel it. You'd feel that extra G that month, you know.

Maybe you get dessert with Francia a few more times. Maybe you get yourself that sick Ike Bahar button down you've been eyeing at the mall. So Saturday, he's already doing a good deed. Here's the problem. No matter what you do, you're going to lose, right? Because if you go, all right, there's these two extra tickets. We're not going. I feel cool about the first four

tickets going for face value because of immediate family members although you did mention that the younger sister didn't do jack shit but that's what younger people don't do anything yeah so um they didn't put any effort in feels like it's pissing you off a little bit there because you did mention it the problem is you you're you're sensitive enough to the issue that you're gonna it's gonna bother you to be criticized. You need to be kind of ice cold. You need to be a little bit more like Kyle on this because it sounds like you'd like to profit off those two other tickets. And you're saying that your family also is kind of doing a thing which does happen. Certain people have this personality trait where

they start giving away your shit as if it's theirs. Like like oh ryan's got a thing oh ryan could do that for you i'm like hey hey we gotta we gotta dial that down ryan's got six seats in denver i mean right come on let's go yeah we're dialing down the ryan favors for non-immediate people okay so it sounds like you're dealing with that now here's where i say you only lose. If you give the other two tickets, and we're only talking about the two here, to extended people, the mom's coworker deal, which sucks, you're losing money, right? You're losing money by giving those two tickets away at face value. If you were to say, hey, look, tickets are going for a thousand bucks. I i'd like to get he's saying 600 he wants to land right in the middle that seems like a fair number taylor swift is gonna get that hot right

i think he's gonna get that yeah right somebody is going to say can you believe you fucking scout these tickets on me all right and if it's a family member that is going to happen it will happen because instead of the person going hey it's really's really great that so-and-so was able to get those tickets and I didn't get murdered on the secondary market here, it was fine. Now, yeah, there's a small sliver. Save us the emails of people who would be like, I'd be totally fine with paying the extra. Okay, fine, fine. But the way it would normally work, the larger percentage group would be, because it's just the way we are, we kind of suck sometimes. They're going to go,

ah, you know, it was great. I was able to get him, but he got him for 200. He's making 800 off of this fucking asshole. And it appears based on this email that that's going to bother you a little bit. So you kind of lose that way too.

Um, and the fact that everybody knows about the tickets, you can't really do anything about that. Retroactively having said all those things, I still would just go. Cause here's the, here's the other part. Here's another reason why we all suck sometimes sometimes we're just you know man we're just a fucking tennis match of being awesome collectively and being terrible collectively that's what we are is that if you were to sell them to somebody you didn't know for a thousand,

the person that's hoping to get them for face value would have said, oh, if I had known he had those two tickets, I would have paid that much. The person that will say that will be the same person that's going to say, I can't believe he made $800 off of us. Okay? So I'd say, fuck it. And these two tickets, you go to the four people and go, Hey, look, I won six tickets. I want to cover the cost of this. I'm getting married here soon. I've got something that's valuable and land on a decent number where maybe it doesn't feel like you're getting every last dollar. You're telling the person like, Hey,

look, if you want to go, I have the two, but I can sell them for $2,000 total for these next two. If you want to make an offer, I will do it for you for less and make that like maybe face-to-face real communication so that you're reading off and should be like, hey, you can also not go. If you want to go this bad, I'm giving you a discount. So you can't be pissed at me later on. But I don't think you're wrong at all to want to make a little coin back on your good luck. I think an easy way

to get around this is just be like, I don't know what you've told people. It's just be like, just lie and say they're already sold. And just be like, you know, I counted you for, I didn't, nobody's, you know, nobody said anything. You could just pretend like you didn't think about the, you know, the cousins and cousins, friends, and that one guy from that was your neighbor that your mom still talks to his mom or something like you know you could just pretend like you didn't think about any of that shit just be like hey it's already sold and then right now start trying to sell that shit i think it's pretty clear that everybody already knows i think that's a great idea i think it might be too late for that i'm just saying it just seems like unless you were just offering up pages live, be like,

oh, actually they have been sold. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. They have been sold. And you'd be like, sorry, I didn't think about it or whatever. I don't know. Like I said, I don't know what conversations you've had. He's basically saying he knows he's waiting for people to start asking him.

So if you can just try to get the, get the word out there that, uh, the tickets are sold to just be like, I didn't even think about it. I took care of my people. I had these last two. I just, you know, I didn't even think about it. I took care of my people. I had these last two. I didn't even think about it. I'm so sorry, guys. Because even when you give to people, it's like, if there's enough, it's like, why did you give them to me?

So even if you do give them to some people, depending on how many... He says he's got rabid Taylor fans in his circle there, so I don't know how many there are. It could even be a lose-lose depending on who you give them to. You know what you do here? I think it comes back. I bring this up

a lot. Some people really don't like it, but I think one of the benefits of being married is you get to blame the other person for something they didn't do to get yourself out of something. Why can't you just say to the family members, hey, actually, my fiance fucking gave the two away to somebody else. then now they're off

the table it's just that when the other family members show up four deep there's gonna be hey how do you know how do you know tom's fiance you'd be like what dude i got these office stuff up seek whatever i forget i don't know who are our sponsors i? I think right now we're free agents. Yeah, I think we're a man without a home. Okay. This one's quick, but it happens all the time and it just happened to me too. Ryan and Kyle,

I need some help approaching my future wife at the gym. This guy, the title was Zero Riz with Gym Crush. Did you know what Riz meant? Is it like gross or no no game oh okay yeah okay got it yeah you thought it was you thought it was something else that's that's right it's just not a topic there's a certain line i don't feel like crossing on the podcast i don't know what that's about but maybe it's the old disney in me okay so he said again i need some

help approaching my future wife at the gym i'm not the greatest of new people in general again like we said with Van a lot of middle innings guys not many openers not many starters not many closers however she's always running on the treadmill at the gym I don't see how I can get much of a conversation without obviously waiting till she's done timing up my exit with hers I had one chance one day when we both

were actually finishing at the same time she asked if I needed the sanitized spray bottle and smiled. I barely managed a quote, yep, thanks. It honestly seemed like she waited around for a second after for me to come talk to her again. Did I blow my chance? I can't time up my exit on purpose now without seeming weird, right?

Or maybe you can. Or maybe you can. Or maybe it can. Now, did you really get that vibe? Did you really get that vibe? Was the sanitizing thing a moment? You know, like this guy's saying, he thinks this is, you're always going to ask yourself,

what do we always ask guys when it comes to the fairer sex on this podcast? What's your history? Does it happen to you a few times, all the time, never the time, right? So if the emailer thinks he's found his future wife, there's been a few times that women have been interested. Maybe that is a clue. Maybe it is a clue. I mean, it's a little dicey to say, today's climate, yeah, maybe you can time it. Maybe you could just time it say, you know, today's climate.

Yeah, maybe you can time it. Maybe you could just time it just right. On the exit out, you get a smoothie. Tell our man, do you ever get the smoothies? These are great. The berries, PB&J. Are you kidding me? Shout out to berries in Denver.

Kyle, you want to jump in and then I'll tell you what happened to me recently? I was going to say, I think you can do, like he's so afraid of like being weird i think you could do a weird thing as long as you're not being weird doing it you know what i mean like you could it's not weird to like approach somebody from the opposite sex that you're attracted to that's not weird it's been done so many weird times and you know the gym probably isn't a place where you know the the opposite sex is is super into that i think women probably isn't a place where, you know, the opposite sex is super into that. I think women probably aren't super into that where they're trying to carve out an hour of their day.

I don't want to be hit on at the gym. Sure. Yeah, I'm saying it's probably not the best place to do it. But if there's really no other place and, like, you know and you think you have some sort of read on the situation, I think you can do a thing that's awkward or against the norms as long as you're not weird while you're doing it. That's all. I just think you guys should get out of your heads a little bit. But I think it's tough at the gym

when usually people want to be left alone. Yeah, most of the time people want to be left alone. But there are times. Look, I'm just going to tell you. It happened not that long ago. At the gym. Walk in. And a couple guys look at each other.

Specifically one guy who's my boy. And looks at me to be like, have you seen the new girl? I was like, nope, I haven't. And I was like, what? And I went, holy shit. And there she was. Insane. Insane.

Got an audible Jesus Christ out of me as I walked with my buddy. Right? I was like, Jesus Christ. Now, did I do it loud on purpose? Who's to know? Right. And so it was, it was fucking up everybody's day. And then I noticed something.

I noticed a little eye contact. It didn't make a ton of sense. Then there was like a stretching routine going on. And then your boy went over to the cables, six stations. I was like, I need to get away from this. And guess who decided to bypass the two cable stations that were way closer to her to work right next to your buddy, your podcast host here at one of the cable stations that was way further away from where she was and where it was more convenient to work cables. And then you want to tell me a couple of trainers didn't look at me going,

oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, Rosillo, you were due. You're like the chargers. I was going to say. And I was like,

all right, lock in. And I'm doing those, those cable things to failure for the triceps, like Jeremy Scott. And then guess what happens? I don't do anything. And then this tall fucking USC guy sits down with her back at the stretching mat.

They must have talked for an hour. You know how when guys aren't interested, they're not interested. They just keep saying wow to every comment that the girl says. Wow. Wow.

Oh, really? Wow. And I'm watching it all happen. And she's talking the whole time. She could have been happier. I could have had a kid by now. This was going to be a good story, dude have had a kid be a good story dude i thought this was a good story that was a bad story you want to know why because your boy hesitated boys like i don't want to be that guy i don't want to be now there's a really good chance she wasn't remotely interested in me she just liked that cable stand better but

you know you don't your boys thought about it a couple times since then. I could have been saving for college by now, right? But I was too wrapped up in my own shit. I hesitated. And who knows? They could be married by now. They could be married. And I just kept watching this guy say, wow. Wow, he doesn't give a shit what she's saying.

But God, is he having the best time ever. And she seems super personal too. And they just sat and that's it. I haven't seen her since. They probably moved. They probably moved to Texas. Let that be a lesson. Oh, God. I'm not saying freak out. This isn't

a license to start being a fucking weirdo and freaking out out there, boys. I'm just saying pay attention to the signs a little bit more. And if you hesitate, your arm day might be great, but your old heart muscle could be sore. Thank you

for listening to the Ryan Rosillo Podcast. Thanks to Kyle. Please subscribe to our product, Ringerman Spotify. Thank you.