The Ryen Russillo Podcast - NFL Is Back! Plus College Football Early Impressions With Scott Hanson and Brad Edwards

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Russillo shares his thoughts from the first weekend of college football, including Alabama-Miami, Penn State-Wisconsin, Ohio State-Minnesota, LSU-UCLA, and more (0:30). Then Ryen talks to longtime host of NFL RedZone Scott Hanson about the return of the NFL. They discuss the young QBs in the AFC East, high hopes for the Rams with their new QB Matt Stafford, a Chiefs revenge tour, the reloaded Buccaneers, and more (16:22). Then Ryen talks with his former ESPN colleague Brad Edwards about some of the weekend's biggest college football games, schools putting an emphasis on strength of schedule, CFP expansion arguments, Brad’s new book, ‘Dynasty by the Numbers: Why Alabama Now Owns the Greatest Decade-Plus Run in College Football History’, and more (47:23). Finally, Ryen answers some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:25:50). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Scott Hanson and Brad Edwards Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

all right i'm fired up early on a monday here pacific time we're talking football the entire podcast scott hansen nfl red zone his career and the start of the season and then a deep dive the first weekend and bigger playoff expansion stuff by author and my former ESPN co-host Brad Edwards. Life advice. Let's go. Man, what a weekend. This felt awesome. It felt great to see everybody in these stadiums. It felt normal.

It's amazing how much you can miss certain things. I went to my first game since 2019. I think since the title game, yeah. Because I didn't go to a game last year. So for me personally, going to LSU at UCLA and just feeling it again, there's nothing like it. There's nothing like college ball. And let's talk about it.

All right, I'm going to run through this because we've got one week. I could do a very simple and predictable, not original, hey, overreaction Monday, which is still what I'm going to sort of do a little bit there. but that's just what it is. We can't help ourselves. We're excited. I mean, you could make it really negative, but honestly, it's about excitement. And it's the fact that we have only first impressions. I've always said this about college football. We are the least informed on this sport of all the major sports that we talk about. At least with the NFL, you have an idea, even if a coach can make a huge difference.

Baseball, hey, where are your pitchers and basketball? How many great players do you have on your team? College football is entirely different. And that's why Stanford Steve and I have always made that joke. We used to make all those years working together. Preseason rankings would come out and be like, oh, that team's top 10. What happened? Quarterback's back. We like the coach and they won their bowl game. All right, done and done. And then we're either right about it or completely surprised. You're like, yeah, you guys forget about the seven other people that are missing from that team. So we are the least educated on this. And that means the first week is first impressions. And if we relate it to just normal interactions with people,

think if you spent three hours with somebody and they acted terrible, then it'd be really hard to convince you that they were anything different than that. And that's what happens in college football is we have these not only high expectations, forget people, high expectations of a team. We spend three hours with them on a Saturday and it doesn't go as well as we thought it was going to go, that's a very bad first impression. The difference here is you're going to get 12 impressions and the guy that you may have hung out with for three hours

that you didn't like all that much, you're probably not going to hang out with him 11 more times. So that's where we can make the mistake. First impression, biggest game of the weekend, Georgia and Clemson. We know it was about the defense. 15 sacks now for Georgia going back to the Cincinnati game. They're loaded with guys.

I mean, Jordan Davis, number 99, 6'6", 360, moves like he does. There's all sorts of guys flying around for them. But it's the same thing with Clemson. Actually, these teams really mirrored each other. And it's a pick six that decides this. 10-3 score. It's the, I think, first scoreless half for Clemson going back to 2008. But I don't, I mean, it still felt like a coin toss game.

So it's huge for Georgia because of all of the, hey, can Kirby win against equal talent teams? Well, he did. He did. I didn't love the quarterback situation with JT Daniels. In a weird way, I was probably a little bit more concerned with JT Daniels because he had a better time of it than Uyunga Lole. I mean, the hits he took, some were on him. I think Herbstreit was really good on the call. He said he stared down the receiver on the pick six too much.

I thought it was a great play by the corner as well on top of everything else. Dabo said that it was the receiver that ran the wrong route. The second sack, I thought DJ Legg was going to get broken in half. The fourth sack after the pick where they had great field position, he held onto the ball too long. And then on the fifth sack, I thought he was going to get knocked out of the game. So I'm not going to tell you, hey, it was awesome for a Clemson quarterback I have higher hopes for than probably the Georgia quarterback,

but this was a coin toss result, loaded defenses, weak schedules the rest of the way. And as we'll ask Brad Edwards, it's already kind of started up. What will this mean for the playoff? Hey, look, August was last week. August was last week. And we're going to be talking about this game in November, and we could feel differently about these teams. Now,

I don't like whenever we look at the remaining schedule and say, oh, they're favored against the rest of the teams by this average score, and even though we haven't had the surprises the last few years that I tell you that usually always happen, but it hasn't happened in recent memory. I'm not going to now say that this is the tiebreaker and Georgia doesn't have to win the SEC title game.

You can present it. It might be a possibility, but to present it is fact. Again, when August was last week, I'm just not going to do that. What feels like a sea of maybes and uncertainties and then certainties, Bama, again, is the certainty. Now, if you go back to Miami last year, and I used to bring this up, they beat Louisville, who was 18th in the country last year. They were 3-0. They went to that Clemson game, a lot of hype. They scored 17 points. It

was 42-17. I'm telling you, it wasn't even that. There was like one real touchdown in that entire game. They played North Carolina at the end of the season, the regular season. They lost 62-26. They did win their bowl game against Oklahoma State. But the point is that it felt like whenever Miami stepped up talent, it wasn't even close, and that's what we had with Alabama. Now, if you looked at Bryce Young, who was one of the top recruits at the position coming into Bama last year, and he did get some action because Bama was beating so many teams last season, he's more talented than Mac Jones.

But whenever I used to get Saban, whether it was in studio or on the phone, we used to talk to him once a year back on the radio show. I remember the Sims-Coker quarterback debate, and Sims won it, and then Coker wins it the next year, and then he ended up winning a title. Sims wasn't very good in his playoff game against Ohio State because Bama could have won that game too. I asked him, I go, what is it when it's close?

He goes, command of the locker room, respect the other guys. And Mack had it, and I don't think Bryce did as a younger guy, which isn't totally unexplainable, But Bryce is the more talented QB. And then we saw that. And turnover at the receiver position, it doesn't matter. Mechie's there. Williams, Latu, the tight end, who hadn't had any catches. Two touchdowns right out of the gate.

And Evan Neal, that tight end. Excuse me, Evan Neal, their tackle, who's 6'7", 350. And if you saw that box jump video that you've been seeing all offseason, when I was at the LSU game, I was talking to another media member and he was like, Neil looks like a kind of guy who shouldn't even be allowed to play college football. So Bama, not a headline here, feels like a certainty. Miami, the letdown continues carried over for the hype going into these bigger games. Speaking of certainties, we know the certainty is always there with Ohio State's talent, but we got to bring them up as a top team here because CJ Stroud spent the first

half on social media being like, oh, what's up with this guy? You're like, okay, look, not every single top recruit at the position at one of the premier programs is going to look like Tom Brady for the entire first half of his career. All right, it's not going to happen. In the second half, I think Stroud, the five completions that he had averaged like 50 yards per completion. Okay, so they figured it out. If there's a snapshot of each team that I always think about where I go, okay, what's the blink test of this football team? When I think of Ohio State, I think of the slot receiver lining up, getting the post, getting inside, no safety help. And that throw is going to be there multiple times

every time. It happened with other quarterbacks. It's happened with Ryan Day. And it happened in this game as well. Like, you just aren't going to hold up. If I take a snapshot of the old Oregon-Chip Kelly games, it'd be like handoff, handoff, bubble. We're going to throw it out. Eventually, the tight end is going to run wide open down the seam for a touchdown for 40 yards because you're not going to stay disciplined enough that entire time.

So, against Minnesota, which is a better football team, even though Minnesota looked at it in the beginning, they didn't have a chance. Like, look, sometimes these games are going to play out a little differently. So the first impression of them for Stroud ended up being entirely different in that second half. So I don't really think you have anything to worry about with that game. Speaking of some of that snapshot stuff, Oklahoma. Now we know that the defense was supposed to be better. That did not seem to be the case against Tulane. I like Tulane's quarterback, Pratt. I would also place him as the favorite of the only quarterback.

If we had to bet which quarterback would get beaten up by a defensive line for talking shit in a football game, I'd put Pratt as the favorite. Might not even be available on the board. We know that, hey, with this coordinator, another year with him at Oklahoma, hey, there's more talent, there's more depth up front. You know, we love this offseason stuff with football when it's the defense. It's like we're going to make things more simple. Oh, we're going to be football when it's the defense. It's like, we're going to make things more simple. Oh, we're going to be more complicated.

We're going to disguise more. No, we're going to make it easier for these guys. We're going to be aggressive. No, we're going to play less of a zone. We're going to play straight man. No, we're going to mix the coverage, and we're going to do all these different things. All right, fine. They gave up, what, 35 points at Tulane, and Tulane actually had a chance in this thing.

That part seems scary, but on offense, Oklahoma, man, every time I watch them, I'm like, who's 11? Wait, who's four? Oh, this guy's a five-star? Who's Darby? All right, Mims? All these guys running around all over the place, but it also gets back to Spencer Rattler, who I do think has the most arm talent of any quarterback in the country. Rattler is as good as anyone that I've seen, and again, we've got a lot more to watch this season, of putting what he needs to as far as velocity or taking it off. Like he's that good, the touch,

the feel and all those things. Now, as I pointed out before, and this has even happened, I think sometimes with fields and days offense last season at Ohio state, but it certainly happened to other guys as well. And you know, the LSU offense under Joe Brady was explained to me years ago,

kind of like, all right, here's your one, here's your two on this side of the field. And then three is your guarantee. All right. So first, second,

we don't make you scan the whole field and then know that three, the way we set things up, here's your one, here's your two on this side of the field, and then three is your guarantee. All right? So first, second, we don't make you scan the whole field and then know that three, the way we set things up, three is your guarantee. But three isn't always your guarantee. And so then that actually takes you out of the comfort zone of the scheme where you're thinking, oh, wait, I actually have to make some reads here. And I'm not saying no one's making any reads in college football, but I think that there's so much hand-holding at the quarterback position now because the offenses are advanced that even somebody like Rattler,

who some people have as the number one quarterback coming out, I don't think that'll end up happening once the draft actually happens less than a year from now. But Rattler, it's so easy for him sometimes. I see him getting really loose. Now, the second pick was a great pick. The third one that should have been the third one was an awful throw and it was even worse uh pass interference call on that one it's probably more offensive pass interference and sometimes i wonder with some of these

predetermined reads and throws hey man this is the rule zone this is the read here it'll be like oh i didn't even look at that guy it's like are you looking at safeties every now and then are you so locked into these are the rules based on the defensive concept you're facing that you don't actually look at some of the stuff or a safety shading over to you? I do wonder about that, and I think it happens a lot. I don't know if Oklahoma's defense is going to be better. I know that's not what you wanted against Tulane. But again, some of the top playoff contenders, we all seem to want them to win 50 to nothing

where you don't take them seriously. Let's look at another couple teams that we're hoping to be playoff contenders but we also know off the ohio state not dominance against minnesota but dominance on the roster we're like okay what do we make a penn state in wisconsin so number 19 beats number 12 wisconsin at wisconsin i think both teams are good i don't think they're going to be great uh johan dotson had five catches for 102 yards it could have been way worse that guy got free all day long, and he got free deep, and it really is shocking with Jim Leonard's defense in Wisconsin that the safeties could keep making that mistake.

In a weird way, I'm kind of surprised it doesn't happen more often just in the game of football, which tells you how good these guys are in preparation. Yet with Penn State here, they didn't really burn Wisconsin enough with it except for one huge play. Clifford on Penn State's side, it looks shaky all game. My expectations are lower for Clifford at Penn State than they are for Mertz, quarterback of Wisconsin. But then there's Mertz, who as we had Booger on last week,

it was like he had that huge game against Illinois. He's a big-time recruit for Wisconsin. Get in there at that position, like a really big-time deal for them. And as I watched that game close where he had two picks to end it, the second one wasn't as bad as the first one. But the first one, I'm like sitting there going, alright, do you trust that Mertz is going to make the right read? And right now I don't. I don't trust that he's

going to make the right read. And for somebody that's supposed to be a strength where I have higher hopes for him than Penn State's quarterback position, I think when you looked at both those teams, there's guys you like all over the field. I really like Penn State's toughness. I think when you looked at both those teams, there's guys you like all over the field. I really like Penn State's toughness. It was a great win on the road, but my first impression, which

could be wrong here, is that both quarterbacks feel more limiting, which seems it's an aggressive take this soon, but that's what I saw for three plus hours. Florida State, are they better? They have to be better. They're down 38-20.

They hang in there. Jordan Travis, quarterback. In a weird way, they got back in this game running the football because Notre Dame stayed with a three-down lineman formation. And then Florida State's like, if this is what you're giving us, we're just going to keep taking it. They kept running the football down. But Mackenzie Milton, if you remember him at UCF,

two top-10 Heisman finishes. Hadn't played in a game since November 2018. He gets back in. It was the story of this game. Starts, I think, 5-5. The numbers actually could have been a little bit better than that. And they tie this game up and send it to an overtime. Florida State misses the kick at home. So

Notre Dame's probably going to be pretty good. No one's going to care. Florida State might be better. It's kind of one of those momentum losses when you've been down as Florida State, but you have the expectations that you should have when you're in Tallahassee. But I'm not sure. And again, Notre Dame, no one's going to care because of the playoff losses. Iowa State, 16-10 against Northern Iowa.

And that was plus two in the turnover column against a quarterback for Northern Iowa who hadn't played in a couple years versus Iowa, who now has won seven straight Big Ten games. a quarterback for Northern Iowa who hadn't played in a couple years versus Iowa, who now has won seven straight Big Ten games. The average margin of victory here in this one is like 20-plus points. They had two pick sixes against Pennix, who can get a little loose with the football for an Indiana team that still should probably be pretty good. But next week's Iowa-Iowa State game is going to mean a ton, and going into it, it feels

like Iowa is clearly the better team, but Iowa State's better in the rankings, higher expectations. I was at LSU at UCLA. I will admit, I thought the game was going to be good, and I thought LSU would wear them down with their size, their depth. That was not the case whatsoever. Looking up at the scoreboard, you're in the third quarter. LSU has two rushing yards. The final totals, UCLA on the ground, 210 to LSU's 49 yards.

That was a great atmosphere. It was a big win. You guys know me as much as I like LSU. I was really happy for Chip to get this kind of win because I thought he was starting to turn it around a little bit, but it's tough to look at their record last year and say, hey, you know what? UCLA's actually really good. You guys are sleeping on them. But they handled it up front. I don't know if this LSU offensive line is going to be as good as the recruiting would have told you the last couple of seasons. I thought Mack Johnson, a quarterback last year, kind of just playing with freedom.

Hey, we don't have a good record. This season's at a loss. I thought he played more tense. I thought he held onto the football forever. I don't know if there's more issues of trying to figure out some balance in formations of what LSU is going to run. I felt like there were some real disconnects there. It was still a competitive game until it wasn't,

and they really didn't have any answer for a lot of the stuff that Chip and UCLA was doing against them. So that is a great win for UCLA. It's a great win for Chip to kind of remind people that he can coach again because there's not anybody that actually works in the sport

that really doesn't, that doesn't think that guy can't coach. And then, of course, all the LSU questions pop up again, which what I still think is a pretty talented team, but a team I don't think anybody's ever picked better

than to come third in their own division. So we'll see what it means if LSU falls apart and UCLA has a couple of tough losses, we'll look back and say, oh, maybe that win wasn't that big of a deal. I still feel like it was, so I'm not going to shoot it down that way. Speaking of the Pac-12, have a weekend division. Oregon State loses to Purdue. Washington loses to Montana. They face each other 19 times. The last time Montana won was in 1920. It's the first FCS win against a ranked team in five years. Nevada beat Cal.

That's not terrible. Utah State beats Washington State. BYU lost to Arizona. Oregon had a tough one. We'll see what happens against Ohio State. But right now, the Pac-12's hopes are on UCLA and USC. Small note to UCLA, the tweets coming out of that program after that win, and it's a big win, but man, if you're the athletic director

and you're about to send a tweet about your team's win, and you go, hey, would Danny Cannell send this? He would? All right, maybe I shouldn't do it. Because they're doing Get the Gap videos. They edited the video where the UCLA fan told Coach O he's going to get his ass kicked and then Coach O went back to him

and was like, oh, bring your sissy blue shirt. Now they're making sissy blue shirts. So I imagine younger people are like, no, that's exactly what we're supposed to do. You're supposed to never have any wins and then have one win and actually go in a national championship.

I get it. I get it. And I know people are going to say, oh, you just care that way because LSU. No, I don't. I just think it was, I think it going to say, oh, you just care that way because of LSU. No, I don't. No, I don't. I just think it was,

I think it was weird. There's a lot of noise, a lot of noise. And I would probably be way more annoyed if it weren't for Chip Kelly. So there you go. All right.

A lot of maybes, very few certainties after one full week of college football. Scott Hanson, the host of Red Zone. Everybody's favorite show. This is cool, man, because I remember having you on in the very beginning.

Van Pelt and I would be like, hey, are you watching this? Do you realize this thing exists? I'd be like, yeah, I do. I do realize. I knew it was bad when I'd be traveling back from college football, and I would tape the seven-hour show and then try to watch it, knowing I was getting back from some southern city late on a Sunday. So that was

always weird. And then I would try to turn the phone off so that I wouldn't know what happened. So it still felt live. And then eventually sometimes you're like, all right, I'm going to fast forward through here because I always felt like there was some, there should have been some four o'clock Eastern mercy rule when it was Jacksonville that you were going to on first down at their own 15 that it was like maybe maybe i can fast forward through some of this and still have a good idea what happened in week six yeah the late window can be a little slim at at some times and you know if we start there that's a good that's a good place because i get hit up by fans all the time thinking that i stack the games personally from the early window to the late window right right and so when it's

nine two split they're like handsome why don't you move some of those games and i'm like okay well first of all it doesn't work that way second of all it turns out the nfl you know knows how to make money and and that is and you know this but for the audience that doesn't might not know this they want to create us sometimes in the late window, a pseudo-national game. And that's why you're going to see maybe a two-game window, or let's say a three-game late window, where one of the games will be Arizona and Seattle, which this year is a good game, but like maybe more regional Jacksonville, Tennessee, something like that. And then the third game is Cowboys-Giants, and that's where it's being spread out to most of the

country. So now the early window is obviously where it's at, and as we have kind of either dubbed or stolen the name, depending on who you talk to, the witching hour for the end of the third quarter all the way through the fourth quarter of the early window that's really where the that's where the action's at that's the pressure point for the show yeah scholars have argued the origin of the witching hour but no one do you have it's 100% sure do you have a take on it um i don't i mean it's almost like one thing where if something is invented by someone i think the inventors are always forgotten and the promoters are the ones that were remembered so if if my buddies a part of my take are tweeting out the witching hour all the time then it just becomes that it's their thing when i feel pretty

certain knowing that that one of the two are not sitting around one day just saying hey i'm going to call this window the witching hour but the fact that they have the following they have, that it then turns into kind of their deal, which is why I always think it's a little funny, and I don't care if they get pissed off or not. But there'll be certain things that Van Pelt and I had done 10 years ago, and they'll be like, look, it's not even the same thing, but they'll do like a thing,

and then I'll circle back on something I did with Van Pelt, and then they're like, hey, you're stealing it from part of my team. You're like, actually, that's right. Yeah. You don't want to have to parse through and go, OK, let me show you a recording from this time where we did the Boston accents. No one wants to do that. We did or we did life advice or whatever else. So, yeah.

All right. So here's here's something I thought was really interesting because the NFC East over the years, we always kind of knew what to expect. It'd be New England and then a bunch of teams firing their coaches every two years. And now, even with New England, feeling like they're better with Mac Jones.

And I think the Mac Jones decision has to be not only about Mac Jones, but also about Cam's struggles, Cam and Cam to where he was with Mac Jones, and then also his availability with not being vaccinated, which is a factor in roster decisions. That's the grown-up world that these guys are in. We now have a group of four quarterbacks here where they're all really young, and Josh Allen feels like he has the chance to be running the division here now for a long time, which

is a bit of an assumption in assuming no one else is going to be good enough, but the Bills are in a better position now at quarterback than any of the other three teams. Youngest quarterback division, starting quarterback division, I believe in modern NFL history. I think in the Super Bowl era, the elder statesman in the division as a starting quarterback is 25 year old josh allen so uh it'll be fun it'll be fun to watch um i think look at belichick we all know doesn't do anything unless he thinks it's going to win football games so the matt jones decision it's not like well he's the future let's let have the future start now he's he legitimately, I believe, that week one, they have the best chance to win. The cutting cam part, of course, is the interesting aspect of that. And I'm not so

sure it had to do with VAC status or availability. I mean, maybe availability, but not necessarily back status. We saw the sound bite that Belichick gave about, hey, you guys, and you know, Belichick was asked straight up, did his vaccination status or the COVID situation have anything to do with releasing Cam? And he goes, no. And he paused. And then they were moving on to the next question. And Belichick interrupted the, you know, Stacey James or whoever it was, PR person that was running the Zoom and then gave a more elaborate answer saying, by the way, you guys, talking to the media, you guys have the numbers. You might want to look up how many coaches, players, and staff have been infected that were vaccinated. You might not want to lose sight of that. Now,

that's a paraphrase of what he said. So Belichick was almost giving us a vax take, I think, on that, maybe a veiled vax take that doesn't necessarily mesh with much of the public's vax take and its ability to squash COVID. But I think he definitely thinks that Mack Jones is the way to go here. The releasing of Cam is just, it's a curious, it's got to be a locker room dynamic. Or Belichick went to him and said, hey, I'm naming Mack number one. Do you want to be released? Because if you think you can go catch on and be a starter somewhere else by the end of the year it's it's not happening here short of an injury to Mac and maybe Cam said coach I appreciate it that's respect for a former MVP and that type of stuff that's an interesting one I will say this so with the way Mac Jones has uh flashed a bit in the preseason and Belichick uh anointing him

the Patriots might not be as far back as people think. Like, don't necessarily pencil in Buffalo as the division champ. I would probably still predict them, but I don't think it's going to be, oh, it's a fait accompli based upon last year. Yeah, I would say the best part of the Cam Newton story in New England

is that everybody really liked him and that, you know, the locker room thing was always, i think the guys look at him in almost like legendary status you know it's kind of it's not quite mike vick but you could tell like when vick got to a team it was these guys that were just in awe of him and i think cam had a little of that too but i also feel like belichick's answer and just me you know paying a lot of attention to it over the years and being from the area i think if the question were phrased differently, then he would have told the media they were wrong in a different way. I think what he was doing was he was saying, hey, if you guys are implying that this is only because of vaccination, now I'm going to tell you why the vaccination numbers may not back up your position.

Whereas if it were presented as, hey, how much better was Mac on the field than Cam, then Bill may have very likely said, hey, him much better was Mac on the field than Cam, then Bill may have very likely said, hey, him not being available for a week really hurt him. So I feel like he's so anti-media that it'd be one of those deals where however you framed it, he was going to make you, it's almost like, it's a little Popovich-ish, where Popovich, very small birds, because he thinks he's doing this funny routine, will just be like, no matter what you say, he's going to say that you're wrong. Which I look, one of my favorite experiences ever, a guy named Doug Melvin. He was general manager of the Texas Rangers.

This is going back 20 years. He got on with the Red Sox as a consultant in the front office. I was working for the AA Red Sox in Trenton and it's 2002. And of course, anytime any of those front office guys came through, I was trying to pick their brains. That's what I actually wanted to do. I wanted to work in a front office.

And so I went to Doug Melvin. I'm like, hey, I'm Ryan. And he just like, hey, you know, like these guys are getting harassed all the time for jobs. So it's not like they haven't already built up this defense mechanism. But I said, you know,

is it really about developing pitching and just stockpiling as much depth as you can in the six minor league, you know, levels that you have here and all the summer and all this is just back then it was so deep how many different programs you have like isn't just stockpiling arms big numbers velocity just trying over how many arms can we get because somebody get hurt all this different stuff and he was like well keep track of runs and it was like it didn't matter it didn't matter what i said i was just gonna be wrong and i remember even at 26, I was like, okay, that was

a lesson. That was a lesson there. All right. I would like to, if I can follow with this, because you mentioned two guys that, that, uh, one I've dealt with and one I watch from afar, Belichick, I've dealt with them. Uh, I used to be a roving reporter with NFL network before I was the host of NFL red zone. Now, this is going back 13 years, but I was living at the Patriots, right? This was, you know, this was the 16-0 season. This was, you know, obviously they had a run of a decade and a half of excellence. So I dealt with Belichick all the time. I spent a Christmas with Bill Belichick one time, if you want to hear that story. But Popovich, the other one, right? And they're both very similar in a way that I think they feel, they loathe the media so much

that they feel like you are not worthy of my brilliance. Like it would either explode your mind or I see no point in wasting time with you because I'm throwing pearls to swine here. If I legitimately answer a question, uh, do you find them to be the same people or in that respect? Yeah, I think there's a lot of similarities. And honestly, if I had both of their jobs or either one of their jobs for 20 plus years, I probably think the media was a waste of my time too, which is sounding unfair. But like, look, I host a podcast and there's plenty of people that do this job that I've just like, I don't, I don't have any time for your opinions on stuff.

So I don't, I don't, it's not like I don't understand it, but sometimes I think the effort is excessive in being so dismissive. You know what I mean? What's the goal here? To use more energy on something that doesn't even matter? But Belichick, to his credit, if you're in the trusted circle, he then becomes very revealing. I didn't love when he pushed back on the draft pick stuff

recently where and he's like well we've had a few good ones too it's like man you've had a bad run you've had like a really bad run and everybody else would have to answer for it it's okay to ask you these questions but he felt like it was it was not worthy of him being asked but then there's other moments where i think the people that can i don't know you know i don't know how the trust grows i would hope it wouldn't be just, Hey, I'm never going to criticize you, but he cares about history so much that I think in those moments when he's very revealing, it's a huge reward for all of us. Like whenever I've seen some of that real access stuff with Belichick, I think he's incredible. I mean, look, he's obviously one of the most impressive guys who's run a team in any of our lifetimes.

I would never deny him any of that stuff. I just think some of the smaller things are kind of a waste of time. Let's do Belichick Christmas though. Why did you end up at his place? Well, no, no. Okay. I wasn't in, I wasn't, okay. It was Christmas fell on a, it was either I believe this was 2007. So like I was there all the time and Bill comes to the microphone and, and I don't know if you remember how much time you spent at the Patriots. I didn't, I didn't have to do any of that stuff. I was just a talk show. When you go to a news conference, a lot of times they'll send, there's always the cameras there to gather the sound bites, but live reporters, there can be less and less, especially for a Belichick news conference when

they know they're not going to get anything. This is obviously pre-Zoom days, everything else like that. I'm telling you, there were seven photographers there, right? Running the video cameras, but they couldn't care less. They just shooting the cameras there were maybe three physical human beings in the room on christmas day and they had a practice and they had availability so i go and he gets up to the podium and he goes and i'm like thinking i you know i i don't have a wife and kids but i got you know my brother and my sister they invited me to their house for that christmas and i'm here i'm covering trying to get a soundbite out of Bill Belichick on Christmas Day. And during a playoff push, right?

It was week 16, maybe even going into week 17, depending on how the calendar fell. And he comes up to the podium and he goes, well, first thing, Merry Christmas to everyone. He said, I can't do a Belichick, obviously. Christmas to everyone. He said, I can't do a Belichick obviously, but just the fact that he, you know, in his voice just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone. We had a good practice

this morning. He liked that. And I'm like thinking I just heard Merry Christmas from Bill Belichick. Like what am I doing? It was an accounting of my life at the time. That's not a terrible Belichick. I could just see him being like, Santa gets a lot of the

credit, but it's not just Santa. The elves, they have a lot of depth at the elf position. The reindeers do their part. All three phases. Christmas, it's not just one day. You build to it. So I think you guys, the elves, you guys are overlooking

the elves. The bad boys and girls I'm just going to talk about. Good boys and girls that are here. We're trying to win a holiday. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to transition into. Yeah, I know. Yeah. No, no, no.

It's not that the impersonation is bad. I just now I'm like, okay, how do I get into a Rams question? So I'm just going to get out. We both are out here. I'm high on the Rams. I just am because when you look at what McVay was able to do statistically offensively, also realizing if you look at some of the pressure numbers and play action,

Stafford is basically a completely times whatever you want to say version of golf in certain elements of the game that played perfectly what McVay did and yet McVay's offense still statistically held up with golf. I am very bullish on them and the fact that personnel on defense showed us, even at the end of last year, without even having the quarterback part of it because of the injury and everything else, this was still a very competitive team.

So I know there's a lot of excitement out there. We both see it all the time for the Rams. People can make Rams jokes all they want, but I think they're a very serious contender this year in the NFC. I 100% agree with you. I think the fact that Matthew Stafford, I'm quite sure, did not take one snap in the preseason. That indicates to me that McVay saw and heard whatever he needed to see

and hear in the meeting rooms on the practice field to say, we're ready to go. we're ready to go. We're ready to go. And diversity of weapons, obviously the Cam Akers injury is a tough, tough one for them. But the division, it's the toughest division in football, or at least the most diversified division in football, where I could easily talk myself into all four teams winning that division, including the Arizona Carpets. I could absolutely talk myself into them winning it. And so it's the old,

someone's got to come out of there and is going to get the home game. But why not the Rams? Absolutely. Why not the Rams? And Aaron Donald is still the best, if not the second best player in the NFL and Ramsey ain't far behind either. So I could see them putting it together and then I got to score 31 a game to beat people. But I think Stafford will have those types of games. And you want to talk about a guy who's got to feel like he got let out of jail. You know, he wanted that the whole, you remember the whole thing about his house in Detroit? You know, he put up his house for sale in Detroit, you know, big mansion in the suburbs of Detroit and whatnot. And his wife had to go out on social

media and say, no, it's because, you know, we've got a swimming pool and our kids are getting old enough that we think it might be dangerous for them to be around the pool without supervision, like contorted in this whole thing. No, he was done. He gave everything he thinks that he could. And now it's time for him, after making probably $200 million in the league, to say, I got three years, maybe four years, something like that, to win something significant.

And so I think the Rams absolutely could be a major player in the nfc this year and i i imagine and i think i'm remembering this right you you were down for all the in-person stuff for the super bowl this past year despite the limited access correct i was it was very limited but yeah i was there physically on game day and in tampa for a few days prior yeah so the kansas city storyline is really interesting because you go back to that game and you go, okay, your tackles are a mess. They've revamped it. We're talking about it being a different

group, but the group necessarily, when they were healthy, were still really good. If the storyline is played out, like, hey, Kansas City had to overhaul that whole offensive line. Well, you did because of retirements, but not because it was a bad unit all season. It was bad in that game because of the limited availability of the guys that are normally in those positions. Did you get any feel off of that of a Madden Holmes, a Kansas City team that was like,

well, wait a minute, we actually are capable of losing? Because it's just so tough to pick against him. You go through his resume of games, go look at look at even the losses here like none of this is even that bad and then it was horrible on the biggest stage honestly I think they did a poor job of trying to redesign some of the routes and make it a little bit easier in my homes instead of running in reverse 20 yards every snap but did you pick up anything from that from a team that feels invincible and experiencing a really awful night and embarrassing night? Yeah, well, look, they patched it up just personnel-wise, and I think the talent on the offensive line is good enough, but Mahomes does not need a top three offensive line to be able to dominate a game and take over a game, right? I mean, they were a mess, and they came up against

the buzzsaw that was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that I haven't seen a defense peak like that. A defense that was good earlier in the year, but a defense that just got better every week, and they had three or four players that blossomed into stars, maybe even megastars. You're talking about Devin White, the linebacker, and what we knew about Shaq Bar barrett already but um vita vea um but guys that it was it was the perfect storm of bad things that happened and i still think mahomes played one of the better

super bowls i've ever seen played given the circumstances in a blowout loss right now that's not a category in and of itself but the dude still still could have came within this close to throwing three touchdowns, four touchdowns in that game. Bouncing off guys face mask after doing the snowball fight throw or the dodgeball meme throw. Anyway, to get to your point specifically, here's what I'd be worried about if I was Kansas City Chiefs fans. In the preseason, he did take snaps, right? He got into preseason games. There were a couple of plays that I've seen some different film study types diagram where the pocket was there to step up in and he bailed out of the pocket. Now, he might do that because he's one of the most dangerous and effective guys out of the pocket run past,

you know, determination in the middle of it. But the pocket, the routes were there and the pocket was there to be stepped up into and he didn't step up and do it. And it wasn't like a super clean pocket. Like there was going to be some noise in there if he did. And he chose to bail out. Small sample size, but was he impacted by the end of the stretch run and specifically the super bowl last year where he felt like he wasn't safe in there that'll that'll prove itself that'll

prove itself out but that'd be that's but that's nitpicking for a team that almost everyone will have as the afc favorite going into this year yeah i agree with you on the home like i didn't leave that game thinking any differently about Mahomes other than I was actually shockingly impressed still. How is he even doing some of the stuff that he's doing? And then you have a Tampa team on the other side. I was looking through some of the

health numbers. Their return of how many guys played 200 snaps, I think it's the top 31 guys in snap totals from last season. All of them are back oh yeah so they had an unprecedented run of health which is you know just it's the luck of the draw sometimes but the fact that all of that depth is back um is another reason why you believe brady was really that injured last year this whole knee thing that came out during the pre-season or during the uh

off season and into the pre-season you know i, I do, but I think we have like a weird, this is something I've thought about, and I don't know that I've hashed out the thought as well as I need to, but I think there's times where we completely underrate how special these guys are, but then we can also kind of overrate what these guys do with the pain and the tolerance and then the injuries. And I think there's guys that have significant injuries that just play. And if they want that

information to get out, it'll get out. You know what I mean? There's all these defensive linemen with horrible shoulders. And if you went in there after seven or eight years of playing, and then you said, oh, this guy played a whole season with this, this, and this, there's probably another hundred defensive linemen that'd be like, dude, I could say the exact same thing about my deal or anybody that has the tears in the knee. I think the greatest part about Brady is that even with a significant injury, he can find a way to play the position where he's not going to be as limited, especially if we're talking

about like the lower half i mean shoulder for a quarterback you know it's a totally different deal it can be the end of it but i don't want to ever sound dismissive because we've done it long enough where you're around these guys and there's so many times you'll hear about so you'll see somebody you're so impressive but then the media loves to kind of overplay the significance of an injury when it's like it is a significant injury. But you're forgetting that that's kind of the job. If that makes sense. No, totally does. And to the extent that it was injured, you know, we can't the greatest doctors of the world can't get inside someone else's body and and and feel that pain and manage it and whatever.

someone else's body and feel that pain and manage it and whatever. Brady, to your point, to me is like a great UFC grappler. Now, I'm sure you've talked to many more than I have probably, but I've always heard that. Lots of grapplers, yeah. Lots of grapplers. Their specialty is on the ground. No, but when they're in some type of a lock, they can transfer energy to different parts of their body. So they

do not fatigue while they're doing that, whatever the Python bowl constrictor type, type movement that they have. And they can transfer, you know what, it's right here, but I, you know, I can go from my left shoulder to my right shoulder and still get the pressure on his neck this way. I believe Brady is that way. He's that type of an athlete where obviously physically gifted, not so much, but that he knows himself and knows what's required and knows, okay, I can transfer this much energy or transfer my balance or throw it this way where I can get the job done. And he's the most maniacal competitor you and I have ever met. And he would do that and he would say, if the thing tears, it tears, whatever.

I got to get through this, especially in the season last year with whatever he had to prove last year in Tampa. Yeah, he certainly had the motivation. That's why I got to tell you, Florio's tweets every now and then. He had one this week where, I mean, look, he also had something during the season. I know he probably doesn't like me. That's fine. I'll be okay with it.

Probably doesn't like me either, and I'm hot and cold on him. But, yeah, go. But, I mean, he had this Ravens practice deal where he was saying it could be the end of the season. And it was like, man, it's probably not going to be the end of the football season. And then he had this Brady thing where it was like the ultimate middle finger to Belichick would be for the Bucks to sign Cam Newton you're like I think Brady covered the revenge part of this I think he did it last year I think yeah I think winning the Super Bowl is first year away when you miss the playoffs is probably I don't know that's just me I don't I'm not a reporter just a guy at home watching

speaking of being at home watching I want to finish with this. How many years is this now for you? This will be season 13 on NFL Red Zone. Season 13. Okay. You're terrific at it. We know this. It is a unique skill to have because you bring, this is one of the things about Mike Greenberg

that I don't know that people understand how great he is. The sense of urgency that he brings to every single broadcast and carries that through all four hours of the radio show, two, three hours he's doing get up. Greeny has an incredible stamina to the terrific pace that he provides. Like he's very unique in that way. And that's why he's as successful as he is. You have a pace and energy that carries throughout this entire thing, even that bad second slate that we talk about, because like the NBA with the TNT stuff that they used to do more so than they do now,

but they wanted those TNT broadcasts. They didn't want anybody messing with them because they want to be able to use that big number somewhere else. They've gotten more lenient about that, obviously, with the challenges the last couple of seasons. But you have that energy all the way through but you're doing it 13 years i'll ask you did they kind of look at this as like hey we'll throw hansen on this you know like is it that you know what is anybody really

going to watch this and now it's turned into the thing at least for social media uh you know clearly because it doesn't have the ad revenue it's it's probably not thought of as the same way. So is it true to think that it was like, hey, go ahead, man, go do this thing in the beginning, because on the hierarchy of where you're at an NFL network, it certainly wasn't like you were the biggest star and now you've blown up with it. So it's kind of a two part question, which I'm never supposed to do. Give me the origins and then to what ultimately like how much longer you want to do this, because like all of us, even though you own this real estate, which is kind of what we always want, once we get that real estate, we always kind of start to move the goalposts and think about the next thing. Okay. Well, to answer your four-part question.

Yeah, that was a lot there. That was a bad form. My man. Hey, for those watching, I love Ryan. I have been a fan of his and he knows this. Somehow I got a hold of his phone number one time and I used to text you. I'm sitting in my driveway because I used to just listen to the radio in the car. And when you and SVP were doing your thing, for whatever reason, I just didn't have or listen to the radio in the house. I would sit in the driveway until you guys finished the segment because I was so captivated by it. So any busting of chops is all in good fun. But to answer your multi-applied question here, no, one, I got it.

And I think some people probably did think, ah, you know, this is a little sidecar thing that, hey, great, if it blows up. In fact, I had an executive, I won't name him, but I had an executive come up to me during the middle, maybe three quarters of the way through the first season who confessed to me, Scott, nobody knew this was going to be as big as what we feel it will be. And I was like, well, not nobody because I went after it, Ryan. I called the talent coordinator when I heard in the summer before

2009 season when Red Zone began. I said, is it true we're doing this thing and this is how what you're gonna and they're like, yep. And I was like, I want it. Like, put me on the list, audition me, whatever you want to do. And I was already, like I said, a roving reporter for NFL media. So I think they knew about my passion, my energy, my enthusiasm for the game, knowledge of the game. And I got it. And I was like, I sent a text message. And this is going to sound dumb. I sent a text message to Eric Weinberger, the executive producer at the time at NFL Media, and to Steve Bornstein, who is a legend in our business, used to run ESPN back in the day. At this point in 2009, he was running

NFL Network. And I sent both of them, I said, I mixed a metaphor. I said, I'm going to tear the cover off the ball with this thing. Because I envisioned it as a football fan. And I said, if we do this right, there's no better way to watch football. If you're a Packers fan, I get it. You want to watch every snap of the Packers game. I get it. We don't want to impose on that. But if your favorite team isn't playing, what's not to love about NFL Red Zone? So I wanted it, and I sent that text, and I'm not joking. This is going to sound like hyperbole, but I mean it. I was like, I need to have a moment where Tom Brady, legendarily, maybe urban myth, went up to Bob Kraft and said, I'm the best decision your franchise has ever made.

I'm not equating myself to Tom Brady. I'm just saying I really did believe this thing was going to explode and that my skill set would marry well with it. To answer the second part of the question, how long can I do it? I don't know. I just signed a new contract. Thankfully, I'm very blessed in a changing media landscape. I signed a multi-year deal. I do it for the money too, so as long as the money is good, but can I keep up the enthusiasm

and be real with it, to be genuine with it? I don't want to be like some people in our business, and I won't name names who have gotten their shtick and they just like, ah, and that's what they do when they get on the air. Like my enthusiasm, I guarantee you, Ryan, week one, we're right around the corner here. I'm going to try and pin the needle with the enthusiasm because I know our audience is that way.

And as long as I can keep doing that, as long as I can tap into that, as long as I can tap into that and serve the audience in a way that they love, and I still have fun with the job and my bladder still can handle the requirements, then I'm going to keep doing it. As long as y'all have me, I'm going to try and do it. I feel like your urination patterns have been covered for years now. So I'm glad that we didn't have to go into it you can follow scott hansen at scott hansen and we're just i don't know man we're just about a week away from it so i can't wait to check in and have another great season

man i appreciate it we'll see you on sundays ryan great to be with you i'm really excited to talk my man here brad edwards. For those that don't know, we were at ESPN together. We traveled for, I think it was five years because I did college game day for six years, McShay that first year, and then Trevor Maddich, Brad and I, a lot of stories from the road over those five years. And one of my favorite dudes to talk college ball with, my favorite part of him was when he realized it was like, hey, you don't follow me on Twitter. And you were like, why would I follow you? He's like, there's a lot of NBA stuff. Like I am only about college football. That's all we want. And he wrote a book about Alabama.

He went to Alabama. He's actually not a crazy Alabama homer. He was always very, very neutral about it, which is hard to do. And he is probably as smart as anyone I've ever talked to when we're talking college ball. So it's good to see you, man. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you. I have to come back and join you every week for all those compliments, get my self-esteem up. I really appreciate it. I've missed you, man. It was fun all those years and haven't seen you since you left Bristol. Yeah. Wow. You've been busy or something. Yeah, I know. It's almost like I moved. For those that don't know, Brad's just a machine. He's just a machine. And, you know, I actually use Brad as an example when younger people ask me about the business. I go, you know, the best thing you can

do, it's not easy, is you have to find a way to be valuable to a company in a way other people aren't. And so like McShay's an example. I go, McShay and another guy started up this scouting service. They started writing their own reports and ESPN were like, these guys are really good. Let's go ahead and buy their company. You know, Brad was somebody that worked in research behind the scenes. Cause you'd just be like, Hey Brad, what's going on with the BCS? And Brad lived with all these other ESPN employees that I was friends with too, back in the day when they're all younger. And Brad was the guy that figured out how to project the BCS formula. Right. And now once he explained it to me, I'll admit, I was like, Oh, I think

maybe this isn't as hard as daunting, but it was so scary. And then that's what Brad did. Brad was the guy that went out as a researcher and then was in front of the mic, in front of the camera, because he was the guy that was like, what do you think is going to happen? And the years spent with Brad helped me understand the BCS. I thought as well as anybody else that was on the air that wasn't Brad, because you're you and I had the resource of you. Although there was a couple early Sunday flights where I was just like, Brad, I don't care about Iowa State. Overload. Shut it down, man. Getting a seat next to me on a plane when I was in college football mode was always a dangerous thing, even if you didn't know me.

You know, just you bring it up. You're going to you're going to have your ear talked off until that plane touches down. But, yeah, it was hard for me to turn it off at the same time. I guess that's why a seven hour show was a good thing for me on Saturday. I never ran out of gas. So of all the things that you taught me and I think, you know think people looked at the transition of the BCS, okay, well, teams and programs need to start doing these things. I'd go, maybe. Maybe they do. Now with the playoff, it was like, okay, now it's totally different, so teams should do this. This is important.

Let's just start with this, kind of a surface question. How much of a difference do you think it is now whether you're an ad or scheduling your conference and you're trying to trying to juke things a little bit because i want to get to some of that stuff that used to happen maybe it's still happening or how how much do you think it's really changed and how programs present themselves as far as perception to try to get a bunch of people in the room to think their team is good i think as far as scheduling uh what you've seen a lot of in the last couple years is this belief by athletic directors that the playoff is going to expand. And because of that, there's going to be more value in just putting it on the line in the non-conference and maybe more reward than there is risk.

The problem is we're still at a moment now where with the four-team playoff, I don't know that there is the same risk-reward balance. And that Georgia-Clemson game, I think, is going to be a fascinating study if you get to the end. And if Georgia were to, say, win out all the way to the SEC championship game and then Clemson wins out, was it really worth it for Clemson to have played that game? Or are they going to end up getting shut out of the playoff as a one loss ACC champion because of it. I mean, there's obviously so much that could still happen. But, but I, I think that's one of the things that, you know, ADs have kind of been looking at is this idea that strength of schedule is

going to matter. We were told with the start of the playoff, strength of schedule is, is one of those components that they would want to really consider highly. But up to this point, and I'm not saying that there's an example I can point to of an egregious omission, but the reality is we've yet to see a two-loss team make the playoff. I think we all know in 2017, Auburn would have gotten in with two losses if they hadn't lost a third time in the SEC title game to Georgia. It can happen. It would have happened in that instance. But are we really going to see the selection committee go out and say, hey, you know what? This team's got two losses, but we think that they're better than that one loss team.

And the reason we think they're better is because of who they lost to. who they lost to. And so until we see that play out, I really don't know that there is this advantage in going out and testing yourself out of conference because it still seems that to the majority of people in that selection committee, that loss column is the most important criteria. Yeah, you're right. I just think it's human nature when you look at it and you go, hey, there's a loss in there. And that's why I think in the BCS era, as much as we want to talk about strength of schedule, I wouldn't have scheduled anybody if I were in AD. You know, I always respected the programs. And a lot of the top programs did do this.

Like, give me one game. Just give me one. Back when it was always eight conference games and four non-conference. Just give me one. You know what I mean? Don't give me four non-conference. Right. But, you know, some schools, whether it's SC, you know, Stanford, you know, Ohio State's always scheduled really well.

LSU would always take on a bunch of different people. Alabama's had always this kind of neutral site thing, which is now going to run its course where they've dominated these games. By the way, why do teams continue to take those games from Alabama? I mean, Miami-Philates example, all you're doing is guaranteeing that you're going to start the season on a bad note. I think the average score now is it 30 in those games and we went to a couple like remember going to bam we were at several of them we were at bam in michigan and it's so funny too because you know the other programs a big time program with history they're coming in everybody's hype the kids are talking themselves into it they're on the sideline they're waving the towels and it's fucking 14

nothing five minutes later. Yeah. And look, Miami, we'll just use Miami from this past weekend as an example. They were ranked number 14 going in. They might legitimately be a top 15 team. They sure didn't look like it. And they're going to come away from that game dejected and believing we're not even a top 25 team. Like, we were so overrated. And it could take five weeks for them to get their

confidence back and they might never get it back. And that's the danger in playing a game like that. It's like, you know, sure you go test yourself against the best, but you know, I don't know you, you know, you really became a college football fan about 15 years ago, right? Yeah. I mean, look mean look i i loved it i always liked it um but the level that i was at at espn and then traveling and then being all over the country getting to experience this i mean it's just like as much as we all love the nfl the saturday thing the geography the way the culture is attached to the program sometimes

how the program and the staff and their style attached to the program, sometimes how the program and the staff and their style of play represents where they are in the country. It's just unlike any other sport that we care about this much. So yeah, I would say that even though I have depth of knowledge going back historically of just being a guy on TV, like the level that it cranked up to in 06 when I started at ESPN. So 15 years is a perfect number. Yeah. And so right around that time, I mean, 2007, we had one of the craziest seasons of all time. You know, you had all this rotating going on in the top two teams losing left and right. And I think somewhere a little bit more than 10 years ago, we were at a time in college football where it was very possible in a given week for number 20 to knock

off number one, where you had a lot of instances where the top ranked team or maybe the top three or four, they probably had more talent overall, but their quarterback wasn't as good. And so if you've got a guy like a Matt Ryan, you know, you can, you could on a given day, knock off a number one or a number two and end up having a great season. You know, we, we saw a bunch of those through the years where you had like a, you know, Phillip Rivers at NC state, Eli Manning at Ole Miss, where they're, they're supporting cast wasn't as good, but they were so much better at the most important position that, that they were able to pull an upset here and there. What's happened in recent years

is that the teams that have the most talent overall, and they're like four or five of them that just load up on the four and five stars every season. If they have a quarterback, I mean, if they have a really good quarterback, no one other than the teams in that group of four or five is capable of beating them. And we saw this with LSU a few years ago with Joe Burrow.

I mean, with all the other years LSU hasn't had a quarterback, you know, they've been prone to being upset by teams outside of that group. But when they had Joe Burrow, no one had a shot at him except an Alabama or a Clemson, someone on that level. And now we're, you know, we're seeing this where, this. Obviously, Alabama is about to have its last three quarterbacks all start in the NFL on day one. How many teams in the country, even if Alabama goes out and plays its C game,

are capable of beating them if they have a quarterback at that level? You would have to have a bad coach, which is not the case at all with safety. You would have to have a guy that would be like frustrating and stubborn as a play caller and have Bryce Young throw four picks. You know what I mean? Like the Ole Miss game. Remember the Ole Miss game at Alabama?

Yeah, it was a Chad Kelly game. And Bama still had the ball with a chance minus five in the turnover column. Right. Minus five in the turnover column with Ole Miss also having scored a touchdown on a ball that the quarterback threw as he was falling down, it bounced off somebody's helmet into the hands of a receiver who took it 50 more yards for a touchdown. So it took all that stuff for Ole Miss with a pretty good quarterback to be able to beat Alabama. And so I guess what I'm getting at is I think things have shifted now

to not only our – see, we've also entered this phase of college football where it's no longer defense wins championships. I think the last people who were holding on to that have finally relented now and will admit, okay, that just having the best defense in the country is not going to get you very far if your offense isn't well above average. And then, of course, that's a concern if you watch that Georgia Clemson game the other night. If you're a fan of either team, like, okay, defense is really good. But these days, if your offense isn't a lot better than what we saw, and look, I mean, a lot of that was good defense, but both of those teams have a long way to go on offense as well.

You know, can you beat an Alabama if you can't play a lot better offense than that? And I don't know. And I think that's one of the things that's made this premium on quarterback such a big deal. And when, you know, when you've got, you know, Tua and Mack Jones and you've got, you know, Dwayne Haskins and Justin Fields and you've got Sean Watson and Trevor Lawrence,

it's like, who else has a shot at knocking off one of these teams? And I mean, obviously you got Oklahoma from a talent standpoint, pure talent across the roster is not at the same level as those other teams. But when you've got a Baker Mayfield and a Kyler Murray, even a Jalen Hurts, you got a puncher's chance. And everybody else in the

country pretty much has no chance. And of course, Georgia is up there with those others talent-wise, but up to this point, they haven't had the quarterback who was quite good enough to be able to knock off two of those teams in a row. And so that's why, unfortunately, we're at about the most top-heavy stage of college football that maybe there's been since the very early days when all the Ivy League teams were dominating. Yeah, that part of it is frustrating because I loved that 07 year. It was my second year at ESPN.

It was the first year I started going to some of the games. And Brad used to write the research pack for all of us. And it was funny because you could see how when we get... Brad also tipped me off to this one. Each school would send out their research packs. And I remember the one that really pissed us off. It was Oklahoma State. Once A&M and Missouri went to the SEC, Oklahoma State's information department started counting those wins as SEC wins. Oh, yeah. Because they had left the conference years later. And Brad's like, wait a minute, did you see this note? And I was like, yeah, I saw the note. And then the other one was 07, like Boston College was ranked second, speaking of Matt Ryan that year. Cal made its

number two. Wasn't it West Virginia a pit game away from playing for the national championship? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. this is 2007 in a nutshell. 2007 is the most ridiculous year of my lifetime in college. We'll probably never see it again. But we were if Dennis Dixon of Oregon does not blow out his knee on a Thursday night game, I think it was against Arizona. Yeah, it was. You could have you could have had an Oregon versus West Virginia national championship

game. And even if you take one of those teams out, you also had Missouri and Kansas that were in position late in the season. Now, one of them was going to have to beat Oklahoma, which probably wasn't going to happen that year. But the fact that you've got all these teams that were, I mean, it's not just they weren't blue bloods. I mean, these are teams that have been, you know, way off the radar for not just most of college football history, but even a lot of them for recent college football history at that time. Just kind of came out of South Florida, I think, got up to number two that year. It was a weird, weird year where, you know, you just had programs that you weren't used to seeing there.

And it was a lot of fun. Of course, it still ended up with LSU and Ohio State in the national championship game. And you get same old, same old, but it was fun while it lasted. No, it's a good point because if you go back to the early 90s, that Colorado, Georgia Tech stuff, and you're like, oh. So some people argue, hey, guys, it's always been this top heavy. But this is unfortunate with a new format. It's probably what will lead to the expansion happening, which we know is going to happen. We always knew it was going to happen. It didn't matter what they said, because whatever they had set up the system, they probably weren't expecting that Ohio State, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Clemson were going to take up 20 of the first 28 playoff spots, which is to your point, you know, you're loaded every year.

And now you're all these teams are adding NFL quarterbacks every time. How are you supposed to compete with them? When I watched the Big Ten slate this weekend, even if Ohio State looks shaky, which as I mentioned in the open, hey, guess what? Not every single top recruit is going to look like a first-round pick, the first game he plays in his career, especially when it's kind of a prime time one for C.J. Stroud against Minnesota. Minnesota is a capable football team. You know, Flex brought in more talent. It's a conference game.

But now if you're looking at the Big Ten, because I want to ask you how this relates to what the Big 12 used to do. In the BCS era, let's just do it this way and you take it wherever you want to go because now the Big Ten has a bunch of losses because they all played each other. This is the opposite of what the Big 12 used to do in the BCS. What was that? Yeah, so the Big 12 would play all their non-conference games up front, and then they would kind of backload the conference schedule

so that what they thought were the best teams in the league will all be playing each other in November. And so you're going to end up, by default, with a bunch of teams that are 8-0, 9-1, things like that going head to head. And you're going to you're going to basically manufacture top 10 matchups. They might not be in reality top 10 teams. They certainly didn't all finish there. But at the moment, you know, it looks like a huge game.

All eyes are focused on that game around the country. And, you know, it ends up being one of those showcase games where the winner gets a huge boost from it. And I think that's what the Big Ten will probably miss out on this year, if the wrong teams lose these conference games early. And I'm not sure, not sure if they did. I mean, obviously, Ohio State got through, you know, Penn State might be the better team than Wisconsin. But I think, you know, all things considered that neither one of them looks like a team that's going to beat an Ohio State team once it gets more experience under its belt. So, you know, I don't know, that might still be a one-team league as far as all that goes. But yeah, at the end of the day, you know, you're kind of setting up for,

you know, going into October with these teams having more losses than they normally would, they're going to be further back in the rankings and it's just going to be more work to try to climb up and create top 10 matchups in the second half of the season in that conference. And, uh, you know, I don't know at this point, at this point, if you're the big 10, you're just hoping that, that maybe Iowa is as good as they look the other day and that they, you know, make a nice run to the big 10 title game and you get a high profile conference championship that's that's kind of the best case scenario at this point barring michigan finally doing something yeah you know that really hasn't been the case though for the big 10 where you feel like okay let's get this marquee

title game we've almost always gone into it with this revamped version of the big 10 the legends and leaders era where you were like wait what you know like what's this is a bit of an afterthought and i think look you can still say the same thing for oklahoma in the big 12 like we're so focused on every team not only getting the playoff but being a championship winner you know we're really i think one of the unfortunate things with college football with the not just realignment but the importance on the playoff the importance the importance on the playoff the importance the importance on the bcs title game is we're incredibly dismissive of other accomplishments

like we act as if the rose bowl is boring now i don't but you know i think there was even an oregon team one year they're like oh the rose bowl again and you're just going do you guys know your own history well of course you don't or the the oklahoma running this big 12 where it's like what they're doing is amazing and i'll admit there's there's probably multiple times a year where i'll look at oklahoma on certain weekends where i go they okay this these this team is different this team is different look at the o-line no one's going to be able to rattle them they can outscore everybody yeah i know the defense isn't what we want it to be elsewhere we could even say that off the first week because

the hope was oklahoma coming in was better defensively i don't know if it's it's just that week one against Tulane and the game got kind of weird because they got up early. I don't have an answer to that. But when Oklahoma loses, they had the Georgia loss to come back in the playoff, but the other three losses they've had in the playoffs are against maybe the best LSU team we've ever seen. Alabama and Clemson is one seeds. The same thing happens with Notre Dame where people are like, oh, I'm so sick of them. And you're like, what? You're sick of a team that's actually good enough

to actually get to the playoff? And so even with Notre Dame going down and beating Florida State, which, you know, they were up and it was a scary moment for them in Tallahassee. My thought is that they're still a good football team,

but we don't, we're like, we don't care about any of it anymore. You know, the national conversation. Yeah, go ahead yeah what you're talking about Notre Dame at the moment is a great example because who would have ever thought that Notre Dame could do something quietly right but but they have like under Brian Kelly over the last five or six years they have become probably five years they have very quietly become a solid top six to top eight program in the country. They're one of the few teams that you can count on every year to be in contention for the playoff,

and they're going to be really good. There's just such a gap between them and the very best teams that it makes them seem insignificant. And even as you watch them like last night, you're like, you know what, they might. I mean, look, they didn't look like a top 10 team last night, but I think they still could be. But are they good enough to be able to beat a one or two seed when they get to the playoff? I don't think they are, and I'm not sure that they will be. And I think that's

unfortunately where we are with the sport at the moment is that there's such a big gap between the top two or three teams in a given season and everyone else. It just kind of sucks all the fun out of it because, you know, it's one thing to get into a playoff. And, you know, I mean, you were on that show with me for all those years and it was really pre-playoff. In fact, I think your last year on the show, the last show we ever did together, was before the final BCS championship game out in Pasadena. And so I've kind of gone through this playoff era, and I've said it so many times in recent years, there's a difference between being good enough to make the playoff and being good enough to win it.

There's a big difference between the two. And we've seenoff and being good enough to win it. There's a big difference between the two. And we've seen it play out with a lot of fours. Now, granted, there have been two fours that have won. So it's not true every year. But a lot of years, even at the midway point of the season, you can tell that's the case. And we don't want to believe it as sports fans, because we see every other sport out there, where if you just get into the playoff, you got a chance. But college football is not like that. I mean, football in general is just one of those sports because there are 11 guys out there on the field and you've got 22 different guys when you include both the offense and the defense. You know, it's not one of those where you get the,

you know, one or two shooters get hot in basketball or a pitcher to get hot in baseball, you know, the overall talent is going to prevail in football, even in a one game scenario like that. It doesn't even have to be a series. And so I think that's the unfortunate thing about it is that it's just so difficult to get excited about a one versus four game in most of these years with the playoff. And why do people think it's going to be better if we expand to eight or 12? I mean, do you have any idea what one versus eight is going to look like? We can only hope four versus five just delivers an awesome game every year because that's the only way it's going to get any better. Yeah. The reason people want it is so that they

don't feel like they're getting screwed anymore. And I would argue you weren't really getting screwed during this version of it. Right. But it becomes personal. It's inclusion. Right. It becomes really a selfish thing. The biggest thing that I learned about college football fans, and I've done this rant two different times, once on the podcast and once on the radio show, where you're just so used to getting screwed over in daily life that you just apply the same principles to your college football team. You know, there's still Oklahoma State fans that feel like they should have been in the game against Alabama.

And you were like under no. Yeah. No, no. I mean, against Alabama instead of LSU. Right. Instead of the rematch that we got. And every argument that I heard was terrible. You know, and it was it was just there was no lining this team up against this team saying

yeah this team should be playing in the national championship and more often than not when you look at it and i guess sometimes the national conversation reaction in notre dame like notre dame supposed to apologize for being in the playoff twice like after notre dame loses one of those playoff games that none of us really probably expected to win deep down maybe we thought to be more competitive uh it turns out i never want to see them in the playoff again i mean the same thing happens to oklahoma and you're just going like look what what are we supposed to do not be here like who do you want and that's why i'm with you right would you rather see right would you rather see a weaker team is going to get beat worse and that's why with the playoff

expansion which hey when it happens i'm going to watch the games we're going to talk about we're going to be all excited but i i think the inclusion part of it blinds people to what the actual product will be. And I also think from a playoff committee standpoint and whatever, they'll probably revamp that to make it feel new and it won't matter. Is that, okay, so we get the non-Power 5 in there when the 8-12 version. All right, whatever. Cool. Fine. But do you think you're going to get a second non-Power 5, 11-1 team

in the playoff for a national championship? Or do you think they're just going to say, hey, you know who we really liked was 4-Loss Auburn this year? You know what I mean? That's what I think is going to happen. And then you're going, why did we play the 12 then? And I'm not going to say, oh, the regular season is diminished. You are still diminishing a little bit,

but not so much that the returns are still going to be great with viewership and TV dollars and all that kind of stuff. But I don't know that people really I think the first thing you say is, oh, great, they expand it. My team will have a better chance of getting in. And then when it gets expanded, you're going to go, why is this team even like, what are we doing with this team right here? Like Florida lost three of the last four games. And because they finished 12th, we like their strength to schedule better than Nevada. Like what,

what? And that's, what's going to happen. So go ahead. Yeah. I do think it will be good for the health of the sport, you know, not necessarily for legitimizing the champion or anything like that.

In fact, not at all for legitimizing the champion. The champion that. In fact, not at all for legitimizing the champion. The champion is already completely legit. But to give all the fans west of the Rockies the knowledge that they're going to have a team in there, they have something to root for. They have a reason to watch after the middle of October because it feels like it's been three years in a row

that we just completely dismissed the Pac-12 at the midway point of the season. West of the Rockies, Brad? It's like west of Chicago. Well, and that might be true, too, if you don't consider Oklahoma to win the whole thing. Right. No, I mean, I guess I was doing a, you know, sort of a slanted go. Yeah. But look, I think that's bad for the sport, right? You need people to at least think they got a chance to get in there. And you know from NCAA basketball tournament, for everyone, it's not about winning the whole thing. To just get into it and win a game makes the season a lot of fun for a bunch of teams out there.

And maybe that's what we would gain from an expanded playoff, is that you're going to have a lot more fan bases that are more excited about the way, even if it ends with a loss in a semi-final they're going to come away more excited than if they had won the fiesta bowl you know as a you know second tier new year's six game um and and and so look that that's that's good because i mean look this is another one of those years where we got oregon coming up against ohio state if Oregon loses that game, and I think at this point we'd all expect them to, what are you watching for the rest of the year in the Pac-12? You're hoping that USC or UCLA can run the table? I mean, it's almost diminished to that by the end of week two.

And, I mean, I don't know. week two and i mean i i don't know i just i i hate it because i've been out there with you for many of those you know games when those teams were good like usc oregon washington um there's some great fan bases and some utah utah atmospheres yeah and and i just i hate to see it where they feel like they're not really even a part of the sport. And so that's something that does need to change. Yeah, I'm with you on that one because I feel like, especially now, but look, if we had the playoff system, I'll back it up even further. The BCS lucked out so many years where you were like, oh my God, what are they going to do with this, this, and this?

And then we'd have these wipeout final weekends where the BCS got off the hook so many times. And then the BCS people who told us we were never getting a playoff were like, see, it worked out. It worked out. And you just go, okay, we don't even have a decade of information on the playoff format. If we did the four-team thing over 20 years, we would get some of these results that people seem to think are impossible that are never going to happen. But the fact that it's happened in such a top-heavy'm i'm with you i hate i hate some of the conversations

we have about this i mean it goes back to one of your first points off the clemson georgia thing but clemson could have won that game it was decided on pick six all right yeah that's it it was it was kind of a coin toss game and you don't want to be dismissive of what we saw from georgia's front because it was horrifying and this is a a carryover of what we saw last year as they closed the game against Cincinnati or closed the season against Cincinnati, even though they could have lost that game in Georgia. So we're going to sit here and think that,

okay, well, this is what this game, this is what this result means in November into December. We don't know that. But the problem is the last five years is that we would. We would already know it. I just think we have to remember how different we are in the moment around these conversations where if Clemson is rolling through the ACC, which they should because of that schedule, that you know there are going to be conversations. There'll be topics on talk shows in November where it is,

hey, is anybody playing better than Clemson right now? It's going to happen. And then if you go back to that first game, you can start talking yourself into a version of that Georgia-Clemson outcome where it actually doesn't mean as much and that it isn't this tiebreaker of Georgia were to lose in the SEC title game. And I think people lose sight of that because the game was two days ago. Yeah, it really is predictable in a lot of ways. We can already script out what the conversations are going to be in November and first week of December. You see it coming from a mile away because you look at

these schedules. I mean, just back to the point of how difficult these teams are to beat when they have a good quarterback. I mean, everyone, it's probably not going to happen. Someone will slip up because that's just the nature of college football, but it's easy to look at it right now and say, Alabama and Georgia are going to be undefeated going to the SEC championship game. I mean, there aren't a lot of landmines out there. Honestly, if you look at the schedule for both of those teams, you know, Clemson's probably going to run the table. They're going to be undefeated. And so if you're looking at it from that standpoint and you're not allowing for chaos, you can really talk yourself into thinking and what I'm about to say might end up being true. But it

certainly kind of aligns with this idea that these other teams are all going to win out. The Iowa-Iowa State game this weekend could be huge for a one-loss Big Ten champ versus a one-loss Big 12 champ. I mean, you could see a scenario where Iowa is in the Big Ten championship game, Iowa State is in the Big 12 championship game, Iowa State is in the Big 12 championship game, and an Ohio State or an Oklahoma is beating one of those teams. And it's like, okay, who deserves it more, the Big 12 champ with one loss or the Big Ten champ with one loss? And the answer is going to be, well, whoever beat the winner of the Iowa-Iowa State game

is the better team. And as ludicrous as that is, especially as much as we know about that Iowa-Iowa State game is the better team. And as ludicrous as that is, especially as much as we know about that Iowa-Iowa State rivalry and how just insane the results can be in week two each season. Like some of these teams look so bad in that game, then they look so good later on. It shouldn't mean anything. But, you know, the selection committee is always trying to connect dots. And they're going to learn something about this team because of what they did against that team,

that did this against the other team. And it really could end up being a very meaningful game as far as who gets into the playoff. And that's even assuming that neither Iowa nor Iowa State actually gets in. But as far as conference strength, which conference is better, it could end up being a big deal. Yeah, it's a huge game, and it's a great point, too. There are times you thought you knew that game was going to go completely one way, and then it doesn't make any sense, and then what you thought of the team that ended up losing

ends up having this great season. You're so right about that game, and shout out to Ames this weekend. I came away from Saturday completely convinced Iowa State is winning that game and shout out to Aims this weekend. I came away from Saturday completely convinced Iowa State is winning that game. Because if you watch both teams play this first weekend, there's no reason to believe Iowa State can come within single digits of Iowa. But it's just, both of those teams are just so unpredictable

the first two or three weeks of the season. And I mean, I guess to some extent it makes it fun. Both of those teams are just so unpredictable the first two or three weeks of the season. I guess to some extent it makes it fun. If you're a fan of theirs, you probably wish they'd be a lot more consistent. But that's the way that rivalry goes. Yeah, and Iowa State won't play another ranked team until Texas. I mean, unless something weird were to happen with K-State and put it on Stanford. And then if you look at Iowa, well, they're going to have Penn State in there.

And I think at the very least, Penn State's got a lot of guys defensively that can challenge you. But as I said in the open, I don't know that I love the quarterback situation there. Before we let you go, you've got a book out. I'm so proud of my guy, Brad. Dynasty by the numbers.

Why Alabama now owns the greatest decade-plus run in college football history. My thought would be that your family got sick of you and they said, go downstairs. And then after the weekend you came upstairs and you were like, I wrote a book. Yeah. Obviously,

you know, doing all the stuff that I was doing at ESPN, I was very dialed into the numbers. And as Alabama started to, you know, extend this run of dominance, there were so many things that would come up where it's like, man, nobody's ever done this before, or, you know, very few teams have

ever done it. And now Saban's done it twice, or maybe three times. And you start looking at it, and it's like, okay, there's a bunch there. And when I set out to write it, the idea was that, I just want to show, not that Alabama has been the best team in college football over the last 12 or 13 years, because even an Auburn fan would admit that. Right. But I want to show how much better they've been than everyone else in the sport. I mean, six national titles in 12 years. I mean, that number itself should tell you. But I knew there would be a lot more numbers that would tell that story just as well, if not better. And that's what it does. But in the process of putting all of it together, it became evident to me, and I spent a lot

of time working on the college football 150th anniversary a couple of years ago for ESPN. I know the history of the sport. It became evident to me that if you look at stretches of a decade or more, nobody has ever been able to sustain this level for that long. I mean, you're now at 12 years, 13 years, if you want to start at 2008 when they first got to number one under Saban. I mean, you really would have to go back to the Yale teams in the late 1800s to find someone that was able to keep this up for as long as they did.

I'm just talking about the record, the winning percentage, and being rewarded national championships. I even hate to call it that in the late 1800s. They also would play Rutgers and Princeton and go 2-0 and it'd be a national championship. First of all, the other things that Alabama has done, Yale couldn't do in the late 1800s because there was no NFL. You couldn't have these great NFL draft numbers. There were no polls then.

You couldn't have all these weeks ranked number one. I don't even know that there are stats that survive. The rules of the game were different. The scoring system was different, all this stuff. And on top of it, and I know I'm asking the wrong guy when I say this, but are we to believe that the biggest, baddest dudes in the United States all lived in New England? Because the sport at that time was dominated by the Ivy League, and they weren't bringing

kids in from California like they do now. I mean, a lot of them were Northeast kids. And the reality is they were the only ones playing football back then. You know, a lot of the teams in other parts of the country had just started in the, you know, 1890s. And so you can't compare today's Alabama to those teams. And the best comparison you're going to get is to the Bud Wilkinson oklahoma teams in the late 40s into the 50s and if you go back and you look at their schedules i mean they were obviously really good teams they didn't play that many ranked teams along the way and it's just to me there's just no question after

putting all this stuff together that what saban has accomplished not only has defied the odds in a sport where everything has been set up to create parity but it's done so at a level that no other program in the history of the sport has ever been able to sustain for that long give me your best number then oh i kind of struggle with this one but um uh because there's so many there are a few of them in there that i had to double check triple check because i'm thinking there's no way. All right. You'll appreciate this one, even though the on-the-field impact isn't, you know, it's not great because we're talking about something that's voted on. But consensus All-Americans, okay? A consensus All-American is someone who's voted to a majority of the most prestigious All- America teams that year. And they've got this going back all the way i think into the 1800s or something you can find it in the ncaa record book if you want to look at it

um alabama last season was the first team since yale in 1909 to have six consensus all-americans in one season okay if you if you cut it off with that 1909 y Yale team and just go 1910 to present, there have been five teams in the last 111 seasons of college football that have had five or more consensus All-Americans in a season. Three of the five are Nick Saban Alabama teams. So you got Nick Saban with three the other 1700 plus coaches in major college football over 110 years have combined to do it twice twice and and there's so many other things Ryan like you go through and you look at other numbers and like you're not surprised that

Alabama's number one in the category you're not surprised that Ohio State or LSU is number two in the category. What's shocking is that Alabama's number is three times greater than the number of the number two team on the list. And there are several things like that in the book. And so there's just a bunch of it that just wowed me as I put it together. That's Brad Edwards, the book Dynasty by the Numbers. And I know Michael Bonnett, I saw him this weekend. He said he wanted to sign a bunch of it that just wowed me as I put it together. That's Brad Edwards, the book dynasty by the numbers. And I know Michael Bonnet, I saw him this week and he said, he wanted to sign copy of this. So I, uh, I don't know.

I don't know if he's joking about that or not, because I, I, I know what the LSU people feel about Saban and what he's accomplished there. But if Michael really wants one, I'm happy to sign one and give it to him and he can give it to, I'll sign five of them. He can give them to his LSU friends. But yeah, it's been amazing. I guess I should mention where people can get the book. Most people hear book and they're thinking Amazon. It's not on Amazon. You can only get it online on my website, which is bamadynastbook.com. And if you happen to be an Alabama fan listening, the on-campus bookstore, the suit store

carries it along with the Bryant Museum. But those are the only two brick and mortar places you can get it are both on campus. So Bama Dynasty Book dot com if you want to check that out. And we'll do a link to that as I post the podcast. All right. So we'll put it. We'll reply to the podcast link there and we'll have it out there for you. Brad, it's great to catch up, man. We need to do it more often. And enjoy the season. All right. Thanks, man.

Great to talk to you again. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid.

So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. I feel like we need to do like a bigger check-in on everybody, how everybody's doing. But I want to do the QB stock game on Wednesday. I know Cerruti knows it. Kyle, don't be worried. It'll be very easy.

But we're bringing that sucker back. And then I think we should do the take stock on the takes. I think we need to do those. And we'll do them after week one of the NFL season, Cerruti. What do you think? Like only NFL? Or are you talking like everything from when we did it until summer? Through summer?

Because I feel like we've had a couple of weeks, even months of some stuff that we might need to get some stocks and some IPOs or whatever it's called. Get those out there. Yeah, the Florio should... If Cam Newton ended up with the Buccaneers as the ultimate middle finger to Brady, that one, they wouldn't even let you short it. They would just be like, sorry, you can't.

We can't even assign a dollar value to that because there'd be no one that would ever buy that. It's not even a penny stock. We didn't really come up with a great pricing model for it. We had a few people't know. I've got to make sure I give myself enough time to go through it and do it for all the eligible QBs. But there was usually when I would do it each year, there was always like a number that would jump out. Basically, what I would do is I would look at your stats. There was a very simple formula.

I love when people have these things. I'm not going to name any names, but there'll be some people who'll be like, oh, well, based on my preparation, I was able to figure this out. It's like, didn't you just divide a yardage differential? I don't think it was that big of a deal. Easy, Matt Damon. But we just took QBR and we divided it. And then I added in a win-loss differential that was pretty simple. And the prices actually played out pretty

well. But there's usually always one or two QBs two qbs you're like okay that price is way too low like i automatically i'm going to make money because whatever he was that previous year that's not what's going to happen this year but whatever it's fun if you can play along with it but it's different than the takes but you're right like let's put the takes in a file so rudy and then you know i'm just going to figure out something we'll just look that doesn't have to be a real dollar amount thing. We can just look at it weeks later and say, hey, that was a good buy. That was a bad one or whatever. But I don't want to make it as simple as just buy or sell because that's been done a million different times, although it's not entirely different.

But we're just going to be making fun of some of the takes out there. All right. Are we all on the same page with that? Yeah. I think we got revamped first take too. So we might have some new stuff throughout the season. We do have revamped first. I can't we might have some new stuff throughout the season that we can dive into. We do have revamp first.

I can't wait until the NBA season has a headline. We get Tebow on for an hour on a Friday. And I like Tebow. I do. Tebow breaking down Luka Dodgers' weight. Yeah, that'll be the end of my opinions on that one. What else do we have here? Oh, we got to do a North water thing. And then I know a lot of you guys want to go abroad again, but the last couple F1 series,

like not a ton of suspense from it. I mean, they had two laps. I mean, you want to talk about a UCLA type tweet, check out Williams team where they took a podium with two laps. It was raining. They ran two laps and it was over and they had the entire Williams team dumping champagne on each other on Instagram posts. Now, if you know anything about F1, clearly you do if you listen to this podcast. Williams has not had a great run of it the last few years, but

I mean, hell, at least UCLA won the game. Would that be like the 12th man on an NBA bench just going after it and lifting the trophy after an NBA championship? What's the equivalent of that? Because he still won, so he should celebrate, right? But was it actually a real win?

He didn't win, though. It was a podium. Oh, still. All right. So it's still an accomplishment that he would never otherwise have. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think of what the equivalent would be.

It kind of feels a little bit like, what was it, Phoenix who went 8-0 in the bubble? Mm-hmm. But I don't want to hear like, oh, hey, that set the template for everything else. Getting Chris Paul set the template for everything else.

So that's just a play-to-result thing. Like, if a team loses in the first round and they come back and, you know, go deeper in the playoffs next year, you'd be like,

you know, them getting swept 3-0 last year was really, you know, we play the results on that stuff a lot. But the F1, it's hard to explain

how weird that would be. They didn't really even run the race, but they did. And so, we weren't going to do a big deal on that. But I guess. And so we weren't going to do a big deal on that.

But I guess that kid, Russell's going to end up in Mercedes anyway. So that's a good thing. There you go. Yeah. But that was going to happen anyway. We'll have Clark to,

he's better at it than we are, clearly. No one would say otherwise. All right. Life advice. Lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Okay. Investment ideas.

Oh, this will go over well. 185 centimeters, 81 kilograms. All right.com. Okay. Investment ideas. Oh, this will go over well. 185 centimeters, 81 kilograms. All right, cool. Expat living in Japan, married a local, three boys, 10, five, and one. No fear of anyone I know hearing this. Oh, I thought he was just saying straight up, I don't fear anyone. Next topic. No fear of anyone I know hearing this is i've been 19 years and none of i've been here 19 years and none of my friends speak english quick kyle if you could speak any foreign language what would it be and go farsi okay didn't expect that kind of makes sense why farsi you said quick i don't know it just it was it was Why Farsi? You said quick. I don't know. It just, it was,

I actually was going to go with like, I don't know, Mandarin or Japanese or something, but you said quick and you kind of already were on the Japan corner with this email. So I said Farsi. Do you know anyone that speaks that? Do you think you'd be able to use it?

Yeah, a couple of Arab friends and their parents. I feel like they're probably talking about me when I'm like the white guy hanging around the house, but I never know. So I would like to speak Farsi. That is a

Persian language. Modern day Iran, Afghanistan. You could be an international liaison. Try to help us through some of this stuff, Kyle. Yeah, I like it on this part of the world over here

he just wants to use the eavesdrop on people that's it Tom Bray is it offensive to say when I see Taliban videos that I'm like individually I think I could take a couple I don't think that's offensive no I mean you can size anybody up from any walk

of life. Yeah. I understand their challenges are a little different. They're probably fighting with a different level of inspiration. But I'll admit, when I saw the Taliban overtake, I mean, it's an awful story, but when I saw them overtake that gym in somebody's house and watch them work out, I was like,

I could probably get two of them before I'd be overwhelmed. Well, it was just a thought. All right, back to the email. Anyway, the point of the matter is my grandmother died, left me $100,000 U.S. Currently, we're renting and my wife wants to buy a house. The problem is, despite the fact that we live in one of the cheaper preferences in Japan, she wants to live in the most expensive part of our city. We're talking $400,000 for a three-bedroom place.

She's a stay-at-home mom. I'm a foreigner. I can't get a loan from the bank until I get permanent residency. I've applied for it, though, and should get it, but the process will be about another nine months. During that time, the 100K is just sitting in my U.S. checking account.

I'd like to make a little offer before it disappears. You know, maybe less than the amount we have to borrow any advice for a nine-month investment. My first thing would be don't email me about this, but I can give you a little bit of common sense here on a few things. If I had a dollar for every time, it's like, hey, I want to do this, but my wife wants this house. I mean, it's just overwhelming. I think we all have to admit some of us have, I don't know if there's a nesting instinct there. And let's just try not to, uh, turn this into, Oh, a guy saying this, but there's just, it's endless. It's endless. How many times the guy will say, I'm not saying there aren't men that also want to spend money on houses when the females live more prudent about

the money, but it seems to be whatever that ratio it is. It seems to be higher on the female side where the guy would be like, Hey, this is our current situation, but my wife wants this. So here's the deal. From what I've learned is whatever it is the wife wants is probably what you're going to end up doing. Now, here's the scary part. When you start talking in practical numbers of, hey, I'd like to borrow less. So say you're taking a $300,000 loan. The likelihood that you're going to make another 50 grand here in nine months while exposing that money, the kind of risk that would take on that kind of return is why you shouldn't do any of this stuff. I mean, take it out of your checking account and talk to somebody who really understands some of these short term, but the priority here is safe

investments where, you know, you're not even going to be making on that math 10 like in a nine month deal and again i don't know all the products this isn't something that i would um i don't i never profess to understand this world enough but i do know what it's like to have your money exposed when you're thinking about a big investment when the stock market went to shit during the beginning covid i like a lot of other people were like all right well some of these things are just ridiculously priced and started buying up stuff but i also knew that I was doing a real estate deal. So every time you're looking at it going like, oh, look what it did today. Oh, it's recovering. I'm so smart. I'm so smart. And then you're like, holy shit. If we have another downturn,

which is entirely possible, yet it's only doubled since then. But it was possible. We don't know. None of us know. I mean, it's like the gambler who tells you he never loses, never talk to him again, right? My point would be this house is likely the most important purchase you've ever made in your life. You have a wife and three kids that are depending on you here. So the number one priority is not thinking, hey, how do I turn 100K into 150 so that I'm borrowing less? It should be, how can I make anything off this 100,000, which you're not going to make in a checking account? How can I make anything here where I'm not exposing the money to, I have to go to my wife and say, hey, I lost half of it. All right. Because then you're screwed, especially when you're talking about having

enough in the bank, not only is the down payment, but the carry where most banks, and I don't understand how it works over there, but I imagine it's pretty similar, where they're going to want to know how long you can carry a payment without work if things went bad, which is a year, year and a half, something like that, depending on the purchase price of the house. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad for a purchase price around 400,000. So I get your point. And it's awesome that you're like, Hey, how can I do this? But having money in a market and going to bed and then waking up and having that money not there is a really shitty feeling. And it's going to be even worse if that money is already spent on something this important. So the only advice I can give you isn't products or here's this

investment. This is not, what is it, Dave Holmes? This is not the Dave Holmes show. But I know as I was sitting there having money that was attached to other stuff that was really volatile during COVID where I'm like, oh, I have this much money for a down payment on something new. I could have fucked that up in a huge way. The only difference I wasn't going to have anybody yell at me. So, um, that was that. And then I remember being like, Hey dude, what are you doing? Like, don't make this mistake. Like, how are you going to feel if all this paperwork and the realtors and you're putting in an offer on something and then you're like, Oh, Hey, sorry, man. Tesla got wiped out. Can't buy a house now. So that's the only advice that I would have.

Kyle? I actually got more of a question than any advice to give. I don't even know if I can answer it. I'm very remedial. I think you can. I think you can. I think you can. So say I have a similar grandma situation. Are you going to kill your grandmother? Let's say she pulled me aside and said, fuck these people. You're're gonna run all this shit when it's over let's say that happened yeah and so also let's say she has like 150 year old house that i would never move into in a million years but your tone is scary this tone is very specific and it's scaring me i just want that it scared me too no no i actually asked her i was like hey are you like planning something here she's like no no i just wanted to get this stuff out of the way.

You know, I don't see that often XYZ. So I guess what I'm saying is, let's say you have a hundred thousand US, like this guy says, do you really put, and you want a house that's like $350,000 or something. Do you literally put every single dollar of that a hundred thousand dollars down? Because that's like what makes sense. I wouldn't. No way. I mean, look, this is a philosophical thing uh the way money is right now and everybody is like oh the rates can't go any

lower and then they just keep going lower and lower and lower um i would rather have cash to either do other things or no like some people are different some people hate some people hate the idea of a car payment um when i did or didn't have one, I didn't care. I would rather have the stockpile and have that in my account. And then if it meant a little bit more over time, fine. But some people hate the payment. Some people hate the idea that the, but when interest is the way it is right now, I would rather have that cushion than giving them every dollar that they want. But look, the first house I ever bought, I go through the mortgage process, which unfortunately just happens a lot. And it's not always great. You think you're at the finish line, you never are. And then it's like, hey, you know what? Instead of 20% down, we'd love 25% down. And depending on where you are in your life, 20% and 25% can be a huge, huge It can. I mean, even, you know, it wasn't a huge purchase for me, meaning total price point, but it was a huge purchase for me because that's what it was at that time. And so I've talked to other people that do it differently.

You know, some people just straight up pay cash. If you can do that, great, go ahead and do it. I think that the way money is and how cheap it is, unless you're so flush with cash. But again, some people just hate the idea of a bigger payment. They're like, I'd rather do the payment lower. I'm borrowing less. So over time, I'm paying less. But I look at it as whatever house I've lived in, I'm not living in it for 30 years. This isn't my retirement home.

I'm not paying it off. And then that's my retirement. I'm giving to my kids. You know what I mean? Whenever you're looking at mortgage products, as much as you could say, well, hey, how much principal am I paying down? What is my payment? What is my interest? What's the full 30-year calculator on this? You look at those, you're like, oh, no wonder banks do so well. Again, for other people that are in it, they're like, this isn't that interesting. But the first time you do it, you're like, wait a minute. Oh,

okay. That's why the economy works the way it does. I just think when the interest rate is what it is, I would try to find a way to put down the minimum down payment. I'm not talking like 5% down. That's why the mortgage crisis thing was so fucked is you not only were lending to people that couldn't afford and have given you no financial track record that they could pull off what they were doing, but then you would also have the interest rate go to an insane number. And they were letting people do this like 5% down, I don't know, zero down in some cases. And I mean, you know, you say it retroactively like, oh, no shit, that didn't work. But yeah, I mean, long answer here, Kyle, sorry. I personally feel that way. Others disagree. Yeah, because I know somebody like my dad would be like oh just set yourself up and and put as much down as you can because

that makes sense but like i'm in my head and other people i've asked for like no don't do that i'm somewhere in the middle so okay depends like if you're on a budget yeah you know definitely on a budget okay but so say like i'll just i'll just run through the numbers. I bought a condo 10 years ago in Connecticut for $417,000. And I put 25% down because they came back at the very last minute. They're like, oh, let's get 25% of this guy. So I put down the 25%. At that point, it's close to my life savings plus whatever I had left over for the carry that I was talking about. Because they're not going to let you write a check for $125,000 and have $40 in your bank account and then give you a house. You still have to have cash to cover the payment the rest of the way.

So depending, I refinanced it I think once, but the payment, and this is with property taxes and everything else in there, off of that down payment and everything else was I think $2,100. It was around there. So forgive me if the math is a little off. It was a long time ago. So it was about $2,100, I think, on the initial part, maybe $22, something like that. If I had done 50% down and then the payment was like $1,600 or $1,300, again, I'm just doing this off the top of my head because I know it's wrong, but just to ballpark it at that point with what the job was to then go, all right, you're going to get 200,000 down, which I didn't even have now. Oh, wow. But this means every, every month I'm saving another $600.

The $600 based on what I was making then at that point, wasn't going to change that much of what my routine was. And that's just what you have to figure out. And now at that point, I was lucky that the $600 was going to make or break me every single month. Like it definitely would have at other times in my life, but that's where I go. Why would I want to give you another 80,000 upfront to save 600 each month, not only in cash for each month, but then the long-term part of it, which is an important point to part of. But I knew I wasn't going to live in the house in Connecticut. Hell, I had it a lot longer than I ever thought I could because I couldn't sell it forever

because Connecticut screwed up the property tax so much. So, you know, there you go. I think that actually helped. Well, maybe, maybe. I don't know. I mean, I know with any of this stuff, it's just there's going to be some people that are like, yeah, you nailed it. And they're going to be like, no, this is what, you know, whatever.

The beginning of the email is find somebody else better than your sports talk show host to give you a stable nine-month investment. But I'm telling you, if you think like you're going to get some sort of 25% return on something in nine months, you might. But what are you going to do? Go buy stocks right now and day trade for a little while? And then you're going to tell your family, hey, guess what? Hey, guess what, guys? guys all right here we go um we again guys are guys are still chiming in about the pull-up thing it's never ending uh we had somebody chiming in say flat bench press is to decline as kipling pull-up uh is district pull-up he reversed those so he's saying decline is the same as kipling i don't know one person who has ever said, hey, here are my decline numbers, ignoring their flat.

If you do that, don't go outside. Ooh, keep it moving. All right, this is a good one. It's titled Struggling Host Slash Stoner. 27, Melbourne. Huge in Australia and New Zealand. I want to get your thoughts. 187.62.

Steven Adams level screen setter had to wrap up a game of 4-4 pickup because a guy ate it on one of my screens and had to go home he was down for like 5 minutes I heard a crunch swear to god I was stationary the whole time maybe take it a little easy on some of your pickup hoop screens is there something to brag about? I don't know

I played with this guy who was like an old old school player and he used to just level us on these fucking screens and it was bad because I was in high school and he used to just level us on these fucking screens and it was bad because i was in high school and he was like a grown-up and a teacher and i remember he did it to me a couple times and i was like hey cut the shit like what are we doing here and then when anybody would do that i would make sure the first time they went to set a screen on me i didn't care about defending the player i would run into them as hard as I fucking could to get speed.

And again, back then, I probably didn't even feel it, but something I carried over. If somebody sets screens like this on you in a pickup game and you know what's going to happen, don't even give up the basket. Just be a fullback. Put your shoulder right into his chest cavity, and I'm telling you, they're not going to set the screen as hard on you you after that don't say anything either just do it know what you're doing and then it was like when chauncey billups drove on this guy that was trying to like pick him up three-quarter court in an espn pickup

game and chauncey was like yeah i'll run with you guys a little bit and the guy like decided he was gonna take the belt from chauncey billups this in video. And the thing you don't realize, like how physical the NBA game is to get any sort of space. Like Chauncey put his shoulder right into this kid and the kid made a noise. And Chauncey obviously scored on him immediately. And that was great. He's like, Chauncey wasn't dribbling

to get past you or away from you. He's like, I'm going to dribble through you. And I'm going to teach you a little lesson here. And the kid did not pick up Chauncey three-quarter court the rest of that game. Were you there for that one, Cerruti? No, but I have a question for you. little lesson here. And the kid did not pick up Chauncey three-quarter court the rest of that game. Were you there for that one, Cerruti? No, but I have a question for you. Who is worse in a pickup game?

Guy who sets hard, legal, but hard screens or the guy who's constantly trying to draw charges? If you draw a charge in a pickup game, I'm like, I'll just... You're out. We're good. I don't... I've yelled...

I mean, it doesn't happen that often. It really doesn't. I mean, I don't... good i don't i've i've yelled i mean it doesn't happen that often it really doesn't i mean i don't i still don't and i'm not like i've been playing a ton over the last couple years but in all the years i did it but whenever anybody did it i most people knew like i've even said like you're calling fucking charges like how about don't like what do you you know and sometimes you do something to post it gets a little physical and then the kid will go charge and i just be like no and then you just walk to the other end of the court if people call and charge you in your pickup games you just need to everybody not respect the call and walk to the other end all right so back to our guy who's a stoner setting tough screens here checking in my transition away from animation okay that's his full-time work, animating internal trading bids. All right, we'll maybe not put all of this in there.

He's not enjoying it. He's moving more into hosting and presenting. The only problem is sometimes I smoke too much weed. I do want to host pot-adjacent shows, like shows about skateboard tattooing and video games, and maybe later in the future shows like The Amazing Race. I have a full-sleeve geeky tattoo and silver hair. So the aesthetic matches. Sruti, you love this guy. How close were you to getting silver hair? I've actually not silver, but I thought about doing like the cool soccer

player look where you bleach it and you kind of let it grow in. You got like the dark undertones and you got the bleach top hair. I've thought about it several times, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I've wanted to sleep forever. I but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Uh, and then sleep. I've had, I've wanted to sleep forever. I just don't have to get. So this guy is living my dream. I don't, I don't really smoke as much as he does. So it's all good.

Yeah. I've never had, I never thought that about you. Actually, this is, this is, as you said, not as much as this guy at all.

I'm, I'm actually a little surprised. We've never talked about it, but we'll leave, you know, I don't know if we're to the point where everybody's, it's fine. Yeah.

Yeah. Mystery Steve. I also do a bit of stand-up on the side um okay the only problems i'm noticing i'm getting i'm getting heavier because i get high i get too high and eat too much chocolate i think it makes me a bit slower however i'm a bit of a different differentiator from other people in a positive way i've been getting opportunities in hosting presenting in these areas partly because of this i feel uh it adds an edge weed is still uh legal here so wait so he thinks he's edgy weed guy and he's getting jobs because of it just wanted to know what you would do if you were me should i ease up or should i see where it takes me as it seems both positive and negative negative. There's also a place in the Australian media landscape for the Seth Rogen of Australia, and I could fit it.

Cheers. He said when we're down under, we could all rip a cone together, Kyle. Love to. That's cigarettes, right? How do you feel about that? No, I'm imagining. No, cones. Yeah, that's a joint.

Cone. Yeah, I'll do that too. All right. Old guy alert. Happening. No, Cone. Yeah, that's a joint. Yeah, I'll do that too. All right. Old guy alert happening. All right. Look, I'm not anti-weed. I just never was that into it at all. I lived with a bunch of guys who could not function unless they had it.

Despite the social acceptance of it, I still think there's probably some dudes where it's like, hey, it's legal. There's a lot of shit that's legal that shouldn't run your life. And in this case, you know, I mean, look, whether it's you listening right now and you know, or other guys like the day can't start until they get high. And then they would say, oh, I have anxiety. You're just going to be stoned the rest of your life. So if you think it's making you get fat, eat too much food, then I think you're on the right path, though, for the Seth Rogen part of it. I don't know the Australian comedy market, believe it or not.

I still feel like in 2021, Kyle, you're going to help me with this dude. Do you think like, Hey, that guy's pretty good. Do you know, do you know he takes weed?

Like, yeah, yeah. Let's get him a show. He does alcohol too. So, um, I would just say this to anybody. Like, if you think it's interfering which i don't know

this guy's this struggle seems to be that he thinks being a stoner is opening up avenues which i think has to be a bit of an exaggeration um are you still funny if you're doing stand-up are you funnier with it or without it is the reason you can get out there because of it like you know that's why so many of these rock bands it takes 20 years and they have to sober up because they felt like they had to be drunk on stage the whole time. And it's also, I think a lot of these famous people that have drug and alcohol problems, a lot of it has to do with the schedule. Like they don't have to be up at eight or nine most of the time, like the rest of us. So it's like, Hey, it's Tuesday. I'm just going to go out. Um, but you're still young. You're thinking about it. I mean, I don't want to

make it as simple as maybe you don't have to smoke all the time, but you're just going to get to a point where you either realize it is the priority of your day, which it probably shouldn't be, or you're going to think, hey, recreationally, it helps me. And maybe that's not the biggest deal. Maybe that part's not the biggest deal. I just think there really shouldn't be anything other than your kids that takes over your life. That's a great call. Kyle? I would say a couple things. I surprisingly have a couple thoughts on this. One, if you're like waking bacon, I found that that's just whack. And you don't even know that it's whack until you stop doing it. So maybe don't do that.

The other thing, if you're worried about getting heavy, I was always wondering. I even just Googled this a minute ago because I didn't want to sound like an idiot. When you smoke weed, I think it changes your metabolic rate. That's metabolisms, right? Yep. So what if you tried to smoke weed and not eat chocolate? That's like a cheat code, isn't it? You're raising your metabolism metabolism but you're not

putting any shit in there and then you know you're like two birds one stone you're getting high and you're also maybe okay doing the opposite of getting fat i'm surprised you said that because that's like a huge like oh hey just be high and don't eat chocolate that's like telling somebody who smokes okay i want to quit but when you have six or seven beers don't smoke cigarettes you know like is it though is it the same though no i'm not saying cigarettes are the same as chocolate or chocolates as dangerous as cigarettes what i'm saying is tell me cigarettes is better than chocolate right now because i want to feel that what i'm saying for me no but what i'm saying is that you're the reason you know know, any of this stuff is because it, you know, it either calms you or it makes you feel the way that you like to feel.

But at the same time too, it also impacts the decisions. So to just say, Hey, be really high, but now don't like chocolate. That's a big ask. Well, if you're, well if you're getting heavier and you'd rather not work out cause there's like just more fun stuff to do. Isn't that sort of like at least you don't have to run. Just don't eat chocolate.

Maybe you're met up. Maybe drink a little water with lemon juice in it. I think that's a metabolism thing. Maybe you just start doing like all the metabolism stuff and not have to do the workout stuff. And then maybe you won't be as heavy. What happened to my Kyle? You're telling me get really high and then do the cayenne lemon water honey fasting drink. Well, it's not fasting.

I'm not saying don't eat at all. I'm just saying, like, don't like, I don't know, get the crunch bar or whatever. Good calories. Yeah. I'm just saying you could do it as like instead of working out. This is like for lazy people. Like, I'm one of those people. Here's my summary on this.

Stuart, do you have anything to add to this? No, I'm equally surprised as Kyle. I think it's easy to say, hey, don't eat chocolate when you're high, but when you're high, you're going to eat chocolate. I don't think you're in a loop here that's never going to be solved. It's like people that get hammered, you want Chinese food. Like, oh, okay.

Well, now just keep getting hammered. It's cool. But just do not want Chinese food. Yeah. Problem solved. Yeah. When I'm hammered, I'll just rationalize it. I'll think perfectly and I'll make good decisions.

That'll happen. It's like getting drunk in college and not ordering Domino's. That's just every time, every Saturday, Friday night, whatever the night was, you get Domino's when you're drunk because that's what you do. And yeah, it's not great for you, but it's just a habit. Getting hammered is a lot of work though. This definitely has to be food involved.

That's all I'm saying. That's different. Yeah, that's different. I would ask anyone that's doing this because the weed push of the last few years, I think has made people think like, all right, cool, it's legal. None of it matters. But you can't just drink and go to work okay and that's

been that's been legal for a long time too um it's just a lot harder to hide I I would ask anybody this that's like even asking themselves this question as it relates to the emailer if you think it is kind of running your day, then maybe you got to wean yourself off a little bit. If you think it's getting in the way of your work, then that's a problem. If you don't think it's getting in the way of your work, I'm sure there's a lot of guys who are stoned all the time listening to us. We're like, hey, I do this. I work with computers. I'm at home all the time.

I'm more efficient. It doesn't matter. I'm not telling you you're wrong. I'm not telling you you're wrong. But it's up to every person to decide if you're even asking these questions. It's like that episode of Mad Men where Don Draper says, he goes, the minute you have to ask if you have a drinking problem, you have a drinking problem. Right. And so I think if this is something where you are like going, Hey, I didn't do this. I didn't come through with this

and sort of blew this off on and on and on. And you're 27. Then, you know, whatever. But these are these are you kind of have to go through some shit. But I don't even know that that's what this guy is saying. You know, I don't I don't know that it's it's dire. I think he's just sort of in the middle here. But if he wants to be Seth Rogen, he just needs to get higher, eat more chocolate.

Right. I think Seth Rogen's funny, not because he smokes weed. And if you think that's why it's funny not because he smokes weed and if you think that's why it's funny then you're probably wrong well to this guy that struck a nerve right there no i mean i listened to like a lot of comedians podcasts and and not a lot of them but there's a couple that i listened to and they're just like um you know like yeah i had a coke problem but i wouldn't go on stage doing coke because like comedy was important to me and like you know it it threw me off but like you should like if you're funny it sounds like you're funny like you should focus on being funny

without um added things in there so if like if you're you are sometimes it helps but sometimes it helps but if you're having an existential question about whether or not it's it's going to help me do better it's probably not you should focus on being better like regularly the other thing don draper could have asked himself is like, hey, if you're drinking brown water at 9 a.m. at work, that might be more of an issue. Yeah, he never asked that question. I just saw the episode where Don Draper goes,

they win the Clio. Remember, they get hammered because they don't think they have to meet the people from Life Cereal. Then the people from Life Cereal show up. So they get hammered at the commercial awards, advertisement have to meet the people from life cereal and the people from life seal cereal show up so they get hammered at the commercial awards advertisement awards then they have to go back to the office he pitches the live cereal thing face that was the other kids tagline cure for the common everything and then he goes out again with roger and joan he goes home with the brunette and then he wakes up to

bets calling him saying you're two hours late you haven't picked up the kids and he's like whatever it's saturday and she's like it's sunday and he rolls over and it's the waitress from a diner he missed a day and went to bed on a friday and woke up on a sunday with a different person than he went to bed with on Friday and missed an entire day. That is a lot. Hopefully, we don't have any emailers suggesting that timeline. All right, that'll do it. We'll be back on...

We got a lot of stuff going on Wednesday and Friday. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, please subscribe, rate, and review Ryan Russell Podcast, Ringer, and Spotify. Thanks to Kyle and Steve as always. Thank you.