The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell. Plus CFB Coaching Carousel With Bruce Feldman, Tales From the Couch: NBA Reset, and the CFB Top 7.

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Russillo shares his thoughts on the Warriors’ loss to the Mavericks, and a look at the league at the quarter-season mark (0:46). Then Ryen is joined by Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell to discuss the team’s 9-2 season, Kirk Cousins, being drafted by the Patriots in 2008, Rex Ryan stories, and more (22:36). Then Ryen talks with Bruce Feldman about the CFB coaching carousel (48:29). Next Ryen reacts to the updated CFB rankings (1:19:34) before answering some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:25:14). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Kevin O’Connell and Bruce Feldman Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lot of football in today's podcast, including Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell on why his career may have helped him be a more understanding coach. The coaching carousel in college football will cover it all with Bruce Feldman and some awesome stories from Columbus with Michigan's big

win against Ohio State. I'll take a look at the top 12 rankings from the committee as we get into college football's championship weekend. And at one point I just sort of give up. And Tales to the Couch. Which NBA team is terrible? You probably already know.

And Life Advice. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Winter is here, so be prepared and get almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost anything? Well, you can't get a ski slope, but dish soap, definitely doable. Sunshine, that's no. A bottle of wine, yeah. And a snow day, again, no. But blueberry muffins with the delicious crumb topping? Total yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by region.

See app for details. It's Wednesday. It's tails from the couch. Not on last night's games. I'll focus on one of the games last night. I'll mention maybe a couple other things from stuff that I saw on Monday, but I just kind of want to look at the 20

games in deal that we have, where things are starting to kind of show themselves, starting to settle in here a little bit. I always think, look, this is an original. There's plenty of people that would agree. 20 games in, you start to kind of get a sense of who these teams are, as we are at the quarter mark. And yes, I know I still owe a Western Conference midterm, but it's

a midterm on my terms. You don't know what it is. All right, Mavs at home. They win. They are now 13th on offense, 11th on defense, Golden State overall in the season, 9th on offense, 22nd on defense, but in their last 10 games as they've started to figure their stuff out and figure out the rotation, they're trying to play some of the younger guys, more minutes coming. It's back in the rotation after having a little blip there.

They're 11th on defense in their last 10. So Mavs get up big here, 15-4, 23-6, and then in the second quarter, Golden State, actually at the end of the first quarter, some of the defense was figuring itself out. Golden State went to a zone towards, I think, the end of the first half there.

But as of today, Golden State's 9th seed, and they've gone from 3-7 to 8-4 in their last 12. Dallas has basically been 500 the entire season, so this isn't some big swing here. And when you look at the standings, this was, oddly enough, the Western Conference Finals rematch was a matchup of the nine and ten seeds in the West. So there was...

Let's go late here, 10 seeds in the West. Let's go late here because there was an exchange of shots just going on in the fourth quarter. You weren't really sure who was going to end up winning this thing. Golden State's second unit was terrific in the first few minutes of the fourth quarter. Dinwiddie got tossed in this one for an elbow flagrant two on Jordan

Poole, who is going to get hit in the face I guess every other month here. I don't like the ejections on any of this. Dinwiddie got him really good, but it didn't feel like it was, I'm going to elbow you in the face. And then they even dapped it up really quickly as Dinwiddie was walking off. But this is the deal, folks. When we have head trauma as the number one topic in sports talk radio for two straight years, the NBA, the other leagues could draft behind all of the stuff that the NFL was dealing with. Not to minimize the impact of these head injuries, but then, like a lot of times, when public opinion becomes obsessed with something, then it sways the other way. And that's why we see the roughing the quarterback shit you don't like. These awful sideline penalties in football.

You see penalties you don't like because you kind of asked for them. Because you were demanding player safety. So the NBA would be like, look at all this bullshit the NFL has to deal with. Okay, let's make sure we get some sort of protocol in there. So now they're going to review every single elbow thing and anything that looks pretty harsh, even though without

intent, I didn't believe last night with Dinwiddie, you're going to end up getting ejections, which is like, okay, cool. Now we have this because people were so worried about what everyone's policy was as a league and as a team when it came to any kind of contact with the head. All right. So back to basketball. Luca comes in at around 940-ish because that second unit was really good defensively. DiVincenzo starting to, who was that?

Dante DiVincenzo starting to lock Who was that? Dante DiVincenzo starting to lock it up a bit there. And so they're like, okay. Now, Luka comes in. Luka's an experience, right? Because you know he's without a question one of the five best players in the league. He is an MVP candidate probably for... He's going to be for

10 straight years of his career. And I've pointed out the usage rate stuff with him at times but you know he went like five straight possessions without anybody else touching the basketball now it's always going to bother me even though it works and you know maybe there's like a fake handoff in there where he has the ball hands it off and comes back for it whatever to me this doesn't really even count and then they've tried to figure out the Christian Wood stuff at times because there's almost this national broadcast Christian

Wood rule where every time he does something really good on offense, which is a lot because he's so talented on offense, but then the broadcast team will talk him up like it's some mistake that the other teams got rid of him. And when in fact,

it's like, I think he's on a bunch of teams because he's sort of a big stat guy that is talented and doesn't really, when you watch Christian Wood, he plays, if you ask him, Hey, do you know how many guys play against each other at a time? Did you know it was five and five?

He might get it wrong. He plays by himself as much as anybody in the league. And that's saying something. Philly, Charlotte, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Detroit, Houston. Those were the first seven years of his career, seven different teams. Houston back-to-back, gave him away to Dallas for another. Really talented. Broadcast team always starts talking him up,

and they never tell the truth about the story that he's just not super connected with what everybody else is trying to do. But Dallas was kind of desperate for some sort of big situation that could provide them more offense than Powell. But looking at it, it looks like Powell's kind of the default guy,

and they were trying to, you know, beginning of the season, remember that Phoenix game where Wood couldn't miss? It was really impressive, but at the same time, he was just like, he thought he was at a pickup game. And you're like, okay, this is what you're doing? So, all right, enough on that.

You've heard me talk about it before. On defending Luka, it's Wiggins' primary assignment, and then when it wasn't Wiggins, it was Kaminga. That's that body-type match thing that I think gives you the only chance. I think you need a bigger guy to try to at least cut off some of the passing angles for Luka. Good luck. Not really going to work.

It also gets back to the Mikkel Bridges, why he against Luka just doesn't work. He's not big enough, even though he's probably thought of as a better defender than Kaminga. And then Wiggins. At this stage, Wiggins is stronger than Klay. He got Klay in a switch in the first half, backed back him right down just put him right in the side car gave him a helmet and said let's go for a ride um but it didn't it didn't really work like they tried to double Luca late he went four for seven in the fourth quarter he had hard away for a huge three that gave him the lead Josh Green had a great drive.

Josh Green showing real rotation, upside minutes here. Golden State was down 115, 113 left, 10 seconds left. Steph from three called for a travel. That's another thing that's going on. Everybody's getting called for travels. I'm for it on the jump shot. Steph traveled. He changed his pivot foot.

It was the right call. I also think Kleba was going to get in there and contest, if not sort of a backhanded block to the entire thing. So I don't think the travel call, although that may have happened after the whistle and everything was kind of messed up anyway, but it was going to be a good contest no matter what. But it was the right call. Even though I've never been, like, whenever you were talking to somebody,

you know who we're talking about right now, right? Your older buddy. Maybe it's an uncle. He hasn't been married. Nobody likes him. And he goes oh that nba you know the nba they all they do is travel like as if traveling like was ruining people's lives right but we'd heard that for years and years i don't really think that's what the nba did here by calling traveling more and calling carrying more although the carrying thing is very selective it's like hey you're not any good yeah we're gonna call you carries the better players are not to say they haven't get called for any but there's dudes that

are still carrying like crazy and then when I'll see a guy get called for it you're like where what were you from G League okay yeah Reno yeah yeah. Reno? Yeah, yeah. That was a carry. So it was the right call on Steph. I don't mind it because I feel like the league was trying to do something that helped the defense here. Because the offensive players are getting any calls on any contact that's initiated by them. Luka got a call last night where he was driving the left elbow towards the rim. And then he got some contact, like body to body on the drive and then he slung himself backwards you're like oh so luca actually is too weak to not maintain his path

like he's getting driven off of his line and bump and now you're giving him the call like it's one thing when trey's flailing all over the place because he's small the visual part of that makes you think he's getting killed on all these drives when Trey's embellishing it like everybody else is. But because Trey's smaller, you can see the human part of the officiating process of giving him the pen for the doubt and giving him that call. With Luka last night in one drive, I'm like, oh, so he's getting this one

now too? So, I know, it feels like the league, like the guys falling down on screens, all of this stuff that sucks, I felt like the league was like, if we can clean, all of this stuff that sucks. I felt like the league was like, if we can clean up some of this, are we giving something back?

As much as I hate the charge, if you took that out, which is what I would argue for years, and I still hate the way it's called, I think you should have to be there for a beat and then it's a charge. But this is probably something where maybe we have to do something to help the defense a little bit because the way we're

calling a lot of this stuff for the better players to have the ball all the time, they're getting the benefit of the doubt on all these calls. All right, so Steph's called for the travel. He moved the pivot foot there on the left. Luka goes for 40 points. It's his 20th 40-point game that's tied for second in Mavs' history with this guy named Dirk.

So he's already tied with Dirk for 40-point games with 20 of them. The usage of 37%. I'm going to keep monitoring this. He's behind Giannis, behind Embiid. I don't need to monitor. It's going to be in the high 30s all season long. And it's been high 30s pretty much for four years.

His rookie year was 31. Okay, let's look at the standings and ask ourselves this, where are the surprises? Do we still have as many surprises as we thought we did the very beginning part of the season? Not really. Phoenix is one, Denver's two, Pelicans three, Memphis,

and that's Phoenix one without Cam Johnson and this other guy named Chris Paul. Portland's hanging in there, although not doing nearly as well as they were at the beginning of the year. But let's look at Utah. They're now today your eighth seed. They went from 10-3 to 2-8. They actually, if you go through

it, their losses, this is an insane league. Now, like you, I was sitting there going, okay, Utah's not going to be this good, right? At 10-3, which I just said. The easiest way to tell the story is that when they were 10-3, they were number two on offense and number two on defense. Since that time, November 10th, they've sixth on offense and 29th on defense. There's your problem. Defense now is considered the second worst defense sixth on offense and 29th on defense. There's your problem, right?

Defense now is considered the second worst defense in the NBA since that time. Conley's missed five games. They can't defensive rebound to save their lives, and their transition D is even worse. So you go, hey, we don't rebound the ball defensively, and then we let you score and transition all the time. Because marketing, it's not like some marketing drop-off. You could argue he's been better this month than he was the first month. And when it's clicking for them offensively,

it's actually really impressive. It's fun to watch. But because they're small and they can shoot and it's multiple ball, with i'm with the ball in their hands creators decision makers these things that i brave about and talk about all the time what you're giving up on the other end is that you're not defending anybody there's no reason to not get back there's no reason to not get back there but i'll admit when i was going through it this morning and i was looking at the losses washington philadelphia new york la detroit golden state phoenix chicago who i like the Patrick Williams minutes lately. Just his defensive activity.

Watch how much ground that guy covers for Chicago. I know the offense isn't there yet. Other than their Detroit loss, there's nothing to really go, how the hell did that happen? And here's the part that really sucks for Utah. Here are their next 10 opponents. Clippers, Pacers, Portland, Golden State, Minnesota,

Denver, New Orleans, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Cleveland, until they play at Detroit again, which will be mid-December. So, I don't know. Somebody had texted me when they were 10 and whatever, 3, and I said, I'll say 15 and 15. And then I was...

No, it was before that. I don't think I would have been that ballsy about it. I think it was like eight and three. I was like, I think there'll be 15 and 15. That might be good at this point. Okay, keep it moving. What's another surprise team that's no longer a surprise? Spurs.

The Spurs are now your 14th seed in the Western Conference. Only a half game up on Houston. They went from 5-2 to 1-13. 11th on offense, 20th on defense, to 29th on offense, to

30th on defense from November 1st to today. Their net rating from November 1st is minus 15. That's five points worse than the second worst net rating in the NBA. That's the Charlotte Hornets. This is actually not surprising. We thought this was the worst roster in the league

coming in. They have a chance to do something special record-wise here. I love Sohan, Kelvin Johnson. His numbers have increased. The shooting isn't exactly where I'd like it to be. I do like him as a player. I'm a little worried he might be best player. Guy takes the most shots on a really bad basketball team.

Although Vassell's tied with Keldon, the leading scorer, and he's 42% from three. There's a couple little pieces here that I like, but this is about a basketball team. Here's a number from Shulman at NBA.com. The Spurs had a five-game stretch where they didn't have a lead past the 8.57 mark of the first quarter.

So it was like, hey, we're tipping this up. You're never going to have the lead. Sorry. So there's not much more there on the Spurs. So if you're asking yourself, like, where are the standing surprises here? Is Sacramento a surprise at six? Maybe they're a surprise at six.

They've lost three in a row. I still like them. To me, they're a top 10 West team. I think the only thing you're looking at here on who's out in the West would be what you would think Minnesota. I still thought they'd have a nice regular season. This has been a disaster for them. They're tough to even watch.

And now Towns is out for four weeks. I don't know if that might help them. Just to, instead of fighting this Gobert Towns thing, where they do split them up, like the Murray, Trey Young stuff I keep paying attention to, like they really split those guys up as much as they can and they close because you can't have one of those guys on the bench when they're

closing when you have these two players. But there's some teams here that have roster situations where it's like they're trying to get away with splitting guys up a little bit more. I don't know the full minutes on off for all the stuff that's happening with Townsend-Gobert, but guess what? Townsend's going to be around for a few weeks. It feels like Sacramento against

Minnesota against the top 10 thing and the rest of it here, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Houston, Lakers, although AD's been a lot better. The Westbrook stuff off the bench has been terrific. I think what we're looking at here is maybe Sacramento against Minnesota for that spot wherever that would land there.

Unless the Lakers, I mean, they're two and a half out of a 10 seed here. I just don't think it's impossible, even though we don't like the roster. Speaking of the Lakers, hand up here. I was watching the Pacers game on Monday. We're going to talk a little Pacers. Don't worry. Nembhard hits the game winning three. LeBron was on him and Turner missed a wide open three. Then it was an offensive rebound by Halliburton. And then LeBron was kind of stuck in like, do I help towards Matherin who was on the baseline or do I stay out of my guy he just stopped paying

attention to Nembhard now it's wide open hits the game winning three I played the video was like LeBron lost his guy knowing that it was a scramble and off the offensive rebound I thought and I went you know this isn't entirely fair and although I do think because there was a pro argument and I watched all the postgame stuff so it was interesting because LeBron when he's asked about the last play immediately it was like well there was a screw-up on the Miles Turner one, which he's saying, and Russ went way too deep to trail the ball handler because he had no chance to come back. Turner misses the three, and it's kind of a scramble.

So when it's a scramble, a lot of your assignments get kind of thrown out. What I wouldn't want a player doing is leaving a guy wide open to hit a game-winning three. Now, you can argue that LeBron was stuck, but this is what happens, especially when you're older and you're tired. You can look like you're closing out on something that's two feet away as opposed to 20 feet away. I don't think Matherin was even going to get a pass from Halliburton on that side when you look at that angle because Anthony Davis is in front of him. So the pass, I don't think, is getting through.

And then even if it does, Davis is probably blocking the shot as Mather is trying to finish behind him in a very tight quarters with no time to make any kind of decision. So instead, LeBron leaves Nembhard completely open. But I did think it was a little unfair because it was a scramble, so I deleted it. So again, not a hero. Troops are heroes. But there's just so much that goes on in these plays at times where you can go, what about this? What about that? Cause then I started watching all the post games.

Like I wonder what people are going to say about that last play. And there were X players that had some varying opinions on like what it was. I don't, I don't think you need to help defend a D in that spot, but as you're looking going, Oh my God, is this guy wide opens because you've completely dismissed them heart as

even an option. And he was completely open he actually took a lot of shots so it wasn't like this who's this i mean there's a there's also a part of this where lebron could have been like neb who like what the fuck you talking about i'm gonna pay attention to him but you're gonna pay attention to the pacers because they're the four seed right now in the east they're 12 and 8. There's just a lot of average stats. They're 11th on offense. They're 13th on defense. They're net 12th.

Halliburton's a leap guy. Look at the last three years. Leap, leap, leap. Leading the NBA in assists. 20-11 on average. 40% from three first career. 49% from the floor this year. Matherin is a stud. Just taking names. Not afraid of anybody. They don't let him start.

Yeah, the only thing he's afraid of is the lineup card. Turner's been really good for them, and Duarte's missed half the season. They have a lot of average stats, but there's something that's funny with Rick Carlisle and what I processed into last year when I was trying to figure out the over-unders is that Rick Carlisle always finds a way to deliver. Remember some of those Dallas teams that didn't make a ton of sense over the years, right?

And then you're like, wow, how do they end up winning? And don't even take it from me. There'd be other NBA guys you would talk to that would just go, man, Rick Carlisle again. Maybe he's back to doing it. Maybe he's back to doing it because this is a team that you thought after 25 and 57, like how good could they possibly be? I don't think they're a four seed.

If you're looking at the surprises, you know, Miami's at this point, the 11th Chicago's 12th Chicago's get a league worst two and eight record in clutch games. We already talked about Patrick Williams, Miami's the 11th seed Chicago's 12th Miami's 10 and 11, but Butler's missed eight games. So I'm not saying the Pacers necessarily like they'd probably be on the

replace watch there a little bit, but he's got this team rolling. But I'm not sure. They're not a top four team in the East. No. Football fans make every Thursday one to remember with a no sweat same game parlay from FanDuel.

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but it's a much bigger payday than the straight one for once. All right, let's take a look at this. Buffalo at New England. Right now the line is Buffalo minus four. Let's lay the four points. This is more of a longer term look at the Bills and who the Pats are. I just don't think these teams are in the same points. This is more of a longer term look at the Bills and who the Pats are. I just

don't think these teams are in the same tier. Anytime touchdown score. Let's pick somebody who we think is going to score. Ramaji Stevenson's minus 115. The second lowest odds on this one. Let's go Stefan Diggs

plus 125. You can get weird if you want to. You can go some Dawson Knox, some Hunter Henry stuff, plus 300s in there. Pat's defense plus 650. But we're going to keep it with something very realistic. So, so far, we're realistic at this. Diggs gets a TD. Bills minus four.

But let's do something here. The over-under on the first half is 10.5. So if we say over 10.5 in the first half, that's what we'll do here. We'll say let's go over 10.5 at 3-1 odds. Now, if you wanted to actually go under 10.5 points in the first half and really get dangerous, you go 10-1 odds.

So 10 would win you 99 bucks on that one. So, I don't know, maybe you think Belichick and the defense slow them down. They only get a field goal and a touchdown. I wouldn't want to do that. You go 3-1 the other way for over 10.5 in the first half for the Billies. Build your own or choose from one of the popular same-game parlays pre-built for you in FanDuel's top-rated sportsbook app. FanDuel is also now live in Maryland.

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And Rosillo gave me a bad tip. We only hit on two or three of these. It didn't hit. You get it back. Make every moment more with FanDuel, an official sports betting partner of the NFL. Must be 21 or older in select states. Three plus legs minimum. $1 bet required. Refund issued. Non-withdrawable free bets that expire seven

days after receipt. Max free bet. $5. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. They're one of the best teams in the NFL record-wise coming off a big win on Thanksgiving Day against the New England Patriots in his first year of the Vikings head coach, Kevin O'Connell. Thanks a lot for doing this. How are you doing?

I'm doing well, man. How are you guys doing? Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. I know it's a couple days past, but... Well, you know, it's fine. We're still kind of in that Monday mode. I was really impressed. It's New England coming in. I'm still not quite sure about them. I think I like their defense and then special teams fall apart and everything. What's it like to get that kind of win on a Thanksgiving? You know everybody's watching you. days before that where we did not even play close to what we're capable of i certainly did not coach uh you know to the level of feeling like i put our team in a position to have success so when

you get a chance to talk to your team directly after that game go in the locker room and we've got such an unbelievable group that takes accountability for everything that goes on our coaching staff included to be able to lay down the challenge of hey we're going to be right back here in four days and if we do the things we're supposed to do and we control what we can which is our preparation on a short week against a really good team coming in you know this will feel different but we'll earn the right for it to feel different by what we do four days from now. And then to watch our team, shoot, I got to the game. I got to the stadium four hours early and I walked in. I'm normally one of the first guys to get there. And I walk in and half our team's in the locker room already getting suited up. And you could just feel like the game couldn't

come fast enough for us. And just a credit to our leadership and the guys we have in our locker room and the way it's kind of come together to be able to answer that kind of challenge against that kind of team on a short week. And then just that I'll, you know, be able to overcome the adversity that came in that game. And like we've done many, many times this year,

we just found a way to win a football game and treat each individual game as its own. And it sounds cliche at times, but this league is set up in a way where every single Sunday or Thursday, whatever it is, it's going to be a challenge. Can we find a way to play complimentary football when it matters the most to go try to get a victory? And we've been able to do that nine times out of 11 opportunities this year. And that will be the challenge moving forward until they don't let us play any more games this year. Right. And that's the thing is that the record. And I think nationally, whenever we look

at a team that has the kind of record that the Vikings have, and it can feel unfair, it can feel like nobody's going, hey, I'm picking the Vikings to win the Super Bowl. It's because now you're being compared to the other great teams. So I don't know that it's a disrespect to the organization or to the record or the work you guys are doing. All of a sudden, it's like, okay, well, if this is your record and you're undefeated for this long, now I have to compare you to the Bills, the Chiefs, the Eagles, and all that kind of stuff. So does it feel like people have doubted you or do you kind of get what the exercise is as we go through a season? Yeah, I understand it. I really do.

I think our team understands it. That's not to say we don't try to use it in certain times to help motivate, but we really don't have a team like that, Ryan, that at all responds to any of that outside narrative. We're in year one of trying to build something here, and we know that we get a finite amount of time to work together to prepare to make sure we're at our best you know from a standpoint of as a coaching staff giving these guys good plans every week and then watching them able to go out and kind of bring it to life in a way where we give ourselves a chance in the fourth quarter win football games and I think you know I tell our team all the time we'll earn the right for people to talk about us when it really matters.

I understand that our league is incredibly popular. These games, you know, rightly so, get analyzed and picked apart, how you win, what you look like when you win, and when you don't win, what that means for what kind of team you are. And all of it probably is a little bit true and all of it is probably a little bit false. And my job is to make sure that, you know, we kind of ignore as much of that as we possibly can and know that it's going to come down to how we prepare. You know, we're a team that we know is probably going to play close games. We're probably going to have to find ways to win football games different ways sometimes.

And that's what i've been the most proud of is our team uh now kind of has that expectation that if we handle our business prepare the right way um you know it's going to come down to a couple plays here and there but we'll have at least earned the right to feel confident in that moment uh that we're going to make the plays required to win football games. Okay. Your background, you know, we'll get to the playing stuff here. We might go in reverse, but part of that Washington mafia,

although did I, did you miss McVay by a year? Yeah, actually, uh, Sean was a real huge reason why I even got to Washington in the first place. I had talked with him about possibly joining him initially in Los Angeles.

Uh, when it didn't work out, he was like, Hey, you know, I think, uh, you'd be a great fit't work out, he was like, hey, you know, I think you'd be a great fit there. I had previous relationships with guys like Bill Callahan, Matt Cavanaugh, who had coached

me in New York. And I had never met Jay Gruden at the time. So getting a chance to go out there, interview. But I know Sean put in a good word for me there. I had known him for a few years before that. I know Sean put in a good word for me there. I had known him for a few years before that. You know, I talk a lot about this football journey that I've been on,

both playing career and then on into the coaching career. I feel like so much of every opportunity and every coach that I've been able to play for or be around as a coach on their staff, it's affected me in a real positive way. And I don't really feel like I'd feel as comfortable as I do every day leading kind of my own team now without that journey and kind of everything that took place along the way. Okay. So then that kind of pivots perfectly into the wash or from Washington. Then you end up with the Rams. You're calling plays for a couple of years.

I want to talk to you specifically about the preparation for the interview process to be the head coach. Okay. Once you realize you're on the radar of now interviewing for head coaching positions, now make it specific to the Vikings. What kind of preparation did you do going into that interview? Well, we were not a team that had a first round bye last year. So I was doing a lot kind of in a short amount of time, just to, you know, feel I was not one of those people that, hey, I'm coming into this year, you're going to, you need to have this book ready. You need to have your interview process and,

and your philosophies figured out, which I thought really helped me, Ryan, because when the opportunities came, I didn't really get a whole lot of time to kind of manufacture, you know, this special presentation that you were going to put together. What I did was I was really lucky and blessed to be a part of the Rams organization for the last two years, be around a head coach like Sean McVay. And I felt so blessed to just have a coach when he hired me. He said to me, you know, I don't just want you to be the coordinator I want you to be you know by my side alongside me as we go through this thing together and anything I can help in your preparation because he told me I believe you're going to be a head coach in this league and and when you hear that you know at

first you're like okay yeah I'm here to do a job to help you. I appreciate all that. But then looking back on it, all those moments where he was willing to share, willing to allow me to be a part of decision making processes of what he had to go through as head coach and watching us and how we instilled culture and relied on that through tough times to help overcome adversity and come out better off on the back end of all that. I just remember leaving, whether it was the first interview with the Vikings or any of the other interviews I had, I just remember feeling like not only do I believe everything that I just sold to these people and really believe in the football philosophies and the importance of culture, it was something I felt like if I was lucky enough to get one of these opportunities, that I found it realistic for me to go and do it in the most authentic way possible,

being myself, but also staying true to stuff that's really, really important to me. And I think does ultimately allow you to have a chance to win football games in this league. And that's been kind of the coolest part, looking back at that process, then continuing on and helping in any way I could for us to win a Super Bowl and a world championship. But then the next day, kind of stepping into this role and feeling like from the jump, I was prepared. I was ready. I was lucky enough to hire a great coaching staff and ultimately come to an organization that has really been a great fit for me, my personality, and ultimately,

you know, just trying to build this on a daily basis and help players reach their truest potential. Knowing that this league is hard, it's hard to win, and it's going to be a grind every single week. But if we stay true to some of these things that i truly believe into my core um i feel like i'll be able to put our organization in a position to go hunt some of these wins and feel like we're doing it the right way specific to the vikings i imagine you are watching you're going back on huddle whatever program you have and you're watching kirk's dropbacks you're watching all the past plays you're looking at, what did you see with him that you sold the Vikings on that have, Hey, if I'm in here and I'm working with him and I'm designing an offense around him, this is what I want to do. This is how I'll make it better.

Yeah, I think it's a great point. I, you know, I was able to study enough in that short amount of time to see a guy that had grown from working with him in 2017 as his position coach. He had grown through just experience and snaps and playing in different offenses. And you could really watch a guy that I kind of envisioned in the offense we would build here in an offense, obviously based around our skill sets at receiver and running back and the guys we got up front. But I do firmly believe that you do everything in your power to build something for the quarterback. And it's not always to make it easier on the quarterback. It's to bring out the best in that player. And sometimes it is trying to help him in any way you can. And the

other times it's pushing him as much as you can to grow within his experience and within his skill set. And that's the one thing that I don't think gets talked about enough with Kirk is, you know, his ability to throw the football and be accurate, stand in an NFL pocket and deliver the football within the rhythm and timing of how you build an offensive scheme. I just felt like Kirk in conjunction with guys like Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen and Dalvin Cook and the guys we had up front, I just felt like there was a place for a winning offense that he could be right at the front of and leading the charge of. And I've seen that kind of ownership grow, Ryan, week in and week out to the point now where I thought he played phenomenal on a short week the other night. I mean, he was putting the ball in play accurate,

dealing with, you know, NFL pocket against one of the better pass rush teams. I mean, they had the NFL sack leader on their side and just his ability to continue to play at a high level, regardless of circumstance, has really been a winning edge for our team and something that we're going to need to continue to rely upon Kirk to do each and every week. It's been really cool to see the locker room and just our team gravitate towards Kirk as he leads us in his own unique way and playing the position at a winning level for us.

I was going to follow up with Selmy on Kirk. I think you just did that, so I'm not going to ask you to answer it a second time to be totally transparent. Anyone listening to this podcast, you're not the biggest Kirk fan. So I would say over the years, it was frustrating because I would look at some of the deep ball stuff and I'd go, oh, okay, he's not challenging enough. And then I'll have a year where it's like, hey, did you see who's actually killing it in deep balls? And it would speak to the accuracy where you'd go, no, it's actually there. Then there were a year where it's like, hey, do you see who's actually killing it in deep balls? And it would speak to the accuracy where you go, no, it's actually there. Then there are other years where I felt like, let me look at some of the like throws to the sticks. Is how short of it is he?

And I'd be like, I feel like he's short more often than you need that to be. And then there'll be a year. It's like, hey, it's actually doing pretty well. So I felt like there were different years with the concerns that I had about him as being like a real guy. You know, I'm talking about like the standard of not just putting up some numbers but being somebody who can carry a team through some stuff i felt like he showed like different versions of it but never in the same year look hell my favorite throw from him this year isn't even the jefferson catch at buffalo it's the theland throw to the left sideline where i think he gets destroyed and finds a way to get it to the sideline enough

and then i think you're gonna end up getting a penalty on that, on that play as well on that last drive. Like there's, it just seems to be, and maybe it's unfair too, because I'm going back to the Washington years where maybe he wasn't considered like everybody's favorite teammate. I'm not asking for any Intel on that,

but it feels like the whole thing is more comfortable. Whoever he is, maybe it's the record, I don't know. It just seems like it's all coming together a little bit more for him, realizing it's unfair for me at this stage of his career to wonder why he's not going to be one of the Tier 1 guys, which I never thought he would be, and I don't expect it to happen. Yeah, I think my goal in coming here, Ryan,

was I've got a lot of confidence in what Kirk Cousins was before I arrived here and got a chance to coach him on a daily basis, but also just envisioning a world where we could put him in an atmosphere in our building where I never miss an opportunity to tell our team how, you know, when Kirk makes a game-changing play, a special play, I just have never missed an opportunity and will never miss an opportunity to let the guys around him know just how difficult of a job he has and how much he's willing to answer the bell when we need him to. He's a huge reason why we've won nine football games, the from behind victories, being at his best in those moments where regardless of how the day has gone, regardless of what consistency maybe as an offense we've either shown or not shown, when our best is required, he's going to be the guy leading the charge and making sure that

he gives us not only a chance to win football games, but some of the plays he's made, some of the throws he's made in quote-unquote, got to have it type situations. I think he deserves a lot of credit for that, but I also believe very strongly in the atmosphere we have around him, the faith and confidence that this organization has, his teammates have in him, and maybe most importantly, me in his ear having the confidence. He knows that no matter how it goes or how the day is going, I trust that if I do my job for him, he's going to be right there making the play required to go win a football game. And I just feel really strongly about him. So proud of the way he's kind of taken ownership of our offense and in a league that gets driven a lot by statistics and metrics and all those things

in fourth quarters of football games this year, when we need Kirk Cousins to help us go win a football game, he's done that a ton. And we'll probably have to do that a lot more as the season goes on, the way this league works and how competitive things are going to get. I think he's earned the confidence of the guys around him. And there's a feeling on our team that if we have a chance to win a game in the fourth quarter, we're going to come together and do it. And I think Kirk's a huge reason why we have that feeling. Okay, let's go back to the beginning

because this is a funny story. I was still pretty much a real Boston guy, like way too emotional about the outcomes. I'm doing late night TV in Boston and in the third round, the Patriots, 14 years ago, I remember this, 2008, with Brady Rowland. Belichick's like, yeah, let me take this guy, O'Connell, out of San Diego,

take him in the third round. So all of us in the show are like, what are they doing? He needs more weapons. Why are they taking a quarterback? So I feel awful, but I just am very transparent. I feel awful that my first impression with you is like, what are they doing? What is being, again, me on a TV show questioning Belichick, what is the best experience

the learning experience from either bill or brady being with that team that's rolling and kept it going for a lot longer too like the thing that you always remember the most from those from those moments really yeah i can remember early on um it might have been it might have been we had rookie minicamp but then the very next time i i arrived back in Foxboro was one of the team minicamps that the whole team would be at. This is after 2007 when they lost their final game in the Super Bowl. This team with so many great players and coaches. I can just remember that first practice, whether it was an OTA or truly a minicamp, whatever it was. I can just remember the standard that the guys were being coached at.

I mean, Hall of Fame players, Ring of Honor players, guys that have been generational talents for not only Patriots, but many other teams either before and after that. And I can just remember hearing how Tom Brady was being coached, Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Mike Vrabel, Teddy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison, and just thinking to myself, holy cow, you know, this just got real. I better be ready to improve and work as hard as I possibly can to, to grow as a player, uh, listen and be a sponge and not only around Tom Brady in the quarterback room, but Josh McDaniels as a coordinator, uh, hall of fame receiver and Randy Moss, Wes Welker, these guys that, um, you don't, you just don't get those opportunities as a young player. And maybe there's a thousand things, Ryan,

that I would do differently looking back, the old knowing what I know now. But I don't necessarily think I would be in this position that I'm in now without having some of those early experiences of truly being around some of the greatest players and coaches that have played and coached in our game that early on in my career. I was not truly ready at that point to maybe, you know, assume all of that information as a player, but I can promise you I was listening to everything. I wrote everything down. I wanted to become what, you know, the hope was for me there.

And ultimately along my football journey, I've had kind of those, the lights kind of gone on, looking back on some of those times and just being so thankful for those times but um just that that initial reaction that initial meeting i just never forget the feeling i had walking out of there and then just how that was stamped week in and week out during the time i was lucky enough to be there uh to truly grow maybe not physically as the player that i hoped but uh my love of this game and my mental understanding and

growth in this game really could not have grown anymore during those times. It really helped me to where I'm at now. Okay, two things before we finish up. You end up with five or six different teams, practice squad or whatever. Yep. You throw six passes your entire career. That's correct. How does that, which I had to imagine was, I don't know if disappointing is too light

or devastating is too tough an adjective. Somewhere in between there, for sure. How did that influence you as a coach? First and foremost, I think it helps me know how to deal with, you know, at times a 90-man roster, those hard conversations when you go from 90 to 53 at the end of training camp. I've had that conversation. I know what that conversation's like. I know when that conversation comes, you know, from fair circumstances. I know when that conversation comes in not so fair circumstances. So I never, ever take for granted being able to have those conversations and look people in the eye and explain to them the why. And then always make sure that I'm providing some facet of here's what you need to do moving forward. Because I remember that's what Bill did for me when I left New

England. Some other great coaches that I had the privilege of playing for did for me. But then also I feel like, you know, it allows me to understand never to take a day for granted, a day to work, to push our team, to understand the gravity of a Monday on November 28th when we've got a chance to go out and do something to improve. The importance of improving and having a process to where every player on your roster feels like they can improve and they're being coached. And I am important. And just the power of that, if every player on your roster and every coach you have feels that, and it's my job to make sure that that happens on a daily basis around here, I think that can be a really powerful thing that I've tried to take away from maybe the playing career I did not have.

Okay, last thing. We'll end on a lighter note. What's the Rex Ryan story that co-workers of yours have told me? If you can get Kevin to tell this about essentially being cut, but being like he was trying to give you an inspired version of losing your roster spot, if that's the way. So go ahead, just take it away. Yeah, there's a few that I could go with. And, you know, going from New England to New York, you know, two totally different kinds of coaches,

two totally different personalities. But I always felt like New York was such a special time for me because I got to see things done differently, but have some great results and really kind of shape, you know, maybe the understanding of I could be myself, I could be authentic, I could be me every single day. If I believe ultimately what, you know, I'm trying to build here, it's really helped. But a great story that I, you know, I still have the voicemail, I'm not gonna play it for you. But it was the night before free agency, there was a decent chance. This was after year three there, you know, hopefully I was really hoping a year three would turn into year four. Um, and I get a, I get a

phone call from, from Rex Ryan and, and he's, uh, he's essentially, I eventually did talk with him, but I think it's funny and awesome to still have the voicemail where he's basically telling me, uh, that, uh, they were about to trade and probably had already traded for Tim Tebow. And, you know, he had good news and bad news. The bad news is it probably wasn't going to work out for me to continue on as a quarterback on the New York Jets. But the good news was he couldn't wait to talk to me about the coaching opportunity he had for me, which coincided with him multiple times telling me, you know, I don't think much of you as a quarterback. But I sure I think he told me multiple times your life work, your life's work is going to be coaching.

Not always what you want to hear when you're still lacing them up and trying to go out and get better every day. But what it did was it gave me confidence that, you know, even the three years that I was there, I was probably more of a coach than a player in all reality, whether it was helping with the defense or helping in the quarterback room with Mark Sanchez, who's become one of my best friends, you know, to this very day. But Rex was always honest with me. He was always real and ultimately was kind of the first first coach i didn't take him up on that coaching opportunity because i was so uh you know i was still trying to you know as i told him that's a lot to unpack there um but in the end i still think so highly of him and and his part in my

coaching journey and every time i see him i he's one of my favorite coaches i've ever had and has had a huge impact on me yeah Yeah, look, whatever people think of Rex, I will say he has one of the highest approval ratings of former players of any coach of guys that I got to work with, got to know. I don't really hear many guys being like, oh, I didn't like playing for him. There's something to be said for each and every Sunday. Your team feels like not only are we going to go out and win the game game but we're going to be the tougher team and we're going to we're going to do all these things because of you know the confidence that he had in us as a team and I think that's why you can be a wild card playoff team two years in a row and be on the doorstep of you know a trip to the Super Bowl and back-to-back AFC championship

games just by you know building a great defense and having confidence of your players when it matters the most. It's not going to be because of a lack of belief in what you're trying to get done. That's for darn sure. I might be rooting for the Vikings the rest of the way. This is terrific, man. This is really cool. Thanks for taking the time.

I know it's always a busy week in that world. We'll see how it plays out, man. Thanks again. Yeah, I appreciate you, Ryan. Thank you. This episode of the Ryan Russell Podcast is brought to you by State Farm. All right, football fans, the good neighbors over at State Farm wanted me to let you know that you don't really have to get that personal to get the personal price plan.

Seriously, there's no need to tell anyone that you make custom DJ remixes of your team's fight song or that you memorize the choreography to every dancer routine of your team's cheerleading squad. I have something personal. A buddy of mine tells me he DMs Mac Jones before every game. He hasn't heard back from him,

but he just DMs him. Says, Hey man, go get it today, partner. That's right. The State Farm personal price plan simply helps you create an affordable price just

for you like a good neighbor state farm is there call or go to statefarm.com today to create your state farm personal price plan prices vary by state options selected by customer availability and eligibility may vary the right time to have ruse feldman on the show covering college football he joins us from uh my neighborhood as well uh Fox Sports, The Athletic. Let's start with all the coaching stuff because that's what I want to get to. At one point, I think a lot of people felt like Lane Kiffin was headed to Auburn. For those that need explanation, as you pointed out, there's more money there. The history is that they can win a championship. That doesn't happen at Ole Miss. Not to say that Ole Miss isn't a really good job. I also think that there's some

truth to his idea of going up against Saban in the Iron Bowl every year. Like there's a lot there. And then it ends up not happening. And then it's you freeze. And then Lane had a very Kiffin quote where I immediately didn't believe it, where he was like, well, I didn't want to say anything until after the Egg Bowl to not take away from the game. But I told the players.

And maybe he did tell the players. That doesn't make any sense to me. If you're not going anywhere, then just tell everybody as soon as you know. So it felt like, I don't know, it felt like from the outside and not having nearly as much information as you do, Bruce,

that something happened along the way. So what's the story? Yeah, I had talked to Lane Saturday morning and he had told me essentially what you're saying, that he had told me essentially what you're saying, that he had informed the players, I'm Stan, the leadership at Ole Miss had been informed of that, but he did not want to distract or detract from the game or from the players in the game. And as you think about that, as you pointed out, and maybe his rationale, and look, Lane Kiffin knows how the media works and knows how chatter works.

I think if Lane had said, I'm definitely not going, does that pop the bubble? There's no way I'm going to Auburn? I mean, to me, that would probably diffuse it more than escalate it because that's all you had was chatter. And also, by the way, like Lane engaged with, you know, a local media guy who had reported he was leaving. And it was a weird, you know, like kind of back and forth that you just don't see anybody else engage in like three or four days before the game. So, you know, it's kind of weird because I think, you know, like you're saying, it wouldn't take much to say, well, isn't that distracting from the game by doing that, you know, on top of it? So, look, he has done a really good job at Ole Miss, but I think going forward, and it's noteworthy, I would give credit to a specific coach who pointed this out. pointed this out from the time that, that, uh, Auburn was talking to, or had reached out to both Lane Kiffin and Hugh Freeze, they want to combine Owen six. So maybe there's a jinx that's in play

for the Tigers vacancy. Um, you know, look, the, the way it was explained to me by somebody was like, look, if you're at Ole Miss, maybe you have the fifth best job in the SEC West. And if you're at Auburn, maybe you have the fourth best job. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that. But if you say Alabama, LSU, then maybe Texas A&M. But people have wanted Auburn. We're still waiting on somebody to do something really, really good in College Station. So Lane Kiffin, not in play.

They circle back on Hugh Freeze. Hugh Freeze, they know, like Lane Kiffin, can win in the SEC. And Hugh Freeze, they know he can really win in the SEC. He beat Nick Saban multiple times. We know he could recruit. He has a ton of baggage. There's no getting around that. But at the end of the day, they think he can win.

And if the baggage resurfaces at some point, then they'll probably fire him for cause. Yeah, the Auburn thing is tricky because I think you could argue from an on-the-field thing, there's times where it's felt like the second-best job in the SEC West. I don't think it's better than LSU. I mean, the last three coaches who've been at LSU,

all very different, all won national titles. You can't say that other places. You're in that state. You know this. You know LSU as well as anybody. That's an LSU state, and that's a great football talent state. Not to say that Alabama isn't, but look who's in the state with you. So I would say it's probably

the third best um it to me it's definitely a better job than old miss on you know because of the success and the resources the question is you have a and m's money it's just a and m you know it's like whoever goes in there has a little bit of success and then kind of implodes well look i think from like the 10 000 foot view, I would never argue that Auburn is a better job than LSU. I'm just not, especially with the state thing and that there isn't an Alabama equivalent in the same state for LSU. They're never going to have to deal with that.

But when you look at Auburn a decade plus out, national championship, the appearance that year against Florida State was a bit surprising. There have been times where you felt like they're the team that's beaten Alabama more regularly in spots you wouldn't have expected. So the other part, though,

that would definitely put it behind LSU, and maybe, again, you're right. Ole Miss has never felt like the third best job in the SEC West. The Auburn factor. As crazy as it is in the South, and all the stories that we hear, Auburn always feels a little extra.

It just always feels like, wait, what the hell's going on down there? And whether it was Gus Malzahn going from fired to extension every other year to, you know, Chizik winning a title and very quickly being like, actually, you're not the guy.

And I'm not saying like Gene Chizik is this completely misunderstood genius and all this stuff, but Auburn seems to make like whatever your favorite drama is on television, Auburn is the one where you're like, what the hell is this storyline? And that's how it's felt like for a long time. It is because it's wildly unpredictable. And I think it's going to be that now with Hugh Freeze there, right? Like Hugh Freeze is the only guy who I think can wow people at a press conference and also repulse them at the same time, you know,

kind of like you see this and I saw this, you know, firsthand when I was around Ole Miss, when he was on Ogeron staff, when I worked on meat market, this guy is a fantastic speaker. When he gets near in front of a group of people, he's just very dynamic. He has the Southern preacher thing down, but then there's all this other stuff that comes with him. Odd in that is you have a really good college football coach. And again, like if you told me right now, you know, two years from now,

is Auburn a top 15 team? I would go, yes, I believe it. And if you said, who would I think will have the better team, you know, like in two or three years in the SEC West? And I'm going to take Alabama out of it and just say, okay, you know, like in two or three years in, in the, in the sec West. And I'm going to take Alabama out of it and just say, okay, you know, I'll say Alabama is the best, still the best program.

I think Auburn might be the next best because Jimbo is like circling the drain right now. Um, I, I think Brian Kelly's had a really good first year, but I wouldn't bet against freeze in that. And, you know, he's got better resources than lane. that. And, you know, he's got better resources than Lane. So, you know, I don't know. If I was an Auburn fan, I'd be conflicted. But I think I would expect my team to start winning a lot more. Yeah, they'll be as conflicted as they want until he starts dialing them up.

And a quarterback actually looks like a real guy. Let's not use the term dialing them up. Let's not use that term. I just like it from a, like, why aren't we dialing up more stuff? All right. I know.

I know exactly what you mean. Moving on. Dilfer to UAB. And we both know Trent, like, you know, good for Trent because when he took over the elite 11, you know,

Trent likes, you know, you can see him. He's kind of got a big vision. I think he really loved coaching coaches as well as coaching players. And you could kind of see this coming. Didn't know it was going to be UAB, but it's not surprising because a lot of football,

former quarterbacks especially that we all know, all feel like they could coach. And some of them are right. And some of them probably, you know, really miss, you know, you know, misguided on that. But Trent is, you know, he did the work, at least at a big high school program to, to really build it and almost built it like a college program in terms of boosters and, and, and, and the kind of money that they had to bring in. And there was some, you know, it just, I think this will be a good hire. I don't know what success will be under, under Trent Dilfer there. I think you will see, you know, he will put together a really good staff. Um, I think this is a really good hire. Now I I'm biased. I spent a

lot of time around him working on, on a book. Um, but you know, he is, he is very, very smart. And I think he will, you know, he, I think he knows what it takes. And I think I would not want to be in the same conference with him if I was another coach. Yeah. The only part that I was wondering is, is if he could have with the name and, you know, maybe no one cares about, you know, high school powerhouse stuff, unless you've been doing it for like a decade, but then it's weird. Like you'll hear about some Texas coach who hadn't lost a game in 20 years, whatever. And it's like, Oh, that guy's never going to get a sniff at college.

And he may never have wanted to, you know, but with Dilfer, I wonder if he could have with the resume, with his presence, you know, it's not like somebody who played and then disappeared you know he's been on tv now for a long time um i just wonder if he could have gone power five or if he was interesting here is like if deon goes to take colorado and trent is t taken UAB in some way, like, you know, Trent spent a bunch of time in Colorado in some, in some ways it's like, and I'm not saying Dion,

you know, if I was UAB, I mean, if I was a bunch of schools, I would have probably tried to hire Dion already, but it, you know, in a lot of ways, I feel like Trent at Colorado actually would, would make some sense as well or would have. But just because there's ties out there. And I don't know what, I think what you run into with a little bit, and I think you run into it with definitely Dion, but I think you run into it with Trent a little bit, is you better be a pretty secure or pretty desperate leadership group when you take on somebody who has such a big presence.

These are TV guys. Obviously, Dion was a great, great football player, but Trent has a big presence. You and I both worked with him. When he comes in the room, he's getting the oxygen kind of thing. I think for certain people, that is uncomfortable for them. Now, if he starts winning of thing. And so I think for certain people, that is uncomfortable for them.

Now, if he starts winning at UAB, which I think he will, then they'll be uncomfortable and they'll be like, hey, this is, you know, because obviously a lot of big time coaches can kind of be tough to deal with. And I'm not saying Trent would be that way. But I just think sometimes people are uncomfortable with, like, can we control this person? Like, how will we work with them? And I think that will be interesting to see going forward. Okay, so then let's go

back to Deion. The last two seasons at Jackson State, he's 22-2. And the Colorado part of it, you know, it's almost like Colorado might be the toughest Power 5 job going right now. It's the worst Colorado might be the toughest Power 5 job going right now. It's the worst roster in Power 5 right now.

I have no doubts. I've talked to guys who work there. They've had issues getting kids in, admitted through the portal, which makes it a little harder. We'll see how much flexibility they can get for the new coach on that. It's not a loaded state. It's not like we're talking about, you know, somewhere in the deep south or Texas or California. It's Colorado doesn't produce a ton of players to begin with.

And also, you know, you have a couple of things. You have an AD who has tried to get out of there recently. And you have, you know, a Pac-12 that doesn't't it's not going to have usc and ucla much longer and so like how how much more viable is colorado at that point but you know everything i've heard is dion you know is really wanting to be wanting to make a big move and this is a power five move and i'm sure he thinks i can i can get it cranked up there. Cause look what I did here. They weren't winning until I got here. And,

you know, maybe there's a path forward. I mean, obviously it's going to be a big uphill battle while, you know, USC is going to leave and that'll make it a lot easier. And UCLA too. Maybe you still have Oregon,

you still have Washington, you still have Utah. I mean, those are, you know, even like they still have Utah. I mean, those are, you know, even like they're so far down talent wise. Like I feel like they're kind of where Arizona was when Jed fish got the job. Right. So this is not portal or not. This is not going to be that quick of a fix. I don't, I don't think. Yeah. And it's too bad because you and I are of an age where,

you know, Colorado football mattered. Asking around about it, I think they did a much better job of, let's just say, getting guys in from California that weren't going to get the job done in some of the California schools. I don't know if the JUCO thing taken off the way it has is preventing some of those guys from going to CU, but it's an awesome campus. It's an awesome city. I don't know how attractive that is to every single football recruit, but when you look at the talent and where it's going and it feels like it just not being a priority in the conference, I don't know. I'd almost wonder if Dion would be better off waiting it out and wondering if something else pops.

Because I mean, how close was the Auburn thing ever close for him? No, I don't think they were going were gonna they were buying in on him and which you know look that you can read a lot of stuff into that but they weren't the the one that was is interesting to me is usf you know like that's not far from you know he's from he's from fort myers it's not that far away we know he is you know he was a legendary player at Florida State and then the Deep South. And I think, and that place is really bad right now, but unlike Colorado in the Pac-12,

I think he could jump in there and within two years, he probably could win that league. And then he can make a big jump. Again, what Lincoln Riley's done at USC is amazing. And maybe Dion's son is his version of Caleb Williams. I just don't know. Caleb's not leaving. It's not like you're winning next year.

Maybe he can, in two years, go from 1-11 to 5-7 to 9-3, and then maybe he gets out of there. I don't know. But I was like, I think there's... To me, there's more upward mobility at USF. But you know what? People doubt Deion all the time, and he proves them wrong.

So, you know, we'll see. Okay, fickle to Wisconsin. It's a really good hire for the Badgers. You know, I thought if Jim Linder went in there and goes six and one, you know, they were all unranked teams he was playing. I think this is probably not Luke Fickle's job, but he was four and three. And I think there was, there was just concerns that this is not going to, this is going to be more of the kind of the same of what we had. Uh, you look at what Luke Fickle did. I mean, he did get Cincinnati into the CFP.

You look at what Luke Fickle did. I mean, he did get Cincinnati into the CFP. You know, of the two big, big 10 hires, if I had to grade them and I wasn't going to give the same grade, I really liked the Luke Fickle hire. I really loved the Matt Rule hire. I would go one's an A plus, the other one's an A. And the only reason, it's not even a knock on Fickle,

but like, you know, Brian Kelly won a ton of games there. Butch Jones won 19 games his last two years there. Um, you know, D'Antonio built that up before that, like that place was built to do well. Whereas what Matt rule did it at, at Baylor, when Baylor, when he took it over, I mean, that was a, one of the best, um, turnaround jobs anybody's done in the last 20 years in college football. And so, you know, I think this is a big, big, you know, big wins for the Big Ten, no doubt. I'm interested to see how he does there because I don't think that program is that far away.

They were good for a while. They just never, they just struggled to get better than that. And maybe there's a ceiling there. We'll find out. Okay. The one that saddens me is David Shaw stepping down as the head coach of Stanford. And when I think about the short list of coaches that I've loved talking to that have been the most impressive people that I've ever talked to, forget even college football and any sport, David Shaw's on that very short list for me. And when you think about when Stanford's rolling, it's like man could this guy go to the nfl could he do whatever he wanted it felt like that it's just such a crazy business where the guy that

everybody wants in two years it's like oh this is like somehow a bummer to go ahead and get this guy when you look at you know what his record is overall. It's still incredible. But back-to-back three and nine seasons coming off of a COVID year that was weird. And then trying to figure out, okay, what is Stanford prioritizing? Are they keeping pace with everyone else? I think they had one transfer in this group for this season. Obviously, he was a great student, and it's hard to get kids in there. Now, I wonder, there's... So what's the deal?

How did this happen to Shaw? How did this happen? I think it was a variety of reasons. You know, my colleague Stuart Mandel did a really good deep dive into this actually this week that he'd been working on for a month, but it was, you know, you had the transfer portal is one of the late later things that they really couldn't engage in. You see certainly like, look, Chip's at a high academic school and they're crushing it in the transfer portal. You see what Lincoln did. You know, it's like we've seen a lot of schools all over the country and they really cannot, at least at this point, have not been able to engage much in that at all. I'm not talking about like, you know, they have one guy. It's just hard to get kids in there. It's different. I think on NIL, I mean, Stanford has tons and tons of money and resources, but are they

going to devote any of them to football in that regard to try to keep up? The answer has been no to this point. And then I think a big part of it was it really lost its identity. And this started happening long before they started having four win seasons. It just got away. You know, Jim Harbaugh was determined to build the bully on the West Coast and he really did that. And David was able to maintain it for a little while, but then you had the longtime strength,

strength and conditioning coach, Shannon Turley, he got forced out and, you know, he went to another place, but that kind of contributed. You had some assistant coaches leave. I think, you know, assistant coaches leave i think you know you talk to people and you know some of the same people i know here um who are thinking you know what maybe dave needs to relinquish play calling duties and you know he has his coordinators entitled but like this got really stale in a hurry and i i agree with you david shaw is one of the most thoughtful people you talk you could talk to not just in college football. And so it was kind of, it's honestly sad to see how the program had really deteriorated in the last couple of years. But like, I think, you know, the going

forward part is how committed is Stanford going to be? We're going to find out how the, how, you know, what the 80s, you know,'s hiring process is like because this program is no, it's not talent-wise, there's more players than what CU has. But for as good as they were, talking to somebody who coached in the league recently, they were like, when they talked to their players when they got there, it was like, it isn't USC and it isn't Oregon that scares you. It's Stanford because they kick your ass. And that's not that program anymore. And it hasn't been for a while.

And they got to find a way to get that back. Yeah, I hate it. I don't care about Stanford results, but I hate it for Shaw. Knowing what that story is, the backstory, his father, the entire deal. And this is not the ending that I wanted for him. And honestly, I'd be shocked if, like, I don't know what the next job for him is. It's really weird how that bell, you know, it's the less miles to Oklahoma State, to LSU, to, hey, you're going to be in Kansas. We know he could do TV.

We know they love him at NFL Network. You know, if he's here, I know, I think his son's going to be a walk on at UCLA and he can go, you know, kind of maybe, I would say relax a little more, but you know, like the job for coaches and TV, having worked with a couple of them is much more dialed down than it, than it was when they were, you know, trying to keep up on the recruiting world and all the other million things they have to do. So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised. Like we've seen a lot of coaches go to the NFL and bomb miserably from college, you know, work with one of them, obviously. I don't think David's that guy though. Like if he wanted to do it, even though he has

really struggled in the last few years, I think if people, you know, if he really has the passion to do it, he knows what the NFL is like. A lot of guys who go there don't, and they just, they don't have the, they don't read the room and it, and it just doesn't work. You know, he would have probably different challenges than he has at Stanford, but it might be easier for him, honestly, to have success than it was the last few years if he does interview for some NFL jobs. Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going with this, is that the announcement would be met with, oh, that guy ended up losing the gig at Stanford. And I'd go, I think that might be a mistake. I think he'd be buying low on David Shaw once he resets and figures out what he wants to do.

Okay, last thing before we let you go. You're on the sideline for Michigan-Ohio State. At the half, I'm going, Ohio State's pushing them around. Michigan can't run the football. I know JJ McCarthy said a couple deep balls. That's not necessarily what you would say in the scouting report.

And then it just turns into a free-for-all. And Ohio State can't keep up. Michigan's defense was terrific. Ohio State pretty limited. I know I'm saying offensively because I don't really give them too much of a pass for having some guys out of skill position with injuries just because there's always another guy to roll out there, especially when you look at what's going on there at running back.

But what was your takeaway from who Michigan is after that kind of win? I was amazed by what I saw from Michigan. And they were so banged up. And Blake Horn is the best player. They were going to get him on the field a little bit, but just, you know, maybe almost for emotional support as a leader and a little bit and like blitz pickup, he wasn't going to be a factor. He didn't have the same kind of juice he normally has. Donovan Edwards, you know, is out there, you know, in warmups with a hard cast on his hand. You know, he's a great receiver. That's not going to be an issue.

And that's not going to be a factor for them. And then Donovan Edwards turned out and he busted two super long runs with the ball maybe in the wrong hand because that was better for ball security. And I think the biggest takeaway I had was being near the Michigan bench and the belief that they had,

as you could feel them look, and literally they were talking about this on the sideline amongst themselves of like, these guys are going to break. We know who they are. And I was like, wow, they are basically saying like, they just got punched in the mouth and they're going to back away. And everything that, you know, I've wrote about this a lot for The Athletic over the last couple of weeks about how Jim Harbaugh has been able to change the culture there. And a big theme there was we can't out personnel Ohio state, but we can out culture them and we can out physical them. And sometimes with physicality is like, yeah, they, Ohio state clearly set up to shut down the run game and they did for, for the first half. And then it was

like, eventually it cracked and it broke wide open. And I think that speaks to the physicality that, you know, like Jim Harbaugh talked about wanting to build a bully on the West coast. He built the bully of the big 10 and, you know, they smashed 28 to three in the second half. Like that was, that was when I looked around and I'm with Rinaldi on the sid half. Like that was, when I looked around, I'm with Rinaldi on the sideline. At one point I said to him in a commercial break, I was like, turn around. It was like, there were people who were,

some were like, you know, distraught. Most were shocked. They could not believe what was getting done to them on their own field. There was no snow falling. There was no, there was nothing felt like fluky about this. It was like, man, we're getting our ass kicked. One little follow up here.

Anything that I'd read, I think there was one that was titled, I don't know where I read it, where it was like, Ohio State has a Ryan Day problem. And I went, okay, all right,

relax. 31 and two. Right. Is there anything to be said though, of maybe the Buckeye community? And this is probably a reach. Because, again, Day's terrific. Anyone that knows him, raves about him.

The talent has not dropped off whatsoever. They're easily the most talented roster in the Big Ten and probably will be every single year. But that it feels like he carries himself a bit like a guy who's got two national titles in his back pocket. Will that turn anyone off at some point? I mean, look, you lose to Michigan, then people are just going to get pissed no matter what. But when I think about his demeanor and all of it, I'll kind of think to myself, like, you inherited an amazing program. And maybe you're just as good as anybody else doing the job, but it's, it doesn't seem to match. Like at times I'll look at him and be like,

you look like you've been there 20 years and you haven't. I think that job does that, you know, like to, to certain people, like we know he is a, he is a much more self-aware guy than the guy he followed um and i think that's not it's not that hard no it's not that hard i i don't know who's i mean i work with him i'm trying i'm trying to be diplomatic but like with with ryan i do think he you know like that is a heavy job to be wearing right i mean he's 31 and 2 in big 10 play right right? And he's, you know, he's done, he's done an amazing job, by the way, urban, um, you know, he got blown out by Purdue. He got blown out by Iowa. This is different because urban was, you know, famously seven and O against

the arch rival and the ones that matter, you know, they're, they're not going to force you out for being undefeated against that. And I don't think they're going to force Ryan day out either. I think the question ultimately long-term would be, you know, how, how healthy is it to, you know, like, is this, if, if there are people, and again, I think he, I think he knows who matters most, you know, around him, but if there are people who, who are really kind of down on him and say they don't want him and all this other stuff, it's like, you know, he's one of those guys who I think would do well in the NFL. He's been there as an assistant, you know, he's a really good offensive coach.

I'm not saying that he's going to jump now or anything like that, but you know, like is, is I, I think they have to figure out on defense because they just, you know, that Jim Knowles did really well until you faced a really physical team. And then it was like, they have secondary issues.

That's been an issue for them for a while now. They got to get that figured out. But I think big picture, I, I just think for Ryan Day's future there, it's like, okay, we know he can win. He could beat Michigan next year. And then I think you're still kind of dealing with incredibly high expectations of the people there. And I think that wears on you because I don't, you know, I think that wears on you because I think you're exactly right. I think it does. It's, it's, it's hard to be anywhere for five years, you know, as a head coach, right. And they get tired of you after like seven

years, six years, especially if you don't now it's going to like expedite it a little bit. So I'm curious to see how, you know, how this goes, what kind of staff moves they try to make maybe to, to, to, to change it. Cause you have to do something differently. Uh, they're clearly Michigan has a formula that, you know, Ohio state needs to respond to Michigan, Michigan responded to Ohio state and made an adjustment. Now Ohio state needs to make that adjustment. And I'm interested to see what they do. But no doubt, I agree with you.

I definitely think it's like dog years for him. And I've heard that about certain jobs, like dog years at Notre Dame was the way it was. It was amazing. Brian Kelly lasted as long as he did. But I definitely think for this situation, especially when you follow somebody like Urban, and there's really not too many people actually like him, but I think just and he's around i mean he may not live there all the time but

you know because of big noon he's there he's on the sideline that's you know i don't know if that i don't think that helps any yeah look and to be clear here the guy has gone what 45 and five you know and plays in the national championship game granted they lost to bama but this isn't like some it was kind of my harbaugh argument when people be like oh it's time to move on from this guy i'm like if michigan's cool with him and he's cool with michigan then appreciate what you have it's not that easy good luck finding somebody else who will go for it wouldn't 45 out of 50 games yeah right right so this is not suggesting anything of the story it just felt like this year with him and then there was also things where i was thinking

where i was like well maybe this is what happens when you go this long without being challenged but then i'm like yeah but then you could have said the same thing if michigan had lost the game because then you'd be like wow you know they hadn't because i looked at it like the offenses that they had played but uh that's really good stuff on the sideline that's really good stuff on just understanding that michigan's sitting there expecting them to break now maybe that's just talking and a bunch of young kids waving towels and all that kind of stuff but it seems like it felt like it this was specific it meant like it was something you were observing that clearly made an impact on you seeing as opposed to all the other stuff that we see that probably

means nothing yeah last thing on that um the one player mike saner still he's a massachusetts, the littlest guy probably on the field, number zero there, Michigan's Nickelback. He was the one standing up on the bench at the end around what felt like his entire team and pointing at Ohio State. And it will be, you know, it's the most impressive, most, it was probably the best in-game speech I've ever seen a player deliver to his teammates. It was probably the best in-game speech I've ever seen a player deliver to his teammates. It did not feel like, hey, this is what he said to them a week ago against Illinois or whatever, or something. It felt different. And from that moment on, maybe it was coincidence, but it was like all of a sudden, that's when the big plays started to break. That's when it felt like you had some mental breakdowns from Ohio State that came with it. So it's really fascinating to see within that.

I couldn't relay the language that was used in somewhat because it wasn't always PG, but it was very passionate. Thanks, Bruce Feldman, The Athletic Fox Sports. Talk to you again. We said on Monday that we'd react to the college football committee rankings. Everybody was kind of looking at Ohio State, Alabama, how they were going to do that one. They ended up with, and here are the rankings if you haven't heard them, Georgia 1, Michigan 2, TCU 3, USC 4, Ohio State at number 5 ahead of two lost number 6, Alabama.

Then it's Tennessee at 7. After that, I'm kind of lost. I'll tell you, that's how I would have it. That's how I would do it. I think the Bama-Ohio State thing is at least a bit of a conversation considering how I feel about the Big Ten this season. I think it's the fourth best conference. I just do. We've been over it. You don't need to hear me repeat it all. Some of you agree. Some of you disagree. It probably

depends on where you grew up. Tennessee has the two best wins. Nobody has a better win than at LSU in what was a one-sided game and then beating Bama. Because it was weird during the Clemson-South Carolina broadcast. The broadcast, I think somebody had said, hey, South Carolina has the two best wins in the country, stomping Tennessee and then beating Clemson. Beating Clemson is not even close to beating Bama or Tennessee based on what I've seen from Clemson this year. So this is where I want to just remind everybody of what we have coming here.

The committee has Penn State eighth. I might put Utah eighth. I'm just going to do it. I put Utah eighth. I put Washington ninth. I put Penn State tenth. I put K-State eleventh. And Clemson twelfth, although I'd argue Utah 8th. I'd put Washington 9th. I'd put Penn State 10th. I'd put K-State 11th. And I'd Clemson 12th, although I'd argue

maybe even putting Florida State there because I may just like them better right now. Florida State's NC State loss is not bad now. When Devin Leary was there, that's a nice win. Are you sure he wants 12 teams? Are you sure? Are you sure?

Are you sure? Because my point is, it's like from seven down, I guess you could even argue the same thing about Bama. Maybe eight down because Tennessee at least has a couple wins.

You're like, man, that's sick. We're going to let Penn State, Clemson, Utah, Washington, Florida State. I mean, I don't even have LSU in this. You can't, not after you lose to A&M. You want to do what we just did for almost three months and then be like, and now you get a chance to win a national championship.

Of course you do, because it gives your team a better chance of wanting to do it. I would argue it's pointless. And it's going to happen in a couple of years. These teams are going to have a chance now to win a national championship. And I would ask, what was the point of what we just did? And if you ask me like, oh, hey, well, do you like the NFL? No, I don't like the NFL thing either.

And I think I've covered all this way too many times. So it's kind of funny because then it's like, well, what about the six bid program? And I know it was happening. I'm not sure how I feel. Maybe it should be eight where you go, all right, all the conference champs. But do you want the auto-bids still? Because we got so used to a lack

of parity that we were okay with the idea of the auto-bids in college football when there's a version of events where you could have LSU, Purdue, Kansas State, Utah, UNC. Imagine if half of that happened. Utah UNC like imagine if half of that happened and because it's like

the NCAA tournament everybody loves the upsets until it screws up your final four and you're like I don't want to watch St. Mary's right so the auto bid which was the five conference champs,

plus, because UCF went nine and three, they get a chance to win a national championship. Although this year it'd be Tulane, which I would have less of a problem with considering Tulane didn't throw themselves a fucking parade and make hoodies declaring themselves national champs

because the AD thought it was cool. I don't know. I just don't. And if you say it's about the money, I get it. I just don't. And if you say it's about the money, I get it. I'm aware. I'm aware of the TV and the money part. Been aware for a while. I just don't know what the point of what we just did is.

And I know no one agrees with me. But here we go. And I was texting with Big Cap. I'm going to share a point that he made with me that I actually was a real, what would Sam Hinckley call it? A real mind number. What did Hinckley used to call it?

Wouldn't that be a thought experiment? Like, all right, cool. You got the same size jacket. They're all blue. You got it, dude. What if, no matter what happens this weekend, all four are just your playoffs?

Why should Ohio State be rewarded? Why should Bama be rewarded for sitting at home? But if USC or TCU loses, we are conditioned to believe Ohio State is jumping right into this thing. What if they both lost and then Bama?

Is that what we're led to believe with this? And people get mad about some of the stuff that happens with what the committee says. The committee is vague on purpose. They have been vague from the beginning because if they are specific, we will hold their specificity against them. I don't think it's...

For some reason, I was like, wait, what? Just keep the four no matter what happens? There's an actual conversation. There's a real conversation to all of this. But you couldn't just say, hey, make that the norm, because then you would have other years where you might have five teams that you all feel are worthy of being, maybe it's even six, and you would have to see how the conference championship weekend shakes out.

So you couldn't just adapt to that. But at least for this year, it feels a little unfair that an Ohio State or a Bama could jump in if these other teams have done what they're supposed to do and lose in the conference championship game. That's talking college football. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari.

355 Cabriolet what's up i have a ridiculous house in the south fork i have every toy you can possibly imagine and best of all kids i am liquid so now you know what's possible let me tell you what's required life advice the email is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com okay Okay, this one's long, but it's worth it. So I'm just going to get through the email as quick as I can and then we'll deal with it after. Kyle, same page? Yeah, I'll be quiet.

You're always good at being quiet, but I just wanted the audience to know here. Here we go. 64, 280, 285 bench. Not a small dude, not a weak dude. Used to play a lot of pickup basketball before breaking the old neck of the car accident. I'm fine now. I'll be trying to get a run at the rec soon.

Game compares to a poor man's mix of Chicago Bulls, Rip Hamilton, and Nick's Ronnie Turioff. God, I love myself a tender little Ronnie. Roni Turioff, actually. That's right. It's been that long that I called him Ronnie. It's Roni Turioff. Before he quit the devil's weed, that's tobacco. Gained 40 pounds that I haven't been able to lose yet.

Shout out to the Chubby Challenge Group. Techs where most weight loss by February gets the prize money. Also have long blonde hair and have always been called Dirk when I played during college at the Texas Tech Rec Center. First, finest moment athletically was working tech great, real-world Portland alum Marlon Williams during a pickup game that year with B-Texas. Super nice guy, too.

All right? This guy's got some real street cred. Anyway, I'm writing him because I'm in a pickle. I dropped off my mower to this random guy I found online to get the carburetor fixed. I told him I'd be there at 11 a.m. When I got there, I called him. He said just to leave it in his yard.

I'm pretty laid back, so I said sure. He calls me four hours later and tells me, spoiler alert, the carburetor fixed. I told him I'd be there at 11 a.m. When I got there, I called him. He said just to leave it in his yard. I'm pretty laid back, so I said sure. He calls me four hours later and tells me, spoiler alert, the carburetor's messed up. It's a $100 diagnostic fee since he touched the mower. I asked him how much it'll cost to replace the carburetor. He says $250 all in. I say five times, $250 for everything, right?

I have my wife as my witness. This comes into play later. After we agree on a price, he then goes on a 20-minute soliloquy about lithium batteries and Biden while I say, okay, I can get the mower guy's number over to Danny Cannell if he's interested. Whoa, political joke. I made the judgment call that it was better to pay the $250 for a working mower than $100 and still have a broken one. I would agree with that, although there's some signs here. Here comes the rising action of our screenplay writers,

for our screenplay writers out there. He calls me four times during the Tech OU game, aka 8 o'clock at night, and asks me to bring him some bread. That was his quote, bring me some bread. I emphasize, I'm just guessing what this guy sounds like. So he can fix the mower. I say I can bring it over the next day, forgetting that my wife is leaving for a funeral,

and I'll have our six month old which always changes how things go. As a non-parent I understand. This guy is 20 minutes away so I'm not psyched about making the trip. He calls me the next day three times in five minutes around 11 a.m. while I'm trying to put my kid down for a nap. When I call back he asked me if there was a family emergency which didn't allow me to

pick up the phone. No joke I say quote yep my wife's grandmother just passed away and she left for the funeral. So I have my son by myself. Can't come and pay you right now. That would usually get dudes to chill out. Not this lawnmower repairman. Nope.

He then calls me another four times at eight o'clock saying that the mower is ready. I say, cool. My mom's over right now watching my son so I can come pick it up. I say, I got the $250 cash, which is what we agreed to. And he says, quote, yeah. So I get to the guy's house and he's drunk as shit on his back porch. I walk up wanting to get out of there as quick as possible because this guy's a real chatty Cathy and slap the money on the table and say 250 bucks. He looks at me and says, quote, ah, 250't say 250 it was at least 280 and i say no you said 250 now i'm pissed this goes back and forth for a few minutes until we stare silently

into each other's eyes and he looks away first this guy's a great writer he then says ah this isn't enough but i'll do it do you have your phone on you seeing where this is going i said no it's in my truck he tells me to go and get it so i can post a five-star review this doesn't sound like a five-star review guy kyle this guy's worried about his fucking online rating stop calling me when people are dying uh all right so i can post a five-star review and i tell him quote no i gotta go home where is my mower he points over this little shed lean to and says, ah, it's over there. He says a lot, but these are in the quotes.

I got to go. I can't spare no details. He doesn't get up and show me. It just sits there as I walk over, grab the mower, bring it over, fire it up and say, awesome.

Thanks. And get the fuck out of it. Here's the end. I'm mowing the yard the next morning. I see this guy's left me three voicemails while I was mowing. I pull one up and he says, quote, you know what you did. You took my other customer's mower and now I need you to bring it to me right now.

That's a $700 mower and yours wasn't even worth close to that. You knew what you were doing, end quote. Among other things, so now I'm left with this question. So he did actually take the better mower. Did he? It appeared. Let's keep reading. So now I'm left with this question.

Do I bring the mower back? Yes, that's confirmation. He took the wrong mower, which was the nicer one. Or do I just keep it and block the guy's number? I wasn't trying to take anyone else's mower. It was dark outside. I was just trying to get out there. And here they both are.

Honda mowers with the same handles, the exact same color. I was going to ask myself, what would Kyle do? But I figured I'd just go straight to the source. The thing that gets me about all of this, the guy had just said, I think we accidentally switched mowers. I would have brought it over. But immediately accusing me of stealing a fucking nearly identical mower

in the dark royally pisses me off. But not nearly as much as the thought of just bringing it back and having this guy think he won. Petty, but true. Lastly, he's old man, which is worse because being bigger, I'm more liable to get shot rather than to get my ass kicked. Man, I like everything about you on this one, but you did take the wrong mower, right? And I know you don't want to deal with this guy anymore. I'm just asking you this.

You think you're going to deal with him less in the future by keeping the better mower? All this guy does apparently is drink and call people and fix mowers. He's got a lot of time on his hands. You mentioned the porch. So you could keep the nice one, which is still wrong. And I get that you never want to deal with this guy. You're going to have to deal with him if you keep the nicer mower. And despite all the things that sucks

about this dude, you still took the wrong one, which I'm not blaming you for. It was dark. Fucking guy didn't want to help. You fired up. You clearly, you're not maybe super locked in

to all your household items, so you didn't notice the difference. We're giving you the benefit of the doubt. We like your email. We like your writing style. We like your athletic prowess. We like all of it. So we're not blaming you here, but I'm just telling you, if you think that you're right by keeping it because he sucks, I don't know that I agree with you there. And on top of it,

I'm warning you that if you do keep the nice and warm, but this guy is going to haunt you. And I don't think it's worth the lawnmower upgrade and not having to deal with him to think like you're not getting off as free as you think you are if you just try to cut this guy out because he's not this guy is uncut outable yeah dude you're gonna be tony soprano and the with the uh with the song playing just every door that's opening wherever you are you'd be like fuck is this guy this guy just roll up on his tractor, like to find me. And, and you like, this guy was a nightmare during the course of a normal business transaction. I imagine if there's a customer who's bothering him, who just lost a $700 mower, uh, you know, imagine how much worse he's going to get towards you. So yeah,

I think you have to get it back and, you know, obviously never deal with this guy again. I was actually looking to see what he told me how much he paid because I thought it was going to be, oh, it was actually 350. The 250 was for the actual work and then the $100 was going to be for the diagnostic fee or whatever. But I mean, that's what I thought was going to happen.

So I looked up mowers and the cheapest Honda mower is like 450. So I thought maybe you could just keep the mower and buy a new one before this even happened. But that's neither here nor there I thought maybe you could just keep the mower and buy a new one before this even happened. But that's neither here nor there. You got to give him back the mower. And then, you know, I can't believe he wanted to hold you hostage to write a five-star review. I wonder, I would actually look at his reviews and see how many seem a little nervous, nervously written. But yeah, you just have to get your mower back and then never do this again.

And maybe just, you know, go off recommendations instead of, I don't know, Craigslist or whatever you're using right now. Well said. I don't think there's much to add to that. I think there might be some blowback. I think there'll be people that follow up, which we don't necessarily request, but it happens. They're going to be like, who do you think you are? Just just because this guy was annoying you just get to keep the better mower what about the other what about the other guy that owns the nicer mower correct because then you're going to be dealing with him and you're in texas folks right and if this guy played at tech then

did he mention what town he was in i don't think he did might be for the best yeah if we're if we're talking the lubbock surrounding areas i haven't i'd be cautious on the leave a penny take a penny that's like why yeah that's like wild card justice you don't you don't want that you don't want vigilante justice just make it right dude just make it right i'd argue texas is the the state you'd least want to steal a mower. Yeah, I could see that. It'd be up there. Although you could put some of the square states in there probably as well

because it'd be less population. You'd be able to just get away with it. What happened to your neighbor? Damnedest thing. Just disappeared. Like, nice mower. Yeah. Thanks.

Appreciate it. Okay. Uh, this one is, is fascinating cause I did research on it. All right, here we go. Squat rack hierarchy with a twist.

Hey, all six foot one 65 in good shape. Bench two 15, but other lists are largely nonstandard due to some injuries. It's not that interesting. Thank you. I have a gym question that seems in the group's wheelhouse. I'm a member of a nice gym downtown in

a large East Coast city. It's not one of the luxury clubs, but the nicest of the mid-range. So top mid. Got it. I usually lift twice a week and look forward to a long Sunday afternoon workout when the place is dead. No walls. You can spread out a bit without bothering anyone. One of the main movements in this session is your basic barbell bench.

Pretty standard. Right, Kyle? You with us? Yep. I got you there. I really like to use one of the four power racks and set up the crossbars as a catch. I do the same thing at home. I don't do it at the gym. And the way my gym is set up,

our squat rack situation is not ideal for a high-end Equinox, to be honest. And we're going to get a lot of feedback on this one, I can tell. But some of your gyms have the squat rack set up where there's a way to slide the bench in. We have it on the Smith machine, but that's a whole other topic. It appears in this setup

that with the four racks, I like the idea of having the safety pins underneath you where there's a point where you're not going to cut your head off, but you can still get out of it, underneath it, and still get a full range of motion. All right, so I know exactly what he's talking about, what he's trying to do. He continues, I can go heavy into failure without risk of hurting myself or having to hope a stranger offers just the right amount of assistance. I'm always amazed and frankly scared when I see guys really pushing themselves without either of these backup plans in place. I tell you,

nothing gets that last rep up more than the fear of dying. But anyway, I don't know everything about gym etiquette, but I've always assumed benching in the power rack is not a priority use of the equipment and wouldn't do it during peak hours. I would agree with you. It isn't, unless it is a specific, I don't think this gym is going to be high-end enough where the racks are set up. You see these at facilities, like a football facility or something like that,

where you can slide the bench in and it's stationed perfectly and centered and the depth is right every single time. I'm guessing that's, I don't have that at my gym. I'm guessing he doesn't have it at this. We on the same page here so far, Kyle? Yeah, yeah. I got you. Okay.

All right. So, however, this past Sunday, the gym, so he goes, look, I like to. Okay. All right. So, however, this past Sunday, the gym. So, he goes, look, I like to do this. He likes to bench, just straight bench with a bench in the squat rack because the pins are in place. You can go heavier. We're all on the same page here. However, this past Sunday, the gym was suddenly busy. Maybe a change of weather, wrong NFL games.

Who knows? When I was ready to bench, all the racks were occupied. One of them by someone doing barbell curls bar only no plates for what felt like an eternity how do you feel about that kyle what's the point of that being there with barbells i think if you were gonna understand but now i'm not sure i would do there's always a thought that you just shouldn't curl and squat rack and especially if it's busy you never should like that's the least approved probably exercise you could ever do have i done it when people aren't around because i'd like to go a little heavier with a barbell yeah well i know if i'm not in anybody's way like the person that says you should never

ever do it no matter what i think it's an asshole but the person that would do it when it's busy is a bigger asshole okay so my first question is what's the hierarchy of the power rack or squat rack uses i'm sure squats a couple others are at the top but did i have any reason to hover politely check in on how many sets were left or ask mr curls if you would mind moving to one of the many other apparatus where the same thing could be accomplished without trying to tie up core equipment. Or he and I essentially on level ground since both of our exercises are non-primary uses of the cage. This is quite the riddle, isn't it? Or are we both gumming up the works, especially if there's a regular barbell bench setup I could be using,

even if it requires risking my life or worse, flagging down a stranger for several consecutive sets. If it's busy, you're both wrong. He's more wrong than you, but you're both wrong. So it's kind of one of those things where it's like, just being ranked wrong, but less wrong than you give me any benefit. No, you're both in the wrong category. I think you're in the wrong bracket group if it's busy. So nobody's going to go, well, hey, at least you're not curling while I have to fucking wait while you're benching. I think you already knew that part. I checked with a trainer.

I checked with Jeremy Scott on the hierarchy of the squat rack use. Name drop. I said this. I said, I think this is what it is. Name drop. I said this. I said, I think this is what it is. I got a question for you. Guy wants to know the hierarchy of the squat rack rules. I have squats, any Olympic lift, deadlift, seal row, shrugs. Shrugs are still pushing it.

But if you're really going heavy on shrugs, I don't think there's a problem there. And then I said problematic tier is military press. Some people would have military press ahead of shrugs. Don't feel like arguing about it. Bench, this would be moving one in and then curls. And Jeremy Scott said, list looks pretty legit. In our circle, we keep it simple.

And the whole point of the squat rack should be used for squatting, overhead pressing, maybe bench press, maybe based on the gym. And for doing all these other difficult barbell exercises that are often hard or impossible to do elsewhere, the barbell shrugs. Yeah, curls. So, different topic. Yeah, curls.

If the gym is busy, you can do that somewhere else. Empty gym, sure, but in a commercial gym that's busy, don't be an asshole. If you can't pick the barbell up off the floor elsewhere for curls, you're probably not strong enough to be doing that load weight anyway. Also, typically the only dudes who curl in the rack have arms under 15 inches. They should be dead lifting. Wow.

All right, let's finish the email. I'm eager to hear your input on the general above scenario. Well, there you go. Somebody who's done it and then also a professional, but also like thoughts on the same one with one critical detail added. The guy doing the barbell curls only had one hand. Hmm.

That does seem to change things. Hmm. Wow. This seems like a Friday email and it's not Friday. I don't know. I'm wondering how many people were like, okay, we got it and checked out of this one.

And they got it. We're done. We're done here. Good stuff. Bruce Feldman, Connell, what they're going to miss. there's still more here so um he's a regular quiet quiet and respectful like most everyone there and i saw him probably a dozen times before i realized

it was the 13th time he's like that guy's missing a hand this may be in part because the guy's jacked he crushes many of your normal moves despite his left arm ending at his wrist he has a wrist strap at the end standard weight lifting one not some specialized thing from what i can tell and can easily curl so he's got the wrist strap and then he he ties the bar to the strap which still you would have to you would have to tie it a certain way because remember your hands go around the straps on the other stuff uh and he's only got one of those some sort of sailor's knot maybe yeah maybe a sailor's knot could be get in get a look for it he can easily curl bench, but I have no idea if there are delicate ergonomics at play,

hence his curling in the rack. Does this detail change your reaction to the first scenario or the hierarchy? 100%. Yeah. Yes. I'm willing to go, if you're missing a hand,

you can do whatever you want, especially if you're jacked. That's what I was going to say. Whatever you want, especially if you're jacked. That's what I was going to say. Whatever you want, man. Right? Imagine going up to a guy with one hand that's configured a strap to curl like impressive weight, and he's jacked. And you're like, how many more, dude?

It'd be one thing to ask him how many more, which I think is reasonable. But hey, you know, it's kind of busy. Probably shouldn't be curling in the squat rack. I mean, the all-time trump card is i have one hand fuck off do your whole shit in the squat rack dude do everything there whatever you want yeah don't wipe down you want me to move anything over here for you um he said for the record i i just waited him out i also want to give him giant props. Every time I see him killing it, despite obvious obstacles, I can't help but be motivated to work through

and make the most of my own limitations as well. Yeah, so I think for everybody with two hands, the list still holds. And I think if you're a jack guy with one hand that's crushing at the gym, you're just going to win those transactions and we should defer to that guy. Yeah, I had all these examples of real life and he just kind of hit me with the game breaker right there i don't got nothing it's the ultimate finishing move in the gym just go all right

fine you win guy yeah we good i think that's it i don't have anything that's great okay alright yeah sorry we didn't we didn't use you there was a lot of words we'll be quicker we'll be quicker for Judge Kyle on Friday alright I hope you enjoyed the podcast thanks to Kyle as always we'll be back on Friday we'll do some college football scenario stuff

and you know who knows who knows what else we'll do on Friday the Ryan Mus Maslow Podcast. Bring your Spotify. Thank you.