Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 27: The Unexamined Team Is Not Worth Rooting For

Episode Date: September 29, 2017

In episode 27, the gang talks about the eventful week in sports with the FBI's probe into NCAA basketball and the NFL protests. Tom also has to reckon with the fact that the coach of his beloved Kentucky Wildcats, John Calipari, is coaching the Congressional Republicans in a charity basketball game, and is beholden to the evil coal industry.

who had cash express posted in your truck i didn't know but i had a pretty good um idea you're the only friend we have that uh does vandalism as a term of endearment i thought it i thought it was on par with the confetti yeah no it was good it was good took a little you probably had to take them off it might have been annoying off I'm sure it was cute I mean I guess it was kind of annoying It was equally annoying and endearing Yeah it was equally annoying and endearing Maybe slightly more endearing

It took like 10 seconds to take them off See that's not that annoying I'm still sweeping up your confetti It's taken you years It took me seconds I'm an easier on you Thanks and I particularly enjoyed That the post-it notes were It's not that annoying. It's taken you years. It took me seconds. I've never recovered. I went easier on you. Thanks. And I particularly enjoyed that the Post-it notes were Cash Express.

Yeah. I just happened to have those in my car. We have a lot of those at our office, too. And so, like a detective, I was just like, who has Cash Express Post-it notes? Oh, you thought it was someone at your office? I thought it was possibly someone in my office. So I launched an notes. Oh, you thought it was someone at your office? I thought it was possibly someone in my office. So I launched an investigation. Oh, good.

Who here appears to have the worst personal finances? Yes, I said it's either somebody I work with or somebody who cashes checks at the Cash Express or an employee at the Cash Express who has a crush on me or something. You never know. You're holding out hope for that one. Oh, so this gets you on a long journey i told you i launched an investigation and when you launch an investigation you can't rule happy you can't rule anything out you can leave no stone

unturned you can leave no stone unturned so did i send you the pic too soon no uh no i had already you know after i ran through all the possibilities in like 15 seconds, a minute after seeing it, I was like, yeah, Tonya did that. That's Tonya. No way. He brought me in. I said, that's a Turner job. No. Yeah.

Yes. Okay, good. My calling card. Yeah, no. So it was good you should have fucked me I'm a cute girl here's my number Tom rearranged the

so you had put the post-it notes to say HBD exclamation point and Tom rearranged them to say HIV positive no way it's not funny it's funny hey folks I'm here to say that it's funny. Oh, my God.

A little sophomore humor. That's why it's funny. It's not funny for AIDS. It's funny because it's a sophomore joke. So you didn't see it until it was HIV positive? No. When I brought Tom in to the investigation, I said, step into my office. I have to have a word with you.

And then we looked around, and we closed the blinds real quick. I was like, take a look at this. in to the investigation i said step in in my office i have to have a word with you and then we looked around and we closed the blinds real quick i was like take a look at this what do you make of this and he said you know what i'm a picture uh no no no we were at the truck we were at the crime the scene of the crime i imagined curtains everybody we had we had taped it off and people were walking by and we were like don't come any closer this is a crime scene by and we were like don't come any closer this is a crime scene and he said he looked at it and he was like

oh my god my god what kind of animal would do something like this and and so yeah and then he started rearranging them and that's what we came up with HIV positive we were HIV positive that it was you.

Gotcha. Ten, four. We are off to a banner start here, friends. We were HIV positive. What are you talking about? That's a real good. Good, Jesus. Maybe I can go into the old man who lives in your stairwell now.

I had a bit where the old man who lives in your stairwell was going to plug us on Patreon, but what we should do is we'll record that. Yeah. That's a mother point. I have this thing, every time I walk into Tom's apartment. Arrow jumps off the steps above you. Well, I pretend to be an old man, and I'm like, hello? Hello?

Because you can't see anybody as they're walking in the first whatever minute. He thinks one day I'm going to bite on it. You're trying. He thinks one day he's going to be tricked. He's going to be like, oh, my God, an old man just walked in my house. An old man in the stairwell. Hello, Tommy? Last night I was leaving, and I was pretending like I was talking to him.

I was like, he was like, hello? I was like, they're all upstairs if you want to go hang out. And he was like, oh, all right. Happy birthday. And he was like, oh, shit. I lost my mind. Happy birthday. Anyways, okay, so we just lost a bunch of audio, but that's all right.

We didn't lose a bunch. Well, we lost the part where we were setting up. Introduced the show. We were setting up the conversation, the parameters of the conversation today. Well, you were about to say two big things happened, but I'm sure you were going to miss that I was quoted in an article trashing Hillary using the word goddamn. I've got to rein it in. I've got to rein in my language. Or when people quote me, they could, you know, massage it a bit.

Whose article? What article? Elizabeth Katt had an article published talking about Hillary's foul moves one after another. And she quoted me. A tweet? From the podcast. Oh, an article. No, an article. She had an article published today.

And you're mad about being quoted with God damn. I'm fine to be quoted, but it could, you know but it didn't need it really but you said it in a public media platform I know but if I had written it out to be put in a magazine I would not have said goddamn

I'd be honored to be quoted anywhere if fucking National Review called me and quoted me completely out of context saying all manner of slurs I'd still be a little honored. But the things we say in this podcast are quotable. I'm afraid to tell you both. I'm not sure if you've...

I've tried to tell y'all this back around episode six or seven. It's a good reminder to keep my wits about me. I'm still waiting for my ship to come in. I did recently go back and listen to episode five and it was good. We were doing good. That's one of my favorite episodes. Yeah, me too. It's a great episode. Episode five, go back and listen to episode five, and it was good. We were doing good. That's one of my favorite episodes. Yeah, me too.

It's underrated. It was a great episode. Episode five, go back. But enough about us, enough about you. I want to talk about like. Enough about your birthday. I want to talk about like the shit going on. All right.

We're going to tee this up, to use a sports metaphor. Can we call it? The name of all of us. Yeah. We're truly teeing it up. We need a segment called Teeing It Up. Teeing It Up. Here it goes.

We're starting it right now. We're fucking stupid. Any day now, our Patreon page is going to zero out. Yeah, it's just like, yeah, they peaked at episode nine. No, it's good. It's really good. So, the FBI launched a probe into the NCAA this week. Right.

With the allegations being, or the evidence that they thought they had collected being that shoe reps, notably at Adidas were paying recruits high school kids to go to schools most notably Louisville yeah to go play

for their schools and it's kicked off a firestorm Rick Pitino who used to be the coach at University of Kentucky back in the 90s. Used to be. That's okay.

Yeah. Oh, you said the UK. Yeah. And, yeah, and also used to be, as of two days ago, used to be the coach at the University of Louisville. Yeah. And he's not the only one implicated. There's also Syracuse.

There's also Arizona. And then, you know, the feeling amongst the sports punditry is that the hammer's fixing to come down on the granddaddy of all of them, the Teflon Don, John Calipari, which is never going to happen. Really? There's rumors that that's going to happen. No, I mean, people are just like, Calipari's kind of like the poster boy for cheating in college.

Right. Just because he's better at it than everybody, and everybody hates him for it. Right. Is that why he just made a visit to Hal Rogers? That's why he's... And I take points away from him from this. That's why I suggested we call this episode

The Unexamined Team Is Not Worth Rooting For. We're going to examine the team. Are you going to renounce your fandom? No, I would never do that. What's wrong with you, longhorn crazy bastard? Marco Rubio is our coach. I'd still cheer for the Cats. I want to talk about fandom.

Anyways, I think we're going to. We'll get back to that. Coincidentally, Cal Perry is also coaching the congressional basketball game this week. You know how there was like a baseball game Steve Scalise got shot at? Guess whose side he's coaching. Guess. You don't want to hear it.

Just go look at his Instagram, who he's been catting around with the last few days. Who? Marco Rubio, Andy Barr, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Hal Rogers. It's all Coach Cal. Steve Scalise. Right, he's coaching the GOP. He's coaching the Republicans. He's coaching the fucking Republicans.

How does that make you feel? I'm betrayed a little. A little lied to. You know? Yeah. See, I always thought Cal notoriously crosses all of his T's and dots all of his I's. Like, he gives huge amounts of money

to both Democrats and Republicans. Like, he goes, when I was at the Clinton Foundation, he spoke at CGI that year, which was a little surprising that he had a college basketball coach giving this big, like, TED Talk-like thing. And, yeah, to see that is a little,

it doesn't feel good. But, you know, that's what these guys do. You know, he's the highest paid state employee. So, you know, he holds court with shitheads like Matt Bevin and Hal Rogers. You know, he spoke at the SOAR conference in Pikeville a few weeks ago. I forgot about that. A month or two ago, whatever that was. Do you think he considers himself picking a winning team right now? He thinks the Republicans are winning?

Well, here's the thing. Oh, that's a good question. That's a good question. Is there a deeper meaning? This man is notorious for picking a winning team. Is he not? Also, hey, if he's... Or making one.

If he's the subject of an FBI investigation, you can do worse than be coaching the party that controls every lever of government right now. But it kind of does feel like they're also losing in the sense that they're just totally melting down. Oh yeah. You know? It was interesting that

I mentioned that we might talk about it. I don't want to get that into it, but that runoff between Roy Moore and Luther Strangeabama um all of the republicans like mcconnell and mcconnell had sort of convinced trump to back uh luther strange and the whole like gop establishment got like rallied around him and he wound up losing to this insurgent Republican who was like, Insurgent?

Yeah, who was like, Mitch McConnell better run and hide. You know what I mean? Saying that kind of shit. Oh, is that Luther Strange? That's Roy Moore. It's Roy D. Mercer. How big a boy are you?

Remember those? That's some prank calls. How big a boy are you? How big a boy are you? Remember those? That's some prank calls. How big a boy are you? Yeah, I remember all of these. Jesus. My uncle had that CD. Oh, God. And he'd play it in the morning.

Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, when I worked on the street crew at the city, all those boys would play that all day. Isn't that funny? Oh, it's good stuff. Anyways, so they're totally melting down. But they're, I don't know. Actually, I shouldn't say that.

I shouldn't use the superlative. They're totally melting down. But it does feel like McConnell keeps taking, he had a terrible week, you know? He took some L's to use the sports. My man took some L's. Yeah. Some very big L's.

And that's pretty new. I mean, L's. Yeah. Some very big L's. And that's pretty new. I mean, that's pretty crazy. I mean, they have control of all the levers of government, and he's still... It seems like Mitch McConnell's batting 1,000 under Obama, and as soon as he gets the reins, they've just been chubbing it. they've been you know it's been chubbing it it's interesting because what's the last time the Republicans had a had total domination of all the Bush years I guess branches of government the Bush years and they even had the Supreme Court yeah interesting it's kind of like in in nonprofits that we're so familiar with one time an old boss of mine asked a millionaire for like a million or two dollars,

and she laughed and said, you wouldn't know what to do with it if I give it to you. They don't know what to do with it. Yeah. They don't know what to do. Well, here's what I'm starting to wonder. If it's like, if the reason why it sort of worked during the Bush years was because they had this thing to rally around, like war and the Patriot Act, you know, mass violence and all this shit. And now they're sort of like imploding.

I mean, because they are the most craven individuals in American politics. You know, they're total sociopaths. And it seems like they're just sort of like eating each other alive right now. Yeah, they flew a little too close to the Sun I guess I mean they sound I mean they agreed to a health care debate they agreed to debate someone again they're like Muhammad Ali yeah I mean like I can't believe they even agreed to it. Like, two of them couldn't dust him. Right. Yeah. What are they going to say? All they can hang their hat on is long lines and fucking, I don't even know what the fuck.

Just craziness. So, yeah, maybe Coach Cal isn't picking the winning team. Maybe this is the beginning of his downfall. Maybe this is his first bad move. His first wrong step. But Cal's under FBI investigation? No, he's not. Not yet. I don't even think Patino is. Yeah, Patino is.

He better goddamn be. He was over a sex ring. Patino, no, this has nothing to do with that. That's the other thing I want to talk about. I know. That's the whole big thing. Since this all popped off, I've been like, why the fuck is Louisville playing? Why the fuck is Rick Pitino on the court? Why the fuck is this happening? Pitino should have been fired six months ago. Yes! He should have been rolled out of this country

on a fucking rail. Why the fuck he should be in jail? I mean, I rarely say people belong in jail. I fucking hate jails. I don't even believe in jails. We don't even fuck with jails. No, you tie his ass to a horse, slap it, and send it on out to the fucking creek. He needs to be up the literal goddamn creek.

I think people forget that it doesn't matter if a child is 6'8". It's still a child, and you probably shouldn't be arranging sex. Yeah. Sex workers for 16-year-old boys. It's not a good look. But that wasn't what did it. Yeah. I know.

Of course not. Of course it wasn't. What's funny, and it was explained to me thusly, and I don't know why this would be punitive, but apparently the issue at bar here is that when, okay, the feds, the timing of this is curious because they've waited until the college signing period is over where kids recruit sign their letter of intent to go to colleges,

which are like contractual obligations saying I will come here and play whatever, da, da, da, for this. And in that letter of intent says I also will not take gifts, money, even like transportation, whatever, whatever. And once they signed that, they were in violation

because they were defrauding state universities, like government entities. Right, right. At that point. Because they actually had this audio tape of the infamous Coach No. 2, which has been identified as Patino, talking with this Adidas rep. And what's funny is on the tape, the Adidas rep refers to him as the big swinging dick. Really? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

He is so fucking sick. I idolized this man. Hell yeah. Because my dad did. That's why you shouldn't have heroes. Because my dad did. Interesting. Is it time to talk about fandom yet?

No. You sit tight. Well, we'll get back. We'll circle back. That's why you're a goddamn roll over here. Stick a pin in fandom. Okay. I don't have anything profound to say about it

continue there's some connections though so anyway basically this Adidas rep says here's how you get players

and give me who you want and the kid in question Brian Bowen signed with Louisville signed to play with Louisville and apparently

he was paid $100,000 right and he was also $100,000. Right. And he was also, and we talked about this last night, there was an agreement that he would continue. Once he got to the pros. Once he got to the pros, he would be like Adidas' player.

He would be an Adidas player, yeah. Which I don't have a beef with these boys getting paid. None whatsoever. None. No. Well, this is my argument. This is my argument. These kids are getting fucking scabbed out anyway. I mean, not even scabbed out.

Like, they're, I mean, it's like, you know, I mean, like, obviously they have good job prospects later on in terms of. It's like I was saying last night, if you strip it down to its bare essentials, they're literally playing for free and people are making millions, billions of dollars off of that. And that is literally slavery. I don't have, there's no other word for it. What's the other,

what's the other part? Exactly. Remember when the coach, the pro, the NFL coach got caught telling his girlfriend not to bring black people to his games? Yeah. What was that was? No, that was the NBA owner. NBA. Yeah. Clippers owner. Yeah. What's his name? Sterling. Donald Sterling. Well, when they kicked his ass out, like pulled. He's not allowed to own anymore. Right.

like pulled he's not allowed to own anymore right frank x walker the honorable the brilliant frank x walker said uh a plantation owner has been expelled from the cotton fields that's what he said yeah about the whole thing well david west said that too who who plays for the golden state warriors he said like sports is like at some level a reinforcement of plantation politics and i tend to think that's great i mean like i came out of that world like i worked at a school it was a division one school not a very big one might have been my alma mater might not have been but if we were paying players and here's the recruit i mean here's like i mean just the real dirt these kids get sold on come here we'll give you x thousand dollars. And it perfectly mirrors that stuff.

These coaches over-recruit kids and when they can't perform how they think they should perform, they pull their scholarships. So they make these commitments to them, they pull their scholarships. My point is, let's quit fucking acting like they're students. They're workers. And it's like we were talking about

last night, the NCAA literally owns their likenesses. Oh, yeah. Like, do you remember this a few, maybe it was a few years or months ago, I can't remember, it was like a backup kicker for South Florida or some shit, like had his own YouTube channel.

I guess he was like a vlogger or something. He had his own YouTube channel and the NCAA said he had to stop. Oh, that makes sense. Because they own his likeness. He was making money off of his... It's the same thing. It's literal ownership. It's the same thing if you're in the military,

a soldier. If a soldier gets sunburned, they can be fined and charged with... Really? Yes. My roommate in college got severely sunburned in Iraq and they charged him with damaging government property. Damn. That sounds like a

conspiracy theory. Is that real? Sounds like an urban legend. His ass got in deep shit. Because he was in deep shit. We'll go to the tape on that one. Anyways, you were making a point.

What I was saying is there's all kinds of ugly shit that goes on with this. A lot of it racist, okay? Because who's disproportionately affected? Young black men. Okay, and women. And women. But the thing about it is that the profit centers are these young black men that we bring in that are generating millions.

And sometimes billions. Actually, billions if you're thinking about apparel revenues video game revenues tv contracts etc etc and then you have this organization the ncaa that lays out all these sort of draconian policies it's like if uh if me and you wager a a uh a fucking meal you can be fine for that. When I was at home, I don't care to tell it now, because, like, you know, Coach Donato is, you know, he's, you know, famously out of the game now.

But Coach Donato, who was, you know, got in trouble at... because of all this academic fraud stuff a couple years ago, was the coach I worked at... And we had a player good year or if any place for this guy under mid now he's multi-millionaire nba star and his mother had just had i don't know if it's a kidney transplant or liver transplant she had like severe lupus and like you know like had spent every penny she fucking had you know trying to stay alive and all the stuff to see i go to the to the NBA. And I reckon that she's alive and still doing well today.

But to see him play in the NCAA tournament, Coach Nish paid for her airfare in her hotel room, and the NCAA cried foul and said, nope, you can't do that. And he got an infraction over stuff like that.

You know what I mean? A tie-in for his mom's hotel room? Yeah, this woman was like a sick woman that wanted to see her son play because she thought she had a year to live. You know what I mean? Yeah, so what I want to know is this like... Oh, that's a great feel-good story,

but let's get down to it. No, but I mean, well, I guess what I was going to say is just like, how do you change it? Because it's like, because as fans, we participate in it. But I also don't believe in the very neoliberal notion of just boycotting things because that changes nothing. You know what I mean? Like individual boycotts, they do.

They change absolutely nothing. So it's just like but at the same time, as fans, we also do have a sort have some degree of leverage in our buying power, I guess. UofL fans should be irate. They should have been demanding. Well, I mean of the system itself. Yeah, I'm the same. So we were talking about this last night. Who's the victim in the UofL thing?

Can you name it? Who is it? Well, I would... Didn't... Women came forward. Women came forward and were like, yeah, this horrible, all this awful shit. Oh, well, no, no, no.

That's not what I'm talking about. About the... Yeah, about the whole... That's what I'm saying. NFL should have been freaking out. Or UofL fans should have been freaking the fuck out about him. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My question, what I want to know, your literal expertise, Tom,

is why can't they get, why is there not an angle there that they, why has he not come down for that already? Oh, no, they swept that under the rug. See, the thing is, to me, the whole child sex ring at Louisville seems more punitive than this players taking money. That seems more institutional to me. But I guess their argument is that these are state institutions, therefore they're government institutions, government funded,

and so that they are subject to federal law and state law. Like the idea of paying players. So what this boils down to is it's not like the stuff that's going on at Louisville now is not an NCAA issue. The NCAA doesn't. I'm sure they would care, but I'm saying like- They can't weigh in on a child sex ring? No, they can do that. That's what an NCAA issue. The NCAA doesn't. I'm sure they would care, but I'm saying- They can't weigh in on a child sex ring? No, they can do that.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, Patino was like, Patino got a slap on the wrist. I think they got banned from postseason play this year, maybe. When you say child sex ring, you mean the prostitutes were children? No, the players. No, the players. Like the recruits. Okay.

They were arranging sex for underage kids. But I think it's important to tell the listeners. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so. Yeah, no, I think what happened, didn't they pull Louisville's championship banner from 2013 over that, and they got so many games?

I didn't think they pulled the banner. I didn't think they pulled the banner. Yeah, I think they did. I mean, he definitely got punished for that. But to me, what you're talking about seems more punitive than what the feds, this whole federal probe now. You know what I mean? Seems like he should be... So he has been under federal investigation for the...

He wasn't under federal investigation for the child sex ring. Right. He's been under... He is now. He is now. He is now for this, like, the Adidas reps paying his recruits off. Which he was complicit in. How did this come out? So, FBI comes out two days ago and basically says that.

You know how they found out about this? Yeah. They had pinned somebody in an SEC case. And he was just, like, well in exchange. Ratted them out? Yeah, and he was just like well in exchange. Ratted them out? Yeah, he was like well in exchange for a lesser sentence. I know some crazy shit that's going on with Adidas and a couple of universities.

That's how the FBI got put onto it in the first place. It's always a fucking rat. Yeah. Yeah. God damn. That shit happens. I mean, when Coach T-thingan kicked off with T-San, how he got caught was there was this guy,

who I knew, who I did this guy's job for him, literally. Like, I did all of his film scouting for him, like, all this stuff. Like, then he gets to go to T-San, $300,000 a year, and he ends up flipping on, because they didn't wipe the metadata, and they were getting, like...

It's always the metadata. So people were writing papers for all these players and doing their schoolwork like all over the country. But Adam, who we need to trust, is so fucking stupid that he didn't consider IP addresses, all this kind of stuff. The NCAA gets that.

It's like, oh, so you were getting these kids eligible in Kansas? Like he was doing his classes in Texas. He was doing his classes in May King, Kentucky. You know, like, all this kind of stuff. And so when the heat came down on him, he just gave up everybody. Well, so... Rolled on them.

Rolled on them. Yeah. Well, so, like, when I'm... So what I was trying to get at was that, like, you have this, what looks like to me, an institution that looks a lot like slavery um like first of all like there should be more moral outrage about that i guess is what i'm saying i don't understand why there isn't i mean to me it's it's just so blatant and um it's just such blatant exploitation and i guess you know tom was you know we were talking about this last night he's like oh well people say that like people are like oh well they're getting a degree in return and, you know, Tom was, you know, we were talking about this last night. It's just like, oh, well, people say that, like, people are like, oh, well, they're getting a degree in return and stuff.

You know, they're getting a scholarship return and all this. And it's just like that is not even remotely commensurate to the billions of dollars these fucking vultures at the NCAA are making. Yeah. But, like, so, like, but even. It's capitalism. Right, right, right, right. But I'm saying that, like, how do you be, like, an ethical an ethical consumer of that I mean there's no such thing as ethical assumption but you know what I mean like

how do you like if you're trying to change it we've got to do something about it how do we remedy how do we square with this as fans well I'm saying that like we do have some degree of leverage again as like consumers as people who pay also in the sense of like UK is like

an actual government entity of the sense of like UK is like an actual government entity of the state of Kentucky. John Calipari, we forget, is the highest paid state employee. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, it feels like we have some degree of fucking leverage to actually try to like,

I don't know. Well, I mean, most states, most of the United States highest paid employer is a coach. Not basketball, but a coach. Mostly it's a pro coach. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, no. So, yeah, and then, you know, like, the University of Kentucky, and this is hard for me to really say. I mean, because you kind of want it, like, when it's your own rooting interest, you kind of want to sweep it under the rug. under the rug. But the coal industry, which has done more to destroy people's lives in the state, has a wholesale sponsorship

of the basketball program. They called the damn dorm where the basketball players stay the Wildcat Coal Lodge. And it prompted Wendell Berry, your buddy, I'm not telling you. Wendell pulled all of their papers.

They canceled their season tickets to basketball. Yeah. All this shit. And this was all because of Joe Craft. Yeah, yeah. Because he spent. He's the one that put the money up. So it was an actual, it wasn't, you know.

And often I think when we say the coal industry, it becomes this just big monolith that no one can put a face or a name to. the coal industry it becomes this just big monolith that no one can put a face or a name to joe goddamn craft who owns the who owns alliance coal which has most of their minds in western kentucky ponied up all the money for that lodge yeah and that's it's friends of coal like the friends of coal yeah right out front yeah and he was at that time because this happened in maybe like five six years ago billy gillespie's last year up before Cal got there is when he built that. $38 million. Yeah.

That's not... At the time, Bill Bissett... No, that's the seed guy. Bill... Is it Bill Bissett? No. The coal association guy? The coal association guy.

The dude before him, I can never remember his last name. Bill... Bill something. It was a Bill something. He was the guy that had like the... He's like... His offices were beside Joel's in West something. It was a Bill something. He was the guy that had like the, he's like, his offices were beside Joel's in West Virginia.

Remember I signed that in? No, this was the guy. He was the Kentucky Coal Association. He was like the. Him and Joe Craft were like this. Joe Craft was on like the Friends of Coal fucking committee or whatever the fuck. These are actual human shit blogs.

Yeah. This is going to be hard for a lot of people to understand, but just go look at Google Friends of Cole and make your own inferences. Make with it what you will. Yeah. Yeah. These are, I mean, today we had a bunch of people in the studio, or in the theater watching movies,

and Benny said it in a really perfect way. In this state, and maybe everywhere everywhere there is no media accountability and that's how we got Forensic Cold. There was no media accountability at all here and they were able to say whatever the fuck they wanted and they launched an entire PR campaign called Forensic Cold. Taxpayer funded propaganda campaign.

PR campaign to flip the narrative from worker versus company to company and worker versus regulation. Against everybody else. Environmentalist regulation. Regulation of the government. Incredibly successful.

Incredibly successful. Yeah, they should probably be teaching these tactics in schools maybe. Or Coca-Cola or Apple or whoever should probably sign them. It's like all the pathologies they plugged into with that campaign is really, honestly, it was a lot of what you saw during the Trump campaign. I mean, it really precipitated the Trump campaign in a lot of ways. Yeah.

When I left for college in 2004, there was not a Friends of Cole. I had never seen a Friends of Cole sticker. I did not know what that was. And then, you know, I come home for summers and whatever the fuck. I'm home a little bit. More and more you're there for this. More and more.

And eventually I just, like, realized three or four years later while I was in Richmond, where you didn't see this as much, that it was just, it was like an ocean. It was just like an ocean of Friends of Cold bullshit. And, like, all these stickers, like, cold keeps the lights on, blah, blah, blah. Like, all this popped up in, like, a two-year frame. Like, it was just like that. It was of cole bullshit and like all these stickers like cole keeps the lights on like all this popped up in like a two-year frame like it was just like that it was like almost overnight yeah it's pretty crazy nuts anyway the whole point is that a lot of that money got spent that they made around this got kind of funneled to... UK. UK.

And they used UK. Also, Friends of Cole would sponsor UK games. And so you'd be watching live. They still do. They still do. They still do. You see the little flipping board where the scorer's table is. It says, Cole keeps the lights on still. It's not just Kentucky.

It's Alabama, I think. It's, you know, there's other schools in the South they do that with. Yeah. But for a while, because I remember, didn't Sierra Club sponsor a UK game one time? They ponied up a ton of money. You remember this? I can't remember.

A few years ago. Because used to, when Kentucky first started kind of selling out, not selling out, but selling out, saying you can sponsor a whole game. UK used to be, they were more cool back then before they had sold out. I mean, they fixed this PR campaign to say you can sponsor a whole UK game and these are all the things you get. And when it first popped off, it was like over fucking, I mean, every commercial, every inch of the court. I mean, it was just fucking nuts. And finally they realized that was a little too much.

We're going to reign this in. And so now it's like a flip board and blah, blah, blah. But I remember watching a UK game years ago and it was just like wall to wall forensic hole. It was, it was, couldn't, couldn't separate the two. Yeah. Oh, totally. And then, you know, who else? Papa John Schnatter.

Like all these people that are just like completely unfriendly to workers. Like the most egregious examples of that. Yeah. Are all over that shit. Papa John. Yeah. Oh, Papa.

Anywho, this got us off track slightly, but it's good for context, I think. No, I think it's necessary. But, yeah, so I think the whole issue at bar is I don't, I don't, this is, you know, this is me talking. I don't see anything wrong with, you know, you can say what you want about these runners and sneaker companies. They're paying their workers. Who's this? Whoever these AAU people, these runners, these agents, these shoe companies, whatever. They're paying kids.

To make them money. To make them money. Which is more than the NCAA can say. Well, it's like what we were saying last night. It still has this paternalistic dimension to it because, like we were saying earlier, one of the parts of the deal was when you get to the pros, you rep Adidas. Yeah.

It's still like we own you. I mean, like, the term wage slavery has been, I mean, is, like, controversial. I don't know. I don't know who considers it controversial or not, but I mean, that's pretty much what it is. You don't have control over your own circumstances. Even your own brand. Right.

We joke about brands. Your brand and likenesses is owned by someone else. It's bizarre to me that they shut down somebody's YouTube page. It's just like... Yeah. I mean, it's wilder shit than that. I was going to tell a story about whenever I was working at home, we had to sit through

this NCAA compliance workshop. It was like four hours long. We had to watch this video that fucking Clark Kellogg narrated about. And it was called Don't Bet On It. It was basically, there was like one video called Don't Bet On It. It was all about like how the NCAA is against gambling and everything. At that time, I was the campus bookie at Moorhead. I was working for the men's basketball team,

and I was taking bets on everything from fucking snooker and darts to fucking NFL. Is the thing said in this episode going to land you or anybody in a libel? It didn't fucking matter. Yeah, he did. I mean, personally, could he be like, I'm suing the Trillbillies for spreading all this defamatory. No, he didn't know.

I'm just telling my story. No, he didn't know. No, he did not know this at all. Now, this is not on him. Nice. But the funny part is. Under the radar. Yeah.

So what's funny is Clark Kellogg's telling this thing, and he's like, so you and your buddies are in the gym, and you say, you know, we're going to shoot this out, and if I lose, then you're going to buy me a Chick-fil-A. There's all this weird product placement that just so happens to be NCAA partner sprinkled in this video. Yeah. Then it goes, now the one guy you all want to avoid as athletes

is the campus bookie, and everybody knows who the campus bookie is, and every fucking player turned around and looked at me and died laughing. And people didn't know what the fuck was going on. Like, I was trying to get these guys to take a dive against, like, fucking, like, university and shit like that. Didn't work out.

They wouldn't do it. But I didn't have the money to do it, make it happen. Oh, my God. But anyway, the NCAA, it's just so, but I didn't have the money to do it make it happen oh my god anyway the NCAA it's just so it's just you know for all Cal's warts about like palling around with Republicans

and like all his like pro coal shit which in a way I kind of understand Cal's the son of West Virginia coal miners that's why this partnership with UK is kind of a match made in heaven but I don't think he gets you you know, sort of the real-life dimensions to this. And if his dad was an Italian immigrant mining coal in West Virginia, I'm sure that he's probably seen some of this. You know, I'm sure his dad's probably paid in script at some point

or something like that. I don't really know what the company towns really looked like in West Virginia. Well, he's bought the shift, the narrative shift, where it used to be minor versus company. Now it's like minor and company versus everybody else. Yeah, and those are just the old days, and that's not the way things are anymore. Yeah, things are better. People are paid well, la, la, la.

Yeah. But for all of Cal's warts, Cal has been vocal about let's abolish the NCAA. Let's make our own schedules. Let's redistribute the profits to the players.'s been for paying players really yeah and and sort of you know he probably doesn't conceptualize it this way but he has been for a like a revenue sharing kind of thing where all the schools get whatever profits go would go to the ncaa in terms of tv contracts and all this stuff redistributed to all the schools. Let's have our own fucking tournament.

What do we need the NCAA for, really? You know what I mean? And I tend to agree with that. So, you know, I wanted to talk about this in comparison to the NFL. I wanted to talk about it in comparison to the shit that's going on with the National Anthem protest.

Because there is this question of, there is this question it's really interesting because um it's ignited this like nationwide discussion i it's telling time every time every time like race gets like put into like the mainstream discourse it's very fascinating because there it becomes this immediately becomes this question of ownership like people are literally boycotting their favorite teams because their players are fucking disrespecting the flag or they're just you know what i mean like they have this idea that like um that's like uh you don't have the right to do that you know what i mean like we like we we own you pretty much or not maybe not in the sort of hard sense that um that we're thinking of but like at least in the sense that like this country has given you so much i can't

believe you would dare. Right, you're performers. You are performing for us, and this is not what we told you you could do. Right, right. Dixie Chicks got the same shit. Right, right, right, right, right, exactly. You're performers. Exactly.

Get your life right. We're paying you. Exactly. And, yeah, there's really nothing more profound. I just think it's interesting. Because, like, even if you have a system in which players are getting paid, they're still not free to do, I mean, I don't know. I guess that's the entertainment industry in general.

I shouldn't. Well, no, but that's the thing is I think the broader point here is that the entertainment industry, which is disproportionately people of color, we don't view as workers because they tend to be compensated pretty fucking well. And we think, okay, that's good enough. But look what's happening in the fucking NFL with CTE and stuff like that. It's like, yeah, coal miners 10 years ago were compensated pretty good but at what cost right you know what i mean yeah their fucking lungs are destroyed they can't breathe their

life expectancy is dramatically shorter same thing with this nfl stuff yeah like did you see this the article that came out about aaron hernandez yeah no tell me his brain and brain, on his autopsy, he had CTE, the likes that they'd only seen in players in their 60s. Yeah, and he was like 27, 28. It's just like the same thing with black lung. We are seeing it soar through the roof in younger minors. And so these type of injuries, this is crazy, the parallels. I hadn't even thought of all these parallels. But we're seeing severe stages of black lung in really young minors

that have only been working for seven or eight years. Well, it's because they've, yeah, it's like, I hate to get on a higher horse, but yeah, it's just because like, I mean, I don't have to tell y'all, it's just preaching to the choir, but there are no regulations. It's crazy when you really like, there really aren't any regulations. Only two fucking years ago, we lowered the dust standard. And even then, it's not even...

They've eradicated black lung in Germany and shit. They've eradicated black lung in other places. But the point is that, again, I'm preaching to the choir. But even the regulation they do have, there's no accountability. They don't want to pay off somebody easy. And what regulation is there to keep young men playing football and whatever the fuck. Well, what they do is they try to do like in-game stuff.

Like if you make helmet-to-helmet contact, that's automatic ejection. Like that's supposed to be some kind of deterrent. Well, it's funny about that. It's like the damage has already occurred. You know what I mean? And that's not much of a deterrent. These kids have played a gladiatorial sport their whole fucking lives. Like they probably got to the league with some degree of disease,

just like a lot of these guys that are minors, even if they've been in there a year or two, probably have some degree of disease before it gets worse. And the other crazy part about this and the parallel between the coal and the football thing is the owners and the governing bodies and all this stuff are in the pockets of, well, in the case of the NFL, stuff are in the pockets of, well, in the case of the NFL,

they're in the pockets of the organization. So like the science comes out and they try to obscure it. Right. Or they say, we're addressing this with like helmet technology and all this stuff. Right. It's the same shit with like mountain top removal.

It's the same shit with mountain top removal all over again. Yeah. Yeah. Or black lung or any of it, yeah. Black lung or any of it. But the bottom line is, is that if you are underground with no

mask, with no nothing, no regulations, and you're breathing dust in, you're doing damage to your lungs. Yeah. No amount of technology tweaks or padding or helmet tweaks can account for the fact that human beings' brains rattle in their skulls and when they're hit repeatedly

over and over again for years, it's going to do damage. Yeah. And there's nothing you can do to rectify that. But nobody wants to embrace that because there's huge money to be made in there. Yeah. And you're talking about kids. I was thinking about Colin Kaepernick getting blackballed the other day.

It's absurd, one, that this guy led a team to the Super Bowl a couple years ago and he's not got a contract. It's disgusting. Like it's an ability thing. It's not. Well, it's like you pointed out the other day. It's like you pointed out the other day. It's actually pretty funny.

What are the only two leagues that anybody, like the conservatives, ever direct their rage at? NFL and the NBA. And what do those two leagues look like? The, they haven't come. Majority black. I mean, really, it's just like they do this pretzel logic to fucking

I'm not racist, I'm not racist, but it's just so obvious. It's so apparent. They're not getting mad at the fucking hockey players. They're not getting mad at fucking tennis players or whatever. Or even baseball players. Or the WN players. Right, baseball. Or the WNBA.

Right. Yeah. It's always. It stepped out even earlier. Yeah, it is always, how dare you? You don't have that right. Like, just fucking ignorance. It is just straight up.

Yeah. Yeah, and like Tony said, you look at the WNBA, who's been vocal in protesting well before any of this kicked off. But because they don't generate the same revenues, it's not looked at as a... Not a threat. It's not a threat. Right. So, you know, those girls can just do whatever they want to do.

Yeah, they don't have no control over my bottom line, over any... They're not controlling any capitalist livers. Who gives a fuck about them? Right. It's interesting. Do you remember a few years ago when... Well It's interesting. Do you remember a few years ago when, well, there was two things that happened a few years ago.

One, Northwestern's football team was trying to unionize. Do you remember that? Yeah. That was very interesting. But then something else happened later that same season and the Missouri football team's protest.

Yeah. They just basically quit on this coach. That was in 2015? That was after Ferguson. Yeah. So, yeah, like 2014 or something. I'm interested in this climate to see if that happens this coach. That was after Ferguson. Yeah. So, yeah, like 2014 or something. I'm interested in this climate to see if that happens this season. Well, even also right after Ferguson.

Players have insane power as well. Right after, I'm pretty sure it was shortly after Ferguson. What school was it where they got their, the school's president was fired in three days. Missouri. Because they quit playing. That's what you're talking about? Yeah. Not just their coach didn't get fired. Their president of the university. I think their coach was actually like, their coach was like with them

in that protest. But I think like they said we're not playing until you fire this guy because he was trying to silence some of the BLM stuff. Yeah. Because they didn't want to create a distraction. And it took three days. That's another like sports world racist cohort. Yeah. You don't want to be a distraction to your team. Yeah. Because they didn't want to create a distraction. And it took three days. That's another like sports world racist code word is you don't want to be a distraction to your team. Yeah.

Which is basically like, yeah, play football, Blackman. And that's it. And it was a very simple numbers game. That coach made like, or that president made like three million a year or something. Yeah. And, or six, I think it was like 600,000 a year or something. And that game cost three million dollars. Yeah. Them, them not playing like 600,000 a year or something. And that game cost $3 million. Yeah.

Them, them not playing that game, one fucking game or something. I don't know what it was going to cost $3 million. And so they just crunched it, fired his ass. Yeah. That's a pretty, getting a fucking major university's president ousted. I was pretty shocked when all that shook out. And I'm actually pretty surprised that more we didn't see more ripple from that yeah and similar tactics because especially I mean we may see that this

year I'm still holding out hope students have you know so much power because they are literally should are running universities but student, student athletes, especially for these big D1 schools. Right, they're workers. Yeah. Incredible labor power. Yeah, yep. They're not getting compensated, but they hold the levers to millions and millions of dollars. Yeah. I'd be interested to see what happens if Alabama refused to take

the field. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're right. If Kentucky basketball refused to take the... Do you think Coach Cal would go with them? He'd be with the team? I think what Cal would do is sweet-talk them into doing some half-ass protest. Like, I don't think he would say, like,

you're going to stay in, but I think he would be like... You know, like the Dallas Cowboys did last week. Like, they stood for the anthem, then they all took a knee. It's just like, you're missing the whole fucking point. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. Like, right like okay yeah it's better than nothing sure yeah like the whole team will do this and the coach will do it with you if you do it this way right eat a dick yeah which is like even like the funnier thing about like kaepernick it's like kaepernick you know he set out the

national anthem and then like this navy seal like talked to him. He was like, well, what about this? If you took a knee, maybe that would sit better with people, and you would still get your point across. And Kaepernick made that concession, and they still hate him for it. You know what I mean? He still actually didn't have to do that. No. But he did, and it's just interesting.

I think that in 30 or 40 years, Kaepernick will be kind of like Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King. It's like when they're dead, everybody loved them. You know what I mean? Or like later on in their life, everybody loved them. But while they were alive. They only love them once they're able to, as you said, whitewash their history.

Clean them up a little bit. And they're already doing this to Kaepernick, honestly. They're already saying that this is a protest against Trump. Did I say his name wrong? No, no. I'm looking at you like, good point. They're saying that this is a Trump protest when this was a protest against police brutality. Right, right.

He started this when Obama was in office. The libs are already whitewashing it. Yeah, they are. Yeah, it's not a fucking Trump protest. Fuck Trump. And not everything's about Trump. Yeah. Police have long been murdering

and disappearing people from the streets into jail cells, and they will after Trump is in prison, hopefully. I don't know, wherever the fuck he ends up. If Trump is in prison, hopefully circumstances will have changed to where cops are no longer shooting people. We'll see.

Yeah, yes, yes. I did hear, we're already at an hour, but when we're off air, I did hear We're already at an hour But And there's But when we're off air I want to tell you a lot about Vegas Especially you Tom I need to talk to you about Vegas You can tell us about it on air if you want

No I don't want to get into it Plus the last time I shared about my vacation We nearly broke up So I don't want to repeat that But anyway I was in a cab From my penthouse window we could see the trump tower and it and when i got close to it i got close to it because i went and waited in line

and uh bought legal weed for the first time oh oh really yeah nevada just went legal for recreational use pretty epic but uh anyway um so i was really close to the trump tower and it's really gold i've never seen a trump tower before it looks like a big Trump Tower, and it's really gold. I'd never seen a Trump Tower before. It looks like a big penny. Yeah, it does. It's like super gold. I'd never been near a Trump Tower. And then on the cab ride away, I was kind of talking to the guy about it, because in Las Vegas, it's really weird.

The Trump Tower is kind of off by itself. It's not on the strip. It's like away. And then there are just flat areas around it where you could build, but they haven't. And the guy said that those were all – the cabbie said that those were all yeah you walk behind there not far the deserts right there oh yeah yeah you see the desert hills from the strip it's bizarre but the cabbie said that all of these flat places were

projects that got started and then bankrupt in 2008 during the recession and so and they still haven't recovered or whatever like nothing has come out from there which is pretty crazy for me just thinking about how much money circulates in there but the trump tower is the only it's basically the only tower or building anywhere around there that doesn't have a casino in it now do you know why there's no casino in trump tower that's what the cabbie said He said that in the State of Nevada No one who has ever bankrupted A casino before is allowed to open

A casino in Nevada And Donald Trump Has bankrupted a few More than one And in Jersey So he can't have a casino In his tower It's just a hotel

It's the only hotel he can't have a casino in his tower. It's just a hotel. Yeah. It's the only hotel in Las Vegas with no casino. He's such a fucking idiot. It has our fucking president's name on it. I was having a very emotional reaction to it. And our cabbie said, he said, and if you bankrupt a casino, you're just a fucking idiot. I was kind of literally thinking that same thing. It's like fishing with dynamite in my face. Yeah, if you bankrupt.

And I mentioned this to my aunt, who's a Trump supporter. She really supports Pence more than anybody, but it's even worse because she's from Indiana. But I said, I just was relaying this message from the cabbie to her, and she said, plenty of people have bankrupt casinos. Plenty of fine, great businessmen. I couldn't believe it. I was like, okay. Damn it.

What is fucking wrong with people? Yeah, but isn't that crazy? The only hotel in Las Vegas without a casino is Trump Tower. I knew when I was in Vegas, there was this little girl that was in the class I was an aide in, and her name's Grether Ortega Reyes I'll never forget her she was Cuban and her parents had both been doctors in Cuba

like and done all this like humanitarian work all over the world like in Africa and all these different places and they had moved to Las Vegas because like just basically they had you know like they needed to make some money they were like all this stuff was happening. And they were housekeepers in the Trump Hotel.

And I thought that was just fucking. I think about that from time to time now. Thanks for checking out. These people have done all this great work. And they're cleaning houses for this fucking mud. Yeah, yeah. I think we got a soad. I think we got one.

We got a soad. We jumped all over the place, but I think it's pretty good. There's some good nuggets off there out there. It's mostly sports. You got your sports episode, Bubby.

Sports of all sorts. A horse is a horse, of course, of course. Sports ball bullshit. Dang. Well, all right. Well, then this is the end of course. Sports ball bullshit. Dang. Well, all right. Well, then this is the end of the episode. All right.

Yeah. Well, we'll... Visit our Patreon. Yeah. Good, Tanya. Good one. Drop a couple of singles off while you're there.