Behind the Curtain of Distraction: We Went Undercover with the Most Creative Fans in College Hoops

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Oh my gosh, Stock!

We're in 2025!

Great, Scott, has anyone seen this man?

Maybe it's you!

It's handy!

This is you!

Right after this ad.

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Has the curtain of distraction ever been used as an actual curtain in front of a window before?

Or are we making history right now?

It has never performed the duty of a legitimate curtain.

This is exactly how I wanted this session to begin by using the curtain of distraction to block the sun.

Yeah,

it's finally become the big time.

It has grown up to an actual curtain.

It's what it's always wanted to be.

Your title here is what?

Yeah, my name is Bill Kennedy.

I'm an associate athletic director here at Arizona State University.

I've been working full-time here for 37 years.

I went to school here way back a long, long time ago.

And anything else you'd like to know?

Who are the two guys sitting next to you, both of whom have intimidatingly long hair?

Yeah, my name is Harry DiCheco.

I'm a graduate student here at Arizona State University studying computer science.

And I've been part of the 942 crew every year I've been at ASU.

My name is Logan Sears.

I'm a sophomore here at ASU.

I'm majoring in graphic design.

This is my second year in the 942 crew.

Last year, just joined as a performer for the curtain, and now I'm taking over for this guy and trying to lead the whole operation.

So if you're not familiar with the whole operation that 19-year-old Logan Sears is talking about here, it is officially time to take you behind the curtain, as it were.

Because the curtain is an actual black curtain, about six and a half feet tall and eight feet wide, and it hangs from a frame of yellow PVC pipe that gets wheeled out from the student section in the second half of every Arizona state men's basketball game, right behind the hoop, right in the shooter's line of vision, and it terrorizes every opponent who dares to set foot on that free throw bite.

And this crowd, the curtain of distraction.

It's working.

One for three going to this end.

Since 2013, when the curtain first opened, The list of people popping out from behind it have included, but are not limited to, Thanos snapping the Infinity Gauntlet, a topless student smearing Mayo all over his chest and nipples with a spoon, a very cranky old lady, a large bearded kid waving around a Miley Cyrus-inspired wrecking ball, and also the actual Michael Phelps doing a speed-off strip tease.

You know why this is great?

Because Michael was such a good swimmer, he didn't go to college.

So he's getting his college accessories.

It's great

while wearing fake gold medals and a bow tie in order to make a random kid from Oregon State miss.

Two of them.

That's unbelievable.

And while I did go to college, as you may well know, I also knew how Michael Phelps felt.

Because around this time every year, college basketball reminds me that I absolutely did not have the Arizona State college experience either.

I've never had anybody tell me forks up, go devils.

I've never experienced the Sun Devils student section, the aforementioned 942 crew, and I certainly have never experienced their legendary curtain of distraction.

But this season, current leaders Harry and Logan agreed to give Pablo Torre finds out an unprecedented and until now entirely secret honor of joining college basketball's foremost writers room,

which is the only adult in the room's office.

My all-time favorite characters, because they're one of the ones that we started with, are the unicorns.

We have two unicorns that kind of make out.

That's been an ongoing one for almost 12, 13 years.

So that's kind of one of my all-time favorites just because of its longevity and its Hall of Fame nature.

I'm getting the sense now of how ridiculous Bill's existence is.

Yeah.

Oh, believe me, I have a ton of fun with this, Pablo.

It keeps me young.

The person that was in charge of the curtain before me, he starred as the sexy cookie monster, and he did an amazing job with that character, and we had a lot of fun with that.

And that's who Sexy Santa appeared alongside.

Have that curtain of distraction off in the background, and here they come.

We got Santa Claus.

We will give them credit.

Some of the analytics behind this, Harry, a master's in computer science student.

Are you the record holder for most consecutive misses?

I believe I'm number two.

I got showed out recently.

By Logan, yep.

Yeah, I got showed out, but yeah, I just love seeing the young guys, you know, pass the older record.

That's not the total.

Wait, wait, Logan, what did you do to break the record?

So it was a skit.

It was just called nature, and it was just a bunch of animals.

So we had like a frog, a bear, an eagle, a fish, and just show this like this forest scene.

It was probably like five consecutive misses that the first game ended.

And we're like, okay, we got to continue this.

So we were back on a Sunday and then got like two or three more misses.

When you get five consecutive forest misses, Logan, what's that feeling like?

It was definitely crazy because I didn't think of it at the time.

Like when it happened, I'm like, oh, like we got a couple misses, like that's whatever.

But then I'm like, wait, I just joined this group like two, three months ago and now I hold the record versus like legends that have been doing this for years like that's crazy I've loved it for years before coming here and now not to toot my own horn but now I'm the I'm the best one here like that's that's that's crazy well but just Harry the the power that I imagine I would feel

of I'm actually making a difference here I'm going to be honest, that's probably one of my favorite parts about it.

It's 100% how I grew up a sports fan too.

I'm from Philadelphia.

So I'm very used to trying to scream at the enemy team.

And Curtin just allowed me to have a much more direct impact on that.

It's just a great, enjoyable time.

Some of the best moments have been last year, I played an aerobics dancer, like an 80s aerobics dancer.

I put on this Leotard, I put on this big afro.

And I remember getting a missed

knowing that they spent their whole lives dedicated to basketball and me in a leotard is making you miss something that you've trained to do, that's an amazing feeling.

I'm watching Bill watch you guys, and he's just proud.

I sense deep pride

in the coaching tree here, Bill.

You have a rough night, you have a rough night.

And on those games, when you have really good games, you feel good at the end of it.

So it's, you know,

it's kind of like coaching, I guess.

Well, this season, I mean, I want to be blunt about this.

This season has been rough for fans of ASU basketball.

Arizona State won't foul.

So an epic battle to the end will go the way of Texas Tech.

In its history, we're at about a 67% success rate of free throws being made against it.

This year, I will be completely honest.

We're struggling a little bit this year.

We're a little bit over 70%.

I wonder if part of what's happening here is that you guys got so famous that people know to expect it.

Does it feel like the element of surprise has decreased, perhaps?

You know, the funny thing is we've actually heard that some schools have actually practiced against the curtain.

Effective or not, it's making them at least acknowledge it.

I love the idea that some school out there needed their own sexy Santa to practice against.

How do ideas get generated?

Are you guys all pitching stuff?

Yeah, so,

you know, typically what we'll do is we'll get together the week of

a game or set of games to kind of see what's going on.

And we'll look at, you know, what is trending.

And so we start just pitching those ideas.

And then we always say, you know, as much fun as we have and all the kidding we do, obviously we never want to be offensive to somebody.

We never want to do anything inappropriate.

So there are definitely some skits that start to go down the wrong path that we have to bring back to the right direction or not use at all.

Is there an idea that you remember saying no to where it was just like,

this is too much?

We have often joked about different things like, hey, if it came down, like win at an NCAA championship, it's the last thing we ever do.

We know if we do this skit, we're done.

We are out of here.

I probably won't have a job at the end of the day.

But

we will take the bullet for the team so that we can win that championship.

The nuclear curtain.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we had a series of skits kind of called dogs being dogs.

And so you can imagine maybe how dogs greet each other and things like that that would look really odd in the curtain and would not be appropriate in any way, shape, or form.

But if we need that miss, might work.

What you're saying is that Logan and Harry are all too happy to be sniffing each other's asses while wearing dog masks.

Basically.

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Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

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Please drink responsibly.

I'm realizing now that you are the Lauren Michaels of college basketball distraction.

You got some great.

That's absolutely not.

No, it's just clear to me.

It's clear to me that you run a ship, not unlike Saturday Night Live.

This is what's happening here in this office.

By the way, I am like, I am currently a disembodied head at the table with you guys

in the writer's room.

And I do, I do want to be of service.

When we look ahead to Houston, Houston's, that's a big game, a perennial power now, visiting you guys at Desert Financial Arena on ESPN, national television.

And it seems like a lot is on the line.

And I don't say that to put pressure on the curtain, but I want to explore how the curtain might meet the moment.

And so what I did was I canvassed a number of suggestions myself.

Okay.

I had my own writer's room that I have pieced together.

And I just want to throw some ideas at you guys and credit those ideas to others if I could.

I've gone to Hollywood to start.

So I asked Donald Glover, who is a friend of mine.

Nice.

What would you like to see behind the Arizona state curtain of distraction?

And Donald proposed a fat man pooping on a clear toilet.

Okay, that would definitely be in the category if we needed a miss, but we were going to shut it down immediately afterwards.

Noted, noted.

I'm just going to tell Donald Glover, he's got a ticket here.

If he wants to be in the curtain,

we're ready for him.

Also,

we went to our friend Mike Scher, who is one of the great Hollywood showrunners who's behind The Office and Brooklyn 99 and The Good Place and Parks and Rec.

And he reposed Einstein on the toilet reading the newspaper, but then suddenly getting embarrassed and trying to close the curtain.

You know, I think we might have to stay away from the toilet part of it, but if we can think of something else, that is great.

I'm writing that down.

Avoiding

yeah, anything that doesn't involve a toilet problem.

Yeah, yeah.

I do have some in the non-toilet category, but there's a lot I got to delete right now.

Okay.

What about conjoined twins?

Logan and Harry in one shirt with two neck holes.

Done.

You know, let's do it.

Done.

I think we can do something like that.

Now, what if the two conjoined twins then made out with each other?

So we do two conjoined unicorns.

We could put the unicorn masks on them.

You know what?

I would be willing to compromise and go unicorn masks.

There's a lot.

There's a lot that we have.

I mean, are you guys familiar with the movie Human Centipede?

Yeah,

you might want to skip that one, Popper.

Okay, noted, noted.

Mike Scher also proposed cat in the hat eating a messy meatball sub.

He proposed a cyber truck and a refrigerator making out Shakespeare doing the Running Man, the Twins from the Shining playing pickleball.

There's a bunch of Elon Musk ones in here that I don't think I want to make you do.

That seems beyond the pale as well at this point.

Fake injuries.

Have you guys gotten fake injured before?

We have a lot of fake injury submissions.

Yeah, so we did

two major skits basically that we had, but our idea behind it was what if we killed the opposing team's mascot?

We went out very first curtain, the mascot got killed in some sort of fashion, whether it be knockout or whatever the case, and then the dead mascot was propped up in front of the student section and basically ragdolled.

Okay, so violence, but of course, whimsical violence.

Fake, fake violence.

Yeah, movie violence.

Tasteful, yes.

Right.

I got a couple of other suggestions here from Wyatt Sinak, former daily show correspondent, one of my great friends and an excellent stand-up himself.

He was like, Can you get the hawk to a lady?

And I'm like, I don't think so.

I think she seems fascinating these days.

He had the masturbating bear from Conan O'Brien's late night show.

You guys might be too young for the masturbating bear, but a true classic in the genre.

No, not, no, no, not that masturbating bear.

That masturbating bear.

Anyway, you get the drift.

So in this case, we have producer Mike Ryan from the Lebatard show saying, what about Randy Johnson, who I believe

lives in Tempe, local.

Randy Johnson reenacting in slow motion that time the bird exploded when he threw that pitch.

That would be amazing.

Incredible.

I'm going to cross off

guy running in a hamster wheel.

Wait, that would be actually kind of cool.

Okay.

Yeah.

If you can create a hamster wheel and have somebody run around it, that would be kind of interesting.

Right.

When I was a kid growing up, I had hamsters and we had a hamster wheel.

They eat their young is the thing about hamsters.

And so I grew up with a hamster running in a hamster wheel.

And in the wheel, and this is not a thing I'm just saying for you guys.

It's true.

It maybe explains the psychology of me.

The hamster I had would run, and it would be a hamster wheel full of decapitated

hamster baby heads.

Oh, wow, because they have like 30 babies, and so they would just be running in like a death wheel of

a hamster wheel in and of itself would be enough.

I don't know if you'd have to add the decapitated babies to that, Pablo.

I'm seeing the value of Bill in the writer's room.

I'm seeing your grounding force.

I get it.

I get why.

I don't want to discourage anything.

Just want to redirect it, Pablo.

No, this is...

I get why you're in this position of power.

My friend Kevin Wildes, host of FS1s, first things first.

He was saying he loves the idea of a curtain behind the curtain, right?

So have you guys toyed with this sort of experiment of like, okay, so

where are you going with it?

Yeah, just like a Russian nesting doll of curtains.

And so one idea, the curtain opens and there is a doctor wearing scrubs standing next to hospital curtains so different curtain but a second curtain and that curtain when that gets thrown open there's a patient wearing a hospital gown

but their head is a mask And that mask is an AI-generated photo of the person at the free throw line, but aged like 50 years.

So that would be amazing.

The one thing we kind of forgot to mention is we have like five to seven seconds to pull this off.

So

if we could figure a way to get it done that quickly.

Well, okay, hold on.

Just to be solutions oriented, right?

So I understand that this is a very compressed amount of time.

If we were to prepare.

a dozen truly like we will take the Houston roster cut them out as masks so when the guy is going to the line, you already know which one it is.

Right.

So what would then the doctor do?

So the doctor would throw open the hospital curtain and would be horrified to discover this grotesque patient who happens to be the person at the free throw line looking at themselves in the future, grappling with their mortality.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, that's

wonderfully deep, first of all.

I mean, there is a poetry, I think, and a reality.

Yeah.

No, very meaningful.

Very meaningful.

And

I think it's something that

we could definitely explore.

My only reservations, not on your end, because your idea was outstanding, would be our ability in a short amount of time to make sure we had the right head going out there because just of the chaos factor.

My fear would be that we would not do it justice, Pablo.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

By the way, that was a suggestion inspired by Amina Kimes, our friend, a friend of the show.

We're disappointed to hear that you don't have faith in Logan and Harrison.

That's it's not that I don't have, I just want to put them in a bad situation, Pablo.

I think we could put you know, like a group of them together and they could be doing like various old man things as old men.

Oh,

okay, okay.

So, right, right, right, right, right.

So, it's like the Houston basketball team, maybe even their starting five as they're old men, as old men, yeah, and they're moving around very elderlyly.

Correct.

Yep.

Yeah.

Maybe making out with each other?

Maybe.

Yeah.

I'm just trying to, look,

I'm just trying to distract.

Yeah, let me give that one some thought.

I do think that one has some has some merit, though, Pablo.

Have you guys thought about the curtain is thrown open and there's kind of a wheel of fortune?

set up.

And by that, I mean there's a group of words with some letters missing and the person at the free throw line is now trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle by maybe buying a vowel.

Is that something you can do?

I love that idea.

I think that is a very, very cool idea.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

You can give them some kind of puzzle that they got to think about.

So, Harry and Logan, you're ready to be assigned

some theatrical work here.

You guys ready to do this?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes.

Again, I apologize for making you guys make out, but I I think you'll understand it's for the larger.

You'll be written into the lore of the curtain of distraction, Pablo.

Forks up.

Go devils.

The last time we met, I had summoned my entire network of Hollywood elites, a cabal of comedy writers, in an attempt to get you guys some ideas.

And I wanted to set the scene here for people who were not lucky enough to be awake so late at night on the East Coast watching Arizona State basketball.

We're here in Tempe, Arizona, inside Desert Financial Arena as Arizona State's got a tough task tonight.

One of the best teams in the country, fifth-ranked Houston Cougars at home, taking on the Sun Devils.

I should reveal to our audience here that we did embed a camera crew with you you guys.

But we're not closing it, so we have

a little extra time.

Like 20, obviously.

Yeah.

Because we got like normally seven, eight seconds for each shot, and then the time in between, close and open.

And then you can...

Are you having the best?

Yeah, it's a lot of planning, a lot of prep.

With all the costumes, we have a giant racks.

We're getting everything organized.

I don't think I've ever had somebody film me getting dressed before, you know?

I think this game was a little bit different, especially with the unicorns we had to do.

We we got pretty close during that game yeah that stuff either you can flip it over and in or we can use the tutu to cover it probably tutu is going to be easiest is my guess we were one with the unicorn

we're actually yeah yeah yeah let's do hoodie first because that'll get us together give us the the visual here guys what what are we seeing

The big sweatshirt, two armholes like normal, and then just two heads.

And me and Logan were both in there.

Type fit.

Oh yeah.

And then to convey the one type of body, what we ended up doing was wearing both black and white morphs.

So on our outside leg, you'll see white morphs because our unicorns are white.

And then you'll see on the inside leg are black legs.

Right, left, right, left, yeah.

Perfect.

Cool.

So our idea here was basically to try to make those inner legs disappear and just have a set of two legs, making the walk look as natural as possible, quote unquote, natural.

In our last taping, you hadn't told me that there would be side pieces.

Right.

We got lonely.

Right.

What did you guys innovate here?

We just got two of our other current performers, Matthew and Anthony, both great guys.

And we said, listen,

first skit.

What is it?

Okay, so me and Logan are like conjoined unicorns, okay?

Yeah, perfect.

So first skit, we're gonna walk out.

We're gonna take like three paces or whatever.

So like right, left, right.

Like that, yeah, like three paces.

And then you, me and you are gonna make out in the unicorn masks, right?

Second one, we're gonna step out, except we're gonna both turn inwards, make out with each other, and you two are like, what the heck?

Like you guys are, you guys are pissed that we abandoned you.

Perfect.

Do they have their unicorns?

We actually reached out to Randy Johnson, by the way, just for the record, who politely declined to explode a bird under your baseline.

But when I saw that you guys had unicorn side pieces, I was like, clearly, we're in good hands.

Yeah.

So I tune into this game.

It's on ESPN.

It's on national television.

And of course, the magic happens in the second half

as Houston shoots towards the curtain of distraction towards you guys in the student section.

And it takes a while, right?

So it's 13 minutes left in the game for the first foul.

And I am listening at home.

I'm hearing the play-by-play man john shifrin along with kim mcclure the broadcast team on espn okay look what's coming out here in the second half we have the curtains of distraction

and i hear them say that they are trying to find out what is hiding behind the mystery curtain

And you guys behind the curtain at this point are thinking what as the game is taking a while to shine its spotlight on you.

Two shots, go!

What happens is they're in the back, they're ready to go.

There's a door as you can see that they kind of come out with.

We try and hide everybody until that very last second.

Here we go.

So we're waiting for the shot.

We coordinate our walkout and we just start making out

snout to snout.

This skit was really interesting too because this shooter held the ball for three centuries.

It felt like I feel, I feel like I was making

tired.

I was getting winded for making out so much.

It seemed like you guys enjoyed it.

The disappointment, though, of him making the shot now, the mountain becomes clear.

And so, shot number two,

let's roll that tape.

The side views are furious.

It's a remarkable psychological testament to that shooter at the University of Houston to not miss a shot.

On the broadcast, you could hear King McClure, who himself was a sharpshooter at Baylor, incidentally, on this broadcast team, he says.

Does that stuff even work?

I mean, yeah, sometimes you might see like something like that probably would work, and sometimes they're not.

We should do, especially a study done on when they have the credit distraction, what the actual free-throw shooting percentage is.

There should be a study on that.

Chiller, right?

Because that's, like, closer.

And so this is the context for a costume change.

You ready?

Hold on.

Time away, Ray.

Take this.

All right, let's go.

All right, so

the next one, Marty McFly.

Yeah, Back to the Future.

In our writer's room, we had a friend of the show, Mina Kaime, suggest this AI rendition of the opposing team at aged 40 years.

What I didn't know was that you guys would back to the future this.

Hey, did you find the hair?

Oh, yeah, yeah, it's here.

That was, again, that creative flair that, of course, only you guys can provide.

We kind of all thought up of the idea.

And I got to wear a vest over top of this.

That Marty McFly and Doc, we were coming back from the future trying to look for somebody.

You guys, you guys improved it.

We did send you,

yeah, the art department here created those AI-generated faces of every single player on the Houston roster.

And it's remarkable how unbelievably disturbing it is to,

in this case, look into the eyes of a very old and balding and strangely

smiling LJ Cryer,

who is,

yeah, the 23-year-old point guard at the University of Houston, who, by the way, was having a great game.

Three minutes here in the second half, and Cryer with another three back-to-back threes.

And timeout, Arizona State.

You guys are down 20.

Arizona State is.

They're draining threes all over the place.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

And so I imagine, like,

when rain isn't falling, when free throws aren't happening,

it's just frustrating because

you're just pent up.

Yeah, it's building.

It's building.

It's gonna drive the lane right here.

I feel it.

Travel violation.

Good for the game, bad for the curtain.

Woohoo!

They're nervous.

They're nervous.

Wait,

how much are we down by?

12.

Come back.

I sense it.

Cleanest layup I've ever seen.

Nobody touched him on the way off.

Come on.

This is ridiculous.

I can't.

He was on an island.

Pabo picked the wrong game.

We overheard you guys praying for quote-unquote foul power.

Well, we didn't want to disappoint you, Pablo.

So we were hoping we'd get a few more chances in that Houston game.

You had given us three skits to do, and we wanted to make sure that all three got out there.

Some of the students behind us are getting real hype.

They may have some other interests in this game.

But then finally, under a minute,

there's a full court trap, and Bobby Hurley gets Arizona State trying now to commit a foul.

There is Ali committing the foul.

And so 47 seconds left.

The second foul is committed.

Four, four, four.

So it is worth pointing out, and this is truly ridiculous, but on the ESPN broadcast, you can now see Marty McFly and Doc Brown finally popping out from behind this curtain back from the future to confront Houston Guard LJ Cryer with our our portrait of his own mortality.

Oh my gosh, Stock!

We're in 2025!

On national television, all across America, John Schifferin, the broadcaster, is saying,

I don't know how you guys could have been any clearer.

The fact that LJ Cryer drains that,

it's

it's just amazing.

But then the second shot, you're like, all right, let's try something different.

We're 50 years in the past.

Where is he?

I think I see him.

He's right there in the front.

Second shot, we want it to be somebody that was on the court.

Whoever we did it for was standing behind the three-point line.

Number seven, Milos Yuzan.

So it just felt like you guys were with them at this point, which again,

pretty good strategy.

But Houston made the shot.

And so, just to do the math here, this is a bummer.

It's four for four from the line in the second half.

The curtain, therefore, is 0 for 4.

The game is a blowout.

And we didn't even get to the third skit.

And so I'm sitting at home.

My producers and I are up late.

We're on slack.

We are so disappointed.

But then we realize,

look at the schedule,

there's another opportunity for justice to be served.

We absolutely believed in these skits.

We thought they were fantastic.

So, as soon as the game's over, I'm on my phone texting producer Matt.

Like,

we were coming back for BYU.

You guys in?

He replies, all in.

So, BYU is a weekly.

Tempe, Arizona, number 25, BYU, taking on Arizona State as the team's battling here, heading toward the Big 12 tournament.

And

the skit that I'm most looking forward to is still in the chamber

because

Wheel of Fortune is not just a skit, it is also a puzzle.

And I wanted to test the intellect as well as the cojones of the cougars.

And I just want to point out, Bill, that this is where the editorial discussion of what the clue is going to be did, it seems, require some

editing.

Because again, to remind everybody, my suggestion was make this if you're D blank CK apostrophe S small.

Make this, of course, if if you're a duck

small.

You know, you have rubber duckies, all that stuff.

People remember that.

I had also suggested, by the way,

this is the best exclamation point, which was an homage quietly to a real thing that happened on Wheel of Fortune, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with, but it is this.

No.

This is the best, as Pat Sajak pointed out, not right in the butt.

Unfortunately, that contestant went permanently viral for answering.

Bill, I was bummed.

I was bummed we didn't do either of those.

You know, we're a family show.

So, you know, we want to keep it

appropriate, certainly, and we want to make it relevant to what is going on.

So, you know, we took the very, very, very high road and we just, you know, we want them to miss the shot.

So that's what we put out there, miss the shot.

You have to be the adult.

I get it.

I get that.

That's your role here as the Lorne Michaels of Arizona State.

But walk us through how you stage this, right?

So again, Wheel of Fortune, you know how it is up on the board in studio with Pat Sajak.

But for you guys, what was your execution?

How'd you do this?

I was the

host, I guess.

Harry was the contestant.

Yeah, so we'll get shot out of the.

The point is trying to get shot first.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So H first, which will flip these two around.

It's also like, what, two shots?

So I have, what, 20 seconds?

Yeah.

So we just got a bunch of students.

Each student got a different gold shirt with a letter on it.

And we'll put them in the t-shirts.

And we got the t-shirts over there

laid out

by words.

They're in order, yeah.

Okay.

And we just had them all in a line.

We just told them, if you hear your letter called, turn around.

It's under 13 minutes left.

You guys are down 12.

BYU star Richie Saunders drives the lane.

And finally,

and one.

That was probably one of the worst hits to be in and one.

So me and Logan kind of looked at each other.

We knew what we had to do.

Give me a letter.

Give me a main.

Give me one.

Give me a letter.

Falls off for Richie Saunders and the curtain of distraction did its work right there.

You can see him.

I don't know if my neighbors will ever understand why I yelled so loudly so late at night at a game that no one else apparently seemed to care anywhere in the universe of how much I cared about this.

It's very clear that he missed it because of you guys.

And I love that the announcers cannot help but talk about this.

That's something I love about college basketball, right?

The crazy fans, the kids, the student body, the cheerleaders, the pep fans.

It doesn't get any better than college basketball.

You keep that stuff.

It is very clear that he was trying to solve the puzzle.

Clearly.

And clearly thought it said, miss the shit

and got it wrong.

The rest of the half, though, is where this gets crazy.

So I'm like, again, we're on Slack.

We're talking to my producers, and we're like, we got it.

We got the payoff.

This kit works.

We're done.

Like, that's the end of the episode.

Play the outro theme song.

Good.

But then,

under 10 minutes left, Trevin Nell, who's a sharpshooter for BYU himself, he's fouled on a three.

And just to recap here, the most consecutive misses that you had forced apparently so far this season was two.

Again,

kind of a struggle.

But Trevin

misses the first,

misses the second.

This is now three misses in a row.

The curtain is out of control at this point.

And on the broadcast, again, they give you credit.

The curtain of destroying shit.

Is that what's killing them?

And Nell is able to figure it out.

And he goes one for three.

Then the next set of free throws,

I didn't know that I would see Doc Brown and Marty McFly again.

I didn't realize that that was in the cards, but it's a flagrant, it's a flagrant one.

And

it was just good to see your faces.

Oh, my God!

BYU at this point is now four for nine from the line, two for six against the curtain, which is irrefutable statistically.

And the next set of free throws, BYU goes one for two.

7-18 left in the game.

ASU is over the limit, one and one.

And here we have Jaegor Demon, freshman out of Russia.

And

I don't know if his home country is familiar with what you guys bring back next.

But when you lead with the forearm so aggressively that far away from your body, you're making an easy call for the officials.

And I say, this has been a real good officiating crew.

BYU is having some problems with the free throw line here in the second half.

The literal horniness of these unicorns riding the high of this streak of misses.

I mean, this is this is this is the American dream.

What this is.

At what point do you realize this is a threesome?

It was actually the returning side piece from the previous curtain ensemble.

The right half of the unicorn was going at it with the right side piece again.

The left side of the unicorn never made up with the argument that happened at the previous game.

They did not return.

So they were mad that the right side was getting all the action and they were not involved.

Narrative continuity is a key to

free throw distraction.

Keeping track here, right?

Three trips of the line in a row.

All of them work.

And we did, by the way,

reach out to Jaegor Demon

to find out if he had any sense of what was happening.

We await his response.

So this is where I regret to inform you that BYU's Sports Information Department did not respond to multiple requests sent by Pablo Torre finds out for comment from Jaegor Demon.

But after the game, BYU's head coach Kevin Young did seem to indicate that he knew something was up.

Tonight I think was an anomaly to go three of 11 in the second half.

So

we have a worker-like group and they'll be anxious to get back in the gym.

But what I found out today, I believe, after going behind the curtain here with Bill and Harry and Logan in Arizona State, again,

apologies, I guess, to BYU,

is that one institution's anomaly

is another institution's tradition.

The kind of tradition, actually, that no professional team or Olympic medal, as no less than Michael Phelps himself discovered, can even begin to replicate.

The curtain can magically turn an otherwise forgettable college basketball season, let alone a single game, into something that you really do fondly remember.

And that feels like the entire thing that makes college special.

The curtain of distraction is something that a bunch of kids invented and continue to perpetrate and pass down through the generations.

And it is for each of those generations something to celebrate with their friends before they have to go and apply for a job and enter the real world

and grow up.

You guys, spoiler alert, don't win the game.

You lose 91-81.

With BYU,

three for 11 against the curtain.

Redemption can be spelled so many ways.

In this case, it happens to be in a wheel of fortune format.

I do want to point out, Logan, of course, is

the younger star of the show.

But Harry, I'm looking at your

report card here.

You're about to graduate, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I'll be out of here in like two months,

I think.

It's funny, you know, some of our students, after they're done, they'll list actually on their resumes that they were in the curtain of distraction.

And it is absolutely a great conversation starter.

They'll come back and tell me they asked about the curtain.

They'd be like, oh, yeah, I've seen that before.

And it's, you know, it's a great way to make that connection.

So it, you know, it has some real world benefits to some of these students.

You know, I do now understand why you moved us away from the whole human centipede thing, given that this is on

actual resumes.

And on that resume, by the way, Harry,

I do look forward to seeing number two all-time most consecutive forced misses.

Yeah, I know.

I had the title spot, but somebody stole it from me.

So

part of what I found out is clearly that there is a deep, deep, and very real part of me that is very jealous that I did not go to Arizona State.

We appreciate Pablo.

You've got an open invitation anytime you want to come out.

And if we need ideas, we're going to hit you guys up for sure and your vast network of individuals.

I mean, look, most of them involve, but I am going to

have some new ones for you.

We can clean it up and make it presentable.

As always,

forks up.

Go devil.

the devil.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.