CFB With Kirk Herbstreit, Actor Paul Walter Hauser, The Bears Are A Dumpster Fire, Hot Seat/Cool Throne And Listener FAQ’s

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have a twofer for the people. We have our good friend Kirk Herb Street on the show to talk college football playoffs.

Speaker 1 We also have incredible actor Paul Walter Hauser on the show. Big fan of his.
PFT is a big fan of his. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk everything with him. We have Hot Seat Cool Throne.
We're going to talk Monday Night Football, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 We're going to do FAQs, some great FAQs from the listeners. We got a Max update on his foot.

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Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Bard and My Take presented by DraftKings. The fun of the NBA season continues with the simplest way to play for a shot to win big pick six from DraftKings.

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The crown is yours.

Speaker 1 Today is Wednesday, December 18th.

Speaker 1 And I don't even know what to say.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry that you're going through this. And I'm sorry that...
Really, what I'm sorry that we're all going through together is...

Speaker 7 Wait, are you talking about the Bears?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm talking about the Bears. I I don't know what to say.
I don't know what to say.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry that they keep putting the fucking Bears on national television. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's,

Speaker 1 I, they've beaten it all out of me. Like, there's, I couldn't have, let me start with this.

Speaker 1 I could not have been more wrong with everything I said this summer. I've said it, I've, I've, I've copped to that many times, but let me just do it one more time just so that people hear it again.

Speaker 1 I could not have been more wrong.

Speaker 1 I got so excited. I got so hyped that things were going to change.
Nothing is going to change with this organization. It will always be this way.

Speaker 1 They will always be based on bad fundamentals and hoping to get lucky from time to time and nothing done the right way.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I'm now officially worried that Caleb Williams might be like, I need to just, I need to be traded because I still have hope for Caleb Williams. He has looked bad.

Speaker 1 He did not look good on Monday night, but he also, like, everything is broken. The offensive line is so much worse than I expected.

Speaker 1 The defense without Eberflus is now, which is a very funny, like, twist, you know, knife twist, that the defense was being held together by Eberflus.

Speaker 7 Should not Eberflus be coach of the year?

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 1 I don't know how they ever won four games. This was supposed to be year three of a rebuild that was going to do things the right way and change the course of this organization.

Speaker 1 It is nowhere close to that. It is closer to year one of the rebuild than

Speaker 1 it is year three. We've gone completely backwards.

Speaker 1 I don't know,

Speaker 1 there's nothing, there's no path forward because the owners are going to be the owners.

Speaker 1 George McCasky sitting there staring, thinking in his head, like, oh, my mommy's going to be so mad at me when I get home. She's going to say she's so angry.

Speaker 1 These owners do not care about winning football games. They do not care about running an organization the correct way.
They are a joke.

Speaker 1 They have all but ruined their golden goose because I think I speak for a lot of the fans where it's like this is this is just time and time again we get to this point of the season where we're on a nationally televised stage and the team is an embarrassment, an absolute embarrassment.

Speaker 1 top to bottom embarrassment. And I don't know how much more I can take it.
I don't know how much more a lot of people can take it.

Speaker 1 And nothing's going to change because now they're stuck with a spot where they need a coach.

Speaker 1 Um, they have a GM who I like personally, I like Ryan Poles personally. Uh, I've made that clear.

Speaker 1 I don't think he's good for the job anymore, not only because the team has gone backwards, but it feels like he has no power.

Speaker 1 And also, he was probably the person who hired Matt Eberflus and kept him around, and that is an egregious, egregious miscalculation, uh, especially the keeping him with Caleb Williams.

Speaker 1 Ryan Poles should go, uh, and then with Ryan Poles gone, Kevin Warren is now in charge and he's a fucking doofus.

Speaker 1 So I don't really know what to do.

Speaker 1 We should start fresh. They should fire Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren and start completely fresh.
They won't do that.

Speaker 1 They'll either keep Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren, fire Ryan Poles, keep Kevin Warren, and it's just going to be a mess. And nothing's ever going to change.
And I told Max and memes this earlier.

Speaker 1 I'm officially retiring

Speaker 1 from ever getting to a 10 out of 10 excitement for the Chicago Bears until something changes.

Speaker 7 What changes?

Speaker 1 Because ownership problem.

Speaker 7 Anything could change.

Speaker 1 We were talking about it. This summer I was a 10 out of 10 excited.
I will not let myself get a 10 out of 10 excited.

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean I'm not going to root really hard for them and want them to do well.

Speaker 1 I am not going to let myself get 10 out of 10 excited ever again until it's proven on the field that something has changed. So like Max said, what if you hire Vrabel? My response would be,

Speaker 1 that's good.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 7 It would be, what about Ben Johnson?

Speaker 1 That seems good.

Speaker 7 You hire Mike Vrabel to coach the defense and Ben Johnson to coach the offense.

Speaker 1 For the Bears? For the Bears. Oh, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 See, I just went to Pretty.

Speaker 8 What if you start 7-0 next year?

Speaker 1 We'll see. It probably won't last.

Speaker 1 Lovey's last year. I think we started 7-0 or 8-1.

Speaker 7 What if you start

Speaker 7 5-2 this year?

Speaker 1 Nope.

Speaker 1 Pretty Pretty good.

Speaker 8 They almost did start 5-2 this year.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no, that was mean for you.

Speaker 1 No, I know what he was doing. I know what he was doing.

Speaker 7 What if you got a new stadium done? It's perfect.

Speaker 1 I mean, Kevin Warren's not going to do shit. Guys, a fucking doofus.

Speaker 7 What if.

Speaker 1 And Ryan Poles is not. I mean, he, this roster is so bad.
Like, it's, I thought they were so much better. I was blinded.
I'm stupid. I'm a moron.
I was wrong. Weapons, but no offensive line.

Speaker 1 Defensive line's bad. Coach sucked.
Caleb's a rookie quarterback. He's been up and down.

Speaker 1 Even the littlest thing of firing Matt Iberflues, which I wanted. And you had three games in a row where you had fired Shane Waldron.
Thomas Brown had went upstairs to be OC.

Speaker 1 Caleb had looked good in those three games.

Speaker 1 It was the Packers, the Vikings, and the Lions game. So it was obviously hit or miss.
The first half of the Lions game, not great, but he had had moments where it looked like ball getting out faster.

Speaker 1 Everything's kind of looking a little bit better. Then they put

Speaker 1 Thomas Brown on the sideline.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that matters, but it feels like you had one thing that was going a little bit well, a little bit well, not even good, a little bit well, and you changed it.

Speaker 7 Okay, what if you hire Ben Johnson, Mike Vrabel, Jameis Winston, backup quarterback?

Speaker 1 Oh, that's nice.

Speaker 8 If you score in the first half.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 That won't stay.

Speaker 7 You trade for Kyle Shanahan.

Speaker 1 We haven't scored in the first half in fucking years.

Speaker 7 What if the Bears said, we heard a real smart idea out there from our friend Big Cat via Troy Aikman via Mike Florio? And we traded for Kyle Shanahan.

Speaker 7 He's now our head coach, and he's bringing Trent Williams.

Speaker 1 Whatever. It's fine.
We'll see how it happens.

Speaker 7 This is bad. This is sad.
I've never seen you done.

Speaker 1 No, because

Speaker 1 the biggest mistake I made was getting excited when nothing has changed. Structurally, foundationally, essentially,

Speaker 1 the foundation of the house has been decaying and rotting for a very, very long time. And it's been going especially fast since George McCasky took over the team.

Speaker 1 And what happened this summer is the rotting house with termites, they got a new paint job. And I was like, holy fuck, this house looks incredible.
This is going to be the greatest house ever.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to live in it. And then I got in it and the wall and the floor started falling.
And I fell through the floor. And I was like, this sucks.
It's the same as it always was.

Speaker 7 And you fell into the term right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm now, I'm now, I've been hurt enough where it's just like, dude, just be, just realize that unless there's sustained change and sustained progress on the field, if they put together multiple winning seasons in a row under this ownership, then maybe I'll be like, oh, something's different.

Speaker 1 But even one year of winning in a row or one year of winning under this ownership probably won't last because they'll fuck it up.

Speaker 7 So you're not even excited with one winning season?

Speaker 1 No, because they'll fuck it up long term. That's what they do.

Speaker 1 It is broken from top to bottom. We got embarrassed.
I mean, fucking Doug Kramer again.

Speaker 1 How do we do that again?

Speaker 7 Yeah, not being told to report as eligible.

Speaker 1 You're in the backfield, dude.

Speaker 7 Yeah, you get put your job. Here's your job.

Speaker 7 You stay on the sidelines, and then they tell you occasionally on a goal line, sprint onto the field because you're going to play offensive line here or you're going to play fullback here.

Speaker 7 To not go up to the ref and report, that seems, it seems ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Jalen Johnson, who is one of the last guys who cares and is really good on this roster, they forgot to put the C on his chest on Monday Night Football.

Speaker 1 They're just like, oh, yeah, that was just an error.

Speaker 7 An oversight? Yeah.

Speaker 1 The only guy who deserves to be captain, you took his captainship away accidentally.

Speaker 1 They're a non-serious organization that has no attention to detail.

Speaker 1 It just doesn't run the way an organization should. Listen, I hope they get a good head coach.
I will be rooting for them to get a good head coach.

Speaker 1 I'm just not going to let myself get 10 out of 10 excited until something major changes. And I'll get six out of 10.
You'll say,

Speaker 1 it's not like I'm changing how I'm rooting. It's just changing how

Speaker 1 I'm thinking optimistically about the future. I will never let myself get optimistic about the future in a way that I got this past summer.

Speaker 7 Yeah, the problem with shitty owners is that they're very good at instilling hope in people. And they do that in a variety of ways.

Speaker 7 They usually get people that are very excited to step into different jobs, whether that's head coach or in the front office, team president, GM, whatever it is.

Speaker 7 You get excited about those people in the short term because they seem different. They seem like they know what they're doing.
They seem like they have it all put together.

Speaker 7 But at the end of the day, you feel bad for those people that take those jobs because they realize what you've always known, which is this is an impossible job to succeed at. It's impossible.

Speaker 7 You can go into it with the best plans that you have, but at the end of the day, there's going to be something over your head that's fucking you up the entire time until that thing is gone.

Speaker 7 Then those good hires that you make, I still think Ryan Poles was a good hire to make. I think there are a lot of teams that would probably like to have Ryan Poles working for them.

Speaker 7 I don't know if he'll get a GM gig next if he does leave the Bears, but he'll be back in the front office, work his way back up. But he was a qualified candidate.
He was a good candidate.

Speaker 7 And guys like those, they will continue to be hired by the Bears at times and then continue to not be able to do their job, not be allowed to do their job.

Speaker 1 I mean, he also, I mean, he had three-year rebuild, and

Speaker 1 we're nowhere close to a rebuild.

Speaker 7 Your offensive line was so bad last night. So bad.
So bad.

Speaker 1 And Caleb's been bad.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to say, oh, my God, everyone's fault.

Speaker 1 Well, they are faulting Caleb as an organization, but Caleb, I think he's, I'm worried that this has now gotten in his head because he's getting sacked so many times. He's scared to throw it.

Speaker 1 Like that one where Romadunze was open in the middle of the field, that was just Justin Fields' Mitshubiski flashbacks. Where it's like, this is happening again.

Speaker 7 Caleb needs to get his groove back. Here's advanced statistics for you here.
Manalytics.

Speaker 7 Caleb Williams with painted fingernails, 4-3.

Speaker 7 Without painted fingernails, 0-7.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he needs to paint his fingernails again. He lost a rojo.

Speaker 7 It's like when you see the killer whale in captivity and their fin is drooped over.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It just all sucks. I don't know what else to say.
It all sucks.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to stop rooting as hard as I root. I'm I'm just going to stop letting my hopes ever get up again.
That's the difference. That's where the change is.
And a lie.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 8 Because, I mean, we'll revisit this in, I don't know, August or whenever they hire a new coach. And then, you know, there's some good reports out of camp.

Speaker 1 So when I say pretty good,

Speaker 1 we'll see. Will you be upset if I say we'll see? No, not at all.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, it will be boring, but I think I have to do that. I have to do that for my own mental health.
I have to say we'll see.

Speaker 9 We will be revisiting this clip.

Speaker 1 That's a promise.

Speaker 7 This is post-loss clarity that he has.

Speaker 1 But this has also been like, it's just years and years of this bullshit. And it's like that game on Monday Night Football was a game I've seen a million times.

Speaker 1 It's flashbacks to just like, you know, the end of the Trust Finera when they were on a Monday Night Football game and they were just ripping everyone. And then

Speaker 1 I went to this game. I was telling Eddie and those guys were at the game and they asked me if I wanted to go and I was like, no, I've been to that game.

Speaker 1 I went to Mitch Trubisky, John Fox's last game as a Bearshead coach when Mitch Trubisky was a rookie and we got killed by the Vikings. I was at the game in Minnesota.

Speaker 1 Like this game happens every year. So I just,

Speaker 1 it's over. Vikings are great.
Vikings keep rolling. Vikings are, Kevin O'Connell's just, he's coach of the year in my opinion.
He's, I mean, think about what he's done. He,

Speaker 1 Kirk Cousins, fine quarterback. We all think he made Kirk Cousins, they win 11 games that year.
Last year, obviously, things fell apart. He kind of tread water with Josh Dobbs.

Speaker 1 This year, Sam Darnold, who's been thrown to the trash pile a few different times, he's made him playing an elite level.

Speaker 1 Like, this is why, in a weird way, I know that we talked about the Sam Darnold situation last week. Like, what do you do with Sam Darnold?

Speaker 1 I don't think they can make a mistake because they have Kevin O'Connell. Yeah, I think.
Like, J.J. McCarthy would be fine because Kevin O'Connell's the coach.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but I still think you've got to keep Sam. I I think you have to keep Sam.
How much better could Sam Darnold be playing right now than he already is? Like, how much better

Speaker 1 would it be what you're talking about?

Speaker 7 But let's just say he keeps playing like that. Yeah.
He's worth that money. Right, right.
But

Speaker 1 the argument, the counter-argument is J.J. McCarthy's getting paid a million dollars a year because he's a rookie.
Right.

Speaker 1 And you could beef up everything else in all the other holes, and that's how you win a Super Bowl. But I listen, I just.

Speaker 7 I mean, as good as he looked in the preseason, to expect that he would be able to step in and play at the same level Sam's playing at next year. Like, he might be very good.
We don't know.

Speaker 7 But, like, Sam has played to the peak of his ability this year with like one or two exceptions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's just a rookie contract deal that you're trying to win on that window.

Speaker 1 I want to take that chance. I think Kevin O'Connell is just so good that it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 And yes, Kevin O'Connell and the Vikings GM were hired in the exact same cycle as Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflues.

Speaker 7 He is a very good coach.

Speaker 8 Like a week after. Like the Bears made the first move.
All right, you don't,

Speaker 1 you're a coach.

Speaker 1 You don't know NFL details. Now you do.

Speaker 8 It's context. I'm just providing context.

Speaker 9 Memes are just saying that exact stat back here.

Speaker 1 Can you read it off, memes?

Speaker 5 I got to find a tweet.

Speaker 1 It wasn't a week after.

Speaker 8 The Bears hired. Yeah, it was both things happened.
Bears did the first move. Then the Vikings' counter move was

Speaker 8 a better GM and a better head coach.

Speaker 1 Oh, Cody Bellinger got traded to the Yankees. Breaking moves.

Speaker 1 What do you get traded for?

Speaker 1 Probably nothing because they want to get rid of his cash.

Speaker 7 I don't see any details on there.

Speaker 1 Click it again.

Speaker 1 Let's see.

Speaker 7 Full trade.

Speaker 1 Cash. I was right about that.
Cash. Go to cash to the New York Yankees.
Right-hand reliever, Cody.

Speaker 1 Poteat goes to the Cubs. Yep.

Speaker 7 Cash. There you go.
Poteet.

Speaker 1 Okay. So, cash.

Speaker 7 I have the tweet.

Speaker 1 Cash. Okay.

Speaker 10 Go ahead, memes. A timeline.
January 25th,

Speaker 1 2022.

Speaker 7 The most animated memes has ever been.

Speaker 1 I mean, I can't get mad because I, listen, I,

Speaker 1 I make fun of other teams.

Speaker 10 This is, memes you deserve this a timeline a timeline january 25th 2022 bears hire ryan poles january 26th 2022 vikings hire kwasai dafe mensa probably that up january 27th 2022 bears hire matt eberflus january 16th 2022 vikings hire kevin o'connell damn

Speaker 1 Do you know what's probably going to happen, if I had to guess, is that we're going to do the head coaching interviews and they're going to be like, hey, are you comfortable with Ryan Poles?

Speaker 1 And the person's going to lie and be like, because they want the job. They're going to be like, yeah, that's fine.
And then we're going to fire Ryan Poles next year.

Speaker 1 And then so that way everything's, then the coach has to hire the new GM.

Speaker 7 And then the new GM comes in. and has to fire the new coach after like a year.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 7 the new coach isn't his guy.

Speaker 1 We knew we were careening into a the timeline is fucked up last year and we didn't change it.

Speaker 1 And we're doing it again this year where it's like you can just change everything, the GM and coach, and they won't do it. And again, I like Ryan Poles a lot as a guy.

Speaker 1 I just think that this has gotten so far away from him and this roster has gotten so far away from him where

Speaker 1 there's some mistakes that just happen, but there's, I mean, you just, you can't have ever thought, like, in retrospect,

Speaker 1 this offensive line was ever competitive.

Speaker 7 Yeah, if you had to put your finger on it, what's the biggest problem? Big cat everyone what if you're the GM 10 out of 10?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So you'd be back.

Speaker 1 No. Oh, if I'm the GM? Yeah.
If I'm the GM,

Speaker 1 I try to woo Virginia McCasky.

Speaker 7 Like, sleep with her? Yep.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Then we have a child. Okay.

Speaker 7 I don't think she can do that anymore.

Speaker 1 Okay, so then we adopt a child. And yes.
Okay, so Virginia McCasky and I get married.

Speaker 1 Sorry to my wife and kids. I'm going to have to get divorced for the better of the Bears.
For the city. For the city.
So, Virginia McCasky and I, we

Speaker 1 get married. Beautiful marriage.
Wonderful marriage. And then I say to Virginia, hey, Ginny, that's what I call her.

Speaker 1 Hey, Ginny. That's hot.
I'm thinking about adopting.

Speaker 1 And she says, okay, we should adopt. And then we adopt Theo Epstein.

Speaker 7 And he saves the bears.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 7 You like that? Yeah. Or you could adopt like seven homeless pit bulls and just lock her in a room with them.

Speaker 1 Listen, very nice lady. Is she? Sure.

Speaker 7 She doesn't let people. She's 101.

Speaker 1 I don't know if she could do anything mean.

Speaker 7 Yeah, old people didn't do anything bad. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 7 Here's the thing.

Speaker 7 She is a quiet lady.

Speaker 1 I don't even know if she talks.

Speaker 7 She doesn't let people wear bears jerseys or uniforms or logos or merchandise

Speaker 1 in her box.

Speaker 7 I think she might have the worst box in the United United States.

Speaker 1 It's an all-time fumble of a bag. Like you, you fumbled the organization that was, was, that, that Papa Bear bought for, you know, a bushel of blueberries

Speaker 1 and a five-cent piece. Yep.
And now we're here. So, whatever.
I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm just no more.
Six out of 10. Six out of 10 is as high as I'll go in the excitement meter.

Speaker 7 Since I'm being tagged in it, I will respond to a question out there.

Speaker 1 Oh, great.

Speaker 7 Friend of the program, Ryan Fitzpatrick,

Speaker 7 he was on X.com, The Everything App, it's all happening on X. I saw that.
And I saw this. Do you see that? It said, name something worse than being a Bears fan.
And his response was

Speaker 7 being friends with a Bears fan and having to listen to them complain about the Bears. I want to say that's not worse than being a Bears fan.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Also, like, I can confirm that

Speaker 1 it's not worse. My complaints are why a lot of people listen to this show.
The sickos and perverts are loving loving the complaints right now. Hank is having the best time ever.

Speaker 9 Hank, can you please remind PFT what happened that they basically lost to the Bears?

Speaker 1 They did. I mean, that's.
Huh?

Speaker 8 Comedies are good. They're in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Wait, what?

Speaker 1 I mean, you're tall.

Speaker 1 You love to do this, like,

Speaker 7 I'm bigger than you.

Speaker 1 No, like, you basically lost to this team.

Speaker 7 I'm not doing I'm bigger than him.

Speaker 1 This has nothing to do with the commanders. He's much bigger than him.

Speaker 8 This has nothing to do with the Commanders.

Speaker 1 No, he hasn't been able to do it. And no one wants to do that.
He went through the whole

Speaker 9 new ownership phase.

Speaker 7 Yeah, because guess what? I fucking lived it for

Speaker 1 the playoffs.

Speaker 7 No, no.

Speaker 1 It is true.

Speaker 7 I experienced it directly that you have a fucked up owner that no matter what happens, they fuck everything else up. It's true.
That's not me being bigger than.

Speaker 7 That's me just saying something that's the truth. Max, what was that about you asking Hank to

Speaker 1 me?

Speaker 6 Hank has...

Speaker 1 been one to say that the commanders basically lost to the bears but why didn't you say bears though we're not talking we're not talking about the commanders and i've said multiple times over and over and over again on the record no one wants to be the no one wants the bears to be more successful than me yeah i want to be i also i also don't hold any resentment towards jaden daniels drake may bonix michael pennix jarthy because i really do firmly believe that no matter what the draft order went it would have ended exactly here it would have extended exactly here You could have given us Drake May, you could have given us Jaden Daniels, you could have given us Bo Nicks.

Speaker 1 We would have been doing this exact same conversation because that's what the Bears do. That's what they do.
This is the third time in fucking seven years. It's insane.
It's crazy. Six years.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 7 Is it okay if I agree with that, Max, or would that be being bigger than Big Cat?

Speaker 1 No, you can agree. You can agree.

Speaker 9 It's Eagles Commanders Week.

Speaker 9 I'm on Commander's Alert.

Speaker 1 Okay. Respect.

Speaker 7 I'm on Commander's Alert. Respect.

Speaker 1 All right, so the Vikings are great. Also, the good news is for Falcons fans,

Speaker 1 I feel like the A-team was on the Bears Vikings and no one watched one of the most horrific games ever played. That game was so bad.

Speaker 7 I didn't want to watch either game. Both games were awful.

Speaker 1 But the Vikings and Falcons game was like,

Speaker 1 there was two block punts. There was penalties everywhere.
Kirk Cousins looked so bad.

Speaker 1 Desmond Ritter almost had a chance to win the game at the end.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he had a drive where he could have got it done. There was an egregious roughing the passer call.
Yep.

Speaker 1 That was a horrific, horrific game played. So,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 bad Monday night football.

Speaker 1 Bad, bad Monday night football. Vikings are really good, though.
Vikings are playing for the one season.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but again, watching bad football, it's a deposit into the bank. Yeah.
And you always get reward. We did that last Thursday.
What did we get?

Speaker 1 We got Bills Lions on Sunday. It was a great game.
Could have been better.

Speaker 7 It was a great game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it was never really in doubt.

Speaker 7 It was a great game, though.

Speaker 1 It was a great game. It was a fun game.
Did you guys agree? I mean, this is, I feel like I've stayed consistent.

Speaker 1 I didn't like the the Vikings' uniforms. I've been consistent.
I said it with the Packers.

Speaker 1 I'll just say it. The fucking

Speaker 1 NFC North and the AFC North.

Speaker 1 I'll actually say the NFC East as well. I'll throw them in there.
I'm trying to think what other divisions.

Speaker 1 Maybe the AFC East. Those divisions shouldn't do weird uniforms.

Speaker 8 I mean, the Bills are just wearing Patriots uniforms this weekend.

Speaker 7 That is weird. Yeah, they're wearing the white helmets, the red jerseys.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, do the original.

Speaker 7 Why did that game get flexed into prime time?

Speaker 8 I don't fucking know.

Speaker 1 And then we're back to the into the

Speaker 8 four o'clock, and then next week we're playing on Saturday.

Speaker 1 Oh, I just don't think traditional teams should do any types. Like, the purple helmets, if it was the white jerseys and the purple helmets, I'd be fine.
Purple helmets are iconic. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I agree with you. Listen, it was a weird look tuning into it.

Speaker 7 It was just bad football last night. It's okay.
We can turn the page on bad football. Yeah.
Bad presentation. Everything was just rotten.

Speaker 7 Kirk Cousins, after the game was over, though, they were talking to him on the sidelines. They were like,

Speaker 7 How do you feel about this? He's like, Oh, it's hard to win this league. Yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 7 And I said, How do you feel about your play, Kirk? And it looked like he was going to cry. I thought Kirk Cousins was going to cry because he was like, Clearly, I'm not playing up to my standard.

Speaker 7 I think they might make a change.

Speaker 7 I think so, too. It might be Pennix time.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, why not? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're on the outside looking in, and the Bucs have a pretty easy schedule coming up where I think they finish with the Saints and the Panthers

Speaker 1 and they play the Cowboys on Sunday night.

Speaker 1 I think the Bucs, like if the Bucs win out, they obviously win the division. They're up a game.

Speaker 1 So maybe you wait one more week and see if

Speaker 1 you're two games out and then you're like, all right, let's try it with Michael Pennix, but I agree. Time for the future.

Speaker 7 There's something wrong with Kirk. I don't know what it is.
Maybe he just got old.

Speaker 1 He's looked bad. He's looked bad.

Speaker 7 But then we laughed at the Falcons on draft night. It might have been a good move.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Might have been a good move.
He's going to be better than Caleb Williams. Everyone is.

Speaker 1 And then Caleb Williams, I think, actually will go somewhere else and be awesome. I still believe in him.

Speaker 1 I'm never going to stop believing in him. Max,

Speaker 1 can we get an update on your foot?

Speaker 9 Foot's, it was a good update.

Speaker 9 Went to the foot doctor.

Speaker 9 I'm in a walking boot. I still can't walk without crutches.

Speaker 9 but my doctor said eventually, within the next couple weeks, I will be able to just use the walking boot, which is big.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 7 Nice. And then no surgery?

Speaker 9 He said

Speaker 1 you're not an athlete?

Speaker 9 Very, very minimal chance that I need surgery.

Speaker 7 Did you tell him that you were an athlete?

Speaker 9 I would think like less than 1%. I did not tell him.

Speaker 1 How long till you get out of your boot?

Speaker 9 I think you could tell.

Speaker 1 How long till you get out of your boot?

Speaker 9 I get re-evaluated in a month.

Speaker 1 And did you say you could possibly be out then?

Speaker 1 Yeah, possibly. Oh, that's huge.

Speaker 9 Possibly.

Speaker 1 You need to get out of that boot for Super Bowl. I think.
And then you can rebreak it on Bourbon Street. Don't, that was so fucked up.
Right before the Eagles Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was so fucked up that you just said that.

Speaker 7 Have you given your walking boot a voice?

Speaker 1 I've done that.

Speaker 1 Hey, Max,

Speaker 1 you're sticking little toes in the back. Hey, it's me, Max.

Speaker 1 Hey, Max. You're going to get so fast.

Speaker 1 Oh, Italy is a boot. Yeah.

Speaker 7 You got the entire country of Italy on your foot, right?

Speaker 1 Hey, Max.

Speaker 1 Why don't you get a couple of meatballs? Put some meatballs in your sake.

Speaker 1 Warm up your toesies with some meatballs and some sauce.

Speaker 1 Yep, walking boot. Yeah, you got to get out of it before a Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 Why? Because it will suck to be in New Orleans in a boot.

Speaker 9 Is that specifically because you think I'm going to break it again?

Speaker 1 No. I want you to be out of the boot for the Super Bowl.

Speaker 7 I want to see you walking up those stadium steps bootless. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Feeling good in the pants. Yeah, you got a lot of football.
I don't want you to cut your pants.

Speaker 1 I don't want you to have to cut your pants.

Speaker 9 Vikings are good.

Speaker 1 Vikings are very good.

Speaker 7 It's tough to climb up a greased-up light pole with a walking boot on, Max.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Vikings are really good.

Speaker 9 I do have one of my pant legs cut right now.

Speaker 7 It looks good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Peace of

Speaker 1 Max, do you want to say anything about Nick Siriani getting alpha by the D-line coach?

Speaker 9 No, that's just like the culture

Speaker 9 and that all the coaches feel comfortable enough to go up and have that conversation with Nick Siriani.

Speaker 1 Leader of men.

Speaker 9 The way that he coaches his guys is that you can do that and then you can go back the next day and everything's all right because it's like brothers.

Speaker 9 When brothers fight, but it's at the end of the day, we're brothers and common goal of championship.

Speaker 7 You see that all the time in Lions games. Yep.
All the assistant coaches going up to Dan Campbell, looking like they're going to strangle him, being like, better get the fuck away from him.

Speaker 9 Right, because of all the Super Bowls, that Dan Campbell and the Lions are won.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. By the way, Dan Campbell, I did love his speech.

Speaker 7 Oh, it was so good.

Speaker 1 I mean, the Lions.

Speaker 1 We have David Montgomery now out for the year, which is crazy. Like, we knew the defensive injuries, and they just added David Montgomery on that.

Speaker 1 I think we'll be back for the playoffs, though, correct? I don't know. I don't think so.
I think he has a torn PCL.

Speaker 1 That could have been been me reading pro football doc i think they're getting some of their linebackers back maybe uh but it's it's a bad scene but dan campbell went on a radio show and and he pumped everyone up i don't know if you can find the clip but it listen the lions are

Speaker 1 there have been teams that have gotten this many injuries uh the lions have a significant amount of injuries i i i have the stat i don't want to be like i i i see the constant tug and pull of lions fans being like but our injuries and everyone's like, well, you're the first team to get ever get injured.

Speaker 1 Give Lions fans a little bit of

Speaker 1 a little leeway because they do have an insane amount of injuries.

Speaker 7 I'm going to think of them the same way I thought of the Ravens from like two seasons ago. Yeah.
Do you remember that when they got so banged up that even their mascot towards ACL? Yeah.

Speaker 7 That was a bad season. And you can remember that Ravens team for being good, very good, but also, yeah, but injuries.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so the eight Lions that are out for or that are on IR on the defense rank among the top 40 defenders in total EPA.

Speaker 1 No other team has more than two in the top 40, and 52% of Detroit's defensive starters or direct backups are on IR. Yeah, that's a lot.

Speaker 7 Hearing Dan Campbell talk about it, though, it did make me buy back into the Lions. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 7 He was like, you know what, we got by on eating moldy bread for a long ass time. Now we're used to filet mignon.
Guess what? That moldy bread was good for us. We got through it.

Speaker 7 I think he said, we got new guys. We're going to cut them loose.
Yeah. And if they're going to cut them loose.

Speaker 1 If we give up 700 yards and win by one, you'll see me smiling ear to year. Yeah.
He's the one you'd want to go to battle with with this type of stuff.

Speaker 7 I have another question for Max.

Speaker 7 Max, do you think that Jalen Hurts has pretty privilege?

Speaker 1 I saw that. You see the discourse? Yes.

Speaker 7 Dominique Foxworth said that Jalen Hurts has pretty privilege.

Speaker 9 There's also another clip

Speaker 9 of he's interviewing, I don't know if it's his wife or his daughter or something,

Speaker 9 but

Speaker 9 he's interviewing another woman and they're talking about how beautiful Jalen Hurts is. And he's upset by the woman talking about how beautiful Jalen Hurts is.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's like hot chicks hate when guys are halfway.

Speaker 1 I wish I was so hot.

Speaker 9 I just knew this was going to get brought up, but I wish I got more information on that follow-up because it did make me laugh because it made it seem like he just hates Jalen Hurts because

Speaker 9 someone in his life thinks that he's hot.

Speaker 7 Thinks that, oh,

Speaker 7 if you saw was Foxworth interviewing somebody in his family.

Speaker 9 This could be an egregious count of fake news.

Speaker 7 It's like David Tepper and his wife going out to dinner with C.J. Stroud.
She loves C.J. Stroud, so he's like, I'm going to draft Bryce Young.

Speaker 9 Kind of. Kind of like that.
Or it could have just been like a random person that he was interviewing.

Speaker 1 Your mic just cut out? No.

Speaker 9 I did that by accident. But yeah, this is it.
Yeah, it's his wife. He's mad that his wife is thirsting for.

Speaker 1 Can I play the clip? Yeah, yeah, play the clip. This is the pretty fumble.

Speaker 1 Whose tuss was being pushed?

Speaker 7 Jalen's only tissue.

Speaker 1 Oh, I was

Speaker 1 me.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 yeah. Yeah, yes, yes.
That's very cool.

Speaker 7 All right, so when Foxworth brings that up,

Speaker 7 there's some beef there.

Speaker 9 Yes, yes. That's what I that's the information that I gathered, so I didn't take it too seriously.

Speaker 7 Do you think that Jalen Hurts is pretty?

Speaker 9 Yeah, he's handsome as hell. I said privilege.

Speaker 7 I didn't say handsome.

Speaker 1 He's pretty privileged.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no, he's handsome, pretty, all the above.

Speaker 7 I wish he acknowledged his privilege sometimes. We don't all get the same treatment that he gets.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 7 Listen, hot quarterbacks like Josh Allen and Big Ben, you know, they get treated differently. You would think the media would be nicer to Jake Haner.

Speaker 7 He should have pretty privilege.

Speaker 9 Yeah, memes just AI'd me so much.

Speaker 9 Memes is on an AI binge right now.

Speaker 9 You said Jake Haner just reminded me.

Speaker 9 He's on a generational run of AI.

Speaker 7 He really is. And also, Max, you remember like maybe six months after you started on the show, you made the remark that Memes is obsessed with me? Memes is obsessed with you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You're right.
That's a fact.

Speaker 1 I looked at the light again.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 7 We got the best booth in the biz game. We do.

Speaker 1 We do. We absolutely do.
Should we kick it to ourselves?

Speaker 1 I got to process this Cody Bellinger try. I feel like if they did the money for more Kyle Tucker money, then it makes sense.
Otherwise, the Cubs are just cheap.

Speaker 7 So, wait, did the money go to the Yankees?

Speaker 1 No, the Yankees are paying the Cubs.

Speaker 7 Is that what it was?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Yankees traded cash.

Speaker 9 I've also seen a couple tweets now that said I would like to buy Cody Petit stock.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. So that's great.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 9 That could be good for you.

Speaker 1 Cubs are back. That's all I really need.
I think the Cubs are going to go with just like, hopefully, Kyle Tucker hits 45 home runs.

Speaker 7 No, big catch.

Speaker 1 Suzuki hits like 30, and

Speaker 1 we win every game 2-0.

Speaker 7 It says Cody Bellinger and cash go to the New York Yankees. Oh, we're paying? So you're paying the Yankees

Speaker 9 $5 million.

Speaker 1 That's what I...

Speaker 1 Oh, but

Speaker 1 we're getting out of $20 million.

Speaker 7 Correct. You're saving money on

Speaker 9 five.

Speaker 7 Good investment.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 That's according to Bob Nightingale. Cheap.

Speaker 1 Cheap.

Speaker 9 Fucking cheap. Which is, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, who knows?

Speaker 1 Okay, let's kick it to ourselves. We got Hot Seat, Cool Throne, and then we got great two interviews coming up.
We have Kirk Herbstreet and Paul Walter Hauser.

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Speaker 1 Hank, hot seats, cool throne.

Speaker 8 My hot seat is Chris Hansen and NFL right now.

Speaker 1 Not Chris Hansen.

Speaker 1 Scott Hanson. Yes.

Speaker 1 Chris Hansen, the. Why don't you take a seat? Yeah, why don't you take a seat over there? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 That's

Speaker 7 they call that the Pred Zone.

Speaker 1 Did he get now? Chris Hansen. Scott Hansen got railroaded.
No, but Chris,

Speaker 1 let's stay on Chris Hansen for a second. Chris Hansen, I forgot.

Speaker 1 He got it reversed. He wasn't a pedophile, but he got it reversed on him that someone caught him cheating on his wife and did the, you want to take a seat over there? Oh, they caught him?

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure that that was

Speaker 1 the story article.

Speaker 7 I remember the guy from Cheaters. Was that Joey Greco that got stabbed on the episode in Cheaters's?

Speaker 1 On the boat, which might have been fake, but I believe it's real.

Speaker 1 I believe it's real. Yeah, so Chris Hansen, I believe, was caught having an affair with a colleague 20 years junior by a hidden camera and fired from NBC for it.

Speaker 8 He was caught in his own videotape sting, yeah.

Speaker 1 That's so funny.

Speaker 7 Wait, it was his own videotape sting? It was like his show.

Speaker 1 He forgot the videotapes.

Speaker 8 The married NBC anchor was secretly filmed on a date with a blonde television reporter who has reportedly been dating for the past four months.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 7 I want to get ahead of something.

Speaker 7 We had cameras set up in the studio on Sunday because Hank's doing the part of my take documentary.

Speaker 7 And there was like a camera that was in here while I was working on boomers. um and this was probably like i don't know five six p.m

Speaker 1 uh i forgot that the camera was there and that was on and i i farted real loud like nine times who cares like timestamps dude who cares by the way shane is on the sticks right now because max is getting his uh he he we we already heard the update from max but shane doesn't know how to work the volume that was why the volume just turned on there shane i clicked on the video to try to pull it up and instantly just start applying um wait we're we're going a bunch of different sidetracks but i want to stay on this real quick is Is there a reason Pug is not sitting where Shane is?

Speaker 1 Pug's working. Pug's working.

Speaker 7 There's a documentary coming out.

Speaker 1 Your memes, you're not still mad at Pug. No, we're good.
Okay.

Speaker 1 PFT,

Speaker 1 you know what I'm going to do for 2025?

Speaker 1 I think this is...

Speaker 1 I don't give a fuck anymore. Okay.
Love that. Like farts.

Speaker 1 Someone was like, you picked your nose on a stream the other day. I was like, dude, I pick my nose every fucking day.

Speaker 7 I picked my nose also when I was in this, sitting at this desk. And I think after five minutes, I looked at the camera.
I was like, the camera probably just caught me picking my nose. Deal with it.

Speaker 1 Don't care. This is disgusting.

Speaker 8 But talking about farts, like, do you

Speaker 8 like when you have smelly farts and you're in the comfort of your own home? Oh, yeah. Do you like to just like fishbowl under the under the covers?

Speaker 1 It smells good. We know the real comfort of our own homes.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Because I smell it. I'm like in the smellier by myself.
The smellier, the better.

Speaker 1 This one's disgusting.

Speaker 8 I get excited.

Speaker 1 This is disgusting, but I do this. I'm wondering if any of you guys do this.
Because I agree. You have to smell your own farts.

Speaker 1 When you're in your car, you got a good one, and you put on the heated seats to warm up the fart. Yeah.
To really cook it actually.

Speaker 7 You get it simmering a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Give it a little extra juice.
I've never done that.

Speaker 1 That's the gross shit.

Speaker 7 I might start doing that. What I do sometimes is I'll turn the heater off.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 7 When I fart. That way it doesn't blow the smell away.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 So I want to linger in it. This is also fucked up.

Speaker 8 And I was thinking about this, how in New York, I would, like, if I had farts, I would on the train, I would just let them loose. That is fucked up.
And then

Speaker 8 I would be like, because obviously no one's going to accuse random people on the subway, but I would always act like I smelt it, too. Like, oh, who the fuck?

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. Like,

Speaker 1 gross, man.

Speaker 8 Basically, like, you know, getting the, getting the scent off yourself. So if someone else looks around in disgust, then you're also like, yeah, this is who the food.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's the worst behavior ever on a subway, Hank. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's bad on a subway. You don't fart on elevators.
yeah, Hank, you got to slow your farts. All right, so

Speaker 8 Scott Hanson, Red Zone. Obviously, I don't blame Scott Hanson.
There was no way this was his decision. But their entire tagline for years, since the beginning of Red Zone,

Speaker 8 get ready for seven hours of commercial-free

Speaker 8 football.

Speaker 8 And on Sunday, they ran commercials.

Speaker 1 They ran commercials. Now, I feel a little bad.

Speaker 8 They ran 30 seconds.

Speaker 1 I do feel a little bad because

Speaker 1 this is one of those blind spots for us where we're a little out of touch because we don't watch Red Zone anymore. We haven't watched Red Zone in years.
We watch every game.

Speaker 1 We're lucky enough to be able to have every game on.

Speaker 1 And I wish I had known this to speak for the people on Sunday because this is bullshit.

Speaker 1 You have a duty, and this is not Scott Hanson's fault. This is the people behind whoever sold these commercials.
Seven hours of commercial-free football. And you just completely rug-pulled them.

Speaker 1 This is worse than Haktua.

Speaker 7 Who did nothing wrong?

Speaker 1 She's still sleeping. She's still sleeping.
Does she still not make a statement?

Speaker 7 She did.

Speaker 1 Her statement was, hey, y'all, I'm kind of tired.

Speaker 7 I'm going to go to bed. See y'all tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Going to bed. All right.
All right. Bye.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 All right. So

Speaker 7 this is, it is bullshit because the red zone is, it's supposed to be a sanctuary away from commercials. Correct.
They market it as such.

Speaker 7 I don't know if I blame Scott Hanson. I think I might blame Scott Hanson because Jeff D.
Lowe showed me a very interesting video the other day. Okay.

Speaker 7 he was asked to rank his top five red zone sayings like the scott handson sayings scott handsome isms he's claiming the witching hour as being his

Speaker 7 saying

Speaker 1 that mike francesa created that as far as i know did you give it to him though No, I don't I don't know on part of my take but I

Speaker 8 feel I do feel like there was a time when you brought it up to him and then he started using it like that that is definitely how I remember it as well. Yes.

Speaker 1 Like you we

Speaker 1 you brought up the what you wanted to do. The witching hour in the name of the day.
And then he started saying it.

Speaker 7 And I think he tagged part of my take when he started saying it.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you guys have a name for I'm going to call it like the 3 to 4 p.m.

Speaker 7 hour that happens when you get just like all the games coming down to the wire, and they're like four close finishes at once? Do you have a nickname for that?

Speaker 13 Yeah, simply it's not really creative, but I call it the greatest single hour in sports television.

Speaker 1 The witching hour. We call it the golden hour.

Speaker 6 It's the witching hour.

Speaker 7 Witching hour or golden hour?

Speaker 1 It's the witching hour. The golden hour is right at sunset.
Witching hour is the three weeks.

Speaker 13 We're talking before week one. I promise I will refer to it either as the witching hour or the golden hour at some point this season, just for you guys.

Speaker 1 I promise I will do that.

Speaker 8 I remember it that way as well. So

Speaker 7 we're giving credit to Mike Francesa.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 But he gave credit to us, but now the credit has faded away.

Speaker 1 So are we

Speaker 1 blaming blaming Scott Hansen. This is like an al Capone.
We got him for tax evasion.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 So it's like, we're not saying that he's in trouble for the commercial-free. We're just, we're lumping it all.
He's getting a Rico case right now.

Speaker 7 All I'm saying is it never had commercials when Ceciliana was around.

Speaker 1 That's true. That's true.

Speaker 1 This is bullshit.

Speaker 8 This is bullshit. I don't know what's next.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 If red zone is not going to be commercial free, like what is next?

Speaker 1 Do people...

Speaker 1 I struggle with red zone that's all i'm gonna say i've had this take before i think it's too much and i don't like i like being able to watch seeing all the games and the flow of the games i mean seven games is a lot to follow um i love red zone i do i just can't i it's impossible for us though it is impossible we're so far removed from the average fan in terms of watching nfl sunday that yeah like i don't even think we can really comment yeah no you're right you're right i do no one has seven tvs yeah but no with youtube tv now you can use you can at least do four you can do multi-view yeah.

Speaker 8 But they only have sound on, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 I have a prediction.

Speaker 1 Hank's asking. Yeah, Witching Hour, he's looking for it.
He's, he only recently started saying it in the last few years.

Speaker 7 Uh, what are you saying? I have a prediction. Hank asked, what's next? Are they going to start putting commercials in movies? Like, we have product placement now.
That's been around.

Speaker 7 That's been a thing for a while.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Are they going to have commercials like in the court, like a 15-second break?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 That would be what's next. commercials and podcasts.

Speaker 1 I could see it. I'm out, I'm out,

Speaker 7 Corslite. Hot

Speaker 1 Scott Hansen,

Speaker 1 he should have, he got it led to the wolves. Imagine if he had, imagine if he, I see it, Shane.
Shane, Shane is, is crazy with the, with the computer in front of us. It's, it's too much.
Uh,

Speaker 1 he's just going nuts. Uh,

Speaker 1 imagine if Scott Hanson had, like, walked out. Yeah, that and that would have been, he would have been a hero.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it would have sucked for him because he would have lost his job and a lot of money and like the best job in the world, but we would have respected him for that 10 minutes and then we would have gone on to the next thing.

Speaker 7 He would have had conviction.

Speaker 1 I always love when people are like, yeah, you should just walk out. It's like, for what? 10 minutes of our respect? Yeah.
We would have forgotten about it the second the Bills and Lions kicked off.

Speaker 7 Like, no, he would have walked off the set. We would have been like, everybody, we would have tweeted about it.
Yeah. Show respect to Scott Hanson.

Speaker 7 And then Greg Rosenthal would have walked on the set and be like, we love Greg.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, yeah, this guy rocks.

Speaker 8 Yeah, like red zone, they also could have just done it without Scott Hanson, and half the people wouldn't even notice, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 8 and my cool throne is shitty money grab fights involving one of the Paul brothers.

Speaker 7 Okay, what's going on?

Speaker 8 Connor McGregor tweeted that the rumors of about with Taporio are false. I'm in preliminary agreements with the

Speaker 8 Mbani family to face Logan Paul in a boxing exhibition in India. I've agreed.
I will then seek my return to the Octagon. He's like 100 years old.
He hasn't fought in forever.

Speaker 8 He's just going to do a boxing match versus Logan Paul.

Speaker 7 It's probably going to suck. How many times are we going to fall for the Paul fights?

Speaker 8 I'm sick of it. Yeah, like I'm sick of it.

Speaker 1 This might be. If they fight someone who's actually at the top of their game, you know what?

Speaker 7 I will boycott this fight. If I do watch it, if it's on it for free, it'll be a pirated stream.

Speaker 7 I will pirate the stream.

Speaker 1 It depends. But I will not

Speaker 1 box yourself in yet.

Speaker 1 I will not watch it on a legitimate stream because they could easily do this fight like on a saturday at like 9 p.m in like july and you sit you're like sitting on the couch you're like oh i can't pay for it i'm with pft yeah it's on a streaming platform for free that i already have i'm not gonna go as far as saying i won't i i most likely won't

Speaker 1 i most likely i'm not doing it i'm not doing it well i'm gonna break the law This is entrapment.

Speaker 7 You're forcing me to break the law.

Speaker 7 You can only push a man so far.

Speaker 1 That's facts.

Speaker 1 Okay, PFT, your hot seat. Good job, Hank.
Nice job, Hank. Great job, Hank.
Thanks.

Speaker 7 My hot seat.

Speaker 8 Scott Chris thing, but that's okay.

Speaker 7 My hot seat is Doug Gottlieb.

Speaker 1 That's mine, yeah.

Speaker 7 Doug Gottlieb on the hot seat.

Speaker 7 Our boy Adam Schefter reported yesterday that Sacramento State was in discussions to hire Mike Vick as their head coach, head football coach.

Speaker 7 And along with that report, he also posted that Sacramento State has over $50 million in NIL money at their behest that they can contribute to building the program.

Speaker 7 And then Doug Gottlieb replied saying, Jesus, Shefty, but it was J-E-E-Z-U-S. That's how you know he's serious.
Jesus, Shefty, edit what agents tell you. 0.0% chance SAC State has $50 million in NIL.

Speaker 7 Shefty did not take that laying down.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 7 He said

Speaker 7 the SAC-12 leading the school's NIL efforts already announced it reached its initial goal of raising $50 million in NIL funds to strengthen the school's case for an invitation to the Pac-12 or Mountain West conference.

Speaker 7 And Jesus, Doug, a seven-game losing streak and last place in the Horizon League, less time on social media, more time in the gym.

Speaker 7 I give that round to Shefty.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I give that round to Sheffield.
Gross.

Speaker 7 Now, I did see some fact-checking of Shefty saying that the $50 million for Sacramento State is contingent on them following through on their roadmap and then being accepted into the Pac-12 down the line.

Speaker 7 So it's not like Sacramento State has $50 million laying around.

Speaker 1 Yeah, someone's like, hey, if you get us into the big conference,

Speaker 1 we will give you $50 million. That's not $50 million right now.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but Doug Gottlieb, people forget he's hosting his radio show and also doing a bad job coaching college basketball team. He's like the Travis Hunter of media.

Speaker 1 And he's, yeah, I think he's, has he won a game in December?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 famously,

Speaker 1 at the beginning of December, Doug Gottlieb posted, it's the most wonderful time of the year. And it was a meme,

Speaker 1 December 2024. And it just has all the days color-coded.
And it's like December 2nd through 6th, pretend to work. December 9th through 13th, don't even pretend anymore.
Like,

Speaker 1 nostalgia, destroy your body with food and alcohol. This is a coach, a college basketball coach.
And he did a meme being like, December's the time when we don't even pretend to work. I love that.

Speaker 7 Now, to be fair, he's had a gauntlet of a schedule, so he's lost to Evansville, Campbell, Cleveland State.

Speaker 1 He also, he also has done

Speaker 1 things like his way.

Speaker 1 I don't know the exact details, but I just saw it, you know, I just saw it like in glancing through like maybe a week ago. I guess his point guard or one of his best players was not playing his way.

Speaker 1 So Gottlieb way. So Gottlieb

Speaker 1 sat him for the entire game, even though they can't win a game right now. He's like, until he learns how to play my way, he's not going to play.
So he's doing like a Bobby Knight thing for Green Bay.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 7 Credit to Doug Gottlieb. Maybe it's just not in the cards.

Speaker 1 Do you think? Now, again, we love Shefty. He's our guy.

Speaker 1 That response definitely was because Doug Gottley wasn't so far off.

Speaker 7 I think, what's the old saying?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 they get hollered.

Speaker 8 Insiders get stuck.

Speaker 1 The insiders get sent,

Speaker 1 me think the lady doth protest too much. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Let the meat cake.

Speaker 1 Well, I think they do say that.

Speaker 7 I think that Shefty is on high alert after the hijinks that was pulled by Mike Mullarkey against Ian Rappaport.

Speaker 7 We should talk about that again because that's just

Speaker 7 such a dirty move and not hilarious at all that Mike Mullarkey did that.

Speaker 1 Did you guys see John Heyman's meltdown? No. That also, like, the insiders are having a really bad time right now.
They're having a really bad time.

Speaker 1 John Heyman went on WFAN and the host insinuated that he was getting a cut of Scott Boris's deals for reporting on it. And he had a voice crack meltdown.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's a no-no.

Speaker 8 Which is like a funny thing. Again,

Speaker 1 it's a funny thing to say.

Speaker 1 All these guys are just so funny because they really just take so they just cannot stand anyone poking fun of the idea that they're breaking news two seconds before the team does so so the insinuation here was that

Speaker 7 Shams the other day was freaking out about Jimmy Butler Shams got he got cooked by Jimmy Butler's agent yeah all right but then he he like lashed out too yeah so Heyman is being accused of

Speaker 7 getting money from Scott Boris yeah in a joking way so would play the end of it Scott Boris would ever like give any of his money to a reporter no hell no play the end of it uh

Speaker 1 let's see if if Shane can do it. Maybe not that far.

Speaker 1 All right, right there.

Speaker 1 No sound.

Speaker 1 Shane. Shane's getting cooked right now.
Shane's getting cooked by the people.

Speaker 8 There's a lot of jobs in the sports world, especially, you know, being in it.

Speaker 1 Like...

Speaker 8 The insiders has never seemed appealing in any way, shape, or form at any point. No, it doesn't even matter when Shepherd gets these big contracts.
It's like his life is so so stressful.

Speaker 8 There's no time when you're not stressed. I don't know

Speaker 8 how it's enjoyable.

Speaker 7 Yeah, the only joy that Leroy ever got out of breaking stories was the fact that he was beating the insiders.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And the insiders who make that their job getting beaten by a dog.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a crazy life. All right.
I'll pull it up because she's too.

Speaker 1 Thank you for that.

Speaker 1 I'm not even believing.

Speaker 1 Wait, you're playing two things right now.

Speaker 1 You're playing two things.

Speaker 7 Or maybe they're just talking over now.

Speaker 1 He's expecting to be

Speaker 1 not expected to.

Speaker 1 John, go back a little. At some point, I think someone could probably drop it if they're a nice person.

Speaker 1 What I think is it, one,

Speaker 1 it just like how I introduced you. Everybody in baseball knows who you are.
So, one, it's a credit to your work, your followers.

Speaker 1 By the way, I won't be going out with you again. The whole thing is going to disaster.
That's crying.

Speaker 1 That's okay. I can't even believe you said that to question my integrity.
Are you being serious right now?

Speaker 1 I'm being serious, yeah. John, asking me if I'm getting a cut because

Speaker 1 I have a relationship with an agent. It's outrageous.
I know you're not a journalist. You don't know anything about this.
I know you get it and you don't, but that's an outrageous thing.

Speaker 1 It's Friday night at 8:30, John. You shouldn't know that much.
And I am not

Speaker 1 taking this.

Speaker 1 Goodbye. John, do we, you know, thank you for

Speaker 1 the past. The end.
I can't even believe it.

Speaker 1 They're getting upset

Speaker 7 when they're talking to another member of media and they're like, you're not even a journalist. Yeah.
You wouldn't get it.

Speaker 1 They're under fire right now. I can't even believe it.
Yeah. Boach got out at the right time.

Speaker 7 Memes attacking Rossini.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 He was crying the other day about that.

Speaker 1 Warranted and correct.

Speaker 7 Have we found the story?

Speaker 8 Yeah, no, he did find the story. It was not even close to what he said.
I know.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 This is.

Speaker 1 He said

Speaker 1 Probable. She said probable.
It is very funny that you agree.

Speaker 7 I think she said

Speaker 7 discussions were being had regarding this thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 8 it's likely or probable. She didn't say fact, which is how you reported it.

Speaker 1 Like, this is basically a Scooby-Doo meme.

Speaker 1 You think it's Florio takes off the mask, or Rossini takes off the mask, it's Florio. It's really like Rossini and Florio take off the mask.
It's memes all along.

Speaker 1 Because you make up more stories than they do.

Speaker 1 That's probably true.

Speaker 7 I think memes, to be fair to memes, he reads a headline or he reads a post and then he just gets the vibe of what that post is.

Speaker 7 And then he likes, he has his own grok, his own AI inside of his head that summarizes it, rewrites it, and then that's the report.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's probably true. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I'm not paying for that shit.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
That's all I got.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 1 Where were we?

Speaker 7 Oh, hot seat was was over.

Speaker 1 Cool Throne.

Speaker 7 Cool Throne is combat sports. We got a new combat sport that we have to start paying attention to, guys.

Speaker 7 It's better than Power Slap. It's better than arm wrestling.
It's the ultimate dick kicking championship. Ooh.

Speaker 7 Two guys just stand across from each other and kick each other in the dicks until one guy gives up. Oh.

Speaker 7 And it's another one of these sports like Power Slap that was designed just for the clips, basically.

Speaker 7 Because you will share and you will watch clips of two guys kicking each other in the dick.

Speaker 7 To me, it might as well just be, yeah, watch this video.

Speaker 1 Boom.

Speaker 7 Just taking it.

Speaker 1 I like this. Should we do it?

Speaker 1 Should we do it?

Speaker 7 So, to me, this might as well be the ultimate coin-flipping championship. Because if you go first, you should win every time.

Speaker 1 Oh!

Speaker 1 I like this. We should do this on stool streams.

Speaker 7 You want to get involved? Yeah. Ultimate dick kicking.
Why not?

Speaker 7 At some point, this will be like a national event.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 The clips are just too good.

Speaker 1 It's also funnier. Yeah.
Slap. Right?

Speaker 7 It's much, but they should have a women's division.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would prefer it if it was just like they were throwing balls at each other from across the ring.

Speaker 1 So there was a level of like skill?

Speaker 7 Sitting on the ground with your legs open in gym shorts, no one

Speaker 7 and then rolling a tennis or rolling a basketball as hard as you can at the other person.

Speaker 1 Guys really need to get girlfriends these days. I love that.
Do you guys see those posts?

Speaker 7 I like that there's a ref in it. Yeah.
Like, what's the ref's job to police the ultimate dick kicking?

Speaker 1 The, the, um, I don't know if you guys in the algorithm, like, where people would just be like,

Speaker 1 you know, guys can't, you know, all these women aren't dating guys anymore. It's like society's fucked up.

Speaker 1 It's like, maybe we're just, because you're spending all day on your burner account on Twitter and not just going to the bar.

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like there's a whole world out there of people still dating and meeting girls. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Normal people. Going to the bar.
Yeah. Yeah.
The discussion that's happening online is not real life. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Go out, have a drink, touch glass. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, buddy. I like that.
But there are a lot of people online like, man, I can't find a date. It's like, just, I don't know, go to the bar.
Yeah. Probably can, probably can talk to a girl.

Speaker 7 Yep. My other cool throne is the Boca Rattan Bowl.
That's tonight, Wednesday. You guys, long time real ones on Part of My Take will remember that we sponsored the Boca Rattan Bowl back in 2016.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I think.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to remember. The beak, the Ponzi Awareness.
The Bernie Madoff, Wet the Beak, Ponzi Awareness, Boca Rattan Bowl.

Speaker 7 Presented by Part of My Take, presented by Barcelona Sports. Yeah.

Speaker 7 So Western Kentucky Memphis was the first matchup of it back in 2016.

Speaker 7 And who can forget the Royal Rumble, the intern Royal Rumble that we had at halftime with Glenny Balls, Tommy Smokes, Hubs, Robbie Fox. Jesus.
Who else was in that? Glenny went to the hospital.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Glenny went to the hospital. What a great time that was.
And then...

Speaker 8 Book Rotone, what the Beak Ponzi Scheme Awareness Poll presented by Part of Martin, presented by Parcels.

Speaker 1 That feels like a different life ago. It really does.

Speaker 7 We had Caleb down there with the trophy who snuck onto the field at the end of it.

Speaker 1 That was actually electric. Electric.

Speaker 7 And so he presented it.

Speaker 8 Glenny had to go to the hospital. That was almost an actual issue.

Speaker 7 The bowl game did not have a sponsor, so we just said, hey, we're just going to act like we're the sponsor of this bowl game game to raise awareness for it. And we sent Caleb down there.

Speaker 7 He presented the official trophy to Western Kentucky after the game. Western Kentucky, last I checked, has that trophy in their official trophy case at the school.
Yes.

Speaker 7 They're playing in it again tonight. They're in the Boca Rattan Bowl, and they're playing against James Madison.
I love it. I want that fucking trophy.

Speaker 8 What was that kid's name, Mikey Electric or something?

Speaker 1 Yeah, something like that. But I just want

Speaker 7 I want to let the people, because I know that they listen to the show at Western Kentucky. The trophy's on the line again.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I will go down there and steal that trophy back if I have to, if JMU beats Western Kentucky tonight.

Speaker 1 I love bowl season, even though it's been kind of taken away from us. We'll talk about that with Herbie a little bit more, but I still love Bowl season.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 My hot seat was also going to be Doug Gottlieb, but we discussed that in

Speaker 1 detail. Gottlieb, I still can't believe he's coaching.
It's pretty crazy. It's pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'll do a different hot seat. I was thinking about this

Speaker 1 because we were talking about it on Sunday. We had Jonathan Taylor and then the Bengals player.

Speaker 1 Isn't it kind of crazy that Deshaun Jackson, that is his legacy, that everyone's just like Deshaun Jackson every time someone drops the ball? Is there any other situation like that?

Speaker 1 I guess the Leon Lett, but that happens very rarely.

Speaker 7 Yeah, if you Leon Lett. No, I got another one.
Dan Orlovsky.

Speaker 1 Dan Orlovsky, yeah. De Orlovsky.
Yeah, Dan Orlovsky's a bad one.

Speaker 7 It's crazy, but it's also with Deshaun Jackson, he was still so good for so long and so fast that it's not the first thing you think of with Deshaun Jackson. Right.

Speaker 7 When somebody drops the ball, then you do think about him, but like, that's not his enduring legacy. But it is, he does own the legacy of that play.

Speaker 1 Orlovsky's a good one.

Speaker 1 Leon Lett's funny because he's got two of them. He's got the after-the-field goal and then also the Doug Beebe.
Yeah. Yeah, getting chased down in a meaningless end of a game.
Double Beebe?

Speaker 1 No, Don Beebe. Don Beebe.
I don't know why I said Doug.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to think what.

Speaker 1 You're saying the double doink?

Speaker 1 That happens like

Speaker 1 once.

Speaker 1 Never. Yeah, not really.
Yeah, very, very rare. Oh, butt fumble.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 7 Chris Weber.

Speaker 1 But it's not as much. Chris Weber's a good one.
Chris Weber's a good one. Because it's not...
Like, the double doink and the butt fumble are kind of hard to replicate.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about a play that happens that everyone's like, Deshaun Jackson. Like, it's a negative play, and everyone says Deshaun Jackson.
Orlofsky and Chris Weber are great ones.

Speaker 8 Kirk Cousins, fourth-down player. Check down.

Speaker 7 Check down.

Speaker 7 On the positive side, in hockey, the Michigan goal.

Speaker 7 Which one? If somebody does something... They do the wrap-around.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, the wraparound.

Speaker 7 They call that a Michigan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was just part of the NCAA highlight package for that commercial

Speaker 7 for 100 years. Anytime you get jumped, you can just be.
I got

Speaker 1 I got pissed, but you know, took some, gave some more.

Speaker 7 Gave more. Gave some more.
I read the police write-up behind that. So they did like the police report.
You probably saw some of the videos where the guy was like, this guy, not a lick of fat on him.

Speaker 7 Yeah. But like Dwayne, The Rock Johnson.
There was a written report that came out where these guys were just fucking terrified of Biz. Yeah.

Speaker 7 They're like, this guy was out in the parking lot screaming at all of us, like, I'm going to fuck you guys up.

Speaker 1 Biz is my hero. Yeah.
He's legitimately my hero. He,

Speaker 1 the way they were talking about him after was he was William Wallace. They're like, he was, he was nine feet tall and fireballs out of his ass.
It's just amazing. It was just incredible.

Speaker 7 Well, it's a it's a just outstanding, tremendous restaurant, and it's unbelievable. And he goes there four to five weeks.

Speaker 1 Four to five times a week.

Speaker 7 Four to five times a week, and the staff is unbelievable.

Speaker 1 Great organization.

Speaker 7 It's a great organization at Houston's. And it's just everything that happened there.
I saw a guy. I was like, hey, buddy, you know, like, you're an unbelievable guy.
Someone should do something.

Speaker 7 And I did something.

Speaker 1 He's the fucking best. Oh, he's a one-on-one guy.
All right. Then my cool throne is Ryan Rossillo and the UVM soccer team because they won the national championship.
I don't know if you guys saw this.

Speaker 1 It was kind of a Cinderella story. They were unranked.
They made an incredible run.

Speaker 1 I think they survived a two-overtime game in the America East tournament just to get into the regular NCAA tournament. And then they won in overtime last night to win the national championship.

Speaker 1 And yeah, they were unranked and they

Speaker 1 won it all. So shout out Rossillo.
And Jake. Very cool.
And Jake. Yeah.
And Patrick Sharp.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it was an awesome finish.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Great job, UVM.

Speaker 1 Okay. Taylor Coppenrath.
Taylor. Yes.

Speaker 1 Who's that?

Speaker 1 What was the kid's name? Lamb?

Speaker 1 Was it Anthony Lamb?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was the Jake era. Yeah, that was the Jake era.

Speaker 8 Anthony Lamb. Coppenrath was from the parking lot.

Speaker 7 Was it Larinaga?

Speaker 8 No, that was

Speaker 8 Fish. That was George Mason

Speaker 1 or George Mike.

Speaker 7 I know he was was at George Mason at age.

Speaker 1 He didn't go to Vermont. John.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
Yeah. Story history.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we got it all. Was it Dirk Spentley that Bristol was friends with freshman year?

Speaker 8 Oh, Sorentin was from the parking lot.

Speaker 1 Oh, geez.

Speaker 7 No, it was

Speaker 1 what's his name? This is going to be a great UV history, right?

Speaker 7 From the, from the Bruins.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Oh, Tim Thomas. Tim Thomas? No, but I think he was friends with.
Was it Dirk Spentley? He was friends with

Speaker 1 a country star freshman year.

Speaker 7 It might have been Dirks.

Speaker 1 It might have been Dirks.

Speaker 1 We're doing some really good stuff. Yeah, Dirks Bentley.
Spent a year at Vermont.

Speaker 1 And he became Dirks Bentley. And Rosillo.

Speaker 1 Number one guy, Rosillo. Okay, let's get to our interviews.
We got Kirk Herb Street talking some college football playoff. And then we have an awesome interview with Paul Walter Hauser.

Speaker 1 Really, really great actor. Really cool interview.

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Speaker 1 Code audio at checkout. Okay, here he is, Kirk Herbstreet.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest, friend of the program, recurring guest. It is Kirk Herb Street getting ready for the college football playoff.

Speaker 1 He's going to be in South Bend on Friday night. He's going to be in Columbus on Saturday night.
We're all pumped. Herbie, first of all, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1 And I don't, I hate to have to start in a negative light.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about these matchups, but I think we have to address the fact that college football feels like it's in a little bit of disarray right now.

Speaker 1 And what I'm talking about is the Bo Probula transfer portal with Penn State. And

Speaker 1 I want your thoughts on it because I'm hoping that you have some Galaxy Brain fix. But for those that aren't aware, Transfer Portal opened a few days ago.

Speaker 1 The college football playoff has still yet to be played. We always knew this was a screwed-up system.

Speaker 1 But Bo Probula for Penn State, their backup quarterback, who does play in packages, and Penn State is going to be playing for a national championship and playing in the college football playoff in a couple of days, has hit hit the transfer portal.

Speaker 1 And this is the first time that it feels like

Speaker 1 we knew it was a problem, but now it's like, this is a team that's going to be playing on Saturday that just lost a guy that is a weapon for them and does add a different dynamic.

Speaker 1 How the hell do we fix this?

Speaker 1 This is, it's crazy.

Speaker 15 Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've been talking about this for so long, you know, how nutty this is and how

Speaker 15 It's easy to blame the players. I think it's easy to look at it like, how selfish are these guys?

Speaker 15 But I think if if you put yourself in their shoes, I think the calendar and the way it's set up is difficult.

Speaker 15 I don't know Bo's case because I know Preston Stone and there's some other guys that have entered the portal, but they're staying with their team

Speaker 15 and into the playoff, like at SMU, getting ready.

Speaker 15 I don't know why he felt the need to be able to enter the portal, but then leave. You know, maybe you guys can help me with that.

Speaker 15 I don't understand that aspect of his specific story on why he's leaving the team.

Speaker 15 You know, I guess maybe he felt he had to go visit these schools to be able to really get a good handle on where he wanted to go. I have no idea.

Speaker 15 I know it's a little bit of revolving door for the, especially at that position when it comes to the portal.

Speaker 15 And, you know, some of these guys are trying to kind of be re-recruited, like they're high school seniors again to try to figure out where's the best fit for them.

Speaker 7 So maybe he felt Before someone else takes the spot that he wants, he needs to go visit while his team's playing in these playoff games he needs to go visit these schools that's the only thing I can think of of why he left the team yeah yeah I think that's exactly it by the way yeah is and it's the calendar I don't I don't blame the kids because you do have an advantage if you're in the portal earlier so you want to go ahead and make that decision now one way to fix it might be if you could go into the portal and then you could actually join a college football playoff team so you get like an impact free agent that just transfers out of nowhere with no connection to the school that could play.

Speaker 15 Here's the one thing I guess I would say, because this whole thing has gone from like when I played, players had zero rights for the majority of college football.

Speaker 15 The players have had, you have no rights. You just do what you're told.
And, you know, it's like you're in the Marines. Yes, sir.
You may have another kind of thing.

Speaker 15 And then we got to 2020 and COVID and everything kind of changed and a realignment. And then we've kind of gotten into this world now where players are able to leave whenever they want to leave.

Speaker 15 we have nil obviously that that is a huge part of this

Speaker 15 but if you even follow the nfl model the players have restrictions like you can't be on the bears and just say oh the hell with this season i'm going to the lions like like you have a contract you have to follow the contract The NFL has very stringent rules.

Speaker 15 This is what we do as a teams. This is what you're allowed to do.
This is what the players can do.

Speaker 15 So this whole idea of the players in college just doing whatever the hell they want to do isn't, isn't the right thing. Like it's not like if like my kids, I had four sons.

Speaker 15 If my kids at 12 years old said, dad, I'm taking the car. See, I'm going to a party at 12, I'd be like,

Speaker 15 what are you talking about? You can't do that. The world we live in today in college football, it's kind of like, screw you.

Speaker 1 I'm taking the keys.

Speaker 15 And the coach is kind of like, well, okay, he's going to take the keys.

Speaker 1 What am I supposed to do?

Speaker 15 You have zero power.

Speaker 15 and that you know it's cool to be that player and have fun but it's not cool for you as in the long term for your growth and where you're trying to go as a human it might be fun for these that three and five year window but as far as like what is great about this sport is what the hard shit you got to go through the you think is annoying and why do i have to go through it it molds you and changes you into becoming a better person down the road whether it's as an employee or as a husband or a father, whatever it is, you got to go through some tough shit.

Speaker 15 You can't just like, this isn't fun anymore. I'm not playing.
I'm out. Like it just can't be that way.
If you want to do that, I feel like coaches who leave, you know, like they, they get a new job,

Speaker 15 they should have to finish the thing out before they go to their new job. Players, you should have to finish this thing out until you go to your new job.

Speaker 15 Like, I just don't, I think these players at this point, they need to sign contracts. I think we need a CBA.
I think we need to form some kind of players union. I think we need to somehow create that.

Speaker 15 The other thing is we're very, it's almost like silo. Greg Sankey is in an SEC silo.
You know, the Big Ten's in a silo. We need to somehow create more of a national view of the sport.

Speaker 15 We're still governing the sport in the 80s. And the sport is in the 2024.
It's more of a national sport. So we need a national view on how we govern the sport.

Speaker 15 So we somehow need to get that national view to partner with the players union, create a CBA where you're held accountable. Okay, we're going to agree on NIL.

Speaker 15 Here are the rules we're going to agree on for NIL.

Speaker 15 Both sides agree. Here's the deal with portal, transfer portal.
Both sides agree. And whatever they ultimately come up with,

Speaker 15 it's a contract and we sign and then we obey the contract on both sides. I think that's where it's gotten.

Speaker 15 How we get there, I have no idea, but players just kind of coming and going and zero accountability to their team.

Speaker 15 That's not healthy at all.

Speaker 15 And it really takes away from what this sport is about, which is the team trying to win games.

Speaker 15 That's what this is all about.

Speaker 1 It's a bummer. And I don't blame Bo Prabuele at all because the schedule is screwed up where

Speaker 1 it's still based on enrolling for classes. And that's the real problem is that like

Speaker 1 you have to figure out like, you know, kids have to do it before the winter or the spring semester. So that's why they have to do it right now.

Speaker 1 You can't be like, maybe it's the transfer portal just happens in the spring or after the spring semester, but then coaches would be upset because they don't have their team set for spring ball, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But yeah, for Bose case, like the carousel and the musical chairs of quarterbacks in the NIL, like if he waits until mid-January or early January, he's going to be shit out of luck.

Speaker 1 That's just the reality. Teams want to act right away.
And if he waits, all these seats are going to be filled. So he's got to go and be active right now and take care of himself.

Speaker 1 But yeah, the system just is screwed up. I don't know how they fix it.

Speaker 1 I think it just really stinks.

Speaker 7 Some stuff is going to change once the schools start to run.

Speaker 7 They get to pay the players directly now.

Speaker 7 I think that starts, what, next season? So things are going to be.

Speaker 15 It's supposed to be a big thing in April.

Speaker 15 I think something's going down in April. Hopefully by next year, there's

Speaker 15 a new set of circumstances. Hopefully that'll be the case.

Speaker 7 Yeah, so there'll have to be new rules put in place for that as well.

Speaker 7 But yeah, what's the problem with just saying, hey, I'm going to enter the portal and then you finish out the season with your team, and then maybe you miss a week of classes.

Speaker 1 at whatever that new school is. Well, one of the problems is if you sign with a new team and you get money and then you play with the old team, you get hurt, now what happens?

Speaker 1 Because if you're, let's say you're Mizzou and you want Bo Pebula and he's like, I'm going to keep playing for Penn State, but I'm signing with you guys. He gets hurt.

Speaker 1 Mizzou's not going to want him to play in those games. You know what I mean?

Speaker 7 Maybe just make the transfer portal happen after the championship game. Like, we don't have NFL free agency before the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 But that's where the school schedule starts.

Speaker 7 But then now we're going to pretend like these guys, the reason why they're at that school is for class.

Speaker 1 Right. It's stupid.
The whole thing's stupid. So I wanted to start with that.
It's a bummer to talk about. By the way, you mentioned your son or your four sons.

Speaker 1 How was the reception when your son committed to Michigan? That caused some waves.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I've kind of stayed out of that world a little bit.

Speaker 15 I haven't seen a whole lot of reaction intentionally just because I know 80% of the people are thrilled. 20% are going to be jackasses.

Speaker 15 So I just decided it's one thing to take shots at me, but if you take a shot at my kid

Speaker 15 and you want to get in a fight, it's not hard for me to want to do that. So I just

Speaker 15 try to ignore that stuff the best that I can and just kind of stay focused on the positive. What an opportunity for him.

Speaker 15 You know, this is a kid that grew up, a lifelong Ohio State fan of all my kids. Like he's the guy that cried when they lose games.
Like he's an Ohio State junkie.

Speaker 15 Ohio State did not really pursue him to the point of offering him. a scholarship.

Speaker 15 And they were close to, they were like, listen, man, this new rule, that's the big thing with this new world that you talked about.

Speaker 15 Right now, you can have 85 on scholarship, but 125 are in the program. Well, the new world that you're referring to, this rev share football is going to be affected.
It's going to go down to 105.

Speaker 15 So you can only have 105 guys on your team. Now, you could put 105 on scholarship, but a lot of these guys are not.
They're just kind of in a wait and see approach.

Speaker 15 So guys like my son, Chase, who was kind of like that, that last fighting for those last couple spots for a scholarship or potentially a PWO, which would be a preferred walk-on.

Speaker 15 He's kind of in that area where he's fighting. Most of those guys,

Speaker 15 big schools like Michigan, Ohio State, and Notre Dame, the schools that he was looking at the most,

Speaker 15 they're almost, hey, why don't you go to the Mac?

Speaker 15 We're going to bring in this portal guy who we know a little bit more about. And they're really not into developing young players and investing and hoping that they become a great player.

Speaker 15 So Chay got a huge opportunity to do this.

Speaker 15 Trum Moore and his staff believe, and I think they've seen his competitive spirit and his fire and what he did on the field this year to give him this opportunity. And, you know,

Speaker 15 it's very different for our family because our family behind the scenes is scarlet and gray our whole lives.

Speaker 15 You know, Big Cat, it'd be like you having a son that he's Wisconsin born and bred, brainwashed, and all of a sudden he goes to Michigan.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 You know, it's, it is quite a thrill. Obviously, we're beyond ecstatic for him.
I went to Senior Day for my other son who had a heart situation.

Speaker 15 He was part of the senior class of the Ohio State players. So it was a family-only event this past Sunday.

Speaker 15 And I went in there really nervous to wonder how the Ohio State coaches, because none of them texted me, hey, congratulations on Chase. I didn't hear anything from anybody.

Speaker 15 So I was a little bit, should I go? Should I not go?

Speaker 15 And I went because I i need to be there for my other son it was a very cool event by the way um each position coach would you know would would have his guys come up say something about each guy and then that guy had to grab the mic and speak in front of his all of his teammates and close to the media and the fans And it was very emotional to watch some of these guys, Trevion Henderson, Ameka Abuka, like they've been through some stuff, not only losses to Michigan, but just personal stuff.

Speaker 15 So it was very heartfelt day be there to watch that. But, you know, I talked to Chip Kelly afterwards, talked to Ryan Day afterwards.
Nobody said anything. It was like, yeah, it was like, okay,

Speaker 1 yeah, I'll be here.

Speaker 15 I'll see you next week, Tennessee. Looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 I'll call you this week.

Speaker 15 You know, just it was just kind of like business mode, you know, and

Speaker 1 that's good by me. Yeah, that's good.
I mean, you're smart to stay out of the

Speaker 1 out of the fray because I agree. Like, you know, if someone says something about your kids, it's, it's on site.
So

Speaker 1 that's smart to just ignore all of it. But congrats to him.
And a compliment. He's got some balls.

Speaker 7 He's got convictions. So that's a man that knows what he wants.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's cool. No doubt.
Yeah. It's definitely another wrinkle to the rivalry.
So, all right, so let's let's let's go to Ohio State because you're going to be you're going to be calling that game

Speaker 1 Ohio State, Tennessee on Saturday night. I'm so excited for this game.
And I think we're all kind of thinking the same thing. This Ohio State team is is insanely, insanely talented.

Speaker 1 One of the teams that you could circle right now and be like, this team has all the dudes that could end up winning the national title.

Speaker 1 But where are they at mentally after what happened in Columbus against Michigan and the end of their season? And how do they get off the mat?

Speaker 1 Because it is just a very unique situation to have that type of loss with that much on it and that like the four-year buildup and then be like, oh, yeah, we're still going to play for a national title so where do you think they're going to be mentally when it comes to Saturday night

Speaker 15 well again just going back to that that senior day just behind closed doors just with the players it was interesting to to be there because if you go by the outside world the feeling of Ohio State fans very dejected by by the Michigan game and nobody's seen really Ohio State since that the fight the fight at the end of the game

Speaker 15 and everyone just kind of left the stadium I think that day I wasn't there, but just talking to my son and a lot of friends who went to that game, like, holy shit, what just happened?

Speaker 15 How did this happen again? Kind of, kind of feeling. And now,

Speaker 15 you know, Michigan's, they're going to play in a bowl game and Ohio State's going to a playoff game. And

Speaker 15 I think there's the flutter that's out there on social media. Screw Ryan Day, screw, you know, you know, the worst, I've heard people say everything.
I hope they lose the first game and he's fired.

Speaker 15 I mean, just bizarre set of circumstances for a team that's, as you said, it's one of the most talented, is in the playoff hosting a playoff game.

Speaker 15 And you got that kind of noise by a fraction of your, of your fan base. So I think the reality is, which matters most is the players seem to be super engaged.
They kept talking about This isn't good.

Speaker 15 Almost every guy up there that talked said, man, this isn't goodbye. You know, we got four more to go.

Speaker 15 You know it was just it was it was i don't know how many times i heard we have four more games to go

Speaker 15 and i think they truly in their minds are buying into that kind of like march madness when you get ready to make a run you know you got to win a few weekends i think their focus is on trying to beat tennessee and go to the rose bowl and take on oregon and and down the line and and i think they they believe that Kind of like if you go back to the team with C.J.

Speaker 15 Sproud when they lost to Michigan again, and then they had to play georgia and everybody wondered how would they play against georgia and it was like a different team when they played georgia if you remember they played super aggressively stroud played out of his mind scrambling around making plays really outplayed georgia and to george's credit georgia ended up making the plays at the end of the game to win it it the vibe of the players reminds me of that at the end of the day though guys Are they good enough?

Speaker 15 We can talk all day about Jeremiah Smith and all the receivers and all that, but the offensive line,

Speaker 15 if you really watch the Michigan game, you know, when they lost

Speaker 15 the center from Alabama, Seth McLaughlin, when he went down with that Achilles,

Speaker 15 I think that offensive line is a serious question mark going up against Tennessee's strength, which is their defensive front.

Speaker 15 So How will that battle go, I think, will be a big factor because it was in the Michigan game and they're not obviously getting any of those pieces back on that offensive line.

Speaker 15 So that to me will be the big thing. And then just the crowd, the energy in that stadium.
I've heard Tennessee is going to buy 30,000 tickets.

Speaker 15 I don't know if that's true, but just the vibe inside that

Speaker 15 stadium. If things are going great, it'll be obvious, be right in their corner cheering going crazy.
If Will Howard throws a pick, how will the crowd react?

Speaker 15 If the poor field goal kicker who missed two against Michigan happens to miss a kick, how will the crowd react?

Speaker 15 If Tennessee gets a sack and a score, a fumble and a score, how will the crowd react like, like, I'm just wondering what the energy, what you would think would be a night game at the shoe, massive opportunity, home field advantage.

Speaker 15 You would think that would be the case. But if things go sideways, I'm just wondering how that, the environment inside the stadium will go.

Speaker 1 I agree with you.

Speaker 7 Because I think Ohio State,

Speaker 7 they've been practicing with a lot of pissed energy.

Speaker 1 They've been very, very angry, right?

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 you've got to channel that somehow. And I think they're channeling their anger, obviously, into preparing for the football playoff.

Speaker 7 But if something goes wrong, all that emotion that you've put in, all that pissed-off energy quickly can turn on you.

Speaker 7 If that's been your reason for getting ready for this and things start to go downhill, then it can snowball on you and you can get down real fast. You mentioned the

Speaker 7 home field advantage.

Speaker 7 I heard that it's not actually as much of a home field advantage as you might think that it would be during the playoff because they're not doing like the normal game day operations at these schools.

Speaker 7 They're bringing in the national guys. So it's not like the scoreboard guys or the in-stadium audio guys are going to be the normal Ohio state people that run the show.

Speaker 7 It's going to be like a neutral site type of environment with all the media and all the sound just that happens to be played in the horseshoe. Do you think that has any impact on it?

Speaker 15 I don't know, man.

Speaker 15 I guess I'm hearing those same things. I don't know what it's going to, you know, I heard when Tennessee runs out of the field, it'll be like a neutral site field.

Speaker 15 Like Tennessee will have their own entrance that they would have, that they've chosen with their song and their music and their energy running onto the field, which I think is really, really bizarre.

Speaker 15 Like when you go to South Bend on Friday night and Indiana comes onto the field, you know, it's not like the normal, just the visiting team, boo, they kind of run onto the field and then lights go down down and the home field.

Speaker 15 I don't know how they're going to do it. I'm reading the same things you're reading.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 that could be an interesting aspect, not just in Columbus, but all these playoff games. This is, again, uncharted waters.
We have no idea really how it's going to go until we see it.

Speaker 15 With Notre Dame on Friday night in Indiana.

Speaker 15 Is Indiana going to have their normal allotment of tickets? Is it just going to be a small little fraction of Hoosiers fans inside there?

Speaker 15 Are they going to get online and scoop up as many tickets as they can and try to

Speaker 15 have a big showing? Because it's such an easy drive to go from Bloomington up to South Bend.

Speaker 15 I have no idea. But yeah, I'll have a lot more answers on the back end of this, but I cannot wait to see home playoff games and how it'll impact, like you say, the game ops,

Speaker 15 which obviously is a huge advantage for the home team, you know, in a normal set of circumstances.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I heard no hang on sloopy.

Speaker 7 They're not doing that either. That's worth at least four points right there.

Speaker 15 Yeah, dudes, let me, again, at the risk of getting in trouble,

Speaker 15 I think there are schools that do an incredible job with their game ops. You know, like you go into the SEC,

Speaker 15 I think the home crowd and the people who run those stadiums, they look at themselves as our job.

Speaker 15 is to be a distraction to the enemy and to do everything we can to the line where we can't play music while the quarterback's, you know, saying the signals and barking out the cadence.

Speaker 15 But we're going to walk right up to the line with the band. We're going to put microphones into the band, the music.

Speaker 15 We're going to go right to the line where we're going to maybe get a letter from the SEC commissioner that we can't do that. That's our goal every home team.

Speaker 15 And in the Big Ten, I think there's a few stadiums that do that, but I just feel, you guys tell me, I feel like the Big Ten is a little more traditional.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 A little more of their band has as much to do with

Speaker 15 the game they experience as the team. You know, so they're, they're a little bit a tough spot between, like in the SEC, they hire a DJ.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 15 I mean, you go to a break in the SEC and it's like the party's just beginning for the fans during TV timeouts. I mean, it is bonkers at LSU or Alabama or Georgia or Tennessee.

Speaker 15 It's insane during the TV timeout. And at Ohio State, it's,

Speaker 15 you know, okay, let's go to break. We'll be back after this.
And then it's, ladies and gentlemen, if you can pay attention to the North End, the 1973 fencing team.

Speaker 15 Let's all have a, let's get on our feet and show them some appreciation for the 1973 Co Big Ten champs. And it's like,

Speaker 1 yeah. No,

Speaker 1 the easiest way to say it, that's perfectly put because I can actually envision that. The easiest way to say it is, we just haven't figured out a way to get a light show up north yet.
That's it. No.

Speaker 1 Like, we don't have the light show. I see the the light show at Georgia and Auburn.

Speaker 1 And it's awesome. Yeah.
It's, it's insane. The light show always, I'm like, why don't we have a light show?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Music, DJ, like, feed the energy.

Speaker 1 Don't take it away. It's so true.
Pull it away.

Speaker 7 Feed it. Yeah.
You should go right up to that line.

Speaker 7 Those guys are doing a great job if that's how they approach the game.

Speaker 7 It's like, I'm going to do everything that I can to fuck with the opponent, even though my job is to sit in a booth with a lanyard around my neck and like an officially issued team polo.

Speaker 7 I'm out there making a difference. I like that mentality.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I agree.

Speaker 15 I agree. It's like if you go to an NHL game,

Speaker 15 I'll go to these NHL games. I'm so blown away by the game ops and what they do because it's, it's a different 1997 to now, like your job to keep people off their phone and engaged in what's happening.

Speaker 15 That's a challenge, man. It's just a different world that we live in.

Speaker 15 A lot of people's attention span isn't the same and it's easy to like get to a you know TV timeout take a seat look on your phone check out what's going on and all of a sudden it's like oh the oh the game's back on you know and and they try to take that away by keeping you engaged and I really when I see it and I see fans engaged during breaks I just I pay homage to that, man, because it's not

Speaker 15 an easy thing to do in 2024.

Speaker 7 It's so true.

Speaker 1 So this weekend with four games, you're a quarterback, you know these quarterbacks. Give me your top four quarterbacks playing this weekend that you trust.

Speaker 15 Let's start Friday night.

Speaker 15 I think Riley Leonard, I don't know if I trust him yet. I don't know how many times he's really been challenged.
Right.

Speaker 15 So I don't know. It's not that I don't trust him.
It's just we don't know.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 15 And can Indiana put him in a place where they get him into those third down situations where he's got to make plays with his arm not just his legs with his arm i i'm excited to see that and and roarke i've been blown away by that kid their whole story um i was early kind of like it's indiana it's cute story and then i just kind of kept watching him and thought and i stood next to roourke in the ohio state game i was like damn that that's an impressive looking dude this guy's i don't know what he's listed he looks like he's 6'5 to me big impressive guy and i just think that kid plays with a serious amount of confidence for a guy that's in his first year.

Speaker 15 I think of all of them, that might be a guy that stands out to me.

Speaker 15 I don't know how much you've watched Tennessee, but Tennessee with Josh Heipel, we go back to Hendon Hooker or Milton. What do you think of? You think of...

Speaker 15 50-yard bombs just taking shots in that offense because that's who they've been. This year, total opposite Tennessee team.

Speaker 15 They play to their strengths. Let's play defense.
Let's run our all SEC running back, Dylan Sampson, and let's just take care of the quarterback.

Speaker 15 Let's spoon feed him, ease him in, not make him feel like he has to win it, where our quarterbacks in the past did. So it's been a very different style of approach as a head coach.

Speaker 15 Is that good enough to win in this environment?

Speaker 15 I think he'll call his game based on how his defense is playing against Will Howard and Ohio State. If they're forcing Ohio State to punt, he's going to play the way he has most of this year.

Speaker 15 Very conservative, hand it off, throw when you have to kind of approach. If Ohio State's scoring, then you'll see Nico, who's more than capable.
You know, you know, his recruiting story. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Yeah, he's a freak, but he's a freshman. So they've just been very, very careful with him.
So I would say Will Howard, I know he's made some mistakes. He's cost his team in some big games.

Speaker 15 I just think because because of the experience, I think there's a little bit more trust there. But do you trust the offensive line?

Speaker 15 I don't think you can because of the injuries.

Speaker 15 The Clemson Texas game,

Speaker 15 again, man,

Speaker 15 it's just been this. I know.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 1 I asked that question because...

Speaker 1 When you look at the quarterbacks in this playoff, it's very.

Speaker 1 It's really up and down for a lot of guys.

Speaker 15 Kevin Jennings at SMU. Yeah.

Speaker 15 He's a kid that, again, I don't know how many people listening to this or watching this have watched SMU football this year, but they started with Preston Stone, who's a little bit more traditional.

Speaker 15 And now they've got a version of

Speaker 15 a dual threat guy that they spread you out. You got to try to cover everybody.
And then this guy's back there running around.

Speaker 15 and has the ability to take off and run, has the ability to keep it alive and throw.

Speaker 15 He would be an interesting matchup for the Penn State defense. My big concern for SMU in that game is, like you would think, the line of scrimmage on both sides.

Speaker 15 I mean, Penn State, I thought, pushed Oregon around pretty well in the Big Ten championship game at the line of scrimmage. So how will SMU do? And I looked at this morning at the forecast.

Speaker 15 All three games in Columbus, South Bend, and State College, no snow, but you're talking about in the 20s, 20 degrees. um

Speaker 15 not that it favor and a lot of people are like that favors ohio state and notre dame and i guess we'll see if it does a lot of ohio state's roster is from georgia north carolina florida so i don't know how it necessarily favors uh these teams in the north i guess i guess we'll see it's been a big big conversation

Speaker 15 point

Speaker 15 um you know when the playoff first started it's like teams from the north are like it's about time those teams from the south come up here and deal deal with the cold weather well now you get your chance you know in two of those games and we'll see if it becomes a factor or not but ben big that's a great question on who do you

Speaker 1 trust yeah um because i don't i don't know if it's just been too inconsistent with most of these guys all year to really know who is that guy you can trust yeah it's it's dylan gabriel and drew aller is kind of really where that's probably where i stop and it's not saying the other guys aren't good it's just like i'm talking about third and long down four with, you know, five minutes left.

Speaker 15 How about George's situation? I know

Speaker 1 playing.

Speaker 15 How about that?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's crazy.

Speaker 15 Have they talked publicly since that game about what's going on?

Speaker 7 I haven't heard anything. I'm more concerned about their punter, their punter being injured.
That's the real expert. That guy's a stud.

Speaker 1 He's a beast. Yeah.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 with Texas' quarterback situation, though, are you a little bit surprised that Arch didn't get more playing time in the SEC championship game?

Speaker 7 Because I felt like there was a moment where Sark could have, he had a lever that he could have pulled, and he chose not to pull it.

Speaker 7 I don't know if that was intentional because he wanted to save him for the playoff or if he was just like, you know what, yours is my guy.

Speaker 7 We're going to live and die with Quinn. But do you expect to see more of Arch?

Speaker 15 Man, again, go back to that eight-overtime Friday night game with Georgia and Georgia Tech. and think about what happened to Georgia's defense.

Speaker 15 I know it's a different set of circumstances, but Georgia Tech ran a lot of zone read and power read and gave the quarterback an opportunity to utilize his legs or his arm, depending on how the defense of Georgia reacted.

Speaker 15 And they had so much success in that game that the next game was going to be against Texas. And I just thought that Sark,

Speaker 15 much like he did against Texas AM, he would just have a little package in the red zone or short yardage to go to Arch. And as you say, pull that lever.

Speaker 15 i thought i thought after fresh off that georgia tech game he saw something he might be able to attack using arch's ability to attack the edges but he didn't do it yeah and doesn't mean he's putting arch away i just think for whatever reason only only sark knows he's one of the great offensive minds in the game for whatever reason he stuck with quinn throughout almost every snap of that game

Speaker 15 and it makes you wonder you know in their in their next matchup against clemson and down the road how much Arch will be a factor because that dude, I know everybody wants to compare him to his uncles, but he's probably more like his grandfather than he is his uncles as far as, and he's much bigger and stronger.

Speaker 15 Looking at this guy, you know, it's one thing you look at him on TV, you think you go on the pregame and you, you look at these guys in person. Some of these guys just look so different than what your

Speaker 15 your perception of them is. And Arch is one of those guys.
I mean, his legs, I don't know if he he lives under a squat rack. That dude is put together.
He's not just a tall, slippery boy. He's quick.

Speaker 15 He is powerful dude who can spin it. You talk about an excitement of where you want to see Texas next year with Arch having an entire offseason to build his game, but he's nothing like Peyton.

Speaker 15 He's nothing like Eli. He's really nothing like his grandfather, who was a really athletic guy.
He's his own guy and he's got the size that they all have, but his strength and his athletic ability,

Speaker 15 who knows what Sark will do in the offseason to build the offense around him. And who knows if Arch will get an opportunity here in

Speaker 15 these next potential four games that Texas might be playing. I hope we see more of him.
He's fun.

Speaker 7 Manning shouldn't be allowed to be fast.

Speaker 7 It's weird seeing him run with the ball. Yeah.
It's like, come on, man. You just stay in the pocket.

Speaker 7 Maybe once every three years do a naked bootleg and then everybody stands up and claps and laughs while you try to run for a first down.

Speaker 7 That's the Manning way.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 15 Not this guy. Wow.
This dude, this dude's going to do.

Speaker 15 Now, I don't know if they're going to protect him from himself next year, but if he plays the way he wants to play, he's going to be running around people, over people.

Speaker 15 You know, if you're a safety coming up there to tackle that guy, it's like tackling a tight end. You know, I mean, that's basically who's athletic.

Speaker 15 So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
I think it's a game-to-game approach for Sark and how they use Arch and if they do. And not to mention, imagine a fan base.

Speaker 15 It reminds me of Tebow in 06 when he was a true freshman. And Chris Leake was the quarterback.

Speaker 15 But every time there'd be short yardage or red zone, the crowd at the swamp would go crazy just with the idea that 15 might come jogging onto the field. And he would.

Speaker 15 And they were like begging Urban to bring him out. And it became almost, it's Chris Leake, who's quarterbacking 90% of the game, but it almost became like

Speaker 15 the fans were just completely consumed with Tim Tebow, even though he's just doing short yardage.

Speaker 15 And that kind of reminds me a little bit of Texas. This is Quinn Ewer's team, but there's such anticipation and so much excitement about Arch Manning taking over.

Speaker 15 And I wonder if that impacts Sark inside the locker room on protecting Quinn and protecting kind of that feeding into that energy by not putting Arch out there as much as maybe you might think.

Speaker 15 Sart's a whatever it takes to win kind of guy, but I also think he's mindful of the makeup of his team and Quinn Ewers is his quarterback, you know, and I know that's impacted Quinn a little bit psychologically, just, hey, I'm the guy, and yet they kind of are rooting for the other guy.

Speaker 15 So I think it's a little bit tricky on how, on how they manage that at this point in 2024.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's tough. So looking at these games, the spreads are pretty big.
They go from, what, last I checked, I think it was seven to 12-point favorites in each game.

Speaker 7 If you had to pick one upset, because there's going to be one,

Speaker 7 who would it be?

Speaker 15 What's the IU Notre Dame?

Speaker 7 Seven and a half is what I'm looking at right now. I don't know if that's moved.

Speaker 15 I would say IU.

Speaker 15 I'd probably say IU would would be um what's the tennessee uh spread i believe that's a touchdown yeah i think i you know i'm not picking either one of those teams but i i mean you could make a pretty strong case if you're a tennessee fan or you're going to vote you know bet on tennessee um until you see the ohio state offensive line more productive uh against a talented front uh there's no reason to to think that both those games uh that the underdogs should have a shot to be competitive and maybe pull off an upset.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I do love the drama behind the scenes of the Tennessee fans being like, yeah, that stadium's going to be 30% orange, buddy.

Speaker 15 You imagine they get 3,500 fans. What's Ohio Stadium these days? Over 100,000.

Speaker 15 You get basically 3%

Speaker 15 of the stadium is going to be in orange.

Speaker 15 If they get up, there's no,

Speaker 15 you believe they maybe get 30,000 people in there? No way.

Speaker 1 It'd be a testament to the fan base. Yeah.
It wouldn't be. I saw another post.

Speaker 7 I don't know if it was from Game Day Operations at Ohio State or if it was from somebody else that showed what the color orange looks like underneath their LED lights that they have. And it looks red.

Speaker 7 And so now Ohio State's like, yeah, wear your orange. We're going to turn you red.

Speaker 7 It's been a fun like behind-the-scenes battle.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I think it is. And it's a scarlet out, right? So they're going to do the scar the whole stadium if they follow the.
the direction of what the Ohio State's requesting.

Speaker 15 So it'd be all scarlet and then then bright, bright orange.

Speaker 1 So you're right. You're right.
Terrible mix of colors when you put them together. Good on their own, maybe not great together.

Speaker 15 And Ohio State's wearing those all-scarlet units.

Speaker 1 I know. They're doing color rush.

Speaker 7 I don't like that.

Speaker 1 They're doing color rush.

Speaker 1 Wear your uniform. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a classic.

Speaker 7 Wear it. Matter of fact, take all the stickers off the helmet.
Like you start new. It's a new season, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Four games. Yeah, that's a good idea.
I like it. Four games.
Maybe put on

Speaker 1 the stickers during the game. yeah there you go add them during the game

Speaker 1 uh all right so herbie this has been awesome i got one last question give it up for chicago sebastian maniscalco's new stand-up special it ain't right is coming to hulu on november 21st 30 years ago jeff bezos complete nerd bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht and the boxes keep

Speaker 1 coming

Speaker 16 sebastian maniscalco it ain't right Premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 1 Last question for you is not about the playoff. It was a big story, obviously, last week.
Bill Belichick going to North Carolina. How do you think this is going to work?

Speaker 1 Do you think it's going to, I mean, I'm of the belief that there is definitely a market for a coach in college to be almost like Calapari when he figured out the one and done before anyone else and being like, hey, guys, I'm not going to sell you on education.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to sell you on, you know, we like this is a community. I'm going to sell you on, come here.
I'll teach you how to be a pro.

Speaker 1 And the scouts are going to know that if you can handle my system, you're a value in the NFL. And I'm going to get guys drafted.

Speaker 15 I would say part, it's part that

Speaker 15 just put yourself as an 18-year-old recruit and

Speaker 15 knock on the door and it's Bill Belichick at the door or on the phone.

Speaker 15 Honey, Coach Belichick's on the phone. I mean, imagine what that would be, the power of that, right?

Speaker 15 But I'm telling you guys, Bill Belichick,

Speaker 15 he's one of those guys that if he, if he ended up coaching high school football in Annapolis, I would not have been surprised.

Speaker 15 He is a, he's not caught up in all the bullshit, all the noise that we all get caught up in. He is just an old school football coach.

Speaker 15 And I really think that his dad had a major impact on his decisions and what he does.

Speaker 15 I think there's part of him that's probably always been polling at him to be on a college campus because of his time at Annapolis with his dad and before that at places like North Carolina.

Speaker 15 And I really think as much as you guys are saying, hey, don't worry about the education. We're going to go build this roster and we're going to go win a championship.

Speaker 15 I think he's going to think about how I do both.

Speaker 15 I really, I know his reputation is NFL and and building a roster and winning and winning super bowls but i think there's part of him that i think is actually going to enjoy getting kids to buy into the demands of academics because of his background i i don't think it's going to be hey you didn't go to class screw it we're getting ready to win this game i just don't think that's him i just i i think he's gonna the reason it took two weeks we kept hearing wait they interviewed him like how do you how do you interview bill belich like it's one of those, if he says, yeah, I'm interested, it's like, you take it.

Speaker 5 But remember, it went for a while.

Speaker 15 So I'm sure he sat there and just gathered so much intel. Not only, I need this for NIL, I need this for private plane, like whatever it is he needed.

Speaker 15 But I think he wanted to learn like the ramifications and the guidelines of like, what are we doing here? What's this world?

Speaker 15 So when he did step to the podium, it was almost like in his mind, like, okay, I can answer any question. I've studied this and analyzed this job and what it takes so much

Speaker 15 that I know what it, I, I'm ready to go and I'm ready to take it. And, um,

Speaker 15 I, I think you guys are going to be surprised by what he builds. I don't think it's just going to be about, sure, he's going to try to win the national championship.
That's obvious.

Speaker 15 And if you look at their schedule, they're in the playoff next year. I mean,

Speaker 15 there's a very strong chance that North Carolina, I think their one game that makes you scratch their head in your head is Clemson. Other than that, they they might be favored in every game they play.

Speaker 15 So get used to him getting teams to knocking on the door at the ACC championship and into the playoff. But I do think he's going to do the academic side.
That's just me. Maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 15 Just from the time I've spent with him, I think he wants to make that a priority as well, which I applaud him if he can pull it off.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Herbie, we are a national sports podcast, and very rarely do we use our platform and advocate for something, but I feel like it's an appropriate time.

Speaker 7 And I want to put your feet to the fire on this because you might not be in charge of it, but I think you have a say. You are a college football icon.
You can make change if you believe in it enough.

Speaker 7 The Dr. Pepper tuition challenge is out of hand.

Speaker 7 The chess passes are ruining America. It might be symbolic of everything that's wrong with America right now, actually, but it's feeding into it.
Can we do something about that?

Speaker 7 Either move the challenge back a little bit or mandate that they have to throw with one arm like a quarterback. It's a football game.
It's not a basketball game. Make your passes with one hand.

Speaker 7 I want to see a spiral. Can we do something about that?

Speaker 15 Bro, I love that. You know, I used to do the Eckeridge challenge and

Speaker 15 we would throw it from 25 yards, I think, 20 or 25 yards. And the target was just about the size of a basketball.
I mean, it was hard.

Speaker 15 And you would throw that thing. It was almost like trying to make a shot from half court.
I'm with you.

Speaker 15 Everybody, it's almost like pop a shot. They're just firing that thing away right and it doesn't take any ability at all right

Speaker 15 so i think that i think you're on to something i think you move it back at least another 10 yards yeah to take away that that would take away the the chess pass and let me let me get down on the field next time in a game i'll get to the bottom of this i'll find out what's up because it is embarrassing you know it's they've ruined it i don't blame the competitors it's like it's like the challenge portal that's the best way to do it.

Speaker 1 It's easier.

Speaker 15 Yeah, they figured out the answer.

Speaker 1 They figured the answer.

Speaker 7 Right. Yeah.
So the game has to evolve as the players evolve with it. So I think you can either move it back a little bit or just say, hey, you have to have one hand.

Speaker 7 It has to go above your shoulders. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I like that. I'll bring that up.

Speaker 15 If I don't know the Dr. Pepper folks, but if I'm in a game and I'm down in the field, I'm going to make it at a point to go over there and try to get to the bottom of that.

Speaker 15 And again, I'll report back on that as well.

Speaker 1 All it would take is if you boycott, if you boycott a game, maybe just don't even talk for an entire half.

Speaker 1 Just saying, you have the power.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 15 I'm boycotting the game unless you get this shit fixed.

Speaker 1 That's where we are right now. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 7 Well, if you're not boycotting the second half of the Niners-Rams game, yeah, that must have been tough.

Speaker 1 That would have been a fair boycott. That was tough.
That tests us,

Speaker 1 man.

Speaker 15 We've had a ridiculous year and a positive standpoint. I mean, our games have been awesome.
The ratings are off the charts. And on paper, that looked like a really, really good game.

Speaker 15 And it just wasn't.

Speaker 5 It was just, it was brutal.

Speaker 15 We got through it.

Speaker 15 But yeah, I'm looking forward to this Thursday. And then

Speaker 1 I got a good soldier feel to finish it all off. Yeah.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Good luck with that. All right, Herbie, thanks so much, man.
We really, really appreciate it. You're the best.

Speaker 1 And have fun this weekend.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. He is an incredible actor, comedian, wrestler, Paul Walter Hauser.
Paul, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 The wrestling part, I got to admit, I didn't fully understand. You're a wrestler and you are part of Major League Wrestling.

Speaker 1 How did that start? I want to talk about the acting, but

Speaker 1 I was raised on the Attitude Era, so

Speaker 1 I'm not as much into wrestling right now, but I still love wrestling. How did you start with the wrestling?

Speaker 5 Sure, yeah. No, I

Speaker 5 had

Speaker 5 done a wrestling show for charity that this guy, Sammy Callahan, put on. Him and Jon Moxley were trying to raise some money for the wildfire relief in Hawaii.
This was November of last year.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 it went from me like showing up to sign some autographs or do free selfies or whatever, it turned into, hey, do you want to have a wrestling match?

Speaker 5 And that was secretly always a desire of mine to try it. And I had been taking little classes here and there, learning from other wrestlers.

Speaker 5 And so I did this 10-minute match with a guy named Matthew Palmer. And it went really well.
And I had a lot of fun. And there was sort of an adrenaline spike unlike anything I'd ever felt before.

Speaker 5 And I, I played like junior high sports and I've done stand-up comedy in front of, you know, 1,500 people. Nothing I've ever done felt as good as that.
So really.

Speaker 5 I continued to pursue it and kind of doggedly got these other bookings and wrestled other reputable guys. And you learn a lot from them when you're working with them.

Speaker 5 And I'm now telling people that through MLW and a couple other companies, I'm doing like a reverse Dwayne Johnson.

Speaker 1 That's awesome. I love that.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaker 7 What's the biggest pop you've gotten?

Speaker 5 Oh, man.

Speaker 5 The biggest pop I've gotten was probably

Speaker 5 when

Speaker 5 in my first match when I did the crane kick and the six-inch punch as a finisher. It was very theatrical and I think people were wondering what my move style was going to be like.

Speaker 5 And obviously I'm not doing backflips off stuff or anything, but I'm doing, you know, body slams and suplexes.

Speaker 5 And then I pulled out the Cobra Kai style, you know, crane kick, and people went pretty ape. That was, that was a good pop.

Speaker 1 You mentioned the rock. It is, I mean, it's very funny because most, the, most wrestlers, they wrestle and then they get into music or, you know, movies because they're so good at wrestling.

Speaker 1 You're just like, I was such a good actor. Now I want to chase my one true love, wrestling.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of different loves from an occupational standpoint i i my heroes are guys like rob reiner and kendrick lamar and uh

Speaker 5 sting who you know wrestled famously for wcw during the attitude era and i just want to partake in those worlds whenever it makes sense or whenever i think i can do it and i i haven't directed a film yet but i intend to I write a lot of movies.

Speaker 5 I've made some music and now I'm trying this wrestling thing out. And I think a lot of people, a lot of haters online who don't like it and think it's like super lame.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, I think there's a place for everybody in wrestling.

Speaker 5 There's different types of people. The same way in hip-hop, you have Earl Sweatshirt and you have Action Bronson and you have Drake.
These are different styles within the form.

Speaker 5 And so I'm just one of those many styles in that form, I think.

Speaker 7 I think if you're having fun doing it, people will appreciate it. Yeah.
They'll see the passion.

Speaker 5 And I'm just trying to put it over in the mainstream, too, of like,

Speaker 5 if I could someday get nominated for an oscar or or a tony award but i'm also doing an independent wrestling show in front of 800 people i think that's kind of awesome i i like the idea of

Speaker 5 like like if it were reverse and i'm just watching somebody do it if if a random character actor like a john c riley or paul giamatti showed up at a wrestling show and wrestled and they were actually decent i'd be very entertained by that and I'd find it fascinating.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 7 you could have your own egot, the Egot Plus. You get the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, the Tony, and also heavyweight champion of the world.

Speaker 5 Yeah, or U.S. champ or open weight champion in MLW.
We'll see. I'll see how far I can take it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, so you mentioned the Oscar, and it's interesting you brought that up because we have said on this show, I think we had Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, or no, no, it was Matt Damon and Casey Affleck on the show.

Speaker 7 And I said that if I could put in a bet,

Speaker 7 a future bet for somebody to win an oscar for best actor it would be you because i i love you in everything that you're in uh you you've played a wide variety of characters do you feel like that's a possibility do you have do you see roles come across your desk and you're like you know what i feel like this this could be one that's critically acclaimed thanks man yeah i i somebody sent me that clip the day it came out a couple uh people that i i didn't know were like diehard pmt fans they were all hitting me up and sending me that clip it was

Speaker 5 very uh humbly and sweet

Speaker 5 I think anyone can win an Oscar, but it's not even about acumen, like they're so great they're going to win an Oscar. It's usually about the marriage of the role with the performer, right?

Speaker 5 So, you know, there are people who back in the day in 93, 94,

Speaker 5 they looked at Brendan Fraser and Jamie Foxx and they were like, oh, the guy from Encino Man? Oh, the guy from In Living Color. And then they won Oscars for the Whale and Ray.

Speaker 5 So, you know, it's really just about that right marriage of role. I think I've had a couple roles that could have been nominated based on what they were and me showing up and doing the job.
But

Speaker 5 yeah, I'm still looking for that thing where I get to really pop in a great movie and have some form of impact, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I thought the Richard Jewell movie was incredible. I thought that was.
Good movie.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, that was a movie where I was just like, your ability to like be Richard Jewell and have this complicated guy who's like you feel bad for and you know he's just trying to do the right thing that was that was one of those movies I always base my movies on if I'm thinking about it the next day when I wake up that means it's a good movie and that was absolutely the case for for that movie oh that's awesome man yeah no I think that's a

Speaker 5 there's a couple movies I've gotten to do that I just think will stand the test of time And I think, luckily, I'm in that Eastwood ether where whether he's alive or in 20 years when he's gone it'll be the kind of thing where people will revisit that because it was Eastwood and I think that's the same with Black Klansman yeah it's Spike Lee it's Adam Driver it's you know it's it's this big film that did well and then and I think itanya too with being

Speaker 5 such a time capsule piece for the 1990s and being a Margot Robbie thing where I felt like that and Wolf of Wall Street and Suicide Squad were the things that said this is like someone to pay attention to.

Speaker 5 This is someone who's crushing it. Yeah, are you?

Speaker 5 It's fun to be in those movies. I mean, you're never guaranteed that, but like when they come across your proverbial desk, it's like, oh, sick.

Speaker 5 I get to work with Craig Gillespie or Spike Lee or Clint Eastwood. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you nervous at all that you're being typecast as secondary characters to the Olympics?

Speaker 5 I listen,

Speaker 5 I'm hoping 20 years from now I put the stash on and I can play the

Speaker 5 I can play the uh gymnast coach for uh what's what's the name of that girl uh Bella Caroly, right?

Speaker 1 Bella Carolyn, Carrie Struggle, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, Kerry Struggle.

Speaker 5 I gotta play Carrie Strugg's um gymnast coach, yeah, gymnast coach in like 20, 30 years, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, you can do that. I believe you could pull it off in the real world.

Speaker 5 It's so weird, dude. It's so weird that, like,

Speaker 5 it's so weird that I'm playing Chris Farley in this biopic next year

Speaker 5 because

Speaker 5 Farley famously played Sean Eckhart, my character in Itanya, in the monologue sketch with Nancy Kerrigan when she hosted it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That is crazy.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they famously, Jay Leno famously said when the Richard Jewell thing happened, like, this guy kind of looks like the guy that whacked Nancy Kerrigan, right?

Speaker 5 And it was like a famous late-night joke that he referenced these two people together. And then Farley also is on SNL and Richard Jewell ended up being on SNL.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 after the whole debacle. So it's like there's just some weird, incestuous, creative thing going on with these roles.
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 7 So with Chris Farley, that must have been fascinating to play him in a biopic. I can't wait to watch it.

Speaker 7 I have to assume that you learned a lot about Chris as you're studying for the role. What have you learned about him that maybe you didn't know going into it?

Speaker 5 Well, you know, even before I got the role, and we haven't shot it yet. We're going to shoot it next year at some point, probably later in the year.
But

Speaker 5 I knew so much about Chris going in because I was just a fan. So I kind of was reading up on him and ingesting Chris Farley's stuff the way you would if you were preparing for a role.

Speaker 5 And I kind of knew most everything about him. What I found interesting is, you know, he

Speaker 5 had this like very highly intellectual side where him and Tim Meadows used to go to foreign films when they were doing Second City in Chicago. And,

Speaker 5 you know, Chris had these really deep conversations with his female friends that sometimes he couldn't have with his male friends.

Speaker 5 And it was just a very intellectual, sensitive side that not everybody got to see,

Speaker 5 especially if they were like a newer friend when he had already been very famous. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think, you know,

Speaker 5 in telling that story, we hope to show the duality of him as there's a duality to many of us. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you, is it not nervous is the right word, but Chris Farley's beloved. And so do you feel pressure like doing this movie where you're like, I know that everyone loves Chris Farley.
So

Speaker 1 I have to get to a point where it's like people are like, you did, you did him, you know, justice almost in, in playing him.

Speaker 5 I think I love Chris so much that I'm incapable of letting Chris.

Speaker 5 I mean, I can't, I'm not incapable of letting his fans down. People,

Speaker 5 somebody can order a steak and you give them exactly the filet they ordered and they're still not happy. Right.

Speaker 5 And they send it back to the kitchen some people are impossible but i love chris so much that i'm not worried about um

Speaker 5 keeping his memory alive in a in an authentic and loving way yeah i know i'm going to do that um

Speaker 5 and that's not cockiness that's once again knowing what you're capable of too and knowing that there are certain things you are just meant to do in some way you know like i i

Speaker 5 like i i met up with john farley a couple years ago to talk about this being a possibility his brother John. And I gave him my phone number and he goes, why is your number already in my phone?

Speaker 5 My number was already in John Farley's phone and we had never met.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 5 It said Paul Hauser when he typed in the number.

Speaker 5 Weird things like that have been happening for a while.

Speaker 5 And I think some people are just supposed to play certain people. I think Jamie Fox,

Speaker 5 God, his parents, like there's something in the ether that knew he was going to play that role. And I think this is one of those things that I was supposed to play.

Speaker 5 Jeff Bridges, when he got his first role, he has a story about how he told the director, like, I don't think I'm doing a good job. I think this is a mistake.
You should fire me.

Speaker 5 And the director just said, no, I chose you. You're right for the role.
You couldn't screw this up if you wanted to. You're the guy.
And I think sometimes you're just the guy, you know?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. When it comes to playing a role like that,

Speaker 7 do you go like full-time into character?

Speaker 5 Or do you, you know, when the cameras are on you flip the switch well i haven't done it yet um i've only starred or co-starred in three or four things i think jewel

Speaker 5 blackbird this thing i did with mark wahlberg he and i were it was like a two-hander we're both in all the scenes i've only done it like four or five times maybe so

Speaker 5 i

Speaker 5 starring in something is way more taxing than i tan your black clansman i tan your black clansman i get to show up i'm doing my finger guns and I walk out.

Speaker 5 But starring in something is exhausting

Speaker 5 in a way that I kind of didn't know until I did it.

Speaker 5 So my hope is that I can do my homework to a degree of precision and aggression that when I'm on set, I can be very calm and not in character. Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's my hope is that I do the homework enough to still be emotionally available to the crew and the cast because you don't want to alienate people. Even if you are doing a job, it's like, I,

Speaker 5 it's too important to me to be social with people and to be on the level to alienate them.

Speaker 5 So when I watched the Jim Carrey documentary about him and Andy Kaufman, I saw that Jim had kind of alienated a lot of people in his process. Jim Carrey, who I adore, by the way.

Speaker 5 But that process of kind of like alienating people or pushing them away, I've sort of decided I'm not going to do that. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I mean, when you're acting in a show like Blackbird, and it's probably not the, I don't know, is it a fun role when you're playing a psychopathic serial killer? Like, do you have fun?

Speaker 7 Because you did, first of all, I'll just say, like, you did an amazing job

Speaker 7 in that show. It was incredible.

Speaker 7 But I can't imagine that it would be an enjoyable time for you to spend in character as like the scummiest person to ever live.

Speaker 5 It depends on everyone's process, but it was not fun for me. I can tell you that much.

Speaker 5 I was not in a good place personally when i shot that mentally emotionally was not in a good place spiritually not a good place and uh was definitely ingesting a lot of marijuana and alcohol when i wasn't on set

Speaker 5 and uh

Speaker 5 and in and also we shot new orleans that's a pretty spiritually thick place you can kind of feel the air a little bit there sometimes um

Speaker 5 And I would say that the way I played the character, my process was I have to think the thoughts. I can't just say the lines and hope that it seems real.
I had to kind of

Speaker 5 get into the icky of it.

Speaker 5 And so

Speaker 5 having to think the thoughts to have it register in the eyes when you say lines of dialogue, you feel very guilty when you rap at the end of the day. You feel gross.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I only did it because of the damn character, but it's also a little mentally exhausting and you feel really gross. So yeah, no, that character was hard to play.

Speaker 5 That wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun. What was fun was the fact that the writing was good, and I was getting paid decent, and I was working with brilliant actors like Greg Kinnear and Tarren Edgerton.

Speaker 7 So, so, after a day on set, there, do you, is there something that you would do to like cleanse yourself to wipe that day away?

Speaker 5 Yeah, and I didn't cleanse myself well. Like I was saying, I would grab a sandwich from Turkey and the Wolf, and I'd get stoned, and I'd sip a cocktail.
But

Speaker 5 a lot of self-medicating, but the sort of PG things

Speaker 5 that I was partaking in were

Speaker 5 me and my buddy Anthony Pettix would go shoot hoops at a local

Speaker 5 court in somebody's neighborhood in New Orleans, or we'd play Super Nintendo or watch Kirby Enthusiasm. Like there were things that kind of like were pressure releases.

Speaker 5 And yeah, Larry David was very influential to me being able to laugh at the end of a.

Speaker 1 a dark, awkward day. Yeah.
Yeah. So you've done drama, you've done comedy.
Is there there one that you prefer more than the other at this point in your career?

Speaker 5 I think I prefer drama because there's just a complexity to it that has more of a variance and a diversity. Comedy sort of

Speaker 5 can feel redundant sometimes. And that's also why even your favorite comedians make comedy movies that you don't like.

Speaker 5 You know, Leo, every time Leo or Denzel do Leo or Denzel,

Speaker 5 In a drama, we're all just like, boom, another one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 5 like comedy, there are brilliant people who do comedy, and we're like, that movie sucked. Why isn't it as good as the one they made eight years ago? Right.

Speaker 5 And it's like, well, comedy can get very redundant, and after a while, you learn somebody's shtick, whereas, like, drama, you're living in different worlds and different moods, and you can keep them guessing a little bit better.

Speaker 5 So, I think I enjoy watching and doing drama more, but at the same time, my roots are entirely stand-up and sketch comedy. I grew up on Jim Gaffigan and Monty Python and,

Speaker 5 you know, Chris Farley and Eddie Murphy and everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, wait, so when did you start doing stand-up? Because that was how you started, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, when I was 16, I started writing screenplays and started doing stand-up comedy. Oh, wow.
So that was like the year it got really aggressive where I was like, I'm going full throttle, full bore.

Speaker 5 And my last few years of high school, I did three plays a year.

Speaker 5 Wrote for the school newspaper, did choir, was in barbershop quartet, was class president one year, was writing scripts and doing stand-up.

Speaker 5 so it was like i was trying to do the john cena dwayne johnson schedule before i was actually able to do that type of schedule i was nuts um

Speaker 5 and uh and yeah i i thought stand-up or screenwriting might be a way to break in i didn't know how to break into hollywood i thought well they say you can climb the wall you can break through the wall you can pay someone to get you through the wall What's my way?

Speaker 5 I'll just try all the things.

Speaker 5 And what I would find find out is that stand-up is incredibly hard to break into, even if you're decent. And I think I was, I don't think I was good.
I think I was decent. And

Speaker 5 I think I got away from stand-up because I just didn't want that lifestyle of you're in a depressing atmosphere.

Speaker 5 You have to wind your wheel up on your back and make these people laugh and you're constantly having to prove yourself.

Speaker 5 Whereas I could go into an audition and two minutes into the audition, they're like, you got the job. You're the guy.
Yeah. Yeah.
Like, it's so much easier than stand-up, in my opinion. yeah

Speaker 1 and you get treated exponentially better so so what point in your career were you like all right i think i've broken not broken through but like this is this is people are noticing and i feel like they they see something in me i i think uh i was telling somebody i think like the show kingdom that i did about the mma fighters with frank grillo and matt lauria

Speaker 5 uh jonathan tucker nick jonas that show was sort of my like associate's degree and me breaking in Itanya was like the end of the associate's degree where it's like, you're getting your bachelor's now.

Speaker 5 People know your face, but not your name. And then Richard Jewell was like

Speaker 5 sort of the last year of the bachelor's degree where it's like, hey, you are,

Speaker 5 you are,

Speaker 5 people now are starting to know your name and they're starting to think of you in a different light because you're not just a silly idiot. You can, you can act too.

Speaker 5 And I think Blackbird is like the start of trying to gain a master's degree yeah

Speaker 5 I'm trying to do that right now the next four years is me trying to get the master's degree and in my early 40s hopefully I'm I'm mastering this stuff and and you know you look at a quarterback that's about the age early 40s is like okay you've put in your time and now you are that's your legacy right now we know Tom Brady is Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers is Aaron Rodgers yeah I like I think I think you will be like one of the biggest actors in the world in the next 10 years from your mouth to to my business manager's ears you should be you should be we we said i this might have been the same interview but you should play andy reed in the andy reed biopic

Speaker 5 oh yeah damon was like i'm gonna hit hauser up about that i'm like he never hit me up he didn't hit you up where's where's my andy reid folder no yeah i am developing a movie with with uh ben and mat though um something that i'm gonna act in and produce and i co-wrote oh that's awesome that's awesome wait and you're are you a jets fan did i read that right

Speaker 5 So here's the story on that.

Speaker 5 I, two years ago, got an email two, two and a half years ago saying the Jets organization would like to invite you to get two to four VIP passes and sit in the owner's suite.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 And I was like not in New York at the time. And I was a lifelong Packer fan.
Was like, I, I, this is weird.

Speaker 1 Like, I wonder what propelled them to do that.

Speaker 1 They're recruited fans. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Who knows? And I, I, uh, then I got this movie, the Springsteen movie I'm doing right now in Jersey. And I was like, I wonder if that offer is still on the table.

Speaker 5 I literally went to my Google emails and was like looking up Jets in the search engine of my past emails. Found the email and emailed my PR people and was like, hey, I know it's two.

Speaker 5 It's like an enormous Donald voice. Hell, yeah, I know it's two and a half years later, but

Speaker 1 can I still go to a Jets game for free?

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 I'll just say I'm a Jets fan, you know? So I did that and they were like, let us check.

Speaker 1 They were like, probably weary about it.

Speaker 5 And then there I was two days ago. Was it what day is today? Monday?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yesterday. So yesterday I was at the Jets game with my buddy Darren and we're sitting with, you know.

Speaker 5 the owner or co-owner, Chris Johnson and his wife Doris, and they could not have been sweeter and nicer and more down to earth.

Speaker 5 And we're nothing on lobster rolls and Eclairs and watching the game surrounded by all these wealthy people that I felt very out of place with.

Speaker 1 So, so, so, not a Jets fan, but then you got to see your old quarterback because you're a Packers fan, your old quarterback Aaron Rodgers play. It's not going well.

Speaker 5 It's uh, it's rough because all the talent's there, but not everything's connecting, you know, and uh

Speaker 5 and and it's it's you know, it's tough too. Like, not everybody can stay so you can be talented, but not have the sharp or crispness that you once had.
And it doesn't mean you're not good.

Speaker 5 It just means you're a 42-year-old quarterback or a 44-year-old quarterback, right? Yeah. And I think actors are like that, too, to bring it back to acting.

Speaker 5 It's like some actors, and I won't say their name as to not be rude, but when they get older, they're just not as sharp. And it doesn't mean you don't enjoy them.

Speaker 5 It just means they don't have that crispness. And then there are some that stand the test of time and are giving psychotically good performances in their 80s and 90s.

Speaker 5 And that class of actors like a Sir Anthony Hopkins. Yeah.
Anthony Hopkins can still be as good as he was in Silence of the Lambs tomorrow. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's a very rare thing.

Speaker 5 And I think, you know, Rogers, the best days are probably behind, but I loved watching him. And I met him at the Espys.
We did a comedy skit together and he could not have been cooler.

Speaker 5 We had a lot of fun talking to each other.

Speaker 1 Wait, so that's something interesting you bring up.

Speaker 1 I never really thought of like, is there a, not an expiration date, but is there a career arc for an actor where it's like they become washed up and is that something that you actually think about in the back of your head where you're like i have i'm in my prime right now i gotta i gotta work work work because who knows at 60 will i still have it i don't worry about that so much because i also know i'm fiercely competitive and uh and i'm not fully mentally well so i know that when i'm 60 i'll still be getting weird yeah doing different stuff.

Speaker 5 Doesn't mean I'm better than so-and-so.

Speaker 5 it just means that's how i'm built i think i may be proven wrong in 30 years you know who knows but um my hope is that when i'm 60 and maybe have a couple more nominations or something under my belt and some people are like that's a classy actor that's a real actor that guy like i hope i hope i'm still showing up and doing

Speaker 5 shows like I think you should leave with Tim Robinson. I hope I'm still showing up at WrestleMania and someone's putting me through a table.
Or I hope, you know, I hope MLW is still having me back.

Speaker 5 And, you know, like these are, these are the things I do think about is never take away your self-amusement and your competitive spirit and your sense of play. And I don't think that'll happen to you.

Speaker 7 What's it like being competitive as an actor?

Speaker 5 Dude, people don't even think about the way I think about it. I'm a weirdo.
Like I'm way too insecure and in my head with competitive nature.

Speaker 5 I don't think guys like Paul Dano and Adam Driver think the way I think. I think they're very content, focused,

Speaker 5 and they probably don't think about it as much. I very much think about the guys in my bracket.

Speaker 5 And I'm, you know, Aaron Paul said to me very early in my career, I did a movie with him that few people saw.

Speaker 5 And Aaron Paul gave me advice. He said, you got to beat the town.
Who are you the next of? Who are you up against? Who are the guys you see at all your auditions?

Speaker 5 You got to beat those guys out and i kept a list of like 30 40 guys that i was slowly trying to get all the jobs and then eventually

Speaker 5 there were like me and four or five other guys in the top bracket and i was like damn okay and now i'm at the point where if these three people pass they come to me

Speaker 5 so it's like i'm still in my head i'm still like

Speaker 5 I still have this dogged obsession of I want to I want to be the guy that gets the offer before them.

Speaker 5 but you know, that also never stops because Christian Bale says that about DiCaprio. He has been very vocal about saying,

Speaker 5 If DiCaprio passes, I get the offer. And it's like, so maybe that happens forever, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 Or is do you pay attention to the guys that are coming up behind you too? The relatively new guys? Are you like, this guy, he's getting a little too close to me? I need to separate myself.

Speaker 5 Oh, no, no, no, never that. It's all support.
It's all love.

Speaker 5 It's just me trying to make me the best, not to anyone else's detriment or put down. It's just me trying to show my teeth every time I open my mouth.
That's all.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 But I love the guys coming up.

Speaker 5 I love Will Poulter, Fred Heckinger,

Speaker 5 Joseph Quinn.

Speaker 5 Shalamay is great.

Speaker 5 There's a lot of guys coming up that are great, I think.

Speaker 7 So what's the story of the rumor that surrounded you, the Quentin Tarantino rumor?

Speaker 5 Fake news.

Speaker 7 What happened with that?

Speaker 5 It's all fake news. It's

Speaker 5 Tarantino and I have never had a meeting. He's never contacted me.
Some random blog site said that I was in contention or it was overheard, that I had been offered the lead in the movie critic.

Speaker 5 And it was news to me. And me and my manager are freaking out.
I remember I was sitting on the toilet on my cell phone. I'm like texting.

Speaker 5 And suddenly my phone blows up and I go on Twitter and it was just like,

Speaker 5 and all these people are talking about it. I was like, what the hell is going on? And you know, for us, we thought maybe it was true and we just hadn't been given the offer.

Speaker 5 Maybe somebody internally spilled the beans at a luncheon at the San Vicente bungalows and somebody texted somebody and they put it online. You know, you never know.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But uh,

Speaker 5 but it turned out that I guess Bill Maher had Tarantino on his show, the basement show that looks like everybody's a prisoner to Bill.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah, the one where he like smokes weed in front of Hawk to a girl and asks her about

Speaker 5 everybody looks like a kept woman while he drinks and gets high.

Speaker 5 But yeah,

Speaker 5 he and Tarantino very briefly talked about me and Mara was kind of putting me over saying like, he was in Richard Jewell. He was good.

Speaker 5 And Tarantino was like, yeah, he's been in a few things, but whatever. I think people just thought I was going to cast him because, you know, he looks like he could be a movie critic.

Speaker 5 And I was like, oh, like it totally was like...

Speaker 5 like a kidney shot from a boxer.

Speaker 5 I had to take a knee and be like, oh, that hurt.

Speaker 5 Oh, I wish I wasn't contention. But also, like,

Speaker 5 you know, there's a real world out there where wars are being fought. If I'm not in a Tarantino movie, I think I'll be okay.
But

Speaker 5 I do love the guy. I love his work.
And, you know, I'd love to be a fly on that wall and do anything in one of his movies. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And also, I think

Speaker 7 if you're having your name thrown around in baseless rumors for a Quentin Tarantino movie, but they're believable enough where people are like, I could see that happen.

Speaker 7 That's probably a good thing too, right?

Speaker 5 Certainly. Yeah, it certainly brings a smirk to to your face that people can believe that.
And, you know,

Speaker 5 I've had meetings with big name directors who were thinking about using me for something and for whatever reason they went another way. And

Speaker 5 if anything, that is just fodder for encouragement. Like, hey,

Speaker 5 you never know. You could wake up and

Speaker 5 you could wake up and I could be doing a recurring guest star on a sitcom or I could be in a Spielberg movie. And that's it's kind of a fun, exciting way to live your life, you know, to

Speaker 5 sort of feel the pendulum swinging back and forth. And the key is to just have fun and honor every commitment.

Speaker 5 Treat a scrimmage like the Super Bowl, is what I always tell young actors, because you never know who's watching and you want to honor the fact that anyone gives a crap about you and gave you a role because they could cast somebody else.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So

Speaker 1 we've got some pretty deep connections in Hollywood.

Speaker 7 Jerry O'Connell is a good friend of ours. Have you ever met Jerry O'Connell?

Speaker 5 No, but I'm a fan. I love

Speaker 5 his brief but impactful performance in Can't Hardly Wait.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 5 And I've certainly been a fan of his from Stand By Me.

Speaker 5 And he seems like a nice guy. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I know McGuire. You didn't mention Kangaroo Jack or his Supermodel wife.

Speaker 5 I think it'd be a little shallow to just say that he's got a hot wife and did the now cult classic Kangaroo Jack, right? I was trying to go for deeper cuts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, no, the supermodel wife, though, you can say right off the top.

Speaker 7 I loved his wife when I was 13.

Speaker 1 Supermodel wife. He's got a supermodel wife.
You can Google it. It's a fact.

Speaker 5 I'm happy she's wife.

Speaker 1 She's a very nice lady.

Speaker 5 Is it Rebecca Romaine?

Speaker 1 Yes, it is. Yeah, you are.

Speaker 1 You pervert.

Speaker 7 You're a pervert. Yeah, you played that cool.

Speaker 1 Oh, what's your name?

Speaker 7 Rebecca Romaine? Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's not like I know how to spell her last name, capital R-O-M-I-J-N.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 That'd be crazy.

Speaker 7 I would like to see you and Jerry in a movie together. I feel like that would be.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you and Jerry. Jerry's a good actor.

Speaker 5 Or maybe that's the next hit sitcom is he's my stepdad, and I'm like, we're trying to help each other out, and we're both total messes or something.

Speaker 7 No, I think it'd be better if he was your dad, and then Rebecca Romain is your stepmom.

Speaker 1 Stacy's mom has got it going on. There it is.
Hey, so you've been in some, you've had some great part roles in some incredible comedy in sitcom. You were in Reno 911.
You were in Always Sunny.

Speaker 1 Have you ever made anyone break break in filming those where you're like, man, this is awesome?

Speaker 1 Because I always think about that when you're like in those big shows and it's like, yeah, I made all these funny people laugh.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that happens on occasion.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to think when it's happened for me. I don't think it was,

Speaker 5 I think I remember breaking.

Speaker 5 I broke Tom Lennon once or twice on Reno, and that was a big feather in the cap.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I broke a couple of the sunny people once or twice, and that was a big feather in the cap because I love those shows so much. They're two of my favorite shows of all time.
So for me, that's, that's

Speaker 5 those moments mean as much as winning an actor trophy, you know, like those are your own trophies that you

Speaker 5 get to ponder whenever you're having a bad day.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's also, I mean, it was, is it weird, like having a show like Always Sunny, where it's like you watched it probably as a fan, and then they call you up and they're like, hey, we want you to be in it.

Speaker 5 Dude, it was nuts. I was, I was at college, I was dropping out of college in Oak Park River Forest, this place called Concordia University.

Speaker 5 I was basically dropping out, partying my face off,

Speaker 5 ballooning up in wait, and writing a movie script for Keen Peale because they had just Mad TV had just gotten canceled, and my manager at the time repped them.

Speaker 5 He's like, you know, you want to write a movie for these guys? They're looking for something to do together. And so I'm writing a script for Kian Peale before they have the hit show.

Speaker 5 And I'm dropping out of college. And most of my days were spent watching Dirty Work and Wet Hot American Summer and episodes of It's Always Sunny.

Speaker 5 And so a year later to be in the room auditioning for the show was crazy.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 5 stepping into the bar, I vividly remember I brought my friend a set, which was such a thing. Like I had a weird flex back in the day where I just didn't ask permission for anything.

Speaker 5 I would just bring one of my buddies to set and he'd be hanging out with me all day without asking anybody.

Speaker 5 So, like, my buddy Peter and I, Peter Hins, this really funny dude, he and I walked into the set of It's Always Sunny, and walking into that bar and seeing everything, it was like

Speaker 5 the Wizard of Oz or something. Like, we could not believe we were in the bar of It's Always Sunny.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's so awesome. That's gotta be crazy.
Going back to making people break on set, that never happens in a show like Blackbird, right?

Speaker 5 Um, I wouldn't say it never happens. I mean, there's a famous clip on YouTube of

Speaker 5 somebody, I think it might have been Phil Hartman or somebody, had a fart machine in the elevator in a scene in The Master, the P.T. Anderson film.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 5 It's a pretty serious film, or at least an intense film. And like,

Speaker 5 and like they had a moment where everybody broke and it was like over a fart joke.

Speaker 5 So, like, it can happen, but I would say most of the time on blackbird 98 of the time we were both locked in

Speaker 5 you know deathly serious about the work but i will i will say you have to keep stuff light outside of it yeah and i think there were a day or two not that he ever truly showed it but there had to be a day or two where i annoyed the crap out of taryn like in between takes or in between setups where i'd be

Speaker 5 doing an accent or a celebrity impression or dancing or being stupid. And for me, it was like therapeutic, but for him,

Speaker 5 at some point, I'm sure it proved distractionary. But like, you got to break up the intensity somehow.
You got to stay sane.

Speaker 5 And for me nowadays, if I'm having a rough, rough day for whatever reason, I just watch a couple clips from I Think You Should Leave on Netflix and

Speaker 5 I'm out of it. Or I'll watch a really good wrestling match from MLW or another organization on YouTube and it makes me feel better.

Speaker 1 Who was your favorite wrestler growing up?

Speaker 5 Sting was my number one. Still is.

Speaker 1 Still is.

Speaker 5 Still is.

Speaker 5 Well, he retired, but you know what it is.

Speaker 5 Everybody's got their Mount Rushmore. He's the top of mine.

Speaker 5 And I think I just admired the fact that

Speaker 5 he was second fiddled to Hulk Hogan in that good guy era, but... Hogan was like never really selling for other people.
He was always saying, like, I'm the dude. You can't get one over on me.

Speaker 5 And Sting would sell for people. Sting, you could beat the crap out of Sting, but he would still come back.
Yeah. And I feel like I saw that more than I saw with Hogan.
I admired that.

Speaker 5 Loved the flare and pizzazz of the guy going from surfer sting to the crow sting. And he got all dark and serious and fought the NWO with just a baseball bat and a silent face.

Speaker 5 Like there was something so cool about that. And

Speaker 5 he stood the test of time and just recently, you know, had his final match back in the spring of this year in Greensboro, North Carolina. And I got to be there.

Speaker 5 And Tony Khan allowed me to sit ringside with some dear friends. One of my oldest friends, Ryan Kunitzer, who, you know, I've known the guy 30-something years.

Speaker 5 Sting was like our guy, and we're standing there, you know, nearly emotional as he has his final match. It was amazing.
That's incredible.

Speaker 7 Who else is on your map, Rushmore?

Speaker 5 So there's two types of rushmores, right? There's the one where you're trying to objectively give the top four from the worldly perspective. And then there's personal rushmore.
Which one do you want?

Speaker 7 I want personal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I want personal.

Speaker 5 Personal rushmore is Sting,

Speaker 5 Bret Hart.

Speaker 5 I think

Speaker 5 Ric Flair

Speaker 5 and Chris Jericho.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 I think those are the four. But Jericho's tough, too.
He just sneaks in there past.

Speaker 5 He just sneaks in there past a couple other guys, like Ricky Steamboat or Randy Savage.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Randy Savage, he was the best. Yeah.
I miss that guy.

Speaker 1 Macho Man. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think my top 10 has a bunch of random guys too. Like they're not who you'd think.
I don't go for the low-hanging fruit of The Undertaker, Andre the Giant, and Sean Michaels.

Speaker 5 Like I like guys who are impactful in different ways. I love Dustin Rhodes, a.k.a.
Goldust, Rey Mysterio, Mick Foley.

Speaker 5 Kurt Angle, not all the people that get put at the top.

Speaker 1 Yeah, mankind is probably on my rush more.

Speaker 7 I've got a really dumb question for you.

Speaker 7 But I think about this with acting.

Speaker 5 I'm a very dumb person. Serve it up, bro.

Speaker 7 How much time do you put in behind the scenes just literally memorizing your lines?

Speaker 5 Depends on the role.

Speaker 5 Depends on the role. There are certain things like Richard Jewell, I would learn my lines a week, like five to seven days in advance.

Speaker 5 And I'd be very overly familiar with them, and it could kind of fall out of me a lot easier. And then there's other things.

Speaker 5 If I'm doing a comedy, there's just less of a stress of learning the lines it just feels like

Speaker 5 i don't know it's like bam margero the skateboard like it's not like he's in shape and skateboards all the time but like he can still jump on a skateboard and and do whatever because he's bam yeah that's kind of how i feel about comedy but i think that's actually a really dangerous way to

Speaker 5 it's a dangerous attitudinal stance because you can then sometimes give 85% when you should be giving 100. Yeah.
So, so it depends. But, uh, but yeah,

Speaker 5 my whole thing is I learn one page at a time. So I'll always know the first page of dialogue better than the last.
But I, I, for me, that's just my process. I learn one page at a time.

Speaker 5 The biggest audition I ever had page-wise, I think I learned,

Speaker 5 I think Itanya was 13 pages I memorized. And I think Scream 4, I memorized like 15 pages.

Speaker 7 Geez. So when you're rehearsing for like Black Klansman, there are some lines of dialogue in that movie you probably would never want to say in any context besides in front of a camera, right?

Speaker 7 Are you doing, are you rehearsing like the full lines?

Speaker 5 Yeah, if I have to, if I have to like feel the words and

Speaker 5 say them in a way where it, you don't feel the timidity in the character.

Speaker 5 Because like I've, I've met some weird racist ass dudes at dive bars or, you know, one of those low-key racist guys who's like putting the bait out and seeing if you'll, if you'll touch the, the pole line.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Seeing if you're friend or foe.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 The, yeah, the Uber driver who's like talking politics and then it's like,

Speaker 5 yeah, you know how these people are. Then they're looking at you in the rear view and you're like, I want to freaking die right now.
Yeah. I don't want to be in this guy's car.

Speaker 5 I've met enough of them that like

Speaker 5 you can't have timidity. It's got to be, if you were born with that.
ideological stance, it has to be as normal as, well, yeah, we always have pork chops on Thursdays.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 5 It just has to be normal to you. So you don't say it because you're like, look at me, I'm saying the rap lyrics behind closed doors.
You're doing it because

Speaker 5 you have to make sure it's right.

Speaker 5 But I would say what's harder is when you improvise with a bad character.

Speaker 5 There were lines that I said in Black Bird and Black Klansmen that I improvised. that you feel very guilty about because afterwards you go, well, that wasn't in the script and you still got there.

Speaker 5 So how'd you get there?

Speaker 5 that's tough that's acting yeah that's acting yeah that's really good acting it's also acting yeah it's also sometimes good acting and you're like oh that is a really good line unfortunately it's devastatingly awful but that's who you're playing on the day yeah unfortunately it's really really racist and you came up with it all on your own yeah i i had a disgusting moment where i felt so bad

Speaker 5 I'm doing a scene with John David Washington, who's about as likable and sweet of a person as you can get on a movie set.

Speaker 5 And I did something where I stuck my mouth out to look like an ape or a primate with my tongue

Speaker 5 to piss him off in this scene. Now, Spike gave me the direction of you're up in his grill, do something that could provoke him, but he won't be provoked.

Speaker 5 So, like, that's what I thought of for that character. But the moment after it was done, I went up to John David.
I go, hey, man, I just want to say, and he goes, I know, I know.

Speaker 5 Like, very much said it like, I know where you're going with it. And I, like, we, we're on the same page here.
Don't,

Speaker 5 don't, don't take your foot off the pedal just because you're uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I really admired his, his grace and professionalism with that. And, and there have been moments like that in other projects.

Speaker 5 And sometimes you just got to be able to have a conversation preliminarily too. Sometimes I won't do something because I'm like, I don't want to get,

Speaker 5 I don't want someone to create a story of me being a bad person because I made a creative choice. So let me run this by them first to make sure they're comfortable.

Speaker 5 And 90% of the time, the other actor is like, oh, you shouldn't have even told me. You should have just done it.
Right.

Speaker 7 It's like before you step into the wrestling ring.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That too. I'm always asking wrestlers, you know, like.
Like these guys in MLW, that's their locker room. I'm a guest in their locker room.
I'm new to the roster.

Speaker 5 And I really respect those guys and gals. And it's always about finding out what are we doing and

Speaker 5 how do we do it the best way that doesn't complicate something or hurt anybody long term.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, Paul, this has been awesome, man. We really appreciate you joining us.
I got one last question. It's the Roback question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com, promo code take.

Speaker 1 20% off your first purchase, Q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, roback.com, promo code take.

Speaker 1 I mentioned it at the top, but major league wrestling, there's free pay-per-views, or sorry, free matches. The big streams are on YouTube.

Speaker 1 So, the last question I have for you is, if wrestling started taking off for you and they're like, you have to give up acting, would you do it?

Speaker 1 Like, really take off.

Speaker 5 If they gave me that ultimatum and something weird happened, where say in 2026, I undergo the Chris Pratt style transformation.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And MLW is taking off, and they got a show on TV. And they want to put a belt on me, and we're doing the whole thing.

Speaker 5 If that opportunity presented itself, I would would just hold my ground and say, you have to let me do both.

Speaker 5 I don't think I would take the deal because

Speaker 5 at the end of the day,

Speaker 5 I love acting. It would hurt my feelings.
It would hurt my spirit to not get to act in some capacity. And you got to ask my wife.
My wife, Amy, is such a patient, grace-driven woman.

Speaker 5 She knows that when I go three, four, five months without acting, I'm not that fun to be around. I'm like starved for attention and I'm like hell-bent on making my jokes.

Speaker 5 And suddenly I'm in the kitchen and I'm trying to turn into Anthony Bourdain or Guy Fieri. Like, it's like, it's a very, you know, we're sick people, actors.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 So it's like, I think it would hurt the soul and the brain too much if I didn't do it. But I do think that there's a way to do both.
And I'm trying to prove that.

Speaker 5 And the other thing to anyone listening, like, know your value. If you're good at what you do and somebody's saying there's an ultimatum, tell them,

Speaker 5 give them a counter-ultimatum. Yeah.
That you need to do both. And, you know, you'll find out that when you stick to your guns and you are who you say you are, you should be able to do both.

Speaker 1 That's a great, a great sentiment. And it's also what you said about going crazy when you don't act for a while.
That's, that's why you're an incredible actor.

Speaker 1 I mean, we, we, we obviously, we do a stupid podcast, but when we go five days without talking to each other about sports, we're like, what the fuck? Like, our brains start going crazy.

Speaker 5 It nourishes your spirit to do these things you love.

Speaker 5 And I really believe, and you know, not to, not to be too preachy, my, my dad's literally a retired minister, but I believe that God put us all on earth to do different things, to, to embody something that can benefit other people.

Speaker 5 You guys do it yourselves. You entertain and educate people on topics they're interested in, and you give people a reprieve from a dark, twisted, difficult world.
And

Speaker 5 I think I do the same. And like, you know, it's when you feel that inside yourself and you go, man, I feel thirsty for this thing.
That's God's way of telling you you're meant to do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. We're putting on the service.

Speaker 5 So I would encourage people to follow the breadcrumbs, you know, follow the trail of passion because it's there for a reason.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I appreciate you telling us that we educate people. We haven't educated a single person.

Speaker 7 No, we did.

Speaker 5 Well, you educate them on other people, right?

Speaker 1 We did.

Speaker 7 We educated

Speaker 7 numerous NFL head coaches on what to do in the fourth quarter of a playoff game if you're losing by by two scores and it's fourth down, fourth and eight, do you kick the field goal or do you give the ball back to Tom Brady to beat you in the NFC championship game?

Speaker 5 Listen, you guys were the first people to say the Andy Reid thing. So if that happens, we can go back and be like, these guys educated us.

Speaker 1 That's true. Yeah.

Speaker 5 They were prophetic.

Speaker 5 I mean, this was happening.

Speaker 7 You would absolutely kill an Andy Reid role. Yeah.

Speaker 5 At the end of the day, I'm looking to work with anybody who's kind, who treats people well, and

Speaker 5 wants to work hard and tell a good story, whatever that that looks like it could be a sitcom it could be a uh a little indie foreign film it could be anything uh but at the end of the day you hope to do something that uh you're proud of you know and i never want to be that actor who just takes a bad movie for a lot of money uh i have two children who are going to be in private school and life is not cheap uh it can be very difficult sometimes so i'm sure there's going to be that temptation too but but i try to make things that i would want to pay my hard-earned money to go see at the AMC Theater or the Regal Cinema.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think it comes across too. So,

Speaker 7 is there one role, not one that you have like the ball in motion for? So, taking out like the Chris Farley, any of that stuff.

Speaker 7 Is there something that you've been fascinated with, a story or an individual that you've just been really, really interested in who you would like to play or a role that you would really like to play at some point?

Speaker 5 Good question. Yeah, I'll leave you at this.
I have three roles I really want to inhabit in the next five years.

Speaker 5 I want to play Teddy Roosevelt.

Speaker 1 Oh, Oscar.

Speaker 7 Oscar.

Speaker 1 There you go.

Speaker 1 Oscar.

Speaker 5 And that's another one where I just, I know I can play him. I'm not even worried about it.
I just have to convince other people to want to do it.

Speaker 5 The other one is

Speaker 5 a father who knows how to be present and not on his phone all the time. Okay.
Good role. That's a role I really need to inhabit and get better at because I

Speaker 7 can be,

Speaker 5 yeah, it's a fantasy. This is a genre.

Speaker 5 And the,

Speaker 5 yeah, as a father, I mean, I want to inhabit that characteristic. The third role is,

Speaker 5 I want to kick somebody's ass in MLW, and I'm going to be doing that Thursday night at the Mowrills Ballroom

Speaker 5 in Long Island City. And I hope you check it out in person.
If you can't make it in person, Court Bauer, in all his benevolence, is providing these pay-per-view style cards for free on YouTube.

Speaker 5 So check it out.

Speaker 1 I love it. I love it.
Well, Paul, thank you so much for your time, man. We're big fans of yours and keep crushing it.

Speaker 7 I'd also like to invest in the Teddy Roosevelt film when it gets made.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Manifesting.

Speaker 7 I got some money coming through.

Speaker 1 Travis Hunter Heisman.

Speaker 5 Love to you guys and let's do this again in like a year or two here.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
Love it. Thanks so much, man.

Speaker 7 Man, I'll tell you what.

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Speaker 1 Before we do FAQs, well, Hank, you're eating a burger and you're supposed to read FAQs.

Speaker 1 What? It's so good. It's so good.
Do you guys... FAQ for you guys,

Speaker 1 you know how the daylight savings thing is back in the news?

Speaker 1 Whether we should or we shouldn't. And we're like, hey, I wish we had another hour of sunlight in the winter.
I'm an idiot.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize that if we just, if we like didn't do daylight savings, or I don't even understand the terminology, if we didn't do daylight savings,

Speaker 1 it would get dark at like 7.15 in the summer. Oh, never realized that we'd have to give that up.

Speaker 7 The opposite side of it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I didn't. And I don't mind.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, I don't want that. I thought it was like so.
I thought it only fucked with us. No, it was like the sun would rise at like 4:45 in the summer and then set at like 7.45.

Speaker 1 That's the opposite.

Speaker 7 It sucks.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So just suck it up for the winter.
We're already five days away from the long or the shortest day of the year. We're going to be on the other side soon.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it sucks for like the first week when you're like, oh, it shouldn't be dark this early, but then it's like, whatever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just get through it.

Speaker 8 People that bitch about winter are fucking losers.

Speaker 1 Listen,

Speaker 1 it's cold, then it's dark early. And also,

Speaker 1 don't bitch.

Speaker 8 Move to California if you don't like it.

Speaker 1 Don't bitch about winter until like late January, early February. This is not winter yet because it's holiday season.
Everyone's happy. There's football on.
This does not count as winter yet.

Speaker 7 That's what always fucks with you is that you think, oh, it's going to get dark so early in the wintertime, but then it starts to get longer in January. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because we're almost there. December 21st at home.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 7 if you change the, if you take away daylight savings time, that takes away like three hours worth of recurring bits on part of my tape. What are you talking about, bits?

Speaker 7 Just think about that. Think about the podcasters.

Speaker 7 What do you mean bits? Well, because last year. You mean PSAs.

Speaker 1 No, last year. Not bits.

Speaker 7 Last year we thought that the clocks went back in the fall. Oh.
And we fucked that up the other day.

Speaker 1 I think you were thinking of PSAs because we've been bought by big time.

Speaker 7 No, we kept saying that it falls back, but it actually goes forward.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was our fucking fall. That was a bad year for us.
Yeah. When we did our final year review with Dave, he's like, hey, it says here,

Speaker 1 you guys screwed up the daylight savings thing. We're like, fuck, man.
No excuses. Next year we'll nail it.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we have to do 10 minutes in the dungeon for every time we fuck that up.

Speaker 1 But seriously, I mean, we're almost there.

Speaker 1 What is it? Divisional round? January, I think, I think it's January 18th is when we move the clocks back again.

Speaker 1 So we're almost there. We've almost made it.

Speaker 7 We pretty much made it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, FAQs. Hey, boys.

Speaker 8 What will President Pug do about Max's injury? I believe Pug needs to address weekly injuries like midweek coaches press conference.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 1 We actually need him to do an availability report because I was dealing with a little sickness the last like week and a half of rolling sickness in my house.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was questionable a couple times.

Speaker 7 What is Pug doing about health care as president on this podcast?

Speaker 1 But he needs to give like an update of like how everyone's feeling just so we can set the stage of like, listen, we're football guys. We don't complain.

Speaker 1 I don't think you guys didn't even know that I was dealing with it. I puked seven times on Saturday.
Damn.

Speaker 7 The only reason I would talk about an injury is if it was mandated for me to report it. Yeah.
Otherwise, I don't want people to know.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 7 But, Pug, you should definitely do a mandated injury report.

Speaker 1 Yeah. On how you need to, you need to, like, poll all of us separately how we're doing.
And then,

Speaker 1 like, game days, you should just, you could just do a tweet.

Speaker 8 Or press conference, Instagram live press conference.

Speaker 1 But if he's doing it three times a week.

Speaker 8 We get Pug like a step and repeat. That's going to stay in front of.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I think he does it once a week. I would like to see a once-a-week injury report.

Speaker 1 But what I mean, there's game days.

Speaker 1 Show days.

Speaker 1 can be 10 weeks.

Speaker 7 Then we have to wait for all the test results to come back, and we'll have more information about his injury as a week progresses. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I missed the first part. This is just injury reports.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think you need to start adding injury reports. Maybe make a graphic.
And like, maybe it's, maybe it's every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have to be a press conference, but it just says, like, you can ask all of us how we're doing.

Speaker 1 Just so the listeners know what we're dealing with.

Speaker 9 So it could be physical and emotional.

Speaker 1 Mental, yeah, of course.

Speaker 7 Of course. Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people can give you their answers.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I'll start sending you my sleep stats.

Speaker 1 Yeah, bears have me depressed.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fat.

Speaker 1 Fat.

Speaker 7 Was that for you?

Speaker 8 No, but like some later on. Some might be in the future.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 Doubtful. Fat.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you'll be like, you'll be like Tom Brady's shoulder. Remember, he was listed like, what was like 17 years in a row? Yeah.
With a

Speaker 1 probable shoulder.

Speaker 1 Someone should stay the same every time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Memes.
Memes, Italian.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Limited participant.

Speaker 1 Italian non-horny kind.

Speaker 8 Hey, PMT gang. My FAQ is how long does it take to write boomers on Sunday for the Monday show? They are always so clever and funny, and I always get a good chuckle out of them.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank you. That's nice.

Speaker 7 It depends week to week, honestly. Depending on what the schedule is.

Speaker 7 If we have a Bears game or a Commander's game or a really good game like we had last weekend weekend in the late slate, we just put off writing the boomers as long as we can and then we just write like hell for about, I don't know, 40 minutes.

Speaker 7 Yeah. And also Hank writes his boomer.
Memes does his. That has been a very big help.
Hank does his.

Speaker 1 That's been a very big help. We've gotten a lot more efficient on our Sunday schedule.
Yeah. Because I was thinking about it.

Speaker 1 Like, it used to be that we wouldn't be done till one or two in the morning. We're usually done about 11.30.

Speaker 1 Shout out the guys in the booth because they stay till like three or four in the morning. Time zones.
Time zones. But still, like, we.

Speaker 8 No, yeah, no, the New York, it was.

Speaker 1 We've gotten very efficient.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I'm also

Speaker 1 miss football season. I'm very excited for playoffs.
I think I said this last week, but I'm excited to like sit down and soak in one single game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about the wild card round the other day. Like,

Speaker 1 I'm just so pumped to just like

Speaker 7 one matchup. You get to focus on individual games.

Speaker 8 And this kind of set you up with like the Christmas and then they're going to do the Saturday, one games.

Speaker 1 This is the point of the season, though, where we just have a lot of football that doesn't mean anything. So it's like, just get me.

Speaker 1 I just want to hit the fast forward to the playoffs because it's like, I want to just, let's get this thing on.

Speaker 1 Let's get it on.

Speaker 8 Who would last the longest in a zombie apocalypse? Resources of plenty out of the group, and who would kill themselves first just to get it over with?

Speaker 7 Are we saying like the dead rise? Like, everybody that's dead shows up.

Speaker 1 Can I make a confession? I don't like zombies. I've never been a zombie guy.

Speaker 7 I don't like zombies.

Speaker 1 Don't like the shows, don't like the movies. Just doesn't do it for me.
I don't like it. There's nothing, it does nothing for me.

Speaker 7 I don't know why everybody decided that zombies are a thing. Right.
And we're always going to talk about zombies.

Speaker 8 What about Planet of the Apes, like

Speaker 8 plague? Like, you're trying to survive,

Speaker 8 not zombies per se, but like, you know, there's a plague that's taking over the country. You're trying to survive.

Speaker 1 Or like

Speaker 7 we would have Dr. Fauci on the program.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's a good idea.
I guess that's zombies. I think

Speaker 1 I would survive the exact amount of average time.

Speaker 8 I would probably put myself in the kill myself first.

Speaker 8 I feel like PFT could survive just eating random shit.

Speaker 1 You live next to the lake, though. Just get to water.
Is that how it works? Yeah, I mean, I think that's what you're supposed to do. Do instantly is just get to water.

Speaker 1 Whatever the thing is, get to water.

Speaker 7 I think I would just, I think I'd be okay. Like, I would just, I could deal with making it.

Speaker 8 You could just eat Fritos for like three years. Yeah, I could.

Speaker 7 I could do that.

Speaker 1 If a nuke hits, you just go underwater for the five seconds it hits.

Speaker 8 I always thought that was a tsunami, like, just swim underneath it. Wait, what?

Speaker 7 You thought that the way to survive a tsunami was to jump into the water?

Speaker 8 Well, yeah, you know how, like, when you're in the water and you just go underneath the wave?

Speaker 7 Yeah, like, when your body's surfing, you can just, yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 7 I don't know about all these idiots running away from the thing.

Speaker 1 That might not be wrong.

Speaker 1 That might not be wrong. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 8 Nikki wrote, I think she said she's studying and she must have taken out her. She wrote like five questions.

Speaker 8 Who creates the cover graphics for podcast episodes? What is the go-to music for the office to listen to? And do you guys have a sick Christmas tree in the office?

Speaker 1 The graphics is our guy, Triggs. He is the goat.
Trigg goat.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 8 Singular.

Speaker 1 But isn't it Triggs draws?

Speaker 8 Triggs draws.

Speaker 7 I think over the years we've just called him Triggs. I've just added an S.

Speaker 1 Trigg is Triggs. No, it's Triggs.
Triggs is the man.

Speaker 1 He is so, so, so, so talented.

Speaker 1 Also, hit him up if you want

Speaker 1 side work because he does incredible stuff where like he can make all kinds of art and cool things. He's a big sports fan.

Speaker 7 He's a very talented artist, and he also does some sick-ass graphics for like college football Saturdays. Yeah.
Where he shows you exactly what games are on, what channel, at what time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So his Twitter handle is, what is it?

Speaker 1 Trigg draws. Triggs draws?

Speaker 7 No, Triggs draws.

Speaker 1 I think it's

Speaker 1 the S on

Speaker 1 Draws that has me.

Speaker 7 It's like when Gilly calls it barstools.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Trigg draws.

Speaker 1 He's the man. So do hit him up.
He's got a shop online that is, I mean, yeah, the Tiger Woods stuff. Those prints are awesome.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 go-to song in the office. We don't have it.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, music.

Speaker 7 Whatever Brandon Walker paces around the office to at 7 a.m.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then what was the last question?

Speaker 8 Do you guys have a sick Christmas tree in the office?

Speaker 1 We have one. We have two.
Two? I think we have two.

Speaker 7 I wouldn't say that it's sick because it's not live.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 7 Live trees are way better. Yeah, we have two.

Speaker 1 I got to cop a tree?

Speaker 7 I got to get my tree. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like one week away. Yeah.
So?

Speaker 1 Get it?

Speaker 7 But no, you don't understand. The way I operate with Christmas trees, I get them up until February.
A little bit late. And I keep them up forever.

Speaker 7 I get my fill-in on the back end. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That thing's not gonna wait until after the super bowl daylight savings time is probably when it's time to take the tree down yeah my oh yeah january 10th that's a little early my guess but maybe super bowl yeah oh yeah january 18th sorry the divisional round um okay you got any more

Speaker 1 no

Speaker 1 okay let's wrap up the show numbers

Speaker 1 memes you ever gotten this no 92. oh look at you this is a new memes he's just admitting it three i did guess it though.

Speaker 7 No, you didn't. You didn't get it.
Everyone guesses it every week.

Speaker 1 You get it. Everyone can guess it.
No, you didn't.

Speaker 7 I'm guessing eight for my drug-added quarterback.

Speaker 1 All right. 17.

Speaker 7 94, Pug.

Speaker 1 21.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Reset.

Speaker 1 Reset.

Speaker 1 Good luck, memes. Thanks.

Speaker 7 Good luck to everybody here, too. Thanks, memes.

Speaker 1 Did you get like a new medication or something? No,

Speaker 1 75.

Speaker 7 Love you guys.