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

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We have our good friend kirk herb street on the show to talk

college football playoffs we also have incredible actor paul walter hauser on the show big fan of his pft is a big fan of his oh yeah we're talking everything with him we have hot seat cool throne we're going to talk monday night football unfortunately we're going to do faqs some great faqs from the listeners we got a max update on his foot the barstool golf time app makes it easy for golfers to find the best tee times at the best prices stop searching all over google for your next tee time start searching multiple courses in your area from one app it's annoying to have to create accounts for each individual course to book online just make one account with us at Barstool Golf Time and book all of your tee times. Plus, the new reservation sharing option allows you to take control and book tee times for your entire group.
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The fun of the NBA season continues with the simplest way to play for a shot to win big pick six from draft kings download the draft kings pick six app now use code take that's code take for new customers to play five dollars get fifty dollars and pick six credits happy holidays from draft kings pick six the crown is yours today is wednesday december 18th and i don't even know what to say 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 through together is wait are you talking about the bears yeah i'm talking about the bears i don't know what to say okay i don't know what to say i'm sorry that they keep putting the fucking bears on national television yeah it's uh it's i they've beaten it all out of me like there's I couldn't have.

Let me start with this.

I could not have been more wrong with everything I said this summer.

I've said it.

I've copped to that many times, but let me just do it one more time just so that people hear it again.

It could not have been more wrong.

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. They will always be based on bad fundamentals and hoping to get lucky from time to time and nothing done the right way.
And, uh, officially worried that, like, Caleb Williams might be like, I need to be traded because I still have hope for Caleb Williams. He has looked bad.
He did not look good on Monday night. But everything is broken.
The offensive line is so much worse than I expected. The defense without Iberflus is now, which is a very funny knife twist, that the defense was being held together by Iberflus.
Should Matt Iberflus be coach of the year? Maybe. 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. It is nowhere close to that.
It is closer to year one of the rebuild than it is year three. We've gone completely backwards.
I don't know. There's no path forward because the owners are going to be the owners.
George McCaskey 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.
These owners do not care about winning football games. They do not care about running an organization the correct way.
They are a joke. 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 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, 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.
And nothing's going to change because now they're stuck with a spot where they need a coach um they have a gm who i like personally i like ryan poles personally uh i've made that clear 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 and also he was probably the person who hired matt eberflus and kept him around. And that is an egregious miscalculation, especially the keeping him with Caleb Williams.
Ryan Poles should go. And then with Ryan Poles gone, Kevin Warren is now in charge.
And he's a fucking doofus. So, I don't really know what to do.
We should start fresh. They should fire Ryan Poles and Kevin Warren and start completely fresh.
They won't do that. 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. I'm officially retiring from ever getting to a 10 out of 10 excitement for the Chicago Bears

until something changes.

What changes?

Ownership, probably.

Anything could change.

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.

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

I'm 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, that's good.

Yeah, right.

It would be, what about Ben Johnson?

That seems good.

You hire Mike Vrabel to coach the defense and Ben Johnson to coach the the offense for the bears for the bears oh that's pretty good see i just went to pretty that what if you start seven and oh next year we'll see it probably won't last lovey lovey's last year i think we started seven or eight one what if you start a cliff five and two this year no pretty good they almost did start 5-2 yeah year? Nope. Pretty good.

He almost did start 5-2 this year.

Yeah, I know.

That was mean.

No, I know what he was doing.

I know what he was doing.

What if you got a new stadium done?

It's perfect.

I mean, Kevin Warren's not going to do shit.

Guy's a fucking doofus.

What if...

And Ryan Poles is not...

I mean, this roster is so bad.

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.
Defensive line's bad. Coach sucked.
Caleb's a rookie quarterback. He's been up and down.
Even the littlest thing of firing Matt Eberflus, 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, Caleb had looked good in those three games. 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 moments where it looked like ball getting out faster, everything's kind of looking a little bit better. Then they put Thomas Brown on the sideline.

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.

Okay.

What if you hire Ben Johnson, Mike Vrabel, Jameis Winston, backup quarterback?

Oh, that's nice.

If you score in the first half.

Oh, wow.

That won't stay.

You trade for Kyle Shanahan.

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

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.

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

Whatever. It's fine.
We'll see how it happens. This is bad.
This is sad. I've never seen you down the road.
No, because the biggest mistake I made was getting excited when nothing has changed. Structurally, foundationally, essentially, 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 McCaskey took over the team.

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. I can't wait to live in it.
And then I got in it 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.
And you fell into the termite now. Yeah, I've been hurt enough where it's just like, dude, 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.
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. So you're not even excited with one winning season? No, because they'll fuck it up long term.
That's what they do. It is broken from top to bottom.
We got embarrassed. I mean, fucking Doug Kramer again? How do we do that again? Yeah, not being told to report as eligible.
You're in the backfield, dude. Yeah, you get put your job.
Here's your job. 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.
To not go up to the ref and report, it seems ridiculous. 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.
He's like, oh, yeah, that was just an error. An oversight? Yeah.
The only guy who deserves to be captain, you took his captainship away accidentally. They're a non-serious organization that has no attention to detail.
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 i'm just not going to let myself get 10 out of 10 excited until something major changes and i'll get 6 out of 10 you'll say i'm i'm it's not it's not like i'm changing how i'm rooting it's just changing how i'm 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
Yeah. It's impossible.
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 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 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 candidate. 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.
I mean, he also, I mean, he had three-year rebuild and we're nowhere close to a rebuild. Your offensive line was so bad last night.
So bad. So bad.
And Caleb's been bad. I'm not going to say, oh my god, everyone's fault.
Well, they are faulting Caleb as an organization, but Caleb, 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.
Like that one where Roman Dunsay was open in the middle of the field, that was just Justin Fields, Mitch Trubisky flashbacks. Where it's like, this is happening again.
Caleb needs to get his groove back. Here's advanced statistics for you here.
Manalytics. Cable Williams with painted fingernails, four and three.
Without painted fingernails, oh and seven. Yeah, he needs to paint his fingernails again.
He lost his mojo. It's like when you see the killer whale in captivity and their fin is drooped over yeah it just all sucks i don't know what else to say it all sucks i'm not gonna i'm not gonna stop rooting as hard as i root 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 why because i mean we'll we'll revisit this in, I't know august or whenever they hire a new coach and then you know there's some good reports out of camp so when i say pretty good we'll see will you be upset if i say we'll see no not at all okay 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, we'll see.
We will be revisiting this clip. That's a promise.
This is post-loss clarity that he has. Correct.
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.
It's flashbacks to just like, you know, the end of the trust scenario when they were on a Monday night football game and they were just ripping everyone and then 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 I went to Mitch Trubisky uh John Fox's last game as a Bears head coach when Mitch Trubisky was a rookie and we got killed by the Vikings. I was at the game in Minnesota.
Like, this game happens every year.

So, I just, 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, Kirk Cousins, fine quarterback.

We all think, he made Kirk Cousins, what'd they win? 11 games that year. Last year, obviously, things fell apart.
He kind of tread water with Josh Dobbs. This year, Sam Darnold, who's been thrown to the trash pile a few different times, he's made him playing at elite level.
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 with sam donald i don't think they can make a mistake because they have kevin o'connell yeah like jj mccarthy would be fine because kevin o'connell's the coach yeah but i still think you got to keep sam i think you have to keep sam how much better could sam donald be playing right now then then he already is like how much better it's money would it be yeah but but let's just say he keeps playing like that.
Yeah. He's worth that money.
Right. But the, the, the argument, the counter argument is JJ McCarthy's getting paid a million dollars a year because he was, he's a rookie.
Right. And you could beef up everything else and all the other holes.
And that's how you win a Superbowl. But I listen, I mean, as good as he looked in the, 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.
But, like, Sam has played to the peak of his ability this year with, like, one or two exceptions. Yeah, it's just a rookie contract deal.
They're trying to win on that window. I wouldn't take that chance.
I think Kevin O'Connell is just so good that it doesn't matter. And, yes, Kevin O'Connell and the Vikings GM were hired in the exact same cycle as Ryan Poles and Matt Eberfluss.
He is a very good coach. Like a week after.
Like the Bears made the first move. All right.
You're a guy who doesn't. You don't know NFL details.
Now you do? It's context. I'm just providing context.
Memes are just saying that exact stat back here. Can you read it off, memes? It wasn't a week after.
The Bears hired. Yeah, it was both things happened.
Bears did the first move. Then the Vikings counter move was a better GM and a better head coach.
Oh, Cody Bellinger got traded to the Yankees? Breaking moves? What did he get traded for? Probably nothing because they wanted to get rid of his cash. I don't see any details on there.
Do we click it again? Let's see. Full trade.
Cash. I was right about that.
Go to cash. The New York Yankees.
Right hand reliever. Cody Poteet goes to the Cubs.
Yep. Cash.
There you go. Poteet.
Okay. So cash.
I have the tweet. Cash.
Okay. Go ahead.
Memes. A timeline.
January 25th. The most animated memes I mean I can't get mad Because I Listen I I make fun of other teams This is Memes you deserve this A timeline A timeline January 25th 2022 Bears hire Ryan Poles January 26th 2022 Vikings hire Kwisai Ad adafe mensa probably fucked that up january 27 2022 bears hire matt eberflus january 16th 2022 vikings hire kevin o'connell do you know what's probably gonna happen if i had to guess is that we're going to do the head coaching interviews and they're gonna be like hey are you comfortable with ryan poles and and the person's gonna lie and be like because they want the job they're gonna be like yeah that's fine and then we're gonna fire ryan poles next year and then so that way everything's then the coach has to fire hire the new gm and then the new gm comes in and has to fire the new coach yeah after like a year yeah the new coach isn't his guy we we knew we knew we were careening into a the timeline is fucked up last year and we didn't change it and we're doing it again this year where it's like you can just change everything the gm and coach and uh they won't do it and again i like ryan poles lot as a guy.
I just think that this has gotten so far away from him

and this roster has gotten so far away from him.

There's some mistakes that just happen, but you can't have ever thought,

like in retrospect, this offensive line was ever competitive.

Yeah, if you had to put your finger on it, what's the biggest problem?

Big Cat is the GM.

What if you're the GM?

10 out of 10? Yeah. So you'd be back no oh if i'm the gm yeah if i'm the gm um i try to woo virginia mccaskey like sleep with her yep okay then we have a child okay i don't think she can do that anymore okay so then we adopt a child and yes.
I don't think she can do that anymore. Okay.
So then we adopt a child and yes. Okay.
So Virginia McCaskey and I get married. 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 McCaskey and I, we get married, beautiful marriage, wonderful marriage.
And then I say to Virginia, hey, Ginny, that's what I call her. Hey, Ginny.
That's hot. I'm thinking about adopting.
And she says, okay, we should adopt. And then we adopt Theo Epstein.
And he saves the bears. I like that.
You like that? Yeah. Or you could adopt like seven homeless pit bulls and just lock her in a room with them.
Listen, very nice lady. Is she? Sure.
She doesn't let people. She's 101.
I don't know if she could do anything mean. Yeah.
Old people didn't do anything bad. Yeah, that's true.
Here's the thing. She is a quiet lady.
I don't even know if she talks. She doesn't let people wear Bears jerseys or uniforms or logos or merchandise in her box.
I think she might have the worst box in the NFL. It's an all-time fumble of a bag.
You fumble the organization that Papa Bear bought for a bushel of blueberries 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 ten. Six out of ten is as high as I'll go in the excitement meter.
Since I'm being tagged in it, I will respond to a question out there. Oh, great of the program ryan fitzpatrick he was uh he was on x.com the everything app it's all happening on x and i saw this do you see that it said name something worse than being a bears fan and his response was uh being friends with the bears fan and having to listen to them complain about the bears i want to to say that's not worse than being a Bears fan.
Yeah. Also, I can confirm that it's not worse.
My complaints are why a lot of people listen to this show. The sickos and perverts are loving the complaints right now.
Hank is having the best time ever. Hank, can you please remind PFT that they basically lost to the Bears? They did.
I mean, that's... Huh?

The commies are good.

They're in the playoffs.

Wait, what?

I mean, you're talking... Wait, wait, wait.

You love to do this, like, I'm bigger than you.

No.

But, like, you basically lost to this team.

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

This has nothing to do with the commanders.

I think that's much, much bigger than me.

This has nothing to do with the commanders.

No, he went through the whole...

He went through the whole new ownership phase.

Yeah, because guess what? I fucking lived it for... Yeah, now look at him.
He's in the playoffs. No, no.
It is true. 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.
That's me just saying something that's the truth. Max, what was that about you asking Hank to ask me? Hank has been one to say that the commanders basically lost to the Bears.
But why didn't you just say that? We're talking Bears, though. We're not talking commanders.
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 the Bears to be more successful than me.
Yeah. I want the Bears to be good.

I also don't hold any resentment towards Jaden Daniels, Drake May, Bo Nix,

Michael Penix, J.J. McCarthy, because I really do firmly believe that no matter what the draft order went,

it would have ended exactly here.

It would have ended exactly here.

You could have given us Drake May.

You could have given us Jaden Daniels.

You could have given us Bo Nix.

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.
It's crazy. Is it okay if I agree with that, Max, or would that be being bigger than Big Cat? No, you can agree.
You can agree. It's Eagles Commanders Week.
I'm on Commanders Alert. Okay.
Respect. I'm on Commanders Alert.
Respect. All right, so the Vikings are great.
Also, the good news is for Falcons fans, 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.
I didn't want to watch either game. Both games were awful.
But the Vikings and Falcons game was like, there was two block punts. There was penalties everywhere.
Kirk Cousins looked so bad. Desmond Ritter almost had a chance to win the game at the end.
Yeah, he had a drive where he could have got it done. There was an egregious roughing the passer call.
Yep. That was a horrific, horrific game played.
So, yeah. Bad Monday night football.
Bad, bad Monday Night Football. Vikings are really good, though.
Vikings are playing for the one seed. But, again, watching bad football, it's a deposit into the bank.
Yeah. And you always get rewarded.
We did that last Thursday. What did we get? We got Bills-Lions on Sunday.
It was a great game. Could have been better.
It was a great game. Yeah.
I mean, it was never really in doubt.

It was a great game, though.

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.

I didn't like the Vikings uniforms.

I've been consistent.

I said it with the Packers.

I'll just say it.

The NFC North and the AFC North, I'll actually say the NFC East as well. I'll throw them in there.
I'm trying to think what other divisions. Maybe the AFC East.
Those divisions shouldn't do weird uniforms. I mean, the Bills are just wearing Patriots jerseys this weekend.
They're wearing the white helmets, the red jerseys. Be original.
Why did that game get flexed into primetime? I don't fucking know. It is? Or into the afternoon.
It's 4 o'clock, and then next week we're playing on Saturday. Oh.
I just don't think traditional teams should do any types of... Like, the purple helmets, if it was the white jerseys and the purple helmets, I'd be fine.
Purple helmets are iconic. Yeah.
I agree with you. Listen, it was a weird look tuning into it.
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.
Kirk Cousins, after the game was over, though, they were talking to him on the sidelines. They were like, how do you feel about this? He's like, oh, it's hard to win this league.
Yada, yada, yada. And I said, how do you feel about about your play kirk and it looked like he was going to cry i thought kirk cousin was going to cry because he was a clearly i'm not playing up to my standard i think i think they might make a change i think so it might be pennix time yeah i mean why not yeah you're you're you're on the outside looking in and the bucks have a pretty easy schedule coming up uh where i think they finish with the saints and the panthers uh and they play the cowboys on sunday night i don't i think the bucks like if the bucks went out they obviously win the division they're up a game yeah so maybe you wait one more week and see if you you you know you're two games out and then you're like all right let's try it withix.
But I agree. Time for the future.
There's something wrong with Kirk. I don't know what it is.
Maybe he just got old. He's looked bad.
He's looked bad. But then we laughed at the Falcons on draft night.
It might have been a good move. Yeah, might have been a good move.
He's going to be better than Caleb Williams. Everyone is.
And then Caleb Williams, I think, actually will go somewhere else and be awesome. I still believe in him.
I'm never going to stop believing in him. Max, can we get an update on your foot? It was a good update.
Went to the foot doctor. I'm in a walking boot.
I still can't walk without crutches but uh my doctor said eventually within the next couple weeks i will be able to just use the walking boot which is big okay so nice no surgery he said you're not an athlete very very minimal chance that i need surgery did you tell him that you were an athlete i I would think like less than 1%. I did not tell him I was an athlete.
How long till you get out of your boot? I think he could tell. How long till you get out of your boot? I get re-evaluated in a month.
And did he say you could possibly be out then? Yeah, possibly. Oh, that's huge.
Possibly. You need to get out of that boot for Super Bowl.

So then you can re-break it on Bourbon Street.

Don't.

That was so fucked up.

Right before the Eagles Super Bowl.

That was so fucked up that you just said that.

Have you given your walking boot a voice?

I've not.

Does that sound like, hey, Max, put your sticky little toes inside you? Hey, it's me, Max. Hey, Max.
You're going to get so fat. Oh, Italy is a boot.
Yeah. You got the entire country of Italy on your foot right now.
Hey, Max, why don't you get a couple meatballs? Put some meatballs in your sake. Warm up your toesies with some meatballs and some sauce.
Yep, walking boot. Yeah, you got to get out of it before a Super Bowl.
Why? Because it will suck to be in New Orleans in a boot. Is that specifically because you think I'm going to break it again? No.
I want you to be out of the boot for the Super Bowl. I want to see you walking up those stadium steps bootless.
Yeah. Feeling good in the pants.
We got a lot of football. I don't want you to have to cut your pants.
Vikings are good. Vikings are very good.
It's tough to climb up a greased up light pole with a walking boot on, Max. Yeah, Vikings are really good.
I do have one of my pant legs cut right now. It looks good.
Yeah. People are Irish.
Max, do you want to say anything about Nick Sirianni getting alpha'd by the D-line coach? No, that's just like the culture. And that all the coaches feel comfortable enough to go up and have that conversation with Nick Sirianni.
Leader of men. 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.

Yeah.

It's like when brothers fight, but it's at the end of the day, we're brothers and common

goal of championships.

Right.

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, you better get the fuck away from Dan.

Right, because of all the Super Bowls that Dan Campbell and the Lions have won.

Oh, okay.

By the way, Dan Campbell, I did love his speech.

All right. Dan Campbell looking like they're going to strangle him, being like, you better get the fuck away from Dan.
Right, because of all the Super Bowls that Dan Campbell and the Lions have won.

Oh, okay.

By the way, Dan Campbell, I did love his speech.

Oh, it was so good.

I mean, the Lions, 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.

I think he'll be back for the playoffs, correct?

I don't know.

I don't think so. I think he has a torn PCL.

That could have been me reading Pro Football Doc. I think they're getting some of their linebackers back, maybe.
But it's a bad scene. But Dan Campbell went on a radio show and he pumped everyone up.
I don't know if you can find the clip, but listen, the Lions are there have been teams that have gotten this many injuries. The Lions have a significant amount of injuries.
I have the stat. I don't want to be like, 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.
Give Lions fans a little bit of give them a little leeway because they do have an insane amount of it. I'm going to think the same way i thought of the the ravens from like two seasons ago yeah remember that when they they got so banged up that even their mascot towards acl yeah that was a bad season and you can remember that ravens team for being good very good but also yeah but injuries yeah so the uh eight lions that are out for or that are on ir on the defense rank uh among the top 40 defenders in total epa no other team has more than two in the top 40 and 52 percent of detroit's defensive starters or direct backups are on ir yeah that's a lot hearing dan campbell talk about it though it did make me buy back into the Lions.
Yeah, of course. 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.

I think he said, we got new guys.

We're going to cut them loose.

Yeah.

So they're going to cut them loose.

If we give up 700 yards and win by one, you'll see me smiling ear to ear.

Yeah.

He's the one you'd want to go to battle with, with this type of stuff.

I have another question for Max. Max, do you think that jalen hurts has pretty privilege i saw that you see the discourse yes dominique foxworth said that jalen hurts has pretty privilege there's also another clip of he's interviewing i don't know if it's his wife or his daughter or something but but 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.
Yeah, it's like hot chicks hate when guys are like, oh my God, you're so hot. I didn't think this was going to get brought up, but I wish I got more information on that follow-up, because it did make me laugh laugh because it made it seem like he just hates Jalen Hurts because someone in his life thinks that he's hot.
Got it. The clip you saw was Foxworth interviewing somebody in his family.
This could be an egregious count of fake news. It's like David Tepper and his wife going out to dinner with CJ Stroud.
She loves CJ Stroud, so he's like, I'm going to draft Bryce Young.

Kind of.

Kind of like that.

Or it could have just been like a random person that he was interviewing.

Did your mic just cut out?

No.

I did that by accident.

But yeah, this is it.

Yeah, it's his wife.

He's mad that his wife is thirsting for...

Can I play the clip?

Yeah, play the clip.

This is the pretty purple. Fumble? Whose tush was being pushed? Daylin's only tushed.
Oh, I was your meet. Oh, yeah.
Yes, yes. That's very cool.
Alright, so when Foxworth brings that up, there's some beef there. Yes, yes, that's what I that's the information that I gathered, so I didn't take it too seriously.
Do you think that Jalen Hurts is pretty?

Yeah, he's handsome as hell.

I said pretty.

I didn't say handsome.

Pretty privilege.

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

I wish he acknowledged his privilege sometimes.

We don't all get the same treatment that he gets.

That's true.

That's true.

Listen, hot quarterbacks like Josh Allen and Big Ben,

they get treated differently.

You'd think the media would be nicer to Jake Hayner. He should have pretty privilege.
Yeah, memes just AI'd me so much. Memes is on an AI binge right now.
You said Jake Hayner, just reminded me. He's on a generational run of AI.
He really is. And also, Max, remember maybe six months after you started on the show, you made the remark that Memes is obsessed with me.
Memes is obsessed with you. Yeah.
You're right. That's a fact.
I looked at the light again. Ugh.
All right. We have the best booth in the biz, guys.
We do. We do.
We absolutely do.

Should we kick it to ourselves?

I got to process this Cody Bellinger.

I feel like if they did the money for more Kyle Tucker money,

then it makes sense.

Otherwise, the Cubs are just cheap.

So wait, did the money go to the Yankees?

No, the Yankees are paying the Cubs.

Is that what it was?

Yeah, the Yankees traded cash.

I've also seen a couple tweets now that said, I would like to to buy Cody petite stock. Oh, okay.
Great. Let's go.
That could be good for you. Cubs are back.
That's all I really need to say. I think the Cubs are going to go with just like, hopefully Kyle Tucker hits 45 home runs.
No, big guy. Suzuki hits like 30 and we win every game to nothing.
It says Cody Bellinger and cash go to the New York Yankees. Oh, we're paying? So you're paying the Yankees 5 million.
That's what I... Oh, but we're getting out of 20 million.
Correct. You're saving money on the long term.
You're only giving 5. Yeah, yeah.
Good investment. Yeah.
That's according to Bob Nightingale. Cheap.
Cheap. Fucking cheap.
Which is, you know... Yeah, who knows? 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.
Okay, Hot Seat, Cool Throne. Holiday party fails can turn into a great story that ends with a toast over Coors Light.
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Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. Henry, Coors Light.
Love Coors Light. Holiday season.
Yeah. It's holiday parties, ugly sweaters.
I've got a Coors Light that's out on my deck, and I use it to monitor the temperature, depending how blue the mountains are. I love that.
Last week, the bluest mountain I've ever seen in my life. It was like an Eves Klein blue.
It was perfect. Yeah, so celebrate responsibly.
Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. Hank, hot seats, cool throne.
My hot seat is Chris Hansen in NFL Red Zone. Not Chris Hansen.
Scott Hansen. Yes.
Chris Hansen, the one-seeking seat guy. Yeah, one-seeking seat over there.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sorry, Scott. They called it the Pred Zone.
Mm-hmm. Did he get? No, Chris Hansen.
Scott Hansen got railroaded. No, but Chris.
By me and by his company. Let's stay on Chris Hansen for a second chris hansen i forgot like he got 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 i'm pretty sure that that was i remember the story i remember the guy from cheaters was that joey greco that got stabbed on the episode on the boat yeah which, on the boat, which might have been fake, but I believe it's real.
I believe it's real. Yeah, so Chris Hansen, I believe, was caught having an affair with a colleague 20 years a junior by a hidden camera and fired from NBC for it.
He was caught in his own videotape sting, yeah. That's so funny.
Wait, it was his own videotape sting? It was like his show? He forgot the video skin was real? 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 wow i want to get ahead of something uh we had cameras set up in the studio on sunday because hank's doing the the part of my take documentary yep 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 uh i forgot that the camera was there and that was on and i i farted real loud like nine times who cares like time stamps dude who cares by the way shane is on the sticks right now because max is getting his uh he 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 started playing um wait we're we're going a bunch of different side tracks but i want to stay on this real quick is is there a reason pug is not sitting where shane is or are we he's working pug's working there's a uh documentary coming out your memes you're not still mad at pug no we're good okay uh pft you know what i i you know what i'm gonna do for 2025 and I think this is... I don't give a fuck anymore, okay? Love that.
Like, farts. I caught my...
Someone was like, you picked your nose on a stream the other day? I was like, dude, I pick my nose every fucking day. I picked my nose also when I was 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. Don't care.
This is disgusting. Don't care.
But talking about farts, like, do you, like, when you have smelly farts and you're in the comfort of your own home, you like to just, like, fishbowl under the covers? It smells good. We go in real comfort of our own homes? Yeah.
Because I enjoy it. I'm, like, the smellier, if I'm by myself, the smellier, the better.
This one's disgusting. I get excited.
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. 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 extra.
You get it simmering a little bit? Yeah. Give it a little extra juice.
I've never done that.

That's the gross shit. I might start doing that.
What I do sometimes is I'll turn the heater off when I fart. That way it doesn't blow the smell away.
Yeah, right. So I can just marinate it.
This is also fucked up, but I was thinking about this. In New York, if I had farts on the train, I would just let them loose.
That is fucked up. And then I would be like,

because obviously no one's going to like accuse random people on the subway, but I would always act like I smelt it too. I'm like, Oh, who the fuck? Yeah.
Right. Like, oh, gross man.
Basically like, you know, getting the, getting the scent off yourself. Cause if someone else looks around and disgust, then you're also like, yeah, this is, who the fuck? Yeah.
That's the worst behavior ever on a subway hank yeah yeah it's bad on a subway you don't fart on elevators but yeah hank you gotta smell your own farts all right so um scott hanson red zone i 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 get ready for seven hours of commercial free uh football and on sunday they ran commercials they ran commercials now i feel a little bad 30 seconds i do feel a little bad because this is uh 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 we're able to we're lucky enough to be able to have every game on um and i wish i had known this to speak for the people on sunday because this is bullshit this is you have a duty and this is not scott hansen's fault this is the people behind whoever sold these commercials seven hours of commercial free football and you just completely rug pulled them this is worse than hock to a who did nothing wrong she's still sleeping she's still sleeping she's still not made a statement oh she did her statement was hey y'all i'm kind of tired i'm gonna go to bed see you tomorrow gonna bed all right all right bye uh yeah i all right so 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 uh i don't know if i blame scott hansen i think i might blame scott hansen because jeff de lowe showed me a very interesting video the other day okay he was asked to rank his top five Red Zone sayings Like the the Scott Hansen sayings, Scott Hansen isms. He's claiming the witching hour as being his saying 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 might have. I feel I do feel like there was a time when you brought it up to him and then he started using it.
That is definitely how I remember it as well. You brought up the witching hour phrase and then he started saying it.
I think he tagged part of my take when he started saying it. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah. Do you guys have a name for, I'm going to call it like the 3 to 4 p.m.
hour that happens when you get just like all the games coming down to the wire, and there are like four close finishes at once. Do you have a nickname for that? Yeah, simply it's not really creative, but I call it the greatest single hour in sports television.
It's the witching hour. We call it the golden hour.
It's the witching hour. Witching hour or golden hour? Yeah, it's the witching hour.
The golden hour is right at sunset. Witching hour is the three to four.
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. I promise I will do that.
I remember it that way as well. We're giving credit to Mike Francesa.
Yeah. But but he gave credit to us but now the credit has faded away so are we so we're blaming scott hansen this is like an al capone we got him for tax evasion yeah yeah exactly so it's like we're not saying that he's in trouble for the uh commercial free we're just we're lumping it all he's getting a rico case right.
All I'm saying is, it never had commercials when Siciliano was around. That's true.
That's true. This is bullshit.
This is bullshit. I mean, what's next? Yeah, what, if Red Zone's not going to be commercial-free, like, what is next? Do people...
I struggle with Red Zone. That's all I'm going to 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.
I love red zone. I do.
I just can't. 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 like, I don't even think we can really comment.
Yeah. No, you're right.
You no one has seven tvs yeah but no youtube tv now you can use you can at least do four you can do multi-view yeah but they only have sound on yeah yeah i have a prediction hank's asking yeah witching hour he's looking for it he's he only recently started saying it in the last few years uh what are you saying i have a prediction hank asked what's next

are they gonna start putting commercials in movies like we have product placement now that's been around that's been a thing for a while yeah are they gonna have commercials like in the court like a 15 second break yeah that would be what's next commercials and podcasts I can see it.

I'm out.

I'm out.

Coors Light.

Hot seat.

Scott Hansen. would be what's next commercials and podcasts i could see it i'm out i'm out course light scott hansen 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 he's just going nuts uh imagine if scott hansen had like walked out yeah that would have been a hero 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 he would have had conviction I always love when people are like yeah you should just walk out it? 10 minutes of our respect? Yeah.
We would have forgotten about it the second the Bills and Lions kicked off. 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.
And then Greg Rosenthal would have walked on the set. We love Greg.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
This guy rocks. Yeah.
Like Red Zone. They also could have done it without Scott Hanson and people half the people wouldn't even notice yeah yeah uh and my cool throne

is shitty money grab fights involving one of the Paul brothers okay what's going on

Conor McGregor uh tweeted that the rumors of a bout with Toporio are false I'm in preliminary

agreements with the Mbondi Mbondi family to face Logan Paul in a boxing exhibition in

Thank you. out with taporeo or false i am in preliminary agreements with the imbani and imbani family to face logan paul in a boxing exhibition in india i have agreed i will then seek my return to the octagon he's like 100 years old he hasn't fought in forever he's just going to do a boxing match for slogan paul it's probably going to suck how many times are we going to fall for the the paul fight i'm sick of it yeah like.
I'm sick of it. So they fight someone who's actually at the top of their game.
You know what? I will boycott this fight. If I do watch it.
If it's on for free. It'll be a pirated stream.
I'll probably watch. I will pirate the stream.
It depends. But I will not.
Don't box yourself in yet. I will not watch it on a legitimate stream.
Because they could easily do this fight on a Saturday at 9 p.m. in July, and you're sitting on the couch.
You're like, oh, I guess so. I won't pay for it.
I'm with PFT. It's on a streaming platform for free that I already have.
I'm not going to go as far as saying I won't. I most likely won't.
I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it.
I'm going to break the law. This is entrapment.
You're forcing me to break the law. You can only push a man so far.
That's facts. Okay, PFT, your hot seat.
Good job, Hank. Nice job, Hank.
Great job, Hank. Thanks.
Minus the Scott Chris thing. That's okay.
My hot seat is Doug Gottlieb. That's mine, yeah.
Doug Gottlieb on the hot seat uh our boy adam schefter reported yesterday that sacramento state was in discussions to hire mike vick as their head coach head football coach and along with that report he also posted that um sacramento state has over 50 million dollars in nil money at their behest that they can contribute to building the program. 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. Shefty did not take that laying down.

No. He said 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.

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 i give that round of shefty absolutely i give that round of shefty now i i did see some fact checking of shefty saying that the 50 million dollars for sacramento state is contingent on them falling through on their roadmap and then being accepted into the pac-12 down the line. So it's not like Sacramento State has $50 million laying around.
Yeah, someone's like, hey, if you get us into the big conference, we will give you $50 million. That's not $50 million right now.
Yeah, but Doug Gottlieb, people forget he's hosting his radio show and also doing a bad job coaching college basketball team. Yeah.
He's like the Travis Hunter of media. And he's, yeah, I think he's, has he won a game in December? Because the famously it beginning of December, Doug Gottlieb posted, it's the most wonderful time of the year.
And it was a meme. December, 2024.
And it just has like all the days color coded. And it's like December 2nd 6th, pretend to work.
December 9th through 13th, don't even pretend anymore. 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. Now, to be fair, he's had a gauntlet of a schedule.
So he's lost to Evansville, Campbell, Cleveland State. He also has done.
He's doing things like his way. I don't know the exact details, but I just saw it.
I just saw it inancing through like maybe a week ago, I guess his point guard or one of his best players was not playing his way. So Gottlieb 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.
I like that. Credit to Doug Gottlieb.
Maybe it's just not in the cards. Do you think? Now, again, we love Shafty.
He's our guy. That response definitely was because Doug Gottlieb wasn't so far off.
I think, what's the old saying? Well, they get sensitive. The insiders get sensitive.
The insiders get sensitive. Me think the lady doth protest too much.
Yeah. Let them eat cake.
Well, I think they do say that. I think that Shefty is on high alert after the hijinks that was pulled by Mike Malarkey against Ian Rappaport.
We should talk about that again because it's such a dirty move and not hilarious at all that Mike Malarkey did that. Did you guys see John Heyman's meltdown? No.
The insiders are having a really bad time right now. They're having a really bad time.
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.
Yeah, that's a no-no. Which is a funny thing to say.
All these guys are just so funny because they just cannot stand anyone poking fun of the idea that they're breaking news two seconds before the team does. So the insinuation here was that John Heyman.

And 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 like lashed out too.

Yeah.

So Heyman is being accused of getting money from Scott Boris.

Yeah.

In a joking way.

So it would play the end of it.

Do you think Scott Boris would ever like give any of his money to a reporter? No. Hell no.
Play the end of it. Let's see if Shane can do it.
Maybe not that far. All right, right there.
No sound. Shane.
Shane's getting cooked right now. Shane's getting cooked by the people.
There's lot of jobs uh in the sports world especially you know being in it like the insiders has never seemed appealing in any way shape or form at any no it doesn't even matter when when shepter gets these big contracts it's like his his life is so stressful yeah there's no there's no time when you're not stressed. I don't know how it's enjoyable.

Yeah.

The only joy that Leroy ever got out of breaking stories was the fact that he was beating the insiders.

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

It's a crazy life.

All right.

I'll pull it up because she's too weird.

I apologize right now.

I'm not a bully.

Wait.

You're playing two things right now. You're playing two things.
Clearly, it just ended the phone call. Or maybe they're just talking over to you.
Shane, go back. Go back.
I did not expect it to. John.
Go back a little. At some point, I think someone could probably drop it if they're a nice person.
What I think is, one, it's just like how I introduced you. Everybody in baseball knows who you are.
So, one, it's a credit to your work, your following. By the way, I won't be going out with you again.
The whole thing is a disaster. He's crying.
That's okay. I can't even believe you said that to question my integrity.
Are you being serious right now? I'm being serious, yeah. John.
Ask me if I'm getting a cut because 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 comment. It's Friday night at 830, John.
You should know that much. And I am not taking this that serious.
Goodbye. John, thank you for joining us, John.
I can't even believe it. Thank you, John.
I can't even believe it. I appreciate you.
The end. I can't even believe it.
They're getting upset 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. They now yeah me just got out at the right time memes attacking Rossini yeah he was crying the other day about that warranted and correct how we found the story yeah no he did find the story it was not even close to what he said I know what this is he said probable she said probable it is very funny that you you's what she said.
I think she said discussions were being had regarding this thing.

Yeah.

It's likely or probable.

She didn't say like fact, which is how you reported it.

Like this is basically a Scooby-Doo meme.

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 because you make up more stories than they do.

That's probably true.

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.

And then he has his own grok, his own AI inside of his head that summarizes it rewrites it and then that's the report yeah it's probably true yeah i'm not paying for that shit okay okay all right that's all i got okay um where were we oh hot seat was over cool throne cool throne is combat. We got a new combat sport that we have to start paying attention to guys.
It's better than power slap. It's better than arm wrestling.
It's the ultimate dick kicking championship. Oh, two guys just stand across from each other and kick each other in the dicks until one guy gives up.
Oh, and it's another one of these sports, like Power Slap, that was designed just for the clips, basically, because you will share and you will watch clips of two guys kicking each other in the dick. To me, it might as well just be, yeah, watch this video.
Boom. Just taking it.
I like this. Should we do it? Should we do it? So, to me, this might as well be the ultimate coin flipping championship because if you go first you should win every time oh i like this we should do this on stool streams you want to get involved yeah ultimate dick kicking why not at some point this will be like a national event.
Yeah. The clips are just too good.
It's also funnier.

Yeah. Ultimate dick kicking? Why not? At some point, this will be like a national event.
Yeah. The clips are just too good.
It's also funnier than slap, right? It's much better. They should have a women's division.
Yeah. I would have preferred if it was just like they were throwing balls at each other from across the ring.
So there was a level of skill. Sitting on the ground with your legs open in gym shorts no one blindfolded and then and then rolling a tent or rolling a basketball as hard as you can at the other person guys really need to get girlfriends these days i love that do you guys see those posts i i like that there's a ref in it yeah like what's the ref's job to police the ultimate dick kicking the the um i don know if you guys in the algorithm, like where people would just be like, you know, guys can't, you know, all these women aren't dating guys anymore.
It's like society's fucked up. It's like, maybe we're just because you're spending all day on, on your burner account on Twitter and not just going to the bar.
Like, I feel like there's a whole world out there of people still dating and meeting girls. Yeah.
Going going to the bar yeah yeah the discussion that's happening online is not real life yeah uh go out have a drink touch glass yeah 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 yep my other My other cool throne is the Boca Raton Bowl. That's tonight, Wednesday.
You guys, long time, real ones on part of my take. We'll remember that we sponsored the Boca Raton Bowl back in 2016.
Yeah. I think.
I'm trying to remember the full name. The awareness.
The Bernie Madoff, wet the beak, Ponzi awareness, Boca Raton Bowl. Presentedca Raton Bowl.
Presented by Barstool Sports. Yeah.
So Western Kentucky-Memphis was the first matchup of it back in 2016. And who can forget the Royal Rumble, the intern Royal Rumble that we had at halftime with Glennie Balls, Tommy Smokes, Hubs, Robbie Fox.
Jesus. Who else was in that Royal Rumble? Glennie went to the hospital.
Yeah, Glennie went to the hospital what a great time that was and then we're telling what the beak ponzi scheme awareness bowl presented by part of my day presented by parcel that feels like a different life ago it really does we had caleb down there with a trophy who snuck onto the field at the end of it that was actually electric electric and so he presented that he had to go to the hospital yeah it's almost an issue yeah the bowl 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 to raise awareness for it and we sent caleb down there he presented the official trophy uh to western kentucky after the game western kentucky kentucky last i checked has that trophy in their official trophy case at the school yes they. They're playing in it again tonight.
They're in the Boca Raton Bowl and they're playing against James Madison. I love it.
I want that fucking trophy. What was that kid's name? Mikey Electric or something? Yeah, something like that.
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. I will go down there and steal that trophy back if I have to, if JMU beats Western Kentucky tonight.
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. Okay.
My hot seat was also going to be Doug Gottlieb, but we discussed that in detail. Gottlieb.
I still can't believe he's coaching. It's pretty crazy.
It's pretty crazy. I'll do a different hot seat.
I was thinking about this because we were talking about it on Sunday. We had Jonathan Taylor and then the Bengals player.
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? I guess the Leon Lett, but that happens very rarely. Yeah, if you Leon Lett.
No, I got another one. Dan Orlovsky.
Dan Orlovsky, yeah. The Orlovsky.
Yeah, Dan Orlovsky's a bad one. It's crazy, but 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. When somebody drops the ball, then you do think about him, but that's not his enduring legacy, but he does own the legacy of that play.
Orlovsky's a good one. Leon Lett's funny because he's got two of them.
Yeah. 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.
Dan Beebe? No, Don Beebe. Don Beebe.
I don't know why I said Doug. Yeah.
I'm trying to think what you're saying the double doink? That happens like once. Never.
Yeah, not really. Yeah, very, very rare.
Oh, butt fumble. Oh, yeah.
Chris Webber. But it's not as much.
Chris Webber's a good one. Chris Webber's a good one.
Because it's not like the double doink and the butt fumble are kind of hard to replicate. I'm talking about a play that happens that everyone's like, Deshaun Jackson.
Like it's a negative play play, and everyone says Deshaun Jackson. Orlovsky and Chris Weber are great ones.
Kirk Cousins, fourth down play. Check down.
Check down. On the positive side, in hockey, the Michigan goal.
Which one? If somebody does something, they do the wraparound. Oh, yeah, the wraparound.
They call that a Michigan. Yeah, that was just part of the NCAA highlight package for that commercial for 100 years.
Anytime you get jumped, I got bizzed. I got bizzed, but took some, gave some more.
Gave more. Gave some more.
I read the police right up behind that. So they did the police report.
You probably saw some of the videos where the guy was like, this guy, not a lick of fat on him. but like dwayne the rock johnson there was a written report that came out where these guys were just fucking terrified of biz yeah like this guy was out in the parking lot screaming at all of us like i'm gonna fuck you guys up with biz is my hero yeah he's legitimately my hero he uh he 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 of his ass.
It's just amazing. It was just incredible.
Well, it's an outstanding, tremendous restaurant, and it's unbelievable. And he goes there four to five times a week, and the staff is unbelievable.
Great organization. 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're an unbelievable guy.
Someone should do something. something i did something he's the fucking best oh he's a one-on-one guy uh are then my cool throne uh is ryan russell on the uvm soccer team because they won the national championship i don't know if you guys saw this it was kind of a cinderella story they were unranked uh they made an incredible run uh i think they survived a two overtime game in 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.

And, yeah, they were unranked, and they won it all.

So shout out Rosillo.

And Jake.

Very cool Jake.

And Jake.

Yeah.

And Patrick Sharp.

Yeah, it was an awesome finish.

Yeah.

Great job, UVM. The Cats.
Okay. Taylor Coppenrath.
Taylor, yes. Who's that? What was the kid's name? Lamb? Was it Anthony Lamb? Yeah.
That was the Jake era. Yeah, that was the Jake era.
Anthony Lamb. Coppenrath was from the parking lot.
Was it Laranega? No, that was a fish. That was George or George Mike.
I know he's at George Mason. He didn't go to Vermont.
Yeah. All right.
Yeah. Story.
Yeah, we got it all. It was Dierks Bentley that Priscilla was friends with freshman year.
Oh, Sorrentino's from the parking lot. Oh, geez.
No, it was what's his name? This is great UVM history right now. Goaltender from the Bruins.
No. Oh, Tim Thomas? No, but I think he was friends with, was it Dierks Bentley? He was friends with a country star freshman year.
It might have been Dierks. It might have been Dierks.
We're doing some really good stuff. Yeah, stuff yeah dirks bentley spent a year at vermont there we go became dirks bentley and russo number one number one guy russo uh 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, really great actor.
Really cool interview.

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Give Tommy John this holiday tradition and a great days begin with great underwear. Hurry to tommyjohn.com slash PMT for your last minute holiday gifts and save 30% site wide 30% off just in time only on tommyjohn.com slash PMT if you're listening to this right now you haven't bought a gift for your husband boyfriend dad anyone anyone out there the underwear Tommy John is top notch they also have great sweatshirts joggers everything but the underwear is the best you're gonna have to need the stocking stuffers do it right now with tommy john tommyjohn.com slash pmt for last minute holiday gifts and save 30 percent site-wide 30 percent off just in time only at tommyjohn.com slash pmt okay here he is kirk herb street okay we now welcome on a very special guest friend of the the program, recurring guest.
It is Kirk Herbstreet getting ready for the college football playoff. 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. And I don't, I hate to have to start in a negative light.
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. What I'm talking about is the Bo Perbula transfer portal with Penn State.
And 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.
The college football playoff has still yet to be played. We always knew this was a screwed-up system, but Bo Perbula 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 the transfer portal and this is the first time that it feels like i knew 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 how the hell do we fix this this this is it's crazy yeah yeah i mean we've been talking about this for so long you know how nutty this is and how it's easy to blame the players I think it's easy to look at it like how selfish are these guys but I think if if you put yourself in their shoes I think the calendar and the way it's set up is is difficult I don't know Bo's case because I know Prestonon Stone and there's some other guys that have entered the portal, but they're staying with their team and into the playoff, like at SMU getting ready.
I don't know why he felt the need to be able to enter the portal but then leave. Maybe you guys can help me with that.
I don't understand that aspect of his specific story on why he's leaving the team. 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. I know it's a little bit of revolving door, especially at that position when it comes to the portal.
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 where's the best fit for them 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 way. Yeah.
And it's the calendar. 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 here's 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 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 may have kind of thing? And then we got to 2020 and COVID and everything kind of changed in a realignment.
And then we've kind of gotten into this world now where players are able to leave whenever they want to leave. We have NIL, obviously, that is a huge part of this.
But if you even follow the NFL model, the players have restrictions. You can't be on the Bears and just say, oh, the hell with this season.
I'm going to the Lions. You have a contract.
You have to follow the contract. The NFL has very stringent rules.
This is what we do as a team. This is what you're allowed to do.
This is what the players can do. So this whole idea of the players in college is doing whatever the hell they want to do.
Is it isn't the right thing? Like it's not like like my kids, I had four sons. 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, 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. I'm taking the keys.
And the coach is kind of like, well, okay, he's going to take the keys. What am I supposed to do? You have zero power.
And it's cool to be that player and have fun, but it's not cool for you in the long term for your growth and where you're trying to go as a human. It might be fun for 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 shit 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. 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 get a new job, 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. 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. 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. We're still governing the sport in the 80s and the sport is in 2024.
It's more of a national sports. We need a national view on how we govern the sport.
So we somehow need to get that national view to partner with a players union, create a CBA where you're held accountable. Okay, we're going to agree on NIL.
Here's the rules we're going to agree on for NIL. Both sides agree.
Here's the deal with portal, transfer portal. Both sides agree.
And whatever they ultimately come up with, it's a contract. And we sign.
And then we obey the contract on both sides. I think that's where it's gotten.
How we get there, I have no idea. But players just kind of coming and going and zero accountability to their team that that's not healthy at all yeah and it really takes away from from what this sport is about which is the team trying to win games yeah you know that that's what this is all about it it's a bummer and and i don't i don't blame bo perbue at all because the schedule is screwed up where you know it's it's still based on enrolling for classes.
And that's the real problem is that like 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.
You can't be like maybe it's the transfer portal just happens in the spring or after the spring semester, but then coaches will be upset because they don't have their team set for spring ball, all that stuff. But yeah, for Bo's 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.
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.
But, yeah, the system just is screwed up. I don't know how they fix it, but it just really stinks.
Some stuff is going to change once the schools start to – they get to pay the players directly now. I think that starts, what, next season? So things are going to be – It's supposed to be a big thing in April.
I think something's going down in April. Hopefully by next year there's a new set of circumstances.
Hopefully that'll be the case. Yeah, so there'll have to be new rules put in place for that as well.
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 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 and you get hurt, now what happens? Because, like, if you're – let's say you're Mizzou and you want Bo Pabula and he's like, I'm going to keep playing for Penn State, but I'm signing with you guys, he gets hurt.
Mizzou's not going to want him to play in those games. You know what I mean? Maybe just make the transfer portal happen after the championship game.
We don't have NFL free agency before the Super Bowl. But that's where the school schedule.
But then now we're going to pretend like these guys, the reason why they're at that school is for class. 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. How was the reception when your son committed to Michigan? That caused some waves.
Yeah, I've kind of stayed out of that world a little bit. 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. So I just decided it's one thing to take shots at me, but if you take shot at my kid, um, and you want to get in a fight, it's not hard for me to want to do that.
So I just, I just try to ignore, uh, that stuff the best that I can and just kind of stay focused on the positive. What an opportunity for him.
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. Ohio State did not really pursue him to the point of offering him a scholarship.
And they were close to, they're like, listen, man, this new rule, that's the big thing with this new world that you talked about. 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, but it's going to go down to 105. So you can only have 105 guys on your team.
Now you can put 105 on scholarship, but a lot of these guys are not, they're just kind of in a wait and see approach. 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.
He's kind of in that area where he's fighting. Most of those guys, big schools like Michigan, Ohio State, and Notre Dame, the schools that he was looking at the most, they're

almost, hey, why don't you go to the MAC? We're going to bring in this poor 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. So Che got a huge opportunity to do this.
Jerome Moore and his

I'm just... up being young players and investing and hoping that they become a great player.
So Che got a huge opportunity to do this. Jerome Moore and his staff believe, and I think they've seen his competitive spirit, his fire, and what he did on the field this year to give him this opportunity.
And, you know, it's very different for our family because our family behind the scenes is scarlet and gray our whole lives. You know, Big Cat would be like you having a son that was, he's Wisconsin born and bred, brainwashed, and all of a sudden he goes to Michigan.
Yeah. 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.
He was part of the senior class of the Ohio State players. So it was a family-only event this past Sunday.
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.
So I was a little bit, should I go? Should I not go? And I went because I need to be there for my other son. It was a very cool event, by the way.
Each position coach would, you know, 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 and mecca buka like like they've been through some stuff you know not only lost it to mishkin but just personal stuff so it was very heartfelt uh day to be there to watch that but uh you know i talked to chip kelly afterwards talked to ryan day afterwards nobody said anything it was like yeah it was like okay yeah i'll be here for you

you know i it was just kind of like business mode yeah and but that's that's good by me yeah that's good i mean you're smart to stay out of the uh out of the fray because i agree like you know if if someone says something about your kids it's it's on, it's on site. That's smart to just ignore all of it, but congrats to him.
And a compliment. He's got some balls.
He's got conviction, so that's a man that knows what he wants. Yeah.
No doubt. It's cool.
No doubt. It's definitely another wrinkle to the rivalry.
All right, so let's go to Ohio State because you're going to be calling that game. 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 insanely, insanely talented.
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. 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? 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 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 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 the Michigan game.
And nobody's seen really Ohio State since the fight at the end of the game. 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? How did this happen again? Kind of feeling.

And now, you know, Michigan's going to play in a bowl game and Ohio State's going to a playoff game. And I think there's the fodder that's out there on social media.
Screw Ryan Day. Screw, you know.
But, you know, the worst – I've heard people say everything. I hope they lose the first game and he's fired.
I mean, just bizarre set of circumstances for a team that's, as you said, one of the most talented is in the playoff hosting a playoff game. And you've got that kind of noise by a fraction of your of your fan base.
So I think the reality is what matters most is the players uh seem to be super engaged they kept talking about this isn't good almost every guy up there that talks said

man this isn't goodbye you know we got four more to go you know it was just it was i don't know how many times i said i heard we have four more games to go 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 down the line. And I think they believe that kind of like if you go back to the team with CJ Sproud, when they lost 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 Georgia's credit, Georgia ended up making the plays at the end of the game to win it.
The vibe of the players reminds me of that. At the end of the day though, guys, are they good enough? We can talk all day about Jeremiah Smith and all the receivers and all that, but the offensive line.
Yeah. If you really watch the Michigan game, you know, when they lost the center from Alabama, Seth McLaughlin, when he went down with Achilles, I think that offensive line is a serious question mark going up against Tennessee's strength, which is their defensive front.
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.
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. I don't know if that's true.
But just the vibe inside that stadium. If things are going great, it'll be obvious, be right in their corner cheering a little crazy.
If Will Howard throws a pick, how will the crowd react? If the poor field goal kicker who missed two against Michigan happens to miss a kick, how will the crowd react? If Tennessee gets a sack and a score, a fumble and a score, how will the crowd – 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. 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.
I agree with you because I think Ohio state, they've been training, they've been practicing with a lot of pissed off energy. They've been very, very angry, right? So you've got to channel that somehow.
And I think they're channeling their anger, obviously, into preparing for the football playoff. But if something goes wrong, all that emotion that you've put in, all that pissed off energy quickly can turn on you.
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 um the the home field advantage 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 they're not doing like the normal game day operations at these schools they're bringing in the national guys so

it's not like the uh the scoreboard guys or the uh in stadium audio guys are going to be the normal ohio state people that run the show it's going to be like a uh 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? I don't know, man. 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 on the field, it'll be like a neutral site feel, 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. 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 in the home field.
It's, I don't, I don't know how they're going to do it. I'm reading the same things you're reading.
But that, that, that, 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. With Notre Dame on Friday night in Indiana, 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? Are they going to get online and scoop up as many tickets as they can and try to, you know, have a big showing because it's such an easy drive to go from Bloomington up to South Bend? 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 uh which obviously is a huge advantage for the home team you know in normal set set of circumstances yeah i heard no hang on sloopy they're not doing they're not doing that either that's that's worth at least four points right there yeah yeah yeah let me again at the risk of getting in trouble, I think there are schools that do an incredible job with their game ops.
You know, like you go into the SEC, I think the home crowd and the people who run those stadiums, they look at themselves as our job 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 quarterbacks, you know, saying the signals and barking out the cadence, 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.
We're going to go right to the line. We're going to maybe get a letter from the SEC commissioner that we can't do that.
That our goal every home and in the big 10 i i think there's a few stadiums that do that but i just feel you guys tell me i feel like the big 10 is a little more traditional yeah a little more of the band has as much to do with the the 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 yeah 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 it's insane during the tv timeout and at ohio state it's 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. Let's all have a, let's get on our feet and show them some appreciation for the 1973 cold big 10 champ.
And it's like, yeah, no, 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. Like, we don't have the light show.
I see the light show at Georgia and Auburn. Or the DJ.
And it's awesome. Yeah, it's insane.
The light show always, I'm like, why don't we have a light show music dj like feed the energy feed don't take it away it's so true all the way feed it yeah you should go right up to that line yeah those those guys are doing a great job if that's how they approach the game it's like i'm gonna do everything that i can to to fuck with the opponent even though my job is to sit in a booth with a lanyard on around my neck and like an officially issued team polo i'm out there making a difference i like that mentality yeah yeah i agree i agree it's like if you go to an nhl game i you know 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 that's a challenge man it's just a different world that we live in a lot of people's attention span isn't the same and it's easy to like get to a you know tv time out take a seat look on your phone check out what's going on and all of a sudden it's like oh 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 an easy not an easy thing to do in 2024. It's so true so uh 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.

Let's start Friday night.

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.

So I don't know. It's not that I don't trust him.
It's just we don't know. Right.
And can Indiana put him in a place where they get him in those third down situations where he's got to make plays with his arm, not just his legs, with his arm. I'm excited to see that.
And Rourke, I've been blown away by that kid. Their whole story, I was early kind of like, it's Indiana, it's a cute story.
And then I just kind of kept watching him and thought, and I stood next to Rourke in the Ohio State game. I was like, damn, 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.
I think of all of them, that might be a guy that stands out to me. I don't know how much you've watched Tennessee, but Tennessee with Josh Heupel, we go back to

Hendon Hooker or Milton. What do you think of think of 50 yard bombs just taking shots in that offense because that's who they've been this year total opposite Tennessee team yeah they play to their strengths let's play defense let's run our all SEC running back Dylan Sampson and let's take care of care of the quarterback.
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.
Is that good enough to win in this environment? 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.
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 his recruiting story. Yeah, 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.
I just think because of the experience, I think there's a little bit more trust there. But do you trust the offensive line? I don't think you can because of the injuries um the clemson texas game again man it's it's just been this i know you know i i asked that question because when you look at the quarterbacks in this playoff it's fair it's it's it's really up and down for a lot of guys.
Kevin Jennings at SMU. Yeah.
He's a kid that, again, I don't know how many people listening to this or watching this, that watched SMU football this year. But they started with Preston Stone, who's a little bit more traditional.
And now they've got a version of a dual threat guy that they spread you out. You've got to try to cover everybody.
And then this guy's back there running around and has the ability to take off and run, has the ability to keep it alive and throw. 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. 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 it? And I looked at this morning at the forecast, all three games in Columbus, South Bend, and State College, no snow. But you're talking about in the 20s, 20 degrees.
Not that it favors, 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 these teams in the North.
I guess we'll see. It's been a big, big conversation point.
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 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, man, Big Head, that's a great question great question on who do you trust yeah because 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 I'm talking about third and long, down four with, you know, five minutes left.
How about Georgia's situation? I know they're playing. How about that? Yeah.
It's crazy. Have they talked publicly since that game about what's going on? I haven't heard anything.
I'm more concerned about their punter. Their punter being injured.
That's the real X-factor he's a beast yeah yeah so wait with uh with texas quarterback situation though are you a little bit surprised that arch didn't get more playing time in the sec championship game because i felt like there was a moment where where sark could he had a lever that he could have pulled and he chose not to pull it i don't know if that was intentional because he wanted to save him for the for the playoff or if he was just like, you know what, yours is my guy. We're gonna we're gonna live and die with Quinn.
But do you expect to see more of Arch? 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. 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.
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, much like he did against Texas A&M, 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. I thought 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 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. Look at this guy.
You know, it's one thing you look at him on TV. I think you go on the pregame and you look at these guys in person.
Some of these guys just look so different than what your perception of them is. And Arch is one of those guys.
I mean, his legs, I don't know if he lives under a squat rack. That dude is put together.
He's not just a a tall slippery boy. He's quick.
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.
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, 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 these next potential four games that Tex might be playing.
I hope we see more of him. He's fun.
Manning shouldn't be allowed to be fast. It's weird seeing him run with a ball.
It's like, come on, man. Just stay in the pocket.
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. That's the Manning way.
Right. Not this guy.
Wow. This dude.
This dude's going to do, 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. 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. So yeah, we 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 it reminds me of Tebow in 06 when he was a true freshman and Chris Leak was the quarterback 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 and they were like begging urban to bring him out and it became almost it's chris leek who's quarterbacking 90 of the game but it almost became like the fans were just completely consumed with Tim Tebow even though he's just doing short yardage 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 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.
Sark'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. So I think it's a little bit tricky on how they manage that at this point in 2024.
Yeah, it's tough. So looking at these games, the spreads are pretty big.
They go from what from what last i checked i think it was seven to 12 point favorites in each game um if you had to pick one upset because there's going to be one who would it be what's the what's the iu notre dame seven and a half is what i'm looking at right now i don't know if that's moved i. I would say IU.
I'd probably say IU would be – what's the Tennessee spread? I believe that's a touchdown. Yeah, I think – I'm not picking either one of those teams, but you could make a pretty strong case if you're a Tennessee fan or you're going to bet on Tennessee until you see the Ohio State offensive line more productive against a talented front, there's no reason to think that both those games, the underdogs should have a shot to be competitive and maybe pull off an upset.
Yeah. I do love the drama behind the scenes of the Tennessee fans being like, yeah, that stadium's going to be 30% orange, buddy.
You imagine? They get 3,500 fans. What's Ohio Stadium these days? Over 100,000, right? Yeah.
You get basically 3% of the stadium is going to be in orange. Yeah.
If you get up, there's no – you believe they maybe get 30,000 people in there? No way. It'd be a testament to the fan base, yeah.
It wouldn't be. I saw another post.
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.
And so now Ohio State is like, yeah, wear your orange. We're going to turn you red.
It's been a fun behind-the-scenes battle. Yeah.
Yeah. I think it is.
And it's a scarlet out, right? So they're going to do the whole stadium if they follow the direction of what the Ohio State's requesting. So it would be all scarlet and then bright, bright orange.
So you're right. You're right.
Terrible mix of colors when you put them together. Good on their own, maybe not great together.

And Ohio State's wearing those all-scarlet unis. I know.

They're doing color rush.

I don't like that.

They're doing color rush.

Wear your uniform.

Yeah.

It's a classic.

Wear it.

Matter of fact, take all the stickers off the helmet.

Like you start new.

It's a new season right now.

Yeah.

Four games.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

I like that.

Four games.

Maybe put on the stickers during the game.

Yeah, there you go.

Add up during the game.

All right, so Herbie, this has been awesome.

I got one last question.

It's a Roback question.

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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

do you think it's going to

I'm of the belief that

there is definitely a market

for a coach in college

to be almost like

Calipari 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

I'm going to sell you on. Come here.
I'll teach you how to be a pro. 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 drafted I would see part it's part that just put yourself as an 18 year old recruit and knock on the door and it's Bill Belichick at the door or or on the phone uh honey Bill coach Belichick's on the phone I mean just imagine what that would the power of that right, right? But I'm telling you guys, Bill Belichick, 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.
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.
And I really think that his dad had a major impact on his decisions and what he does. I think there's part of him that's probably always been pulling at him to be on a college campus because of his time at Annapolis with his dad.
And before that, in places like North Carolina. 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. I think he's going to think about how I do both.
I really, I know his reputation as NFL and building a roster 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 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 going to, the reason it took two weeks, we kept hearing, wait, they interviewed him.
Like, how do you, how do you interview Bill interview bill belichick like it's one of those if he says yeah i'm interested it's like you take it but remember it went it went for a while so i'm sure he sit 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 But I think he wanted to learn like the ramifications and the guidelines of like, what are we doing here? What's this world? 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 that I know what it, I'm ready to go and I'm ready to take it.
And 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.
And if you look at their schedule, they're in the playoff next year. I mean, there's a very strong chance at North Carolina.
I think their one game that makes you scratch their head in your head is Clemson. Other than that, they might be favored in every game they play.
So get used to him getting teams knocking on the door of 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 just from the time I've spent with him.
I think he wants to make that a priority priority as well which i applaud him if he can pull it off yeah herbie we are a national sports podcast and very rarely do we use our platform and advocate for something up but i feel like it's an appropriate time um 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 you have a say you're a college football icon you can make change if you believe it enough the dr pepper tuition challenge is out of hand the chess passes are ruining america 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 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 i want to i want to see a spiral can we do something about that bro i love that you know i used to do the eckridge challenge and 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.
And you would throw that thing. It was almost like trying to make a shot from half court.
I'm with you. It's almost like pop a shot.
They're just firing that thing away. It doesn't take any ability at all.
So I think you're onto 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 i'm 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 portal.
That's the best way to do it. Right.
It's easier to do it. Yeah, they figured out the answer.
They figured the answer. Right.
Yeah, so the game has to evolve as the players evolve with it. Yeah.
I think you can either move it back a little bit or just say, hey, you have to have one hand and it has to go above your shoulders. Yeah.
Yeah. I like that.
I'll bring that up. I don't know the Dr.
Pepper folks, but if i'm in a game and i'm down in the field i'm gonna make that a point to go over there and try to get to the bottom of that i'll i know again i'll report back on that as well yeah all it would take is you if you boycott if you boycott a game maybe just don't even talk for an entire half just saying you you have the power uh i'm boycotting the game unless you get this shit fixed yes that's where we are right now yes yeah well thank you for not boycotting the second half of the niners rams game yeah that must have been tough that would have been a fair boycott that was tough that tests us man 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. And it just wasn't.
It was just brutal. We got through it.
But, yeah, I'm looking forward to this Thursday. And then I got a good Soldier Field to finish it all.
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 and uh have fun this weekend Kirk Herbstreet was brought to you by our great friends at Campbell's Campbell's chunky soup it's soup season what a great time of year to enjoy some soup I've been eating soup just about every day. I think I've had soup every day for the last three weeks.
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And now, here's Paul Walter Hauser.

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.

The wrestling part, I got to admit, I didn't fully understand you're a wrestler and you are part of major league wrestling uh how did that start I want to talk about the acting but I I was I was raised on uh the attitude era so I I I I'm not as much into wrestling right now but I I still love wrestling. How did you start with the wrestling? Sure, yeah.
No, I had 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.

And 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?

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.

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 and i i played like junior high sports and i've done stand-up comedy in front of you know 1500 people nothing i've ever done felt as good as that so really i continued to pursue it and 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 and and i'm now telling people that through mlw and a couple other companies i'm doing like a reverse Dwayne Johnson.

That's awesome.

I love that.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. What's the biggest pop you've gotten?

Oh, man.

The biggest pop I've gotten was probably 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 and obviously I'm not doing backflips off stuff or anything but I'm I'm doing you know body slams and suplexes 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 you you mentioned the rock it, I mean, it's very funny because most wrestlers, they wrestle and then they get into music or, you know, movies because they're so good at wrestling. You're just like, I was such a good actor.
Now I want to chase my one true love, wrestling. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of different loves from an occupational standpoint.
My, I, my heroes are guys like Rob Reiner and Kendrick Lamar and 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. I've made some music and now I'm trying this wrestling thing out.
and I think I can do it. And I haven't directed a film yet, but I intend to.
I write a lot of movies. 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.
But at the same time, I think there's a place for everybody in wrestling. There's different types of people.
The same way in hip hop, you have Earl Sweatshirt and you have Action Bronson and, and you have Drake. These are different styles within the form.
And so I'm just one of those many styles in that form, I think. I think if you're having fun doing it, people will appreciate it.
Yeah. They'll see the passion.
And I'm just trying to put it over in the mainstream, too. If I could someday get nominated for an Oscar 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 like the idea of, like, if it were a verse and I'm just watching somebody do it, if a random character actor like John C. Reilly 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. Yeah.
I mean, 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.
Yeah. Or US champ or openweight champion in MLW.
We'll see. I'll see how far I can take it.
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. And I said that if I could put in a bet, a future bet for somebody to win an Oscar for best actor, it would be you.
I love you and 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 didn't know were like diehard PMT fans.
They were all hitting me up and sending me that clip. It was very humbly and sweet.
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? So there are people who back in the day in 93, 94, 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. So it's really just about that right marriage of role.
I think I've had a couple of roles that could have been nominated based on what they were and me showing up and doing the job. But but, 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? Yeah.
I mean, I thought the Richard Jewell movie was incredible. I thought that was-

Good movie.

Yeah, I mean, that was a movie where I was just like, your ability to be Richard Jewell

and have this complicated guy who's like, you feel bad for and he's just trying to do

the right thing.

That was one of those movies that 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 that movie movie oh that's awesome man yeah no I think that's a 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 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 this big film that did well.
And I think I, Tonya, too, with being 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 this is someone who's crushing it yeah are you it's fun 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 I get to work with Craig Gillespie or Spike Lee lee or clint eastwood yeah are you are you nervous at all that you're being typecast as secondary characters to the olympics i i listen i'm hoping i'm hoping 20 years from now i put the stash on i can play the uh i can play the um uh gymnast coach for uh what's what's the name of that girl Oh, Bella Caroli, right? Bella Karoli. Carrie Strug.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Carrie Strug. They got to play Carrie Strug's.
Gymnast coach. Gymnast coach in like 20, 30 years, right? Yeah.
Yeah, you can do that. I believe you could pull it off.
It's so weird. Dude, it's so weird that I'm playing Chris Farley in this biopic next year because Farley famously played Sean Eckhart, my character, and I, Tanya, in the monologue sketch with Nancy Kerrigan when she hosted.
Yeah, that is crazy. And Jay Leno famously said when the Richard Jewell thing happened, like, this guy kind of looks like the guy that whacked Nancy Kerrigan, right? And it was like a famous late night joke that he references two people together.
And then Farley also was on SNL and Richard Jewell ended up being on SNL. Yeah.
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.

So with Chris Farley, that must have been fascinating to play him in a biopic.

I can't wait to watch it.

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?

Well, you know, even before I got the role, and we haven't shot it yet it yet we're gonna shoot it next year at some point probably later in the year but um i i 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 stuff the way you would if you were preparing for a role um and and and, and I kind of knew most everything about him. What I found interesting is, you know, he, uh, he, he 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, uh, you know, Chris had these really deep conversations with his female friends that sometimes he couldn't have with his male friends and there was just a very intellectual sensitive side that not everybody got to see um especially if they were like a newer friend when he had already been very famous yeah i think i think you know in in telling that story we hope to show the duality of him as there's a duality to many of us yeah 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 i have to i have to get to a point where it's like people are like you did you did him you know justice almost in playing him.

I think

I love Chris so much that

I'm incapable of

letting Chris and

I mean I can't I'm not

incapable of letting his fans down people

somebody can order a steak and you give

them exactly the fillet

they ordered and they're still not happy right

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 keeping his memory alive in a in an authentic and loving way yeah i know i'm going to do that um 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 like 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 my number was already in john farley's phone and we had never met huh it said paul hauser when he typed in the the number weird things like that have been happening for a while um and i think some people are just supposed to play certain people i think jamie fox 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. 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.
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? Yeah. Yeah.
Wow. When it comes to playing a role like that, or do you go, do you go like full time into character or do you, you know, when the cameras are on, you flip the switch? Well, I haven't done it yet.
I've only starred or co-starred in three or four things. I think Jewel, 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 we've only done it like four or five times maybe so i starring in something is way more taxing than i tanya black klansman i tanya black klansman i get to show up i'm doing my finger guns and i walk out uh but But starring in something is exhausting in a way that I kind of didn't know until I did it.
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.
Um, 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, it's too important to me to be social with people and to be on the level to alienate them.
So when I watched the Jim Carrey documentary about him and andy coffin i saw that jim had kind of alienated a lot of people in his process jim carrey who i adore by the way um but that process of kind of like alienating people or pushing them away i i've sort of decided i'm not going to do that yeah 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? Because you did, first of all, just say like you did an amazing job in that show. It was incredible.
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. It depends on everyone's process, but it was not fun for me.
I can tell you that much. I was not in a good place personally when I shot that mentally, emotionally was not 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. And, uh, and, and also we shot in new Orleans.
That's a pretty spiritually thick place. You can kind of feel the air a little bit there sometimes.
Um, and, 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 get into the icky of it um and so 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 um 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 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 taron edgerton so so after a day on set there do you is there something that you would do to like cleanse yourself to to wipe that day away 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 um a lot of self-medicating but i the sort of pg things i part that i was partaking in were um me and my my buddy Anthony Pettix would go shoot hoops at a local court in somebody's neighborhood in New Orleans or we'd play Super Nintendo or watch Curb Your Enthusiasm.
There were things that kind of were pressure releases. And yeah, Larry David was very influential to me being able to laugh at the end of a a dark awkward day yeah yeah so you you've done drama you've done comedy is there one that you prefer more than the other at this point in your career 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 can feel redundant sometimes and that's also why even your favorite comedians make comedy movies that you don't like you know leo every time leo or denzel do leo or denzel in a drama we're all just like boom another one yeah right but like comedy there are brilliant people who do comedy and we're like movie sucked.
Why isn't it as good as the one they made eight years ago? Right. 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. 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 uh you know chris farley neddy murphy and everything yeah wait so when did you start doing stand-up because that was how you started right yeah when i was 16 i started writing screenplays and started doing stand-up comedy oh wow that was like the year it got really aggressive where i was like i'm going full throttle full bore and my last few years of high school i did three plays a year wrote for the school newspaper did choir was in barbershop quartet was class president one year was writing scripts and doing stand-up 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 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.
I'll just try all the things. And what I would find out is that standup 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 I think, I think I got away from standup because I just didn't want that lifestyle of you're in a depressing atmosphere. You have to wind your wheel up on your back and make these people laugh, and you're constantly having to prove yourself.
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.
And you get treated exponentially better. So what point in your career were you like, all right, I think I've not broken through, but people are noticing, and I feel like they see something in me? I think I was telling somebody, I think the show Kingdom that I did about the MMA fighters with Frank Grillo and Matt Lauria, Jonathan Tucker, Nick Jonas.
That show was sort of my like associate's degree and me breaking in. I, Tanya was like the end of the associate's degree where it's like, you're getting your bachelor's now.
People know your face, but not your name. And then Richard Jewell was like sort of the last year of the bachelor's degree where it's like hey you are you are uh 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 and uh and i think blackbird is like the start of of trying to gain a master's degree yeah i'm trying to that right now.
The next four years is me trying to get the master's degree. And in my early 40s, hopefully I'm mastering this stuff.
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 think you will be one of the biggest actors in the world in the next 10 years.
From your mouth to my business manager's ears. You should be.
You should be. We said, this might have been the same interview, but you should play Andy Reid in the Andy Reid biopic.
Oh, yeah. Damon was like, I'm going to hit Hauser up about that.
I'm like, he never hit me me up he didn't hit you up where's where's my andy reed phone no i am developing a movie with with uh ben and matt 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 so here's the story on that i two years ago got an email to 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 okay 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 like I wonder what propelled them to do that. They're recruiting fans.
Yeah. Who knows? And I, I, uh, then I got this movie, this Springsteen movie I'm doing right now in Jersey.
And I was like, I wonder if that offer is still on the table. 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 too.
It's like an enormous Donald voice. Yeah.
Yeah. I know it's a two and a half years later.
And I still go to a jets game for free. Yeah.
I'm just saying I'm a jets fan, you know? So did that and they were like let us check they were like probably worry about it and then there i was uh two days ago was it what day is today monday yeah yesterday so yesterday i was at the jets game with my buddy darren and uh we're sitting with you know the owner or co-owner chris john and his wife Doris, and they could not have been sweeter and nicer and more down to earth. And we're noshing on lobster rolls and eclairs and watching the game surrounded by all these wealthy people that I felt very out of place with.
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.
It's rough because all the talent's there, but not everything's connecting. And it's tough, too.
Not everybody can stay. You can be talented, but not have the sharp or crispness that you once had.
And it doesn't mean you're not good. 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. 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. Right.
And it

doesn't mean you don't enjoy them. 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 and they're

Thank you. It doesn't mean you don't enjoy them.
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.
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.
And that's a very rare thing. 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. We had a lot of fun talking to each other.
Wait, so that's something interesting you bring up. 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 um doesn't mean i'm better than so and so 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.
I hope I'm still showing up and doing 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.
I hope MLW is still me back. And I, you know, like these are, these are the things I do think about is never take away your self amusement and your, your competitive spirit and your, your sense of play.
And I don't think that'll happen to you. You know, what's it like being competitive as an actor? Dude, people don't even think about the way I think about it.
I'm, I'm i'm a weirdo like i i'm way too insecure and in my head with competitive nature i i don't think guys like paul dano and adam driver think the way i think i think they're very content focused and they probably don't think about it as much i i very much think about the guys in my bracket and i'm But, you know, Aaron Paul said to me very early in my career, I did a movie with him that few people saw. 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? You got to beat those guys out.
And I kept a list of of like 30 40 guys that i was slowly trying to get all the jobs and then eventually 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 so it's like i'm still in my head i'm still like i still have this dogged obsession of i want to i want to be the guy that gets the offer before them yeah but you know that also never stops because christian bale says that about dicaprio he has been very vocal about saying like if dicaprio passes i get the offer and it's like so maybe that happens forever you know yeah Yeah, or do you pay attention to the guys that are coming up behind you too the the relatively new guys are you like this guy he's getting a little too close to me i need to separate myself oh no no never that it's all support it's all love it's uh 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.
Yeah. But I love the guys coming up.
I love Will Poulter, Fred Hechinger, Joseph Quinn. Chalamet is great.
There's a lot of guys coming up that are great, I think. So what's the story of the rumor that surrounded you, the Quentin Tarantino rumor? Fake news.
What happened with that? It's all fake news. 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.
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 and suddenly I, my phone blows up and I go on Twitter and it was just like, and all these people are talking about it. I was like, what the hell's going on? And you know, for us, we thought maybe it was true and we just hadn't been given the offer.
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.
Yeah. 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 oh yeah the one where he like smokes weed in front of hawk to a girl and asks her about everybody looks like a kept woman while he drinks and gets hot yeah but yeah he he and tarantino very briefly talked about me and maher was kind of putting me over saying like he was in richard jewel he was good 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 and i was like oh like it totally was like uh like a kidney shot from a boxer i had to i had to take a knee and be like oh that hurt yeah oh i wish i was in contention but also like you know there's a real world out there where wars are being fought if i'm not a tarantino movie i think i'll be okay but yeah i i do i do love the guy i love his work and you know i'd love to be a fly on that wall and and do anything in one of his movies yeah and also i think if you're if you're having your name thrown around in baseless rumors for a quentin tarantino movie but they're believable enough where people like i could see that happen that's probably a good thing too right certainly yeah it certainly brings a smirk to your face that people can believe that and you know i've had 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 uh and if anything that is just fodder for encouragement, like, Hey, you, you never know, you could wake up and 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, to sort of feel the pendulum swinging back and forth. And the key is to just have fun and honor every commitment.
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. We've got some pretty deep connections in Hollywood.
Jerry O'Connell is a good friend of ours. Have you ever met Jerry O'Connell? No, but I'm a fan.
I love his brief but impactful performance in Can't Hardly Wait. Yep.
And I've certainly been a fan of his from Stand By Me. And he seems like a nice guy.
Yeah. You didn't mention Kangaroo Jack.
Or his supermodel wife. 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.
Yeah, no, no. Supermodel wife, though, you can say right off the top.
I loved his wife when I was 13. Supermodel wife.
He's got a supermodel wife. You can Google it.
It's a fact. I'm happy for it.
She's a very nice lady. Is rebecca romaine yes yeah you are you know you pervert you're yeah you played that cool oh what's her name uh rebecca romaine yeah it's not like i know how to spell her last name capital r-o-m-i-j-n exactly that'd be that'd be crazy i would like to see you and jerry in a movie together i like that would be good Jerry's a good actor or maybe that's the next hit sitcom he's my stepdad and I'm like we're trying to help each other out and we're both total messes or something I think it would be better if he was your dad and then Rebecca Romijn is your stepmom Stacy Stacey's mom has got it going on.
There it is. Hey, so you've had some great part roles in some incredible comedy and sitcom.
You were in Reno 911. You were in Always Sunny.
Have you ever made anyone break in filming those where you're like, man, this is awesome 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 yeah that happens on occasion um i'm trying to think when it's happened for me i don't think it was i think i remember breaking i broke tom lennon once or twice on Reno and that was a big feather in the cap.

Yeah.

And I broke, um, I broke a couple of the sunny people once or twice and that was a big feather in the cap.

Cause I love those shows so much.

They're two of my favorite shows of all time. So for me, that's, that's those moments mean as much as winning a, uh, actor trophy, you know, like those are your own trophies that you, you get to ponder whenever you're having a bad day.
Yeah. And it's also, I mean, it was, it, 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 like, Hey, we want you to be in it.
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. I was basically dropping out, partying my face off, ballooning up in weight and writing a movie script for key and peel.
Cause they had just mad TV had just gotten canceled. And my manager at the time repped them.
He's like, you know, you want to write a movie for these guys they're looking for something to do together and uh so i'm writing a script for key and peel before they have the hit show 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 and so a year later to be in the room auditioning for the show was crazy and then and then stepping into the bar i vividly remember i brought my friend to 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 i would just bring one of my buddies to set and he'd be hanging out with me all day without asking anybody so like my buddy peter and i peter hens 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 it was it was like the wizard of oz or something like we we could not believe we were in the bar of it's always sunny yeah yeah that's That's so awesome. That's got to be crazy.
Going back to making people break on set, that never happens in a show like Blackbird, right? I wouldn't say it never happens. I mean, there's a famous clip on YouTube of somebody, I think it might have been Phil Hartman or somebody, had a fart machine in the elevator and a scene in the master the pt anderson film uh-huh that's a pretty serious film or at least an intense film and like and like they had a moment where everybody broke and it was like over a fart joke so like it can happen but i i would say most of the time on blackbird 98 of the time we were both

locked in 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 taren like in between takes or in between

setups where i'd be doing an accent or a celebrity impression or dancing or being stupid. And for me, it was like therapeutic, but for him at, at some point, I'm sure it proved distractionary, but like I, you, you got to break up the intensity somehow you got to stay sane.
And for me nowadays, if I'm having a rough, rough day for whatever reason i just watch a couple clips from um i think you should leave on netflix and and 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 you know who was your favorite wrestler growing up sting was my number one still is still is is still is uh well he retired but you know what it is it's yeah everybody's got their mount rushmore he's the top of mind uh and i think i just admired the fact that he 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 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 love the flair 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.

Like, there was something so cool about that and uh and he stood the test of time and just recently you know uh had his final match back in the spring of this year in greensboro north carolina and i got to be there and tony khan allowed me to sit ringside with some dear friends one of my oldest friends Ryan Kunitzer who uh you know I've known the guy 30 something years sting was like our guy and we're standing there you know nearly emotional as as he has his final match it was amazing that's incredible who else is on your mind Rushmore so there's two types of Rushmore's 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? I want personal.
Yeah, I want personal. Personal Rushmore is Sting, Bret Hart.
I think Ric Flair and Chris Jericho. Oh, okay.
I think those are the four. But Jericho's tough, too.
He just sneaks in there past a couple other guys like Ricky Steamboat or Randy Savage. Yeah, Randy Savage.
He was the best. I miss that guy.
Oh, God. Macho man.
Yeah. 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 Shawn Michaels.
Like, I like guys who are impactful in different ways. I love Dustin Rhodes, a.k.a.
Gold Dust, Rey Mysterio, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle. Not all the people that get put at the top.
Yeah, Mankind is probably on my rush war. I've got a really dumb question for you.
But I think about this with actors. I'm a very dumb person.
Serve it up, bro. How much time do you put in behind the scenes just literally memorizing your lines? Depends on the role.
Depends depends on the role there's there are certain

things like richard jewel i would learn my lines a week like five to seven days in advance

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 if i'm doing a comedy there's just less of a stress of learning

the lines it just feels like i don't know it's like bam margero the skateboard like

Thank you. things if i'm doing a comedy there's just less of a stress of learning the lines it just feels like 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 it's a dangerous attitudinal stance because you can then sometimes give 85% when you should be given a hundred.
Yeah. So, so it depends, but, but yeah, I, I, my whole thing is I learned 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 learned one page at a time the biggest audition I ever had page wise I think I learned I think I Tanya was 13 pages I memorized and I think Scream 4 I memorized like 15 pages geez so when you're rehearsing for like Black Klansman there's some lines of dialogue in that movie you probably would never want to say in any context besides in front of a camera right are you are you doing are you rehearsing like the full lines yeah if i have to if i have to like feel the words and and say them in a way where it you don't feel the timidity in the character 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 yeah see if your friend or foe yeah the yeah the uber driver who's like talking politics and then it's like 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 i've met enough of them that like 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 yeah right it just has to be normal.
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 you have to make sure it's right.
But I would say what's harder is when you improvise with a bad character. There were lines that I said in Blackbird and Black Klansman 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.
So how'd you get there? That's tough. That's acting.
Yeah, that's acting. Yeah.
That's really good. It's also acting.
Yeah. It's also sometimes good acting.
You're like, oh, that is a really good line. Unfortunately, it's devastatingly awful, but that's who you'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 had a disgusting moment where i felt so bad 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 and uh and i did something where i stuck my mouth out to look like a ape or a primate with my tongue uh to 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 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 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 don't don't take your foot off the pedal just because you're uncomfortable yeah and i really admired admired his grace and professionalism with that.
And there have been moments like that in other projects. 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 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.
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.
It's like before you step into the wrestling ring. Yeah.
That too. I'm always asking wrestlers, you know, like, like these guys at MLW, that's their locker room.
I'm a guest in their locker room. I'm new to the roster, and I really respect those guys and gals.
And it's always about finding out what are we doing and how do we do it the best way that doesn't complicate something or hurt anybody long term. Yeah.
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.
20 20 off your first purchase q-zips polos hoodies joggers shorts rowback.com promo code take i mentioned at the top

but uh major league wrestling uh there's free pay-per-views or sorry free matches the big

streams are on youtube um 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 um like really take off

I love you. 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? Um, like really take off. If they gave me that ultimatum and something weird happened where say, say in 2026, I undergo the Chris Pratt style transformation.
Yeah. And, uh, MLW is taken off and they got a show on TV and I'm, they want to put a belt on me and we're doing the whole thing.
If that opportunity presented itself, I would just hold my ground and say, you have to let me do both. Yeah.
I don't think I would take the deal because at the end of the day, 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. 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. 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.
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. And the other thing to anyone listening, like know your value.
If you're good at what you do and somebody saying there's an ultimatum, tell them, give, give them a counter ultimatum that you need to do both. And you know, you'll, you'll find out that when you stick to your guns and you, you are who you say you are, you, you should be able to do both.
It's that's a great, a great sentiment. And it's also what you said about like going crazy when you don't act for a while that's that's why you're an incredible actor 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 yeah it nourishes your spirit to do these things you love and i really believe and you 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. 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, and uh and 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 yeah we're put on the surface so i i would i would encourage people follow the breadcrumbs you know follow the the trail of of passion because it's it's there for a reason yeah i appreciate you telling us that we educate people we haven't educated a single person uh no we we did well you educate them on other people right we did we we educated numerous nfl head coaches on what to do in the fourth quarter of a playoff game if you're losing 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 listen you guys were the first people to say the andy reed thing so if that happens we can go back and be like these guys educated us that's true yeah they were prophetic yeah i mean you this was happening you would absolutely kill an andy reed role yeah at the end of the day I'm looking to work with anybody who's kind, who treats people well and wants to work hard and tell a good story, whatever that looks like. It could be a sitcom.
It could be a little indie foreign film. It could be anything.
But at the end of the day, you hope to do something that you're proud of. And I never want to be that actor who just takes a bad movie for a lot of money.
I have two children who are going to be in private school and life is not cheap. It can be very difficult sometimes.
So I'm sure there's going to be that temptation too, but I try to make things that I would want to pay my hard-earned money to go see it, the AM theater the regal cinema yeah I think it comes across too so is there is there one role uh not one that you have like the ball in motion for so taking out like the Chris Farley any of that stuff 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? Good question. Yeah, I'll leave you at this.
I have three roles I really want to inhabit in the next five years. I want to play Teddy Roosevelt.
Oh, Oscar. Oscar.
There you go. Oscar.
And that's another one where I just know I can play him. I'm not even worried it it just i just have to convince other people to want to do it um the other one is uh 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 is sci-fi yeah it's a fantasy this is a genre um and the uh father, I mean, I want to have it that characteristic.
The third role is I want to kick somebody's ass in MLW, and I'm going to be doing that Thursday night at the Mo'Reals Ballroom 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 his benevolence is providing these pay-per-view style cards for free on YouTube so check it out 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 I'd also like to invest in the Teddy Roosevelt film when it gets made yeah manifesting I got some money coming through Travis Hunter for Heismiser love to you guys and let's do this again in like a year or two here yeah all right love it sounds so much man paul walter hauser was brought to you by our great friends over at body armor i'm drinking my body armor right now got their water i drank several body armors on sunday keeping me hydrated during the NFL streams. Body Armors also presenting Surviving Barstool, keeping Big Cat hydrated throughout all the challenges.
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He was also brought to you by Shake Shack. It's day three of the Shake Shack Holiday Burger Blitz.
And on the slate today, we have the avocado bacon burger. Oh, hell yes.
Nothing like avocado and bacon on a burger. Hank, let me get one of the...
Let me get avocado bacon.

Fries.

These smell so good.

I'm on a diet, but I don't care.

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Dunking is probably most likely... No!

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What was your favorite blitz and the avocado bacon burgers all yours for free with a $10 minimum purchase some terms apply what's your favorite blitz of the week blitz that vikings defensive end i know it's not a blitz but that's a pretty good strip sack yeah but blitz the burger blitz promo code burger blitz get free Shake Shack burger with $10 vitamin purchase. That's so good.
Before we do FAQs, well, Hank, you're eating a burger and you're supposed to read FAQs. What? It's so good.
It's so good. Do you guys, FAQ for you guys, you know how the daylight savings thing is back in the news, 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.

I didn't realize that if we didn't do daylight savings, or I don't even understand the terminology.

If we didn't do daylight savings, it would get dark at like 7, 15 in the summer.

Oh, really?

I never realized that we'd have to give that up.

The opposite side of it?

Yeah.

Yeah, I didn in the summer. Oh, never realized that we'd have to give that up.
The opposite side of it? Yeah. Yeah.
I don't mind. Yeah.
Yeah. That's I don't want that.
I thought it was like, I thought it only fucked with us. No, it was like the sun would rise at like 445 in the summer and then set at like 745.
That's the opposite. the summer.
Yeah. So just suck it up for the winter.
We're five days away from the shortest day of the year. We're going to be on the other side soon.
Yeah, it sucks for the first week when you're like, oh, it shouldn't be dark this early. But then it's like, whatever.
Yeah, just get through it. People that bitch about winter are fucking losers.
It's cold and it's dark early. Get over it.
Also, don't pitch. Move to California if you don't like it.
Don't pitch about winter until 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. 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. Yeah, we're almost there.
December 21st. Also, 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? Just think about that. Think about the podcasters.
What do you mean, bits? Well, because last year- You mean PSAs, not last bit last year we thought that the clocks uh went back in the fall oh and we fucked that up the entire time i think you're thinking of psas because we've been bought by big time no we kept saying that it it falls back but it actually goes forward yeah that was a bad year for us yeah when we did our uh final year review with dave he's like hey it says here you guys you guys screwed up the daylight savings thing fuck man no excuses next year we'll nail it yeah we have to do 10 minutes in the dungeon for every time we fucked that up but seriously I mean we're almost there what is it divisional round January I think I think it's January 18th is when we move the clocks back again so we're're almost there. We've almost made it.
We pretty much made it. Yeah.
Okay, FAQs. Hey, boys.
What will President Pug do about Max's injury? I believe Pug needs to address weekly injuries like midweek coaches press conferences. I like that.
We actually need him to do an availability report because I was dealing with a little sickness the last week week and a half a rolling sickness in my house uh yeah i was questionable a couple times what is pug doing about health care as president on this podcast 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 we're football guys we don't complain i don't think i you guys even know that i was dealing with it i puked seven times on saturday damn 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 right but pug you should definitely do a mandated injury report yeah on how you need to you need to like pull all of us separately how we're doing and then uh like game days you should just you could just do a tweet or Instagram live press conference.

But if he's doing it three times a week,

we get Pug like a step and repeat that he can stand in front of.

I think he does it once a week.

I would like to see a once a week injury report.

But what, I mean, there's game days.

There's show days.

Then we have to wait for all the test results to come back

and we'll have more information about his injury

as the week progresses. Yeah.
I missed the first part. This is just.
Injury reports. Yeah.
I think you need to start adding injury reports. Maybe make a graphic, and maybe it's every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.
It doesn't have to be a press conference, but it just says you can ask all of us how we're doing just so the listeners know what we're dealing with. So it could be physical and emotional.
Mental, yeah, of course. Of course.
Yeah, people can give you their answer. Yeah, I'll start sending you my sleep stats.
Yeah, bears have me depressed. Okay.
Yeah. Fat.
Fat. Was that for you? No, but it might be in the future.

Yeah.

Doubtful fat.

You'll be like Tom Brady's shoulder.

Remember he's listed like 17 years in a row.

Yeah.

With a probable shoulder.

Someone should stay the same every time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Memes.

Memes.

Italian.

Yeah.

Limited participant. Italian non-horny kind uh 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 oh thank you that's nice uh it depends week to week honestly depending on what the schedule is if we have a Bears game or a Commander's game or a really good game like we had last 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.
Yeah. And also Hank writes his boomer.
Memes does his. That has been a very big help.
Max does his. That's been a very big help.
We've've gotten a lot more efficient on our sunday schedule yeah because i was thinking about it 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 um shout out the guys in the booth because they're they stay till like three or four in the morning time zones time zones but still like we know yeah no the new york it... We've gotten very efficient.
But, yeah, I'm also... I'm going to 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.
For, like... I was thinking about the wild card round the other day.
Like, I'm just so pumped to just, like, one matchup. You get to focus on individual games.
And they do kind of set you up with like the Christmas and then they're going to do the Saturday one games. 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. 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.
Let's get it on. Who would last the longest in a zombie apocalypse? Resources resources aplenty out of the group and who would kill themselves first just to get it over with it's not are we saying like the the dead rise like everybody that's dead shows up can i can i make a confession i don't like zombies i've never been a zombie guy i don't like zombies don't like the shows don't like the movies just doesn't do it for me i don't like just there's nothing it does nothing for me.
I don't like zombies. 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.

I don't know why everybody decided that zombies are a thing.

Right.

And we're always going to talk about zombies.

What about Planet of the Apes plague?

You're trying to survive not zombies per se, but there's a plague that's taking over the country.

You're trying to survive. What we would do is we would have Dr.
Fauci on the program. Yeah.
I guess that's zombies. I think I would survive the exact amount of like average time.
I would probably be, I would probably put myself in the kill myself first. I feel like PFT could survive like just eating random shit.
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 instantly.

Zombies can't swim, right?

Just get to water.

Whatever the thing is, get to water.

I think I'd be okay.

I could deal with making do.

You could just eat Fritos for like three years.

Yeah, I could do that.

If a nuke hits, you just go underwater for the five seconds it hits. always thought that was tsunami like just swim underneath it wait what if you you thought that the way to survive a tsunami was to jump into the water well yeah you know how like when you're in the in the water and you just go underneath the wave i do yeah like when you're body surfing yeah yeah yeah sure i mean i don't know all these idiots running away from that might not be wrong that might not be wrong yeah sure uh all right nikki wrote i think she said she's studying and she must take an ad or she wrote like five questions uh 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? The graphics is our guy Triggs.
He is the goat. Triggs.
What? Singular. But isn't it Triggs Draws? Triggs Draws.
I think over the years we've just called him Triggs. I've just added an S.
Triggs is Triggs. No, it's Triggs.
Triggs is the man. He is like so, so,, so talented.
Also, hit him up if you want side work because he does incredible stuff where he can make all kinds of art and cool things. He's a big sports fan.
He's a very talented artist, and he also does some sick-ass graphics for college football Saturdays where he shows you exactly what games are on what channel at what time. Yeah.
So his Twitter handle is what is it? Trig draws. Trigs draws.
No, Trig draws. I think it's the S on draws that has me.
It's like when Gilly calls it bar stools. Yeah.
Trig draws. He's the man.
So do hit him up. Yeah.
he's got a shop online that is, I mean, yeah, the Tiger Woods stuff. Those prints are awesome.
But go-to song in the office. We don't have any.
No music. Whatever Brandon Walker paces around the office to at 7 a.m.
Yeah. And then what was the last question? Do you guys have a sick Christmas tree in the office? We have one.
We have two. Two? I think we have two.
I wouldn't say that it's sick because it's not live. No.
Live trees are way better. Yeah, we have two.
Do you cop a tree? I got to get my tree. Yeah.
It's like one week away. Yeah? So? Get it? But no, you don't understand.
The way I operate with Christmas trees, I get them a little bit late. And then keep up forever.
I get it. I get my fill in on the back end.
Yeah. I think it's like daylight savings time is probably when it's time to take the tree down.
Yeah. Yeah.
January 10th. That's a little early, I guess, but maybe Super Bowl.
Yeah. Well, yeah.
January 18th. Sorry.
The divisional round. Okay.
You got any more?

No.

Okay.

Let's wrap up the show.

Numbers.

Memes.

You ever gotten this?

No.

92.

Oh, look at you.

This is a new meme.

He's just admitting it.

Three.

I did guess it, though.

You didn't get it. Everyone guesses it every week.

You get it.

Everyone can guess it.

No, you didn't. I'm guessing eight for my drug addict quarterback 17 94 pug 21 Okay Reset Reset Good luck memes Thanks good luck to everybody here too Thanks memes

Did you get like a new medication or something?

No

Probably

75

Love you guys. Thank you.
Thank you.