Steve Young, ASU Head Coach Kenny Dillingham, Are The Bengals Back? Jalen Hurts And AJ Brown Used To Be Friends, CFB Playoffs And Guys On Chicks

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On today's Pardon My Take, we've got an awesome, awesome twofer for the people. We've got Steve Young, Hall of Famer.
Incredible interview with him. First time on, we've been trying to get him on for a really long time.
And then we have a great interview with head coach Kenny Dillingham from the Arizona State Sun Devils. Really fun talking to him, talking about the college football playoff, winning the Big 12, maybe PFT trying out for kicker next year.
We're going to talk some Monday Night Football. We're going to talk some college football.
We got hot seat, cool throne. We got guys on chicks.
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Okay, let my take. Yeah, pardon my take.
Yeah, pardon my take. Yeah, pardon my take.
Yeah, pardon my take On the DraftKings Casino. Today is Wednesday, December 11th.

And PFT, I kind of want to believe in the Bengals again.

Let's go.

Jamar Chase is so goddamn good.

It's actually insane to watch.

And I know the Cowboys are bad.

And I know the Bengals are bad.

But Jamar Chase, what he's doing this year,

and every single play he feels like he's open. And even if he's not open open Joe Burrow's going to throw it to him and then he will get open that was, it's too little too late for the Bengals, but even still watching them and watching their offense and obviously we had the Leon Lett play by the Cowboys which was peak Cowboys and Mike McCarthy giving us his patented stare up at the the uh Jumbotron being like how can I reverse what just happened I have a suggestion for Mike McCarthy because this happens to him a lot something bad happens you know something bad has just happened in the game as head coach he forces himself to watch the replay of that bad thing over and over and just sit in that pain yeah Mike you gotta you gotta stop doing that you gotta stop subjecting yourself to just trauma repeatedly over and over again.
If something bad happens, find

yeah. and just sit in that pain yeah mike you gotta you gotta stop doing that you gotta stop subjecting yourself to just trauma repeatedly over and over again if something bad happens fun yell at somebody which he did do last night mike mccarthy was he i i don't think that this is is this mike mccarthy's best coaching job it might be he also assaulted a cameraman he did assault the cameraman but you're right like it's it i i will for forever like i could be on my deathbed and i'll be and someone will be like hey describe mike mccarthy staring at a play that he wants to will into uh reversing and it's like seared in my brain it's that same dumb look where he looks up and he's like if i stare at this jumbotron long enough with my fat chins i can get everything to change And it never changes.
And Dallas was the worst place for him to go because they have a giant screen hanging directly above the field. If it was anywhere else, you're just going to see him staring off into the distance.
Yeah. But yeah, with this, it's something that we see all the time from him.
That was a weird way to end the game. And Joe Burrow said it best, like it's about time that one of these broke in our favor.
Yeah. He finally got a bounce.
And McCarthy talked about what happened after the play. He said that the crowd actually had a lot to do with it.
So the punt was blocked. And then I don't know.
How do you pronounce the guy's name? I don't know. Yeah, he just came off injured reserve.
And I'm going to butcher it if I try to do it. But he heard the crowd, and the crowd was excited because the punt was blocked.
And he saw the in front of him and it was just one of those moments grab ball he called it a vice moment where he was stuck in a vice yeah see ball try to grab ball it didn't work out for him um but yeah i guess it's nice to see the bangles win a game as you know after that they've lost so many games where they played good enough to beat almost any other team right if their If their defense wasn't so bad. Right.
In this one, they didn't play exceptionally well, but they managed to figure out a way to win at the end. And yeah, don't take anything away from Chase Young and Joe because what they're doing is just crazy.
It's crazy. It always works.
It's crazy. And I know the Bengals have virtually no chance of, can we pull up the playoff predictor? I mean, I think it's like 10% chance or something.
They'd have to run the table. The one good news for them is they do play the Broncos in a couple weeks, and Broncos are the seventh seed right now.
But I think they would need, I think they would have to win out. I think the Colts will have to beat the, or the Colts would have to beat the Broncos, and the Colts would have to lose out, and the Broncos would also have to lose out.
So Broncos would also have to lose out so it's what is it three percent three percent so not even close to ten percent uh but it would just be it's fun I just want them to have a chance in week 18 I don't think they're going to get it but it's there's so much fun to watch and Joe Burrow's having an all-time year and uh you just sit there and you look at it it's torture for Bengals fans because they can look at every game and be like, man, if we had just gotten one bounce, if they had six wins right now, if they were six and seven, they would have a legitimate chance of running the table and making the playoffs. But just one bounce didn't go their way until last night.
I do like the headline that they put on ESPN afterwards. Gaff hurts Cowboys playoff hopes.
Yeah. That's to look at it that was doubt they were in the playoffs yeah okay they had hopes of being they had hopes they had hopes i want to talk real quick about the simpsons broadcast yeah because i am um i'm a simpsons freak i love the simpsons i think seasons like three through eight are maybe some of the best television to ever be written and produced okay

uh i did watch the first half of the simpsons broadcast last night and i don't know why it took me so long to remember this the simpsons are a million times better in 2d yeah the simpsons in 3d not that fun yeah i still watched it because it just made me think about being a kid watching the Simpsons again.

I tried.

It was so far behind.

It was very far.

It's just too. It was too.
It's hard to watch a game knowing that like you're two minutes behind. It's actually torturous being like, oh, I wonder what happened.
I already could know what happened if I was watching the real broadcast. So I watched.
I actually watched with my son son for like maybe 10 minutes he was a little confused because he doesn't know who the simpsons are that's the other thing is like the simpsons i i feel like our demographic yes that's when the simpsons was gold they've been on tv forever but i don't feel like kids are growing up watching the simpsons i wasn't even allowed to watch the simpsons oh really yeah it was like not uh it was not like a kid show yeah yeah it was kind of bad boy stuff if hank had watched i wasn't allowed to watch married with children yeah that was that would come on after the simpsons yeah yeah yeah if hank had grown up watching the simpsons he would be a real shithead today yeah he'd be like sarcastic and a hater and a smart mouth simpsons road rage though 3d game elite game yes it's like simpsons gta oh yeah but i think that if they had made all the players different characters on the simpsons that would have been a little bit better but i i started to figure out after like the second drive whenever a player got on the field as like a simpsons character it was gonna be like when homer was was cooper rush and he was like here we go which they should have said uh it was a key that that guy was gonna do something great like ralph wiggum does not have that type of lateral quickness he He doesn't have that dog in him either. When he gets put in at wide receiver, you know he's about to break the game.
Yeah. And I saw Lisa made that catch for a touchdown.
Yeah, Lisa did a little tiptoe down the sidelines. Yeah, that was sick.
Lisa did the Chase Brown play. She did the Chase Young.
She did not jump into the big Salvation Army pot at the end. Yes.
The sex cauldron. That was cool.
But yeah, Ralph Wiggum. I give Ralph Wiggum.
He's my Gruden grinder. Okay.
Nice. Yeah, I'm happy they tried.
I don't know. You just can't be that far behind.
Yeah, I watched like one, maybe one drive. Not even.
Just can't be that far behind. We just need a time when they do one of these alternate broadcasts where they're cartoons and there's something like crazy and violent that happens on the field like you need the miles garrett you need a miles garrett you need a malice at the palace you need a fight between the two teams pepper spray we don't yeah pepper spray would be great we don't root for injuries but seeing how they would deal with like homer simpson having a compound fracture tomorrow hamlin yeah tomorrow any game pray pray Pray prayers for for Mo Sislak.
Yeah, in the South Park game that they do, when they substitute Kenny in for Demar Hamlin, you know something bad's about to happen. It's going to get really bad.
What were you going to say, Max? Did you try to watch it? I did. Some of the plays, you couldn't even see what was going on.
I know. The camera angles were crazy.
They did one like drone view that was literally looked like you're watching from outer space you couldn't see a single thing that was yeah i think that happens when something goes wrong with the technology and they have like the far end zone camera where you can't see anything i think that's what that was but yeah there were a few of those in the first half they need to sack up and just do it with no like that's just the main broadcast yeah where

it's like this is the only way you can watch football tonight i i actually would respect that because you wouldn't know there was a delay that would be fun that would be it have joe buck and troy aikman seriously calling the game yeah that would be so fun no they got to get al michaels doing that game yeah sweet so max you watch you're a monday night guy i watched some of it Okay.

What'd you think?

I didn't like it.

Okay.

That was it.

That was my take put put put it out there that's the review uh okay so just to clean up on week 14 uh it does feel we're down the home stretch everyone's done with their buys everyone's ready to go four games left it feels like the playoff picture is pretty clear in that we know there's like a handful of teams that are still in it and there's in the hunt stuff is they got to clean it up at this point because i think i mean the cowboys the bears being those are the patriots graphic what were they were in the hunt they have they've been eliminated now that's that's patronizing yeah it's unbelievable but. But technically in the NFC, I think 15 out of the 16 teams are still not eliminated, which is, can we just, we need a different elimination tag where it's like, you're not technically eliminated, but dude, get a fucking grip.
Yeah, code blue. Everyone from the Saints on down, Saints, Cowboys, Bears, Panthers, just be like, hey, I know technically not, but you're brain dead if you're actually thinking this.
The Panthers still being in the hunt is just wild. No one wants to play them.
No one wants to play Panthers right now. No one wants to play them.
Well, that's because the NFC South is always – the NFC South keeps everyone in the hunt for as long as possible. Yeah, that in-the-hunt graphic, man.
I used to love that in-the-hunt graphic until I realized what it was doing to me yeah now you're now you're now you're out of the in the hunt you're

i'm eating you're in it you're in the you're in it for now all the way in it um so there was one

thing story we should probably talk about nfl before we talk a little college football uh

what what's this going to be uh this is going to be brandon graham from the philadelphia eagles going on a radio show uh on monday and essentially saying that jalen hurts and aj brown don't fuck with each other they don't like each other they're not friends no they used to fuck with they used to be friends they used to be friends they ain't friends anymore and now they're now they're just teammates that's not trouble in paradise that's not what he said what did he say he said that they used to be friends before being teammates they were friends before the like the draft um and then when you become teammates things can get a little bit dicey and he made assumptions after watching that video without knowing anything and that's what he said after the fact that no one else is picking up on that on that part of his statement oh you're saying no one's picking up on the the part of the statement where after he said what he said and everyone was like oh this sounds bad he then did a retraction we shouldn't we shouldn't note the retraction where he was like yeah oh i stepped in it i maybe shouldn't have said this no he was just making assumptions he doesn't know anything and that he was just making assumptions just like everyone else was watching the video so so brandon graham watching he doesn't have any further context to this than you or i would have watching the no play on television nope he's just a fan that's what he said it was great too because then T.O. got involved with Donovan McNabb.
Yeah. It's just like peak Philadelphia.
Yeah, say it to me to my face. Don't say it through the media.
We actually should just play the video I sent you, Max, now. I don't know if you guys saw this, but this is – I actually think that this might be a sign that the Eagles are ready to go on a Super Bowl run because they're, what, 11-2, and they've won how many games max eight games in a row nine games nine games in a row everything's going well they now have players talking about players the old players talking about old players and this was this was after I think this is a crossing broad guys they did a good job with Kyle Pegg and he's good job.
Yeah, so shout out to him. Great video.
This is after the Eagles have won their ninth game in a row. He interviewed people coming out of the link.
And I saw this video and I was like, this could not sum up the Philadelphia Eagle fan base more, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So go ahead.
Play the video. Carolina Panthers suck! I don't know why we're struggling with Carolina.
They suck. They won 2-15 last year.
Suck. We should have fucking killed that.
It's like, who do we want? Jalen Hurts is not the answer. That sounds like Max.
We have a number one defense. Running back.
Jalen Hurts is not the answer. I would never say that.
Big time win. balling out it's like he didn't do anything i think we should get a new quarterback maybe draft like jackson dart or like jalen miller why is brown not getting enough touches including e.g brown man i would not let nick seriani come to the game within the first half because then he couldn't call the first out of plays he can let callin moore just run saquon barkley the entire time And we would win the game within the first half.
We gotta run the ball.

I don't know what we're doing.

Why second and one?

Run the freaking football.

What would you do differently if you coached?

I would give Saquon the ball every time and I would pass to AJ Brown when he opened.

Is that easy, Nick Ceriani?

The Eagles should have won by more.

I'm disappointed.

12 and a half point favorites.

You gotta smack these dudes.

They're just jerking around.

Jerking around.

Jerking around.

Stop jerking around.

And beat the teams you need to beat

Still Super Bowl hosts?

Absolutely

At the end of the day, we're all fucking delusional

We go to the ball

We need a victory sweep

Go Birds, baby

Never in doubt

Miss, it's hard to win in this league, true or false?

So true

It's hard to win in this league, true or false?

So true

But a win is a win, isn't it?

Win is always a win

It's the last night of the Eros Tour, so I'm looking forward to getting home and live streaming that

But the Birds are great

Go Birds, Taylors and Eagles fans. Go birds! I mean, that's just – there are nine wins.
Could you imagine what I'd be saying if I was an 11-2 team, if the Bears were 11-2 and nine wins in a row? Like, having people be like, yeah, Jalen Hurts, not the guy. We need Jalen Milrow or Jackson Dart.
Jackson Dart was a great one. Yeah.
They fucking suck. Max, as an Eagles fan, what would your reaction be if the Eagles team booed you guys? Oh, reverse boo.
They might need to turn it around. Yeah.
I mean, that would just turn into a disaster. It'd be a boo-off.
In theory, I would appreciate it and I would understand it.

Yeah.

But in reality, it would be a disaster.

I don't know.

Because people would get so angry.

I mean, it would basically be like when Nick Sirianni started yelling at the fans.

But it might end up resulting in good things.

That would be the most Philly story of all time. Like the Eagles start booing you guys, you boo them back, and then they just don't stop winning.
No, no, no, because then that would be civil war. You can't have civil war.
House divided. Yeah, it has to be a one-way street.
I'm sorry, it has to be a one-way street. So what's the official statement on on aj brown and jalen hurts not getting along yes good question they are friends no they used to be if i were to say hey big cat and i used to be friends then i started doing the podcast and it would be like that doesn't sound good memes would start looking for a job yeah everyone would be like what do you mean used to be friends you don't say used to be friends for someone that you're friends with.
No, it just means that they were friends before they were teammates, and it got lost in translation. Mitch Hedberg saying, I used to do drugs, I still do them, but I used to also.
Yeah, no, used to be friends is not a good thing to say about someone. Like, I used to date this chick.
Would you say that about your girlfriend? They literally didhake last week they did they did the the Fresh Prince handshake oh wow okay so like they had a bad week sometimes sometimes memes comes into the office on a day of work and wants to kill PFT yeah but they're co-workers not friends they're also but wait and also the memes and PFT definitely used to be friends yeah you could absolutely say that about them we used to be friends before the lottery yeah yeah no and then you know sometimes in the in like the workplace things get heated at some point we might at the end of the day you're still friends i don't know about pf we might be friends again at some point yeah that's up to memes it was just very funny like the whole like whole T.O. then going after Tom.
The T.O. thing was crazy.
Did we read the T.O. tweet? No, find it.
It's just, oh, you guys are 11-2. I know.
I know. I don't know.
Philly media. Tough place to play.
It's a tough place to play. That was just the fans.
That wasn't really the media. Tough place to play.
Brandon Graham literally went on Philly Sports Talk Radio. Yeah.
So why did – that's the other thing. Like, if you're Brandon Graham, you probably know that there's certain things that you shouldn't say because it will cause a shitstorm in Philly.
And he went ahead and said them anyways. That's what tells me that there might be something to it.
Wait, what do you think would cause a shitstorm? Saying, saying like Jalen Hurts and AJ Brown used to be friends yeah whatever so Don McNabb on AJ Brown's potential frustrations he said with Jalen Hurts it's two grown men if you got an issue you come to me let's not go through the media because now it blows up and now what you said is out there in front of everybody and then to then came over the top and said now this is interesting is coming from you not how i interpreted it but funny thing is i agree with you on the idea if you have an issue with someone that you go to them and not the media but here's the thing i never had issue with you, but it's known that you had an issue with me.

So maybe you should have taken your advice here.

Oh, yeah.

And we might have won Super Bowl 39,

but that's another story for another day.

Just my two cents.

You gave yours.

I'm giving mine.

Hey, Freddie Mitchell, thanks for sharing.

That's my favorite part.

Just saying, yeah, Freddie Mitchell texted this to me,

so I had to speak on it. And then Fred X is the first reply saying popcorn activated.
There's no place like Philly. It's just so funny.
You just can't even you got you got you got simultaneously simultaneous wide receiver QB beefs going on old ones and new ones. You're basically like like, hey, this summer we're going to do Top Gun and Top Gun 2.

We're going to play it in the same theater.

That's what you guys are doing right now.

But that was real beef.

T. Owen McNabb was real beef.

A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts is not real beef.

At the time, though, do you think people were saying that's real beef?

Maybe.

Also, A.J. Brown has to be in the touchdown score this week.

Oh, okay.

That's conviction.

Has to be in the touchdown.

I'll see you next time. maybe also AJ Brown has to be in the touchdown score this week oh okay that's conviction has to be in the touchdown score you know that they're going to find a way to feed him the ball I agree I agree I agree Hank are you loving this? oh yeah what are your thoughts Hank? I mean that's Boston was kind of the same way like it's just kind of good sports town degenerate sports town angry sports town yeah used to be beef yeah like there's just never used to be friends you're never you're never going to be happy Tom Brady also wasn't best friends with all his receivers although I don't want to say that him and Julian drove to practice together like every day but Antonio Brown live in his house yeah not all of them um all right I think he was yeah pretty much everyone except what like Aaron Hernandez yep Aaron Hernandez was a great player for the Patriots and they used to be friends probably yeah yeah and then what happened um okay anything else from week 14 I'm excited for some from for the stretch run of football yeah i'm ready to go i'm ready for playoffs i was saying that on sunday nights like we're at the point of the season where there's a lot of games that just mean nothing and i want playoff football here i'm ready to get the playoff i'm ready to get the tournament started it's the best and the playoff simulator is really rounding to form now when they put it out like week 12 there's too many things that you have to click to get the playoff.
I'm ready to get the tournament started. It's the best.
And the playoff simulator is really rounding to form.

Now, when they put it out like week 12, there's too many things that you have to click to get your scenarios going.

So I know you're a big playoff simulator guy.

How many games do you have to win to feel very safe?

Two?

I think three.

I feel like you guys, if you won two, you should be okay.

I'm afraid of the Rams slash Seahawks.

But they all have to play each other, too.

I know, but I would feel comfortable if we won three.

And you have Saints.

We got Saints.

Ben DiNucci just signed for the Saints.

So I'm going to have to kill him.

Then we've got the Eagles, Falcons, Cowboys.

I think you get two wins.

Yep.

I think three. But I think you'll be okay with two Saints is a must win Saints is a must win Yeah, Marshawn Lattimore revenge game Yeah, because you don't want to come down to the last three With the Eagles, Falcons, and Cowboys And the Falcons are fighting for that game Yeah, although they might not be at that point Hank, how many games do we need to win for you to feel very scared about your bet?

If you beat the Saints, it's pretty much over.

Oh, so they're just one win, according to your calculations.

We get in with nine wins?

No, but I don't think you're going to lose three straight.

They literally just did.

I hope not. Right? Yeah, well, that was a hard schedule.
That was a hard schedule. I think if you get two wins, it's going to be hard.
Because if you get two wins, the Rams will have to run the table, essentially. Yeah.
I would feel great with three wins. Yeah.
Yeah you if you're in three then they actually do have to run the table they have to win all three all four games um okay let's do a little college football then we'll get to hot seat cool throne hi it's rigs from foreplay and you know what is back it's pga tour 2k25 that's right it's time to tee it up in iconic pga tour events the first look look is a free-to-play demo experience of PGA Tour 2K25 releasing ahead of the full game launch.

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And weather whatever in Ariat work gear. Little college football, we have our Heisman finalists, Ashtonry, Boise State, Cam Ward, Miami,

Dylan Gabriel, Oregon, and Travis Hunter, Colorado.

The voting has already been done, so we don't even have to say anything.

Yeah, so one guy I would have liked to see is Cam Scadabo.

Yep.

He would have been a nice addition to that group,

but besides that, I think those are four worthy guys.

I think Shador might have had a case.

Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, those are the four that I kind of expected. It was funny.
The graphic that they put out there had Cam Ward listed as 42,000 yards. That would be a record.
That would be very hard to beat. I know his defense is bad, but 42,000 is a lot.
Now, Cam Ward ward did have an outstanding season yeah and and the defense was a huge liability for him so some of those wins that were like you know down to the wire where it could have gone either way that's all because cam ward was so good throughout those entire games yes yes so uh we'll find out on saturday night who wins the heisman but yeah they're all all are incredible uh football players, all worthy of the award, all deserving of the award. If it were up to me, I would split it.
Yeah. I think it would be a four-way tie if it were up to me.
Honestly, with the votes already being in, I'll say it right now. If I had to vote today after the votes are in, I'd probably vote Ashton Gentry.
I'd go Cam Ward, but yeah, Cam Ward, Gentry, and then I'd go Hunter third. But the votes are already in.
Yeah. So there's nothing that can be done at this point.
They're already in. When you fill out a Heisman vote, is that done all online? I don't know, actually.
I feel like Heisman's one of those awards that make you mail it back. Mail-in ballots? That's an issue for me.
Yeah, no, it might be online. Yeah, it might be online.
So we have the college football playoff. We have all the bowls talked about it briefly on on sunday but uh the more i think about it the more they really i'm not mad but it's so clear they need to figure out how to fix this so that uh the buy system is makes more sense yeah they they wanted to put a big emphasis on winning your conference which i understand well i get it and.
And with the idea that traditionally in the past, there have been four conferences that had elite teams that ended up winning those. Right.
But they didn't think about the scenario where it's like, okay, if we have Boise State that gets a bye, how would that impact the rest of the schedule? Right. And I get it, too, because it's a moneymaker and that's all that matters.
They didn't want to devalue the conference championships, which it was still an incredible Saturday, and obviously Clemson hitting a walk-off field goal to get in was awesome. Get rid of the conference championships.
If you're going to do it this way, get rid of the conference championships and just have the playoffs start that weekend. Have it be the first weekend of December.
Have it be 16 teams or whatever it is, 14 teams, have the first round be that weekend, and let's just get it going. The committee kind of boxed themselves in by talking about conference championships not being a factor in eliminating a team.
If SMU had gotten blown out, do you think that they would have been out? I do. I think they probably would have been too.
If it was like a 30-point loss yeah i think it's a liability for teams yeah so yeah i don't know they'll probably never get rid of the conference championships just because you're right it makes a lot of money it makes a lot of money but i think it would i think it would if you expand the playoff then you get the money there yeah i mean the way that they 64 teams top four not 64 teams top four teams get a buy top four teams should get a buy because as it stands right now, and Boise is good. I think Boise could beat anyone.
I think Arizona State could beat anyone. We're going to talk to Kenny Dillingham in a minute.
But when I look at the bracket, the thing that keeps sticking out is like Oregon had by far and away the best season in college football. They did not lose a game.
They played in a Power 4 conference. They got tested in big-time games, and they passed every test.
And they are the one seed, rightfully so, and their matchup potentially is going to be Ohio State or Tennessee in the first round, which that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. No,'t it doesn't it ended up rewarding penn state for losing the conference championship game yeah and and and by

the way uh penn state and notre dame in that bottom part of the bracket with georgia now having

carson beck out probably for the rest of the year that's they're live those teams are live

what is penn state now 650 that was on sunday i can look at i might have there is live is live

Thank you. That's – they're live.
Those teams are live. What is Penn State now? It's 650? That was on Sunday.

I can look at it.

There is live as live could be.

I might have to wet the beak on that.

But it's big game James, and he can't win a big game.

That's fair.

Yeah.

He's what, 0-12, I think, versus top five teams?

One thing that I've really loved, though,

is the crying about out-of-conference scheduling that's happened.

Yes.

And it's been continuing.

He beat Ohio State once.

He did beat Ohio State once, but were they ranked top five?

I believe so.

Double check that.

Does this count as a big game, Max?

Penn State, Ohio State. Again, SMU? Yeah, does penn state smu count as a big game i would say no penn state upsets number two ohio okay so he's one one he's one one uh no i would say i think i think he's he's safe smu doesn't count as a big game this is not a big game yeah For Penn State.
No, it's a big game. Oh, it is a big game.
That's bad. I don't know.
No, I don't think it's a big game. But then you're not taking the game seriously, and you've got to take the game seriously.
It's a big game. No, I think you've got to take the game not seriously.
Yeah, if it's a big game, then big game James. True.
Are they allowed to do a whiteout? They are doing a whiteout. Oh, and is it noon? It's at noon.
Oh, love it. I love this conversation because we're essentially having the can't win or can't lose, must win conversation just in completely different terms.
Yes, yes. You got to figure out if it's a big game, though, prior to kickoff.
But I don't know. You don't want it to be a big game, right? No, you don't want it to be a big game.
So, yeah, no. Yeah.
You want SMU to come out in Purdue's uniforms. I mean, SMU, it's going to be like 15 degrees in State College.
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's big.
I mean, that's big. Not shooting for that weather.
Not built. But, yeah, the crying about out-of-conference scheduling from the SEC has been very funny because I don't think any of these coaches have realized that if you don't schedule good out of conference teams guess what that means that there's going to be other teams from other conferences that don't have sec out of conference games on their schedule right right and going back to like alabama schedule you lost to vanderbilt in your conference you lost oklahoma in your conference so that's not really what it gets down to but it's driving people insane there was a an op-ed that was written in uh al.com alabama.com and it was should Alabama join the ACC oh let's have the conversation I had I I like this because I had a someone replying to me the other day that said LSU should just join the Sun Belt.
Yeah. Same feeling.
Yeah. Yeah.
So if LSU joined the Sun Belt, they would probably win the Sun Belt. Well, maybe not.
Brian Kelly would find a way to lose. But if Alabama joined the ACC, he would probably win the ACC and then ensure himself of a bye in the college football playoff this person says if south carolina had been in the acc they would have made the playoffs this year if alabama had been in the big 12 they would have been as well the same would have been true for mississippi if they had been in the mountain west that would be an interesting one yeah if move mississippi out to the mountain west why go through the meat grinder that is the sec every week when you can cruise to an automatic bid in to the cfp and any of the other cupcake conferences the bottom line and it's an ugly truth to be sure is that the other conferences outside the sec and big 10 are no longer viable as they exist today the pac-12 teams figure this out pretty quickly and bolted for the big 10 where oregon is currently the number one team in the country.
I like that take that that the Oregon going to the Big Ten.

Yeah. figure this out pretty quickly and bolted for the Big Ten, where Oregon is currently the number one team in the country.
I like that take, that Oregon going to the Big Ten is equivalent to Alabama going to the ACC. ACC, yeah.
I mean, first of all, I think the SEC was just not as good this year, and we're going off of old SEC. They're still probably the best conference, but it wasn't elite to that level.
I think they're the deepest conference. Yeah, but Alabama was an 18-point favorite against Vanderbilt.
They were a 21-point favorite against Oklahoma. They were a flawed football team.
I don't know any real Alabama fan could straight face. There's a difference between saying, you want to be in because it's the team you root for and you think you might be better than smu and i can buy that argument but you can't sit there and be like we were not a flawed football team because they were they that's just what happened during the season i also think weirdly the the entire backlash to like net we'll never schedule a strong out of conference like obviously wisconsin was down this year.
But if Alabama had, let's just say, played Oregon week one and beaten them, they might have been in with three SEC losses because everyone had been like, holy shit, they beat the number one team. They're out-of-conference.
They went and proved another one. But let's just say it was an up year for Wisconsin, right? One of your good seasons.
If you didn't have that game scheduled against alabama and you had just steamrolled a weaker big 10 schedule if it bounced your way then that would actually favor you and not the sec right because it would mean that you would have one less hard game to right right which would have been yeah right it would have been like indiana didn't play an sec team right and they they're in and they're in and if they maybe played an sec team they would have maybe been out and alabama would have been and then in the future if all these sec athletic directors are like we're not going to schedule hard games like against indiana out of conference because there's no there's no reason for us to do that no benefit then you might wind up in a scenario where indiana gets a playoff spot right because you didn't schedule them right if indiana had played played South Carolina week two and lost to South Carolina, Alabama would probably be in. Yeah.
See how this works? Yeah. It's like a giant ecosystem.
Yeah. Yeah, it is very funny.
We also – are you going to do Bill Belichick for your hot sequel, Throne? Or we want to talk about it because he looks like – We'll talk about it. It looks like he's going to take the North Carolina job.
Yeah. Which I think he's going to be successful.
And I know that this is probably just because he gave his pitch on McAfee show on Monday. And I am a sucker for a good pitch.
But he essentially was like, we're going to be an NFL factory where we're just going to train guys to get to the NFL. He had a 400 page document, a manifesto Bible.
That's a manifesto. Yeah.
Manifesto is working college football. Yeah.
Manifesto is hot right now yeah it is very hot so i i don't know because he's he's on the older side for sure i don't know how he'll do in terms of recruiting there's a lot more that goes into it once the players get in the door then i'm sure that he'll be fine he'll be good you assume because he kind of went in with the clause that his son gets to take over when he stops that his son will probably do a lot of the recruiting. Right and I really do think that if you are matter of fact.
He's going to be the closer. Yeah if you're matter of fact to these both transfer kids and like I think he'll crush in the transfer portal because if he just says hey I'm not going to try to sell you on like idea that we're competing for national titles right away.

I'm going to get you ready to play football at the National Football League level,

and there's no one better that knows that than me.

A lot of kids will probably buy in on that.

That's the goal.

College football, that's the goal now.

So Belichick making his son head coach and waiting.

Hank, I know that you were a big fan when LeBron James got his son drafted by the Lakers. No, but continue.
Okay, so what's the difference with this? Coaching is a lot different than playing. Well, you have to be – yeah, you definitely have to be qualified.
Which he is. Has he been a head coach? No, but he's worked his way up the ranks as any head coach that's ever head coached in the history of coaching has.

Where did he work his way up the ranks?

Right now he's working in Washington.

He was, you know, special assistant.

Then he was whatever, like cornerbacks coach.

Then he was D coordinator.

Like he worked his way up.

Up to where was that?

Position by position.

Where did he work his way up there? In New England, but now he's coaching at washington okay all right it's just interesting good dad how many how many coaches like did kyle is kyle shanahan did he work his way up the ranks there's there's a million there football is like the most basketball is different there's not a lot of examples of nepotism drafts There's a million examples of nepotism coaching. He's doing a good job of arguing his point.
That was actually a really good job arguing. That is a fair point.
Yeah. I would say good dad, though.
I was not trying to denigrate Steve. I was saying Belichick.
It sounds like you were, though. Good dad.
No, it sounds like he does. You don't think he does.
Yeah, because it's a LeBron, Belichick, Joe Biden, great fathers all hooking their sons up.

The point was, you know, nepotism shouldn't be able to work when you have to be skilled and play the actual position.

Like, I mean, Steve Kerr's son is a coach.

What's his name again?

Nicholas.

Okay.

Yeah, Nicholas Kerr.

But there's guys everywhere. It's crazy.
It's crazy. It never stops being crazy.
Did they have a conversation at all? When they burned them, were they like, hey? I know the naming process. We had a group of three or four names and we went with the names we went with but like you gotta have a focus group how did that not how did that pass when you're telling the person what name to put on the birth certificate right that's when you realize nicholas it's nicholas but yeah uh hank i'm really proud of you thank you you argued your point very well i always do pfc tried to get you and you didn't get got no we're just having a conversation we're just having a debate this is how we figure out what we truly believe in it's the socratic method yeah uh socrates who do you guys have winning the whole thing in the college football playoff i got penn state penn state Penn State will lose to, I guess, Oregon.

In the final.

Is that possible?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that isn't possible?

Yeah, that is possible.

No, it is, but I don't know why everyone's picking Penn.

So, Max would finish second?

Max is finishing.

I'm going to take Oregon.

Penn State's losing in the championship.

I'm just going to take Oregon.

Yeah, I mean, I said Oregon before the season started and Texas.

How are you not taking Texas?

What do you mean?

You are Texas.

I'm not Texas.

You are Texas.

Just take Texas.

How?

You love Texas.

Just take Texas.

I love the city of Austin.

Just take Texas.

I'm not like a Longhorn fan.

Just take Texas.

Closeted.

I'll take Texas.

Okay. I'm going to take.
You never had any bias towards Texas football. I like going to the games, and I like tailgating and drinking beer.
That's like enough of a reason for you to be not like a diehard fan. Yeah, you can have bias.
You can have bias. It's okay.
I might be semi-biased. Come out of the closet.
I might be semi-biased. When people do horns down, it does not hurt me.
It does not affect me. So take Texas.
I'm going to take Penn State. Okay.
So I have Oregon. You have Penn State.
Max has Texas. No, I'm taking Arizona State.
There we go. I love it.
I don't think it works for college football, but if it was hockey or college basketball, they're the hottest team. Make a run.
This is the first time there's ever been a playoff where it is like, you know, can a team go on a run? So fuck it. Arizona State.
Make a run. I don't think it applies, but I hope it does.
Who cares? I mean, the funniest outcome I still think would be Ohio State. Yeah, for sure.
I'm just very interested to see. Like, I feel like we'll know within the first half of that first quarter where it's like, are they just a completely dead team or are they going to go to the national championship? Indiana would be funny too.
Indiana would be great. Indiana would be awesome.
All right, let's do Hot Seat, Cool Throne, and then we'll get to our interviews. We have Steve Young and Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham.
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Okay, Hank, Hot Seat Cool Trout.

My Hot Seat, I don't know why I wrote this in my notes. I just wrote fantasy.
I don't know what that means.

Okay.

But the Yankees are also on the Hot Seat.

Oh, I had that.

The reason, one of the reported

reasons that he didn't sign with the Yankees is

because they didn't offer him a suite for

his family and that they

once, what was it, they kicked out someone from

the VIP lounge, like one of his cooks

Thank you. reasons that he didn't sign with the yankees is because they didn't offer him a suite for his family and that they once what was it they kicked out someone from the the vip lounge like one of his cooks or assistants or something yeah family member yeah so the yankees lost out on a generational talent just because they were disrespectful how are yankees fans taking this they're lashing out there it's it's one of those moments that we all do this as fans, but when you're completely removed from it,

it is so funny to watch because I've seen it all.

Juan Soto is a terrible defender.

Juan Soto is a liability.

You're going to have to move him to DH.

Not 26.

He's not 26.

That he's going to be 40 years old,

making all that money.

Actually, it's good that the Yankees didn't get him because now they can use that money to fill a bunch of different holes. It's my favorite one.
It's the best. It's the best to watch because again, we all do it every single time you'd miss out on a free agent or draft pick.
You're like, I never wanted that guy. That guy stinks, but they just flipped so fast when it comes to doing the, that now we can use all that money to fill these different holes.
Yeah, you could have done that. There's no salary cap.
Yeah. You could have just gone ahead and spent money on top of money.
There also was one funny tweet that went semi-viral that made me laugh where someone was like, Juan Soto chose the bag over Legacy. Yeah.
A Yankees fan saying someone chose a bag. It's just, it's great to watch, especially the fact that it was the Mets.
Also, Hank, there was a report that, like, someone kicked his family out of a, they kicked him out of a suite, but then also it was, like, batting practice or something. Like, basically.
Yeah, it was like something in the tunnel or, like, where they were basically, like, he had a family member just hanging out, and they were like, you can't be here. Yeah, and then Steve Cohen threw in a suite for him.
Yeah, that's classy. Family suite.
Cohen said that he didn't think that he was going to win either. He thought that he was going to go to the Yankees until the very, very last second.
They had like a last-minute negotiation. But yeah, Stephen Cohen, he wasn't going to be outspent.
No. And so for Yankees fans to be complaining that you can just buy a team now, it is delicious.
Yeah, the Yankees wouldn't budge on giving Juan Soto a suite at Yankee Stadium saying that if they don't do it for Derek Jeter they're not going to do it for him yeah they're probably like well who do you think is going to pay for this giant salary to need to sell that suite to somebody right exactly but uh yeah it's it's very funny watching the instant turn by Yankees fans being like yeah yeah, he actually is. I saw one Yankee fan just posted all of his like fuck ups in right field.
And they're like, this is we didn't want this for the next 15 years. So here's a story.
The Mets have excellent intelligence. They were aware that while Soto liked being a Yankee and loved having Aaron Judge protect him in the lineup and lead them all in the clubhouse,

he allegedly was upset early in the year by an overzealous Yankees security guy

who disallowed a family member and his chef slash driver from certain areas.

Basically Mark Wahlberg and other guys.

Yeah.

So it was a security guard's fault.

Yeah.

Also, my other hot seat, NBA Cup.

I have been trying not to get mad, but it's kind of bullshit that the Celtics went 3-1 and aren't in it. But it's a good thing you're not mad.
No, I'm not mad. I will be watching and betting on it, but it is slightly triggering.
Yeah. I'm the worst NBA Cup gambler of all time.
That's true. You should be the I think you should be the data.
I think if you break it down, I literally might be the best NBA cup gambler of all time in the history of the world. As of right now, as of right now.
Yeah. And go check out our picks.
We have them on our socials. So follow PFT.
Hank, your cool throne. My cool throne is Deshaun Watson.
Oh. What's going on?

He just posted an Instagram story of him and his girlfriend having a nice...

Looked like they were on a beach.

Beach side, dinner, romantic, classy.

Looks like he's living his best life.

Good for him.

I think it was the ocean.

Although, sometimes I think Lake Michigan's the ocean.

But it looked like the ocean.

I'm going to guess it wasn't Lake Erie and Cleveland in December. No.
And when I say good for him, I mean, I don't care. I hate him.
Yeah, but he doesn't seem to care. He's chilling.
Yeah. No, I saw that.
Pasta didn't look that great. No? No.
It looked like just regular, like, it didn't look that fancy. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, he's still got a shitload of money and a shitload of lawsuits to settle.
I think he might've settled all of them. Oh, he did? I think so.
There's not any new ones? Not yet. Give Tony Busby like a week.
I think it was, I think it was basically like a salamander's tale where just one would fall off and another one would grow on and grow back. Yeah.
All right. So cool cool throw on Deshaun Watson.
You're a big Deshaun Watson fan.

No, but he's on the cool.

Like, he's chilling.

He's chilling.

He is chilling.

He is chilling.

That's Hank's dream life, is being Deshaun Watson.

No, no, no.

Never said that.

PFT, you're hot seat.

Cool throw.

My hot seat is reality.

Oh.

Did you guys see the story about the new supercomputer that just came out?

No.

All right, so Google just announced this yesterday.

They've invented a new computer. They have a new quantum computing chip.
They named it Willow, and it's capable of performing this specific computing challenge in less than five minutes. Okay.
You might be like, okay, what does that even mean? Well, Google says that one of the world's current fastest supercomputers would take 10 septillion years to complete that same challenge that Google's chip did in less than five minutes. 10 septillion is longer than the age of the universe.
Holy shit. So it has this chip that is like the next step in quantum computing.
Septillion? Septillion. It's a real number somehow.
how many trillions are in a septillion uh i don't know i'm was that 70 trill i don't know no idea these numbers are are impossible to even think about that's how big they are so google is infinity bigger than that uh is google bigger than that no infinity infinity is bigger than that yeah I think we're very close to just the world ending so yeah like the AI

super Is Google bigger than that? No, Infinity. Infinity is bigger than that.
Yeah. I think we're very close to just the world ending.
So, yeah. Like the AI supercomputers catching up and then just taking over.
So that's what they talked about. They actually said that what they're starting to believe now and the fact that they've invented a chip that's this fast, it actually l credence to the the theory that we are living in

one of an infinite number of computer simulations right now and once we reach that singularity where we have like crazy quantum computing then we just start developing more and more universes out of that ah so this might not be real holy shit this podcast might not be real wow Wow. Nothing's real.
Yeah.

Except how bad Spotify is where they're in the view wrapped.

And AJ Brown and Jalen Hurts.

That's a real. Used to being friends.

In a different, maybe in a different universe.

Yeah.

They were friends at one point.

Yeah.

My cool throne is shooting your shot.

Okay.

Friend of the program, Ryan Russillo.

Went on a podcast and discussed an event that he was at several years ago it was a uh a celebrity football game and it was with the sports illustrated swimsuit models and he talked about the fact that there were all these swimsuit models there there was one girl that was there that was not getting as much attention as the swimsuit model that he felt to be more attainable. That woman was Meghan Markle.

Mm hmm.

And. There was one girl that was there that was not getting as much attention as the swimsuit model that he felt to be more attainable.
That woman was Meghan Markle. And he shot a shot.
He DMed her. And the picture that Ryan put up, she looks like she's having a good time.
Body language experts. Yeah.
Pretty decent green line test right there, I would say. Ryan looks strong.
He looks very strong. Got a lot of hair.
The hair, I think if he was bald we're so low that it goes differently but megan's markle's short enough that i don't think she saw that you know he's wearing a bald yarmulke well she does love hairy guys true fact so uh ryan slid into her dms and was like hey do you want to on my podcast? But in like a flirtatious manner. Yeah.
And talk football. And she was like, I'm not that big of a sports fan.
Well, I think he was like, you want to come on my podcast and promote your show that's coming out? Yeah. She was like, I don't know sports.
And that's how it ended. But then page six got their grubby hands on the story.
And they put up such an unflattering picture of russillo and the headline was like a former espn uh podcast host thought that megan markle was attainable and that picture actually in that headline not that bad the picture they used in the story yeah that's that's a bad one so it makes it look like i know which one they use they use that one every time yeah it makes it look like ryan thought that megan markle was like a super attainable like beneath him yeah they put that back side by side i rosseau also has told the story like a million times and i it's funny that it just got picked up and they did this oh that's the picture that's the picture right that's bullshit yeah page six fuck you so they they wrote this article just to put this picture of r up and be like, this guy thought this chick was attainable. Yeah.
Then it got community noted. Do you see that? Yeah.
That had to be Rosillo. Well, I mean, the Rosillo army said Ryan Rosillo has said multiple times that this is a joke and never asked Markle out.
Yeah. Because he has told the story before.
But yeah, that's so funny. He invited her on the podcast.
Yeah. To promote her show.
What a good guy. Oh my God.
I've heard that. Rassil is hotter than Meghan Markle.
I'll say it. I think that.
He is. I think she might be attainable for Ryan right now.
Yeah. Actually, no.
I think Rassil is unattainable for Meghan Markle. You know how close he lives to the beach? Yeah.
He's got a boat. He's playing guitar now.
He might not have a boat anymore. He surfs.
Yeah. He's got scripts.
The total package. He's working on them.
That man right there, that is a real prince. Yeah.
Yeah. He'll treat you right.
And when I say treat you right, it means he'll ignore you while he watches Magic Blazers game 38. He's strong.
He's so strong. They fucked.
Fuck you, Page Six. Yeah.
You don't come at our boy like that. It was a dirty move.
Yeah. Okay.
I hope it worked. What if it does work out for them? Could.
Could. All right.
My hot seat is Odell Beckham because he and his dad are on the hot seat because Roma Dunze and his dad have taken over. I don't know if you guys saw, but probably didn't.
A Twitter account called BlackDicka posted. You got to make sure to pronounce the end of that.
Yeah, BlackDicka posted Roma Dunze would have 1,100 yards on any other NFC North team. And James Dunze, Rome's dad, said 1,500.
So that's going well. Everything's going well love it's not depressing i love those twitter accounts like the black adam schefter yeah black skip bayless you didn't know we needed a black dick no now you do we got one uh but yeah things are going well and then we had uh that doesn't even look like dicka i think that's just a random fan who's in a dick sweater yeah i do idea, like, yeah, black people, you should be allowed to dress up as Mike Dicka too.
Yeah, you should have a Dicka. A big Dicka.
And then most of the time, do. My cool throne is Jalen Brunson, because there was a report last night by Josh Hart that in the second half of the Knicks-Raptors game, Jalen Brunson was screaming, I want Dick, I'll take Dick.
Talking about Grady Dick. Got it.
That also got community noted. He's lying on my name.
Very funny, though. This is what I love about guys that have been friends for a long time.
I know. And continue to be friends you can say this type of stuff about your buddy yeah i got dick i want to also carl anthony towns he might be the perfect fit for new york he had a big shot he was repping it yeah uh and the knicks have been hot like carl anthony towns might be built like that see i didn't i didn't think that he would when they made this trade he might be proving me wrong he is He is.
He's built like that. Okay, let's do our interviews.
We've got a great interview with Steve Young and then Kenny Dillingham. Also, awesome, awesome interview.
Really cool guy. Back to back.
Before we do that, we've got a couple ads from UPFT. Before we get to Steve Young, he's brought to you by Viator.
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Steve Young is also brought to you by our great friends over at Uber Eats. I love this ad because every week I get to update you because they're giving away food.
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He's a pro football Hall of Famer, Super Bowl champion, multiple-time MVP. It is Steve Young.
Steve, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it.
We are children of the 90s, so we grew up watching you play football. And we got a bunch of different questions.

I actually wanted to start with some games we watched yesterday.

And your team, who kicked the shit out of my team, the Bears.

Are the 49ers back or did they just play the Bears?

Could they make a run here?

We're trying to figure it out.

I think if you stand back to who who they were last year fully loaded and christian mccaffrey and brandon i you probably other than george the most important people on the field and then trent and not no trent it's you know it's gonna it's it's hard right but i think it was gonna get harder anyway so i think what's happened is they got punched in the mouth in Green Bay got punched in the mouth in Buffalo and and got him in way got embarrassed and this is a team yeah short of some guys we get that but as a group 50 guys have been at Super Bowls or at championship games and all of a sudden people are you know like dogs, like, like something's, you know, and, and I think that this is their answer back, like, Hey, we're wounded, but we're not gone. And so when you say, Hey, can they, can they clap back and get something done? I think this is a group of people that have proven some real resilience.
I mean, there's some, some hardy folks. That's why last week I talked about grit with, you know, during the week about them is like, where's the grit? Where's the natural grit that you guys have had for years? And I think they answered that on Sunday.
So I would say to your question, can they clap back and make something happen? They're under direct. They got to win.
They got to go to Miami and win. They got to win against the Rams who are hot are hot and they gotta come back home and beat the Lions they have to win those games and so yeah it's absolutely possible it's possible hard but possible yes fundamentally there's another story in the NFL going on right now that I feel like you have some good insight into and that's Bryce Young Bryce was he was unceremoniously benched I don't know if you can be ceremoniously benched but he was he was definitely cast aside by the Panthers and I've been ceremoniously benched before.
Yeah you can be ceremoniously benched and unceremoniously benched they're both the same. Yeah yeah so so he was kind of cast aside and you know the the bust phrase got thrown around a little bit with Bryce.

He's still very early on in his career.

Second year, he gets benched, and he comes back,

and he looks like a completely different quarterback.

You had, I don't want to say similar experience,

but you were kind of cast. No, it's an arc.

I know where you're going.

You were cast aside by the Bucs early on in your career,

and you didn't get a chance.

Well, I was a lefty.

People back then didn't want to coach a lefty. They freaked out you kind of do look like ray perkins got the head coaching job and

he looked at me like bro i hate lefties and i i hate scramblers anyone who could run was was like

weird yeah you should stand there don't go anywhere and i look that was prototype i get it

it's still look you got to be a sophisticated passer with football today no matter what but

Thank you. stand there don't go anywhere and i look that was prototype i get it it's still look you got to be a sophisticated passer with football today no matter what but i always thought it was a bonus and he thought it was terrible they ran i mean he thought i lefty in a scrambler you're out i hate you yeah lefties do look weird no but but but but getting thrown out like when you talk about bryce young look there's there's crappy places be as a quarterback today.
You can go to teams and it just sucks being a quarterback there because they have people running the organization. I'm not speaking about Carolina specifically.
I'm talking about there's a number of places where they still don't, from ownership on down, don't understand the position's importance and then how to, they tend to look at it from a defensive perspective.

I'm not going to coddle a quarterback. I'm not going to, they don't need special treatment, you know? And so it's like the paradigm is wrong.
It's not that they need to be coddled or need special treatment. There's expertise to the nature of building a situation and organization from the ground up to make the job for the quarterback as easy as possible so they can thrive and be great.
And if you do that, then you have a chance. And so for Bryce, it's getting to a place where you can actually show who you are.
Look at Sam Darnold. It's a perfect example.
Jets flailing around. Boss goes to Carolina.
Oh, shows some signs. Let's be honest.
He set up some smoke signals in Carolina when he was there. Like, I can still do this.
I don't suck. But you still don't need more help.
And then he gets to San Francisco. And what does Kyle Shanahan say? I love this guy.
This guy's career arc could be great and we all kind of said oh yeah what are you talking about that's crazy he's nuts what does he do then he goes to minnesota and now like and so bryce unless you look there's some guys that hit the pro game who have really thrived in in college who look prototype bryce looks throat prototype probably not as strong as the prototypes, but runs around, makes big plays, and been in the big games. Bryce doesn't know his ceiling.
We don't know his ceiling. And there's filters he's got to go through, even if he got all of that help.
But what you're seeing today in the last few weeks is, hey, look, I can survive here. And if you can survive, then you can thrive.
And so I don't know where this ends up for Bryce, but he's showing me, um, like, like Sam did when he was in Carolina, like we're losing, but I can figure this out. And, and that's a, I always say it's called sending me smoke signals.
Like, like I'm dying here, but I'm sending you something that tells me that you're going to, you have a chance to thrive at some point, either there or somewhere else. Yeah.
With Bryce specifically, things looked real bad for him. Every snap looked like he was thinking it through.
He was lost. It was painful.
He was lost. He looked like he was lost.
And the fact that he's improved so much from earlier this year, as he was going through that and all the public scrutiny that went with it, to how he's playing right now actually tells me that he can be even a whole lot better than he is right now. A hundred percent, a thousand percent, Max, a hundred percent.
I can't agree with you more. It's the signal in tough times, in tough situations, That team, you know, it's hard in locker rooms.
I was in Tampa. I understand losing locker rooms.
The players are not losers, but the losing locker room is tough to overcome. And so if you can show signs, smoke signals again, that you can know, you know what you're doing and I can figure it out, that is warrior work.
That is,rick does not have to do that work anymore yeah yeah josh allen does not have to do that work anymore but but but in many ways bryce is doing that work yeah the do you think in the nfl game we move on from these guys too quickly because you you mentioned josh allen i mean josh allen was not great his rookie year probably not i mean he showed, the smoke signals somewhere around the halfway point of his second year. And now he's playing the best of any quarterback in the NFL.
I mean, that game against the Rams, I know they lost, but he was out of this world good. Do you think, as a league, teams and franchises are moving on too quickly from guys and not giving them a chance to to get through those rough patches that they start their career with the the problem is is you don't have 32 great places for quarterbacks to make that judgment right you have to glean through you have to recognize like if if you're in san francisco and you're struggling you got problems because there couldn't be a better place jimmy garoppolo takes a team to the Super Bowl here and then can't find a job.
So there's places where if you go down and see Sean McVay and struggle at quarterback, the guy that understands and innovative mind and how he calls plays and he understands position, then that's about you. You know what I mean? So if the Rams drafted or the 49ers drafted a young quarterback like trey lanson can't do it that's a that's a sign of that's not a that's not a that's not a situation problem that's a you problem right and so uh but then there's a lot of places where you go and you can't know that they're they they you know they get drafted a young quarterback to try to be great and it's not a place for quarterbacks, and it's not necessarily a you problem.
And I think the people who understand the position, who have built organizations to make sure that they make the quarterback as profitable as possible, have now the reps to know when somebody is not going to get there, or like Sam Darnold, like there's something here and we can work with it. And so I think until there's 32 teams like that, we're going to have to glean through where it is and what it is.
Like if someone gets drafted by the Jets this year and they haven't fixed anything, then it can't be harder. I mean, I feel for Aaron Rodgers because it's so interesting that he's, he was developed in an age of more sophistication.
The job that he had 15 years ago is so much harder than it is today. Today's game, Tom Brady describes, the flats are open, the middle of the field's unpatrolled, and no one can hit me.
It's an amazing time to play quarterback. And Aaron learned the game and are very much more sophisticated.
And so he should be dominating as Tom dominated, as Matthew Stafford is dominating. Anyone that's hung around long enough to know in a sophisticated time should be dominating.
That's how tough it is for the Jets to go be good yeah and granted he's lost some mobility and everything else but that's when you know some place they they've got to they don't understand the position and uh it makes it super hard yeah so what is it about uh san francisco specifically that organization and kyle shanahan what makes it easy to play quarterback for him? If you track Bill Walsh to Andy Reid, and then you track Andy Reid through Mike Shanahan, there's a way that they look at the world. They look at the coaching world as abundant.
In other words, whatever I know, I want you to know. So they're unafraid to share where so many trees of court of coaches, they don't share anything.
Good luck to you, bro. I got my proprietary knowledge, you know, to hell with you.
And, and, and it doesn't have that abundant spirit. So what I'm, what I'm trying to describe you fundamentally is if you're from the Bill Walsh tree, you've been taught to share, like I'm open.
And then also I'm because of that and i seek like i i i like abundance in the in the spirit of how i coach you can have everything i have is that because i'm not gonna i'm not staying here i don't whatever i have today is not what i'm gonna be tomorrow i'm i'm i reinvent myself look at andy reed he's 67 years old yeahaking reinventing himself every week. Never stuck.
Never thinks, oh, I used to do it and it works great and I'm just going to keep calling plays from 2015 because that was when I was great. That's half the league today.
But why is San Francisco great? Why Kyle great? It's because he's come from a place of, like, look, who's come out of his shop? Mikecdaniel like who's come out of the shanahan tree let alone you know i mean like because they're it's like have everything i got because i'm not staying here this week against the rams watch sean and kyle go at it they've been saving stuff so that they could like because they empty the tank when they play each other the The plays, the cool stuff they do. And it's a short week, so they're going to be under real dress to get in all the cool stuff they want to get in.
Because they're not going to, who you knew me yesterday is not who I'm going to be tomorrow. And I think Andy does that.
And that's why it's, as a quarterback, you're trusted. I believe that you can, I'll call plays that are very aggressive and you protect me.
Quarterback, you protect me. It puts a quarterback in a position of great empowerment and faith.
And then I'm going to call plays that make it really easy for you and really hard on defenses. And I've seen that from Kyle from the beginning.
He takes the job of quarterback and makes it as easy as possible and as complex as possible for the defense and then calls plays in combination to just shame them yeah like you think you can play that defense and get away with it I'm gonna pound you and a lot of guys talk about it on Wednesday they actually don't call the plays on Sunday yeah yeah so all right so in all right. So, in a coaching perspective, you go from Tampa to San Francisco.
What was that like when you sit down with Bill Walsh for the first time? You're like, holy shit. This is totally different.
Like, did you have that moment, that Eureka moment where it's like, oh, man, this is – I know I'm not brought in as the starter because Joe Montana's here, but, like, everything in my life is going to be easier when i get my chance yeah i'm the first member i i was traded to the saint louis cardinals uh uh ray perkinson come in as a head coach told me he hates lefties and scramblers you're out of here called me and said i was traded to the san francisco card i mean the san luis cardinals i had made a relationship with the owner hugh colehouse no one else really knew him. And he'd sit over in the corner and I'd go talk to him.
And so he and I were friendly. And I immediately called him.
Because two months before, we were trying to get Bo Jackson to come down. And at dinner, he goes, this is my quarterback for life.
And so I called him. I said, Mr.
Culverhouse, you said I was your quarterback for life. And now I'm getting thrown out of town.
I'm going, you can't send me to St. Louis Louis.
He goes, oh, I'm so sorry, Steve. Yeah, new coach, blah, blah, blah.
He goes, but you're right. I told you that I owe you a chance.
He nixed the trade to the Cardinals. Like he went and cut it.
Like I don't know what you do especially, but he went and, you know, didn't agree to it. Wow.
And then he called me back, and he said, look, I'm going going to give you a week and I want you to go find a place where you can thrive. And I'm like, he saved my life.
And so then I talked to Bill Walsh and Bill Walsh's first thing he said to your question, I love the fact that you're left-handed. I think it's an advantage.
I was like, I mean, in college, my office coordinator said he wouldn't coach a lefty. So I was like, I think it's an advantage.
And I love that your mobility, we're going to have to make sure we know where you're going, but your mobility is a superpower. Wow.
And I'm like, first thing out of the gate. And then he said, Joe Montana has just had his second back surgery.
And I don't know how he comes back from it and so I'm like I hate to

hear that but man that's a real opportunity and so and then the first two things happened the first day the first day we I got to the 49ers we had a summer camp and and Bill Walsh walked in and he said something that I'll I'll I'll never forget he said look I don't care what play we call I don't care what defense we run.

We're going to win

because we have said something that I'll never forget. He said, look, I don't care what play we call.
I don't

care what defense we run. We're going to win because we have shared common experiences amongst each other and an element of love for each other.
That's how we're going to do it. And I was like, did he just, what did he just say? He wrote a book called The Score Takes Care of Itself because of if live values of, because he said, look, we're going to be in Green Bay playing the Packers at Lambeau Field.
It'll be drizzling rain and 31 degrees. You've never been cold in your life.
The wind's going to be whipping. We'll be down by four, third and 10, no timeouts with a minute 10 left.
And I want you to get in the huddle and I want to look across the huddle to people that you have a shared experience with and have some level of affection or some level of respect, like you know each other. And I was like, this is crazy talk.
I've never heard a coach talk like this. This is football.
What are you talking about? I'm used to coaches with a big stick just hitting you over the head. And so I'm telling you, Bill Walsh gets a lot of credit, but not nearly as much as he should get at what the game looks like today.
Like the game that we enjoy today is really off the back of that pump. And I learned it firsthand from the call I got when he told me he loves lefties and scramblers.
And then when he talked about – but then the next thing, we ended the meeting, we went out for the first practice and i'd never met joe montana and he came running out and the first thing i thought is he doesn't look real hurt he gave it bill walsh gave you a nice speech to get you there because he knew you'd be someone yeah yeah yeah six years together yeah how how was that knowing i mean we you know obviously brady has is and they've and the Patriots been through a couple quarterbacks but it had to have been a little difficult at times or a lot difficult at times to to be with a living legend and and knowing the fan base wants one thing and you're and you're like hey I want a shot I know I could do this and then have that moment you know the classic clip the monkey off your back winning the Super Bowl where it's like everything that you thought you could do you went out and proved it I mean there's a book there it's a lot of chapters it was the dynamic is and I Joe would agree I mean it's just been awkward from the first day yeah first day I showed I showed up, it was awkward. And I think if, you know, when we see each other, it's, we never argued.
We never had a crossword of each other. Never, I never had an argument.
I mean, we just didn't, but it was always awkward. And I don't think it was never not awkward.
Yeah. And the day when he was traded to the chiefs, it was, it remained awkward.
When I got there and when, when, when we, when, you know, Bill, Bill was crazy. He would, Joe Montana won two Super Bowls.
He'd drive the team down in the Superdome and then he'd go, go in and run this play. And I'd run in and Joe would run off the play.
Like I was, it was a crazy time. And it was all of that.
And the fans, it was, they were being whiplashed and it was hard. And of course I was going to lose every conversation.
In fact, just one little thing I'll tell you. In 1991, the Gulf War had broken out in the Middle East.
And on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and the headline, because at the time I was playing and things weren't going perfectly, and I think the whole Bay Area and really any 49er fan in the world was like where's we need joe and i remember thinking to myself well he didn't you guys know he lost a game like no that's impossible he threw in a complete pass i i promise you like no we don't remember that yeah on the first page of the chronicle was the gulf war it's steve young's fault you know what i mean it was like a and i think that that tells you how it was going for me yeah and it's i mean it's i i love the honesty because i think a lot of times you know we've had this conversation before where a veteran is in there and then a rookie gets drafted and the veteran will be honest and be like hey i'm not here to help him and like everyone's oh my god how could he say that your teammates but that's kind of the the reality of it like you you've got a job and someone's trying to take your job and there's that element in every locker room and and and and you know and bill create i mean i i think joe and i both feel that we looking back on the relationship we have with bill walsh it It was love hate because, uh, you know, he, he said, I put you guys together to get the best out of both of you. Joe hated to hear that.
And I guess I hated to hear that too. Like, uh, but yet, um, he was the King.
Joe was the King. And I was, I was a fricking pauper.
Right. And so I, I, the, the, the, the power dynamics were me.
Yeah. Also, the fact that his name was Joe Montana.
That's just a starting quarterback. How cool is that? What I could have done with that.
Yeah. If your names were different, then I think the fans would be like, yeah, put Joe in.
Yeah. Joe Montana.
Give Joe a chance. He was a Super Bowl champion.
Yeah. But that, I mean, that Super Bowl, I mean, you guys killed the Chargers.
That had to be that one clip that I feel like I've seen a million times, the monkey off the back. Like that feeling had to have just been the greatest feeling in the world, given everything that had transpired the years before.
I somewhat regret that moment because it reflects something I would have said two or three years before because I, I, uh, I, it's a longer story. I met a guy named Steve Covey on a plane once in the depths of my career trying to replace Joe and, and I dug a hole of depression and anxiety and victimization.
And like, I was, I was struggling and he kind of showed me, know a way you know a perspective that said basically that the 49ers was the greatest platform for iterating to see how good you can get as anything he's ever seen in his life and I was like well no I can't because what I'm just described to you is this place sucks and he's like no this is the greatest chance you've ever had to see how good you can get are you afraid to see how good you can get i'm like no i'm not afraid well then go about be about it like quick and i and i and i was proven at the time that i i was in the bottom of a hole that i had dug that i had victimized myself and made all the excuses and everything else and so i think that two or three years that Super Bowl, I had come to a place of perspective to recognize that it really wasn't about him. It was really about like, go about, this is the greatest platform in history for a quarterback to see how good they are.
Go be about it. I remember playing the Dallas Cowboys soon after and seeing Troy Aikman in warmups and I ran up to him and I was like, Troy, I'm so glad you're here.
I'm in this quest to see how good I can get. And I can only find out against the best and you guys are the best.
So I'm so, I can't wait to play, you know? And Troy looked at me like, fricking weirdo. But I was about it.
I was about it. And so by the time I did it at the Super Bowl, it was almost, it was, it felt a little bit like i i was like what do i want to say it was um uh it was it was it was it was cheap at that point it was more of a thing to do just because it was it's for the cameras because yeah you'd already wanted a couple mvps yeah performative but everyone sees it as a moment yeah i mean i had that moment two or two or three years before.
Right. Do you feel a little bit bad about what you did to the Chargers? Kind of ran it up on them.
I mean, honestly, if someone's going up, like think about the old days when they had someone and they had the shackles behind them and the chain with their legs and they're going up to get guillotined, you know, and the crowd would, in the town square, the crowd would gather and then the guy's going to come and get his head cut off, right? It's like, even if you're a Charger fan and you're about to see me get my head cut off, you might say, oh, I'm okay with losing because then I didn't see a guy get his head cut off. You know what I mean? Like, you know, there was one less death in the world today.
So, today so i mean you know i can't imagine anyone felt bad about that day for me no yeah probably not probably not it's interesting so you you sat next to the so that steve covey guy that's the seven habits of highly effective seven habits right yes and you just happened to sit next to him on a play what are you like you're a savant what do you got you got everything in your pocket i've read a lot of book covers in my life and uh but that's like that is the perfect person for you to sit next to on a plane at that time in your life that story is that has as a longer i tried to tell it as fast as i could but he took the moments like he was he looked like yoda he was bald and shorter and kind of curmudgeonly and i had a long finger and he looked at me right in the eye and goes, I think you're afraid to see how good you can get. And I go, I totally understand that because people, human beings are, that scares people.
Yeah. But I mean, I'm not afraid.
He goes, then go be about it, man. And I mean, I, my life changed right there on a fricking Delta flight from Salt Lake City to San Jose, California.
As I went home, I had flown home after practice on Monday just to get out of town. Wow.
Because the goal four was my fault. Like, I had to get out of town.
And I went to see my brother who was at the University of Utah Medical School. And I walked around with him telling him all my problems.
He goes, bro, I got three kids and I'm broke in medical school. Like, what the hell? What are you talking about? That's incredible.
I got nothing got nothing for my brother i headed home headed back to practice on a tuesday night and sat down next to stephen cubby wow that's like that shallow hell when he meets tony robbins on the elevator that's what happened to you in real life like at the perfect time in your life who initiated that conference could he tell that you were down in the dumps he's like like, yeah, no, I remember he, he, he, we, he, he was, he was, he was from Utah. So he was like, it was somebody I knew and I knew his kids actually a little bit.
So it's like, it was a familial thing. I'd understood him, but I never really sat and talked to him ever in my life.
And I sat down and just, oh, Steve, nice to meet you. Great, wonderful.
And I'm like, how are you doing? And I just, I was at a place where if you ask me how I'm doing, you're getting a half an hour of I'm going to spew out everything because I'm in the pit, man. And that's what I did.
And he listened to all of it and basically said, wow. If you want a little bit more, he said, look, you know what, Steve, I hear it all.
Man, it sounds really hard. sounds really hard can I ask you a couple questions he said tell me about your owner Eddie DiBartolo I'm like man that guy's amazing he sees players and owners as partners it's it's he goes yeah I'd heard about him I really want to meet him he sounds like an amazing guy tell me about your coach Bill Walsh and of course blah blah blah blah blah he goes yeah I really want to meet him too he's a guy that feels like he could has a he has a lot to give to the world you know I'm like yeah no question and then he asked me one last question Steve is Joe Montana on the team is he there and if you needed to go ask him for advice could you do it I'm like well yeah that's the whole problem is he's sitting there on the sidelines hurt and I I I he goes yeah but if you need yeah, but if you need a mentorship, could you go ask him? I'm like, yeah, I could.
And then he said, man, I've been around a long time. I, this is, this is my seven habits book.
This is what I do. I look for companies, platforms where people have, they perform, they give people a chance to iterate and see how good they can get.
And, uh, and I just try to, you know, amplify their stories so that people can read about it and help their own lives. And I got to be honest with you, as I travel the world, this is the greatest, best platform in that I've ever seen for somebody who's set up to go see how good they could get.
Yeah. And I was, I remember when he said it, I was like, wait, didn't you just tell – I just told you a half an hour of crap.
Like, what are you trying to turn this on me? And he turned it on my head in a way that just – I freaking changed my life big time. That's incredible.
I would have just shut up and then put in a bet against you guys the next week if you just unloaded that on me. He actually helped you.
He changed your life. No, no.
And then I remember getting off the plane Tuesday night thinking, I got to get to work, man. And I've been so – I've been pitching to Bono so much.
I might get fired. You know, Wednesday morning is when you get fired, right? And so I ran down to that day thinking, please don't fire me.
Please don't fire me. I feel like I've got a new lease on life.
And you talk about that's and that's towards the end of the season in 1992 I'm the MVP of the league I'm only say that because Steve Covey gave the perspective you know shifted by axis to see that I wasn't in a big pit of neglect and victimization like like stop yeah stop and so I I owe him a great debt i didn't mean to talk about all this today but no that's really cool yeah i mean it's it's an incredible story that like a happenstance just on a on a plane can change your entire outlook everything it changed and when i said i ran up to the troikman i ran up to him said that to him like that's what, that's what I was – I'm about it. Yeah.
If you're great, I'm about playing you, man, because I've got to find out. Yeah.
Because I've got to figure out – and I remember Mike Shannon came in in 1992 as a new offensive coordinator for the 49ers, and I remember talking to him about this at length. And he's like, man, that's inspiring.
Let's be about it. Like he went all in.
And so we just, the two of us for three years until he fricking committed treason and left for the Broncos, uh, the three years we were together. I mean, I put it up against anything, anywhere, anytime.
Yeah. And your numbers were insane.
Speaking of Mike Shanahan, was there, I remember there was a rumor that when John Elway retired, there was a chance you were going to come out of retirement and go play for Mike Shanahan? I wasn't – I'm not on retirement. I was – You're still on the Niners.
I was the first season, 1999 season. And so Mike was – and yeah, no, I spent some time in Denver and we were ready to – we were thinking about it.
Was it close? He was all in, he was all in. And I just, I don't know.
I, I, my wife says that's one of the things I, you know, cause we were newly married at the time and she regrets not like pushing me harder to do it. I was, I was kind of emotionally cooked in some ways.
Like you get the end you're like ah what am i doing and i and i just need i i i i should have jumped in and i want to play 2000 to maybe two or three years 2000 2001 2002 2003 would have been the years i played in denver if i would have done it yeah wow that's a real like what if yeah what if moment yeah could could the broncos have won another do you think you want another super Why not? real what if. Yeah, what if moment.
Yeah, could the Broncos have won another Super Bowl? Do you think you would have won another Super Bowl? Why not? Let's go. Yeah, I mean, those are good teams.
Mike and I, I mean, the two of us, I mean, if history was anything like we had before, it was good stuff. Yeah, I got kind of a tough question for you here.
Can you tell me which loss was worse for you? Which Brett Favre? 82 championship game. Okay.
I was going to say, out of all the Brett Favre losses, is it the consecutive playoff losses, or is it losing the role in something about Mary Tills? The Brett Favre losses were different because the championship game we played in Green Bay, my rib was out, and I only played like three plays. So I don't really – that was that one.
And then the loss at home in 95, we just couldn't run the football. Like, we just – you know, we had – Gilbert and Reggie White for our line was super hard.
Like, it was just – it wasn't as – I don't know why. It wasn't as painful.
It was more – it felt more competitive. When I think about the 92 championship game, I throw up in my mouth.
Like, I really really struggle with that one that was a total screw up and i the regret i have about that game is is heavy yeah yeah yeah um by the way we have a bone to pick with you uh you are not going to remember this at all you're not going to remember this at all but i still have to bring it up uh in 2000 you really have to yeah no here it is this is gonna be funny it's kind of a full circle uh moment because you probably have no idea what i'm about to say in 2020 you were on i believe pti and maybe lightly but kind of criticizing joe burrow for doing an interview tipsy uh we were the ones who did the interview with him and we were the drunk guys no no i think remembering a little bit off he was smoking cigar at LSU and I regret, I actually regret that interview for me I was like what are the kids going to start smoking cigars like stop Steve, relax but it was actually you said something about he's doing an interview tipsy I want it on the record, we were actually fully hammered when we interviewed him. We interviewed him six hours after he won the national championship game.
It's one of my favorite moments that we've had in this history of this podcast. We've been doing it for nine years, but we were fucking hammered when we interviewed him.
I guarantee I have his PTI that I was having fun with it because it was funny to me. I think I enjoyed the fact that I was watching you guys and going, what the hell are we doing here? Yeah.
I mean, it was like a thrill of a lifetime. We got to interview the national champion Heisman.
How come hammered you got to interview a guy right after the national championship? Well, he didn't know that we were going to be hammered, but we'd known Joe for a while. Yeah, and we knew Coach O.
They'd become good friends of ours. Ohio.
Yeah, so we stayed out late after they won the national championship, and then we had friends in the program. We were like, hey, we'll come to your hotel.
We can set everything up in the lobby or a room. We'll interview you before you got to get on the buses.
So Joe and Coach O came down. Coach O was sober, but Joe, he just won a national title.
It was like 8 in the morning, and we had been on Bourbon Street all night. So we did the interview just very drunk, and it was one of the funniest interviews we've done.
I miss my PTI times because there was guys great questions, a great, great questions. That's always fun.
So yeah, I'm sure we're laughing about you guys. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we, we, I think we also got them in trouble because I think that's when Joe admitted that Odell was handing out cash.
Yeah. Cause we're like, you're about to leave LSU.
So it doesn't really matter now. That was real money.
Right. Yeah.
i got plenty of money too in my pocket so yeah yeah you guys you guys took down a lot in one nice job yeah that was the first time that college players have taken money yeah yeah we were doing some good interviewing yeah we should do all our interviews drunk yeah we really should it's actually not it's a pretty good pretty good hack for you're starting a podcast. Just get hammered and badger people the questions.

Yeah.

I got a question for you about the modern-day quarterback play in the NFL,

namely the slide.

So I don't know why, but just in the last two years,

I feel like I've been watching quarterbacks slide to protect themselves,

and I've been thinking more and more,

the slide isn't really that safe of a play at all for quarterbacks because it puts your head so close to the ground where if you get hit on a slide you're likely to bounce your head it puts your head on a pedestal right at the level of people's knees and and and and like you basically are saying and and by sliding you're opening yourself up right it's like yourself up, right? It's like, Oh, hit me in the face. Yeah.
That's what the slide. And I think the slide, the game, look, the game changed when they changed the rules.
It's now a Canadian size field. Essentially is what we've done is we've expanded the space because defenders can't launch their bodies.
The space that's come in the last six or seven years that's put the prototype is now like it's my game my pro i'm you know all the people tell me you scramble you you're weird you're odd now i'm like this is my mainstream yeah and so the game's changing and the slide needs to change because it's actually it can be weaponized by a quarterback you're seeing patrick mahomes not the slide particularly but the go out of bounds fake and then come back or the pump fakes or all the stuff that they're doing to abuse defenses. Defenses are really under duress from the NFL by making the rule change for safety.
And so it feels like the slide, I never slid. If I can get a quote, I'm going to, any clip of me sliding, it'd be a mistake if I did.

Because I always felt like just what you just said, it's dangerous.

You get yourself hit in the face.

And plus, referees always reduce where you slid.

Like whenever I would, I guess I have slid because I know I've done it.

And then all of a sudden it was for a first down and then now I'm a half a yard behind. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like I slid to make the first down and they're like, no, you slid back.
And so I learned sliding, the mentality of it is they don't give you the yards so forget it, I'm not going to do it anymore. Do you guys tell me, does your mom live with you what is going on that's max max just came

in to to change the uh he doesn't care he doesn't care yeah he didn't care at all he just walked right in front of the camera that was crazy but a freaking boring story i don't need to know that was so boring like like i fell asleep i forgot you guys were live yeah max you have any questions look let's go with the slide you gotta get you gotta change the slide Your mic's not on.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, can you scream it into the dead mic, bro?

Yeah. Look, let's go to the slide.
You've got to change the slide. Your mic's not on.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, can you scream it into the dead mic, bro? Yeah, I mean, imagine if you had slid on that.
For some reason, it popped up. I love the old accounts where they just pop up old highlights, that 49-yard run against the Vikings, the game-winning touchdown run.
Like, that would have been ruined if you had tried to save yourself and slid somewhere on that run no but i think the game it's unfair for defenses today because you've gotten lamar jackson out there sliding you know you guys these guys are i mean these are super super capable people so they put themselves in a bind so what happened with shazier is that he's they're taught to go when someone slides that you go to hit them to take them down because they're such a threat today, because their prototype is to come out and start gaining those free yards out there, but then just fly over the top of them. Go to hit them, and if they slide, just fly over the top.
But that's even hard to do. So I think, I don't know, I think sliding's, to make sliding safe for quarterbacks is impossible, so get rid of it.
Yeah. I don't mind that take at all.
Yeah. Because it's impossible for a defender to just stop.
And it's going to get worse and worse as the more mobile, the more dynamic of a runner coming out of the pocket the quarterback is, the less – the slide was invented for people who couldn't run. Yeah.
You're of your element you're in a very dangerous you're now in the jungle now you know without any weapons and you're like how can we get you to safety yeah so the slide was put was for people who didn't know what they were doing out there they were it was out of their out of their that's just not the case anymore yeah so the slide is a the actual – the rule for the slide is for a time that's gone now. The prototype is not the pocket.
You have to be a sophisticated passer to do the job, but the idea that nobody can go get those yards with their legs, those days are over, so the slide is – it's not part of the game today, shouldn't it? The one thing about the modern game, obviously the offenses have been, you mentioned it, like it's very easy to play offense now. Everything's open.
Wide receivers are incredible. I do think we get to a point where we forget about how special Jerry Rice was.
Can you tell us, maybe our younger audience, like what made Jerry Rice so damn good? Because we get to a point where, yeah, there's guys that are, I mean, Jamar Chase, Justin Jefferson, some of these guys are doing incredible things. Jerry Rice was doing that every single year for a decade and a half.
No room. Yeah, with no space.
With no, like, that's the thing. The game was, you had to make space as an offense.
There was no, people were launching all over the place. Defenders were flying.
You couldn't run slip screens. You couldn't, there were no cheap yards.
Now people say, oh, you ran a lot of slants for cheap yards, but tactically we out, you know, we were quicker to the punch in some ways. But it wasn't like, you know, the game was not the game today.
So you make a great point. Jerry Rice, every once in a while, you run into somebody like Michael Jordan, who is supreme talent with supreme work ethic, like blue collar over my dead body every day.
And I think in a person's psyche, what happens is there's a fear that even though I'm amazing at something, I have this fear that I can't get rid of that I'm going to, someone's going to take my job. And I swear to you, I think Michael Jordan was driven by that, even though it's like he's the greatest ever.
And Jerry Rice was driven by the same thing. Until the day he retired, he thought someone was going to take his job.
Yeah. So he lived in a state of, I'm not going to say fear because it's the wrong word, but anxiety that, that I need to go to work.
And so I'll give you one quick story. We won the Superbowl against the Chargers, come home, do the parade down Market Street.
The buses pick everyone up from the Market Street, go down to the facility in Santa Clara, drop everyone off. The coach makes a speech because he just won the Super Bowl.
Hey, see you later. See you at the first OTA in April.
And, you know, goodbye. So everybody, it's like a derby.
Like, you get out of there. Everyone's gone.
So the next day, no one's gonna go to no one's gonna go down there tomorrow right but i'm single i got nothing to do i'm gonna go down clean up my locker i don't know so i go down there nobody's there and i'm and the doors are locked but i know there's a 24-hour guard that's there all the time so i'm banging on the door banging on the phone he comes like bro what are you doing here i the locker. I want to, you know, take a hot tub.
I don't know. Do something.
And I go out to the fields, you know, the 49er facility is still there. Same thing.
Go out to the back of the locker room and there's the fields. And I look out and freaking Jerry Rice is out back in the corner.
And I can't hardly see that it's him at first. I'm like, who's that freaking crazy man out there in the corner running? He's like running routes against air.
And then he's acting like he's catching the ball. And I'm like, that's Jerry.
Holy shit. And I'm like, bro, like take a day off, man.
And a couple of things went through my mind. First was, is that Jerry? I said yes.
And the second thing is, question I asked myself is, am I supposed to go out there and throw it to him? Like, man, I don't want to go throw it to him. And I can't remember if I did or didn't.
I want to believe I went out there and at least tried. But that's when people say, who's Jerry Rice? Jerry Rice is the guy when no one, like he must have had a key.
Yeah. Because the guard didn't know he's back there.
He'd go, hey, Jerry Rice Rice is back. He's like, yes.
What the hell? You know? I'm like, yeah, he must have known Jerry had a key. That's crazy.
Uh, to the, to the, to the gate and he was going to go do the work. Wow.
And, uh, and so that's Jerry Rice. And so put the numbers of Jerry Rice up there and look at even today, when the game wide open.
Jerry Rice's, all his records should be under duress, right? They should be being lapped in today's game. And you can't get close to them.
You cannot get close to them. Did it make it hard as a quarterback when he would give the ball back to you and it would be all sticky? No, it wasn't that.
You hype now come on that was the that was pre that was pre-1985 that was that was the stickum era now the gloves that they have today yeah are much tackier than anything that we had when we were playing with in the 80s and 90s much tackier yeah the idea that you can go back behind and grab a ball with one hand like odell does those those gloves are much tackier than they are than they were back in the day yeah yeah yeah so um you were talking earlier about sending smoke signals quarterbacks that send smoke signals maybe they're not in the best position right now but you see something and you're like okay i'm gonna keep my eye on you you're right. You're still alive.
What quarterbacks are out there right now? And we'll move on from Bryce Young because I think he sent up a few of those. But what quarterbacks right now do you see that might not – they might not be playing that great right now, but you see something that you want to keep your eye on? I see it in Caleb.
Now, look, I don't know how the ceiling is, and you've got to go through some filters like I told you, but but you got to get into a spot where you can get some help. What I didn't like about Caleb's game yesterday is in the first half, like you're look clearly under duress.
Things are really going south fast. Get out man and start like make plays.
Like we're not going down this way. And so what I didn't like about his game yesterday is he just kind of sat there looking for the third guy waiting waiting for someone to come open.
Like, no, get out, go, make something happen. Refuse to go down that way.
So there's still learning that he's going to have. But there's some things I've seen this year that I feel like I would want to invest in Caleb for sure.
I don't think it's fair to say C.J. Stroud anymore because I think we've seen it.
Now we just got got to get it developed and get him all the help that he needs and everything else. I really feel that he's in a great spot.
Help me go around the league. I'm just thinking what the Sam Darnold is going to – I mean, what do the Vikings do? That's what we were saying.
We had a whole discussion about it on – our podcast comes out Monday, Wednesday, Friday. you're insane to not sign a guy that's doing that for you right he's playing as well as you could expect but what do you do what do you do i mean you know this situation what like what do you do with jj mccarthy like i would be bill walsh and say look awkward but let's let's go well you know who will benefit the vikings right all right we don't know which one of you will benefit more or less but right now the vikings will benefit yeah and as long as you don't have a toxic personality which i know jj's not and i know sam's not like you know joe and i were not toxic personalities we weren't going to inflame things in the locker it wasn't going to be worse because of the awkwardness.
Now that can happen. You don't want that, but I would be unafraid, especially with my history.
I'd be like, bro, two of you, let's just, let's go. Yeah.
I mean, iron sharpens iron. You're going to get, you're right.
The Vikings will be the beneficiary. And especially when you get JJ for free for a few years.
Right. So, you know, I don't know.
I just, when someone's playing great football in the NFL today and you know that, you know, over and over again, as Sam has shown this year, I just, I believe that this is the truth of Sam Darnold. He will grow from here.
He's going to be like Josh Allen. Like he can run, he can move, he can do all the things that you need from a prototype quarterback today to get out and get those free yards.
And I would not let Sam Darnold go at all. Yeah.
And I don't care who you have at quarterback, other than maybe Patrick or Josh, I would say bring him in. If you can get him at a price that works, make it awkward, man.
If they're going to let them go, do not. And if I was Sam, I am not going back to one of those places that doesn't take care of, it doesn't understand the quarterback position.
So I will go compete to go to one of those places that does. Yeah.
Yeah. Because I mean, you don't, Kevin O'Connell is an incredible coach.
and then you also have Justin Jefferson. Don't walk away from that.
Nope. You have to dynamite me out of a place like that.
Yeah. All right, well, I had one last question, Steve.
This has been so much fun. We really love having you on, and we'll definitely do it again.
Max fell asleep, but other than that, it was super exciting. Yeah, well, he's got ADD.
I've thought this has been incredible. My last question is a Roback question.
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So, you mentioned all the way at the beginning of the interview, being on a losing team with the Bucs and having that in the locker room. We're at that point of the NFL calendar, December, where there's some teams that it's clear it's over, they're not in the playoffs, they've got two or three wins.
How do those teams get off the mat and play this game every single Sunday? Are guys just playing for themselves? What is it like in that locker room when you're trying to do the prep all week and then get there and be like we know we're probably not going to win football is weird different because the job is to go ram into other people and it's unusual you know it's as a team game look there's ufc there's boxing there's other things that you know that's part of that's the game but the game in football is i gotta go get into other people. And honestly, it's not natural.
And so for the human condition, I don't care how tough you are. It's not natural to just go like, I can't wait to go ram into somebody.
And so in football, when you have a sense of one, right? And we're accountable and we work together and we have each other's back and you know over my dead body and like we're then that natural incentive comes it like it comes out of people like it comes out of the locker room like you can feel it feeling warm-ups like i swear i can watch a team warm up and i can feel the level of this over my dead body feeling this sense of commitment to go ram into somebody this week i'm i'm ready and so when you start losing and then you're out of it then it's tough because naturally even tough veterans of the nfl human is like i really don't want to ram anybody this week like i'd rather not and so it it makes it super hard more than any other sport that when things are, you know, you're out of the playoffs here, you know, you're just, you know, running out the clock of the season. When you have to go hit people, it makes it that much harder to get them to go do it.
And so as a coach, you know, a lot of coaches use threats and because they're under duress, if they're out of it too, they're probably a little under duress as well. So a losing locker room that's out of the playoffs is actually a kind of a dangerous place to hang out because you go to play and not everybody's committed.
You get yourself hurt. Right.
And so in that way, you, you just, you pray that you're in a locker room like the 49ers this last week and go, hey, look, no way. And then there's leadership in there and there's a commitment to it and we're not going to go down that way.
It's probably a little bit of a DNA thing that they've had for a while. But teams that have lost for a long time and it's part of their culture and their dynamic now, it is brutal when you get out of the playoffs.
And now you have to go to go figure out how to go play and, and, and, and show who you are. Like the idea that I'm going to go play quarterback on a losing team that's out of the playoffs.
How do I, let's say I'm all in 100%. I need five linemen that are all in a hundred percent.
I'm not going to say they're not, but human nature says, I really don't want to ram in anybody this week. So, you know, and so I'm not going to be tip of the spear, you know, ready.
It's hard. I feel for teams that are in that mode all the time.
I saw it in Tampa Bay for one season. I was there for one full season and there were no losers on the team, but it was a losing place.
Right. And it was possible to change.
I mean, some of the toughest human beings I ever met, James Wilder, I don't know if you ever read that name before, running back. I mean, tough, I mean, passages.
These guys are, it was all years I played. Some of the toughest people I knew were down there.
But the culture and the feeling, you just couldn't get over it. And it gets, it's infectious.
It's infecting. And I feel bad for teams that can't get out of it.
And teams that are constantly in it, I blame ownership. And unfortunately, in this league, you can't, because equity ownership is not going to change.
People don't really talk about it because they feel like they can't change it. They can get the coach fired.
They can get the general manager fired. They can get the quarterback fired.
So people, that's where they talk. They can't get the owner fired.
But the problem, 99% chance is the owner. How do we hold the owner accountable? How do we do that as a city, as a fan base? I mean, we need to be thinking about how we help ownership be accountable.
Yeah, yeah. Because it would make the team, if they could feel that accountability and answer to it, it would help the team.
And so I don't know how to – you guys figure it out. How do we figure out a way to hold it? It's on an airplane with a banner behind it.
Yeah. Over the stadium.
Listen, you're preaching to me because the Bears' ownership is not serious about winning football games, and it's very frustrating as a fan. Well, if you feel that way, then it really doesn't matter who is the general manager, who the coach is, who's the quarterback.
You can't overcome apathy. If that's what you guys are saying, if you guys are saying that Chicago Bears' ownership is apathetic, then you guys got to figure out how to address it yeah yes the one thing that they pay attention to is is the bottom line when the money starts getting messed up then they start looking at it like i was a i was a commanders redskins football team fan and uh i worked 25 years on getting dan snyder fired nothing was ever going to happen until he started losing money and his his corporate partners started pulling their sponsorships and then he got caught all the stuff with the investigations uh to personal conduct was one thing but when he got caught taking money from the other owners that's when it was like okay now it's time to get this guy out so the only thing these guys listen to is money that's what will make them don't know.
I don't know. I don't know.
I just know that the league would be an even better league. We're a great league right now.
We're an even better league if we could figure out a way to hold the ultimate equity owners accountable. Yeah.
Agreed. Agreed.
I had one last, last thing because I read this about you today. I did not know this, but you never took a snap under center in your entire nfl career no excuse me in the shot you were always under center you never the year i was in the usfl express that's all i did was a shotgun i loved it and it's building bill wallston believe in it he didn't believe the timing could be it wasn't until john elway and mike shanahan used the same offense in 98 and showed, no, no, it doesn't matter.

And I remember when John was doing it from the shotgun, I'm like,

frick, why – like, it doesn't matter.

And from the shotgun, it's just such a better spot to be –

to play quarterback.

And so, yeah, no, I never – in the NFL, I never played one snap of shotgun,

which is –

That's crazy.

That's such a bummer.

You had to just get into your center's butt every play yeah or me man and for me what i could have been uh all right well steve thank you so so much we really enjoyed this and and like i said we're we're gonna have you back on you have to come back on legally now uh you're you're a recurring guest i gotta tell you my dad's nickname is grit okay nice young i see the sign behind you and angelo duckworth wrote the book grit yes uh and he's in the book uh which is weird that's it if you're serious about grit oh yeah i'm in yeah we do we do a great if it's just a sign no no cheap signing that max walks by and i'm not gonna i'm not coming back but no we do grit week every year yeah we do grit week oh you guys are about it then i'm about it yeah we are we are we do a grit week where we travel around to different training camps and uh you know do interviews out of a van so we're about it for sure i love that yeah as gritty as a podcaster can get not as great not that gritty but we we push the limits for grit for podcasters i like it oh yeah all right thanks so much you guys got a lot of good therapy for me i appreciate the time yeah absolutely appreciate it take care see you boys thank you steve young was brought to you by our good friends over at bluetooth bluetooth is an online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, but as a fraction of the cost and in a chewable form. The process is simple.
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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash PMT. And now, here's Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham.
Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest. He is the Big 12 champ.
It is coach Kenny Dillingham from the Arizona State football program. Coach, first of all, thanks for joining us.
And second, congrats, because you might have one of the best stories in college football right now you guys were picked to be last in the big 12 you win the big 12 you get a buy in the college football playoff we're sitting here on Tuesday has it all set in yet that this is just like an incredible uh ride and just a hell of a season yeah it is And the fun part is it's not over like we're still rolling you know that's the best part is uh we got like three and a half more weeks before we play again but uh yeah and to think it all started when what was it coach dugans became the oc at florida state the same time i became the oc at florida state it's just ironic that it all led to this moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that was how I first linked up with you is I took the job as Dougs at Florida State, and then you hit me up and you're like, hey, don't let me down here because you're playing as me right now. And we've talked ever since.
But this is – I mean, that Big 12 championship game was incredible because you guys did it in a fashion that was just a blowout fashion. And I do have to ask, though, in that game, and I want to talk about Cam Scadabo because he's so much fun to watch.
There was that clip where he threw the ball panicking in the backfield, and they flashed to your face. And I've never seen a coach more like, holy fuck, what just happened? Why did he do that? What was going through your head in that moment? Well, so Cam is actually one of the smartest kids on our team.
So I'm going to preface it with that. All right.
And we tossed him the ball. The play didn't work.
Horrible play call by me. Not good.
Right. And he starts running around backwards.
We were on our three yard line. He then realized he was stuck and he was 20 yards back.
And he's so intelligent. He said, whoa, I'm out of the pocket.
I can throw the ball away. So he made a decision in a split second, instead of losing 20 yards, I want to throw the ball away.
And I knew like, as it was going, I'm like, this dude's going to throw the ball away. Like I know Scott, he's going to throw the ball away.
And then when he did it and the ball almost got picked off, it was one of those moments that I was like, is this real life or is this an alternative reality? I was in a state of what the hell is going on right now. Yeah, it's actually a really smart play.
When you think about it yeah it might have taken a

couple years off your life but i always say when a running back has a ball in the backfield they're gonna get battled up throw the ball get it out of bounds yeah i mean and we had a guy in the area he actually came to the sideline and both him and our quarterback are so competitive our quarterback had a bootleg off of the play off the toss and he boots out opposite he goes where were you you were supposed to be over there was he had a plan to throw it back for a touchdown after running backwards for 18 yards to our quarterback and that's just that you know he's such so such an aware player that's what makes him unique and different is he he's super intelligent he plays as hard as you can possibly play he's so fun to watch he's he's, he's one of the fit, my favorite guys in college football to watch with a ball in his hands. Do you find yourself calling running plays just because you want to watch him run with a football? Yeah.
I mean, we definitely want to, I mean, I get on the headset. I don't call the place.
Coach Arroyo does, but I get on the headset because that's my background. I said, hand it to Scott.
I don't care what you do. Just hand it to him or get it to him as many times as you can here.

Or I want to see Scott touch it twice in a row.

I'll definitely make comments like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would just do it not because it's necessary for, like,

the situation or the game, just because I, as a person on the sideline,

want to watch him running with the football.

Yeah.

We don't make too many of those decisions.

Just, you know, we mainly try to win try to win yeah our main purpose for decision making that's why you're you and i'm me yeah yeah so uh the other one yeah yeah yeah i don't want to trade no the other one we got to talk about is uh the ending of the byu game um now this is where you basically were coach dougs me playing video games where I had big time clock management issues I did stupid things all the time do you know now that like we're a few weeks removed from that you're in the playoff and you're comfortably big 12 champs do you realize how fucking stupid you were in that moment yeah that was a mistake I I hopefully said I think in my in my press conference on monday like 100 you know when we do an average play takes four to five seconds uh so and then a throwaway play takes eight seconds so when you do the math yes does the little book that tells you to run around run around and throw it away tell you the game's gonna end yes but does common sense tell you to go hand it to scat and score yes so 100 hindsight let's just turn around let's hand it to that dude who should be at the heisman trophy ceremony and uh let's save the drama for another day yeah it made for a great ending it did it was it was literally i was watching it live being like this guy's fucking playing madden right now like what is he doing and then having that scene of you with the ref and there was some guy standing behind you that was making me laugh so hard this like diehard Arizona State fan who basically instantly became your hype man who looked like he was just repeating everything you were saying it was why I love college football it was just a scene you can't get in the NFL. And, yeah, learn the lesson to maybe just run the ball next time.
Yeah, should have just probably handed it to Scott. Yeah, and you know as an Arizona State student how hard it was going to be to get all those guys off the field.
Once the student section gets on the field, that's a big cleanup job that you have to undertake there. That's what was going through my mind was I'm getting pushed in the back.

I'm getting hugged by random people and like mosh pitted in there.

And then I'm being told there's still time.

Then my wife's out there and we're hugging and she's giving me a kiss.

Congrats.

And then we have donors on the field.

The guy that you're talking about is one of our top donors.

That's awesome.

And he's came out on the field with my wife.

And it was just, you talk about chaos.

I mean, but you know what?

Thank you. field the guy that you're talking about is one of our top donors that's awesome and he's came out on the field with my wife and it was just you talk about chaos i mean but you know what this season's been so crazy that why why not why not give add to it like why not why not embrace it all embrace embrace the chaos and i i feel like you had maybe this is just the point of the football season where everything blends together but didn't you have a game that was almost similar where you were out on the field and the game was over? Was that earlier in the season? Like the same thing happened? Yeah.
Yeah. I've never had a second added in my career.
I coached Pop Warner. So if there's ever a time for a second to be added on a clock, you'd think it was Pop Warner officials.
And it's happened twice in our first uh 11 games this year we had a second added to the game uh which gave the team the other ball yeah the ball again so it was uh very interesting yeah we might need to work on our last second situational football that might be something to circle this offseason i i agree there's a lot more than that to work on i got i got of problems. Yeah.
So you guys are in a great spot now. As Big Cat mentioned, you were picked last in your conference.
How often do you repeat that? How often do you still let the team know, hey, you were picked last? That's really bad. The expectations were so low on you that you're actually last.
And look at all you've accomplished., you still use that as motivation, like constantly with the team now? Yeah, it's more, we're still not like people don't believe we're good, right? We weren't even picked high in the last CFP rankings. People are saying, hey, these teams that get to play us have the shorter, easier path.
So our guys see all that, they read all that all that you know regardless of what they've accomplished on the last 12 or 12 weeks or 13 weeks now they I mean they still have the chip on their shoulder because people still doubt them and that's why we're where we're at is because we have a lot of people who were at these blue blood programs that chose to come out here live in paradise live in 65 degrees and sunny in December jump in the the pool maybe take a little dip right and walk down palm tree lane at arizona state and compete for championships at the same time i mean i don't know about you but that sounds like a good time you're recruiting us right now it sounds good yeah there's probably a couple i don't know like uh let's say 230 pound uh i'd say juniors in high school they linebackers. Maybe they've got like the start of a mullet going on right now.
And they're trying to figure out where they want to go to school, maybe three-star recruits. What would you say to those guys? I would say you get to come out here and live in paradise.
You get to play championship football. You don't have to go in the snow and hit people in 25 degrees yes does it get hot in the summer yeah keep your butt inside right get in the pool the pool's not bad right it's a good spot and be around good people we have really good people on our staff and we uh we have a saying here be a good person make good decisions and the last one have more fun working harder than anyone in the country.
You want to have a lot of fun working your ass off? This is a spot for you. Yeah, and I got to give you credit because I love your breath of fresh air when it comes to college football and the way you've attacked this is awesome.
The one thing that's crazy that I haven't seen any other coaches do, the transfer portal sucks. You're losing guys.
It's just part of the business. But you're out there quote tweeting a guy who's transferring being like, he's awesome.
Someone pick him up. Is that like, I mean, that's an intentional strategy by you.
But like, it seems very genuine that you're like, hey, look, I understand how this is going to work. We're going to lose guys every year.
I'm not going to shit talk them. I'm not going to, you know, tell them, make them feel bad for making a decision for themselves.
I'm here to still support them. It's awesome.
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, like I know it's a business.
I get all of it. Trust me, I'm in it.
Right. So I understand it.
But college sports is supposed to be to help the kids. Like that's still the root of what it's supposed to be.
And if there's a guy who's not playing for us, who wants to go play college football, why should I be upset? Like I shouldn't be upset. I should be like, you're right.
You're not going to play for us right now. Or maybe you're behind somebody on the depth chart, or maybe you're really good and you want to go your dream school, right? Maybe this isn't your dream school.
Why would I be mad at a kid for wanting to do what's best for him? Coaches do it all the time. I've moved around.
Assistant coaches move around. What a double standard that would be for me if I don't support the players and their career aspirations like I support coaches and like I did in my career.
So I root for them. I try to help them.
I let them give my number to other college coaches for them to call me. I want to see them successful.
And bottom line, and I really think if you're good to people, people are going to be good to you back. Yeah.
I really believe that. Yeah.
It's a great message. And you can fight against the rules all you want.
A lot of coaches do. They're very resistant to it.
Or you can realize, hey, this is the situation that we're in. what's the best way that we can deal with it this is the new reality and if you support guys that are looking to transfer somewhere else a high school recruit is going to see that and think to themselves that's a good guy that's a guy that i would want to play for yeah i would hope like i said i just believe like i said earlier our number one thing on our board when we recruit people for our coaches, like our number one thing is be a good person.
Like that's not very hard to do. Like when you really truly think about it, it's not hard to just treat people right.
Yeah. And if you do that, good things are going to happen for you.
I just believe it. So I do think that's part of it is just being a a good person.
Yeah. Not rocket science.
Yeah, yeah. Or rocket surgery.
Yeah. You know, it's neither.
All right, so I got a question for you. So, Art, like I said, we first got linked up when I took your job as Florida State offensive coordinator as Doug's.
But I actually have longer history with you, which always, for everything in my life, it goes back to a bet. You coach Bo Nix his freshman year.
It took me a long time to become a Bo Lever. I'm recently a Bo Lever.
It's been about like a month now that I've been a Bo Lever. Part of the reason why it took me so long was I remember specifically betting Oregon against Auburn, his first game.
And I was like, who the fuck is this guy? And you guys won that game. But you coached Bo Nix.
Are you surprised at all about the success he's having in the NFL? Like what type of guy is he? Because you were with unfiltered, uncut Bo Nix freshman year where he was doing crazy-ass shit. Now he's balling out in the NFL.
Has any of this surprised you at all not at all so i coached bo as a true freshman he had a pretty good season as your freshman sec newcomer of the year and then he transferred to play for me at oregon uh that was a big reason he went up to oregon and uh bo has always been competitive and special and accurate and has moxie and intelligent like he's the dude that has enough dog in him.

That's it makes some people uncomfortable.

Like, oh, whoa, he's going to say something back to you.

Yeah.

Like in a good way, like in a competitive way. Like, why do you like that call?

Well, what have you thought about doing it like this?

And some people don't like some people.

This is what you do.

Go do it.

Don't don't give your opinion. I'm the opposite.
I'm not been the smartest dude in the room, and I never will be. You know what I am? I'm smart enough to listen to people.
And I was smart enough when I went to Oregon to listen to Bo Nix when he said, I want to run, I want this guy to run the route like this. I'm like, okay, go tell him.
You're the one throwing it, not me. Like, I'm over there standing with my hands in Like I hope this works.
Right. So I have zero doubt in my mind that he was going to be successful.
He has it. And I'm excited to watch him play, you know, for many years to come because I think he's going to be one of the next great Bronco quarterbacks.
I like that. There's so much dog he makes people uncomfortable.
You know what? You know who he makes uncomfortable if you've got too much dog? He makes cats uncomfortable. He makes non-dogs uncomfortable.
Yeah. Brings it out of them.
Yeah. So are you, what you know who he makes uncomfortable if you got too much dog he makes cats uncomfortable it makes non-dogs uncomfortable yeah brings it out of them yeah so are you when you watch him when you watch me in the nfl and he's not he hasn't turned the ball over in like a month are you like what the hell man what is sean payton telling you that that i didn't tell you no i mean he did that at uh oregon i mean he had one of the highest completion percentage in the country he really didn't turn turn the ball over at Oregon for us when we got there.
So he's kind of doing exactly what he did his last two years in college. The problem was he's so efficient as a passer, people wanted him to throw it deep more.
And there was a narrative about him going into the draft. And the funny thing about narratives is you guys know a narrative can be created about anything.
It doesn't really matter. People can make it out of thin air.
They can find a stat and create it. And there are some narratives about him going into the draft that led to him.
And it was the best thing that ever happened to him because it put him in a position to be drafted by the Broncos with Sean Payton. So that narrative of he doesn't throw it deep or take chances was the best thing that could ever happen in his career because it got him with a really good football coach yeah you you really had like the full Bo Nix experience because Auburn Bo Nix was chaotic and it was nuts and it was awesome and it was just like I always just think about though that game again against LSU uh in Baton Rouge and then in Oregon yeah he he like it was justs and no interceptions, and he was so efficient.
So you saw it all. You're a Bo Nix whisperer.
I don't know about whisperer. I will say this.
I can guarantee I would not be the head coach at Arizona State without Bo Nix, without Jordan Travis. I can promise you that because they're both really good players.
The kid we have right now, Sam Levitt, he's a very similar player to Bo Nix. He's got that swagger, the blonde hair, the runaround, ultra competitive.
I mean, they're very – it's like I'm living – I'm like reliving the Bo Nix experience with this new guy, Sam Levitt. And it's super exciting.
I mean, now he's a big 12 champ as a freshman so I've been blessed to be around some good quarterbacks yeah so so looking at the college football playoff I don't want you to get ahead of yourself because you obviously like I love the spot you guys are in in the fact that no one thinks that you know they look at Boise they look at Arizona State they're like oh that's a cakewalk for Clemson and Texas and all that stuff but if you're able to to win a game and Oregon wins a game, you go up against Dan Lanning. Who knows the other one better? Do you think you know Dan Lanning better than Dan Lanning knows you? I think we know each other the same.
I mean, Dan and I go back to when I was a high school coach and he was a GA at Arizona State. And then we link back up at Memphis where he was the linebackers coach and I was the quarterbacks coach.
And coaches play a game called like, who's got the pen last? Where we go in and we talk ball. He draws up what he would do.
I draw up what I would do. Then he draws up what he would do.
We go back and forth for hours or some coaches, if you love ball. Right.
And that was the guy I did that with. And me and him would go and forth for hours at memphis and at oregon just who's got the pen last what would you do here what would you do here so i think we both know each other uh fairly well obviously he's got that place rocking and rolling i mean i got my i got my oregon duck helmet up there i don't know if you guys can see it's barely off the screen but uh you know i got a lot of respect for him.
Yeah. So you obviously have to start looking ahead a little bit in terms of just who you're going to be playing because you don't know yet.
So how much prep work are you doing for each team right now? We're breaking them down. We're not watching them yet just because we don't know who we're playing.
We're really focusing on ourselves. We were watching all of our games and saying, okay, what tendencies have we created that we can break?

So we're really going to focus on our own self-scout and fixing our own problems first. And then we'll get in here in another week to really the opponent prep.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's interesting. I always think about the self-scouting thing.
And again, we're dumb. We're not, you know, we're not true like X's and O's football guys.
And I always think about how other coaches would see things that I do on film film and then i'd have to like play three-dimensional chess to like change something that i think that they've noticed on film and then i would get myself totally out of my own game plan so how much do that as opposed to like playing to your strengths you know what you do well and we're going to continue doing those things that we do well all right well. Well, I'll create a parallel here.
So I play video games,

fully aware.

It's really not that much different.

You've,

you've played a guy who runs three plays in Madden or NCAA over and over again,

right?

Me runs the same three place every single time.

And you physically can't stop it.

It's the most frustrating thing on the planet.

Okay.

There's that philosophy.

And then you run the guy who calls run, run, run, play action, run, run, run, play action screen. And it's frustrating.
Right. And we're more of the run, run, run, play action screen, the schemed up than we are.
We're going to run the same three plays over and over again. You can't stop it.
Those philosophies carry over to real life. Even though nobody wants to ever compare things to a video game.
There are some parallels.

It's more of a train of thought and a belief system.

So for us, it's more, it's not that we're not going to do what we do.

It's more, can we do it a different way? Instead of doing it out of, you know, instead of running four verticals, can we motion to

four verticals this week?

Can we align the back on the other side?

Can we motion somebody? Can we shift? It's more more doing the same things but looking like it's different uh i would say it's you know dressing it up put a little salad dressing on it still a salad but still a little bit different so do you do you have shark wheel in the playbook uh shark wheel is probably the biggest cheat code in a video game ever created yes it does It does not work in real life like it would work in the video games. Okay.
But you should maybe just have it in there for what, you know, maybe if you get to national championship, you've got to surprise someone, shark wheel will work. It probably will.
You know what does work in real life and in the video game is mesh. Two by two, mesh with the tailback wheel.
That play is still unstoppable. Video games, real life, most common third down play in football, third medium play in football is that play, which is always run in video games too.
And people say video games aren't real. Yeah.
The wheel route just in general is a great concept. I feel like it's, especially in college, it's always open.

Yeah. You get the running back going full speed against a linebacker in space and it's like, hey, it's going to be open.
No doubt. Yeah.
So your start was very interesting. I don't know if this is true, but you got injured your senior year in high school and immediately went to coaching.
So it was like that. It was just, you knew that you had to be a football coach.
and the minute you because you hear all the time like guys will go play you know division two college they'll play they'll go all the way to the end of their football career and then start coaching the end of your football career was senior year in high school you're like all right ready to coach let's go yeah so I tore my ACL the spring of my junior year tried to play my senior year without my ACL. Problem is, I'm 5'9".
I'm unathletic, you know, I'm overweight. And I was never really a good player.
And that's not a good combination to already be not a good player and not have an ACL. My high school coach was like, hey, bud, you may want to do this if you like football, start coaching.
And so my high school coach is actually our special teams coordinator right now, Charlie Ragle. So he's like, hey, bud, let's just start this coaching thing.
You're already not very good. This ACL is going to make you worse.
Oh, wait. I started.
That's awesome. So your high school coach is now on your staff.
That's fucking cool. Yeah, he is our special teams coordinator, assistant head coach.
That it's also it is a really great excuse if you weren't very good to begin with because when you hear like oh he tore his acl so he couldn't play football everyone automatically assumes he must have been a great football player bad injury luck so you can you can play into that you're being a little bit too honest with us i think yeah i was not a great I mean, and I wish I could say bad injury luck since that ACL.

I've. yeah i was not a great player i mean and i wish i could say bad injury luck since that acl i've torn my left patella tenant playing hoops playing morning hoops and my right patella tenant playing morning hoops so i don't i was just not a very good athlete i have my i have a two and a half year old boy i i pray and i think he's got my wife's genes was the athlete of the family.
She was like an Olympic hopeful gymnast. So I really hope he's got her jeans.
Yeah. Wait.
So back to your high school coach, has there been moments where you guys been sitting late in meetings, especially now, like maybe even this week where it's like, this guy was your coach in high school and now he's on your staff and you're going to the college football playoff. That's's a really cool like pinch yourself moment has he said that to you oh yeah we definitely our staff is filled with people who love arizona state i mean our running backs coach coach high school in the valley uh forever are in the valley is phoenix area right our our tight ends coach is born and raised in arizona went to ari Arizona State.
One of our D-line coaches went to Arizona State. Our linebackers coach is from 15 minutes from Arizona State.
Our defensive coordinator is from 30 minutes from Arizona State campus. Like we have so many people that are passionate about this place that we look at each other and we had a saying.
I mean, we were predicted to win four wins. So when we were going to get our fifth win, we would look at each other and say, a saying i mean we were predicted to win four wins so when we were going to get our fifth win we would look at each other and say we can just get this one and then we won five and then we're like if we can just get this one if we can just get this one and 11 wins later big 12 champs we're looking at each other into this next week and we can just get this one oh yeah how long the ride goes i i love that imagine a team just going if we can just get this one all the way to a national title yeah you could do it for sure yeah it's been a hell of a season and and the conference that you play in seems like it's more chaotic than any other conference in the country what is it about the big 12 that just lends itself to these these crazy games well one we play nine conference.
So we play more conference games than some of the other leagues, right? And then two, it's just every team is so close to each other from a talent perspective. So, I mean, there's not really the bottom of the league.
Traditionally, there's not a true – I mean, we were supposed to be the bottom, but there's not really the bottom of the league and consistent powerhouses. So every week that you play, I mean, you could win or lose the football game.
I mean, because it's so competitive. So you beat each other up and then everybody has two losses by the end of it.
Like when you go through the nine games to survive at eight and one is very, very rare. So we beat each other up.
And then the environments, I think it's an underrated thing. The environments in the Big 12, going on the road to Stillwater, going up to – we didn't go to Boulder this year with Coach Prime.
Those are – I mean, going to Utah, going to BYU, coming to Arizona State, you guys saw our crowd. Those are real environments.
So not only do you have to play good teams, you're not like going on the road to 25,000 fans who leave at halftime. You're going on the road to people throwing tortillas on the field like they do at Texas Tech.
Yeah. Yeah.
San Marcos, tough place to go. Yeah.
So I know that you walked this back a little, but there was a point in the season where you were down to do open tryouts for kickers. And I hit you up right away, and I was like, I got a kick and he's sitting right next to me i started stretching i i told him i was like hey there's a chance you might have to go down there now i know you you figured that out i don't know if pft has uh eligibility left but would you still be open for pft trying out just getting a maybe a private tryout in the spring sometime just to see what he's got? We could do a private tryout.
I feel our guys have done a phenomenal job. I mean, I should have never said that.
I openly apologize. Like I said, sometimes some things have to be handled behind closed doors.
But 100%, if you want to come out and, you know, you want to see what you got, I would love for you to come out and embarrass yourself. I think that'd be awesome.
I think that'd be exciting. He's testing you.
This is like when you got picked last, coach. Now I'm making this personal.
If I can just make one field goal, then I'll be okay. Okay, so when Big Cat told me that, I did try out for the XFL, went three for five from 37 yards.
So I started stretching, got in rack a little bit i do have eligibility left i looked it up i could i could enroll in asu law school and i i could be on the roster like obviously i wouldn't get in the game but you don't have a limit i could just be on the roster and just just show up for games it's like the the seventh string kicker right i mean in today's day and age with NIL, you know, you may be able to NIL yourself through pardon my take to become our fourth string kicker. Yeah.
There could be a play there. I mean, there's an opportunity.
And you know what? I want to take on the mantra of what you speak about at ASU and any NIL money that I make through being the fourth string kicker, I'm going to distribute that to the rest of the kickers on the team. I think that's a great idea.
I think that's an absolutely phenomenal idea. And I'm going to match.
Big Cat's going to match. I'm going to match.
Oh, we'll see. Hot damn.
We're rolling now. Now we're putting with fist greets.
Listen, I can still make a 35-yard field goal consistently, I think. I haven't kicked in like a year.
But you give me like three months to get into shape and to start working on it, I'm going to be lights out from 40 in. Yeah.
Consistency. That's what you need.
He's just trying to test you. So I actually did have one last question.
He's trying to test you because I know how Coach Dillingham is. Rowback question, RHOBACK.com, promo code TAKE.
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My last question, and I know what you're doing to PFT because I know you pretty well in just reading everything and talking to you. You just like guys who want to to compete so you have a ping pong table uh that you you basically have the rule that if you beat someone in ping pong and they don't want to play again you're like that guy's not for me uh so how much how much of that is like real where it's like you know if we play a video game and you don't want to play again i don't really want you around because i want you to have that you're like, I got to win a game.
Yeah. It's not, I mean, I say that jokingly, but it's somewhat like, it's, it's not 100% true.
I just want to see somebody who's like passionate about it. Like we're doing something, we're competing in something.
Like if I beat you and you're like, Oh, what's the next thing that we're doing on our visit? Right. That doesn't, I don't connect with people like that.
Like I grew up the youngest of four where I got my butt beat and everything. And like, I would hate it.
And I'd be like, play again, play again. I want people that like, want to be the very best and that are wired in a way that I don't care if they're playing tiddlywinks they want to win i don't even know what a tiddlywink is yeah but i i've heard the saying before and they want to win in it and whether it's spades whether it's chess whether it's ncaa i want people that it pisses them off to lose yeah it bothers them it's uncomfortable yeah i like that love that mantra so uh is there anybody else on your team that you want to shout out, like an unsung leader of the program? Because we spend a lot of time talking about the running back, the quarterback, but is there a guy on the team that's like the heartbeat of the team that's kind of operating behind the scenes? Yeah, one of those guys would be Xavier and Alfred, our starting safety, who was first team all-conference.
He started his career at Texas, transferred from Texas, went to USC, you know, didn't work out there, transferred from USC, shows up at Arizona State. The NCAA deemed him ineligible for transferring twice is before the rules changed.
So then he practiced for a year and a half without playing here. And now he's first team all conference.
The work he's put in, he's the guy who gives our pregame speeches if you ever watched any of our videos i don't give pregame speeches i'm horrible at it but he's good at it so he's the one who gives the pregame speeches to the guys he's definitely one of those guys i love it love it we're rooting for you guys yeah i mean this is uh it's why i love college sports this type of story and and and someone who's got the passion that you've got, especially for Arizona State. Don't let Pete Prisco back on the bandwagon, by the way.
He's a friend of ours. He's going to say that he never left.
He definitely left the bandwagon. He left.
So we'll gatekeep the bandwagon for you when it comes exclusively to just Pete Prisco. That sounds good.
Okay. All right.
Thanks so much, Coach. We really appreciate it, man.
See you, Coach. I appreciate it.
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I'm wearing the boots right now. I've been rocking the boots all week.
I was walking through the kitchen at Barstool Sports today. Got pulled aside by like three people.
They're like, yo, PFT, are you you matching? did you match your boots with your shirt uh i did not i just got very very lucky when i got dressed

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Thank you. holla dude season now at hey dude.com give the gift of comfort and style this holiday okay hank guys on chicks michigan fan here and i am buzzing from saturday what michigan fan here and i am buzzing from saturday is this is old yeah yeah okay maybe they were just buzzing.
Oh, okay. I've been dating my boyfriend for four months.
Wait, is this still the Michigan fan? Nope. Okay.
Maybe. I've been dating my boyfriend for four months.
We're in our late 20s and he absolutely loves basketball. Recently, he joined a league where two teams play.
The Unks and the Grads. Usually happens? As it sounds, a bunch of middle-aged men play against recently graduated high schoolers.

The Unks and have, this is written incorrectly, the Unks and have an ex-D1 football player and always win.

And my husband takes great pride each week.

He makes fake newspaper articles and AI-generated podcasts glorifying himself for his performances.

He recently said he's considering going to an Open NBA tryout because he dropped a triple-double against a team of 18-year-olds. Should I be honest and tell him he isn't good enough, or should I let him try and live his dreams? I love this idea for a league where it's just two teams, and you only have one team that you play against, and you play against them all the time.
It's like gangs. Yeah.
It's Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. Yeah.
No, I think a guy's got to have a hobby. He's creating an alternate universe for himself.
That's a normal thing to do with fantasy football and rec leagues and stuff. Someone always takes it seriously, but that's not a bad thing.
Also, what were you going to say, Max? I want us to put out this graphic that he's joining's that he's joining it yeah yeah yeah i want i want to fulfill us to fulfill this guy's dream yeah send us yeah send us a recap and we'll talk about it as a national sports podcast we'll talk about it also judging from this uh blurb that the girl wrote in nothing better nothing better than playing intramural rec sports, whatever it is, and having like a true insane athlete on your team. Cause that's really what it sounds like.
He's just good because he's got a D one football player on his team. But when you like, when you get in those situations, you're like, we have a true ringer and there's just no way we can lose best feeling in the world.
I do love a scramble golf when you have a scratch golfer yeah yeah like when you took all the money from me at your club with that guy yeah who's a pj pro shout out to kurt that was shout out kurt i love what he's doing though i love that he's creating like this entire thing entire narrative storylines about his team you'd rather have a guy like that than a guy that just doesn't do anything. Yeah.
Yeah. Hello, Big Cat PFT, Hanky Wanky, and Crybaby Max.
That was mean. My husband...
I forgot about that tweet. My husband dips and constantly leaves his spitters around the house.
He tells me don't throw them away until they are full. I think this is absolutely gross, but he thinks it's better than making a new one every day and then proceeds to say it's good for the environment they get there what do i even say back to that yeah he's right although it is gross spitters are fucking gross disgusting habit i remember when we first started working uh out of the new york office and it was a time when there were no lucy's there were no nicotine pouches like everybody in that office dipped constantly And every mountain dew bottles no i was talking about like caps on the mountain dews are different because they're like they're green so they're a little tinted but people walking around with like pepsi bottles and water bottles that were just filled to the brim with dip spit everybody all the time that was that was gross looking back it's it's uh because yeah i mean i'm a lucy guy but it you know back in the day uh having tip you can't have a bottle after it gets like a quarter full you got to throw it out because then you're spitting and it's splashing back it's gross can we bring you like fill one up that's just disgusting can we bring back the spittoon that they had in cartoons where you would like spit into it from across the room and make that nice satisfying ding yeah shout out this guy for looking out for the environment though what a great spin zone everyone in this room has accidentally tasted yes spit right yeah i mean i only went to college for a year but in my college days and when i lived in in boston my roommates dipped and i didn't.
And the number of times like waking up and drinking, being hung over and taking a sip of something and it being dip spit. Like there's truly nothing worse with a hangover.
Yeah. I lived in a baseball house.
Which means. Drinking dip spit.
Yeah. There was just dip.
Everywhere. Everywhere.
Everywhere. I'm a guy, but think this question is pertinent.
Every time my wife comes home after running errands going to the gym etc she asked me if i jacked off while she was gone how can i get her to stop asking me besides saying yes and having a weird conversation every time i also don't want to lie to her but the answer is usually i was gonna say he's definitely jerking off so yeah yeah. Yeah, I think this guy's confused because she just 100% has your number.
Yeah. And you have a tell.
There's something where she comes back and she knows maybe you don't do a good enough job cleaning up. That's why she's asking you all the time.
If you stop jacking off, I bet you she'd stop asking. Maybe turn off the porn before she gets back.
back yeah let's be funny if she just kept on walking into him blasting porn yeah or she like goes on the computer and autocorrect just pops up also yeah just don't jerk off a couple times say no and she'll probably stop asking if you keep saying yes maybe you can get some yeah yeah just like no i was saving it for you girls love hearing that yeah you're probably you're probably you're fucking up because she's coming back she might be horny and she's from the gym yeah she's asking you if you jacked off because she wants to bang yeah and when you point when you don't immediately respond with let's go bone then she's like he jacked off yeah he must jacked off. This was a tweet.
I don't know. It got, it went pretty viral on Twitter from Tori tweeted.
My sister asked for a pod wreck for a six hour drive. This, this isn't got, this isn't guys on obviously listen to part of my take.
This is her review and this is from Lex. So this is chicks.
Okay. Yeah.
Max from hashtag PMT is so fucking annoying when he sucks off the eagles constantly so that was lex's review i think that was on friday's episode so it was after his lions rant which did make no sense but we have to let him just do what he wants that was it was natural he was doing it off air too that was just like immediate aftermath of a game that didn't go your way. Correct.
So I do think that people forget sometimes that like we will record a right after a game. And that is the dumbest time for us.
Like the dumbest time for our brains is immediately after a game and having zero time to process what we watch. Yeah.
You know what? The best way to do it is to watch another game and then go ahead and talk about the game before the last right that you saw. But we can't we're not able to process.
No, very well. Do we want to know.
And also, I don't think the podcast would be as good. No.
Do you want to sit there and listen to somebody that you agree with all the time? If we're just like, yeah, actually looking over my notes, you know, they should have gone. No, I just want to be like, hey, dumb coach, stupid interception.
Too many home games. Too many home games.
They play all their games. Bang, podcast done.
If you want somebody that gets it right, like listen to Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah.
Or talk to him. Yeah.
We ain't ever going to get it right. And we take pride in that.
But yeah, Lex was it lex we heard your we heard i understand i understand clear we take criticism you know valid criticism we take it seriously so we will make steps to make sure that lex feels like her needs have been met and for the fans uh just so you know uh at home max and hank are actually very aware they'll oftentimes like it's probably every like once a month for each of them, we'll finish the show and they'll just be like, I talk too much. Oh, yeah.
Oh, that Friday I was thinking I was like, that was a big talk too much. I mean, Max has to do it now for the five or six years when I was editing the podcast.
I would be listening back and then hear myself talk and get mad and be like why do you ever edit yourself out oh yeah oh my god in the beginning the first few years i was editing everything as soon as i started i just go like 4x speed that you can't even actually hear what i'm saying i you guys don't talk too much i love having multiple voices like memes he's been fucking talking all episode yeah do you guys ever get the thing where like you you record a podcast then you go home and you go to sleep usually like on a sunday it'll be late we'll you know try to fall asleep at like 12 30 1 a.m and as you're laying there in bed trying to fall asleep you just keep saying yourself i shouldn't have said that oh yeah one thing all the time you know that you're wrong you know that you are very wrong and then you just know that you have to wake up the next day and have hundreds of people tell you that you were wrong about the thing that you know that you're wrong or like i shouldn't have reacted that way all the time and i'm i think that's actually why we're successful is that we actually are still critical of ourselves because if we if i went home every night and been like nailed that yeah it would probably suck but yeah no i i don't sleep i edited out like a whole thing that we said last episode about what we just kept talking about how tez watkins from oregon is a really good receiver his name is tez johnson yeah that's why that's why i just called him tez yeah we appreciate that yeah good job complete denial that anyone even listens to this show and that this is a podcast. And that's how I live my life.
Yeah, no, I know the minute I get something wrong. I get in my car on Sunday nights and I'm like, oh, fuck.
And I just have that moment like, ah, whatever. Hopefully, they'll be cool about it.
Like, this is my career, but I just tell myself, like, I was never going to be, like, you know, I don't consider myself someone whose opinion matters in sports talk, so, like, it doesn't matter. Yeah.
It doesn't matter how dumb you are. It does matter, Hank.
All right, good show, boys. The whole booth is here.
Booth, we got anything to say about Luigi? We disavow. I mean, we got a whole booth of italians i'm curious to see what what the what the next play is for luigi yeah did you see the youtube video what what do you think mario's gonna break him out was that fake what yes what do you think is gonna happen the next play i don't know he said that there he said it's not over i saw i saw a tiktok i'm pretty sure it's over it was a fake youtube video video.
Or like it wasn't him that made it. It's just kind of wild that he got arrested for acting suspiciously in a McDonald's.
I think the answer to my question. I didn't want to get into it.
No, get into it, Hank. Hank, need your thoughts.
Can't edit this one out, buddy. I was going to say the answer to my question while Hank collects his thoughts.
That instant reaction from our Italian booth. Hopefully, Luigi doesn't get an Italian lawyer.
Yeah. The lawyer shows up the first day.
He's like, did you see a YouTube video? The YouTube. It looked like it would have been interesting if it were real.
Okay. But apparently.
It's not. It's not.
Hank? I don't know. What are your thoughts, Hank? I just take everything with a grain of salt.
You're smart. I'm not just going to believe everything.
There's a lot of things that don't make any sense, and it's basically everything. The media lies to you.
You know what's disappointing to the listeners is that we're going to have a great post-show conversation about whatever Hank's thoughts are right now. Yeah.
Yeah, but this is where I get actually in my head because it's like I'm not trying to spew conspiracy theories and then have everyone do well-actually. Let's take some time.
Because I'm not informed. Think it through.
But my initial reaction is Friday. Let's get a little presentation.
Who writes down their manifesto as a young kid? Ted Kaczynski. Yeah.
Right. Pretty famous.
Connor Stallion. No, but I'm saying he's a youth.
Okay. Youth aren't writing and holding.
Well, it's only three pages. So you're saying if it was a notes app that it would be believable? I don't think if it's three pages, that's a manifesto.
Hank, you put together presentations for me. And never in person.
Okay. Never physical copies.
Here's what we'll do. And than me um i just i wonder if you know he was a heartthrob after his picture went out there girls were like swooning all over him i wonder if he got to actually like enjoy his like brief celebrity run no probably not you don't think anybody you don't think he boned and a girl recognized him it was like he's Wait, they only recognized him.
They arrested him. Well, yeah, before that.
He was on the run for like four days. Yeah, but no one knew who he was.
Somebody knew who he was. His face, like his face up, but no one knew he was on the run.
Yeah, but you don't think anybody else recognized him? It was like your eyebrows looked like that guy. Maybe.
Yeah, that was the big takeaway is guys like him, guys like me, guys like Nicky Smokes, we shouldn't be doing that with our eyebrows. Yeah.
You just get caught. Jets-Jaguars game preview on Friday will be Hank's Conspiracy Theory Hour.
I give you a full hour. Numbers.
11.ug 17 95 21 you say Jack Jackson 19 19 right Jack 19 for Jack 93 someone say 93 no one said 90 parts I thought Pug did too He said 99 Pug

94 is coming soon

Love you guys Thank you. Thank you.
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