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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Speaker 1 See Mintmobile.com. On today's part of 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Really fun talking to him, talking about the college football playoff, winning the Big 12.

Speaker 1 Maybe PFT trying out for kicker next year.

Speaker 1 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...
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Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 football guy for Dean of AWA.

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Today is Wednesday, December 11th.

Speaker 1 And PFT, I kind of want to believe in the Bengals again.

Speaker 6 Let's go.

Speaker 1 Jamar Chase is so goddamn good. It's actually insane to watch.

Speaker 1 And I know the Cowboys are bad, and I know the Bengals are bad, but I don't, like, Jamar Chase, what he's doing this year, and every single play, he feels like he's open.

Speaker 1 And even if he's not open, Joe Burrow is going to throw it to him, and then he will get open.

Speaker 1 That was, it's too little, too late for the Bengals, but even still watching them and watching their offense.

Speaker 6 And obviously, we had the Leon Lett play by the Cowboys, which was peak Cowboys, and Mike McCarthy giving us his patented stare stare up at 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 got it you got to stop doing that you got to stop subjecting yourself to just trauma repeatedly over and over again.

Speaker 6 If something bad happens,

Speaker 6 yell at somebody, which he did do last night. Mike McCarthy was,

Speaker 6 I don't think that this is, is this Mike McCarthy's best coaching job?

Speaker 1 It might be. He also assaulted a cameraman.

Speaker 6 He did assault a cameraman.

Speaker 1 But you're right. Like, it's, I, I will,

Speaker 1 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 reversing.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And Joe Burrow said it passed: it's about time that one of these broke in our favor.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it finally got a bounce.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And then

Speaker 6 I don't know. How do you pronounce the guy's name?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he just came off injured reserve, and I'm going to butcher it if I try to do it.

Speaker 6 But he heard the crowd, and the crowd was excited because the punt was blocked, and he saw the ball in front of him, and it was just one of those moments. Grab ball.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But yeah, I guess it's nice to see the Bengals 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 if their defense wasn't so bad.

Speaker 6 Right. In this one, they didn't play exceptionally well, but they managed to figure out a way to win at the end.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 It's crazy. And I know the Bengals have virtually no chance of...
Can we pull up the

Speaker 1 playoff predictor? I mean, I think it's like 10% chance or something. They'd have to run the table.

Speaker 1 The one good news for them is they do play the Broncos in a couple weeks, and Broncos are the seven seed right now. But I think they would need, I think they would have to win out.

Speaker 1 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 it's, what is it, 3%?

Speaker 1 3%. So not even close to 10%.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 they're so much fun to watch. And Joe Burrow's having an all-time year.
And you just sit there and you look at it.

Speaker 1 And it's torture for Bengals fans because they can look at every game and be like, man, if we had just gotten one bounce,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 I do like the headline that they put on ESPN afterwards: Gaff hurts Cowboys' playoff hopes. Yeah.
That's one way to look at it.

Speaker 1 They were in the playoffs? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 6 They had hopes of being in the playoffs. They had hopes.

Speaker 1 They had hopes.

Speaker 6 I want to talk real quick about the Simpsons broadcast. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 I tried.

Speaker 1 It was so far behind.

Speaker 6 It wasn't very far behind.

Speaker 1 It's just too, it was too.

Speaker 1 It's hard to watch a game

Speaker 1 knowing that 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.

Speaker 1 So I watched, I actually watched with my son for like maybe 10 minutes. He was a little confused because he doesn't know who The Simpsons are.

Speaker 6 That's the other thing is like The Simpsons, I feel like our demographic. Yes.

Speaker 6 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 right now i wasn't even allowed to watch the simps oh really yeah it was like not uh it was not like a kid show yeah yeah i mean it was kind of bad boy stuff if hank had watched allowed to watch married with children yeah that was that would come on after the simps 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 the smart mouth simpsons road rage though 3d game elite game yes it's like simps 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.

Speaker 6 But I sort of figured out after the second drive, whenever a player got on the field as like a Simpsons character, it was going to be like when Homer was Cooper Rush and he was like, Here we go, which they should have said.

Speaker 6 It was a key that that guy was going to do something great. Like Ralph Wiggum does not have that type of lateral quickness.

Speaker 1 He doesn't have that dog in him.

Speaker 6 When he gets put in at wide receiver, you know he's about to break the game off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Who and I saw Lisa made that catch for a touchdown.

Speaker 6 Yeah, Lisa did a little tiptoe down the sideline. Yeah, that was sick.

Speaker 1 Lisa did the Chase Brown pot.

Speaker 6 She did the Chase Young. She did not jump into the big Salvation Army pot at the end.
Yes. The sex cauldron.

Speaker 1 That was cool.

Speaker 6 But yeah, Ralph Wiggum, I give Ralph Wiggum,

Speaker 6 he's my Grooten Grinder. Okay.

Speaker 1 Nice. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm happy they tried. I don't know.
You just can't be that far behind.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I watched like one, maybe one drive, not even. You just can't be that far behind.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 You need the Miles Garrett.

Speaker 6 You need a Miles Garrett. You need a Malice at the Palace.
You need a fight between the two teams.

Speaker 1 Pepper Spray.

Speaker 6 We don't root. Yeah, Pepper Spray would be great.
We don't root for injuries, but seeing how they would deal with Homer Simpson having a compound fracture.

Speaker 1 DeMar Hamlin? Yeah, Damar Hamlin.

Speaker 1 Any game.

Speaker 1 Prayers for Mo Sislak.

Speaker 6 Yeah, in the South Park game that they do, when they substitute Kenny in for DeMar Hamlin, you know something bad's about that.

Speaker 1 It's going to get really bad. What were you going to say, Max? Did you try to watch it? I did.

Speaker 3 Some of the plays, you couldn't even see what was going on.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 3 Like, the camera angles were crazy. They did one, like, drone view that was

Speaker 3 literally looked like you're watching from outer space. You couldn't see a single thing that was going on.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But yeah, there were a few of those in the first half.

Speaker 8 They needed to sack up and just do it with no, like, that's just the main broadcast.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Where it's like, this is the only way you can watch football tonight.

Speaker 1 I actually would respect that because you wouldn't know there was a delay.

Speaker 1 That would be it.

Speaker 6 Have Joe Buck and Troy Aikman seriously calling the game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That would be so fun.

Speaker 6 Oh, I mean, no, they got to get Al Michaels doing that game.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, wait, so Max, you watch? You're a Monday night guy.

Speaker 3 I watched some of it.

Speaker 1 Okay. What'd you think?

Speaker 8 I didn't like it.

Speaker 1 Okay, that was it. That was my take.

Speaker 1 Put it out there. That's the review.

Speaker 1 Okay, so just to clean up on week 14, it does feel

Speaker 1 we're down the home stretch. Everyone's done with their buys.
Everyone's ready to go four games left.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And there's the in-the-hunt stuff is they've got to clean it up at this point because I think, I mean, the Cowboys, the Bears being

Speaker 1 in the hunt?

Speaker 1 They've been eliminated now.

Speaker 6 That's patronizing.

Speaker 3 It's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 But technically, in the NFC, I think 15 out of the 16 teams are still not eliminated, which is... Can we just...

Speaker 1 We need a different elimination tag where it's like, you're not technically eliminated, but dude, get a fucking grip. Yeah, code blue.

Speaker 1 Everyone from the Saints on down. Saints, Cowboys, Bears, Panthers, just be like, hey, I know technically not, but.

Speaker 1 You're brain dead if you're actually thinking that.

Speaker 6 The Panthers still being in the hunt is just wild. No one wants to play them.
No one wants to play Panthers right now.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 now you're out of the in-the-hunt.

Speaker 1 I'm eating. You're in it.

Speaker 6 You're in it. For now.

Speaker 1 All the way in it. Nice bad.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 there was one thing, story we should probably talk about NFL before we talk a little college football.

Speaker 6 What's this going to be?

Speaker 1 This is going to be Brandon Graham from the Philadelphia Eagles

Speaker 1 going on a radio show on Monday and essentially saying that Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown don't fuck with each other.
They don't like each other.

Speaker 6 They used friends. No, they used to fuck with each other.
They used to be friends.

Speaker 1 They used to be friends. They ain't friends anymore.

Speaker 6 And now they're just teammates. That's not true.

Speaker 1 Trouble in paradise. That's not what he said.
What did he say?

Speaker 3 He said that they used to be friends before being teammates. They were friends before the draft.

Speaker 3 And then when you become teammates, things can get a little bit dicey. And he made assumptions after watching that video without knowing anything.

Speaker 3 And that's what he said after the fact that no one else is picking up

Speaker 3 on that part of his statement.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're saying no one's picking up on the part of the statement where after he said what he said and everyone was like, ooh, this sounds bad, he then did a retraction.

Speaker 1 We shouldn't note the retraction where he was like, oh, I stepped in it. I maybe shouldn't have said this.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 6 So Brandon Graham watching, he doesn't have any further context to this than you or I would have watching the

Speaker 1 play on television. Nope.

Speaker 3 He's just a fan. That's what he said.

Speaker 1 It was great, too, because then T.O. got involved with Donovan McCain.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's just like peak Philadelphia.

Speaker 6 Yeah, say it to me to my face. Don't say it through the media.

Speaker 1 We actually should just play the video I sent you, you, Max.

Speaker 1 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 and 2, and they've won how many games in a row, Max?

Speaker 1 Eight games in a row, nine games in a row? Nine games in a row. Nine games in a row.

Speaker 1 Everything's going well. They now have players talking about players, old players talking about old players.
And this was after, I think this is a crossing broad guys.

Speaker 1 They did a good job with Kyle Pagan.

Speaker 3 He does a good job.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Yeah, so shout out him. Great video.
This is after the Eagles have won their ninth game in a row. He interviewed people coming out of the link.

Speaker 1 And this is, 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.

Speaker 1 I don't know why we're struggling with Carolina. They suck.
They won 215 miles. They suck.
We should have fucking killed them.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 balling out like he didn't do anything

Speaker 1 quarterback maybe drafts like jackson daughter or like uh jalen's brown not getting enough touches

Speaker 1 include aj brown man i would not let nick sirikani come to the game within the first half because then he couldn't call the first out of plays and he can let callan moore just run saquon barkley the entire time and we would win the game within the first half we're gonna to run the ball.

Speaker 1 I don't know what we're doing. Why second and one? Run the freaking football.
What would you do differently if you coached?

Speaker 10 I would give Saquon the ball every time, and I would pass to AJ Brown when he opened.

Speaker 1 It's that easy, Nick Siriani. The Eagles should have won my Moore.
I'm disappointed.

Speaker 11 12 and a half point favorites. You got to smack these dudes.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 At the end of the day, you're all fucking delusional. We go to the ball.

Speaker 1 Get buried, baby.

Speaker 1 Miss, it's hard to win in this league, true or false.

Speaker 10 So true.

Speaker 1 It's hard to win in this league. True or false, true.
But a win is a win, isn't it?

Speaker 6 Wins always a win.

Speaker 10 It's the last night of the eras tour, so I'm looking forward to getting home and live streaming that.

Speaker 1 But the birds are great.

Speaker 12 Go birds, Taylors and Eagles fans. Go birds.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Like, having people be like, yeah, Jalen Hurts, not the guy. We need Jalen Milro or Jackson Dartler.
Jackson Dart was a great one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Fucking suck.

Speaker 6 Max, as an Eagles fan, what would your reaction be if the Eagles team booed you guys?

Speaker 1 Oh, reverse.

Speaker 6 They might need to turn it around.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I mean, that would just turn into a disaster. It'd be a boo.

Speaker 3 In theory, I would appreciate it and I would understand it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 in reality, it would be a disaster because people get so angry. I mean, it would basically be like when Nick Siriani started yelling at the fans.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 it might end up resulting in good things.

Speaker 1 No, that's the most Philly story of all time.

Speaker 6 Like, the Eagles start booing you guys, you boo them back, and then they just don't stop winning.

Speaker 3 No, no, no, because then that would be civil war.

Speaker 1 You can't have civil war.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it has to be a one-way street. I'm sorry, it has to be a one-way street.

Speaker 6 So, what's the official statement on A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts not getting along?

Speaker 1 Not being friends with them. Good question.

Speaker 3 They are friends.

Speaker 6 No, they used to be friends.

Speaker 6 If I were to say, hey, Big Cat and I used to be friends, then we started doing the podcast. He would be like, that doesn't sound good.
Memes would start looking for a job.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 No, it just means that they were friends before they were teammates. And it got lost in translation.

Speaker 1 Mitch Hedrick. I see like they do.

Speaker 6 I used to do drugs. I still do them, but I used to also.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, used to be friends is not a good thing to say about someone.

Speaker 6 Like, I used to date this chick. Would you say that about your girlfriend?

Speaker 3 They literally did this handshake last week.

Speaker 3 They did the Fresh Prince handshake.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 So, like,

Speaker 3 they had a bad week.

Speaker 3 Sometimes Memes comes into the office on a day of work and wants to kill PFT.

Speaker 8 Yeah, but they're co-workers, not friends.

Speaker 1 They're also. But wait, and also, memes and PFT definitely used to be friends.
Yeah. Like you could absolutely say that about them.
We used to be friends before the lottery. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. No, and then, you know, sometimes in the in like the workplace, things get heated.

Speaker 6 At some point, we might be playing.

Speaker 3 But at the end of the day, you're still friends.

Speaker 6 I don't know about PFT. We might be friends again at some point.
Yeah. That's up to memes.

Speaker 1 It was just very funny, like the whole T.O. then going after Tom.
The T.O.

Speaker 3 thing was crazy. Did we read the T.O.

Speaker 1 tweet? No, find it. It's just, oh, you guys are 11-2.

Speaker 1 I know. I know.

Speaker 3 I don't know. Philly media.

Speaker 1 Tough place to play. It's a tough place to play.
Tough place. That was just the fans.

Speaker 8 That wasn't really the media.

Speaker 1 Tough place to play. Brandon Graham literally went on

Speaker 1 Philly Sports Talk Radio. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So why did that's the other thing? Like, if you're Brandon Graham,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That's what tells me that there might be something to it.

Speaker 1 Wait, what do you think would cause a shitstorm? Saying like Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown used to be friends? Yeah.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Whatever. All right.
The T.O. said,

Speaker 1 so Don McNabb on A.J. 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.

Speaker 1 And now what you said is out there in front of everybody. And then T.O.
then came over the top and said, now this is interesting is coming from you.

Speaker 1 Not how I interpret 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.

Speaker 1 I never had an 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.

Speaker 1 And we might have won Super Bowl 39, but that's another story for another day. Just my two cents.

Speaker 1 You gave yours. I'm giving mine.
Hey, Freddie Mitchell, thanks for sharing. That's my favorite part.

Speaker 3 Just like saying, like, 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's no place like Philly. It's just so funny.
You just can't even...

Speaker 1 You got

Speaker 1 simultaneous wide receiver QB beefs going on. Old ones and new ones.
You're basically 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.

Speaker 1 That's what you guys are doing right now.

Speaker 3 But that was real beef. Keto and McNabb was real beef.
A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts is not real beef.

Speaker 6 At the time, though, do you think people were saying that's real beef?

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 3 Also, A.J. Brown has to be in the touchdown scorer this week.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. That's conviction.

Speaker 3 Has to be in the touchdown score. Let's go.

Speaker 3 You know that they're going to find a way to feed him the ball.

Speaker 1 I agree. I agree.
I agree. Hank, are you loving this? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 What are your thoughts, Hank?

Speaker 8 I mean,

Speaker 8 Boston was kind of the same way. Like, it's just kind of a good sports sports town, degenerate sports town, angry sports town.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Used to be beef.

Speaker 8 Yeah, like, there's just never,

Speaker 8 you're never going to be happy.

Speaker 3 Tom Brady also wasn't best friends with all of his receivers. Although

Speaker 6 him and Julian drove to practice together, like, every day.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 8 Antonio Brown live in his house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Good point. Not all of them.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 I think he was.

Speaker 8 Yeah, pretty much everyone except what? Like Aaron Hernandez? Yep.

Speaker 3 Aaron Hernandez was a great player for the Patriots.

Speaker 1 And they used to be friends, probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then what happened?

Speaker 1 Okay, anything else from week 14?

Speaker 1 I'm excited for

Speaker 1 the stretch run of football.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I want playoff football here. I'm ready to get the playoff.
I'm ready to get the tournament started.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I know you're a big playoff simulator guy. How many games do you have to win to feel very safe? Two?

Speaker 6 I think three.

Speaker 1 I feel like you guys, if you won two, you should be able to.

Speaker 6 I'm afraid of the Rams slash Seahawks.

Speaker 1 But they all have to play each other, too.

Speaker 6 I know, but I would feel comfortable if we won three.

Speaker 1 And you have Saints.

Speaker 6 We got Saints. Ben DiNucci just signed

Speaker 1 for the Saints.

Speaker 6 So I'm going to have to kill him. Then we've got

Speaker 6 Eagles, Falcons, Cowboys.

Speaker 1 I think you get two wins. Yep.
I think three. But I think you'll be okay with two.

Speaker 3 Saints is a must-win.

Speaker 1 Saints is a must-win. This is a must-win.

Speaker 6 It's a must-win this weekend. Marshawn Lattimore revenge game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you don't want to come down to the last three with the Eagles, Falcons, and Cowboys.

Speaker 3 And the Falcons are fighting for that game.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Although they might not be at that point.

Speaker 6 Hank, how many games do we need to win for you to feel very scared about your bet?

Speaker 8 If you beat the Saints, it's pretty much over.

Speaker 1 Oh, so they're just one win,

Speaker 1 according to your calculations.

Speaker 6 We get in with nine wins?

Speaker 8 No, but I don't think you're going to lose three straight.

Speaker 1 They literally just did. I hope not.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, that was a hard schedule.

Speaker 1 That was a hard schedule.

Speaker 1 I think if you get two wins, it's going to be hard because if you get two wins,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 Rams will have to run the table essentially. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I'd feel great with three wins. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you're in three, then they actually do have to run the table. They have to win all four games.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's do a little college football. Then we'll get to Hot C Cool Throne.

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Speaker 1 Little College Football, we have our Heisman finalists: Ash and Genty, Boise State, Cam Ward, Miami, Dylan Gabriel, Oregon, and Travis Hunter, Colorado.

Speaker 1 I think voting has already been done, so we don't even have to say anything.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so

Speaker 6 one guy I would have liked to see is Cam Scatabo.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 6 He would have been a nice addition to that group, but besides that, I think those are four worthy guys.

Speaker 1 I think Shador might have had a case. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 those are the four that I kind of expected.

Speaker 1 It was funny, the graphic that they put out there had Cam Ward listed as 42,000 yards.

Speaker 6 That would be a record.

Speaker 1 That would be very hard

Speaker 1 to beat.

Speaker 6 I know his defense is bad, but I mean, 42,000.

Speaker 1 42,000 yards.

Speaker 6 Now, Cam Ward did have an outstanding season. Yeah.
And the defense was a huge liability for him.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. So we'll find out on Saturday night who wins the Heisman.
But yeah, they all are incredible.

Speaker 1 college football players, all worthy of the award, all deserving of the award.

Speaker 6 If it 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.

Speaker 1 Honestly, with the votes already being in, I'll say right now, if I had a vote today after the votes are in, I'd probably vote Ash and Genty.

Speaker 6 I go Cam Ward, but yeah, Cam Ward, Genty, and then I go Hunter Third.

Speaker 1 But the votes are already in. So there's nothing that can be done at this point.
They're already in.

Speaker 6 When you fill out a Heisman vote, is that done all online?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Actually, I feel like Heisman's one of those awards.
They make you mail a mail.

Speaker 6 Mail-in ballots. That's an issue for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it might be online.

Speaker 6 It's not verification.

Speaker 1 yeah it might be online but so we have the college football playoff we have all the bowls we 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 with the with the idea that traditionally in the past there have been four conferences that had elite teams that ended up winning those.

Speaker 6 Right. But they didn't think about the scenario where it's like, okay, if we if we have Boise State that gets a buy, how would that impact the rest of the schedule?

Speaker 1 Right. And I get it too, because it's a moneymaker and that's all that matters.

Speaker 1 They didn't want to, you know, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like, 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.

Speaker 6 The committee kind of boxed themselves in by talking about conference championships not being a factor in eliminating a team. Right.
If SMU had gotten blown out,

Speaker 6 do you think that they would have been out?

Speaker 1 I do.

Speaker 6 I think they probably would have been too. I think it was like a 30-point loss.
Yeah. I think it's a liability for teams.
Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 6 They'll probably never get rid of the conference championships just because you're right. It makes a lot of money.

Speaker 1 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 teams.
Not 64 teams.

Speaker 6 Top four teams get a buy.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk to Kenny Dillingham in a minute, but it just, it's, when I look at the bracket, the thing that keeps sticking out is like Oregon had by by far and away the best season in college football.

Speaker 1 They did not lose a game. They played in a

Speaker 1 power four conference. They got tested in big-time games, and they passed every test.
And they are the one seed, rightfully so.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 No, it doesn't. It doesn't.
It ended up rewarding Penn State for losing the conference championship game.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 and by the way, 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,

Speaker 1 they're live. Those teams are live.

Speaker 6 Where is Penn State now? 650?

Speaker 8 That was on Sunday. I can look at.

Speaker 6 They're as live as live could be. I might have to wet the beak on that.

Speaker 1 But it's Big Game James, and he can't win a big game.

Speaker 6 That's fair. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's, what, 0-12, I think, versus top five teams.

Speaker 6 One thing that I've really loved, though, is the crying about out-of-conference scheduling that's happened. And it's been continuing.

Speaker 3 He beat Ohio State once.

Speaker 1 He did beat Ohio State once, but

Speaker 1 were they ranked top five?

Speaker 8 I believe so.

Speaker 6 Double check that. Does this count as a big game, Max?

Speaker 1 Penn State.

Speaker 1 Again, SMU.

Speaker 6 Yeah, does Penn State SMU count as a big game?

Speaker 6 I would say

Speaker 3 Penn State upsets number two, Ohio.

Speaker 1 Okay, so he's 1-1. He's 1-1.

Speaker 1 No, I would say I think he's safe.

Speaker 1 SMU doesn't count as a big game. This is not a big game for Penn State.
No, it's a big game.

Speaker 6 Oh, it is a big game.

Speaker 1 That's bad.

Speaker 1 I don't know. No, I don't think it's a big game.

Speaker 3 But then you're not looking at it, then you're not taking the game seriously, and you've got to take the game seriously. It's a big game.

Speaker 1 No, I think you've got to take the game not seriously.

Speaker 6 If it's a a big game, then big game James. True.

Speaker 1 Are they allowed to do a whiteout? They are doing a whiteout. Oh, and is it noon? It's at noon.
Oh, I love it.

Speaker 6 I love this conversation because we're essentially having the can't win or can't win must-win conversation just in completely different terms.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

Speaker 6 You got to figure out if it's a big game, though, prior to kickoff.

Speaker 3 But I don't know. You don't want it to be a big game, right?

Speaker 1 No, you don't want it to be a big game.

Speaker 3 So, yeah, no.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You want SMU to come out in Purdue's uniforms.

Speaker 3 I mean, SMU, it's going to be like 15 degrees in state college.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's big. I mean, that's big.
Not shit for that weather. They're not built.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And going back to like Alabama's schedule, you lost to Vanderbilt in your conference. You lost to Oklahoma in your conference.

Speaker 6 So that's not really what it gets down to, but it's driving people insane. There was an op-ed that was written in

Speaker 6 AL.com, alabama.com,

Speaker 6 and it was, should Alabama join the ACC? Oh.

Speaker 6 Let's have the conversation.

Speaker 1 I like this because I had someone replying to me the other day that said LSU should just join the Sunbelt. Yeah.
So same feeling.

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.
So if LSU joined the Sun Belt, they would probably win the Sun Belt.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe not. Brian Kelly would find a way to lose.

Speaker 6 But if Alabama joined the ACC, he would probably win the ACC and then ensure himself of a buy in the college football playoff.

Speaker 6 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 in as well.

Speaker 6 The same would have been true for Mississippi if they had been in the Mountain West. That would be an interesting one.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 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 to the CFP and any of the other cupcake conferences?

Speaker 6 The bottom line, and it's an ugly truth to be sure, is that the other conferences outside the SEC and Big Ten are no longer viable as they exist today.

Speaker 6 The Pac-12 teams figured 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

Speaker 6 Oregon going to the Big Ten is is equivalent to Alabama going to the ACC.

Speaker 1 ACC, yeah. I mean, it's

Speaker 1 first of all, I think the SEC was just not as good this year, and we're going off of old SEC. Like, they're still probably the best conference, but it wasn't like elite elite to that level.

Speaker 6 I think they're the deepest conference.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and but Alabama was a... 18-point favorite against Vanderbilt.
They were a 21-point favorite against Oklahoma. Like,

Speaker 1 they were a flawed football team.

Speaker 1 I don't know any real Alabama fan could straight face, like, 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.

Speaker 1 But you can't sit there and be like, we were not a flawed football team because they were. That's just what happened during the season.

Speaker 1 I also think, weirdly, the entire backlash to like, we'll never schedule a strong out-of-conference.

Speaker 1 Like, obviously, Wisconsin was down this year, but like, if Alabama had, let's just say, played Oregon week one and beat them, them, they might have been in with three SEC losses because everyone had been like, holy shit, they beat the number one team.

Speaker 1 You know, like they're out of conference. They went and proved another one.

Speaker 6 But let's just say it was an up year for Wisconsin, right? One of your good seasons.

Speaker 6 If you didn't have that game scheduled against Alabama and you had just steamrolled a weaker Big Ten schedule if you wanted your way, then that would actually favor you. and not the SEC.
Right.

Speaker 6 Because it would mean that you would have one less hard game to win. Right, right.

Speaker 1 Which would have been, yeah, right. It would have been been like Indiana didn't play an SEC team.
Right. And they're in.
And they're in.

Speaker 1 And if they maybe played an SEC team, they would have maybe been out, and Alabama would have been in.

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 there's no reason for us to do that, no benefit, then you might wind up in a stereo where Indiana gets a playoff spot because you didn't schedule them. Right.

Speaker 1 If Indiana had played South Carolina week two and lost to South Carolina, Alabama would probably be in. Yeah.

Speaker 6 See how this works? Yeah. It's like a giant ecosystem.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is very funny. We also,

Speaker 1 are you going to do Bill Belichick for your hot sequel throne? Or we want to talk about it? Because

Speaker 1 he looks like he's going to take the North Carolina job. Yeah.
Which I think he's going to be successful.

Speaker 1 And I know that this is probably just because he gave his pitch on McAfee's show on Monday, and I am a sucker for a good pitch.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 He had a 400-page document. A manifesto.
A Bible. That's a manifesto.
Yeah. Manifestos work in college football.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Manifesto's hot right now. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 6 Very hot. So I don't know because 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.

Speaker 6 Once the players get in the door, then I'm sure that he'll be fine. He'll be good.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 1 And I really do think that if you are matter of fact.

Speaker 8 He's going to be the closer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if you're a matter of fact to these

Speaker 1 both transfer kids and like I think he'll crush it in the transfer portal because if he just says, hey, I'm not going to try to sell you on like this idea that we're competing for national titles right away.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 That's that's a lot of kids will probably buy in on that because that's the goal. Like college football is, is, is, that's the goal now.

Speaker 6 So, Belichick making his son head coach in waiting. Hank, I know that you were a big fan when LeBron James got his son drafted by the Lakers.

Speaker 6 No, but continue. Okay, so

Speaker 6 what's the difference with this?

Speaker 8 Coaching is a lot different than playing.

Speaker 6 Well, you have to be, yeah, you definitely have to be qualified.

Speaker 6 Which he is. Has he been a head coach?

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 6 Where did he work his way up the ranks?

Speaker 8 Right now, he's working at Washington. He was, you know, special assistant, then he was whatever, like cornerbacks coach, then he was de coordinator.
Like, he worked his way up

Speaker 8 position by position.

Speaker 6 Where did he work his way up there?

Speaker 8 In New England, but now he's coaching at Washington.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 6 All right. It's just interesting.

Speaker 1 Good dad.

Speaker 8 How many coaches did Kyle Shanahan? Did he work his way up the ranks?

Speaker 8 There's a million.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 1 He's doing a good job of arguing his point.

Speaker 1 That was actually a really good job of arguing his point.

Speaker 6 That is a fair point. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I would say good dad, though. I was not trying to denigrate Steve.
I was saying Belichick.

Speaker 1 It sounds like you were, though. Good dad.
No.

Speaker 8 Sounds like he does. You don't think he does.
Yeah, because it's.

Speaker 6 It's a LeBron, Belichick, Joe Biden, great fathers, all hooking their sons up.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 8 Nicholas. Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Nicholas Kerr. And, but he, like, there's, there's guys everywhere.
It's crazy. It's crazy.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 It never stops being crazy that he.

Speaker 1 Did they have a conversation at all?

Speaker 1 Did they, when they, when they, when they birded them, were they like, hey,

Speaker 1 like, I know the naming process. We had like a group of like three or four names.
We went with the names we went with. But like.

Speaker 6 You got to have a focus group.

Speaker 1 How did that not, how did that pass?

Speaker 6 When you're telling the person what name to put on the birth certificate. Right.
That's when you realize.

Speaker 1 Nicholas. It's Nicholas.
But yeah.

Speaker 1 Hank, I'm really proud of you. Thank you.
You argued your point very well. I always do.
PFT tried to get you and you didn't get God. No, whatever happens.

Speaker 6 We're just having a conversation. Just having a debate.
This is how we figure out what we truly believe in. It's the Socratic method.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Socrates. Who do you guys have winning the whole thing in the college football playoff?

Speaker 6 I got Penn State.

Speaker 1 Penn State.

Speaker 8 Penn State will lose to.

Speaker 1 I guess Oregon. In the final.

Speaker 8 Is that possible? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, that isn't possible? Yeah, that is possible.

Speaker 3 No, it is, but I don't know why everyone's picking Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 So Max would finish second.

Speaker 1 Max is finished. I'm going to take Oregon.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to take Oregon.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, I said Oregon before the season started and Texas.

Speaker 8 How are you not taking Texas?

Speaker 1 What do you mean?

Speaker 8 You are Texas.

Speaker 6 I'm not Texas.

Speaker 1 You are Texas. Just take Texas.
How?

Speaker 8 You love Texas. Just take Texas.

Speaker 6 I love the city of Austin. Just take Texas.

Speaker 6 I'm not like a Longhorn fan.

Speaker 1 Just take Texas.

Speaker 8 Closeted.

Speaker 3 I'll take Texas. Okay.

Speaker 6 I'm going to take

Speaker 6 Texas.

Speaker 8 You never had any bias towards Texas football.

Speaker 6 I I like going to the games, and I like tailgating and drinking beer.

Speaker 3 That's like enough of a reason for you to be not like a die-hard fan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like

Speaker 1 you got biased. It's okay.
I might be semi-based.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 So take Texas.

Speaker 6 I'm going to take Penn State. Okay.

Speaker 1 So I have Oregon. You have Penn State.
Max has Texas.

Speaker 8 No, I'm taking Arizona State. There we go.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 8 I don't think it works for college football, but if it was hockey or college basketball, they're the hottest team.

Speaker 8 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?

Speaker 1 So fuck it. Arizona State.
Make a run.

Speaker 8 I don't think it applies, but I hope it does. Who cares?

Speaker 6 I mean, the funniest outcome I still think would be Ohio State.

Speaker 1 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 I'm just very interested to see.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 8 Indiana would be funny, too. Indiana would be great.

Speaker 1 Indiana would be awesome. Um, 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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Speaker 1 Okay, Hank, Hotsi Cultural.

Speaker 8 My hot seat, I don't know why I wrote this on my notes. I just wrote fantasy.
I don't know what that means.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 8 But the Yankees are also on the hot seat.

Speaker 1 Oh, I had that.

Speaker 8 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 or assistants or something, a family member.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So

Speaker 8 the Yankees lost out on a generational talent just because they were disrespectful.

Speaker 6 How are Yankees fans taking this?

Speaker 8 They're lashing out.

Speaker 1 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's a terrible defender.

Speaker 1 Juan Soto's a liability. You're going to have to move him to DH.

Speaker 8 He's not 26.

Speaker 1 He's not 26.

Speaker 1 He's going to be 40 years old, making all that money.

Speaker 1 Actually, it's good that the Yankees didn't get him because now they can use that money to fill a bunch bunch of different holes.

Speaker 1 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 a draft pick. You're like, I never wanted that guy.

Speaker 1 That guy stinks. But they just flipped so fast.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 You could have just gone ahead and spent money on top of money.

Speaker 1 There also was one funny tweet that went semi-viral that made me laugh where someone's like, Juan Soto chose the bag over the over legacy yeah

Speaker 1 a Yankees fan saying someone chose a bag

Speaker 1 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 sweep but then also it was like batting practice or something like basically yeah like something in the tunnel or like yeah where they 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 classic family sweet Cohen said that he didn't think that he was going to win either.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And so for Yankees fans to be complaining that you can just buy a team now is, it is delicious. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
The Yankees wouldn't budge on giving Juan Soto a sweet at Yankees Stadium, saying that if they don't do it for Derek Jeter, they're not going to do it for him.

Speaker 6 Yeah. They're probably like, well, who do you think is going to pay for this giant salary to me to sell that sweet to somebody?

Speaker 1 Right, exactly. But yeah, it's very funny watching the instant turn by Yankees fans being like, yeah, he actually is.
I saw one Yankee fan just posted all of his

Speaker 1 fuck-ups in right field. And they're like, this is what we didn't want this for the next 15 years.

Speaker 6 All right, so here's a story. The Mets have excellent intelligence.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 8 Basically, Mark Wahlberg and the other guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So it was a security guard's fault.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 1 But it's a good thing you're not mad.

Speaker 8 No, I'm not mad. I will be watching and betting on it, but it is slightly triggering.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I'm the worst NBA Cup gambler of all time, and PFT is the PFT.

Speaker 3 You should be the data.

Speaker 3 You should be the data.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 As of right now. As of right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and go check out our picks. We have them on our socials.
So follow PFT.

Speaker 1 Hank, your cool throne.

Speaker 8 My cool throne is Deshaun Watson.

Speaker 1 Oh. Oh.

Speaker 8 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,

Speaker 8 beachside dinner, romantic, classy. Looks like he's living his best life.

Speaker 1 Lake Erie.

Speaker 6 Good for him.

Speaker 8 I think it was the ocean. Although, sometimes I think Lake Michigan's the ocean.
But it looked like the ocean.

Speaker 6 I'm going to guess it wasn't Lake Erie in Cleveland in December. No.

Speaker 1 And when I say good for him, I mean I don't care. I hate him.

Speaker 8 Yeah, but he doesn't seem to care. He's chilling.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No,

Speaker 1 I saw that. Pasta didn't look that great.

Speaker 1 No. No.
It looked like just regular, like, it didn't look that fancy.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, he's still got a shitload of money.

Speaker 1 And a shitload of lawsuits to settle.

Speaker 6 I think he might have settled all of them.

Speaker 1 Oh, he did? I think so. There's not any new ones?

Speaker 6 Not yet.

Speaker 6 Give Tony Busby like a week.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, so cool throwing Deshaun Watson. You're a big Deshaun Watson fan.

Speaker 8 No, but he's on the cool. Like, he's chilling.
He's chilling.

Speaker 6 He is chilling. He is chilling.

Speaker 6 That's Hank's dream life, is being Deshaun Watson.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. Never said that.

Speaker 1 PFT, you're a hot seat cool.

Speaker 6 My hot seat is reality.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 6 Did you guys see the story about the new supercomputer that just came out?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And it's capable of performing this specific computing challenge in less than five minutes. Okay.
You might be like, okay,

Speaker 6 what does that even mean?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 8 Septillion?

Speaker 6 Septillion. It's a real number chip.
It breaks my brain.

Speaker 8 How many trillions are in a septillion?

Speaker 6 I don't know i'm what is that 70 trillion 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

Speaker 8 i think we're very close to just the world ending so yeah that's like the ai supercomputers catching up and then just taking over so that's what they talked about they actually said

Speaker 6 that um what they're starting to believe now and the fact that they've invented a chip that's this fast, it actually lends credence to the theory that we are living in one of an infinite number of computer simulations right now.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Holy shit, this podcast might not be real.

Speaker 1 Wow,

Speaker 1 nothing's real. Yeah,

Speaker 6 except how bad Spotify is with her and Fear Rapt.

Speaker 1 And A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts.
That's right.

Speaker 1 Used to being friends.

Speaker 6 In a different, maybe in a different universe. Yeah.
They were friends at one point. Yeah.

Speaker 6 My cool throne is shooting your shot.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 6 Friend of the program, Ryan Rossillo, went on a podcast and

Speaker 6 discussed an event that he was at several years ago.

Speaker 6 It was a celebrity football game. And it was with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.
And he talked about the fact that there were all all these swimsuit models there.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 That woman was Megan Markle.

Speaker 6 And he shot a shot.

Speaker 6 He DM'd her. And the picture that Ryan put up, she looks like she's having a good time.
Body language experts. Yeah.
A pretty decent green line test right there, I would say. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ryan looks strong.

Speaker 6 He looks very, got a lot of hair.

Speaker 1 The hair is the same.

Speaker 8 I think if he was bald or so low, that it goes differently.

Speaker 1 But Megan's markle's short enough that I don't think she saw that, you know, he's wearing a bald yarmulke.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 6 she does love hairy guys.

Speaker 1 True.

Speaker 6 Fact.

Speaker 6 So Ryan slid into her DMs and was like, hey, do you want to come on my podcast?

Speaker 6 But in like a flirtatious manner

Speaker 6 and talk football. And she was like, I'm not that big of a sports fan.
Well, I think he was like, do you want to come on my podcast and promote your show that's coming out? Yeah.

Speaker 6 She was like, I don't know sports. And that's how it ended.
But then Page Page Six got their grubby hands on the story. And they put up such an unflattering picture of Rosillo.

Speaker 6 And the headline was, like, a former ESPN

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So it makes it look like.

Speaker 1 I know which one they use. They use that one every time.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it makes it look like. Ryan thought that Megan Markle was like a super attainable, like beneath him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they put that back side by side. Rosillo also has told this 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.

Speaker 6 That's the picture right there. That's bullshit.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Page six, fuck you.

Speaker 6 So they, they wrote this article just to put this picture of Ryan up and be like, this guy thought this chick was attainable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, then it got community noted. Do you see that?

Speaker 8 That was, yeah, that had to be Rosillo.

Speaker 1 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 has told the story before, but yeah, that's so funny.

Speaker 6 He invited her on the podcast. Yeah.
To promote her show.

Speaker 3 What a good guy.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. I've heard.

Speaker 1 Russilla is hotter than Megan Markle. I'll say it.
I think that

Speaker 6 she might be attainable for Ryan right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know, actually, no,

Speaker 1 I think Russilla is unattainable for Megan Markle.

Speaker 6 You know how close he lives to the beach? Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's got a boat. He's

Speaker 1 not a boat anymore. He surfs.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 He's got scripts. He's a total package.

Speaker 3 He's working on him.

Speaker 6 That man right there, that is a real prince. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He'll treat you right. And what I mean, when I say treat you right, means like he'll ignore you while he watches Magic Blazers, game 38.

Speaker 6 He's strong. He's so strong.

Speaker 1 They fucked.

Speaker 6 Fuck you, Page 6. Yeah, that was.

Speaker 1 He'll come at our boy like that.

Speaker 6 It was a dirty move. Yeah.

Speaker 6 What if it does work out for them?

Speaker 1 Could. Could.

Speaker 1 All right. My hot seat is

Speaker 1 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 Black Dica

Speaker 6 posted. You got to make sure to pronounce the end of that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Black Dika

Speaker 1 posted Romadunze would have 1,100 yards on any other NFC North team, and James Adunze, Rome's dad, said 1,500.

Speaker 1 So that's going well. Everything's going well.

Speaker 1 Everything's not depressing.

Speaker 6 I love those Twitter accounts, like the Black Adam Schefter.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Black Skip Bayless.

Speaker 1 You didn't know we needed a Black Dika.

Speaker 6 No. Now you do.

Speaker 1 We got one.

Speaker 1 But yeah, things are going well. And then we had, that doesn't even look like Dikka.

Speaker 3 I think that's just a random fan who's in a Dikka sweater.

Speaker 6 I do like the idea, like, yeah, black people,

Speaker 6 you should be allowed to dress up as Mike Dikka too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you should have a Dikka.

Speaker 1 A big Dikka. And then

Speaker 1 most of the time do.

Speaker 1 My cool throne is

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Talking about Grady Dick. Got it.
That also got community noticing that he's lying on my name. Very funny, though.

Speaker 6 This is what I love about guys that have been friends for a long time

Speaker 6 and continue to be friends. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You can say this type of stuff about your buddy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got dick. I want dick.
Also, Carl Anthony Towns, he might be the perfect fit for New York. He had a big shot.
He was repping it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the Knicks have been hot. Like, Carl Anthony Towns might be built like that.

Speaker 6 See, I didn't think that he would when they made this trade. He might be proving me wrong.

Speaker 1 He is. He's built like that.

Speaker 1 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.

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Speaker 6 And now here's Steve Young.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest. He's a Pro Football Hall of Famer, Super Bowl champion, multiple-time MVP.
It is Steve Young. Steve, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I actually wanted to start with some games we watched yesterday and your team,

Speaker 1 who kicked the shit out of my team, the Bears.

Speaker 1 Are the 49ers back or did they just play the Bears?

Speaker 1 Could they make a run here? We're trying to figure it out.

Speaker 9 I think if you stand back

Speaker 9 to who they were last year, fully loaded, and Christian McCaffrey and Brandon Ayuk, probably

Speaker 9 other than George, the most important people on the field, and then Trent and not no Trent, it's, you know, it's going to, it's, it's hard, right? But I think it was going to get harder anyway.

Speaker 9 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 a way got embarrassed and this is a team

Speaker 9 yeah short of some guys, we get that, but as a group, 50 guys

Speaker 9 have been at Super Bowls or at championship games. And all of a sudden, people are, you know, treating them like dogs, like something's, you know, and I think that this is their answer back.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 I mean, this is some hardy folks. And that's why last week I talked about grit with, you know, during the week about them is like, where's the grit?

Speaker 9 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?

Speaker 9 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.
And they got to come back home and beat the Lions. They have to win those games.

Speaker 9 And so, yeah, it's absolutely possible. It's possible.
Hard, but possible. yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Fundamentally.

Speaker 6 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 unceremoniously benched.

Speaker 6 I don't know if you can be ceremoniously benched, but he was definitely cast aside by the Panthers.

Speaker 9 I've been ceremoniously benched before.

Speaker 9 Yeah, yeah, you can be ceremoniously benched and unceremoniously benched. They're both the same.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so he was kind of cast aside, and

Speaker 6 the bust phrase got thrown around a little bit with Bryce. Um, he's still very early on his career.

Speaker 6 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, you were kind of

Speaker 9 arc of the year. I know where you're going.

Speaker 6 You were cast aside

Speaker 6 by the Bucs early on in your career, and you didn't get a chance to go.

Speaker 9 I was a lefty. People back then didn't want to coach a lefty, they freaked out.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you kind of do look like

Speaker 9 Ray Perkins got the head coaching job, and he looked at me like, bro, I hate lefties, and I hate scramblers.

Speaker 9 Anyone who could run was, was like weird.

Speaker 9 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,

Speaker 9 no matter what. But I always thought it was a bonus, and he thought it was terrible.
They ran. I mean, he thought,

Speaker 9 lefty and a scrambler, you're out. I hate you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Lefty do look weird.

Speaker 9 No, but but but but getting thrown out, like when you talk about Bryce Young, look, there's crappy places to be as a quarterback today.

Speaker 9 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

Speaker 9 there's a number of places where they still don't,

Speaker 9 from ownership on down, don't understand the position's importance and then how to...

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 It's not that they need to be coddled or need special treatment.

Speaker 9 There's expertise to the nature of building a situation in an organization from the ground up to make the job for the quarterback as easy as possible so they can thrive and be great.

Speaker 9 And if you do that, then you have a chance. And there's, and so for Bryce, It's getting to a place where you can actually show who you are.
Look at Sam Darnold's a perfect example.

Speaker 9 Jets flailing around. Bus goes to Carolina.
Oh, shows some signs. Let's be honest.
He sent up some smoke signals in Carolina when he was there. Like, I can still do this.

Speaker 9 I don't suck, but you still don't need, you need more help. And then he gets to San Francisco.
And what does Kyle Shannon say? I love this guy. This guy's...
Our career art could be great.

Speaker 9 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,

Speaker 9 and so Bryce, unless you look, there's some guys that hit the pro game who have really thrived in college, who look prototype. Bryce looks throat prototype.

Speaker 9 Probably not big as strong as the prototypes, but runs around, makes big plays, like, and, and, uh, been in the, been in the big games. Like,

Speaker 9 Bryce doesn't know his ceiling. We don't know his ceiling.
And there's filters he's going to have to go through, even if he got all of that help.

Speaker 9 But what you're seeing today in the last few weeks is, hey, look, i i 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 i i can figure this out and and that's a i always say it's called sending me smoke signals like like i'm i'm dying down here but i'm sending you uh something that tells me that you're gonna you you you have a chance to thrive at some point either either there or somewhere else yeah with Bryce specifically, things looked real bad for him.

Speaker 6 Every snap looked like he was thinking it through.

Speaker 6 It was painful. He was lost.
It looked like he was lost.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 9 100%.

Speaker 9 1,000%. Max, 100%.

Speaker 9 I can't agree with you more. It's the signal in tough times and tough tough situations.
That team,

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And so if you can show signs, smoke signals again, that you know what you're doing and I can figure it out, that is warrior work.

Speaker 9 Patrick Mahomes does not have to do that work anymore.

Speaker 9 Josh Allen does not have to do that work anymore.

Speaker 9 But in many ways, Bryce is doing that work.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you think in the NFL game, we move on from these guys too quickly? Because you mentioned Josh Allen. I mean, Josh Allen was not great as rookie year, probably not.

Speaker 1 I mean, he showed sign 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.

Speaker 1 I mean, that game against the Rams, I know they lost, but he was out of this world good.

Speaker 1 Do you think as a league, teams and franchises are moving on too quickly from guys and not giving them a chance to get through those rough patches that they start their career with.

Speaker 9 The problem is, is you don't have 32 great places for quarterbacks to make that judgment. Right.
You have to glean through.

Speaker 9 You have to recognize, like, if you're in San Francisco and you're struggling, you got problems.

Speaker 9 There couldn't be a better place. Jimmy Grappolo takes a team to the Super Bowl here and then can't find a job.
Yeah.

Speaker 9 So like there's places where, you know, if you go down and see a Sean McVay and struggle at quarterback, the guy that understands an innovative mind and how he calls plays and he understands position, then that's about you.

Speaker 9 You know what I mean? But if they, if the Rams drafted or the 49ers drafted a young quarterback like Trey Lance and can't do it,

Speaker 9 that's a sign of, that's not a, that's not a, that's not a situation problem. That's a you problem.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 9 And so, uh,

Speaker 9 but then there's a lot of places where you go and you can't. know that.

Speaker 9 They're, they, they, you know, they, they get drafted a young quarterback to try to be great and it's not a great place for quarterbacks. And it's not necessarily a you problem.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And so I just, I think until there's 32 teams like that, we're going to have to glean through where it is and what it is.

Speaker 9 Like if someone gets drafted by the Jets this year and they haven't fixed anything, then

Speaker 9 it can't be harder.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 9 I feel for Aaron Rodgers because it's so interesting that

Speaker 9 he was developed in an age of more sophistication.

Speaker 9 The job that he had 15 years ago is so much harder than it is today. Today's game, as Tom Brady describes, the flats are open, the middle of the field's unpatrolled, and no one can hit me.

Speaker 9 Like it's an amazing time to play quarterback. But, and Aaron was, was,

Speaker 9 you know, learned the game and are very much more sophisticated. And so he should be dominating as Tom dominated, as, you know, as Matthew Stafford is dominating.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 9 granted, he's lost some mobility and everything else, but that's when you know some place 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 if you track you you track bill walsh uh to andy reed and then you track andy reed to and through mike shanahan like that

Speaker 9 there's a there's a a way that they look at the world they look at the 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

Speaker 9 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 it doesn't have that abundant spirit.

Speaker 9 So what I'm trying to describe to you fundamentally is if you're from the Bill Walls tree, you've been taught to share. Like I'm open.
And then also, I'm...

Speaker 9 because of that and i seek like i 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.

Speaker 9 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 Reid. He's 67 years old.
Yeah. Freaking reinventing himself every week.
Never stuck.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But why is San Francisco great? Why Kyle great? It's because he's come from a place of,

Speaker 9 like, look, look what, what who's come out of his shop mike mcdaniel like who's come out of the shanahan tree let alone you know what i mean like

Speaker 9 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 can like because they empty the tank when they play each other the plays the the cool stuff they do and it's just short week so they're going to be under real duress 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 yeah 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 belief and like faith and then and then i'm going to call plays that

Speaker 9 make it really easy for you and really hard on defenses. And I, and I've seen that from Kyle from the beginning.

Speaker 9 He, 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.

Speaker 9 Like you think you can play that defense and get away with it. I'm going to pound you.
And a lot of guys talk about it on Wednesday. They actually don't call the plays on Sunday.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
So, all right. So in a coaching perspective, you go from Tampa to San Francisco.
What was that like when you sit down with Bill Wash for the first time?

Speaker 1 You're like, holy shit, this is totally different.

Speaker 1 different like did you have that moment that eureka moment where it's like oh man this is i 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 well yeah

Speaker 9 i'm the first remember i i was traded to the st louis cardinals

Speaker 9 uh

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 9 ray perkins had 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 cardinals i mean the st louis cardinals i had made a relationship with the the owner, Hugh Culverhouse.

Speaker 9 No one else really knew him. And he'd sit over in a corner and I'd go talk to him.
And so he and I were friendly. And I immediately called him.

Speaker 9 Because he, 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.

Speaker 9 Culverhouse, you said I was your quarterback for life, and now I'm getting thrown out of town. I'm going to, you can't send me to St.
Louis. He goes, oh, I'm so sorry, Steve.

Speaker 9 Yeah, new coach, blah, blah, blah. I goes, but you're right.
I told you that I owe you a chance. He nicks the trade to

Speaker 9 the Cardinals. Like he went and cut it.
Like, I don't know what you do, especially, but he went and,

Speaker 9 you know, turned, you know,

Speaker 9 they didn't agree to it. Wow.
And then, so he called me back and he said, look, I'm going to give you a week and I want you to go find a place where you can thrive. And I'm like,

Speaker 9 he saved my life. And so then I talked to Bill Walsh and Bill Walsh's first thing he said to your question.

Speaker 9 I love the fact that you're left-handed. I think it's an advantage.

Speaker 9 I was like, I mean, in college, my office coordinator said he wouldn't coach a lefty.

Speaker 9 So it's like, I think it's an advantage. And I love that your mobility,

Speaker 9 we're going to have to make sure we know where you're going, but your mobility is a superpower.

Speaker 1 Wow. And I'm like, first thing out of the gate.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And so, and then the first two things happened the first day.

Speaker 9 The first day I got to the Fort Naturalist, we had a summer camp and Bill Walsh walked in and he said something that

Speaker 9 I'll never forget. He said, look, I don't care what play we call.
I don't care what defense we run.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 What did he just say?

Speaker 9 He wrote a book called The Score Takes Care of Itself because of if you live values of because he said look you we're gonna 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 winds are gonna 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 of respect like you know each other and i was like this is crazy talk.

Speaker 9 I've never heard a coach talk like this in my, that's

Speaker 9 football. Right.
What are you talking about? I'm used to coaches with a big stick just hitting you over the head.

Speaker 9 And so I'm telling you, Bill Walsh gets very, he gets a lot of credit, but not nearly as much as he should get at what the game looks like today.

Speaker 9 Like the game that we enjoy today is really off the back of that.

Speaker 9 And I learned it. firsthand from the call I got when he told me he loves lefties and scramblers.
And

Speaker 9 then when he talked about, but then the next 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.

Speaker 1 He gave you, Bill Walsh gave you a nice speech to get you there because he knew you'd be someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Six years together.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 How was that knowing? I mean,

Speaker 1 you know, obviously Brady is gone and the Pagers have been through a couple quarterbacks, but it had to have been a little difficult at times or a lot difficult at times to be with a living legend and knowing the fan base wants one thing and you're like, hey, I want a shot.

Speaker 1 I know I could do this.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 9 I mean, there's a book there. Yeah.
It's a lot of chapters. It was the dynamic is, and I, and Joe would agree.
I mean, it's just been awkward from the first day.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 The first day 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, never had an argument.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 When I got there and when, when, when we, when, you know, Bill would, Bill was crazy. He would, Joe Montana won two Super Bowls.

Speaker 9 He'd drive the team down in the Superdome and then he'd go, go in and run this play.

Speaker 9 And I'd i'd run in and joe would draw i'll run off the 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 i'll just one little thing i'll tell you in 1991 the golf war had broken out in the middle east and uh on the front page of the san francisco chronicle uh uh and the headline

Speaker 9 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, do we need Joe?

Speaker 9 And I remember thinking to myself, well, he didn't, you guys know he lost a game. Like, no, that's impossible.
He threw me in a complete pass. I promise you.

Speaker 1 Like, no, we don't remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 9 On the page of the Chronicle, it was the Gulf War. It's Steve Young's fault.

Speaker 1 I was like, Joe.

Speaker 9 You know what I mean? It was like, and I think that that tells you. how it was going for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's, I love the honesty because I think a lot of times, you know we've had this conversation before where a

Speaker 1 uh 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 like 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

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 9 I think Joe and I both feel that we're looking back on the relationship we have with Bill Walsh, it was love-hate

Speaker 9 because,

Speaker 9 you know, he said, I put you guys together to get the best out of both of you.

Speaker 9 Joe hated to hear that. And I guess I hated to hear that too.
Like,

Speaker 9 but yet he was the king. Joe was the king.
And

Speaker 9 I was a freaking pauper, right? And so

Speaker 9 the power dynamics were not good for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Also, the fact that his name was Joe Montana.

Speaker 1 That's just, that's a starting quarterback.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 What I could have done with that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, if you guys, if your names were different, then I think the fans would be like, yeah, put Joe in.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Joe Montana. That's Joe in the Super Bowl champion.

Speaker 1 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 it a million times, the monkey off the back.

Speaker 1 Like, that feeling had to have just been the greatest feeling in the world, given everything that had transpired the year before.

Speaker 9 I somewhat regret that moment because it reflects something I would have said two or three years before

Speaker 9 because

Speaker 9 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 I

Speaker 9 dug a hole of depression and anxiety and victimization. And

Speaker 9 I was struggling. And he kind of showed me

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And I was like, well, no, that can't be 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Like quick.

Speaker 9 And I was proven at the time that 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.

Speaker 9 And so I think that two or three years before that Super Bowl, I had come to a place of perspective to recognize that it really wasn't about him.

Speaker 9 It was really about like, go about, this is the greatest platform in history for a quarterback to see how good they are. Go, go, be about it.

Speaker 9 I remember playing the pack, like the Dallas Cowboys soon after and seeing Troy Aikman in warm-ups. And I ran up to him and I was like, Troy, I'm so glad you're here.

Speaker 9 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 glad I can't wait to play, you know?

Speaker 9 And Troy looked at me like, freaking weirdo

Speaker 9 but i was about it i 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

Speaker 9 uh 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.

Speaker 1 Because, yeah, you'd already wanted a couple MVPs.

Speaker 9 It's performative, but everyone sees it as a moment. Yeah.
I mean, I had that moment two or three years before

Speaker 6 right do you feel a little bit bad about what you did to the chargers

Speaker 9 kind of ran it up on it i mean honestly you know when someone if someone's going up like think about the old days when they had someone and they had the the shackles behind them and the chain with their legs and they're going up to get guillotine you know the the crowd would then the in the 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 I then I didn't see a guy get his head cut off.

Speaker 9 You know, I mean like you know there's there's no there was one less death in the world today. So I mean, you know, I can't imagine anyone felt bad about that day for me.
No.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 3 right?

Speaker 9 Yes.

Speaker 6 And you just happened to sit next to him on a project.

Speaker 9 Where are you like you're a savant? What have you got?

Speaker 1 You got everything in your pocket?

Speaker 6 I've read a lot of book covers in my life.

Speaker 6 But that's like, that is the perfect person for you to sit next to on a plane at that time in your life.

Speaker 9 That story is, that has a longer, I tried to tell it as fast as I could, but he took the moments. Like he was, he looked like Yoda.

Speaker 9 He was bald and shorter and kind of curmudgeonly and 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.

Speaker 9 And I totally understand that because people, human beings,

Speaker 9 that scares people. Yeah.
But

Speaker 9 I'm not afraid. He goes, then go be about it, man.
And I mean, my life changed right there on a freaking Delta flight from Salt Lake City to San Jose, California.

Speaker 9 As I went home, I had flown home after practice on Monday just to get out of town because

Speaker 9 the Gulf War was my fault.

Speaker 1 Like, I had to die to get out of town.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Like, what the hell?

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 I got nothing from my brother.

Speaker 9 I got nothing for my brother. And I headed home, headed back to practice on a Tuesday night and sat down next to Stephen Covey.

Speaker 1 Wow. That's like that shallow hell when he meets Tony Robbins on the elevator.

Speaker 6 That's what happened to you in real life, like at the perfect time in your life. Who initiated that conversation? Could he tell that you were down at the dumps?

Speaker 9 He was like, no, I remember he, he, he,

Speaker 9 we,

Speaker 9 he, he was a, 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.

Speaker 9 I had 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?

Speaker 9 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

Speaker 9 I'm in the pit, man. And that's what I did.
And he listened to all of it and basically said,

Speaker 9 wow.

Speaker 9 I'll tell you, if you want a little bit more, he said, you know what, Steve, I hear it all. Man, it sounds really hard.
Can I ask you a couple of questions?

Speaker 9 He said, tell me about your owner, Eddie DeBardolo. I'm like, man, that guy's amazing.
He sees players and owners as partners.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 He goes, yeah, I really want to meet him too. He's a guy that feels like Nickelodeon has a lot to give to the world.
And I'm like, yeah, no question. And then he asked me, one last question, Steve.

Speaker 9 Is Joe Montana on the team? Is he there?

Speaker 9 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 i he goes yeah but if you need a mentorship could you go ask him i'm like yeah i could and then he said man i i've been around a long time i this is this is my seven habits book this is what i do i look for

Speaker 9 companies platforms where people have it they they perform they give people a chance to iterate and see how good they can get. And

Speaker 9 I just try to

Speaker 9 amplify their story 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

Speaker 9 platform that I've ever seen for somebody who's set up to go see how good they could get.

Speaker 9 And 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?

Speaker 6 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 i would have just shut up and then uh put on 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

Speaker 9 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 the bonus so much i might get fired you know wednesday mornings when you get fired right And so I ran down that day thinking, please don't fire me.

Speaker 9 Please don't fire me. I feel like I've got a new lace on life.
And you talk about that's 1991, and that's towards the end of the season. In 1992, I'm the MVP of the league.

Speaker 9 I only say that because Steve Covey gave the perspective, you know, shifting by axis to see that I wasn't in a big pit of neglect and victimization. Like, stop, stop.

Speaker 9 And so I owe him a great debt. I didn't mean to talk about all this today, but.

Speaker 1 No, that's really cool. Yeah.

Speaker 9 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 i i when i said i ran up to the troikman i ran up to him said that to him like that's what i was i'm about it like you're if you're great i'm about playing you man because i got to find out yeah i got to figure out and and and

Speaker 9 i remember mike shannon came in in 1992 and there's 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 let's let's be about it.

Speaker 9 Like, he went all in. And so we just, the two of us, for three years until he freaking committed treason and left for the Broncos,

Speaker 9 the three years we were together, I mean, I put it up against anything, anywhere, anytime.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And your numbers were insane.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 9 I wasn't not on retirement. I was

Speaker 1 on the season,

Speaker 9 99 season. And so Mike was, and

Speaker 9 yeah, no, I spent some time in Denver and we were, we were ready to,

Speaker 9 we were thinking about it.

Speaker 1 Was it close?

Speaker 9 He was all in. He was all in.
And I just,

Speaker 9 I don't know. I, I, my wife says that's one of the things I, you know, because we were newly married at the time and she regrets not like pushing me harder to do it.

Speaker 9 I, I was, I was kind of emotionally cooked in some ways. Like you get towards the end, you're like, what am I doing? And I just need,

Speaker 9 I should have jumped in. I would have played 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Wow.
That's a real like what if.

Speaker 6 Yeah, what if moment. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Could the Broncos have won another?

Speaker 1 Do you think you would have won another Super Bowl?

Speaker 9 Why not? Let's go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, those are good teams.

Speaker 9 But Mike and I, I mean, the two of us, I mean, if history was anything like what you had before, it was good stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I got kind of a tough question for you here.

Speaker 6 Can you tell me which loss was worse for you? Which Brett Favre?

Speaker 9 92 championship game. Cowboys.

Speaker 6 I was going to say

Speaker 6 out of all the Brett Favre losses, is it the consecutive playoff losses or is it

Speaker 1 losing the role in something about Mary Wallace?

Speaker 9 The losses were different because

Speaker 9 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,

Speaker 9 we just couldn't run the football. Like, we just, you know, they, 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.

Speaker 9 It was more, it felt more competitive.

Speaker 9 When I think about the 92 championship game, I throw it open my mouth. Like, I really struggle with that one.
That was a total screw up. And I, the regret I have about that game is, is heavy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 By the way, we have have a bone to pick with you. 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.

Speaker 1 In 2000.

Speaker 9 Do you really have to?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, here it is. This is going to be funny.
It's kind of a full circle moment because you probably have no idea what I'm about to say. In 2020, you were on, I believe, PTI,

Speaker 1 and maybe lightly, but kind of criticizing Joe Burrow for doing an interview tipsy.

Speaker 1 We were the ones who did the interview with him, and we were the drunk guys. No, no,

Speaker 9 I think you're remembering a little bit of you've smoking cigar at LSU, and I regret, I actually regret that interview for me. Like,

Speaker 9 what am I? I was like, what are the kids going to start smoking cigars? Like, stop, Steve, relax.

Speaker 1 But it was actually, it was, you said something about, like, he's doing an interview, Tipsy. I want it on the record.
We were actually fully hammered when we interviewed him.

Speaker 1 We interviewed him like 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

Speaker 1 we were fucking hammered when we interviewed him.

Speaker 9 I guarantee you I have his PTI that I was having fun with it because it was funny to me. Like I think I enjoyed the fact that I was watching you guys and going, what the hell are we doing here?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It was, I mean, it was, I mean, it was like a thrill of a lifetime.
We got to interview the national champion Heisman.

Speaker 9 How come hammered, you got to interview a guy right after the

Speaker 9 national championship?

Speaker 6 Well, he didn't know that we were going to be hammered, but we'd known Joe for a while.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we knew Coach and Coach O. They become good friends of ours.
Ohio, yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we stayed out late after they won the national championship, and then we had friends in the program. We're like, hey, we'll come to your hotel.

Speaker 1 We can set everything up in the lobby or, you know, a room. We'll interview you before you got to get on the buses.
So Joe and Coach O came down.

Speaker 1 Coach O was sober, but Joe had, he just won a national title. It was like eight in the morning, and we had been on Bourbon Street all night.

Speaker 1 So we did the interview just very drunk, and it was, I mean, it was one of the funniest interviews we've done.

Speaker 9 I miss my PTA times because PTI times because it was

Speaker 9 guys are

Speaker 9 great questions, and it's always fun. So I'm sure they were laughing about you guys.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. I mean,

Speaker 1 I think we also got them in trouble because I think that's when Joe admitted that Odell was handing out cash. Yeah, because we were like, you're about to leave LSU, so it doesn't really matter now.

Speaker 1 That was real money, right?

Speaker 9 Yeah, but like I got plenty of money, too, in my pockets.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 You guys took down a lot in one million.

Speaker 1 Nice job. That was crazy.
That was the first time that college players have taken money. Yeah.
Yeah, we were doing some good interviewing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we should do all our interviews drunk. Yeah.
We really should. It's actually not, it's a pretty good hack for if you're starting a podcast.
Just get hammered and badger people the questions.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I got a question for you about the modern-day quarterback play in the NFL, namely the slide.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 I don't know why, but just in the last two years, I feel like I've been watching quarterbacks slide to protect themselves.

Speaker 6 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 about to put your head close to the ground.

Speaker 9 It puts your head on a pedestal, right? At the level of people's knees. And

Speaker 9 like you basically are saying,

Speaker 9 and by sliding, you're opening yourself up, right? It's like, oh, hit me in the face. Yeah.
That's what the slide.

Speaker 9 And I think the slide, the game, look, the game changed when they changed the rules. It's now a Canadian-sized field.

Speaker 9 Essentially, is what we've done is we've expanded the space because defenders can't launch their bodies.

Speaker 9 The space that's come in the last six or seven years that's put the prototype is now like, it's my game.

Speaker 9 you know, all the people tell me you scramble, you're weird, you're odd. Now I'm like, this is my mainstream.

Speaker 9 Yeah, and so the game's changing, and the slide needs to change because it's actually can be weaponized by a quarterback.

Speaker 9 You're seeing Patrick Mahomes, not the slide particularly, but the go out of bounds fake and then come back, or the you know, pump fakes, or all the stuff that they're doing to abuse defenses.

Speaker 9 Defenses are really under duress from the NFL by making all the rule change for safety. And so, it feels like

Speaker 9 the slide,

Speaker 9 I never slid. I, if I can get a quote, I mean, uh, 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.

Speaker 9 You get yourself hit in the face. And, uh, and plus, referees always reduce where you slid.
Like whenever I would slide, I guess I have slid because I know I've done it.

Speaker 9 And they, 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.

Speaker 9 And they're like, no, you slid back. And it's like, I learned sliding that the mentality of it is they don't give you the yards, so forget, I'm not going to do it anymore.
Do you guys tell me?

Speaker 9 Does your mom live with you? What is going on?

Speaker 1 That's Max. Max, Max just came in 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,

Speaker 9 but it's a freaking boring story. I don't need to

Speaker 9 have a bad story, like I fell asleep and forgot you guys were live.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Max, you have to go back to the slide.

Speaker 9 Look, let's go the slide. You got to get, you got to change the slide.

Speaker 1 I just wanted to make sure you want to bucket. Your mic's not on.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, can you scream it into the dead mic, bro?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, imagine if you had slid on that.

Speaker 1 For some reason, it popped up. I love the old accounts where they just pop up old

Speaker 1 highlights, that 49-yard run against the Vikings. Oh, yeah.
Game-winning touchdown run. Like, that would have been ruined if

Speaker 1 you tried to save yourself and slid somewhere on that run.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 So they put themselves in a bind. So, what happened with Shazir is that he's taught to go when someone slides that you go to hit them to take them down because they're such a threat today,

Speaker 9 because their prototype is to come out of the you know 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.

Speaker 9 But that's even hard to do. So,

Speaker 9 I think, I don't know, I think sliding's to make it to make sliding safe for quarterbacks is impossible. So get rid of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I don't mind that take at all. Yeah.
It's like, it's impossible for a defender.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You're now out of your element.

Speaker 9 You're in a very dangerous, you're now in the jungle now,

Speaker 9 without any weapons. And you're like, how can we get you to safety yeah so the slide was

Speaker 9 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 is for a time that's gone now the prototype is not uh the pocket you know you have to you have to be 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 the slide is it's not it's not part of the game today shouldn't be the uh one thing about the modern modern game, obviously, the offenses have been, you mentioned it, like it's very easy to play offense now.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 maybe our younger audience, like what made Jerry Rice so damn good?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Jerry Rice was doing that every single year for a decade and a half.

Speaker 1 No room.

Speaker 9 Yeah, with no space, with no, like, that's the thing. The game was, you had to, that, you had to, you had to make space as an offense.
There was no, people were launching all over the place.

Speaker 9 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, we out,

Speaker 9 you know, we were, we were, 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.

Speaker 9 Jerry Rice, every once in a while, you run into somebody like Michael Jordan, who is supreme talent with supreme work ethic, like

Speaker 9 blue collar over my dead body every day.

Speaker 9 It's, you know, and I think there's, and I think in a person's psyche, what happens is there's a fear.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And I swear to you, I think Michael Jordan was driven by that, even though it's like he was the greatest ever. And Jerry Rice was driven by the same thing.

Speaker 9 Until the day he retired, he thought someone was going to take his job.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 And so he lived in a state of,

Speaker 9 I'm not going to say fear, because it's a wrong word, but

Speaker 9 anxiety that I need to go to work. And so I'll give you one quick story.
We won the Super Bowl against the Chargers, come home,

Speaker 9 do the parade down Market Street.

Speaker 9 The buses pick everyone up 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 uh you know goodbye so everybody is like it's like a

Speaker 9 derby like to get out of there everyone's gone so the next day no one's no one's gonna go to No one's going to go down there tomorrow, right? But I'm single. I got nothing to do.

Speaker 9 I'm going to go down, clean up my locker. I don't know.
So I go down there. Nobody's there.
And and the doors are locked, but I know there's a 24-hour

Speaker 9 guard that's there all the time. So I'm banging on the door, banging every phone.
He comes, you're like, bro, what are you doing here? I'm like, I don't know. I'll clean the locker.

Speaker 9 I want to, you know, dig a hot tub. I don't want to do something.
And I go out in the fields, you know, the 49er facility is still there. Same thing.

Speaker 9 Go out in 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Holy shit.

Speaker 9 And I'm like,

Speaker 9 bro, like, take a day off, man.

Speaker 9 And a couple of things went through my mind. First was, is that Jerry? I said, yes.
And the second thing is, the question I asked myself is, am I supposed to go out there and throw it to him?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But that's, when people say, who's Jerry Rice? Jerry Rice is the guy when no one, like he, he must have had a key. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 9 the, the, the guard didn't know he's back there. He'd go, hey, Jerry Rice is back.
And he's like, yes.

Speaker 1 What the hell?

Speaker 9 You know, I'm like, yeah, he must have, no one Jerry had a key.

Speaker 1 That's crazy.

Speaker 9 Uh, to the, to the, to the gate, and he was going to go do the work.

Speaker 1 Wow. And

Speaker 9 so that's Jerry Rice. And so put the numbers of Jerry Rice up there.
And look at even today when the game is wide open. Jerry Rice is, all his records should be under duress,

Speaker 9 right? They should be

Speaker 9 being lapped in today's game. And you can't get close to them.

Speaker 1 You cannot get close to him.

Speaker 6 Did it make it hard as a quarterback when he would give the ball back to you and it'd be all sticky?

Speaker 9 No, that wasn't that. You guys

Speaker 1 don't believe the hype now.

Speaker 9 Come on.

Speaker 9 That was pre-1985.

Speaker 9 That was the stick'em era. Now, the gloves that they have today

Speaker 9 are much tackier than anything that we had when we were playing with in the 80s and 90s. Much tackier.
The idea that you can go back behind and grab a ball with one hand like Odell does,

Speaker 9 those gloves are

Speaker 9 much tackier than they were back in the day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So you were talking earlier about sending smoke signals, quarterbacks that send smoke signals.

Speaker 6 Maybe they're not in the best position right now, but you see something and you're like, okay, I'm going to keep my eye on you. You're still all right.

Speaker 1 You're still alive.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 9 I see it in Caleb.

Speaker 9 Now, look, I don't know how the ceiling is, and you got to go through some filters like I told you, but you got to get into a spot where you can get some help.

Speaker 9 What I didn't like about Caleb's game yesterday is in the first half, like, you're looking clearly under duress. Things are really going south fast.
Get out, man, and start like, make plays.

Speaker 9 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 for someone to come open.

Speaker 9 Like, no, get out, go, make something happen.

Speaker 9 Refuse to go down that way. So, there's still learning that he's going to have.
But I early, there's some things I've seen this year that I feel like I would want to invest in Caleb for sure.

Speaker 9 I don't think it's fair to say CJ Stroud anymore because I think we've seen it. Now we just got to get it developed and get him all the help that he needs and everything else.

Speaker 9 I really feel that he's in a great spot.

Speaker 9 Help me go around the league.

Speaker 9 I'm just thinking what the Sam Darnold's going to, I mean, what do the Vikings do?

Speaker 1 That's what we were saying. We had a whole discussion about it on our podcast comes out Monday, Monday, Wednesday.

Speaker 9 You're insane to not sign a guy that's doing that for you. Right.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 9 I would be Bill Walsh and say, look,

Speaker 9 awkward, but let's go.

Speaker 9 You know who will benefit? The Vikings. Right.

Speaker 9 Right. We don't know which one of you will benefit more or less, but right now, the Vikings will benefit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 We weren't going to inflame things in the locker room. It wasn't going to be worse because of the awkwardness.
Now, that can happen. You don't want that.

Speaker 9 But I would be unafraid, especially with my history. Like, bro, two of you, let's just, let's go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, iron sharpens iron.
You're going to get, you're right. The Vikings will be

Speaker 9 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 he, you know, over and over again,

Speaker 9 as Sam has shown this year, I just, I believe that this is the truth of Sam Darnold. He will grow from here.

Speaker 9 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

Speaker 9 I would not let

Speaker 9 Sam Darnold go at all.

Speaker 9 And if I would,

Speaker 9 and I don't care who you have at quarterback, other maybe Patrick or Josh, I would say, bring him in. If you can get him in a price that works,

Speaker 9 make it awkward, man. If they're going to let him go, do not, do not.

Speaker 9 And if I was Sam, I am not going back to one of those places that doesn't take care of and doesn't understand the quarterback position. Yeah.

Speaker 9 So I will go compete to go to one of those places that does. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because, I mean, you don't, Kevin O'Connell is an incredible coach, and then you also have Justin Jefferson. Like, don't walk away from that.
Nope.

Speaker 9 You have to dynamite me out of a place like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 9 Max fell asleep, but other than that, we're super excited.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, he's got ADD.

Speaker 1 I've thought this has been incredible.

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Speaker 1 So you mentioned all the way at the beginning of the interview being on like a losing team with the Bucks and having that in the locker room.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 How do those teams get off the mat and play this game every single Sunday? Like, is it just, are guys just playing for themselves?

Speaker 1 Or 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?

Speaker 9 Football is weird and different because the job is to go ram into other people and it's unusual. You know, it's as a team game.

Speaker 9 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 people to ram into other people.

Speaker 9 And honestly, it's not natural. And so for the human condition,

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 9 And so in football, when things are, when, when, when you have a sense of

Speaker 9 one, right? And we're, we're, we're accountable and we're working together and we have each other's back and, you know, over my dead body.

Speaker 9 And like, we're, then that natural incentive comes, like it comes out of people, like it comes out of the locker room. Like you can feel it, feeling warm-ups.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Like, I'd rather not.

Speaker 9 And so

Speaker 9 it makes it super hard more than any other sport that when things are, you know, you're out of the playoffs, you're, you know, you're just, you know,

Speaker 9 running out the clock of a season, when you have to go hit people, it makes it that much harder to get them to go do it.

Speaker 9 And so as a coach, you know, a lot of coaches use threats and because they're under dress, if they're out of it too, they're probably a little under duress as well.

Speaker 9 So a losing locker room that's out of the playoffs is actually kind of a dangerous place to hang out

Speaker 9 because you go to play and not everybody's committed. You just get yourself hurt.
Right. And so in that way,

Speaker 9 you just, you pray that you're in a locker room like the 49ers this last week and go, hey, look. No way.

Speaker 9 And then as 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.

Speaker 9 But a team 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.

Speaker 9 And now you, you have 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.

Speaker 9 How do I, let's say I'm all in 100%.

Speaker 9 Well, I need five linemen that are all in 100%. I'm not going to say they're not, but human nature says, I really don't want to ram in anybody this week.

Speaker 9 So, you know, and so I'm not going to be tip of the spear, you know, ready. It's hard.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And it was impossible to change. I mean, some of the toughest human beings I ever met, James Wilder, I don't know if you ever heard that name before, running back.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 9 tough, I mean, passages. These guys are,

Speaker 9 all years I played, of the toughest people i knew were down there but the culture and the and the feeling you just couldn't get over it and uh and it gets it's infectious it's infecting and uh i feel bad for teams that can't get out of it and i and teams that are constantly in it i blame ownership

Speaker 9 you can and unfortunately in this league you can't because equity ownership is not going to change you can't People don't really talk about it because they can't feel like they can't change it.

Speaker 9 They can get the coach fired. They can get the general manage fired.
They can get the quarterback fired. So people, that's where they talk.
They can't get the owner fired. But the problem,

Speaker 9 99% chance is the owner. How do we hold the owner accountable? How do we do that as a as a city, as a fan base?

Speaker 9 I mean, we need to be thinking about how we help ownership be accountable. Yeah.

Speaker 9 It would make the team.

Speaker 9 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 out how how to, how do we, how do we figure out what's going on?

Speaker 6 It's like an airplane with a banner behind it from the stadium.

Speaker 1 Listen,

Speaker 1 you're preaching to me because the Bears ownership is not serious about winning football games, and it's very frustrating as a fan.

Speaker 9 Well, if you feel that way, and then

Speaker 9 it really doesn't matter who is a general manager, who the coach is, who's the quarterback. Like, you can't overcome apathy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 If that's what you guys are saying, if you guys are saying that Chicago Bear ownership is apathetic, then you guys got to, you got to to figure out how to address it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 The one thing that they pay attention to is the bottom line. When the money starts getting messed up, then they start looking at it.

Speaker 6 Like, I was a Commanders, Redskins, football team fan, and I worked 25 years on getting Dan Snyder fired.

Speaker 6 Nothing was ever going to happen until he started losing money, and his corporate partners started pulling their sponsorships. And then he got caught.

Speaker 6 All the stuff with the investigations 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.

Speaker 6 So the only thing these guys listen to is money. That's what will make them act.

Speaker 9 I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I just know that the league would be,

Speaker 9 we'd 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.

Speaker 1 Agreed.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 No, excuse me, in the shotgun, you were always under center.

Speaker 1 You never took a snapshot.

Speaker 9 The year I was in the USFL and the Express, that's all I did was a shotgun. I loved it.
And it's Bill didn't, but Bill Wallace didn't believe in it. He didn't believe the timing could be.

Speaker 9 It wasn't until John Elway and Mike Shanahan used the same offense in 98. and showed, no, no, no, it doesn't matter.
And I remember when John was doing it from the shotgun, I'm like, frick, why?

Speaker 9 Like, it doesn't matter. And, and from the shotgun, it's just such a better spot to be to play quarterback.

Speaker 9 And so, yeah, no, I never, in the NFL, I never played one snap of shotgun, which is that's crazy.

Speaker 6 That's such a bummer. You had to just get into your center's butt

Speaker 1 every play. Yeah, for me, man.

Speaker 9 Poor me. What I could have been.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, Steve, thank you so, so much.
We really enjoyed this. And like I said, we're going to have you back on.
You have to come back on legally now.

Speaker 1 You're a recurring guest.

Speaker 9 I got to tell you, my dad's nickname is Grit. Okay, nice.
Grit young. I see the sign behind you.
And Angelo Duckworth wrote the book, Grit.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 9 And he's in the book,

Speaker 9 which is weird. That's

Speaker 9 if you're serious about grit, I'm in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we do. We do a grit week.

Speaker 9 If it's just a sign,

Speaker 9 if it's just a sign, a cheap sign that Max walks by and sits on, then I'm not coming back.

Speaker 1 Then we do Grit Week every year. Yeah, we do Grit Week.

Speaker 9 If it's true, you guys are about it, then I'm about it. Yeah, we are.

Speaker 1 We are. We do a Grit Week where we travel around around to different training camps and

Speaker 1 do interviews out of a van. So we're about it for sure.
I love that. Yeah, as gritty as a podcaster can get.

Speaker 1 Not that gritty, but we push the limits for grit for podcasters. I like it.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 9 Thanks so much for stationing. You guys got a lot of good therapy for me.
I appreciate the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it.
Take care, see you. See you, boys.
Take care.

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Speaker 6 And now, here's Arizona State Coach Kenny Dillingham.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 ride and just a hell of a season?

Speaker 13 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 we got like three and a half more weeks before we play again.
But, yeah.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So that was how I first linked up to you with you: 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I do have to ask, though, in that game, and I want to talk about Cam Scatabos because he's so much fun to watch. There was that clip where he threw the ball

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 13 Well, so Cam is actually one of the smartest kids on our team. So I'm going to preface it with that.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 13 And we toss 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.

Speaker 13 He then realized he was stuck and he was 20 yards back.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 I was like in a state of what the hell is going on right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's actually a really smart play. Yeah.

Speaker 6 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 going to get battled up.

Speaker 6 Throw the ball, get it out of bounds.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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 an aware player.

Speaker 13 That's what makes him unique and different.

Speaker 13 Is he he he's super intelligent he plays as hard as you can possibly play he's so fun to watch he's he's one of the my favorite guys in college football to watch with the 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 plays uh coach arroyo does but i get on the headset because that's my background i said hand it to scat i don't care what you do Just hand it to him or get it to him as many times as you can here.

Speaker 13 Or I want to see Scat touch it twice in a row. I'll definitely make comments like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 I would just do it not because it's necessary for like the situation of the game, just because I, as a person on the sideline, want to watch him running with the football.

Speaker 13 Yeah. I don't, we don't make too many of those decisions.

Speaker 13 Just, you know, we mainly try to win. That's usually our main purpose for decision making.

Speaker 6 That's why you're you and I meet. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So the other one.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't want to trade.
No. The other one we got to talk about is the ending of the BYU game.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Do you know now that we're a few weeks removed from that and you're in the playoff and you're comfortably Big 12 champs, do you realize how fucking stupid you were in that moment?

Speaker 13 Yeah, that was a mistake.

Speaker 13 I openly said it, I think, in my press conference on Monday, like 100%. You know, when we do an average play takes four to five seconds,

Speaker 13 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 going to end? Yes.

Speaker 13 But does common sense tell you to go hand at the scat and score? Yes. So 100% hindsight.
Let's just turn around.

Speaker 13 Let's hand it to that dude who should be at the Heisman Trophy ceremony and let's save the drama for another day.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 But it made for a great ending.

Speaker 1 It did. It did.

Speaker 1 It was literally, I was watching it live, being like, this guy's fucking playing Madden right now. Like, what is he doing?

Speaker 1 And then, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It was just a scene you can't get in the NFL. And yeah,

Speaker 1 learned the lesson to maybe just run the ball next time.

Speaker 13 Yeah, should have just probably handed it to Scat.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And you know, as an Arizona State student, how hard it was going to be to get all those guys off the field. Like once the student section gets on the field,

Speaker 6 that's a big cleanup job that you have to undertake there.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Then my wife's out there and we're hugging and she's giving me a kiss. Congrats.

Speaker 13 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 this this season's been so crazy that why why not why not just 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 I've never had a second added in my career.

Speaker 13 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 11 games this year.

Speaker 13 We had a second added to the game, which gave the team the other ball. Yeah.
The ball again. So it was very interesting.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we might need to work on our last second situational football. That might be be something to circle this offseason.

Speaker 13 I agree.

Speaker 13 There's a lot more than that to work on. I got a lot of problems.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Like, that's really bad. The expectations were so low on you that you're actually last.
And look at all you've accomplished.

Speaker 6 Do you still do you still use that as motivation, like constantly with the team now?

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's more, we're still not like people don't believe our we're good right we're we weren't even picked high in the 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 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 pool, maybe take a little dip, right, and walk down Palm Tree Lane at Arizona State and compete for championships at the same time.

Speaker 13 I mean, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a good time. You're recruiting us right now.

Speaker 1 It sounds good. Yeah,

Speaker 6 there's probably a couple, I don't know, like, let's say 230 pound,

Speaker 6 I'd say juniors in high school. They're linebackers.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 Yeah. Keep your butt inside, right?

Speaker 1 Get in the pool, right? The pool's not bad, right?

Speaker 13 It's a good spot. And be around good people.
We have really good people on our staff, and we have a saying here: be a good person, make good decisions.

Speaker 13 And the last one, have more fun working harder than anywhere in the country. If you want to have a lot of fun working your ass off, this is a spot for you.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 tweeting a guy who's transferring, being like, he's awesome. Someone pick him up.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Maybe this isn't your dream school. Why would I be mad at a kid for wanting to be, do what's best for him? Coaches do it all the time.
I've moved around. Assistant coaches move around.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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,

Speaker 13 People are going to be good to you back. Yeah.
I really believe that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's a great message.

Speaker 6 And you can fight against the rules all 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.

Speaker 6 What's the best way that we can deal with it? This is the new reality.

Speaker 6 And if you support guys that are looking to transfer somewhere else, a high school recruiter is going to see that and think to themselves, that's a good guy.

Speaker 6 That's a guy that I would want to play for.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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 I do think that's part of it is just being a good person yeah not rocket science yeah yeah

Speaker 1 either

Speaker 1 all right so I got a question for you so our like I said we 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.

Speaker 1 You coached Bo Nix his freshman year.

Speaker 1 It took me a long time to become a Bo Lever. I'm recently a Bo Leaver.
It's been about like a month now that I've been a Bow Leaver.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Because you were with like unfiltered, uncut Bo Nix freshman year, where he was doing crazy ass shit.

Speaker 1 Now he's balling out in the NFL. Has any of this surprised you at all?

Speaker 13 Not at all. So I coached Bo as a true freshman.
He had a pretty good season as true freshman year, SEC Newcomer of the Year. And then he transferred to play for me at Oregon.

Speaker 13 That was a big reason he went up to Oregon. And Bo has always been competitive and special and accurate and has moxie and intelligent.

Speaker 13 Like, he's the dude that has enough dog in him that 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.

Speaker 13 Like, why do you like that call? Well, 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.

Speaker 13 I'm the opposite. I'm not the smart.
I've never 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.

Speaker 13 And I was smart enough when I went to Oregon to listen to Bone X when he said, I want to run, I want this guy to run the route like this. I'm like, okay, go tell him.

Speaker 13 You're the one throwing it, not me. Like, I'm over there standing with my hands in my pockets.
Like, I hope this works. Right.

Speaker 13 I have zero doubt in my mind that he was going to be successful. He has it.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 1 I like that. So much dog, he makes people uncomfortable.

Speaker 6 You know who he makes uncomfortable? If you've got too much dog, he makes cats uncomfortable. He makes non-dogs uncomfortable.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Brings it out of them.

Speaker 6 When you watch him 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 I didn't tell you?

Speaker 13 No, I mean, he did that at Oregon. I mean, he had one of the highest completion percentage in the country.
He really didn't turn the ball over at Oregon for us

Speaker 13 when we got there. So he's kind of doing exactly what he did his last two years in college.

Speaker 13 The problem was he's so efficient as a passer, you know, people wanted him to throw it deep more, you know, and there was a narrative about him going into the draft.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And there are some narratives about him going into the draft that led to him in the, 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.

Speaker 1 So that narrative of

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you really had like the full Bo Nicks experience because Auburn Bo Nicks was chaotic and it was nuts and it was awesome. And it was just like, I always just think about that game

Speaker 1 against LSU in Baton Rouge. And then in Oregon, yeah, he like it was just touchdowns and no interceptions.
And he was so efficient. So you, you saw it all.

Speaker 1 You're a Bo Nick's whisperer.

Speaker 13 I don't know about whisperer. I wouldn't be, I will say this.
I can guarantee I would not be the head coach in Arizona State without Bo Nix. Yeah, without Jordan Kravis.

Speaker 13 You know, I can promise you that because they're both really good players.

Speaker 13 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 run around, ultra-competitive.

Speaker 13 I mean, they're very, it's like I'm living,

Speaker 13 I'm like reliving the Bo Nicks Knicks experience with this new guy, Sam Levitt. And it's, it's super exciting.
I mean, now he's a Big 12 champ as a freshman.

Speaker 13 So I've been blessed to be around some good quarterbacks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, 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 and 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 in Texas and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But if you're able to win a game and Oregon wins a game and 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?

Speaker 13 I think we know each other the same. I mean, I go, Dan and I go back to when I was a high school coach and he was a GA at Arizona State.

Speaker 13 And then we linked back up at Memphis where he was the linebackers coach. Now I was the quarterback's coach.
And coaches play a game called like who's got the pen last where we go in and we talk ball.

Speaker 13 He draws up what he would do. I draw up what I would do.
Then he draws up what he would do. And we go back and forth for hours or some coaches if you love ball, right?

Speaker 13 And that was the guy I did that with. And me and him would go back 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?

Speaker 13 So, I think we both know each other fairly well. Obviously, he's got that place rocking and rolling.
I mean,

Speaker 13 I got my Oregon duck helmet up there. I don't know if you guys can see it.
It's barely off the screen, but I got a lot of respect for him.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so have 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.

Speaker 6 So how much prep work are you doing for each team right now?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 And then we'll get in here in another week to really the opponent prep. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's interesting. So I always think about the self-scouting thing.
And again, we're dumb.

Speaker 6 We're not, you know, we're not true like exes and those football guys and i always think about how other coaches would see things that i do on 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 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?

Speaker 13 Me. And he runs the same three plays every single time.
Yeah. And you physically can't stop it.
And it's the most frustrating thing on the planet. Okay.
There's that philosophy.

Speaker 13 And then you run the guy who calls run, run, run, play action, run, run, run, play action screen. And it's frustrating, right?

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Those philosophies carry over to real life, even though nobody wants to ever compare things to a video games. There are some parallels.
It's more of a train of thought and a belief system.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 13 It's more doing the same things, but looking like it's different.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 1 So do you have Shark Wheel in the playbook?

Speaker 13 Shark Wheel is probably the biggest cheat code in a video game ever created.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 13 It does not work in real life like it would work in the video games.

Speaker 1 Okay. But you should maybe just have it in there for what, you know.
Maybe if you get to national championship, you got to surprise someone. Shark wheel will work.

Speaker 13 It probably will.

Speaker 13 You you know what does work in real life and in the video game is mesh two by two mesh with the tailback wheel yeah that plays 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 yeah yeah the wheel route just in general is a great concept i feel like it's especially in college that'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.

Speaker 13 No doubt.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 II college.

Speaker 1 They'll play, they'll go all the way to the end of their football career and then start coaching.

Speaker 1 The end of your football career was senior year in high school, and you're like, all right, ready to coach, let's go.

Speaker 13 Yeah, so I tore my ACL the spring of my junior year, tried to play my senior year without my ACL.

Speaker 13 Problem is, I'm 5'9.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 So, he's like, Hey, bud, let's just start this coaching thing. You're already not very good.
This ATL is going to make you worse. Oh, wait, I started.

Speaker 1 That's awesome. So, your high school coach is now on your staff.
That's cool.

Speaker 13 Yeah, he is. He's our special teams coordinator, assistant ed coach.

Speaker 6 That's that's awesome.

Speaker 6 It's also 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.

Speaker 6 So, you can play into that. You're being a little bit too honest with us, I think.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I was not a great player.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 So I don't, I was just not a very good athlete. I hope my, I have a two and a half year old boy.
I pray and I think he's got my wife's genes. He was the athlete of the family.

Speaker 13 She was like an Olympic hopeful gymnast. So I really hope he's got her jeans.
jeans.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, so back to your high school coach, has there been moments where you guys have 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.

Speaker 1 That's a really cool, like, pinch yourself moment. Has he said that to you?

Speaker 13 Oh, yeah. We definitely...
Our staff is filled with people who love Arizona State. I mean, our running backs coach coached high school in the valley forever.

Speaker 13 The the valley is phoenix area right our our tight ends coach is born and raised in arizona went to arizona state our one of our d-line coaches went to arizona state our linebackers coach is from 15 minutes from arizona state our defensive coordinators from 30 minutes from arizona state campus uh 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 if we can just get this one and then we won five, and then we're like, if we can just get this one, don't get sick, if we can just get this one, and 11 win blater, big 12 champs, we're looking at each other.

Speaker 13 And then this next week, if we can just get this one,

Speaker 13 see how long the ride goes. I love that.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 6 It's been a hell of a season. And the conference that you play in seems like it's more chaotic than any other conference in the country.

Speaker 6 What is it about the Big 12 that that just lends itself to these crazy games?

Speaker 13 Well, one, we play nine conference games. So we play more conference games than some of the other leagues, right?

Speaker 13 And then two,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Traditionally, there's not a true, I mean, though we were supposed to be the bottom, but there's not really the bottom of the league and consistent powerhouses.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 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

Speaker 13 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, right?

Speaker 13 Those are, I mean, going to Utah, going to BYU,

Speaker 13 coming to Arizona State. You guys saw our crowd.
Those are real environments.

Speaker 13 So not only do you have to play good teams, you're not like going on the road to 25,000 fans, you know, who leave at halftime.

Speaker 13 You're going on the road to people throwing tortillas on the field like they do at Texas Tech.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. San Marcus, tough place to go.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I know that you walked this back a little, but there was a point in the season where

Speaker 1 you were down to do open trials for kickers. And I hit you up right away and I was like, I got a kicker.
And he's sitting right next to me.

Speaker 6 I started stretching.

Speaker 1 I told him, I was like, hey, there's a a chance you might have to go down to Arizona. Now, I know you figured that out.

Speaker 1 I don't know if PFT has 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?

Speaker 13 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 apologized.

Speaker 13 Like I said, sometimes some things have to be handled behind closed doors. But 100%, if you want to come out and

Speaker 13 you want to see what you got, I would love for you to come out and embarrass yourself.

Speaker 1 I think that'd be awesome.

Speaker 13 That'd be exciting.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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 the squat rack a little bit.
I do have eligibility left.

Speaker 6 I looked it up.

Speaker 6 I could 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 as like the the seventh string kicker right i mean

Speaker 13 in today's day and age with nil

Speaker 13 you know you may be able to nil yourself through pardon my take to become our fourth string kicker yeah like that there could be a play there and there's an opportunity and you know what i like 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.

Speaker 6 I'm going to distribute that to the rest of the kickers on the team.

Speaker 13 I think that's a great idea. I think that's an absolutely phenomenal idea.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to match.

Speaker 6 Piquet's going to match. I'm going to match.

Speaker 13 Oh, we'll see. Hot damn.

Speaker 1 Now we're rolling now.

Speaker 13 Now we're fucking with fist greets.

Speaker 6 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 in shape and to start working on it.

Speaker 6 I'm going to be, I'm going to be lights out from 40 in. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Consistency. That's what you need.
He's just trying to test you. So I actually did have one last question.
This is, he's trying to test you because I know how Coach Dillingham is. Rope.

Speaker 1 What's up, guys? It's Big Cat here making my Irish entrance with proper number 12 Irish whiskey. How do you make an Irish entrance, you ask?

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Speaker 1 So get out there and make your Irish entrance. Anything else just wouldn't be proper.
My last question, and I know what you're doing to PFT because I know you pretty well

Speaker 1 and just reading everything and talking to you,

Speaker 1 you just like guys who want to compete. So you have a ping pong table

Speaker 1 that 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.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 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 dog where you're like, I got to win a game.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's not, I mean, I say that jokingly,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Like, if I beat you and you're like, oh, what's the next thing that we're doing on our visit? Right.

Speaker 13 That doesn't, I don't connect with people like that. Like, I grew up the youngest of four where I got my butt beaten everything.

Speaker 13 And 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 tiddly wink is but 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.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It bothers them. It's uncomfortable.
Yeah. I like that.

Speaker 6 I love that mantra. So is there anybody else on your team that you you want to shout out, like an unsung leader of the program?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 13 Yeah, one of those guys would be Xavier Alford, our starting safety, who was first team all-conference. He started his career at Texas,

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 It was was before the rules changed. So then he practiced for a year and a half without playing here.

Speaker 13 And now he's first team all conference. What he's put in the work, he's put in.
He's the guy who gives our pregame speeches. If you've ever watched any of our videos, I don't give pregame speeches.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 1 I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 We're rooting for you guys. Yeah.
I mean, this is,

Speaker 1 it's why I love college sports, this type of story. And

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He definitely left the bandwagon. So we'll gatekeep the bandwagon for you when it comes exclusively to just Pete Prisco.

Speaker 13 That sounds good. Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. Thanks so much, Coach.
We really appreciate it, man. See you, Coach.

Speaker 13 I appreciate it. Go, Devils.

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Speaker 1 Okay, Hank, guys on chicks.

Speaker 8 Michigan fan here, and I am buzzing from Saturday.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 8 Michigan fan here, and I am buzzing from Saturday.

Speaker 1 Is this

Speaker 1 old? Yeah, this is yeah, okay. Maybe they were just buzzing up from oh, okay.

Speaker 8 I've been dating my boyfriend for four months.

Speaker 6 Wait, is this still the Michigan fan?

Speaker 1 Nope. Okay.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 Usually happens. As it sounds, a bunch of middle-aged men play against recently graduated high schoolers.

Speaker 1 The Unks

Speaker 8 and have, this is written incorrectly, the Unks and have an XD1 football player and always win. And my husband takes great pride each week.

Speaker 8 He makes fake newspaper articles and AI-generated podcasts glorifying himself for his performances.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 Should I be honest and tell him he isn't good enough or should I let him try and live his dreams?

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It's like gangs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. Yeah.
No, I think the guy's got to have a hobby.

Speaker 6 He's creating an alternate universe for himself.

Speaker 8 It's a normal thing to do with fantasy football and

Speaker 8 rec leagues and stuff.

Speaker 8 See, someone always takes it seriously, but that's not a bad thing.

Speaker 1 Also, what were you going to say, Max?

Speaker 6 I want us to put out this graphic of

Speaker 3 that he's joining it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 I want to

Speaker 3 fulfill this guy's dream. Yeah,

Speaker 1 send us a recap and we'll talk about it. It's a national sports podcast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll talk about it.
Also,

Speaker 1 judging from this

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Because that's really what it sounds like. He's just good because he's got a D1 football player on his team.
But

Speaker 1 when you get in those situations, you're like, we have a a true ringer, and there's just no way we can lose, best feeling in the world.

Speaker 8 I do love

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 who's a PJ pro.

Speaker 1 Shout out to Kurt. That was

Speaker 6 I love what he's doing, though. I love that he's creating like this entire thing, entire narrative, storylines about his team.

Speaker 6 You'd rather have a guy like that than a guy that just doesn't do anything. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 Hello, Big Cat, PFT, Hanky Wanky, and Crybaby Max.

Speaker 1 That was mean. My husband,

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 1 They get their full use of it.

Speaker 8 What do I even say back to that? Yeah, he's right. Although it is gross.
Spitters are fucking gross.

Speaker 1 Disgusting habit.

Speaker 6 I remember when we first started working 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.

Speaker 8 And Mountain Dew bottles. No, I was talking about caps on.

Speaker 6 The Mountain Dews are different because they're like, they're green, so they're a little tinted.

Speaker 6 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 on it.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, uh, because, yeah, I mean, I'm a Lucy guy, but it, you know, back in the day, uh,

Speaker 1 having tips, 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.

Speaker 3 It's gross.

Speaker 1 Can you, like, fill one up? That's just disgusting.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Shout out to this guy for looking out for the environment, though. What a great spin zone.

Speaker 3 Everyone in this room has accidentally tasted this spit, right?

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah. I mean, I only went to college for a year, but in my college days and when I lived in Boston, my roommates dipped and I didn't.
And

Speaker 8 the number of times, like, waking up and drinking, being hungover and taking a sip of something and it being dip spit, there's truly

Speaker 1 nothing worse with a hangover.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I lived in a small house with a drinking dip spit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There was just dip everywhere. Everywhere.
Everywhere.

Speaker 8 I'm a guy, but think this question is pertinent. Every time my wife comes home after running errands, going to the gym, et cetera, she asked me if I I jacked off while she was gone.

Speaker 8 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 yes.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, he's definitely jerking off. So yeah, what? Yeah,

Speaker 6 I think this guy's confused because she just 100% has your number. Yeah.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 If you stop jacking off i bet you she'd stop asking maybe turn off the porn before she gets back yeah that'd be funny if she just kept on walking into him blasting porn yeah or if 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 something yeah

Speaker 1 Yeah, just be like, no, I was saving it for you. Girls love hearing that.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 you're probably

Speaker 6 fucking up because she's coming back. She might be horny.
And she's asking you. From the gym, yeah.
She's asking you if you jacked off because she wants to bang. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 6 when you don't immediately respond with, let's go, bone, then she's like, he jacked off.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he must have jacked off.

Speaker 8 This was a tweet. I don't know if it got, it went pretty viral on Twitter

Speaker 8 from Tori tweeted. My sister asked for a pod rec for a six-hour drive.

Speaker 3 This isn't got

Speaker 1 guys on channels.

Speaker 8 Obviously, Tori listened to part of my take. This is her review, and this is from Lex.
So this is chicks.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Max from hashtag PMT is so fucking annoying when he sucks off the Eagles constantly. So that was Lex's review.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 That was just like immediate aftermath of a game that didn't go your way.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 I do think that people forget sometimes that like we will record right after a game, and that is the dumbest time for us.

Speaker 1 Like, the dumbest time for our brains is immediately after a game and having zero time to process what we watch.

Speaker 6 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 game that you saw.

Speaker 1 But we can't, we're not able to process. No,

Speaker 6 nor do we want to. No.
And also, I don't think the podcast would be as good if we

Speaker 6 do you want to sit there and listen to somebody that you agree with all the time?

Speaker 1 If we're just like, like, Yeah, actually, uh, looking over my notes, you know, they should have gone. No, I just want to be like, hey, dumb coach, stupid interception, that's what these home games

Speaker 6 play all their games.

Speaker 1 Bang, this podcast done.

Speaker 1 If you want somebody that gets it right, like listen to Malcolm Gladwell or Talk Tua, 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

Speaker 1 uncle.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 And for the fans, just so you know,

Speaker 1 at home, Max and Hank are actually very aware. They'll oftentimes, like, it was probably every once a month for each of them, will finish the show and they'll just be like, I talked too much.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, that Friday I was thinking, I was like, that was a big talk too much.

Speaker 8 I mean, Max has to do it now for

Speaker 8 the five or six years when I I was editing the podcast, I would be listening back and then hear myself talk and then get mad and be like, why?

Speaker 1 Do you ever edit yourself out, Max?

Speaker 8 Oh my God. In the beginning, the first few years, I was editing everything.

Speaker 3 As soon as I started, I just go like 4x speed that you can't even actually hear what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 You guys don't talk too much. I love having multiple voices, like memes.
He's been fucking talking all episode. Yep.

Speaker 6 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 try to fall asleep at like 12.30, 1 a.m.

Speaker 6 And as you're laying there in bed, trying to fall asleep, you just keep thinking to yourself, I shouldn't have said that

Speaker 6 one thing. All the time.

Speaker 6 You know that you're wrong.

Speaker 1 You know that you are very wrong.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 1 Or like, I shouldn't have reacted that way all the time. And

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 it would probably suck. But yeah, no,

Speaker 3 I don't sleep. I edited out like a whole thing that we said last episode.

Speaker 1 About what?

Speaker 3 We just kept talking about how Tez Watkins from Oregon is a really good receiver. His name is Tez Johnson.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's Watkins. That's why I just called him Tez.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we appreciate that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Good job, man.

Speaker 8 Complete denial that anyone even listens to this show and that this is a podcast. And

Speaker 8 that's how I live my life.

Speaker 8 Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 I know the minute I get something wrong, like I get in my car on Sunday nights, and I am like, oh, fuck. Then I just have that moment, like, ah, whatever.

Speaker 1 Hopefully, they'll be cool about it.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 It doesn't matter how dumb you are. Yeah.
It does matter.

Speaker 1 All right. Good show, boys.

Speaker 1 The whole booth is here. Booth, we got anything to say about Luigi?

Speaker 1 We disavow. I mean, we got a whole booth of Italians.

Speaker 3 I'm curious to see

Speaker 3 what the next play is.

Speaker 1 For Luigi?

Speaker 3 Yeah, did you see the YouTube video?

Speaker 1 What do you think? Mario's going to break him out? Was that fake? What? Yes. What do you think is going to happen the next play?

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 3 He said it's not over.

Speaker 1 I saw a TikTok. I'm pretty sure it's over.
It was a fake YouTube video.

Speaker 8 Or like it wasn't him that made it.

Speaker 6 It's just kind of wild that he got arrested for acting suspiciously in a McDonald's.

Speaker 1 I think the answer to my question. I don't want to get into it.

Speaker 1 I don't want to get into it, Hank. Oh, no.

Speaker 6 Hank, need your thoughts. Can't edit this one out, buddy.

Speaker 1 I was going to say the answer to my question while Hank thinks, collects his thoughts,

Speaker 1 that instant reaction from our Italian booth. Hopefully, Luigi doesn't get an Italian lawyer.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 The lawyer shows up the first day. He's like, did you see a YouTube video?

Speaker 3 The YouTube, I mean, it looked like it would have been interesting if it were real. Okay.

Speaker 1 But apparently, it's not.

Speaker 3 It's not.

Speaker 1 Hank?

Speaker 8 I don't know. You don't want to get it.

Speaker 6 What are your thoughts, Hank?

Speaker 8 I just take everything with a grain of salt.

Speaker 8 I'm not just going to believe everything.

Speaker 8 There's a lot of things that don't make any sense, and it's basically everything.

Speaker 1 The media lies to you.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 8 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 be well-acted.

Speaker 1 Let's take some time. Because I'm not informed, but

Speaker 8 my initial reaction is.

Speaker 1 Friday, let's get a little presentation.

Speaker 8 I just writes down their manifesto as a young kid.

Speaker 6 Ted Kaczynski? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. Old.
Pretty famous. Counter-style.

Speaker 8 Oh, no, but I'm saying like

Speaker 1 he's a youth. Okay.
Youth aren't writing. Well, it's only three pages.

Speaker 3 So you're saying if it was a notes app, that it would be believable?

Speaker 6 I don't think if it's three pages, that's a manifesto.

Speaker 1 Hank, you put together presentations for me.

Speaker 6 and i never in person okay or like physical copies here's what we'll do he's way younger 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

Speaker 1 enjoy

Speaker 6 his like brief celebrity run no probably not you don't think anybody you don't think he boned and a girl recognized him

Speaker 1 they only they only recognized him they arrested him well yeah no before that he was on the run for like four days. Yeah, but no one knew who he was.

Speaker 6 Somebody knew who he was.

Speaker 1 His full face, like his face, but like no one knew he was on the run.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but you don't think anybody else recognized him? It was like,

Speaker 6 your eyebrows look like that guy.

Speaker 1 Maybe, yeah, that was the big takeaway: is like guys like him, guys like me, guys like Nikki Smokes, we shouldn't be doing that with our eyebrows. Yeah, you just get caught.

Speaker 1 Jets Jaguars game preview on Friday will be Hank's conspiracy theory hour.

Speaker 1 I give you a full hour. Numbers:

Speaker 3 11. 3.
8.

Speaker 1 99. Pug.
17.

Speaker 1 95.

Speaker 1 21.

Speaker 6 What did you say, Jack?

Speaker 1 Jack said 19. 19, right, Jack?

Speaker 3 19 for Jack.

Speaker 1 93.

Speaker 1 Did someone say 93?

Speaker 1 No one said 93.

Speaker 6 I thought Pug did it. He said 99, Pug.

Speaker 6 94 is coming soon.

Speaker 3 Love you guys.