Notre Dame HC Marcus Freeman, CFB With Andy Staples + Mt Rushmore Of Business Jargon With Hank’s Dad

Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
On today's Pardon My Take, we have some college football. We got two guests, great guests, head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Marcus Freeman, on the show.
We also have our good friend Andy Staples previewing college football week one

and the new playoff.

Football, real football.

We're talking real football.

So this week we're going to do college football.

Next week we're obviously going to do NFL.

We have the Mount Rushmore of business jargon with special guest Hank's dad.

It's come down to a two-man race between Hank and PFT. So Hank's bringing in in additional people that's fine yep i can do whatever he wants bring in help yep uh we got who's back of the week we got a great show for you and is brought to you by our friends at draft kings we had the appetizer last week now it's time to feast college football is back don't miss any of the action jump in at draft king sportsbook it's a full full slate of games for week one, including the big matchup in Atlanta between the preseason number one and number 16, Georgia versus Clemson.
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No place to hang out or washin' And then I can't blame all on the sun

Oh no

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Today is Monday, August 26th. And football is back.
And for the feels like 75th year in a row i lost money thinking that dj uncle lately was going to be the dj uncle lately from the coveted year in that notre dame game that he played uh he played against notre dame with clemson and i got burned yeah it seems like he doesn't like to run with the football that much anymore he doesn't do the thing where he's like hey i'm 245 pounds 245 pounds. I'll just put my head down and run over you.
This is – it's just every year. Every year I'm like, this is the year.
DJ you. And I feel bad for Florida State fans.
This whole offseason, they were going to be on like a fuck you tour in college football this year because of unfortunately how last season ended for them. And we do still stand with Florida State at the end of last season.
Correct. You did what you had to do.
But this was a a bad way to start out traveling all the way over to ireland i would assume that some florida state fans probably imbibed one or two beverages over in ireland got drunk off guinness your poops black and then you get to see that stinker yeah and then you had on top of that uh that kirk herb street twisted the knife saying man tough loss for the knolls over an island for to a good georgia tech team the great news is with the new 12 team playoff there's still plenty of opportunities to climb back into the bracket regroup and keep battling yes now he's he is technically right that they're not out of it with the new playoff uh it actually florida state has controls their own destiny now whereas last year they won all their games and didn't control their own destiny so they actually control their own destiny even though they lost the first game uh so they're not out of it but man does that suck especially how last year ended and then to be like you know revenge tour starts now dju i'm gonna believe in him for once well no i believe in him every single year uh that one game i i actually think we should actually maybe do like a maybe it's maybe it's a mount rush war maybe it's just a segment where it's like if you didn't watch this one game you would think about someone totally different if i had just somehow missed dju throwing five touchdowns against notre dame during the coveted year i would it would it would have stopped me from having so much pain and lost bets yeah every year after that i'm pretty sure there's a couple carson wince games out there that definitely apply to this yeah they're just like you see one 73 degrees outside see one game over and it just fucks you up forever yep then you're never going to get out of that hole either because you keep you know deep down in your soul like this guy is capable of accomplishing the unthinkable somewhere in there is that guy and it's up to somebody to bring it out of him yeah and it just didn't happen it didn't happen but it is i feel like georgia tech always fucks people up in in like these weird situations too yeah they're i mean they're they have played obviously last year the miami game yeah oh that was. And they only had, I think, 14 possessions total during this game.

Yeah.

Right?

So they just controlled the clock.

And they did it.

And, yeah, you have Kirk Herbstreit twisting the knife.

It looked like a great time out in Ireland.

I did love how mad everyone got about Pat McAfee getting drunk at a bar.

Yeah.

You had him do a show at an Irish pub.

I stand with Pat McAfee. That's exactly how he should act.
you're in ireland you want to adopt the culture right of that town like how could he what do you mean how could you put you put him in a bar when you send him to utah guess what he does doesn't have a single thing to drink right you just win in rome you make him do a show in a bar he's gonna get drunk and when they cut to the booth in the actual game and they were holding guinness right people took that and were like you got espn people getting drunk at their shows and in the game it's like that's it's a crazy reach yeah also i'm fine you're in ireland i'm okay with that if announcers want to drink beer while they're announcing a football game it would make things a lot more entertaining if al michaels well he probably already has a couple glasses scotch nothing big yeah but if you had, you know, if Tom Brady wanted to crack open a couple, like, zero-carb seltzer and tequilas, I'd be okay with that. So, week zero, I hate week zero, by the way.
I think it's- Well, I don't. I hate it.
I just think, just give me, like, four more games than what they give us. Because the Georgia Tech-Florida State game ended, and I was like, all right, next game.
The problem with the Hawaiii game was not it's not a real game yeah i i'm okay with having the appetizer with having just four games but i want them to be back to back right there i i want i want you to to start uh that second game was montana state and new mexico right which was incredible montana state covered big time underdog great game won the game outright on the game so i i would have loved to see that start kick off right afterwards but and then have the next one right after that and then have hawaii kick off late at night in theory week zero i'm fine with it's just the execution of it give me eight games eight games give me give me give me uh one time give me a morning an afternoon and night big game and then sprinkle in a couple of these other you know Nevada SMU games that's what I want and they just don't it just sucks my problem was after the first game was over I was at a bar and then I was like man I can't wait for this next game that I'm kind of pretending to care about because I'm betting on it don't really care about this game if it was in any other week but then you have like 45 minutes to an hour of just like reminding people, hey, we got to stick around because we got to see what happens with Montana State later. And it's like everyone goes through the motions of college football is back, but like it really isn't.
I just wish there was more. That's all.
It's a good appetizer. It's a fine appetizer, but just give us more.
You can't. Football's a drug.
They basically were like, here you go go have have this drug and then whoops sorry you're gonna have to wait another five days for more of the drug yeah i died i need i need the drug right now we need to have i can cut it off in the summer i can i can live without the drug but the minute you put the drug in front of me i'm gonna get fucked up and want to just go you know lose my whole life and just sit in a motel for the next six months. What about this? What if they put a new week before week zero, week negative one? Fine.
And there's just one game. No.
I need more of the drug. They just gave us a taste.
I want the whole thing. What if it's the worst possible football game you can imagine? No.
I want more. I need more.
They got me hooked. I mean, I'm already hooked.
They got me extra hooked. Like D3.
You get one D3 game in week negative one. And then week zero, then you get eight games.
It's like easing yourself in. I just needed more.
I needed more. I left being like, man, I wish I had more.
I watched the entire SMU Nevada game, and I was like, give me another game. It's another great game.
Yeah. Well, it was college football.
It was an interesting game. It was a wild game.
SMU had a player kicked out for spitting. They were, like, burning timeouts at random times, not being set.
I don't even know if you spit on anybody, if you just spit on the ground. It was the craziest thing ever, and Nevada was going to punt, and then they blew the whistle through the flag, and I was like, oh, it must be, you know, delay a game or, you know,

false start, whatever, move them back.

And they're like, no, a player spit, he's out of the game,

and now Nevada has the first out.

It really was a good weekend of just quintessential college football, though,

because you had the weird stuff going on in Ireland.

You had a wind delay in the Montana State-New Mexico game,

where in the fourth quarter, Montana State got the ball with what looked to be like a 55 mile an hour wind at their back the entire time and then you had the weird shit that happened and the craziness and the chaos at the end of the uh the smu game yeah and uh we also had the which i i didn't realize i should have done a better job that now college football has a two minute warning which i don't really like yep yep they do i don't like that they reminded us several times that which i appreciate that you know what that's why week zero is important yeah i just two minute warning was kind of fun that they didn't have it yeah it's because it also was a great casual like you could you could spot the casual watching like an nfl guy who just tuned into their first college football game they're like oh uh he was out of bounds on that catch nope one foot one foot or you know oh where's the two minute warning nope they don't have that why is the clock stopped right now because they got a first down i want the games to be slightly different so you can kind of spot them in the wild yeah but at the same time when you watch a receiver make a catch in college and he gets two feet in you're like that guy could play in the yeah he could play on sundays yeah he could play on sundays uh any other i i saw i we're just going through the roster cuts. Trey Lance threw five picks.
I feel bad for Trey Lance. He almost had Skip Bayless on his side.
Yeah. Skip was loving it, and then right on QE threw a pick six.
I actually feel bad for Trey Lance because it's not his fault that he got drafted number three. Yeah, number three? Top five.
Yeah, it was at least top five uh he threw five picks someone had a tweet i i should have bookmarked it but it was basically like trey lance in the last five years it was like high school he played i don't know like 300 snaps college he played 300 snaps and then since being in the nfl he's played like 150 snaps he just hasn't. He hasn't played that much.
He's an all-time guy of this guy could be great because I saw him really, really play well in one game. And he had that run.
He had that touchdown run that looked awesome. It was in the FCS national championship game against JMU.
Right. It was absolutely crushed.
I don't know. Did he throw like one interception when he was in college? He was incredible.
Zero interceptions. He was awesome in college.
And then he got his entire senior year taken away for covid but yeah he uh i feel bad for trey lance i officially feel bad for trey lance i think he'll be okay yeah i mean he did make a lot of money being picked third overall uh mike white also got cut yeah so they're doing skylar thompson right now yeah they're gonna bring mike white back to the jets mike white could win you a game on the new york jets i care who he's playing against. I don't care.
He could come off the bench in the first quarter, and Mike White has that ability to just somehow throw for three touchdowns for the Jets. Right.
Who's your backup right now, Memes? I didn't realize you had Jordan Travis, but he's injured. Tyrod Taylor.
Oh, Ty God. He's going to have some freak injury that nobody else in the history of football is going to have.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't ask for your backup. Your backup probably is irrelevant this year.
Yeah, at least for the first five snaps. Come on, man.
Izzy's back, though, Memes. Izzy had a great game.
Izzy's still back. Yeah, it's Izzy season.
It's Izzy season. Defensive line backups look good.
I know everybody cares about the Jets. That's awesome.
It's huge. It's getting way down in the deep shit.
I was actually thinking about whether I should bring up that the Bears made a trade for a couple defensive linemen. Don't know if it moves the needle, but they did.
Jalen Hurst threw his first pick at training camp. Oh, wow.
That moves the needle. He got that out.
Last day of practice in training camp. Probably bounced off Dotson's hands.
We're going We're going to get Brandon Ayuk on the commanders. And we've got Luke McCaffrey and Martavis Bryant.
We don't need John Dotson. Just ready for football.
I'm just ready for football. We did have, I'd say the best NFL story from today was Jim Harbaugh in the elevator.
Yes, it was incredible. So the Chargers, a couple Chargers players including Justin Justin Herbert, got caught in an elevator before.
I think it was before the game against the Cowboys this weekend. And Harbaugh was the same hotel where like a room blew up.
No, I think that that one Oxnard, I believe the fire was in California. Dallas and hotels.
Something's going on. So Harbaugh was asked after it.
So Harbaugh, I guess, was the elevator right before, which makes me believe that Harbaugh probably did this on purpose and got the elevator stuck on purpose. But afterwards, he did an interview, and he said, talking about the elevator, they were stuck for two hours, Justin Herbert and some Chargers players.
He said, you get in those situations, and it's a test of wills. I was proud of each of the guys and the two women that were on that elevator that's a win you feel good about yourself you were challenged it was a test of will and you pull it down or pull it in and then talking about justin herbert is my favorite getting off the elevator and it was hot as each person came off the elevator sweating and some had the shirt off justin herbert his hair was a little wet but his was completely dry.
That was another thing that blew me away. I might bet on the Chargers now.
I think you left out the best part of that quote. He said, for Justin Herbert, his hair being a little wet, but his shirt completely dry.
He said, that was another thing that blew me away. This guy is just a beast.
He is. He's a beast.
Hank, when you were stuck on that elevator, was your shirt dry? Yeah, we were only in there for 10 minutes. Two hours is a long ass time to be stuck in an elevator.
Very long. Somebody peed on that elevator.
I want to know about that. I want to know who pissed on that elevator.
Honestly, I would say that if Justin Herbert didn't pee on that elevator, selfish teammate. Because that means that he wasn't hydrated enough.
That's true. That's a good point.
You should be peeing all the time. time if harbaugh come out and say it was incredible justin had to pee six times on this elevator because he was so hydrated i'd say that's a guy setting an example and a tone for all the rookie guys on the team that need somebody to look up to for hydration i i am i have to say i like i know we did that whole talk with will he's picking the chiefs to not win the afc west saying it's a scrappy division and i i'm still i think we's picking the Chiefs to not win the AFC West,

saying it's a scrappy division.

And I think we announced that the Chiefs were going to win the AFC West

like six months ago.

Sticking with that, but I might put a little something on the Chargers

just because not to win the AFC West, but maybe just to win the Super Bowl.

Because Harbaugh, the guy just does things like this.

Yeah.

He's the winner.

He also said that Friday was a key step in the team getting good

at making yourself harder to break.

Thank you. The guy just does things like this Yeah I mean he said The winner He also said that Friday was a key step In the team getting good at making yourself harder to break Love that We gotta get stuck in an elevator Love that I'd sweat so much He'd be like this guy's a wimp I would How long would it take you to start complaining when you were stuck in an elevator I'd say less than a second I complained before the elevator's even stuck I'm like damn I'm in another elevator When you're getting on an elevator you know this time my great-grandfather died and then he said who's got it better than those guys that were on that elevator no one no one no one nobody um do we have any other football stories i had a couple other things i wanted to touch on the elevator one was really my favorite that was the best hank you had something no well i had something for you on the way in so on the way and i was talking to uh i ran into the guy in my building who helped us get out of the elevator and we were talking about the incident he kind of made a joke oh you're gonna get stuck in the elevator again i was like no thanks for helping and he was like telling me a story about i thought he was talking about my building he said uh my friend like it happened to like, it happened to him.
The woman came, went to the floor. He didn't tell anyone, and she died.
What? Like, they were looking for, and I was like, the guy just didn't tell anyone? Like, he knew she got stuck down there, and then he said, yeah, he got arrested for being dumb. And I was like, here? And he said, no, different building.
And then I was like, all right, see ya. He just died because didn't tell anyone? It was one of those wild, small talk conversations that he was like, yeah.
And my friend was, you know, he had a similar situation happen, but the thing fell down and he didn't tell anyone. And the family was looking for her and it smelled bad.
And I was like, so she died? He's like, yeah. I was like, is he arrested? He's like, yeah, 20 years.
Oh, my God. That's good to see you.
That's a nice little, yeah, fun conversation to have. Hank, did you want the other thing I had for you? Yes.
Did you see Jason Tatum's tattoo? Yeah. What'd you think? Did you see a PFT? I'm going to look it up right now.
I think if I had accolades. Give me your media.
Well, no, no. First, before you look it up, guess what the tattoo is.
Jason Tatum's tattoo is of his son. Nope.
But his son's dunking on him. Nope.
It is a trophy. Okay, it's of the Larry O'Brien trophy.
Nope. You'd think because he just won it.
He also won a gold medal. Is it of the gold medal? No.
It's better. It's even better.
Jason Tatum got a tattoo of himself lifting the all-star MVP trophy. Named after? Named after his good friend, who he corresponds with frequently.
Kobe Bryant.

But he just won the gold medal in Larry O'Brien.

Those aren't named the Kobe Bryant.

The gold medal is the Kobe Bryant medal.

Hey, come on.

What?

People get touching tattoo tributes to people that they've lost and they care about.

Come on, Hank.

What does it say on it? It says, like something G-R-A. Come on, Hank.
Is that grail? Did he say, this is my grail? I mean, dudes get crazy. Everyone's tatted up.
But Hank, he just got this tattoo. He just won two of the most impressive things.
No one gives a fuck about the All-Star MVP. He did not win NBA Finals MVP.
That's true. Two out of three of them.
Tattoos take a long time to sketch up and plan out. It's hard to do a gold medal.
He probably is waiting to get those ones, but they're coming. So he got this designed the second he won this trophy.
Do you know what it is, Hank? And I know, listen, I know you're sensitive about his aura. This is a Joel Embiid tattoo.
No. Yeah.
That's the P. You get that too if that's the most you've ever won.
If he hadn't just won the NBA. Yeah, he is.
He's won. Say it again.
He just won the finals. I understand, but you don't get the all-star MVP trophy.
If you win the all-star game MVP, the NBA finals, and a gold medal in the same year, you can do whatever you want. Yeah, and you should get the NBA Finals and the gold medal tattoo before.
How many tattoos have you got? Who are you to criticize? If I won an NBA Finals, an All-Star MVP, and a gold medal, All-Star MVP with the last tattoo I'd put on my body. But what if he gets the other two, then? Is it forgiven? I think it's better.
It would be slightly forgiven, yes. It's better than if Joel Embiid had gotten this tattoo because that would have been...
That's loser talk. Yeah, but this is a tattoo Joel Embiid would get.
He doesn't even have tattoos. But if he got one, because he's never won anything.
Gold medal. First of all, Nick.
He won a real MVP? A sketch of himself at draft night. Yeah.

So you're upset that he doesn't have a real MVP tattoo?

No, I mean all-star MVP is more important than real MVP.

But to me, this just calls into question his aura even further.

It seems like he's forcing the aura.

Negative 5,000 aura.

How's getting a tattoo of force?

He gets what he likes.

Okay.

Because he likes all-star MVPs. That's also a terrible trophy.
What is that trophy? It's a Kobe Bryant trophy. I know, but what is it? It looks like a bad building.
It looks like a giant martini shaker. Yeah, or like a really shitty wedding cake.
Or if the World Series trophy just let itself go. Yeah.
Yeah. Got really fat.
Yeah. I did.
Crystal butt plug. That was the other thing I wanted to talk about briefly with the boys.
I want to talk a little baseball because we've got two guys having probably the craziest years that we've had in a long time. Aaron Drudge hit his 50th and 51st home run today.
He's on my dingers only. He's closing in on the AL record.
Who had first pick in dingers only? That would be me. Who'd you take? I took Shohei, and Shohei joined the 40-40 club.
Fastest. The fastest of all time to join it.
He's going to demolish the 40-40. He's probably going to have the most combined, or like, I don't even know how to phrase that no one's ever been to the 50 50 no one's been so he has a legitimate chance to go 50 50 he could get 50 50 on this uh i think a rod has the record right it's like 44 44 43 43 he was but he was so the 40 steroids yeah the 40 40 guys uh he did it Shohei did it in 126 games, and the second fastest was Alfonso Soriano in 2006, 147 games.
So he's got a full 30-plus games to get to the 50-50 club, which has never been done. He also did it in the most dramatic fashion, hitting a walk-off grand slam.
It's just crazy. On the first pitch with two outs.
Shohei, and just casually the next day, threw off the mound for the first time because, oh, yeah, if you don't remember, Shohei has a career ERA of 233. Yeah, he's also, like, the best pitcher too.
He is. He's just taking a year off.
It's insane the fact that he's like, oh, yeah, I have a UCL, so I'm just going to become one of the best base stealers now and the home run. So Shohei's doing that in L.A.
And then Judge hit his 51st, so he is now four guys total before this have three seasons or more with 50 home runs. Babe Ruth, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Alex Rodriguez.
Aaron Judge joins that group. He's also the first player in MLB history with 50-plus home runs, 120-plus RBIs, and 100-plus walks before September.
And he's on pace for 62 this year. It's pretty crazy.
Yeah, it's absolutely wild. If MLB was competent, if they had a way of rigging the games like some of of the other leagues do sometimes they would make sure that it was going to be a Yankees Dodgers yeah series instead we'll probably end up I don't know who's the Cleveland and San Diego it's also like why the um constant who the MLB needs a face of the league and the MLB what's the marketing problem for the MLB? It's okay to just say the MLB, they're just so far behind football

that once September hits, it's football season.

Because these two guys and what they're doing is so insane and so awesome

that MLB, unfortunately, has become more of a regional sport

where you root for your team and don't probably tune into everything else.

But these guys are the face of the MLB, and they couldn't be better.

Two of them.

I mean, Shohei is having an incredible season.

And they're both awesome.

I'm looking for. Two of them.
I mean, Shohei is having an incredible season. And they're both awesome.
I'm loving watching. And outside of not talking to the Little League World Series, Aaron Judge seems like a good dude.
I was going to say, I think the face of the league is the United States Little League World Series team. Facts.
Because we win. We win again.
We beat Taiwan. I said Taiwan.
it's disgusting that little world series is in the pocket of the communist party of china chinese taipei ah the little league world series has now officially decided that uh taiwan belongs to the chinese government it's crazy weird huh weird the little league world series hank what are your on that? Do you recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan? I think it would help to give some context to our maybe younger listeners who aren't fully aware what the difference is. Maybe like somebody that's eight, nine years younger than us that might be listening out there.
Yeah. Yeah, hypothetically, on a couch somewhere.
So you're saying that the team identifies as Taiwan. post-world war ii what happened was like where are the players on the team i'm gonna i'm gonna set it up for you it depends on who they're saying their allegiance hank post-world war ii the communists and nationalists had a big war against each other in china before they were big they were fighting on the same side against the Japanese.
And after World War II, the communists won. The nationalists flew over to Taiwan.
They set up their own country there. Now, to this day, the communist party in China, the Chinese government, still claims that they own everybody that's living in Taiwan, and it's called Chinese Taipei.
Like, you remember a couple seasons ago when ESPN drew that seven-dash line or whatever around the South China Sea, and they gave fishing rights to the Chinese government in the South China Sea? That's what the Little League World Series is doing with Taiwan. They're just giving it to the Chinese.
So the Little League World Series is in bed with the Chinese. In bed with the Chinese.
No better than LeBron. Or Steve Kerr.
Yeah. Yeah, so the country of Taiwan.
Yeah, I'm with you. That's fucked up.
Taiwan. It's Taiwan's name.
Yeah. So we beat Taiwan today.
That's all I'm saying. Not Chinese Taipei.
But it was awesome. He's the fuck out of Taiwan.
Two to one. Yep.
Yep. And extras.
Florida. Small balls back, baby.
Florida. Now that's a real island.
That's, yeah. That's how we, Florida probably declares itself as its own country.
Hell yes. We would never do that in the United States.
That big boy on Florida was awesome. He was electric.
He stole home. They had two big boys just mashing.
Yeah. The United States, we stand for something, and that's why I was glad we didn't have to play against Puerto Rico.
Yeah, exactly. We got this.
So baseball's back, though. Baseball's fully back.
So back. Both those both those guys should we do our who's back and then we'll get to two interviews we got Marcus Freeman and Andy Staples who's back of the week it is brought to you by Buffalo Wild Wings book your fantasy football draft at Buffalo Wild Wings to get a championship ring.
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Hank, who's back of the week? My who's back of the week is Oasis. Oh, good.
Yes. I don't think i talked about it on the show i definitely talked to pft about it but there is an hbo documentary i think it came out a while ago but i stumbled upon it in the spring maybe early summer and i was went down to oasis rabbit hole and just became obsessed i definitely was talking to pft about it for a while before the pop punk show uh so i'm pumped.
I was not really. I was, you know, in the I know, you know, Wonderwall category.
Like I knew. Yeah.
Some of them got bangers. The documentary was great.
They were like the biggest band of all time in the 90s. And they have bangers.
And they got drama. The brother drama is so.
They got aura. Like the Liam Gallagher has aura aura like through the moon he is one of the funniest characters so i'm very very very very late to the party but like me and robbie fox will just send each other like i you know it was in my algorithm for a while where i was just getting you know all the old videos and and when i'm drunk i'll just like turn on some of their live concerts and stuff it's all the concerts have like 700 000000 people.
700,000 people in bucket hats. Yeah, and they're waving giant, giant-ass flags.
They only perform at the biggest music festivals. It's incredible.
And meanwhile, they're on stage, and Liam is calling his brother a cunt in between songs. His roasts are so good.
If you ask Liam Gallagher about any modern musician, he'll just talk to you for about 30 seconds about how bad that guy sucks. He's on the Mount Rushmore of haters, but in a hilarious way.
Have you told Billy about this? No, I'm sure he's excited. Hank found a second band? Yeah.
Are you worried what Billy Strings is going to say? No, I think... Is there room for two? Yeah, there's room for two.
My YouTube, like if you went on my YouTube,

because that,

it was definitely a phase

kind of like food,

like I was in like a three-week

Oasis obsession phase

that petered off.

But sometimes when I'm drunk,

like you come home,

I think I saw like a meme on Twitter.

It's like,

you know you're drunk

when you're just,

someone's turning on full-length concerts.

Yeah.

That Oasis,

like turning on their old,

like the Wembley or whatever,

like that happens still. Glastonbury.
Yeah. Yeah, they had a, it was like,

it was like,

it was like,

it was like,

it was like,

it was like,

it was like,

it was like,

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it was like,

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it was like,

it was like,

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it was like,

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it was like,

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it was like,

it was like, it was like, it was like,onbury yeah yeah yeah they had a it was like 400 000 yeah no every single concert is the same way and i was watching documentaries like yeah i knew one song i didn't know they were this big and they were like the biggest band in the world yeah how long do you think this reunion is going to last will they put over under i'm going to say one and a half do they have to go to a different country probably it feels like a lot of the beef always starts whenever they have to fly anywhere if okay they've got a beef in america i think spain one one at a time i'm guessing the first concert is going to be in england somewhere yes so they'll stay together the second one let's just say hypothetically it's scotland if they have to come to america for a tour it will not. They won't make it over that body water.
Absolutely not. Did you see, where is it? If it's drivable.
If it's drivable, they can do it. If they can take separate cars there, yeah.
Our colleague, Dante the Don, had a very funny. Okay.
My favorite. This is Dante the Don.
My favorite Liam Gallagher story is from 2017 Lollapalooza. They stick him with the worst slot of the weekend, 4 p.m.
Friday. I show up at 3, get on side stage, so pumped for the show.
He goes on, immediately starts bitching out his sound guy and guitar player. Three songs later, says fuck this and walks off stage.
Yeah, he does that all the time. He's just like, I'm not doing this.
And he's talented enough where he can keep getting away with it. He did that, I think they were supposed to do MTV Unplugged, and he said, I just don't like how acoustic sounds.
Yeah, I like it. He just didn't do it right before.
The documentary part of it I liked because they were right before the internet and technology. So they were really the last big rock stars.
Liam Gallagher is a rock star. They're the new Beatles.
Yeah. Doesn't give a fuck.
Yep. Okay.
Who's back? Who's back? I got a couple who's backs of the week. My first is Logan Paul.
Yeah. Logan Paul's back.
Yeah. Wait, when he pushed his dog? Yeah.
Apparently he pushed his dog off a speeding boat. Yeah, that was bad.
I saw that. So that he could then rescue his dog and then get a lot of hits on video for being like, oh, look, my dog fell in the lake and I saved it.
Yeah. But you can see his arm pushing his dog.
Yeah. That was bad.
Jail.

Really bad.

Prison.

Now I want to see Mike Tyson beat the fuck out of him.

Noted dog lover, Mike Tyson.

You'd think the videos, the amount of videos they've done in like different height, like

they could figure out a way to push a dog off a boat without having to be so obvious.

Yeah.

Not that I'm condoning that, but I'm saying it was so obvious that he did that.

It should have been like somebody else's arm.

And then the video is, I beat this guy up and saved my dog, but I beat him up because he pushed my dog into the lake. We left him for dead in the water.
Yeah. Yeah.
So my other who's back of the week. Cute dog, by the way.
Very cute dog. My other who's back of the week is Jameis Winston.
Yes. Jameis Winston, for some reason, he's still in charge of giving all the pregame speeches to the Browns, even though he's not technically QB1, but hegame qb1 i think he's heart and soul qb1 deshaun watson is what's gonna happen this year with him i don't know i don't we're gonna do some previews coming up but like deshaun watson has to be one of the biggest question marks is he good still we don't know no one knows we don't know if he's good or not he had a couple games last season where he looked like okay that was that looked like an nfl quarterback right and then a lot where it was like this guy stinks and he's got a great coach he's got a great coach and jamis is now in the building and jamis will be the most popular person that building and his video his uh pre pregame speech videos continue to go viral because he talked about cc's pizza yeah and it just gives you goosebumps and.
And you're like, I just want to get out there and play for Jameis.

He's the best.

Yeah, so Jameis is...

So he gets paid $4 million a year.

And I think if he only acts as a motivational speaker,

he's worth $4 million a year to have on retainer.

Yeah, when he retires...

Just to give speeches.

We'll hire him at Barstool to just do that.

Just give us speeches every single day.

Him and Ben Herbert.

We'll be the drill tweet. Can someone help us with Barstool's finances uh rent this you know sound equipment this Ben Herbert trainer 10 million Jameis Winston 4 million and all they do pre-game speech Jameis pumps us up and then Ben Herbert makes us harder to break I just I would love to yeah it is worth paying james winston four million dollars a year just for vibes agreed and that's what they're doing agreed uh okay my who's back of the week is um hilarious hit pieces that don't really land now this is very uh very specific but not to get political uh but if anyone is paying any attention rfk dropped out and then endorsed trump and then there was a bunch of people coming out against rfk his own family again not to get political i just saw one story that made me laugh that i thought was good for the show uh there was a explosive uh bombshell that was dropped that is titled rfk jr accused of being a cocaine dealer at harvard university as former classmate speaks out and it's just this dude who's apparently been sitting on this for like 40 years that he's like yeah i bought 40 worth of cocaine from rfk in college i don't know if you you you realize that that does not help being like this guy sucks so it was uh he said that his excuse for it was i was offered to purchase cocaine from a a Kennedy.
So I did it. It's like, yeah, that's, I would have done the same.
The whole point of a hit piece is to be like, we all now feel bad. Like, we feel like this person is a scumbag.
You're like, yeah, 40 years ago, this guy sold me Coke. It's like, oh, that kind of rocks.
I did read it at the very end. It put in a note saying like, the point, the reason why I'm writing this right now is because Trump has suggested the death penalty for drug dealers.

How do you feel about endorsing a guy that would have had you killed when you were 18?

It's like, I'm sure I still would have done it.

He's a fucking Kennedy.

Yeah, that's what he probably was the coolest guy at Harvard.

They break the law.

That's what they do.

So so I just it made me laugh.

And I like, again, we don't talk politics on the show but that political uh story definitely made me laugh because it was just so ridiculous the the biggest back this guy has been sitting on this did you see the whale yeah did you see the other coming forward about the whale no oh yeah the whale was a much more normal story very cool so he took his daughter he a beached whale that was dead, and then he took his daughter to the beach and used a chainsaw to cut off the whale's head, and then bungee cord the head of the whale to his minivan, and whale juice started leaking into the car- Oh my God. Onto his daughter.
Jesus. That's- He's a weird guy.
That's pretty normal. That's pretty normal, I'd say.
Yeah, he's a weird guy. But yeah, coming out and being like,

guy sold me Coke in college.

Got him.

Wow, I'm going to change everyone's mind now.

You've got to lead with a whale story.

All right, Huey, finish us off.

My who's back.

Conference realignment.

The UConn Huskies seems like they're trying to get into the Big 12.

And their big pitch is that they'll spend more money on football particularly. And that Big 12 is very bullish on basketball, and they want more basketball to be a little bit higher of an income for them.
They tried to go after Gonzaga a couple years ago. That did not work out.
So now they're trying to go after Hurley and the Huskies and trying to bring in some basketball eliteness to that conference. Max, what do you think about the idea of UConn switching conferences? You would love it.
Hate it. Absolutely hate it.
Alright, so this would suck because I do love the Big East as it's currently set as a basketball conference. And Hurley's talked to us before about Northeast, the Italian League, all that stuff.
It would suck. It also would make the Big 12 the greatest college basketball conference of all time.
And it just would. Because now you'd have Kansas.
You'd have UConn, you'd have Arizona, like Cincinnati. It'd be just crazy college basketball every single year.
Baylor. So I don't want it to happen because I want UConn to stay in the Big East, but I also realize that the Big 12 would just be so fucking good with basketball.
But I don't want it to happen. No, I don't want it to happen either you have you have these thoughts in your head of like things that are just known to be true correct all the time and will never ever change and that's uconn is a big e school and that will never change it's never changed it's never changed in the past it'll never be any different than that but no i don't i don't want that to happen uconn should be in the big east yeah they're home right now let's leave them home yeah i did look at uh the get-in price Allen for when UNC comes to town first time UNC's ever played at the Fog do you know how much it costs to go to that game $700 I think it's like $1,800 or like $2,000 just to get in the door of that game we gotta go to Fog Allen this year we've been talking to our friend Eric Chen It seems like an awesome place.
Actually, you know what would be great is we could take a road trip in Vanny. Yeah, we could.
To the fog? So we'll be ready by the winter? Yeah. Really? Winter of what year? We'll circle back, but yeah.
Have we got the timeline up here? I got faith. That's subject to change.
I don't know. Is faith a mechanic? Faith fixed a car, a van that hasn't driven.

Summer's over.

Wheels are in motion.

Summer's not over, Hank.

No, the wheels literally are not in motion.

The wheels have not been in motion for five years.

It hasn't driven. I think you're the one who always says, hold on to summer.

Oh, wow.

Locked in.

Labor Day.

Summer's over, so I better not see you golfing.

That's not.

I mean, the fall golf is the best golf. What about winter golf? In Arizona.
Summer's not over. Week after Super Bowl.
Don't do this to us. Oh, man.
Yeah, I don't want this to happen either. It would suck.
I also feel like Danny Hurley should just get all his money and be out of his contract if this happens. It should be in his contract that UConn stays in the Big East.
Yeah. Yeah.
And it was just so perfect that it was right before college football started. We're like, all right, new normal, new conferences, no Pac-12, 12-team playoff.
Oh, yeah, here's another one. We're not done yet.
That's why it's been my take from the beginning. Just get us to the finish line.
Tell us when we're done with this stuff. Okay, let's get to our interviews.
We have Marcus Freeman, head coach of Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and then Andy Staples talking college football. And it is college football season.
It's brought to you by Coors Light. Big rivalry game coming up.
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Thank you to Coors Light, our wonderful sponsor, the coldest beer out there, the best beer out there, the best beer for college football. Okay, here he is, head coach of Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman.
Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It is head coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Marcus Freeman.
They have a new series out called Here Come the Irish. It will be out August 29th on Peacock.
Let's start with that coach. So basically hard knocks, right, for a college team.
When you were were approached with that were you were you like a little bit uh nervous about like hey do we really want to do all access or what was your thought process behind having you guys do this show yeah I think it's something we've talked about probably for about a year now and um the first thing I think of is a little bit you're you're protective of team. And hold on, I don't want episodes coming out throughout the season.
And our guys wondering why they're not in a certain episode or looking for characters and stories. But then we started talking more in depth about it.
And they're going to capture stuff from all year long, but they're going to put them out at different times that really won't interfere with our season. And so that was 100% good with that.
But I've seen a glimpse in pieces of the first two episodes, and I think it's awesome. They've done a really good job of not only just showing the football side of things, but telling the stories of our players, showing some of the things that the fans and some of those guys that aren't fans would like to know.
It's pretty entertaining. Give me one guy that's either on the team or on your staff that's going to be a breakout star of this.
Because every year in Hard Knocks, we always get one guy that we fall in love with, we didn't know about. But it's like, oh my God, this guy's hilarious.
I love that. Who's that person on Notre Dame? Who's hilarious? I don't know who's hilarious in that.
Who we hope, and he better be the breakout star. It better be the quarterback, you know, and if he's the breakout star, then you know what, things are going to go really, really well for us.
Yeah. How's his hair? Is his hair as good as Sam's? No, he doesn't have the long hair.
He's pretty clean cut. But he's got a listen.
He is a he's got a unique personality, ultra competitive. But, you know, I think him and Sam are two completely different individuals.
Yeah. How long would Sam take getting, you know, ready after a game in the shower, all the product? Was he, was he always the last one out? You know what? I know that he was never out before me.
And I take a while because I have to do media and some other things after a game.

And I always beat him out of the locker room.

Yeah.

So, yeah, your quarterback, Riley Leonard, who last year he went through, you know,

the injuries and everything.

Was that part of it, like seeing how – because he's a gritty guy

and he fought through a lot of stuff and he's kind of one of those perfect,

like he's a gamer.

Were you – when you were deciding, you know, Transfer Portal, you're like, this is a guy. We've played him.
We know him. And we know that he can fight through stuff.
Was that part of the process? Absolutely. That was part of the thought process when we ended up going after him.
We played him, obviously, in season. You study him for weeks leading up to that game and in that game.
And he's a tough competitor. He ended up getting hurt at the very last play of that game.
And then I hear about two weeks later, he bounces back and he was healthy, but he is an ultra competitor. And that's a huge part of what we're looking for.
Yeah. I know you obviously, we're fans.
We can gamble on games. That game was awesome because Audra Kestame ran that touchdown at the end.
Yeah, I think the analytics would tell him to take a knee.

Yeah, yeah.

But maybe you got the room for him to score that touchdown.

Yeah, I mean, listen, if you had a chance to score a touchdown,

I understand the right move to do is to take a knee there.

Do you tell the guys?

Because it's like you're scoring a touchdown in a big-time college football game.

It's hard to turn that off. Are you able to tell them before like hey if you break this, go down? Yeah, you know in that situation the analytics book would tell you to go down but we were down I think two points at that point and I got a firm belief that like you never want to take points off the board and so you're down.
I never tell our offense to take a knee at the one-yard line. I say score.
Now, if we're tied or we're winning, now we'll alert you, hey, alert down, down, because what we want to do is kick a field goal with zero seconds on the clock. And so that's just where the analytics plays out.
And as a head coach, you've got to make a decision. But we did not tell him to go down.
Yeah, yeah. I forgot you guys were down one.
So it would have been – yeah, you're right. That would have been a weird situation.
Obviously, you can end the game with a field goal, but you never want to take that risk. No, no doubt.
No doubt. So much can go wrong with any type of field goal, extra point.
I can't take points off the board. Yeah, and we're very happy that he didn't go down at the one.
Yeah. So shout out to him.
Yeah. His points are good.
That should be your motto for the team. Points are always good.
No one will ever complain about points. I saw that you were in camp.
You were wearing a shirt that caught my eye. You were wearing a shirt that just said Grit on it, which we appreciate.
We love Grit on this podcast. We do a Grit tour every year for the last eight years.
And I'm curious to know what Grit means to you at Notre Dame football. Some of the haters out there might say Notre Dame football, not gritty.
What would you say to the haters? You know what? We have to be gritty. You know, I don't know what some of those people would say about the past, but that's something we believe in.
It's really the motto of our offense for this year. And matter of fact, I think I might have the t-shirt on right now.
I don't know if you can see it. I think think I got it.
Yeah. Grit.
Grit. But yeah, it's the motto of our offense.
You know, coach Denbrock, we just hired him this year to be our offensive coordinator. He brought that when he came and I love it, man.
It's a way for me to show our offense a little bit of support, but I'm a firm believer in if we want to have success, we better have grit. And that's something that every person in this program needs to have.
So what does grit mean for your offense? If it's an emphasis on your offensive mentality this year, are we talking fullbacks? Are we talking like old school stuff? No, it's a mentality. It's a mentality.
It isn't a – I don't know if you're going to see us in old school, two-back isos and running the ball every play, three yards in a cloud of dust. But you know what? Again, it's a mentality.
We talk about the GB and having gratitude for the opportunity that you have. But at the same point of it, like it's a mentality that I don't care if we're throwing the ball, running the ball, we're zone read, we're doing whatever you're doing offensively.
If you don't have grit and that mentality, you're not going to have success. Yeah.
So you're, you know, the head coach of Notre Dame football. You're under 40 years old.
Incredible success. Does your dad still think you're not that big of a deal? It was funny.
I was just talking to him today, and I was telling somebody, like, I still think, you know, my dad thinks I'm a little kid, you know, and that's just my dad's 80. But I have a 17, me and my wife have a 17 year old son that just took an official visit.
And I remember telling somebody else, like, I still view him as a little kid. So I don't know if it's something as parents or as fathers that we never just see our young children as adults or these grown men,

but he definitely still sees me as a young Marcus for sure.

Yeah, because the famous story when you guys were playing the Fiesta Bowl,

there was a sideline report that your dad,

even though you've had all this success in the world,

doesn't think you're that big of a deal.

Is that something like if you win a national title,

will he be like, hey, you're a big deal now? Are you waiting for that? I sure as hell hope so, man. You know, that would be an awesome opportunity to celebrate with him.
But he's got a unique way of keeping you humble, right? And he never lets you get too big. He reminds you, you know, where you've come from.
But I mean, that's the relationship we have. You know.
My dad was in the military for 26 years. He was, I think, 43 when I was born.
So we have obviously a little bit of an age gap between us. But I don't know if he'll ever change, man.
That's just who he is until he's done on this earth. Yeah, I mean, it's good.
It keeps you humble. Yeah, it's good to have somebody like that.
Even if you're at the highest of highs professionally, your dad's like, you know what? Like you could have done a lot better. I feel like we need to look at the mistakes more than we looked at the successes there.
You have another hater, by the way. I don't know if you're familiar with the trash talk that James Laurinaitis has been putting your way recently about college football.
First of all, have you played college football 25? Absolutely. We have four boys at the house and two girls.
So all four boys play college football. And so I've played it a few times with the kids for sure.
Do you always play as Notre Dame? Most of the time. Funny story.
Last night, I was telling somebody that I get home late. The kids are playing.
One of them is using Notre Dame. He was like, Dad, you want to play? And I'm like, sure.
And he was like, OK, I'm Notre Dame. You can't use Notre Dame.
So I'm like, all right. So I ended up getting Texas A&M.
And I'm like, after I'm playing with him, like, you know what, this is a good way to scout your opponent. I want to see who the stars are and all those different things and how they work.
So I don't know if I'll continue to do that, but most of the time I'm Notre Dame, but maybe during the week we play a new opponent, I'll start using them on college football. Yeah I like that.
Yeah, because because Lauren, I just said that you weren't very good at playing at playing video games. He said they used to beat you like every time that you guys played back in college.
He said some very mean things about your video gaming ability, actually. You know what? Listen, man, like I don't think it was as bad as he tried to portray.
But I know he won probably more than I did for sure.

But my point is like, you need to spend more time preparing, studying, getting ready for

whatever we're getting ready for and less time playing that game.

Yeah, fair point.

But I do like the angle of taking your next opponent and just playing just college football

25 with them every single week just to get ready like you're scouting before the scouting.

That's right.

Exactly right.

I'm like, this is genius, man.

You can play a game, play with your kids, but also be able to say, okay, we're scouting our opponent. Yeah.
I mean, the stadium pulse for, was it Kyle Field? That's going to be an intense environment. Have you thought about that? I mean, they have the 12th man, but Notre Dame has the real 12th man, Jesus, on their side.
But that's going to be a tough environment to go into. Yeah, it's going to be loud.
You know, we've played in some tough environments, but the thing about it, you have to prepare for it. And so we have obviously a pretty loud speaker system here that you have to be able to plan, prepare, you know, something unique this year is that we have the coach to play or communication and you have to be able to prepare to be able to hear that maybe with the crowd noise, but also there's times you might not be able to hear it.
So we have to prepare for both of those things. But at the end of the day, like if we execute, it won't be as loud as we think it's going to be.
Yeah. I got a tough question, but you're, you're such a compelling speaker and every time you, you post a video of you, you know, recruiting or talking to the guys, I'm like, man, I want to run through.
I don't like Notre Dame.

I'll just tell you that.

But I want to run through a brick wall.

But your career was cut short because you have an enlarged heart.

How long did it take to kind of mentally get over that that was taken from you?

Because it's got to be really difficult to be like, my body, I feel fine.

I can play the game.

But I can't anymore because the doctors found something. Was that, how long did that take for you to, to, to get over that? You know, I think at that time, um, I was wrestling back and forth.
It was like, man, how long am I going to be able to play in if I had a couple of knee injuries? I would have been on a couple of teams and, and I was kind of going back and forth. And then when the Colts called and said, Hey, we want to sign you.
I remember talking to my college coach. He's like, look, play as long as you can.
And when they found the enlarged heart valve, like it's obviously something you don't want to hear and you're not expecting to hear. But as long as like, man, this is a sign from God, like, hey, enough is enough.
You know, move on. You're not good enough to to play in the NFL.
And let's let's start this next chapter so I remember

driving home from Indianapolis and calling my coach and saying listen coach Tress I'm a I can't play anymore I'm ready to be a graduate assistant and he said okay show up first thing tomorrow morning at 6 30 and we're gonna get started on this journey that's I mean that's the perfect next step so do you do you use it uh as a positive in recruiting ever where you're like hey I can love you more than any coach like literally no i try to use that maybe with my wife and and maybe sometimes the kids but using that in recruiting for sure so we we were lucky enough to interview jim trestle like seven or eight years ago um has he instilled the love of punting into you at all? He is definitely a guy that values field position. Yes.
There's at times that I remember those things and remember that motto, but there's also times I'm a little bit more aggressive. You know, he was an offensive guy.
He comes from the offensive side. You know, I come from the defensive side of the ball, but I'm a little bit more aggressive than coach was.
So I know there's times I go for it, maybe on fourth that he's probably shaking his head and says punt the football. But there's also times I remember that little birdie saying, Hey, punt the ball, win the battlefield position.
Yeah. He's obsessed with it.
We like what we rattled off different situations. He just like, Oh yeah, that was a punt.
Incredible punt by us. Like we pinned him deep.
It was, it was like the Sean McVay clips where he's like talking about a great play he drew up and it's just jim tressel talking about punks it was the most beautiful play in sports because yeah the the possession switches on a punt both teams get possession of the ball and he was just obsessed with it he was the first person to ever and i still use it to this day that told me the punt is the most important play in football. And that was something I heard for years and years, the most important play, the most important play.
And now as a head coach, I still use it just because it's the one play you can guarantee at least around 40 yards of field position. And there are some, obviously some really positive signs of having an elite punter and a really good punt unit, but there's a times on fourth down coach, I got to go for it.
Yeah. Speaking of coach Trestle, have you had a conversation with him about today's college football and being like, man, this is different because this is, he's kind of the poster boy for like, can you believe this is what the NCAA did? And now we're at a point where players are getting paid, which we're all in support of, but have you had that conversation? Like, man, this is it's nuts where we've ended up.
Yeah, we've had many conversations. And I think he's obviously accepted what's going on with the NCAA and how the game has changed and players getting paid.
We don't really discuss, you know, obviously his situation and where we're at now. But, you know, coach is such a an outside thinker, right? Old school where he I remember his advice to me was now with guys getting paid transfer portal.
You have to double down on relationships and brotherhood because, you know what? You've got guys from all over. You know, some are transfers for one year, some some from for two years.
He's like, you have to double down on your brotherhood and getting these guys to commit to Notre Dame and each other. And so that's the most Jim Trestle response to NIL and Transfer Portal.
But, yeah, it's crazy how times have changed. It's wild to look back on that and think to yourself, there was a six-month news cycle where people were pretending to get upset because college players got tattoos it led off every show and people had to pretend to be mad about it and we were sitting at home like what is the big deal about this why are people so upset about it did you get any free tattoos no no i didn't get any free tattoos and i'll make sure i put that on the record right now.
You kind of look to your left arm there. Yeah.

I got long sleeves on, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You had a viral moment.

It might've been last year or the year before where you were able to flip it on a reporter who is your son's coach.

Is that?

Yeah.

So how good did that feel?

That must've been like, it's, it's ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun.

You, you finally had your moment, but did he change any of his coaching after you you questioned him in the press conference that might have been the only game I could have went to it was uh during a bye week and um I remember going out to seeing one of my kids play and and I look and I'm like man his coach is one of our reporters and so I'm kind of just laughing and watching and he might have made some decisions that maybe I don't agree with. And the result wasn't what I'm sure he wanted.
So I remember yelling to him on the field like, hey, Tim, I'm going to ask you about these plays tomorrow. And I think he thought I was joking, but I had it written down.
I was ready to go after him a little bit. But it was all in good faith and good nature.
Good dude. It just shows you a little bit of how small town, you know, South Bend is, is that, you know, you got a guy that can ask you questions in a press conference and next thing you know he's coaching one of your kids in a flag football league.
But that's what makes it different around here. Yeah, it was a great moment.
It was – I mean, I feel like every coach probably watched that and was like, man, I wish I had that moment. The worst thing about it is he did the ultimate no-no

and he started blaming his other coach.

It happened.

I'm like, hold on now.

If I start blaming our coach, you guys are going to write about me for days.

So it was great to turn the table on.

If that ever happens again, I'll offer our publication, Barstool Sports,

if you'd like to write a blog about his coaching decision.

Yeah, you should start just your own newspaper. And then you start calling for his job.
That's what we'll do. I won't waste time in the press conference.
I'm just going to write a blog about it for sure. A lot of people are calling for this guy's job, saying he doesn't have what it takes, melting down in crucial moments.
You go over every fourth down decision he makes. Yeah, it would be good for you because then you get to think about it from the standpoint of a reporter too, and then you get to understand their point of view and their questioning you later on.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
It would work both ways. What's the key to recruiting? Because you are a great recruiter.
You've had great recruiting classes in your short time at Notre Dame. Like I said, when i watch videos i i'm not a notre dame fan but i'm a marcus freeman fan so what like what is it that you think that you do better than uh other guys or you found has worked more i think you know the the thing i always believe in is you have to have something good to sell um you have to believe in what you're selling but at at the end of the day, it's going to come down to relationships.
And that is more important than anything. Can you get this young person and his family to trust you and your football program to lead their son for four years? And I'm actually going through it right now with my oldest son.
And he's gone on a couple official visits for wrestling. And I remember him coming home last night.
He got home from a visit last night and he was like, man, I really liked it. This was a great school.
And I'm like, what about the official visit you took two weeks ago? He was like, yeah, that was good too. But at the end of the day, I was like, young people can be persuaded in a moment, but who's going to continue to develop relationships and pour into you after the visit? And that's what I was like, you know what? It's still about relationships because you can try to sell as much as you want on a visit and say, let's get them to commit right now.
But not many guys are just going to do it on that moment. And so can you continue to double down, continue to develop relationships with that kid? So at the end of the day, they're like, you know what? This is where I want to be.
And even after they come in, you have to keep doing it because everybody else is still recruiting. Everybody else is trying to get that kid to come visit their place.
And so you have to continuously recruit and develop relationships with that person until he gets here on campus. Yeah.
Has the de-recruiting, has that been affected at all with the rule changes? We've always heard in the past that once you get a guy to come to school, then they show up, they get in camp, and then all of a sudden you have to check his ego a little bit because in the past you've gassed him up, we need you here, you're going to start here, you're going to do great here. Then they get into practice, and now they have to be coached hard just like everybody else.
Have you had to change that at all with the new rules about the transfer portal and all that? No, I haven't. I don't, you listen, I don't intentionally try to de-recruit you, but I am honest.
And if there's times you need to be corrected or coached hard, we're going to do that. Like that's a part of trying to get the best out of you.
And what I'm hoping is that the relationships we build in recruiting, the relationships we'll continuously build here, helps you understand that. You know what? Coach cares about me.
So he's getting on me. That's why we're doing it.
When you just get on people and yell and scream and you don't have a relationship with them and you don't tell them why. Yeah, they're going to say, man, this dude is nuts.
I don't want to play for him. I'm ready to move on somewhere else.
But if you can continue to tell them why, have a relationship with them, but be authentic and coach them hard and coach them and coach others around them hard, I think they'll truly respect that. And that's the way this program does it.
Yeah, it's fair. So Big Cat, as he said, he's not a Notre Dame fan.
You could say he's a Notre Dame hater. Yeah, I go back and forth.
I like you. I don't really feel that strongly one way or the other about Notre Dame.
Let's just say that Big Cat and I are – we're brothers and we're in high school. We're 17 years old and we're five-star recruits.
How do you pitch us to come play football at Notre Dame? That's a great, great question. Great question.
It's going to start with explaining to you that every goal you have as a football player, you can achieve at Notre Dame, right? You can achieve. I want to win my conference.
Yeah. Well, then that's not a great, you want to rather win a national championship or a conference? Well, yeah, one at a time.
I don't want to go to class. Well, then you're not, you are definitely not coming to Notre Dame.
That's a part of it, right? Is that we got to figure out what guys would fit here too, you know? And that's the one thing, like if you you talk to a guy or you look at his transcript and say, okay, he doesn't enjoy going to class, he's not going to go to class, you have to move on. Like, instead of trying to fight the university to get this person into school, you got to move on because they're not going to succeed here anyway, you know? And so that's probably the most important thing to say, okay, everybody wants the great players.
Every school in the country wants this pool of players. Okay.
How do we figure out which one of these guys in this pool will fit at Notre Dame? And then you just go after them as hard as everybody else, but everybody wants that kid. And so we have to figure out which ones want that and fit here and then just go after them.
And one, like I said earlier, like I don't want to teach in football. I want you to believe that you can achieve every goal you have in football here.
But hold on, let me also show you to what else this place provides you. Because at some point it's going to be over.
We all dream of playing as long as Tom Brady, but there's one Tom Brady. And you have to understand a place like this can truly set you up for life after football also.
Okay, so we got off on the wrong foot as recruits. Let's say, okay, hey, coach, my goals in life are to play a little bit of college football than be hired as a financial analyst in Chicago by an alum from Notre Dame.
Do you think this is a place I should go? There's a no-brainer.

I would list every single

one that has done that, that we have

in this network. I would get you on the phone

with them. Okay, nice.

It would be over.

Maybe try my hand at doing some college football

analysis on NBC

for a couple seasons

and then switch over. You guys are giving me layups now.

You're giving me layups.

You guys will leave campus.

I said, they're done.

They're coming to Notre Dame.

Let's get somebody.

I just want to meet the Golics.

I want to pet the Golics pugs and make that happen.

That's done.

They'll be here on your visit.

That's what we'll take.

On your visit, you'll get a chance to meet them.

I got a dumb question, and it's something I just never thought about.

You just named your captains.

You got five captains this year. How is that process working? Is it difficult for you to have to whittle it down to be like, hey, here's our five captains.
Are there guys that you feel? Can you name? If I were the coach, I'd be like, everyone's a captain. Why not? But can you name, like, as many captains as you want, or is there a rule you got to stick it to five? No.
Four can walk out for the coin toss. But I just believe that, you know, the, the number of captains will be based off the voting.
And you'll, I'm trying to, I'm not trying to give away one of the episodes of our here come the Irish, but that's going to be on there, how we did it. And basically to me, I described what I believe a captain is, what I believe a leader is.
And it's not always what you think it is. I was saying, OK, if you want this responsibility, you really want to do this stand up.

And it was interesting to see who really stood up and who wanted to be an opportunity to be named a captain.

You know, not many people did it, as you would think.

Not as many people as you would think did it.

And then what I got to do after that is when you vote, I got to say, okay, right. What's the right number.
Okay. You got a clump here.
You got a clump here. You got a couple of guys here.
Like what's the right number, um, to truly lead this football team. And, and that's how I came up with five last year was four.
I think my first year was three. And so I also don't want to be a coach that has a 10 captains.
Like want to say, what's really a captain? Who fits this mode? And we'll name them from there. This is why I'd be a bad coach because I would just take my best player who is eyeing the transfer portal and just slap that C on him.
Be like, can't leave now, dude. You're the captain.
Oh, my gosh. You would lose all credit of what a captain is.
Yeah, but I'd keep that player. I'd keep that player.

He can't leave.

Every player would threaten to transfer.

Like every week.

Coach, I'm thinking about going to.

They'd come in my office and be like, yeah, I'm thinking about going to Alabama,

and I'd just pull out the C from underneath my desk and be like, what about this?

There you go.

Is that a C can pay you a little NIL money or not?

Maybe, maybe, yeah.

It's like a pinata.

It's a giant C that you hit, yeah.

Coach, this is probably a dumb question for me, too, because, again, I don't know that much about Notre Dame football. But when people say wake up the echoes, are they awake this year? Are we going to wake them up? What does wake up the echoes mean? They're up.
They better be up. I think really it's just a credit to the past, right? Wake up the echoes, those that have been here, those that believe in this place.
Listen, I didn't come up with the slogan. I've embraced it all in, you know, but I don't know where the slogan originally came from, you know.
So the echoes were asleep, but then you got to wake up the echoes. Am I getting that right? Like they were asleep at some point, and then it's your job to wake up the echoes on a weekly basis? That sounds good to me.
I really have never asked what the heck that slogan means. You might hear me say it every once in a while, but listen, that description sounds really, really good.
Okay. Yeah, you just got to be loud.
That's what I'm hearing. The echoes are loud.
No, hear the part of it. It's a part of our fight song.
Yeah. It's a part of our song, and so that's probably where they got it from.
They took the slogan. But the meaning behind it, that sounds pretty good.
Do you ever like on a fall day, you catch the wind and you're like, wait, was that an echo? Or was that? No, that wasn't an echo. No.
Okay. Yeah, because Notre Dame is one of those.
I don't like Notre Dame, but I've said it three times now.

I do like when Notre Dame's in the mix.

It's fun when Notre Dame is in the mix.

It's good for college football.

There's something about the gold helmets.

It's just – it is college football,

and I guess that would be waking up the echoes.

Yeah, I guess we'll wake them up.

Yeah, I'll wake them up. I wouldn't mind having the echoes.

I want to then put them back to sleep, but we'll wake them up.

Yeah, they should be awake.

Coach, do you have special access to old Notre Dame game film? How far back does that go? Yeah, you can black and white. You could find any Notre Dame game film.
I don't sit here and watch a lot. No, I don't go way back that far.
But you have access to anything you want around here. Have you gone back to see if Rudy was off sides?

No, I just listen, whatever the movie shows is what I believe.

Okay, that's fair.

Not everybody's going to believe that, right? I've

heard some many people say he was

off sides, but the movie doesn't say that, so I'm going to

go with what the movie says. I think that's smart.

Yeah. So,

I went to Wisconsin. I'm a

Badger. You obviously coached with Luke

Fickle at Cincinnati.

He's a psycho.

What would you say, like, his

Thank you. I went to Wisconsin.
I'm a Badger. You obviously coached with Luke Fickle at Cincinnati.

He's a psycho.

What would you say his best attribute is and maybe the most psycho thing he does?

Because I obviously love him, and I hope he has tremendous success.

But what is it like being around him?

He's demanding, but he does care about young people.

He's tough. One of the toughest dudes I know, obviously a wrestler played nose guard at Ohio state.
Um, very demanding of, of those around him. Um, but the same demands that he puts on those around him, he puts on himself.
Uh, but he will, he will continue to make sure that program is, is truly reaching his full potential. He's going to get everything out of those guys and the coaching staff there.
So he actually coached me as a player at Ohio State when I was a lot of people there. And so our relationship goes back many, many years.
And I wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for the things he taught me in our years together. So I have a lot of respect for him and look forward to see what he does in Wisconsin.
Did he ever challenge you to a wrestling match? I'm not stupid not stupid now. There's a lot of stories I've heard about him as a wrestler and that's just one of those opportunities that I'll pass out.
Who do you think would win in a fight? Luke Fickle or Mike Vrabel? Ooh. I plead to fit.
I really do. But I would pay a lot of money to watch that.
Yeah. Vrabel, we had him on a month ago.
He said he could whoop him. I don't think so.
Yeah. Vrabel is very confident about his ability to beat Fickle's ass.
Yeah. I don't think that's.
I bet you both, those two, would both say they're going to whoop each other. Yeah.
And that's only, listen, the only way to figure out who wins that one is they got to go after it, man. They're going to start fighting, and then they'll be like,

I really enjoy fighting you, and then they'll just stop the fight

and be best friends again.

I feel like that's how it's going to work between the two of them.

As a defensive guy yourself, I feel like a lot of coaches go through this

if they come up on the defensive side of the ball, former player,

they get elevated to a head coaching position, and they feel like,

okay, I can't be the full-blown defensive psycho that I used to be in the past because now I'm in charge of the entire team. At that point, do you hire somebody on your defense to fill that role of being just the crazy guy that's going to be able to dial up that intensity a little bit? Or are you staying the same person going from defense to being the head coach? Yeah, I think the intensity you coach with doesn't change if you're the coordinator head coach, right? You're going to, if you're an intense person, you're going to coach with intensity.
You're going to have the energy and emotions. But at the end of the day, you're going to hire somebody as your defense coordinator that can get the job done.
And we've done that here. We got a great defensive coordinator in Al Golden.
But, you know, I'm not looking for somebody to just be a raw, raw guy.

I want somebody who's really good.

And, you know, we got one here. Yeah.
All right, Coach, I know you've got to run in a second. Last question for me, a rowback question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com, promo code TAKE, 20% off your first purchase, Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, rowback.com.
Quick analytics question for you. You're down 14 and uh it's the fourth quarter and you score with three and a half minutes left are you going for two or are you kicking the extra point uh kicking extra point oh no yeah that's wrong just so you know it's a math thing that's what your that's that's what your analytics book will tell you uh yeah It's a math thing.
That's what your analytics book will tell you? Yeah, it's a math thing. I should have said, do you not trust your two-point play? No, I just don't know if I want to use it at that moment.
Yeah, you do want to use it at that moment. Remember this conversation.
This will happen. I know what the book would tell you.
The book would tell you to go for two, so if you don't get it, you have more time to try to do it onside kick.

No, no, no. It's not onside kick.

It's a two-point conversion. If you have a good

two-point conversion, it's probably over 50%

success. You go for two.
If you

get it the first time, then you can win the game

with an extra point. If you don't get it,

the analytics say you're going to get it the

second time statistically.

Yeah, or you can say, hey, listen, man, we make two extra points. We'll go to overtime.
Oh, no. Coach.
I like it. You're the exact reason.
That's why there's a lot of great things out of that book, but there's also some head coach decisions that I got to make that definitely I can't always go by the book. All right, so promise me this.
Whenever this situation comes up and you kick the extra point and you lose in overtime, you have to come back on, pardon my take, just so we can be like, see? And then if we win, then what do I get out of it? Lucky. You got lucky.
Yeah, you got lucky. That's how we do.
You'll come to a game. You'll wear your Notre Dame jersey and be on a sideline.
Fine, if you win that way, I'll do that. I like your train of thought, though, which is like if we get to overtime, there's more football.
We're a better football team. We'll probably win in overtime.
I love it. But if you're a better football team, you wouldn't have been down 14.
But I would rather – okay, that's a fair point, too. Yeah.
But I like the idea – I still like the idea that nerds aren't always right in football. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, listen, there are analytical studies and opinions out there and when you should go for it on fourth, when you should go for two-point conversions.
But there's also a human element to it, you know, and I have to, at the end of the day, use my best judgment, uh, on what I believe is right for that right situation. And then again, there's a situation where I totally a hundred percent agree with the book, right.
Use the book, but there's also times where, you know what, I got to make sure that I can make a decision that I believe is best for the team in that game. And that's actually on, on me coach, because like, obviously you're synonymous with Notre Dame.
Now you're the head football coach i forgot you didn't go to notre dame you have an ohio state education so those type of numbers you'd have to take off your shoes and your socks to count to 14 i hear you man i know that wisconsin degree did you really well brother oh look at me now i got one last last question for you it's another analytics question okay so you're in the fourth quarter in this scenario and you're losing 31 to 23 you have the ball there's two minutes nine seconds left to play it's fourth down and goal and you're on what the eight yard line you're on the eight yard line fourth and goal again you're already lost okay say this one more time down eight and it's fourth and eight on the eight-yard – fourth and goal on the eight-yard line. And there's two minutes, nine seconds left in the game.
Mm-hmm. Fourth down.
Do you kick a field goal to bring the margin from eight to five? A one-score game to a one-score game. With two minutes, nine seconds left.
Or do you go for a touchdown, and then you could maybe get a two-point conversion and tie the game? I'm going for it. The reason is even if you kick the field, at some point you've got to stop them.
If we don't get the first down, guess what? We've got to stop them. I forgot to mention too, in this scenario, Tom Brady is the quarterback of the opposing team.
He's the best quarterback to ever play, hypothetically.etically. Hypothetically.
So it would probably be tough to stop him. You're right.
So I think you made the right call. Yeah, you made the right call.
You could be an NFL head coach. Yeah, you got it.
What does the book say? Go for it. Yeah, go for it.
The book says go for it. Yeah, do the opposite of what Matt LaFleur did.
Okay, so coach, thank you so much. Everyone tune in.
It's going to be great. They basically have their own hard knocks it's gonna be awesome on peacock august 29th uh really appreciate you coming on and i will stand to it if you win a game in the scenario that i laid out i will go to a notre dame game with the notre dame hat on and everything and cheer and wake up the echoes but if you lose in that situation you got to come back on us.
No doubt about it, man. At least we might be in your head now if that situation comes up.
That's all we care about. Man, I might have to go for two now.
Yep. All right.
Thanks so much, Coach. Appreciate your time.
Awesome, man. It's been fun, man.
Good to see you guys. All right.
See you, man. Good luck.
Marcus Freeman was brought to you by our great friends at Game time i have huge news about the game time app they've got something brand new it's called game time picks football season's here we can't wait to get out to some games this fall with the help of game time the official ticketing partner of barstool sports we can't make it to many sunday games i'm actually looking at going to that monday night game bangals and the Commanders, get a chance to go out and see some football live in person, or if you're looking to attend the opening kickoff game, the Chiefs and the Ravens. Big Cat, how much is that with game time picks? All right, so you can get in for 240, which is great, but you also, if you hit the game time picks feature at the top, and I'm seeing some awesome seats for 523 that look like They're going to be right in the end zone high up looking right at the banner or 301 is on the 35 yard line on the on the on the high up uh section which i think that's the best place to watch football that's pretty good so what game time picks does it filters out all the fluff and it shows you only the best deals great seats.
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Okay, we now welcome on our good friend, Andy Staples, for a little college football preview. Andy Staples from the On3 Network.
You can listen to his podcast. It is college football season, Andy.'re very excited let's start big picture this is our first year with the 12 team playoff um so how do you think that's going to affect uh the regular season i've heard it you know there's there's two camps regular season doesn't matter as much i'm in the camp of we're now going to get games uh that are elimination games in November that never would have had a shot to be that a two loss team versus two loss team maybe even a three loss team versus two loss team kind of things where we get more games that mean more towards the end of the season yeah both camps are correct big cat but it's not it's not going to be the regular season doesn't matter anymore like that camp is wrong ultimately but they're right in the fact that you don't have the nuclear impact right of say the kick six or michigan ohio state last year would be a good example of that where they're just just like, okay, you're out.
That's it.

Right.

But what you're going to have is a lot more elimination-type games. Like the Big 12, any game that affects who gets into the Big 12 championship game is a playoff elimination game.
Yeah. And that could be four games a week in November.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, I'm excited for the Big 12. The big 12 is, is, uh, it feels like it's with all the alignment, realignment, which is a bummer and losing the pack 12, which is a bummer.
I'm happy that the big 12, at least on paper feels like it's still going to be the chaotic, uh, conference. That's just going to be week to week.
You have no idea some high scoring games. I need the big 12 to keep that mo for college football yeah yeah and and guys like you guys are gonna love that because you you just love watching good games like it doesn't have to be big name brands and that's why i keep trying to tell people about the big 12 everybody's so even like i can make a case for 10 of the 16 big 12 teams to win the championship this year and go to the college football playoff and like I can argue it pretty convincingly for all 10 and that's going to be great once we get down into October and November and then you know I think people will fall in love with that as we go on so the new Big 12 is is fun I think the new SEC out of its mind, like insane, what these games are going to be.
I mean, you think about Georgia, Texas, and you got Georgia going to Alabama. You've got Texas and Texas A&M playing again.
You've got Oklahoma playing LSU. Like these, these matchups that are going to become standard regular season matchups just are mind blowing me right now.
Yeah, it's going to be great once we get into it. I mean, conference realignment, it's bad for a whole lot of reasons.
It's confusing. I think it loses some of the stuff that makes college football great that we love about college football.
But when it comes down to it on Saturdays, when we sit down on our couches, we're going to see these two teams like Georgia and Texas playing each other in conference in Austin, and we're going to be like, okay, this is fun. I can at least acknowledge that.
So I guess we can start with the SEC. Let's talk SEC.
There's a lot of good teams. I think that the Longhorns have a chance.
Their hardest game is Georgia at home. They do have to travel to Michigan, obviously, and they lost their big boys up front on defense.
But who do you like in the SEC right now? Who's your top team? So I still like Georgia in the SEC, and I'm much higher on Alabama than I think most people are. I don't think they drop off that much.
I remember going up there in the spring and just looking at the amount of aliens walking around on the field. It hasn't changed.
Yes, they did lose Caleb Downio state and that's a that's a big loss like caleb downs was the best player who entered the transfer portal this offseason but they're still top three in talent in the whole country i think it's them ohio state and georgia in some order and so i think they could be very good and their schedule is not you know like georgia's schedule where they have to go to Tuscaloosa, to Ole Miss, to Texas.

I think they got a worse draw than Alabama did.

So I think Alabama could be very good, could be an SEC championship game type team.

Texas can definitely make the SEC championship game, which remember no more East and West. west this is like top two they just came out with a tiebreakers last week and uh yeah there's a random draw at the end which i just i i want to do a coin flip at a truck stop if they get to that but it will be pretty crazy at the top of the sec because you have all those teams and then like in the sec in the big 10 schedules matter so much more yeah what did you draw like texas of the ones that were like texas georgia alabama ole miss texas and ole miss probably got the the best draws of those two missouri and tennessee got pretty good draws oklahoma got screwed lsu got screwed and florida they just basically backed over with a bulldozer yeah well florida and flor probably not going to be very good regardless they're not going to be as good as those teams I mentioned but it doesn't matter with that schedule I I like the Alabama tape because I was thinking about it you know obviously it's gonna be very bizarre not seeing Nick Saban on the sideline but is there a chance that with Kalen DeBoer taking the job who's had success everywhere he's gone, that Jalen Milrow is actually going to be a lot better? Because, you know, he struggled last year at times.
I was at that Texas game when he couldn't complete a pass. But Kalen DeBoer, he's going to throw it deep.
That's what his offenses do. Jalen Milrow is probably the best deep passer in college football.
His problem is throwing it 10 yards over the middle. I think Alabama's offense is going to be insanely explosive and something like you saw maybe five years ago when they had that wide receiver room that was probably the best wide receiver room in the history of college football.
Now, they don't have the wide receiver room right now, although they like some of their young guys. There's a freshman named Caleb Odom that they love but I I think they could have a very good offense I think Jalen Millro is going to be better this year no matter what happened because think about what happened last year guys like Tommy Reese is the new offensive coordinator he comes in they're not really sure who their guy is they're like okay we guess it's Jalen Millro and they go with him for the first couple games they lose the Texas game and I'm still not still not convinced they didn't go you know what we're tired of hearing you guys yell at us about the quarterback we're gonna start these we're gonna start one of the other guys and see what and you'll see what we've been seeing yeah and so they start tyler buckner against usf they play him and ty simpson and it's like see he's no role was the best option yes yes and i just yeah i think alabama people because of the Saban part, maybe they're a little underrated for the first time in a long time where I still think they're going to be a really, really tough team and that offense is going to be explosive.
What about Tennessee? Because Tennessee's got some big boys. It feels like they're finally kind of putting it all.
You know, they got the quarterback they want you think this is the Tennessee fans being like, hey, it feels like 98. Can we actually have it feel like 98? I think they're feeling pretty good right now in Tennessee.
James Pierce Jr. is their best player.
He's an edge rusher, probably a top-ten draft pick next year. Deepest defensive line they've had since I was a baby beat writer covering Tennessee, and had John Henderson and Albert Hainsworth and Will Overstreet.
It's been a long time since Tennessee's been that stacked on the D-line. And then offensively, Nico Iamaliaba takes over a quarterback.
And this is like a great test case because Nico's like the first big NIL deal, the first guy who went to a place where maybe you didn't expect him to go because he got a big NIL deal. And I actually think their offense is going to be quite a bit better than it was last year because basically they had to give up the middle of the field because Joe Milton couldn't do a lot of the things that they needed him to do to run the full offense.
Joe Milton didn't have real good instincts on the read option mesh. He couldn't do a lot of RPO stuff.
Nico can do that. Nico also has much better improvisational skills, which that was what made Hendon Hooker so good in this offense.
If some stuff broke down, he could find you five or six yards instead of it being an incomplete pass, an interception, or a five-yard loss. He could just find a little bit of a positive gain.
Nico's going to be able to do that too and i think that helps tennessee i also think tennessee's schedule helps like i didn't see state week two that's pretty tough but if they can go two and one and this is not an easy stretch by any occasion but if they go two and one against alabama georgia and oklahoma they're going to the playoff yeah like they're gonna be 11 and one or 10-2, and they're going to the playoff. But I think they're talented enough to do that.
Georgia's the kind of bugaboo for them. They've never really matched up well against them.
So what's going on at Georgia? Obviously, their quarterback's coming back again, right? So he's got some experience there. And then there's been, how do we say, like off the field, on road issues for the georgia bulldogs recently is that any different than what happens all across college football or is this a problem that is and maybe they turn a blind eye to it in a lot of places or has this just been a georgia problem it's worse because georgia had a traffic incident where two people died a couple years ago.
And that magnifies it quite a bit.

But I remember when I was a Florida beat writer covering the Urban Meyer teams, I just skipped past all the traffic stuff because there were so many more serious arrests to deal with. But yeah, every team deals with this traffic stuff.
With Georgia, you'd think though, you've had this, you lost one of your teammates, he lost his life lost his life and you still have guys that are, that are driving very, very fast at times, like in the hundreds, which I get it. Like college students do that, especially when you have NIL money or you have a deal with a dealership that gets you a, a, a Hemi that can go 150 miles an hour.
Like I get it. But at a certain point when the coach is like, knock it off like maybe you do and i i'm actually questioning kirby smart's pull in the city of athens and clark county in the state of georgia because i would assume that kirby smart having won two of the last three national titles could have probably gotten a mass transit system built in athens by now yeah i'm a little i'm a little worried about his level of juice.

Yeah, or just build a road that only Georgia football players can use.

It's like the Audubon, but just for Georgia football players. You can get on it.

It's a straight line.

Go as fast as you want.

They actually have a bypass in Athens, and if you've ever driven around Athens,

there's not really a lot of traffic or people.

They could just repurpose that circular bypass for that purpose.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry. Athens and if you've ever driven around Athens there's not really a lot of traffic or people like they could just repurpose that circular bypass for that purpose yeah yeah um I want to talk real quick about the ACC I love this conference this year just because it feels like every quarterback has transferred into this conference like to the point where Kyle McCord who was Ohio State's starting quarterback last year is now Syracuse uh but Cam Ward uh is electric from Washington State is at Miami.
Grayson McCall, who was Ohio State's starting quarterback last year, is now Syracuse. But Cam Ward is electric from Washington State at Miami.
Grayson McCall, who we all know, is now at NC State. What's the team that you look at here? And is ACC a multi-team in the playoff type of league this year? That's a good question.
That's really up to the likes of Miami and Florida State and NC State and Louisville. Can there be a second team that is really good? Like, to make that happen, you need a championship game that's essentially like an 11-1 team against a 10-2 team, and the 10-2 team wins.
Right, yeah. Like, you got to have that.
Miami has the roster and the schedule for that. Cam Ward, everybody's excited about him.
I know everybody's excited about him. I realize he was the top-ranked quarterback in the portal.
I will tell you from watching Cam Ward through the years, it's a little feast or famine there. So we're going to find out.
Cam Ward's first game is at Florida. It's going to be very loud.
They probably have the better roster, but we're going to see how he deals with that. If he can, then I'm very confident about them against this schedule.
You look at it, they should not go worse than 10-2 against this schedule. Let's say they lose to Florida State.
Florida State is, again, the best team in the ACC which is possible then you could have them rematch in the ACC championship game both with really good records and maybe both get in but NC State's in there we'll see what happens with Clemson because Clemson's gonna have a really good defense but they're gonna need you know one of those freshman receivers to be really good Cade Clubnick at going to have to get better. They're playing Georgia right out of the chute.
I'm wondering what the takes are going to be after that Georgia game because Clemson is one of four teams in the FBS that did not take a single transfer out of the transfer portal. The other three are all service academies.
So Clemson is the only one that doesn't require a congressperson to help you get in that didn't take anybody. Yeah, I'm excited for that Florida State Clemson game, the DJ Ungulele revenge game.
That will be fun because it does. You look up and down the entire ACC and it's just guys you know who are somewhere else.
Obviously, Cade Clemson is still at Clemson. but it's going to be a fun league because on paper, it looks like they have some good quarterbacks who played big-time football who kind of like – it was kind of like the Pac-12 last year where it was just like you look up and down the Pac-12 and everyone's got a quarterback they feel good about who's been in these big spots.
And watch Virginia Tech. Yeah.
Their quarterback is Kyron Drones who transferred from Baylor before last season season and it sort of took him about half a year to get it kind of figured out how it worked with him but they they've got him and then they brought in Colin Schley who was Sean Lewis's quarterback at Kent State a couple years ago he was at UCLA last year but if you look at the 2022 season what quarterback played the best at Georgia that was Colin Sch So he's their backup. So they should be a little bit confident to be able to run drones, which he's a very good athlete.
And I just remember I was at the ACC spring meetings this past May and whether it was coaches or ADs or people who just really cover the league thoroughly, every one of them was like, watch out for Virginia Tech this year. Yeah.
He's got a big arm too, right? Drones? Kyron Drones absolutely has a big arm. And we'll just say Brent Prye sort of has gotten his legs as a head coach.
It was a little shaky at first. Like you weren't sure this was going to work out.
And then kind of halfway through last season, it seemed like he figured some stuff out. Tyler Bowen, their offensive coordinator who had not been an offensive coordinator before this job, he kind of figured some stuff out.
So I think they could be considerably better. Yeah.
What about Duke? Duke seems like they might be, I don't want to say good, but I'm interested by Duke because Manny Diaz, right? I don't think Mike Elko left the cupboard there. And then you look at when Manny Diaz took over.
They had several guys enter the transfer portal and say,

you know what, I think I'm going to stay here.

And they bring in Malik Murphy, the transfer from Texas, who started two games for Texas when Quinn Ewers was hurt last year

and won them both.

They're going to be tricky.

They're going to be tricky because I don't think Mike Elko leaves

and they just fall off.

And I also think Manny Diaz, I'm glad he's got another shot at the head coach because I think Mario Cristobal's first two years at Miami show you, Manny was doing a pretty good job at Miami, and then he goes and does a great job as the Penn State defensive coordinator. So this is a good chance for him to show, hey, look, I can do this head coaching thing.
You were talking about the spring meetings. It got me thinking about just media days in general for coaches and amongst the different leagues i personally love sec media day i think that's one of my favorite days of the year you always get some coach that goes out there that has like a point to prove and they've got like a quote that they're ready to unleash and sometimes the quote doesn't even match up with the question that they're asked they're just like i know i got to get this out um can you describe to us the different vibes of the different conference media days yes yeah so i i've been to all of them at this point i some of them i haven't been to as recently as the others but i was at sec and big 10 this year uh big 12 is the most chill like where you big 12 is the one where you might just run into a coach in a back hallway and he's like hey what's up what'd you eat last night where you know where you go and you're gonna get that at the big 12 the sec is very stage managed like we've got to get this guy here we've got to get this guy here this guy has three minutes and 32 seconds with you and then he's got to go over here for four minutes and 34 seconds and basically they're just running them around and then running them through these various ESPN rooms.
Big 10 is in Lucas Oil Stadium and it's fairly stage managed, but like Brett Bielema is just going to be hanging at some point. They just sit down next to Brett Bielema.
What's up? How's it going? Man of the people. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Or PFT, your guy, Kurt Cignetti, former JMU coach, current Indiana coach, he hypnotized me at Big Ten Media Days this year. Hypnotized me.
I'm talking to him, and I'm like, oh, crap. Indiana's going to be good, aren't they? They're basically, they took like half of JMU's team from last year, and I'm looking at their schedule.
I'm like, so these lower-tier Big Ten teams, could they have beaten JMU last year? I don't know if they could have.

No.

So I want to say their total is five and a half.

I think I'm all in on Indiana making a bowl game and cashing that over ticket.

I like that.

I'm going to count every single Indiana win this year as a JMU win in the Big Ten.

You should.

For sure.

And Signetti, I think he's as close to a Nick Saban clone in his mannerisms

and how he manages a football team as you can possibly get. I'm not saying he is Nick Saban or that level of coach.
More public bravado than Nick Saban, though. When someone asks about him, he's like, I just win everywhere.
Google it. Nick Saban would never say that, but Kirk Signetti will say that.
Also, he's 62. He looks like he's 47.
I don't know. There's maybe a Dorian Gray thing going on here.
I'm not sure. But when you're in his presence, you're like, oh, man, this guy's going to win more than he's supposed to.
He did poke the bear, though, and he was like, yeah, we're going to beat Ohio State. We're going to beat Michigan.
That was a tough entrance that he made at Indiana. But we'll see.
I believe they play them back-to-back. They're not going to beat Ohio State.
They're going to lose by 40. I got a question about Ohio State, though.
Ohio State's the best team in the Big Ten on paper. Oregon would have an argument.
It does feel like it's Ohio State and Oregon, and then Penn State and Michigan should both have a chance, maybe even USC. But are we sure Will Howard is good enough to win a national title at Ohio State? I mean, Ryan Day this year, he has to beat Michigan.
We know he has to beat Michigan. If he doesn't beat Michigan, they're going to be like – who knows how the season goes.
Let me push back on that big catch. Does he have to beat Michigan the first time? Yeah, true.
Well, it might not be Michigan the second time, though, because it might be Oregon, right? But if you win the national title, do we care? No, that's true. Let me ask you this, guys.
If that kick that rung in the new year in 2023 in the Peach Bowl, if that kick goes in, and obviously Ohio State would have crushed TCU in the championship game, do we feel differently about Ryan Day, even if last year's Michigan game is the same thing? Yes. Yeah, you definitely would feel differently.
And I think Ryan Day is a good coach, but I think the pressure for them this year with Michigan is that Michigan is no longer – like they have definitely taken a step back. Oh, yeah, there's no excuse if you lose to this Michigan team with that Ohio State team.
Yeah, there should be a 10-point favorite, maybe even more depending on how the season goes.. And if you can't beat this Michigan, now it's like, what's going on here? Harbaugh's gone.
They're in a little bit of transition. Again, Michigan's still going to be very good.
It's more that they were last year, they were one of the best teams ever, the way they went through everyone. So do you feel like Will Howard, though, is that guy? Because Will Howard's fun to watch.
Will Howard's a gamer. He's tough as nails.
I just don't know if he's the passer that you need when you get to that final four level and you're playing a Georgia or you're playing a Texas or you're playing an Alabama. You need a guy who can hit those deep shots consistently, and he's not really that guy as of yet.
But who did he have at Kansas State? True, true. It's a good point.
Other than Deuce Vaughn two years ago, who was helping him with that? Now, I'm back into this question. I'm going to turn it into a Kansas State question just because I want to talk about Avery Johnson.
But we'll stick with Will Howard at Ohio State right now.

Will Howard's never been surrounded by this kind of talent.

True.

You got Emeka Buka, you got Colonel Tate.

The recruitniks know who J.J. Smith is.

Everybody else is going to know who J.J. Smith is once the season starts.
Jeremiah Smith, number one recruit in the nation for the class of 2024.

You're not really going to miss Marv. Like, I know, I realize that sounds hyperbolic, but this is one of the best, most ready-made receivers that has come into college football in a long, long, long time.
He is unbelievable. Like, the best DBs at Ohio State are saying, I got to go against him at practice because he's the best receiver they have already.
So be ready for that. Plus they have Travion Henderson and Quinshaw.
Yeah. Their run game should be awesome.
Yeah. Yeah.
So like all of that is going to make Will Howard better. So Will Howard is not going to have to be Superman.
Now the thing Will Howard does give you is a six4", 235-pound guy who, when you need him to get some yards, he's going to get you some yards. The question for him is, is he going to be able to take care of the ball enough so that they're scoring and then they let that defense do its thing? Because the defense is the other thing for Ohio State.
Where Ohio State looks a lot like Michigan last year is on defense, where you have all these guys who could have gone to the NFL and not as free agent guys. These would have been third, fourth round draft picks.
And they decided to stay for one more year. They then add Caleb Downs, who, like I said, was the best player in the transfer portal.
He's a safety who allows you to change everything about your defense. He allows you to move Sonny Stiles to linebacker, which is where he should have been playing all along.
They have a very deep defensive line. JT Tuumalao coming off the edge, Tyleek Williams inside.
They have everything, which again goes back to your original point, the there's no excuse. And there really is no excuse.
No. Not only should they win the Big Ten, they should win the national title.
There's no excuse. Right.
It is national title or bust. Right.
I think they're going to be – I'm nitpicking here because that's what you have to do before the season starts. They're going to be a dominant, dominant team.
And that expectation is there now that this is the team that should take them over the hump. I'm excited for the big 10.
I think it's going to be kind of crazy. Oh, I got to tell, I got to tell everybody about Avery Johnson first.
Yes. Yes.
You already know about Avery Johnson. Yes.
But Avery Johnson is the reason Will Howard is Ohio state's quarterback. Yeah.
This, there's this weird thing that has happened with the transfer portal and with NIL where basically if you pay up in NIL for a big-time, highly-ranked quarterback recruit, by year two you better be starting him. So Avery Johnson is a sophomore at Kansas State this year.
He's the reason they let Will Howard go. Jackson Arnold, five-star guy at Oklahoma, he's the reason that Oklahoma let Dylan Gabriel go to Oregon.
But Avery Johnson, I'm telling you right now, we've not seen a quarterback this fast probably since Kyler Murray. Yeah.
I don't know how good of a thrower he is yet. We saw a little bit last year where maybe you could see, oh, the arm's pretty good.
If the arm's good, they're going to be so much fun to watch. he's he's a wichita kid he's from kansas which like a talent like that in kansas doesn't happen very often it's it is gonna be fun and i i kansas state's one of those programs that they they somehow got the guy behind uh you know when uh what's his name left bill snyder left they finally they got someone basically the same Like they just keep running.
Chris Kleiman, who's just winning every FCS national title in Dakota State. It's great, though, because they're consistently like, oh, yeah, Kansas State.
Yeah, okay, they might not win 10 games. They're going to be tough no matter what week they play, who they play.
That team is just going to be good and sound at football. Yeah, it's going to be fun to watch.
Now, I don't know if he's got the skill, talent around him to be like a Heisman Trophy guy, but I am so excited to see what he can do because, again, we just haven't seen a QB that fast in a while. Yeah.
And it adds another layer to it. I got a take for you, Andy.
I want you to judge it. Somehow, someway, and I've always wanted Notre Dame to just join the Big Ten and just stop this shit and just join the Big Ten.
You're a Big Ten school. It would be awesome if you were playing Michigan every year.
But somehow, someway, Notre Dame, with the way the college football playoff is set up, and it's the top four highest-ranked conference champions, so they can never get a top four buy. Right.
But somehow, someway, Notre Dame's going to – We probably should explain the rules later. Yeah, yeah.
Well, we can do it right now. Yeah, so it's the top four teams.
The top four conference champions get a buy, and then it's five through 12. The first round is going to be home games for the higher seed, and then they go and then they play where they play neutral and then they play in the bowl games.
So the top five conference champions get into the playoff automatically, but the top four get the buy and get the top four seeds. So we've been doing all this on three.
We're trying to help retrain everybody's brain, so we've been doing all these projected playoff things and invariably we'll put out the graphic on social media and i'll have like utah or kansas state at the four seed as the big 12 champion right and people just lose their shit they're like how can they be the four seed like that's the rule yeah like the acc champ or the big 12 champ they will probably be the three and four seeds right most likely so so that leads me to my point that i want you to grade somehow some way notre dame has actually ended up in the best position in all of this because if they are good they are going to get the five seed and what that means that the five seed is they get a home game against probably a group of five team at the 12 seed and then their next game will be against the four seed who will most be the number 13 team in the country. Yeah.
Who will almost always assuredly be an ACC or a Big 12 team so they will essentially always avoid the Big 10 and SEC until the final four and so somehow Notre Dame has worked out the best possible way. Well, there were four people who designed this system.
Greg Sankey, the SEC commissioner. Craig Thompson, the Mountain West commissioner.
Bob Bowlsby, who was the Big 12 commissioner at the time. And Jack Swarbrick, the Notre Dame athletic director.
This system, and Jack's a smart guy. So he's retired now, but this was the gift he left Notre Dame with because not only does it make it where they never have to join a conference, because if they're 10-2, well, with this schedule, maybe they have to be 11-1 to get in, but usually most years with their schedule, if they're 10-2, they're going they're gonna get in and yeah they never have to play in a conference championship game so they're not playing that extra game so it's kind of only fair that they would have to play the first round but you probably get the first round at home if you're that good so yeah you get the number 12 seed which is like gonna be the the mountain west or the American Athletic Conference champ that might be ranked 23rd in the actual poll.
And then if you win that, you get the four seed, which is potentially like the number 15 team. Who knows? It'll be the fourth lowest ranked conference champ.
So yeah, the number five seed is the best one if you don't have to play in a conference championship game. If you do, it's a little bit different.
Let's say you're Alabama and you lost to Georgia in the SEC championship game, you're not really getting that big of an advantage because you had to play against Georgia and get beat up for an hour. But if you're Notre Dame and you didn't, or let's say you're Ole Miss and you just missed the SEC championship game, and for whatever reason the committee decides the team that lost the SEC championship game is going to be ranked below you, you're in a catbird seat.
Yeah. That five spot is nice.
Yeah. That's true.
So that's the one way that Notre Dame's whole plan could be foiled is just have a really good team intentionally lose in their conference championship game but if notre dame loses one game they will almost always be the

five seed i don't know about this year but yeah a lot of a lot of years they will yeah they'll

end up because they'll just be like okay notre dame like they're the they're the fifth best team

there we'll put them right there i just it's it's crazy to me when i was looking at it i was like

god damn it they did it again we've wanted them to get into a conference and they figured it out

Thank you. They're the fifth best team.
We'll put them right there. It's crazy to me.
When I was looking at it, I was like, God damn it, they did it again. We want them to get into a conference, and they figured it out.
They have outsmarted the sport for about 100 years. Really, blame the Michigan people.
It's Fielding Yost's fault. He blackballed them from the Big Ten.
He got mad at Notre Dame. Notre Dame's like, okay, fine.
We'll just go on the road. We'll go play Army.
We'll go play USC. And then they become this big national brand.
Yeah. Yeah.
Disgusting. It's nuts.
Back to the Big Ten real quick. I want to talk about Iowa and Nebraska.
So Iowa lost their entire offense with their punter. And he's bombed.
Torrey Taylor. He's hitting bombs.
Chicago Bears. Bombs in training camp right now.
And then their coach was suspended for maybe the funniest recruiting violation i guess trying to recruit a quarterback that really worked out for him it's so hard to get caught tampering yeah like you have to be really really bad at this to get caught tampering and they got caught tampering and of course like the receivers coach also gets suspended john bud mayor former uh former badger quarterback big cat uh, he got suspended too, which led to a bunch of people asking me on my show, Iowa has a receivers coach? What does he do all day? Yeah, the easiest job in the world. This is such an interesting one because Iowa, look at Iowa's schedule and think about if their offense is slightly better.
If it's slightly better. We've had the same conversation for like the last 10 years.
Like if they're just competent on offense. But they fired Brian Ferentz and they brought in Tim Lester.
So they do have a new offensive coordinator. So let's imagine Cade McNamara is good or he doesn't get hurt or maybe it's Brendan Sullivan, the Northwestern transfer, comes in comes in but k mcnamara is a starter and they are semi-functional as an office they're still gonna be great on defense you could have a nebraska iowa game on black friday that could potentially affect the college football playoff yeah yeah you're that high on nebraska because we just had will compton on and he did he say? I heard him.
They're going to start 7-0 and then we'll see what happens. They got to beat Colorado and they got to get past your guy, Kurt Signetti.
But 6-1 or 7-0 going to the Ohio State game is not out of the realm of possibility for Nebraska. I want it so bad because they'll have that little number next to their name and it will just be, and I think it might be a rude awakening when they to columbus so nebraska's quarterback is like what they i mean they just gotta like they haven't been to a bowl game since 2016 like if they just make a bowl game that that's enough but if they can be better than that and by the way like if dylan raiola is the guy as a true freshman quarterback he's gonna get so many tractor nil deals like He's going to be the tractor magnate of Nebraska.

And he's not going to really have to go to the NFL.

He's just going to be taken care of for the rest of his life.

Yeah.

So how good is he?

That's a great question.

We don't know.

We don't know.

You watch him play in the spring game.

You're like, ooh, look at all his arm slots.

Very Mahomes-esque. But you also go four high schools in four years flip from ohio state flip from georgia like so there's all that too i need to see it i need to see it we're gonna get a good chance to see it because like they play colorado in week two and for all of the talk about colorado whether it's you know deon saying this or the now resigned assistant who is trying to get the sweet, sweet Saudi money for the NIL.
That's a wild story. I know.
It's incredible. But they have a pretty good D-line that they have imported through the portal.
If Dylan Raiola can handle that, he can handle most of what's on the schedule. Yeah.
So with Colorado, I feel like Dion's been especially spicy this year. What are his latest things that he said? Like, I know he wouldn't take a question from a CBS guy because he doesn't like the CBS national brand or whatever.
And this guy's like CBS Colorado. I think they ranked him, didn't they rank him 15th out of 16 Big 12 coaches? That's probably Fernelli.
We cani. Tom Fernelli is now getting media.
Fernelli definitely voted in that one. Yes.
Yeah. So he's mad at that reporter.
He's mad at another local reporter that's written some bad things about him. And then he's just like, the way he's been talking to the media has not given me confidence in Deion's team this year.
That press conference, I did a lot of reading between the lines on that press conference. Cause I thought it was, it was, he was telegraphing some stuff there.
So the, the one where he's barring, you know, sparring back and forth with the columnist who clearly doesn't like him. I'm fine with that.
In fact, just have that discussion out in the open and I'll watch it. It'll be very entertaining for me, But that press conference, every time he got asked about his D-line, he talked about how much he loved his D-line.
He got asked about his secondary, he talked about how much he loved his D-line. He got asked about his offensive line, he would not talk about anything relating to his offensive line.
That's a giant red flag. Giant red.
This is a team that gave up 56 sacks last year. They have to be better than that.
And if they're not going to be better than that, then it might be the same season. I think they're going to be a little bit better.
I think they'll improve enough to make a bowl game. But I don't know they're going to be good enough to compete in the Big 12.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right, Andy, I got one last question for you, you'll obviously be on again this fall. We're so excited for college football to be back.
Roback question, RHOBACK.com. Andy's wearing it right now.
He's looking thin and in shape and looking great. Partially because Roback is great fitting shirts.
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All right, so last question. Give us the four buys.
Give us right now who is going to be the highest-ranked conference champions. I feel like Ohio State and Georgia you can kind of pencil in, but the other two are tough.
Yeah, I do have Ohio State and Georgia. I am very basic when it comes to that that i think both of those are the best teams in their leagues i have alabama oh i'm sorry i have alabama number five because i have there my number three okay in my poll that but i have florida state winning the acc we're recording this after the dublin game so i may look incredibly stupid georgia techs won that game that'd be brutal oh boy well i bet on florida state so it'd be brutal for me too we're about The Thursday night games with Utah and all's true.
So I made it incredibly stupid. Georgia Tech's won that game.
That'd be brutal. Oh, boy.
Well, I bet on Florida State, so it'd be brutal for me, too.

We're about to Thursday night games with Utah and all those guys.

Well, you know, I thought they were playing last Thursday, PFT.

I was just as disappointed as you.

I just can't wait.

I can't wait for football.

I didn't realize until after when we started the show and PFT said football is back,

that's what he was referring to.

Well, no, because I heard him say Lindenwood, and I'm like, a second was it was there like a yeah two games starting a week earlier that i didn't know about yeah i should be fired so so what happened was i pulled out my phone because i knew the week zero schedule i know what's happening this saturday and then for whatever reason i scrolled down on the app and it the first games that it showed me were i thought week zero and i saw l I saw Lindenwood. I was like, yeah, Lindenwood's probably playing Week 0.
That wouldn't shock me if Lindenwood had a Thursday game. Absolutely.
But yeah, that was a mistake. Hand up.
Misread the schedule. I just want college football to be back.
So my number four seed is my Big 12 champ. I am going with Kansas State, though I will say, because I've been driving the Avery Johnson bandwagon.
I'm going to keep driving it. I might drive it off a cliff, though.
I got some information last week, and I'm a little worried. So my friend Jim Nagy, who runs the Senior Bowl, they put out a watch list of all the guys they think might have a chance to make the senior bowl but it's also basically draft eligible guys they think will be in a camp they'll either get drafted they'll make a team they'll be in a camp and so I just compiled who has the most of all these and then naturally it's a bunch of SEC teams that have the most like Ole Miss has 21 George and Texas A&M have 20 but so I was looking for the Big 12.
Who has the most? Utah has 13. They're always like that.
I may have made a mistake here. I'm just saying it now.
In terms of coaches, he's probably one of the most underrated. He's probably one of the best coaches no one says like in that top three and kyle whittingham will kick your ass i finally figured out because kyle grew his hair out a few years ago i finally figured out after they beat usc in the pac-12 championship game a couple years ago who he looks like if you watch uh anything stallone does now like the reality show with the daughters or the or the tulsa king show Kyle Whittingham looks like Stallone looks now.

And he's got that mind and kyle whittingham will beat your ass i'm telling you right now he hasn't missed a workout like like he has a lou gehrig workout streak going but he'll beat your ass yeah he looks wiry wiry but strong like very lean man all right so i'll give you that one kansas state slash ut. That's fair.
I'll take it. Thank you.
We didn't talk about USC at all. What are the expectations? Because their defense, they can't be worse.
I heard that they're tackling in practice sometimes now. Would be nice.
This has been my frustration with Lincoln Riley because he's a smart person. Clearly a very great, very good offensive coach, great evaluator and teacher of quarterbacks.
But why don't you just send somebody to a Georgia practice in November and say, Hey, how do you guys do this? And then just do that. Yeah.
Because they're showing you how it works. And clearly, you know, USC through the years in Oklahoma, when he was was there they're not tackling as the season goes on like they're tackling gets worse and worse and worse so d'antan lind the new defensive coordinator i imagine he came in and said hey look we got to tackle a little bit he already did he did with the bowl game the bowl game he wasn't technically coaching but he was there helping out and they like missed significantly less tackles than they did during the regular season so they cannot be worse on defense you know who else can't be worse on defense lsu who they play in the season open because lsu's defense was awful last year so they went out and hired blake baker from missouri as their dc lsu's kind of the same players with new coaches usc they they changed a lot of the players out to danton lin went and got some guys that fit what he wants.
Part of the deal with Alex Grinch, the old USC defensive coordinator, I firmly believe that Alex Grinch's mind was poisoned when he was the defensive coordinator at Washington State. And he had this defensive tackle named Hercules Mata'afa, who was 225 pounds, but was awesome.
This is a dude who could do backflips off a 30-foot cliff and at home in hawaii and he was amazing and so alex stretch for the rest of his career like he went to ohio state he went to oklahoma he went to usc he's like i don't need 310 pound defensive tackles hurt could do it yeah and he always would play these two small guys for their positions and so USC is going to have the right size guys in those positions. Now I'm still not convinced though.
I know you've got, you've got Miller Moss as your Heisman guy, big cat. Yeah.
I love, I love that. He stuck it out.
You know, he came in the same recruiting class as Jackson dart, who's been Ole Miss's starter for three years now. So, but I, I do wonder about them because if their defense doesn't get significantly better, they might struggle.
And I want to point out a game involving your Badgers. Yeah.
So USC plays LSU. They might lose that game.
They open Big Ten play against Michigan. They might lose that game.
The Badgers come to the Coliseum for USC's fourth game. We might see USC in a can't-lose-and-or-must-win situation against the Badgers.
Because if they're 1-2 going into the Wisconsin game and their defense has shown any signs of leakiness, Phil Longo's going to be licking his chops to unleash Tyler Van Dyke on USC's defense. And it would be an Alex Grinch revenge game.
He's the safeties coach at the Badgers. That's exactly right.
They're like, you have Alex Grinch now. He's not allowed to decide how big the D linemen are.
Yeah, right. I was like, he's not the defensive coordinator.
He cannot fuck it up that bad. Yes, he could fuck it up.
The safeties could be bad. he he it's we're limiting the the issues here so yes yeah um Andy you're the best we'll talk to you later in the season college football's back thank you so much everyone listen to Andy he's uh putting out pods every single week multiple times a week on three network and uh there's no better time of year Andy Staples is brought to you by Cars.com

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Order yours now at partofmycheesesteak.com and use promo code PMC20 to get 20% off your order. Okay, Mount Rushmore time, and we have a very special guest.
It is Hank's father, back on the show for Mount Rushmore. Now, remind me, the last time you did a Mount Rushmore, what was it for? Water.
Water? That was a good one. We had already done it before and didn't realize it until after.
So, and how did you do? I can't remember. Not well.
It was the old studio. So, Hank's basically bringing in a ring here.
What was my third one? Oh, it was your third. What was the other one? Sounds you don't like to hear.
Okay. Did you have Hank's yawn on that? That's my yawn.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, it's hereditary.
He caught it from you. So Hank's bringing in a ringer, his dad.
I thought that's nice. Yeah.
That's nice. Listen, Hank and I are pretty much neck and neck, and it's nice to be able to have a dad that you can bring in for Mount Rushmore so Hank, I'm glad that you did that it feels like you're rubbing it in a little bit but that's okay, maybe I'll bring my ass in and something you don't have that's fair so I've clinched, I've officially clinched thank you, so it is now a two man race between Hank and P.
Before we do, so we're going to do the Mount Rushmore Business Jargon,

which was selected by Hank and PFT.

Max and I are just, we're basically just playing out.

We're sitting the starters.

Well, there was an idea to have Hank and I go mano a mano.

Yeah, but then it was screw up the score.

And that's a different style.

That's a different format of Mount Rushmore.

We've never done that before.

Yeah.

So what are the standings? How far back is Hank? How many points are you back? I think three. Three points.
I hope three. So it basically comes down to can Hank steal a win and have PFT go last in one of these? Yes.
Hank has. So Max has 70.
I have 59 clinched. PFT was 52.
Hank with 49. So three back.
I think it's fair for Hank to use his dad in this draft because I have been in the business corporate world. Hank's corporate experience is just working at Barstool.
Yeah. So you have a blind spot there.
Yeah. So before we start that, though, I would like some thoughts on the summer of Hank.
Summer of Hank has been unbelievable. Yeah.
What would you rank? was it missoula's duck boat or was it uh being the the what was it the keeper of the light keeper the ringer of the bell of the lighthouse i think the uh duck boat parade i don't see how that could top ever be topped yeah but he did i mean the lighthouse yeah he did keep the lighthouse it was an epic fan reaction to the layout yes yes, it was. Did you have an epic reaction to when Hank went down to Dallas this year and accidentally slipped and put a hole in the wall? That was funny.
Yeah. Content.
Yeah. Content machine.
Tiffany Gomas. Is she invited to Thanksgiving this year? No.
Okay. How do you feel about Hank and his prospects of dunking? There's a possibility.
Now, How do you feel about Hank's prospects of doing steroids to dunk? Not a fan of the steroids. Okay.
You raised it better than that, Hank. He's been working hard.
Yep. There is some...
Has he? Wait, has he? His uncle can dunk. In my prime, I could dunk a volleyball.
So there is some... You know, he's got a shot.
Unfortunately, dunking a volleyball will not out this bet but you're the basketballs you guys have out there are palmable yeah true when you say he's been working hard what has he been telling you I would I would like to know he's been going to the gym we've seen videos he's he sent examples of his workouts okay okay I mean that's an improvement from nothing yeah it is it is we at summer camp last week, and we had them lower the hoop down to eight feet. I don't know if you felt the same way, Hank, but I got a gnarly bruise on my forearm.
Oh, wow. I got Dunker's arm right now.
Yeah. So I don't know if you've been able to reach a point where you're able to even get a bruise on your hand yet.
No, I'm still just reaching for the rim. I can touch the rim, but I can't get above it did you listen to friday's show yeah did you what do you think about hank's fart in our face just air you know yeah that's that's not uncommon in our family we should have we should have said to in hank's defense because our good friend keith yandel texted me uh after listening to friday's show he's like what the fuck is hank's problem hank was violently hung over yes so we So we were taping at 9 a.m.
We should have prefaced that. That was one of those moments where we should have set the stage a little bit better for Hank in his defense.
We were entertaining coworkers. Yes, we were.
Yeah. How much corporate experience do you have when it comes to the business jargon? Do you have a significant amount? I have a lot.
I mean, that was part of the Taco Bell ecosystem was a lot of corporate speak and, you know, marketing presentations are just chock full of that stuff. Yeah.
Has it changed? I feel like it's gotten more annoying, though, in the last 10 years than it was maybe 20 years ago. It was always hilarious.
Like we would we as franchisees would sit in these meetings and they would just go off and we'd be like, what are they talking? Yeah, right. None of this makes sense.
Okay, so do I have first pick? Yeah. Yep.
I have first pick. Ooh, tough one.
Max, how are you playing these? I don't know. I don't really care.
Okay, because I don't really care now either. I'm resting the starters.
I could get last in every one going forward because I'm putting very little effort into these right now. Not even for the listeners? That's kind of mean.
Well, I don't want to take first place and then you guys just like can't have those points right no you got to play it out i don't think you should think like that but yeah you should after all this is a podcast there are people who are listening to your thoughts max yeah okay so i have one one um hmm okay i guess i'll just go with i have a list and i somehow wrote one thing down twice, so I think that's subliminally telling me that I should pick that as one one. I'll go with circle back.
It's the most annoying. Yeah.
You circled back on circle back. Yeah, I did.
I have it twice. It's just when someone says, let's circle back on this, just shut the fuck up.
I don't know why you're saying it like that. Just say, hey, I'll hit you later.
They don't want to come to a conclusion, but they want the meeting to end. Right.
Right. And circling back, yeah, I don't even understand it.
I'm just going to circle around and back to it. Yeah, that's a great pick.
I had that as my 1-1. Just leaves it open to they can hit you back up at any point.
Yeah. Right.
And then say, oh, I'm circling back. How many of these do you use now, Hank, that you're corporate?

Not as, I mean, a decent amount.

Do you circle back?

I don't think I've ever used circle back.

I've thrown it out there because I've been in situations where I don't want to give a definitive, like, let's meet tomorrow

because I don't want to meet tomorrow.

I'll just be like, it's a good way to end a meeting.

Like, all right, yeah, we'll circle back on this stuff.

Like, you just told me a bunch of stuff

that I don't really want to deal with right now.

Yeah.

We'll circle back.

Circle back, okay.

Let's talk about it later. Yeah.
Yeah, All right. When? Who knows? Team Lockwood.
I think we're going to go with the logical next thing, which is put a pin in it. Yeah.
Okay. We're putting pins in it.
Okay. It's similar to circle back, but.
Yeah. Let's put a pin in it.
That one makes me want to punch someone in the face. What's the difference between putting a pin in it and circling back? I don't know.
They all don't mean anything. It's a little more definitive.
Yeah, they all don't mean shit. Is that just a reminder to circle back? It means we're not going to get rid of it.
It's going to be up there on the board, and we're going to put a pin in it. And then we'll circle back.
At the end of the day, yeah, like every single one that we pick means absolutely nothing. I do have like five.
Now that I'm looking at my list, I've got five that translate directly to circle back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like Hank said.

It's just trying to find a way to finish a meeting without an actual conclusion.

Yep.

Max, meatball.

Meatball.

Hey, should we get some meatballs? I'm kind of going to do another one that also kind of sounds like circling back.

Let's table this conversation.

Tabling it. I'm tabling it.
Okay. I had that too.
Yeah. like circling back.
Let's table this conversation. Oh, yeah.

I'm tabling it.

Okay.

I had that too.

Yeah.

Tabling it sucks.

Tabling it sucks.

All right, PFT, you got two picks.

I got two.

Okay, so I'm going to go with touch base.

Yep.

Touch and base to start out.

Yep.

Kind of means docking, but in this case, touch base.

Let's just touch base.

And then for the next one.

It's also the worst about touch bases. It's always like, do you have time to touch base on this? Yeah.
Just fucking tell me when you want to talk. It just means talk.
Let's touch base later. Why don't you just talk to me now? There's nothing worse than the meeting before the meeting.
The pre-meeting is the most like, hey, let's figure out when we're going to meet. No, just dude, you already got me.
You already texted me. You already emailed me.
Just do the meeting right now. Tell me what I need to know right now.
Yeah, you know what's beautiful about this list is I don't think any of this language exists in football. No.
Once you step inside a football building, you don't circle back on anything. You circle forward.
No, and also none of this really exists in our lives. That's true.
We've somehow found a job that we've eliminated all of this stuff. Thank God.
I think if somebody told me to touch base on something, I would leave. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Your second pick. It's something that you do right after you touch base.
Okay. You get on the same page.
Oh. Let's get on the same page on this.
I like pick do i have time to change it nope damn it because i feel like i've no i like that all right all right page get on the same page get on the same page i'm second guessing it now no that's okay i'm not on the same page with myself no you're good don't okay all right all right there was a lot of list yeah there Oh. We're talking a little shit.
Talking a little shit over there. Now that I'm looking, it's not on my list.
Okay. Not on mine.
Although... Do you even have a list? I don't know any of this lingo.
Like, I haven't done a second of... It's not on Max's list.
You've never had, like, an office job before, though. No.
That's what I'm saying. People are always getting on the same page.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm going to go... There's a lot of moving yeah um i'm gonna go there's a lot of moving parts oh yeah there is a lot of moving parts that's just saying i don't want to do this yeah i don't know that's saying it's like it's not my fault it's not my fault yeah yeah there's a lot of moving parts yeah like we're trying to get it done but there's a lot of moving parts yeah yeah it's basically just corporate excuses yeah it is like it's an entire thing of corporate excuses it's a it's a just a blame game yeah i did have that on my list.
Automotive parts is good. Yeah.
It's basically just corporate excuses. Yeah, it is.
It's an entire thing of corporate excuses. It's just a blame game.
Yeah. I did have that on my list.
A lot of moving parts is good. Yep.
Okay. That's Team Lockwood.
So I think, keeping with making excuses, it's above my pay grade. Oh, okay.
For Hank, nothing's above his pay grade. That's facts.
He's a top. No, well, me and Big Cat have kind of played tennis sometimes where it'll be like, you got to talk to Big Cat.
Oh, yeah. Way more Big Cat to me where people come up to be like, Big Cat said I had to talk to you.
I'm like, what? It's the two people at Barstool who get the most I just don't feel like answering is Gaz and Hank. Yeah.
Like, if anyone ever asks for a job from outside of these walls, I'm just like, Gaz, we'll figure it. Here's Gaz's email.
That's just it. Yeah, and then if someone asks for something that involves money or anything, I'm just like, Hank can answer.
Yeah, it's great to have somebody like that around. Or like a hard answer, like you don't want to actually answer.
Oh, yeah. Talk to Hank first.
Yeah, yeah. Am I doing a good job? I don't know.
Ask Hank. I think a lot of people do that with the board, and the board might not even ever exist, but you get asked a tough question tough question well i have to run by the board real quick yeah and i'll get back to you yeah um okay i got two that are uh kind of related and they drive me fucking insane um one i'll even say right now like my brother-in-law says it to me all the time i fucking want to kill him when he says he says it.
Ping you. I'm going to ping you.
Yeah, ping you. What the fuck does that mean? Yeah.
What is ping? It could mean anything. It could mean send an email.
It could mean- Just shut up and just say you're going to text me. It could mean a text.
It could mean a phone call. It could mean a homing pigeon.
There's all sorts of stuff. I don't understand what ping you means.
It drives me insane. And the other one is, and this might be because I just expect people to be able to answer at all times uh hank knows that when he's on vacation i hate when people say they're out of pocket yeah i fuck it drives me nuts you have a fucking cell phone your whole work is in your pocket what does that mean you're out of pocket or people that yeah automated emails yeah you can answer a text you're out of pocket drives me nuts wait does out of pocket mean like you're only using what's in your pocket correct but yeah your pocket is your is your whole work yeah that it makes no sense anymore that excuse is done right like i would understand it if we were in like 1975 and you left work and there was no way for anyone to reach you but what do you mean you're out of pocket it's right here yeah people have automated emails and and i'm like when you get one kicked back like i think that means i can't get this question answered right oh yeah i don't think i've ever done the email like kickback no you have imagine if i did it once you did yep here the worst is text yep have you guys ever gotten it on text no text someone I didn't know that was possible.
Yeah. Hank actually made fun of me for a week when I did it.
Because I was out of the country. But you were still looking at your phone.
And I just said, if you have any questions, ask memes. That's basically what I said.
And I've never done it again because Hank ruined me when he sent me an email and he got it back. Was it professional, though? Were you like, in lieu of contacting me, please reach out to Conor Philbert.
I think I was just like, I'm out of the country this week. If you have any questions, here's Memes' email.
I mean, that would have been a great way to do it is to use Memes' actual name and everybody would be like, who the fuck is that? I think I probably did. I was like, go to Memes' email.
I almost just almost just said that person doesn't exist yeah especially in our job i don't know what would one be urgent enough that like we need to get a hold of max yeah there's i mean and two really that urgent where they like if you don't more so like ad stuff that like an ad will reach out and be like hey they need this right now can you please switch this but is someone even that i'll just still be like hey pug can hey pug hey memes can you switch this someone else is on the email so yeah out of pocket and ping you ping me ping you ping me anything ping yeah fucking drives me nuts i'll ping you yeah hit you in the head with the golf you say ping no not a thing thank god i have the same reaction to ping me yeah what is it what does that mean just you and especially when they text you i'll ping you it's like you're doing it right now again it's just back to like when someone contacts you and they're setting something up it's like we're talking right now even the word ping in the context of it doesn't make sense makes no sense makes no sense in in theory i i think a lot of people want to sound more professional than they actually are so saying like i'm gonna text you'm going to text you later for some reason. They don't like the sound of that, but saying I'll ping you.
It's like, oh, that's businessy. Yeah.
I should be getting paid for using words like that. Ping.
Okay. I think this is a positive one.
I think it's helpful in business jargon. It's when you have a meeting and someone says, hey, I got a hard stop, 930 or whatever the time is.
Give me that hard stop. Hard stop.
Then I know stop stop then i know meeting's over you are like how do we feel about that pick good that was a bad pick above it no but it's a perfect lockwood pick because it's saying like oh i can't do any work after this after this moment yeah yeah i like hard out better than hard stop oh hard out hard stop. I got a hard stop.
Oh, no. They're looking.
They're this. Oh, no.
I pointed to the bottom one. Oh, no.
We got a Taco Bell situation on your hands. We'll get it back.
You guys got to get on the same page. That was on the list.
That was on the list. Hard stop.
We got to get back on the same page. Damn.
Yeah, my favorite Hank one is if you need me for the yak, I'll be around, which is just him saying I'm about to go golf. Oh, I said, do you need me for the yak? Oh, do you need me for the yak? Yeah, yeah.
I'm about to go golf. All right, Max.
Don't have the bandwidth for that. Yep.
Okay, that's a good one. Yep.
This is basically saying you're an idiot. I'm lazy.
Let's say I'm lazy. Yeah.
I can't do that. But it's also literally saying you're an idiot yeah you don't have the bandwidth yeah you're like a you're a rudimentary computer my brain doesn't connect at those speeds dial talk to somebody smarter yeah don't have the bandwidth all right so i got two now and i like these two yeah let me loop you in okay looping in i had that looping in and then for my last one i'm gonna go with a classic tried and true per my last email nice yeah which is a nice passive aggressive way subtle way it's saying fuck you yeah per my last email you dumbass yeah yeah saying there yeah Or you're just not responding to my emails.
Yep. Yeah.

This one. emails you dumbass yeah yeah saying they're yeah you've you've or or you're just not responding to my emails yep yeah um this one is kind of normal conversation but it's how i start probably 90 of my emails that i've ever sent before in my life and it's just thanks for reaching out you do thanks for reaching oh yeah every time you start every if email? If it's someone that isn't within bar, like if it's...

I guess I just don't.

We don't.

We've never emailed.

No.

I mean, I'm not the biggest emailer, but when I do, it's like...

And it's someone I don't know.

I'm like, oh, thanks for reaching out.

Oh, that actually makes sense.

So it's usually when I send people to you because I'm sending...'ll have a conversation with someone like here just just email our producer and then you'll be like thanks for reaching out thanks for reaching out and then i just be like yeah thanks for reaching out uh but i don't think i don't think this is going to happen that's very professional of us yeah i'm thinking of like one specific example in the last couple of months where someone asked me for something i was like just please reach out to our producer max he can handle and then you just wrote thanks for reaching out and that was it that's it yep i was like thanks for reaching out max it was a way of me getting out of something do you have the autocomplete that starts up like on your gmail when you respond to stuff uh probably i wonder if i wonder how much it's learned about you it's probably learned a

lot of thanks for reaching out yeah okay the lockwoods have to get back on the same page for this last one we are on the same page uh but we will probably be doing this afterwards let's take this offline okay taking something offline offline yeah okay uh my last pick it's not it just again these are i just did like straight pet peeves i cannot stand when anyone refers to anyone as a rock star i had that on my list it fucking drives me nuts calling somebody a rock star or not a rock star you're working like you're you're working in accounting i'm not a rock star that's literally not a rock star i would also include ninja and yeah they do ninja a lot too but yeah any of those things it's it's Oh, she's such a rock star. She Not a rock star.
That's literally not a rock star. I would also include Ninja in that.
They do Ninja a lot too. But yeah, any of those things, it's just- Oh, she's such a rock star.
She's a rock star. Oh, he's such a rock star.
No, no. Actually, no, he's not a rock star.
Talk to Greg. He's a rock star at accounting.
If he was a rock star, he would not be talking to us. Yeah, I wonder- He'd be a rock star doing drugs and living the best life ever.
What professions do you think are the furthest away from being an actual rock star? Yeah, something like- In the CIA? Yeah. Director of the CIA? They might be rock stars.
Reach out to Leon Panetta. He's a rock star.
Yeah. If you're assassinating heads of state, that's kind of rock star shit.
Maybe an actual name with an Excel spreadsheet is far away from being a rock star. Someone who works at the IRS.
Yeah. There's definitely been someone who's been referred to as- The IRS, Hank, is by the way, where you pay taxes.
Got it. I know you don't do that.
Reach out to the head auditor over there. He's a rock star.
He's a rock star. All right, what do we miss? Net-net.
Net-net's a good one. That might be personal to us.
Yeah, that's very personal to us. We had one coworker that would say net-net.
I had along the same lines of rock star, kind of somebody who says that I'm passionate about and then something that absolutely nobody is passionate about. Yeah.
Like someone's like, I'm passionate about real estate. Yeah, no one's passionate about it.
Picnic. Picnic.
You guys know Picnic? No, it's Picnic. When someone screws up and they can't get their computer work and you end up, it realizes it's the person.
So you say that's a issue problem in chair not in computer oh i like that that's good i like that i uh one i use personally probably the only one on this list um is when i will send an email and be like i'm ccing this person and it's essentially saying i'm not i'm no longer responsible for this email like this is not my issue.'m giving you the person synergy synergy that's like a classic one yeah that's a classic that's an old school one think outside the box think outside the box yeah on your radar want to put something on your radar that one drives me nuts because it's like what am I supposed to do they're not really telling you to do anything they're just putting it on your radar yep what about using the using the word effort as a verb? We're going to effort this. Yeah.
We're going to effort this. There's a lot that I don't know here.
The other ones, my dad had a big list that I never even heard of. Picking up Jell-O.
Oh, I like that. It's kind of like boiling the ocean.
We need our next Baja Blast. Herding cats.
Herding cats. Yeah.
Getting a 30,000 foot view of something yeah ways herding cats would be hard right difficult yeah that's like similar to picking up jello yeah yeah I just I like picking up jello I just had fiscal year on mine I don't think that's really jargon but you know every time I never really understand it but it's a thing I but it's a thing.

I know it's a thing.

The queues.

Hank, when it really is an entire Mount Rushmore of us just flexing that we don't have to do any of these things.

Hank, what queue are we in right now?

We are in Q3.

Q3, okay.

Are you sure?

It's Q3.

Yeah, it's definitely Q3.

Okay.

Well, I thought everybody would go with the queues.

Are we in the heart of Q3?

But it depends on the fiscal year.

Yeah, that's true, Max.

Don't some companies measure fiscal years? In February. Yeah, ours should be after the Super Bowl.
Yeah. It's the fiscal year.
You don't know what Q it is. Our Q should only be the football season.
Yeah. Q1 hasn't even started.
Yeah, we're in pre-Q. We should do the fiscal year as only the football season, and then everything else is just off season.
Yeah, I like that. Weeks one through four is Q1.
Lovie Smith used to do that, where he'd be like, yeah, one through four would be quarter one. We got to go three and one in the first quarter.
That's how you want to start. Best practices.
Yeah. Wear many hats.
Yeah, wearing many hats is good. It means that person just isn't good at anything.
Being a thought leader yeah that's such a funny term yeah i'm a

thought leader yeah in the uh in the accounting space uh low-hanging fruit did we do we did bandwidth low-hanging fruit back burner move the needle move the needle yeah yeah that's usually done by a rock star or a drug dealer yeah um i'll give you seven minutes of your day back oh yeah and's that? End the meeting early Yeah Okay That's I'm in some meetings now Where that's like I Because I still kind of like I don't really deal with it that much But I'll be in some meetings Where that's like a big like Alright everyone gets ten minutes of their day back And it's like oh my god I can't exit this call To get ready for your. Yeah.
What about telling somebody that you need to sharpen your pencil on this?

Ooh.

Because that is like saying you need to do a better job at doing your job.

Yeah.

Or if they're not going to be able to make a meeting, they say, I'm going to be out of

pocket.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Out of pocket.

Yeah.

That one drives me nuts every time.

Every time.

You can get into any meeting anywhere, anytime.

What about calling slideshows decks?

Is that just what they're called? I got a deck.

Take a look at my deck. Look at my deck.

Yeah.

Send me a picture of your deck.

We got to manage expectations.

I'm going to tee this up. That means that whatever

you're about to do is going to suck.

Yeah. Over promise.

Under deliver. No, that's the wrong

way to do it. Under promise.
Over deliver.

Oh man. If I had to deal with these words.
1,000%? 100%. 100%.
Went to 1,000% though. Yeah.
It's been the pen ever since pen has been like we've been just back to bar. So I've dealt with probably like 80% less of it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. The people that believe these words, it is hilarious.
Yeah. It's just passionate about's just passionate it's crazy people that know people there it is like an art form like seeing someone in a setting where they can just say nothing right but make you believe something is actually impressive because I can't do it but like I've been in meetings where I'm like this person that isn't saying anything yeah there's I mean there's some jobs convincing yeah there's some jobs where your entire job is just to meet.

And that's it.

You just go from meeting to meeting.

I'm passionate about new strategies and e-tail.

I had a guy tell me that one time.

He's like, no, you're not passionate.

You just want people to think that you like your job.

That's all that means.

It's the buy something.

Yeah.

I'm very curious to know what Huey's picks for this would have been.

Because, Huey, do you have any corporate experience at all? I didn't have a pick. Behind Chef? Yeah.
Quid pro quo. Quid pro quo.
Okay. That was the only thing I was thinking of.
Paddy's. Yeah.
These are all over my head. Literally.
That's a good one. They're above his pay grade.
They are above your pay grade. Memes, did you have any? Memes probably wants to kill anyone who says any of these.
You guys nailed all of them. Good afternoon.
That's a good one. What? When you start off an email.
That's just normal life. Just like, fuck your afternoon.
I love how memes, that's just like normal human interaction. It means like, fuck that business jargon.
You don't care about my afternoon. Just tell me what you want.
That's just real life. That has nothing to do with it.
If you see someone in the street, you say good afternoon. Someone asked memes how his weekend was.
He's like, you motherfucker. It's like, you don't give a shit.
No, I like that memes because when someone says good afternoon to you, you know that whatever follows that is going to ruin your afternoon. Yeah.
There's not enough time left in the day to make my afternoon afternoon good now yeah you just made it significantly worse yeah okay so miserable oh no yeah you taught me into that one memes that was a good one yeah oh man all right well great mount rush war the final week is going to be intense how do you boys think you did i think i did pretty good it would be nice to have my dad here, but that's okay. Hank brought his.
And so I hope this was a great father-son moment. It's going to come down to the same page.
And what was the third pick you guys had? Hard stop. Hard stop.
I feel like that's going to be a battle between those two. Yeah, what happened on hard stop? What did you point to? It was on our list.
It was on our list. What did you point to, though? It was on our list.
What did you point to? It was a good pick. It was at the bottom of the list, I think.
Yeah, what did you point to? It on our list what did you point to though it was on our list what did you point to it was at the bottom of the list I think yeah what did you point to it was another one that got chosen later and after that oh which one was it oh no so I took the pick was it Lupien per my last email I swiped per my last email we were on the same page yeah you gotta yeah. You got to be on the same page.
We misread the pointing.

Yeah.

That happens.

You get lost in the snake.

Yeah.

Yep.

Big cat got lost in the snake.

I think after the first pick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Big time.

All right.

Let's finish with numbers.

If you get this,

Max has never gotten the lottery ball.

He has got the number though.

Yes.

Yes,

I have.

Yes,

I have Mickey Mouse.

Never gotten the lottery ball. It's Mickey Mouse.
PFT hasn't gotten either. Yes, I have.
He's never gotten the lottery ball.

PFT hasn't gotten either.

Not on this machine.

Five.

Seven.

Eight.

20.

56.

42.

Three.

I'm giving 99 back to Pug.

Those boys know we're doing it?

It was Pug.

Pug's not here today.

Probably would have gotten it.

Shane always gets 21, but it won't be 21.

Oh, my God.

Is that 20?

Yep.

Oh, you piece of shit.

Now you got nothing.

You got absolutely nothing.

Oh, no, I've gotten it.

I've gotten it.

Nope.

Why are you so upset?

I've gotten it. I'm so upset.
This is the best. I've gotten it.
PFT, you're a piece of shit. Yeah, he is.
You're never going to get this. I really need you to get it before him.
I'm a piece of shit. I need you to get it before him.
I need you to get it before him. I made a promise.
I fucked up. I pulled out all the stops.
I went for 99 when Pog abandoned it. I did everything I could.
Oh, you pieces of shit. This is the best.
Cut his mic. I'm the best.
Lottery ball king. Number king.
We've all. He cut his mic.
I've gotten it. Have I gotten it twice? I might have gotten it twice.
Yeah, listen. So, I mean, congrats.
You got it once. Now, PFT.
Uh-oh. It's all on me.
Uh-oh. I'll take accountability.
It's now firmly entered the phase of being a thing. Memes, you've never gotten it, though, right? Memes has never gotten it, period.
Damn. Not in the old machine, not in the new machine, not on the road.
Congrats, Max. Congrats, Max.
Good job. Good job, Max.
Good job. I think I did guarantee that PFT would get it right before, and you let me down.
I'm sorry. I fucked up.
You let me down big time. Fucked up.
So is it? PFT's never gotten it, huh? Never gotten it. Not on this machine.
Memes, have you ever, ever gotten it? It's tough. It's not so fun when the Rob's got the gun.
Oh, no. I'm going to have to prepare for people just yelling random numbers at me now.
Yeah. Oh, no.
Don't do that. Don't do that.
If you see PFT at Pup Punk or anywhere out and about walking Blake. DC Friday, Philly Saturday.
Don't. Or if you're in Philly saturday don't yell numbers at him like if it's in between songs there's a little lull i'm just mad because i usually said 20 before he could and i didn't this time i let down that's true that's actually so true no i'll wear it all right see everyone on Wednesday.
Love you guys. God damn it, Max.
I'm talking away. I don't know what to say.
I'll say it anyway. Today is another day to find you.
Shine away. I'll be coming for your love, okay? Shine away.
I'll be coming for your love again Shying away I'll be coming for your love again Needless to say I've got a sentence But I'll be still rolling away Slowly learning that life is okay Say up to me It's better to be safe than sorry Say up to me, it's so better to be safe than sorry. Say up to me, it's so better to be safe than sorry.
Things that you say, yeah, is it all I've done? Just to play my memories away. You're all the things I've got to remember.
Are you shying away?

I'll be coming for you anyway.

Are you shying away?

I'll be coming for you anyway.

Take on me.

Take on me.

Take me.

Take on me out Take me out Take me out Take me out Take me out Take me out I Take me up. I'll be you.