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

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Speaker 1 On today's part of 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.

Speaker 1 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 gonna do college football.

Speaker 1 Next week, we're obviously gonna do NFL.

Speaker 1 We have the Mount Rushmore business jargon with special guest Hank's dad. It's come down to a two-man race between Hank and PFT.

Speaker 2 So, Hank's bringing in additional people. That's fine.
Yep. Hank can do whatever he wants.
Bringing in help.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 We got Who's Back of the Week. We got a great show for you.

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Speaker 1 Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

Speaker 1 And then I can't blame all on the sun. Oh, no, we're gonna rock it down to electric avenue.

Speaker 1 And then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to electricity. Part of my take

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Today is Monday, August 26th, and football is back.

Speaker 1 And for the feels like 75th year in a row, I lost money thinking that DJ Unguleli was going to be the DJ Unguleli from the COVID year in that Notre Dame game that he played.

Speaker 1 He played against Notre Dame with Clemson, and I got burned.

Speaker 2 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.
I'll just put my head down and run over you.

Speaker 1 This is, it's just every year. Every year, I'm like, this is the year, DJU.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And we do still stand with Florida State at the end of last season. Correct.
You did what you had to do.

Speaker 2 But this was 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.

Speaker 2 got drunk off Guinness, your poop's black, and then you get to see that stinker.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then you had on top of that

Speaker 1 that Kirk Herbstreet twisted the knife saying, Man, tough loss for the Knowles over an island to a good Georgia Tech team.

Speaker 1 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. Yeah, it's now

Speaker 1 he is technically right that they're not out of it. With the new playoff,

Speaker 1 it actually, Florida State

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 So they're not out of it.

Speaker 1 But man, does that suck, especially how last year ended and then to be like, you know, revenge tour starts now. DJU, I'm going to believe in him for once.
Well, no, I believe in him every single year.

Speaker 1 That one game, I actually think we should actually maybe do like a, maybe it's, maybe it's a Mount Rushmore, maybe it's just a segment segment where it's like, if you didn't watch this one game, you would think about someone totally different.

Speaker 1 If I had just somehow missed DJU throwing five touchdowns against Notre Dame during the COVID year, I would, it would, it would have stopped me from having so much pain and lost bets every year after that.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty sure there's a couple of Carson Wentz games out there that definitely apply to that. Yeah, that just like you see one 73 degrees outside, see one game

Speaker 1 and it just fucks you up forever.

Speaker 2 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 capable of accomplishing the unthinkable.

Speaker 1 Somewhere in there is that guy.

Speaker 2 And it's up to somebody to bring it out of him.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it just didn't happen. It didn't happen.

Speaker 1 But it is.

Speaker 2 I feel like Georgia Tech always fucks people up in

Speaker 2 these weird situations, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, they have played spoilers, obviously, last year, the Miami game.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was the biggest spoiler.

Speaker 2 And they only had, I think, 14 possessions total during this game. Yeah.
Right? So they just controlled the clock.

Speaker 1 And they did it. And, yeah, you have Kirk Herbstreet twisting the knife.
It looked like a great time out in Ireland. I did love how mad

Speaker 1 everyone got about Pat McAfee getting drunk at a bar.

Speaker 1 You had him do a show at an Irish pub.

Speaker 2 I stand with Pat McAfee.

Speaker 1 That's exactly how he should act.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. You're in Ireland.
You want to adopt the culture of that town.

Speaker 10 Like, how could he?

Speaker 1 What do you mean, how could he? You put him in a bar.

Speaker 2 When you send him to Utah, guess what he does? Doesn't have a single thing to drink. Right.
You just... Win in Rome.

Speaker 1 You make him do a show in a bar, he's going to get drunk.

Speaker 11 And when they cut to the booth in the actual game and they were holding Guinness, people took that and were like, you've got ESPN people getting drunk at their shows and in the game.

Speaker 2 It's like,

Speaker 11 that's a crazy reach.

Speaker 2 Yeah, also, you're in Ireland. I'm okay with that.

Speaker 2 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 of scotch, nothing big.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But yeah, 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.

Speaker 1 So week zero, I hate week zero, by the way. I think

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The problem the Hawaii game was not.

Speaker 11 It's not even a real game.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm okay with having the appetizer, with having just four games, but I want them to be back-to-back.

Speaker 1 Right, there you go. So

Speaker 2 I want you to start. That second game was Montana State and New Mexico, right? Which was incredible.

Speaker 1 Montana State covered big-time underdog. Great game started.
Or won the game out, right?

Speaker 2 Won the game. So I would have loved to see that start kick off right afterwards.
And then have the next one right after that and then have Hawaii kick off late at night.

Speaker 1 In theory, week zero, I'm fine with it. It's just the execution of it.
Give me eight games. Eight games.

Speaker 1 Give me one time. Give me a morning, an afternoon, and night big game, and then sprinkle in a couple of these other Nevada SMU games.
That's what I want. And they just don't, it just sucks.

Speaker 2 My problem was after the first game was over, I was at a bar, and then 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.

Speaker 2 Don't really care about this game if it was in any other week.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 And like everyone goes through the motions of college football's back, but like it really isn't.

Speaker 2 I really, I just.

Speaker 1 I just wish there was more. That's all.
It's a good appetizer. It's a fine appetizer, but just

Speaker 1 give us more.

Speaker 1 You can't. Football's a drug.
They basically were like, here you go, have this drug, and then, whoops, sorry, you're going to have to wait another five days for more of the drug. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I need the drug right now. We need to have it.
Because I can cut it off in the summer. I can live without the drug.

Speaker 1 But the minute you put the drug in front of me, I'm going to get fucked up and want to just go

Speaker 1 lose my whole life and just sit in a motel for the next six months.

Speaker 2 What about this? What if they put a new week before week zero, week negative one? Fine. And there's just one game.
No,

Speaker 1 I need more of the drug. They just gave us a taste.

Speaker 2 I want the whole thing. What if it's the worst possible football game you can imagine?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I want more. I need more.

Speaker 1 They got me hooked. I mean, I'm already hooked.
They got me extra hooked.

Speaker 2 Like D3. You get one D3 game and week negative one.
And then week zero, then you get eight games. It's like easing yourself in.

Speaker 1 I just needed more. I needed more.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 It's another great game. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, Well,

Speaker 1 it was college football.

Speaker 2 It was an interesting game.

Speaker 1 It was a weird thing. SMU had a player kicked out for spitting.

Speaker 1 They were like burning timeouts at random times, not being set.

Speaker 2 I don't even know if he spit on anybody if he just spit on the ground.

Speaker 1 It was the craziest thing ever. And Nevada was going to punt, and then they blew the whistle, threw the flag, and I was like, oh, it must be, you know, delay a game or, you know, false star, whatever.

Speaker 1 Move him back. And they're like, no, a player spit.
He's out of the game. And now Nevada has the first out.

Speaker 2 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 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 of that, which I appreciate.

Speaker 2 You know what? That's why week zero is important.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I just two-minute warning was kind of fun that they didn't have it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because it also was a great casual, like you could, you could spot the casual watching, like an NFL guy who just tunes into their first college football game.

Speaker 1 They're like, oh, 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.

Speaker 2 Why is the clock stopped right now? Well, because they got a first down.

Speaker 1 I want the games to be slightly different so you can kind of spot them in the wild.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but at 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 NFL.

Speaker 1 He could play on Sundays. Yeah.
He could play on Sundays.

Speaker 1 Any other, I saw, I mean, we're just going through the roster cuts. Trey Lance threw five picks.
I feel bad for Trey Lance.

Speaker 2 He almost had Skip Bayless on his side. Yeah, Skip was loving it.
And then right on QE threw a pick six.

Speaker 1 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 it was at least top five.

Speaker 1 He threw five picks. Someone had a tweet.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then since being in the NFL, he's played like 150 snaps. He just hasn't played football.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 He had that touchdown run that looked awesome.

Speaker 2 It was in the FCS national championship game against JMU. Right.
He was absolutely crushed. Did he throw like one interception when he was in college?

Speaker 2 Zero interceptions. He was awesome in college.

Speaker 1 And then he got his entire senior year taken away for COVID. But yeah,

Speaker 1 I feel bad for Trey Lance. I officially feel bad for Trey Lance.

Speaker 2 I think he'll be okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, he did make a lot of money being picked third overall. Mike White also got cut.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so they're doing Skylar Thompson right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Bring Mike White back to the Jets. Mike White could win you a game on the New York Jets.
I don't care who he's playing against. I don't care.
He could come off the bench in the first quarter.

Speaker 2 And Mike White has that ability to just somehow throw for three touchdowns for the Jets. Right.

Speaker 1 But who's your backup right now, Memes? I didn't realize you had Jordan Travis, but he's injured. Tyrod Taylor.
Oh, Ty God.

Speaker 2 He's going to have some freak injury that nobody else in the history of football is going to have.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I didn't ask for your backup. Your backup probably is irrelevant this year.

Speaker 2 Yeah, at least for the first five snaps.

Speaker 1 Come on, man.

Speaker 2 Izzy's back, though, memes. Izzy had a great game.
Izzy's still back. Yeah, it's Izzy season.

Speaker 10 It's Izzy season.

Speaker 3 Defensive line backups look good.

Speaker 1 I know everybody can respect the Jets. That's awesome.
Yeah, that's huge.

Speaker 2 It's getting way down in the dragon.

Speaker 1 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 going off.

Speaker 4 It was his first pick at training camp.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 Moves a needle. He got that out.

Speaker 4 Last day of practice in training camp.

Speaker 2 That probably bounced off Dotson's hands.

Speaker 1 Probably not.

Speaker 2 We're going to get Brandon Ayuk on the Commanders. And we've got Luke McCaffrey and Martavis Bryant.
We don't need Jahan Dotson.

Speaker 1 Just ready for football. I'm just ready for football.
We did have,

Speaker 1 I'd say, the best NFL story from today was Jim Harbaugh in the elevator.

Speaker 2 Yes, it was incredible.

Speaker 1 So the Chargers, a couple Chargers players, including Justin Herbert, got caught in an elevator

Speaker 1 before,

Speaker 1 I think it was before the game against the Cowboys this weekend.

Speaker 11 And Harbaugh was.

Speaker 1 In the same hotel where a room blew up?

Speaker 1 No, I think that was Oxnard, I believe.

Speaker 2 The fire was in California.

Speaker 11 It's Dallas and the hotel. Something was going on.

Speaker 1 So Harbaugh was asked afterward. 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.

Speaker 1 But afterwards, he did an interview and he said, talking about the elevator, they're stuck for two hours, Justin Herber and some Chargers players.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You were challenged. It was a test of will, and you pull it down or pull it in.
And then talking about Justin Herbert

Speaker 1 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 shirt was completely dry.

Speaker 1 That was another thing that blew me away. He said, I might bet on the Chargers now.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 This guy is just a beast. He is.
He's a beast. Hank, when you were stuck on that elevator, was your shirt dry?

Speaker 11 Yeah, we're only in there for 10 minutes, though.

Speaker 1 Two hours is a long

Speaker 1 hour.

Speaker 11 It's a very long time to be stuck in an elevator.

Speaker 2 Very long. Somebody peed on that elevator.
I want to know about that. I want to know who pissed on that elevator.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 You should be peeing all the time. If Harbaugh had come out and say, it was incredible, Justin had to pee six times on this elevator because he was so hydrated.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I have to say,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I'm still, 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 FC West, but maybe you should just win the Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 Because Harbaugh,

Speaker 1 the guy just does things like this. Yeah.
I mean, he's a winner.

Speaker 2 He also said that Friday was a key step in the team getting good at making yourself harder to break.

Speaker 1 Love that.

Speaker 2 We got to get stuck in elevators. Love that.

Speaker 1 I'd sweat so much. He would be like, this guy's a wimp.

Speaker 2 How long would it take you to start complaining when you were stuck in an elevator? I'd say less than a second.

Speaker 1 I complained before the elevators even stuck. I'm like, damn, I'm in another elevator.

Speaker 2 When you're getting on on an elevator, you know, this time my great-grandfather died.

Speaker 1 This sucks.

Speaker 2 And then he said, who's got it better than those guys that were on that elevator?

Speaker 1 No one. No one.
No one. Nobody.

Speaker 1 Do we have any other football stories? I had a couple other things I wanted to touch on.

Speaker 2 The elevator one was really my favorite.

Speaker 1 That was the best.

Speaker 1 Hank, you had something? No. Well, I had something for you.

Speaker 11 On the way in, so on the way in, I was talking to, I ran into the guy in my building who helped us get out of the elevator. And we were talking about the incident.

Speaker 11 He kind of made a joke, oh, you're going to get stuck in the elevator again.

Speaker 1 I was like, no, ha, thanks for helping.

Speaker 11 And he was like telling me a story about,

Speaker 11 I thought he was talking about my building. He said, oh, my friend, like, it happened to him.
The woman came, went to the floor. He didn't tell anyone and she died.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 11 Like, they were looking for, and, and, and I was like, the guy just didn't tell anyone. Like, she, he knew she got stuck down there.
And then he said, yeah, he got arrested for being dumb.

Speaker 11 And I was like, here? And he said, no, a different building.

Speaker 11 And then I was like, all right, see ya. It was.

Speaker 1 She She didn't tell anyone?

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 And the family was looking for her and it smelled bad.

Speaker 11 And I was like, so she died? He's like, yeah.

Speaker 11 I was like, is he arrested? He's like, yeah, 20 years.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 That's good in you. It's like, all right, good to see you.
That's a nice little, yeah, fun conversation to have.

Speaker 1 Hank, did you want the other thing I had for you? Yes.

Speaker 10 Did you see Jason Tatum's tattoo?

Speaker 1 Yeah. What'd you think?

Speaker 2 Did you see a PFT? I'm going to look it up right now.

Speaker 11 I think if I had actually...

Speaker 1 Give me your, yeah, yeah, your immediate. Well, no, no, first before you look it up, guess what the tattoo is?

Speaker 2 Jason Tatum's tattoo is of

Speaker 2 his son.

Speaker 1 Nope.

Speaker 2 But his son's dunking on him. Nope.

Speaker 1 It is a trophy. Okay, it's of the Larry O'Brien trophy.

Speaker 2 Nope.

Speaker 1 You'd think because he just won it. He also won a gold medal.

Speaker 2 Is it of the gold medal?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 11 It's better.

Speaker 1 It's even better. Jason Tatum got a tattoo of

Speaker 1 himself

Speaker 1 lifting the all-star MVP trophy.

Speaker 11 Named after.

Speaker 1 Named after

Speaker 2 his good friend who he corresponds with frequently.

Speaker 1 Kobe Bryant. But

Speaker 1 he just won the gold medal in the Larry O'Brien.

Speaker 11 Those aren't named the Kobe Bryant.

Speaker 1 The gold medal is

Speaker 1 the the Kobe Bryant medal. Hank, come on.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 11 People get touching tattoo tributes to people that they've lost and they care about.

Speaker 2 Come on, Hank. What does it say on it? It says, like something G-R-A.

Speaker 1 Come on. Is that Grail?

Speaker 2 Did he say this is my Grail?

Speaker 11 I mean, dudes get crazy.

Speaker 11 Everyone's tatted up.

Speaker 1 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 NPA.

Speaker 2 Well, he did not win NBA Finals MVP. That's true.

Speaker 11 He had out of three of them tattoos take a long time to you know sketch up and and plan out he probably

Speaker 1 to do a gold medal he probably is waiting to get those ones but they're coming oh so he he got this designed at the all like the second he won this trophy do you know what you know what it is hank and i i know like listen i know you're sensitive about his aura this is a joel this is a joel beat tattoo no that yeah that that's the p like you get that too if that's the most you've ever won he hadn't jason the winner

Speaker 11 yeah he is he just he's won say it again he He just won the finals.

Speaker 1 I understand, but that's not a, you don't get the all-star MVP as trophy.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you should win the NBA Finals and the gold medal.
How many tattoos you got? Who are you to be?

Speaker 1 If I won an NBA final, an all-star MVP, and a gold medal, all-star MVP would be the last tattoo I'd put on my body.

Speaker 11 But what if he gets the other two then? Is it forgiven?

Speaker 1 I think it's better.

Speaker 1 It would be slightly forgiven.

Speaker 2 Yes. It's better than if Joel Embiid had gotten this tattoo because that would have been...

Speaker 1 That's loser talk. Yeah, but this is a tattoo Joel Embiid would get.

Speaker 4 He doesn't even have tattoos.

Speaker 1 But if he got one, because he's never won anything. Gold medal.

Speaker 1 First of all,

Speaker 1 he won a real MVP?

Speaker 2 A sketch of himself at draft night.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 3 you're upset that he doesn't have a real MVP tattoo?

Speaker 1 No, I mean, all-star MVP is more important than real MVP.

Speaker 2 But to me, this just calls into question his aura even further.

Speaker 1 It seems like he's forcing the aura.

Speaker 2 Negative 5,000 aura.

Speaker 11 How's getting a tattoo of force? He gets what he likes.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Because he likes all-star MVPs.

Speaker 1 That's also a terrible trophy.

Speaker 2 What is that trophy? It's a Kobe Bryant trophy.

Speaker 1 I know, but what is it? It looks like a bad building.

Speaker 2 It looks like a giant martini shaker.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or like a really shitty wedding cake.

Speaker 2 Or if like the

Speaker 1 chandelier.

Speaker 2 If the World Series trophy just let itself go. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Got really fat.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I did. Crystal butt plug.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 years that we've had in a long time. Aaron Drudge hit his 50th and 51st home run today.
He is in my Dingers Only.

Speaker 2 He's closing in on the AL record.

Speaker 1 Who had first pick in Dingers Only?

Speaker 2 That would be me. Who'd you take? I took Shohei, and Shohei just joined the 40-40 club.

Speaker 2 The fastest of all time to join it. He's going to demolish the 40.
He's probably going to have the most combined, or like, I don't even know how to phrase that.

Speaker 1 No one's ever been to the 50-50.

Speaker 2 No one's been to 50-50.

Speaker 1 So he has a legitimate chance to go 50-50.

Speaker 2 He could get 50-50 on this. I think A-Rod has the record, right?

Speaker 1 It's like 44, 44, 43, 43. He was, but he was, so the 40s.
404.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the 40-40 guys,

Speaker 1 he did it. Shohei did it 126 games, and the second fastest was Alfonso Soriano in 2006, 147 games.
So he's got a full like 30-plus games to get to the 50-50 club, which has never been done.

Speaker 1 He also did it in the most dramatic fashion, hitting a walk-off grand slam

Speaker 1 on the first pitch with two outs. Shohei, and just casually the next day,

Speaker 1 threw off the mound for the first time because oh yeah, if you don't remember, Shohei has a career ERA of 233.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's also like the best pitcher, too. He is, he's just taking a year off.

Speaker 1 It's insane. The fact that he was like, oh, yeah, I have a UCL, so I'm just going to become one of the best base stealers now and the home runs.
So Shohei's doing that in LA. And then Judge

Speaker 1 hit his 50, he hit his 51st, so he is now three guys, or sorry, four guys total before this have three seasons or more with 50 home runs. Babe Ruth, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Alex Rodriguez.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's pretty crazy.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's absolutely wild.

Speaker 2 If MLB was competent, if they had a way of rigging the games like some of the other leagues do sometimes, they would make sure that it was going to be a Yankees-Dodgers series.

Speaker 2 Instead, we'll probably end up, I don't know,

Speaker 2 Cleveland and San Diego.

Speaker 1 It's also like why the

Speaker 1 constant,

Speaker 1 the MLB needs a face of the league and the MLB, what's the marketing problem for the MLB?

Speaker 1 It's okay to say the MLB is just, 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.

Speaker 1 But these guys are the face of the MLB and they're like, couldn't be better.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Two of them.
I mean, Shohei is having an incredible season.

Speaker 1 And they're both awesome. I'm loving why.
And outside of not talking to the Little League World Series, Aaron Judge seems like a good dude.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It's disgusting that Little League World Series is in the pocket of the Communist Party of China. Chinese Taipei.

Speaker 2 The Little League World Series has now now officially decided that Taiwan belongs to the Chinese government. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 Weird, huh?

Speaker 1 Weird.

Speaker 1 The Little League World Series, Hank, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 Do you recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan?

Speaker 11 I think it would help to give some context to our maybe younger listeners who aren't fully aware what the difference is.

Speaker 2 Maybe like somebody that's eight, nine years younger than us that might be listening out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, hypothetically on a couch somewhere.

Speaker 2 So you're saying that

Speaker 11 the team identifies as Taiwan.

Speaker 2 Post-World War II, what happened was...

Speaker 11 Like, where are the players on the team say that they're?

Speaker 2 I'm going to set it up for you.

Speaker 1 It depends on who they're saying their allegiance to.

Speaker 2 Hank, post-World War II, the communists and the nationalists had a big war against each other in China. Before

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like, you remember a couple seasons ago when ESPN drew that seven-dashed line or whatever around the South China Sea, and they gave fishing rights to the Chinese government in the South China Sea?

Speaker 2 That's what the Little League World Series is doing with Taiwan. They're just giving it to the Chinese.

Speaker 11 So, the Little League World Series is in bed with the Chinese.

Speaker 11 No better than LeBron.

Speaker 1 Or Steve Kerr. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So

Speaker 1 I'm with

Speaker 1 Taiwan.

Speaker 1 It's Taiwan's name. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So we beat Taiwan today. That's all I'm saying.
Not Chinese Taipei.

Speaker 1 But it was fuck out of Taiwan.

Speaker 2 Two to one. Yep.

Speaker 1 Yep. And extra.

Speaker 1 Florida.

Speaker 2 Small ball's back, baby.

Speaker 1 Florida. No, that's a real island.

Speaker 2 That's, yeah. That's how we...
Florida probably declares itself as its own country.

Speaker 1 Hell yes.

Speaker 2 We would never do that in the United States.

Speaker 1 That big boy on Florida was awesome. He was electric.

Speaker 1 He's still home.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 We got this. So baseball's back, though.

Speaker 2 Baseball is fully back.

Speaker 1 So back, 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.

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Speaker 1 Hank, who's back of the week?

Speaker 11 My who's back of the week is Oasis. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think I talked about it on the show.

Speaker 11 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

Speaker 11 went down an Oasis rabbit hole and just became obsessed. I definitely was talking to PFT about it for a while before the pup punk show.

Speaker 11 So I'm pumped. I was not really, I was, you know, in the, I know, you know, Wonder Wall category.
Like, I knew

Speaker 11 some of them. You got bangers.
The documentary was great. They were like the biggest band of all time in the 90s.
And they have bangers. And just

Speaker 11 the drama, the brother drama is so

Speaker 11 like the Liam, Liam Liam Gallagher has aura like through the moon. He is one of the funniest characters.
So I'm very, very, very, very late to the party.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 And when I'm drunk, I'll just like turn on some of their live concerts and stuff.

Speaker 1 All the concerts have like 700,000 people.

Speaker 1 700,000 people in bucket hats. Yeah, and

Speaker 2 they're like waving giant, giant-ass flags. They only perform at the biggest music festivals.
It's incredible.

Speaker 2 And meanwhile, like they're on stage and Liam is calling his brother cunt and singing songs. His roasts are so good.

Speaker 2 If you ask Liam Gallagher about like any modern musician, he'll just talk to you for about 30 seconds about how bad that guy sucks.

Speaker 2 He's like, he is on the Mount Rushmore of Haters, but in a hilarious way.

Speaker 1 Have you told Billy about this?

Speaker 11 No, I'm sure he's excited.

Speaker 2 Hey, Hank found a second band? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are you worried what Billy Strings is going to say? No, I think more of this. Is there room for two?

Speaker 11 Yeah, there's room for two. My YouTube, like, if you went on my YouTube, because that,

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 That Oasis, like, turning on their old, like, the Wembley or whatever, like that happens still.

Speaker 1 Glastonbury. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah, they had a, it was like 400,000 people.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, every single concert is the same way.

Speaker 11 And I was watching a documentary. I was like, yeah, I knew one song.
I didn't even know they were this big, and they were like the biggest band in the world.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 How long do you think this reunion is going to last?

Speaker 2 Will they put over under, I'm going to say

Speaker 2 one and a half concerts.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Okay. They've got a beef in America.
I think Spain one time.

Speaker 2 I'm guessing the first concert's going to be in England somewhere.

Speaker 1 Yes, so they're together.

Speaker 2 The second one, let's just say hypothetically, it's Scotland.

Speaker 1 If they have to come to America for a tour, it will not last.

Speaker 2 They won't make it over that body wall.

Speaker 1 Absolutely not. Did you see?

Speaker 11 Where is it?

Speaker 2 If it's drivable.

Speaker 1 If it's drivable, they can't get it.

Speaker 11 Our colleague, Dante the Dawn, had a very funny.

Speaker 11 Okay. My favorite.
This is Dante the Dawn. My favorite Liam Gallagher stories from 2017, Lollapalooza.
They stick them with the worst slot of the weekend, 4 p.m. Friday.

Speaker 11 I show up at 3, get on side stage, so pump 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he does that all the time.

Speaker 1 He's just like, I'm not doing this.

Speaker 2 And he's talented enough where he can keep getting away with it.

Speaker 1 He did that. I think they were supposed to do like MTV Unplugged, and

Speaker 1 he said, I just don't like how acoustic sounds. Yeah, I like it.
And just didn't do it right before.

Speaker 11 The documentary part of it I liked because they were right before the internet and technology. So they were really the last kind of big rock star.
Liam Gallagher is a rock star. So the new Beatles.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Doesn't give a fuck. Yep.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Who's back, bad?

Speaker 2 Who's back? I got a couple who's backs of the week. My first is Logan Paul.
Yeah. Logan Paul's back.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, when he pushed his dog?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Apparently he pushed his dog off a speeding boat.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was bad. I saw that.

Speaker 2 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. But you can see his arm pushing his dog.

Speaker 2 boat. That was bad.

Speaker 1 Jail. Really bad.

Speaker 2 Prison. Now I want to see Mike Tyson beat the fuck out of him.
Noted dog lover, Mike Tyson.

Speaker 1 You'd think the videos, the amount of videos they've done and like different height, like they could figure out a way to push a dog off a boat without having to be so obvious. Yeah, it gets to be.

Speaker 1 Not that I'm condoning that, but I'm saying it was so obvious that he did that.

Speaker 2 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 him off.

Speaker 1 You left him for dead in the water. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So my other who's back of the week. A cute dog, by the way.
Very cute dog. My other who's back of the week is Jameis Winston.
Yes.

Speaker 2 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 he's pregame QB1.

Speaker 1 I think he's heart and soul QB1. Deshaun Watson is...

Speaker 1 What's going to happen this year with him?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 1 We're going to do some previews coming up, but Deshaun Watson has to be one of the biggest question marks. Is he good still?

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 that looked like an NFL quarterback. Right.
And then a lot where it was like, this guy stinks.

Speaker 1 And he's got a great coach.

Speaker 2 He's got a great coach, and Jameis is now in the building, and Jameis will be the most popular person in that building. And his video, his

Speaker 2 pre-game speech videos continue to go viral because he talked about Cece's pizza and

Speaker 2 it just gives you goosebumps. And you're like, I just want, I want to get out there and play for Jameis.
He's the best. Yeah, so Jameis is.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, when he retains just to give speeches. We will hire him at Parcel to just do that.

Speaker 2 Just give us speeches every single day.

Speaker 1 Him and Ben Herbert.

Speaker 1 We'll be the drill tweet.

Speaker 1 Can someone help us with barstools, finances,

Speaker 1 rent this,

Speaker 1 sound equipment this,

Speaker 1 Ben Herbert, trainer, $10 million, Jameis Winston, $4 million. And all they do is pre-game speech.
Jameis pumps us up, and then Ben Herbert makes us harder to break.

Speaker 2 I just, I would love to. yeah, it is worth paying Jameis Winston $4 million a year just for vibes.
Agreed. And that's what they're doing.
Agreed.

Speaker 1 Okay, my who's back of the week is

Speaker 1 hilarious hit pieces that don't really land. Now, this is very,

Speaker 1 very specific, but not to get political.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I just saw one story that made me laugh that I thought was good for the show. There was a explosive

Speaker 1 bombshell that was dropped that is titled RFK Jr. Accused of Being a Cocaine Dealer at Harvard University as former classmate speaks out.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you realize that that does not help being like, this guy sucks.

Speaker 2 So it was,

Speaker 2 he said that his excuse for it was, i was offered to purchase cocaine from a kennedy yeah so i did it it's like yeah that's i would 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's 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 for drug dealers how do you feel about endorsing a guy that would have had you killed when you were 18?

Speaker 1 it's like i'm sure he still

Speaker 2 I'm sure he still would have done it. He's a fucking Kennedy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what they do. He probably was the coolest guy at Harvard.

Speaker 2 They break the law.

Speaker 1 That's what they do. So, so I just, it made me laugh.
But I, like, again, we don't talk politics on the show, but that political

Speaker 1 story definitely made me laugh because it was just so ridiculous.

Speaker 1 The biggest back. This guy has been sitting on this.
Did you see the other one? He's literally like this. Yeah, did you see the other story? Finally coming forward.
About the whale? No. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 The whale was a much more normal story.

Speaker 1 Very cool.

Speaker 2 So he took his daughter to the beach.

Speaker 2 He found like 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

Speaker 2 onto his daughter.

Speaker 1 Jesus. That's a weird guy.

Speaker 2 That's pretty normal, I'd say.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's a weird guy. But yeah, coming out and being like, guy sold me Coke in college.
Got him.

Speaker 1 Wow, I'm going to change everyone's mind now.

Speaker 2 You got to lead with a whale story.

Speaker 1 All right, Huey, finish this off. May who's back?

Speaker 1 Conference realignment.

Speaker 2 The Yukon Huskies

Speaker 12 seems like they're trying to get into the Big 12.

Speaker 12 And their big pitch is that they'll spend more money on football particularly.

Speaker 2 And that Big 12 is very bullish on basketball.

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 1 So now they're trying to go after Hurley and

Speaker 12 the Huskies and trying to bring in some basketball

Speaker 12 eliteness to that conference.

Speaker 2 Max, what do you think about the idea of UConn switching conferences?

Speaker 1 You would love it. Hate it.
You would love it. Hate it.
Absolutely hate it. All right, so this would suck because I do love

Speaker 1 the Big East, as it's currently set, is a basketball conference. And

Speaker 1 Hurley's talked to us before about, you know, like Northeast, the Italian league, all that stuff. It would suck.

Speaker 1 It also also would make the Big 12 the greatest college basketball conference of all time.

Speaker 1 And I like, it just would, because it would, 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 But I don't want it to happen.

Speaker 1 I don't want it to happen because

Speaker 2 you have these thoughts in your head of things that are just known to be true all the time and will never, ever change. And that's UConn is a Big East school.
And that will never change.

Speaker 2 It's never changed.

Speaker 2 It's never changed in the past. And it'll never be any different than that.
But no, I don't want that to happen. UConn should be in the Big East.

Speaker 1 They're home right now.

Speaker 2 Let's leave them home. Yeah.
I did look at the get-in price at Fog Allen for when UNC comes to town. First time UNC has ever played at the Fog.
Do you know how much it costs to go to that game?

Speaker 2 $700. I think it's like $1,800 or like $2,000 just to get in the door of that game.
We got to go to Fog Allen this year.

Speaker 1 We've been talking to our friend Eric Chenoweth. He's going to take us there.
It seems

Speaker 1 an awesome place. Actually, you know what would be great? Is we could take a road trip in Vanny.
Yeah, we could.

Speaker 2 To the Fog?

Speaker 1 So we'll be ready by the winter? Yeah. Really?

Speaker 1 Winter.

Speaker 11 We'll circle back, but yeah.

Speaker 1 Have we got the timeline up here?

Speaker 11 I got faith. That's subject to change.
I don't know if it's a fair thing.

Speaker 2 Is faith a mechanic?

Speaker 1 Faith fix a car that a van that hasn't driven. Summer's over.

Speaker 2 Wheels are in motion. Summer's not over, Hank.

Speaker 1 No, the wheels literally are not in motion. The wheels have not been in motion for five years.
I think you're the one who always says, hold on to summer.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Locked in.

Speaker 3 Labor Day.

Speaker 1 Summer's over, so I better not see you golfing.

Speaker 11 That's not. I mean, you could say fall golf is the best golf.

Speaker 1 Put on winter golf

Speaker 11 in Arizona.

Speaker 2 Summer's not over.

Speaker 11 Week after Super Bowl.

Speaker 2 Don't do this to us.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 It should be in his contract that UConn stays in the big East.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's get to our interviews. We have Marcus Freeman, head coach of Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and then Andy Staples talking college football.

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Speaker 1 Okay, here he is, head coach of Notre Dame, Marcus Freeman.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 approached with that,

Speaker 1 were you like a little bit 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?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I think it's something we've talked about probably for about a year now. And

Speaker 9 the first first thing I think of is a little bit, you're protective of your team.

Speaker 9 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,

Speaker 9 you know, then we started talking more in depth about it. And,

Speaker 9 you know, 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 I was 100% good with that.

Speaker 9 But I've seen a glimpse and pieces of the first two episodes. And I think it's awesome.

Speaker 2 They've done a well a really good job of uh not only just showing the football side of things but but telling the stories of our players showing you know some of the things that the fans and so some of those guys that aren't fans would would like to know it's pretty entertaining yeah so give me one guy that's uh 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 like 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 uh on notre dame

Speaker 9 who's hilarious I don't know who's hilarious not who we hope, and he better be the breakout star or better be the quarterback.

Speaker 9 And if he's the breakout star, then you know what? Things are going to go really, really well for us.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 How's his hair? Is his hair as good as Sam's?

Speaker 9 No, he doesn't have the long hair.

Speaker 9 He's pretty clean cut, but he's got a listen. He is

Speaker 9 a unique personality, ultra-competitive.

Speaker 9 But, you know, I think him and Sam are two completely different individuals. Yeah.

Speaker 2 How long would Sam take getting, you know, ready after a game in the shower, all the product?

Speaker 2 Was he always the last one out?

Speaker 9 You know what? I know that he was never out before me.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, your quarterback, Riley Leonard,

Speaker 1 who last year he went through, you know, the injuries and everything.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 9 That was part of the

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 You end up getting hurt at the very last play of that game.

Speaker 1 And then I hear about two weeks later, he bounces back and he was healthy, um but he is an ultra competitor and that's a huge part of what we're looking for yeah i i know um you obviously we're fans uh we can gamble on games that game was awesome uh because adric estimate ran that touchdown at the end

Speaker 9 Yeah, I think the analytics would tell him to take a knee.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But

Speaker 9 maybe you guys are rooting for him to score that touchdown.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Do you tell the guys, because it's like you're scoring a touchdown in a big-time college football game.

Speaker 2 It's hard to turn that off.

Speaker 1 Are you able to tell them before like, hey, if you break this, go down?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And I got a firm belief that like you never want to take points off the board. And so if you're down, I never tell our offensive, hey, take a knee at the one yard line.
I say score.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And so that's just where the analytics plays out. And as a head coach, you got to make a decision.
But we did not tell him to go down.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Obviously, you can end the game with a field goal, but you never want to take that risk.

Speaker 9 No, no doubt. No doubt.
So much

Speaker 9 can go wrong with any type of field goal extra point. I can't take points off the board.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and we're very happy that he didn't go down at the one. Yeah.
So shout out to him. His points are good.
That should be your motto for the team. Points are always good.

Speaker 2 No one will ever complain about points.

Speaker 2 I saw that you were in camp. You were wearing a shirt that caught my eye.
You were wearing a shirt that just had grit on it, which we appreciate. We love grit on this podcast.

Speaker 2 We do a grit tour every year for the last eight years.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 9 You know what? We have to be gritty.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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 I have a lot of it. There we go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Grit.
Grit. I love it.

Speaker 9 But yeah, it's the motto of our offense.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 It's a way for me to show our offense a little bit of support, but I'm a firm believer. And if we want to have success, we better have grit.

Speaker 9 And that's something that every person in this program needs to have.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 9 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 plate, three yards in a cloud of dust.

Speaker 9 But, you know what, again, it's a mentality. We talk about the GB having gratitude for the opportunity that you have.

Speaker 9 But at the same point of it, 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.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you're, you know, the head coach of Notre Dame football, you're under 40 years old, incredible success.

Speaker 1 Does your dad still think you're not that big of a deal?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 So I don't know if it's something as parents or as fathers that we never just. see our young children as adults and these grown men, but he definitely still sees me as a young Marcus for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because the famous story when you guys were were playing the Fiesta Bowl, there was a sideline report that your dad, even though you've had all the success in the world, doesn't think you're that big of a deal.

Speaker 1 Is that something like if you win a national title, will he be like, hey, you're a big deal now?

Speaker 1 Are you waiting for that?

Speaker 9 I sure as hell hope so, man.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, I mean, it's good. It keeps you humble.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you're familiar with the trash talk that James Laurenitis has been putting your way recently about college football. First of all, have you played college football 25?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 Do you always play as Notre Dame?

Speaker 9 Most of the time. Funny story, last night I was telling somebody that I get home late.
The kids are playing. One of them's using Notre Dame.
He was like, dad, you want to play? And I'm like, sure.

Speaker 9 And he was like, okay, I'm Notre Dame. You can't use Notre Dame.
So I'm like, all right. So I end up getting texts and saying them.
And I'm like, after I'm playing with him, I'm like, you know what?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because

Speaker 2 Lauren I just said that you weren't very good at

Speaker 2 playing video games. He said that he 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.

Speaker 2 You know what?

Speaker 9 Listen, man, I don't think it was as bad as he tried to portray,

Speaker 9 but I know he won probably more than I did for sure.

Speaker 9 But my point is, you need to spend more time preparing, studying, getting ready for whatever we're getting ready for, and less time playing that game.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a fair point.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that, I mean, the stadium pulse for,

Speaker 2 was it Kyle Field? That's going to be, that's going to be an intense environment. Have you thought about that?

Speaker 2 I mean, they have the 12th man, but Notre Dame has the real 12th man, Jesus, on their side.

Speaker 2 That's going to be a tough environment to go into.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it's going to be loud.

Speaker 9 You know, we've played in some tough environments, but the thing about it, you have to prepare for it.

Speaker 9 And so we have obviously a pretty loud speaker system here that you have to be able to plan, prepare.

Speaker 9 You know, something unique this year is that we have the coach-to-player 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 I got a tough question, but you're such a compelling speaker. And every time you post a video of you, you know, recruiting recruiting or talking to the guys, I'm like, man, I want to run through.

Speaker 1 I don't like Notre Dame. I'll just tell you that, but I want to run through a brick wall.

Speaker 1 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 like taken from you? Because

Speaker 1 it's got to be really difficult to be like, my body, I feel fine. I could play the game, but I can't anymore because the doctors found something.

Speaker 1 Was that, how long did that take for you to get over that?

Speaker 9 You know, I think at that time, um, I was wrestling back and forth. I was like, man, how long am I going to be able to play in the NFL? I had a couple knee injuries.

Speaker 9 I would have been on a couple 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.

Speaker 9 He's like, look, play as long as you can. And when they found the enlarge heart valve, like, it's.

Speaker 9 Obviously, something you don't want to hear and you're not expecting to hear, but I was almost like, man, this is a sign from God. Like, hey, enough is enough.
You know, move on.

Speaker 9 You're not good enough to play in the NFL. and

Speaker 9 let's start this next chapter. So, I remember driving home from Indianapolis and calling my coach and saying, listen, Coach Truss,

Speaker 9 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 going to get started on this journey.

Speaker 1 That's, I mean, that's the perfect next step. So, do you, do you use it as a positive in recruiting ever where you're like, hey, I can love you more than any coach? Like, literally?

Speaker 9 I try to use that maybe with my wife and maybe sometimes the kids, but definitely not using that in recruiting for sure.

Speaker 1 So we were lucky enough to interview Jim Tressel like seven or eight years ago. Has he instilled the love of punting into you at all?

Speaker 9 He is definitely a guy that values field position. Yes.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 You know,

Speaker 9 I come from the defensive side of the ball, but I'm a little bit more aggressive than Coach was.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But there's also times I remember that little birdie saying, hey, punt the ball, win the battle, field position.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's obsessed with it. We like, we rattled off different situations.
He's just like, oh, yeah, that was a punt, incredible punt by us. Like, we pinned him deep.

Speaker 1 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 punts.

Speaker 2 He said it was the most beautiful play in sports because

Speaker 2 the possession switches on a punt. Both teams get possession of the ball, and he was just obsessed with it.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah, speaking of Coach Tressel, have you had a conversation with him about today's college football and being like, man, this is different?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But have you had that conversation with him? Like, man, this is, it's nuts where we've ended up.

Speaker 9 Yeah, we've had many conversations. And I think he's, he's

Speaker 9 obviously accepted what's going on with the NCA and how the game has changed, and players getting paid.

Speaker 9 We don't really discuss, you know, obviously his situation and where we're at now, but you know, Coach is such an outside thinker, right?

Speaker 9 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 got guys from all over.

Speaker 9 You know, some are transfers for one year, some

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And so that's the most Jim Tressel response to NIL and Transfer Portal. But

Speaker 9 yeah, it's crazy how times have changed.

Speaker 2 It's wild to look back on that and think to yourself, like, there was a six-month news cycle where people were pretending to get upset because college players got tattoos.

Speaker 2 It let 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?

Speaker 9 No, no, I didn't get any free tattoos. And I'll make sure I put that on the record right now.

Speaker 1 You kind of look to your left arm there. Yeah.

Speaker 9 That's why I got long sleeves on, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
You had a viral moment. It might have been last year or the year before where you were able to flip it on a reporter

Speaker 1 who is your son's coach. Is that? Yeah.
So how good did that feel?

Speaker 1 That must have been like, it ain't no fun when 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.

Speaker 9 It was during a bye week. And I remember going out to seeing one of my kids play.
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.

Speaker 9 And he might have made some decisions that maybe I don't agree with.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And he 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.

Speaker 9 Good dude. It just shows you a little bit of how small town,

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But that's what makes it different around here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was a great moment.

Speaker 1 It was, I mean, I feel like every coach probably watched that and was like, man, I wish I had that moment because you just get the worst thing about it is the worst thing about it is he did the ultimate no-no and he started blaming his other coach about

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 If that ever happens again,

Speaker 1 I'll offer our publication, Bar School Sports, if you'd like to write a blog about his coaching decision.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you should start just your own newspaper. And then you start calling for his job.

Speaker 9 That's what we'll do. I won't waste time in a press conference.
I'm just going to write a blog about it for sure.

Speaker 1 Perfect.

Speaker 2 A lot of people are calling for this guy's job, say he doesn't have what it takes, melting down in crucial moments. You go over every fourth-down decision he makes.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 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 when they're questioning you later on.

Speaker 9 Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 9 Work both ways.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like I said, when I watch videos, I'm not a Notre Dame fan, but I'm a Marcus Freeman fan.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 what is it that you think that you do better than other guys or you found has worked more?

Speaker 9 I think, you know, the thing I always believe in is you have to have something good to sell.

Speaker 9 You have to believe in what you're selling. But at the end of the day, it's going to come down to relationships.
And that is more important than anything.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 But at the end of the day, I was like, young people can be persuaded in a moment, but who's who's going to continue to develop relationships and pour into you after the visit?

Speaker 9 And that's what I was like, you know what?

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 And even after they commit, you have to keep doing it because everybody else is still recruiting.

Speaker 2 Everybody else is trying to uh 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 uh derecruiting has that has that like 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 you know 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 you know 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 then now they have to be coached hard just like everybody else have you had to change that at all with with the new rules about the transfer portal and all that?

Speaker 9 No, I haven't.

Speaker 9 I don't, 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.

Speaker 9 Like that's a part of trying to get the best out of you.

Speaker 9 And what I'm hoping is that the relationships we've built in recruiting, the relationships we'll continuously build here helps you understand that. You know what? Coach cares about me.

Speaker 9 So he's getting on me. That's why we're doing it.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 I don't want to play for him. I'm ready to move on somewhere else.

Speaker 9 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,

Speaker 9 I think they'll truly respect that. And that's the way this program does it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I go back and forth.

Speaker 2 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

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 9 That's a great, great question.

Speaker 9 Great question.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 I want to win my conference.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Well, then that's not a great. You want to rather win a national championship or a conference?

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, that's what I want.

Speaker 1 one at a time. I don't want to go to class.

Speaker 9 Well, then you're not, you are definitely not coming to Notre Dame.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 Like, if you talk to a guy or you look at his, 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.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 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 yeah right and so we have to figure out which ones want that um and and fit here and 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.

Speaker 9 Like, cause at some point it's going to be over.

Speaker 9 As long as we all dream of playing like as long as Tom Brady, but there's one Tom Brady, and you have to understand like a place like this can truly set you up for life after football.

Speaker 2 Also, okay, so we got off on the wrong foot as recruits.

Speaker 1 Let's say, okay, hey, coach, my goals in life are to

Speaker 1 play a little bit of college football, then be hired as like a financial analyst in Chicago by an alum from Notre Dame. Do you think this is a place I should go?

Speaker 9 There's a no-brainer.

Speaker 1 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.
Nice.

Speaker 1 It would be a favorite. Nice.

Speaker 2 Maybe try my hand at doing like some college football analysis on like, I don't know, NBC for a couple seasons.

Speaker 1 And then some of you have to do that. You guys are giving me layups now.
You're giving me layups.

Speaker 9 You guys are leaving campus. I said, they're done.
They're coming to Notre Dame. Let's get somebody.

Speaker 2 I just want to meet the Golicks.

Speaker 2 I want to pet the Golicks pugs and make that happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's done.

Speaker 9 They'll be here on your visit. That's what we'll take.
On your visit, you get a chance to meet them.

Speaker 1 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 work?

Speaker 1 And 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?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 9 no four can walk out for the coin toss um but i just believe that you know the the number of captains will be based off the voting and um you'll i'm trying to i'm not trying to give away one of the episodes of our uh 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 and it's not always what you think it is and i was i was saying okay if you want this responsibility you really want to do this stand up.

Speaker 9 And it was interesting to see who really stood up and who wanted to be an opportunity to be named a captain.

Speaker 9 You know, not many people did it as you would think, not as many people as you would think did it.

Speaker 9 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 guys here.

Speaker 9 Like, what's the right number to truly lead this football team? And that's how I came up with five. Last year it was four.
I think my first year was three.

Speaker 9 And so I also don't want to be a coach that has 10 captains. Like I want to, okay, what's really a captain? Who fits this mold? And we'll name him from there.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do?

Speaker 9 You would lose all credit of what a captain is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I'd keep that player. I'd keep that player.
He can't leave.

Speaker 1 Every player would threaten to transfer. Like every week, coach, I'm thinking about going to Alabama.

Speaker 1 They'd come in my office and be like, yeah, I'm thinking about going to Alabama, and I just pull out the C from underneath my desk, be like, What about this? Here you go. It's the last

Speaker 1 NIL money or not. Maybe, maybe, yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like a piñata, it's a giant C that you hit. Yeah, uh, Coach, this is probably a dumb question for me, too, because again, I don't know that much about Notre Dame football.

Speaker 2 Um, but when people say wake up the echoes, are we waiting? Are they awake this year? Are we going to wake them up? What does wake up the echoes mean?

Speaker 9 They're up. They better be up.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 9 I've embraced it all in, you know, but I don't know where the slogan originally came from, you know.

Speaker 1 We got to wake up.

Speaker 2 So the echoes were asleep, but then you got to wake up the echoes.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 9 That sounds good to me. I really have never asked what the heck that slogan means.

Speaker 9 You might hear me say it every once in a while, but listen, that description sounds really, really good.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, you just got to be loud.

Speaker 2 That's what I'm hearing.

Speaker 1 The echoes are

Speaker 9 here and hear the part of it. It's a part of our fight song.
You know, it's a part of the song. And so that's probably where they got it from.

Speaker 9 They took the slogan, but the meaning behind it, that sounds pretty good.

Speaker 1 Do you ever like catch, you know, like on a fall day, like you catch the wind and you're like, wait, was that an echo?

Speaker 1 Or was that?

Speaker 1 No, that wasn't an echo. No.
Okay. Yeah, because everyone, Notre Dame is one of those teams.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Something about the gold helmets, it's just it is college football, and I guess that would be waking up the echoes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I guess we'll wake them up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'll wake up. I wouldn't mind having the echo.
I want to then put them back to sleep, but we'll wake them up. Yeah, they should be awake.

Speaker 2 Coach, do you have special access to like old Notre Dame game film? Like, how far back does that go?

Speaker 9 Uh, yeah, you black and white, and I mean, you could find any Notre Dame game film. I don't sit here and watch a lot of them.

Speaker 9 No, I don't go way back that far, but you have access to anything you want around here.

Speaker 2 Have you gone back to see if Rudy was off sides?

Speaker 9 No, I just listen, whatever the movie shows is what I believe.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's fair. Now,

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 2 I think that's smart.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I went to Wisconsin. I'm a Badger.
You obviously coached with Luke Fickle at Cincinnati. He's a psycho.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 9 He's demanding,

Speaker 9 but he does care about young people. He's tough.
One of the toughest dudes I know, obviously a wrestler, played noseguard at Ohio State.

Speaker 9 Very demanding of those around him, but the same demands that he puts on those around him, he puts on himself.

Speaker 9 But

Speaker 9 he will continue to make sure that program is truly reaching his full potential. He's going to get everything out of those guys and the coaching staff there.

Speaker 9 So he actually coached me as a player at Ohio State when I was a lot there. And so our relationship goes back many, many years.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 1 Did he ever challenge you to a wrestling match?

Speaker 9 I'm not stupid now.

Speaker 9 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 for sure.

Speaker 1 Who do you think would win in a fight, Luke Fickle or Mike Vrabel?

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 9 I plead to fit.

Speaker 1 I really do.

Speaker 9 But I would pay a lot of money to watch that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Vrabel, we had him on a month ago. He said he could whoop him.
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Vrabes is very confident about his ability to be as ass.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't think so.

Speaker 9 I bet you both, those two would both say they're going to whoop each other. Yeah.
Yeah, not to me, listen,

Speaker 9 the only way to figure out who wins that one is they got to go after it, man.

Speaker 2 Yeah. 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.

Speaker 2 I feel like that's how it's going to work between the two of them.

Speaker 2 As a defensive guy yourself, I feel like a lot of coaches go through this if they come up, you know, on the defensive side of the ball, former player, they get elevated to a head coaching position, and they they feel like, okay, I can't be like the full-blown defensive psycho that I used to be in the past because now I'm in charge of the entire team.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Or are you staying the same person going from defense to being the head coach?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I think the intensity you coach with doesn't change if you're the coordinator head coach, right? If you're an intense person, you're going to coach with intensity.

Speaker 9 You're going to have the energy and emotions.

Speaker 9 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, Nal Golden.

Speaker 9 But, you know, I'm not looking for somebody to just be a raw rock guy. I want somebody that's really good.
And, you know, we got one here.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right, coach, I know you got to run in a second.
Last question for me: Roback question: R-H-O-B-A-C K.com, promo code TAKE. 20% off your first purchase.

Speaker 1 Q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, roback.com.

Speaker 1 Quick analytics question for you. You're down 14,

Speaker 1 and 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?

Speaker 9 Kicking the extra point.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 1 That's wrong, just so you know. It's a math thing.

Speaker 9 That's what your analytics book will tell you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a math thing.

Speaker 1 I should have said, do you not trust your two-point play?

Speaker 9 No, I just don't know if I, you know, if I want to use it at that moment.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you do want to use it at that moment. Remember this conversation, this will happen.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I know what the book would tell you. 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 on it.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, it's not onside kicking. So, you, a two-point conversion, if you have a good two-point conversion, it's probably over 50% success.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Or you can say, hey, listen, man, we make two extra points.
We'll go to overtime.

Speaker 1 Oh, no,

Speaker 1 coach.

Speaker 9 Listen, you're an exact reason. That's why there's a lot of great things out of that book, but there's also

Speaker 9 some head coach decisions that I got to make that

Speaker 9 definitely, I can't always go by the book.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 9 And then if we win, then what do I get out of it?

Speaker 1 Lucky. You got lucky.
Yeah, you got lucky. Yeah, that's how we do.
We're not going to win the rest of the time.

Speaker 1 You'll come to a game.

Speaker 9 You'll wear your Notre Dame jersey and be on a sideline.

Speaker 1 I love it.

Speaker 1 Fine. If you win that way, I'll do that.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 I love it. But I hadn't thought of it.
If you were a better football team, you wouldn't have been down 14.

Speaker 2 But I would rather. That's 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Listen,

Speaker 9 there are analytical studies and opinions out there and

Speaker 9 when you should go for it on fourth, when you should go for two-point conversions.

Speaker 9 But there's also a human element to it, you know, and

Speaker 9 I have to, at the end of the day, use my best judgment on what I believe is right for that right situation. And then, again, there's situations where I totally 100% agree with the book.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 9 I've used the book, but there's also times where, you know what, I got to make sure that I make a decision that I believe is best for the team in that game.

Speaker 1 And that's actually 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.

Speaker 1 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 Western degree did you really well, but

Speaker 1 look at me now.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 There's two minutes, nine seconds left to play. It's fourth down and goal, and you're on, what, the eight? Eight-yard line.
You're on the eight-yard line, fourth and goal.

Speaker 1 You've already lost.

Speaker 9 Come on.

Speaker 9 Okay, say this one more time. You're down eight, and

Speaker 1 it's fourth and eight. on the uh fourth and goal on the eight yard line and there's two minutes nine seconds left in the game

Speaker 2 fourth down do you kick a field goal to bring the 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 tie the game i'm i'm going for it and okay

Speaker 9 the the reason is is that even if you kick the field goal at some point you got to stop them yep right

Speaker 2 if we don't get the the the first down well guess what we got to stop them i forgot to mention too in this scenario tom brady is the quarterback of the approaching team. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's the best quarterback to ever play, hypothetically. Hypothetically.
So it would probably be tough to stop him. You're right.
So I think you made the right call.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you made the right call. You could be an NFL head coach.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got it.

Speaker 9 What did the book say?

Speaker 1 Go for it. Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Speaker 2 The book says go for it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, do the opposite of what Matt LaFlore did.

Speaker 1 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 going to be awesome on Peacock, August 29th.

Speaker 1 Really appreciate you coming on, and I will stand to it.

Speaker 1 If you win a game in the scenario that I laid out, I will go to a Notre Dame game with a Notre Dame hat on and everything and cheer and wake up the echoes.

Speaker 1 But if you lose in that situation, you got to come back on and answer to us.

Speaker 9 No doubt about it, man. Let's have a look.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Yep. Yep.
All right. Thanks so much, Coach.
Appreciate your time. Awesome, man.
Thank you.

Speaker 9 It's been fun, man. Good to see you guys.
All right.

Speaker 1 See you, man. Good luck.

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We're very excited. Let's start big picture.
This is our first year with the 12-team playoff.

Speaker 1 So, how do you think that's going to affect the regular season? I've heard it, you know,

Speaker 1 there's two camps. Regular season doesn't matter as much.
I'm in the camp of we're now going to get games

Speaker 1 that are elimination games in November that never would have had a shot to be that.

Speaker 1 A two-loss team versus a 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah, both camps are correct, big Cat, but

Speaker 3 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 of, say, the Kick Six

Speaker 3 or Michigan, Ohio State last year would be a good example of that, where they're just like, okay, you're out. That's it.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And that's, that could be, you know, four games a week in November. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, I'm excited for the Big 12.
The Big 12 is, is, uh, it feels like it's with all the realignment, which is a bummer, and losing the Pac-12, which is a bummer.

Speaker 1 I'm happy that the Big 12, at least on paper, feels like it's still going to be the chaotic

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And guys like you guys are going to love that because 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 people will fall in love with that as we go on. So the new Big 12 is fun.
I think the new SEC is just out of its mind, like insane, what these games are going to be. I mean, you think about

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 these matchups that are going to become standard regular season matchups just are mind-blowing me right now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I think it loses some of the stuff that makes college football great, that we love about college football.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I can at least acknowledge that.

Speaker 2 So I guess we can 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.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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 Downs to Ohio State, and that's a big loss.

Speaker 3 Caleb Downs was the best player who entered the transfer portal this offseason, but they're still

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And their schedule is not, you know, like Georgia's schedule where they had to go to Tuscaloosa, two Olemiss, two Texas. I think they got a worse draw than Alabama did.

Speaker 3 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.
This is like top two.

Speaker 3 They just came up with a tiebreakers last week. And yeah, there's a random draw at the end, which I just, I want them to do a coin flip at a truck stop if they get to that.

Speaker 3 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 Ten, schedules matter so much more.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 What did you draw?

Speaker 3 Like, Texas, of the ones that were like Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss, Texas and Ole Miss probably got the best draws of those two. Missouri and Tennessee got pretty good draws.

Speaker 3 Oklahoma got screwed. LSU got screwed.
And in Florida, they just basically backed over with a bulldozer.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, Florida and Florida is probably not going to be very good regardless.

Speaker 3 They're not going to be as good as those teams I mentioned, but it doesn't matter what that schedule is.

Speaker 1 I like the Alabama take because I was thinking about it.

Speaker 1 You know, obviously, it's going to 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 Millro is actually going to be a lot better?

Speaker 1 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 is going to throw it deep. That's what his offenses do.

Speaker 1 Jalen Millro is probably the best deep passer in college football. His problem is throwing it 10 yards over the middle.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I think they could have a very good offense. I think Jalen Milro is going to be better this year no matter what happened.
Because think about what happened last year, guys.

Speaker 3 Tommy Rees 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 Milro.

Speaker 3 And they go with him for the first couple of games. They lose the Texas game.
And I'm still not convinced they didn't go, you know what?

Speaker 3 We're tired of hearing you guys yell at us about the quarterback. We're going to start these.
We're going to start one of the other guys and see what, and you'll see what we've been seeing.

Speaker 3 And so they start Tyler Buckner against USF. They play him and Ty Simpson.
And it's like, see,

Speaker 3 Milro was the best option. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes. And I just, yeah, I I think Alabama people, because of the Sabin part,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 What about Tennessee? Because Tennessee's got

Speaker 1 some big boys. It feels like they're finally kind of putting it all.
You know, they've got the quarterback they want.

Speaker 1 Do you think this is, you know, the Tennessee fans being like, hey, it feels like 98. Can we actually have it feel like 98?

Speaker 3 I think they're feeling pretty good right now in Tennessee. This is, you know, James Pierce Jr.
is their best player. He's an edge rusher, probably a top 10 draft pick next year.

Speaker 3 Deepest defensive line they've had since I was a baby beat rider covering Tennessee, and they had John Henderson and Albert Hainsworth and Will Overstreet.

Speaker 3 Like, it's been a long time since Tennessee's been that stacked on the D line. And then offensively, Nico Iyamaliaba takes over at quarterback.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Joe Milton didn't have real good instincts on the read option mesh.

Speaker 3 You couldn't do a lot of RPO stuff. Nico can do that.

Speaker 3 Nico also has much better improvisational skills, which that was what made Hendon Hooker so good in this offense is 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.

Speaker 3 Like he could just find a little bit of a positive gain. Nico is going to be able to do that too.
And I think that helps Tennessee. I also think Tennessee's schedule helps.
Like got NC State week two.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 They're going to be 11-1 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.

Speaker 3 They've never really matched up well against them.

Speaker 2 So what's going on at Georgia? Obviously, their quarterback's coming back again, right? So he's got some experience there. And then

Speaker 2 there's been, how do we say, like off-the-field, on-the-road issues? for the Georgia Bulldogs recently. Is that any different than what happens all across college football?

Speaker 2 Or is this a problem that is, and maybe they turn turn a blind eye to it in a lot of places, or has this just been a Georgia problem?

Speaker 3 It's worse because Georgia had a traffic incident where two people died a couple years ago, and that that's that magnifies it quite a bit.

Speaker 3 But I remember like when I was a Florida beat rider covering the Urban Meyer teams, I just skipped past all the traffic stuff because there were so many more serious arrests to deal with.

Speaker 3 But yeah, every team deals with this traffic stuff.

Speaker 3 With Georgia, you'd think, though, you've had this, you lost one of your teammates, you know, he lost his life, and you still have guys that are, that are driving very, very fast at like in the hundreds, which I get it.

Speaker 3 Like college students do that, especially when you have NIL money or you have a deal with a dealership that gets you a

Speaker 3 Hemi that can go 150 miles an hour. Like, I get it.
But at a certain point, when the coach is like, just knock it off, like, maybe you do.

Speaker 3 And I'm actually questioning Kirby Smart's pull in the city of Athens and Clark County and 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I'm a little worried about his level of juice.

Speaker 2 Yeah, or just build a road

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 They actually have a bypass in Athens. And if you've ever driven around Athens, there's not really a lot of traffic traffic or people.

Speaker 3 Like, they could just repurpose that circular bypass for that purpose. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I want to talk real quick about the ACC.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But Cam Ward is electric from Washington State at Miami. Grayson McCall, who we all know, is now at NC State.

Speaker 1 What's the team that you look at here? And is ACC a multi-team in the playoff type of league this year?

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 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.
Like you got to have that.

Speaker 3 Miami has the roster and the schedule for that. Cam Ward, everybody's excited about.
I know everybody's excited about him. I realize he was the top ranked quarterback in the portal.

Speaker 3 I will tell you from watching Cam Ward through the years, it's a little feast or fam in there. So we're going to find out.
Like Cam Ward's first game is at Florida. It's going to be very loud.

Speaker 3 They probably have the better roster. But we're going to see how he deals with that.

Speaker 3 And if he can, then I'm very confident about them against this schedule. I mean, you look at it, they should not go worse than 10-2 against this schedule.

Speaker 3 And then if, let's say they lose to Florida State, Florida State is, again, the best team in the ACC, which is possible, then

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 We'll see what happens with Clemson because Clemson's going to have a really good defense,

Speaker 3 but they're going to need one of those freshman receivers to be really good. Cade Klubnick at quarterback is going to have to get better.
They're playing Georgia right out of the chute.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 The other three are all service academies. So Clemson's the only one that doesn't require a congressperson to help you get in that didn't take anybody.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm excited for that Florida State Clemson game, the DJ

Speaker 1 Laley revenge game.

Speaker 1 That will be fun because it does.

Speaker 1 You look up and down the entire ACC and it's just guys you know who are somewhere else.

Speaker 1 Obviously, Cade Klubnik is still a 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.

Speaker 3 And watch Virginia Tech. Their quarterback is Kyron Drones, who transferred from Baylor before last season.

Speaker 3 And it sort of took him about half a year to get it kind of figured out how it worked with him.

Speaker 3 But they've got him, and then they brought in Colin Schley, who was Sean Lewis's quarterback at Kent State a couple of years ago. He was at UCLA last year.

Speaker 3 But if you look at the 2022 season, what quarterback played the best at Georgia? That was Colin Schley. So he's their backup.

Speaker 3 So they should be a little bit confident to be able to run drones, which he's a very good athlete.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's got a big arm too, right? Drones?

Speaker 3 Kyron Drones absolutely has a big arm. And, you know, we'll just say Brent Pry sort of has gotten his legs as a head coach.
It was a little shaky at first.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what about Duke? Duke seems like they might be, I don't want to say good, but I'm interested by Duke because

Speaker 3 Mike Unco left the cupboard bear. And then you look at when Manny Diaz took over, they had several guys enter the transfer portal and then say, you know what, I think I'm going to stay here.

Speaker 3 And they bring in Malik Murphy, the transfer from Texas, who started two games for Texas when Quinn Urs was hurt last year and won them both.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And I also think Manny Diaz, I'm glad he's gotten 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.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 I can do this head coaching thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You were talking about the spring meetings. It got me thinking about just media days in in general for coaches and amongst the different leagues.
I personally love SEC Media Day.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Can you describe to us the different vibes of the different conference media days?

Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.
So I have been to all of them at this point.

Speaker 3 Some of them I haven't been to as recently as the others, but I was at SEC in Big Ten year.

Speaker 3 Big 12 is the most chill.

Speaker 3 Like, we're 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?

Speaker 3 What'd you eat last night? Where, you know, where'd you go? And you're going to get that at the Big 12. The SEC is very stage-managed.
Like, we've got to get this guy here.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And basically, they're just running them around and then running them through these various ESPN rooms.

Speaker 3 Big 10 is in Lucas Oil Stadium, and it's fairly stage managed, but like Brett Belem is just going to be hanging at some point. And you just sit down next to Brett Bellama.
What's up? How's it going?

Speaker 3 Man of the people.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Exactly, exactly. Or

Speaker 3 PFT, your guy, Kurt Signetti, former JMU coach, current Indiana coach, he hypnotized me at Big Ten Media Days this year. Hypnotized me.

Speaker 3 Like, 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.

Speaker 3 I'm like, so these lower-tier Big Ten teams, like, could they have beaten JMU last year?

Speaker 1 I don't know if they could have. No.

Speaker 3 So I want to say their total is five and a half. Like, I think I'm all in on Indiana making a bowl game and cashing that over ticket.
I like that.

Speaker 2 I'm going to count every single Indiana win this year as a JMU win in the Big Town. You should, for sure.

Speaker 2 And Signeti, he's, I think he's as close to like 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 one.

Speaker 3 More public bravado than Nick Saban, though. Like when someone says, you know, asks about him, he's like, I just win everywhere.
Google it.

Speaker 3 Like, Nick Saban would never say that, but Kirk Signetti will say that. Also, he's 62.
It looks like he's like 47. Yeah.
I don't know. There's like maybe a Dorian Gray thing going on here.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure. But when you're in his presence, you're like, oh, man,

Speaker 3 this guy's going to win more than he's supposed to.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 But we'll see.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure if they play them back-to-back. Yeah, this team.
They're not going to beat Ohio State.

Speaker 2 They're going to lose by 40.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It does feel like it's Ohio State and Oregon, and then Penn State and Michigan should both have a chance, maybe even USC.

Speaker 1 But are we sure Will Howard is good enough to win a national title at Ohio State? Because that's, I mean, Ryan Day this year, he has to beat Michigan. We know he has to beat Michigan.

Speaker 1 If he doesn't beat Michigan, they're going to be like,

Speaker 1 who knows how the season goes?

Speaker 1 Push back on that big kick.

Speaker 3 Does he have to beat Michigan the first time?

Speaker 13 Yeah, true.

Speaker 1 Well, it might not be Michigan the second time, though, because it might be Oregon, right?

Speaker 3 But if you win the national title, do we care?

Speaker 1 No, let me ask you this, guys.

Speaker 3 If that kick

Speaker 3 that brung 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?

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, you definitely would feel differently.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 There's no excuse if you lose to this Michigan team.

Speaker 3 They should be a 10-year-old Ohio State team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they should be a 10-point favorite, maybe even more, depending on how the the season goes.

Speaker 1 And like, 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.

Speaker 1 It's more that they were last year, they were one of the best teams ever, you know, the way they went through everyone. So do you feel like Will Howard, though, is that guy?

Speaker 1 Because Will Howard's fun to watch. Will Howard's a gamer.
He's tough as nails.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Like, you need a guy who can hit those deep shots consistently, and he's not really that guy as of yet.

Speaker 3 But who did he have at Kansas State?

Speaker 1 True, true. That's a good point.

Speaker 3 Deuce Vaughan two years ago.

Speaker 3 Who was helping him with that? Now,

Speaker 3 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 in Ohio State right now.

Speaker 3 Will Howard's never been surrounded by this kind of talent. True.
You got Emeka Buka, you got Carnell Tate.

Speaker 3 The Recruitniks

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 You're not really going to miss Marv.

Speaker 3 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 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 trayvion henderson and quinshaw judge yeah they're run gameshaw

Speaker 3 miss 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.

Speaker 3 Now, the thing Will Howard does give you is a six foot four, 235 pound guy who, when you need him to get some yards, he's going to get you some yards.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 3 Because the defense is the other thing for Ohio State.

Speaker 3 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 like free agent guys?

Speaker 3 These would have been third, fourth-round draft picks, and they decided to stay for one more year.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 3 They then add Caleb Downs, who was, like I said, was the best player in the transfer portal.

Speaker 3 He's a safety who allows you to change everything about your defense. He allows you to move Sonny Styles to linebacker, which is where he should have been playing all along.

Speaker 3 They have a very deep defensive line. JT Tuimalau coming off the edge, Tyleek Williams inside.
Like they have everything,

Speaker 3 which again goes back to your original point,

Speaker 3 there's no excuse, and there really is no excuse.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 3 Not only should they win the Big Ten, they should win the national title. There's no excuse.
Right. It is national title or bus.
Right.

Speaker 1 I think they're, I mean, 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.

Speaker 1 And that expectation is there now that this is the team that should take them over the hump.

Speaker 1 I'm excited for the Big Ten. I think it's going to be kind of crazy.

Speaker 3 I got to tell everybody about Avery Johnson first. Yes, yes.
If you're a lot of video games, you already know about Avery Johnson. Yes.

Speaker 3 But Avery Johnson is the reason Will Howard is Ohio State's quarterback.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Avery Johnson's 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.

Speaker 3 But Avery Johnson, I'm telling you right now, we've not seen a quarterback this fast probably since Kyler Murray.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 they're going to be so much fun to watch.

Speaker 1 And he's a Wichita kid. He's from Kansas, which like a talent like that in Kansas doesn't happen very often.

Speaker 1 It is going to be fun. And Kansas State's one of those programs that they somehow got the guy behind,

Speaker 1 you know, when what's his name left? Bill Snyder left.

Speaker 1 They got someone basically the same.

Speaker 3 Like they just keep running. Chris Klein is just winning every FCS national title in Dakota State.

Speaker 1 It's great, though, because they're consistently like, oh, yeah, Kansas State. Yeah, okay, they might not win 10 games.

Speaker 1 They're going to be tough no matter who, what, what week they play, who they play. That team is just going to be good and sound at football.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Yeah, it's going to be fun to watch.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And it adds another layer to it.

Speaker 1 I got a take for you, Andy. I want you to judge it.

Speaker 1 Somehow, some way. And, you know, I've always wanted Notre Dame to just join the Big Ten and just like stop this shit and just join the Big Ten.
You're a Big Ten school.

Speaker 1 It would make, it would be awesome if you were playing Michigan every year.

Speaker 1 But somehow, some way, 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 bye. Right.

Speaker 1 But somehow, some way, Notre Dame.

Speaker 3 We kind of should explain the rules later.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Well, we can do it right now.
Yeah. So it's, it's the top four teams, uh, the top four conference champions get a buy, and then it's five through 12.

Speaker 1 The first round is going to to be home games for the higher seed, and then they go, and then they play

Speaker 1 where they play neutral, and then they play in the bowl games.

Speaker 3 So, the top five conference champions get into the playoff automatically, but the top four get the buy and get the top four seeds. And so, we've been doing all this at on three.

Speaker 3 We're trying to help retrain everybody's brain. So, we've been doing all these projected playoff things.

Speaker 3 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 the Big 12 champion. Right.
And people just lose their shit.

Speaker 1 They're like, how can they be the four seed?

Speaker 3 Like, that's the rule.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Like, the ACC champ or the Big 12 champ, they will probably be the three and four seeds. Right.
Most likely.

Speaker 1 So that leads me to my point that I want you to grade.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And what that means at 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 be the one.

Speaker 1 Which might be the number 13 team in the country.

Speaker 1 It will almost always assuredly be an ACC or a Big 12 team. So they will essentially always avoid the Big Ten and SEC until the final four.

Speaker 1 And so somehow Notre Dame has worked out the best possible way.

Speaker 3 Well, there were four people who designed this system.

Speaker 3 Greg Sankey, the SEC commissioner, Craig Thompson, the Mountain West commissioner, Bob Bolsby, who was the Big 12 commissioner at the time, and Jack Swarbrik, the Notre Dame athletic director.

Speaker 3 This system,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 Jack's a smart guy.

Speaker 3 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 and two, or well.

Speaker 3 With this schedule, maybe they have to be 11-1

Speaker 3 to get in. But usually most years with their schedule, if they're 10-2, they're going to get in.

Speaker 3 And yeah, they never have to play in a conference championship game. So they're not playing that extra game.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 So yeah, you get the number 12 seed, which is like going to be the Mountain West champ or the American Athletic Conference champ that might be ranked 23rd. in the actual poll.

Speaker 3 And then if you win that, you get the four seed, which is potentially like the number 15 team. Who knows?

Speaker 1 It'll be the

Speaker 3 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.
Right. If you do, it's a little bit different.

Speaker 3 Like, if you're, 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.

Speaker 3 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,

Speaker 3 like you're in a cat bird seat. Yeah.
Like that five spot is nice.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 But if Notre Dame loses one game, they will almost always be the five seed.

Speaker 3 I don't know about this year, but yeah, a lot of years.

Speaker 1 A lot of years they will.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they'll end up because they'll just be like, okay, Notre Dame. Like, they're the fifth-best team.
We'll put them right there. I just, it's crazy to me.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 They have outsmarted the sport for about 100 years. And, I mean, really,

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 We'll go play USC.

Speaker 3 And then they become this big national brand. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Disgusting. It's nuts.
Back to the Big Ten real quick.

Speaker 2 Want to talk about Iowa and Nebraska. So Iowa lost like their entire offense with their punter.
And he's bombing.

Speaker 1 Horry Taylor is hitting

Speaker 2 bombs in training camp right now.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 3 It's so hard to get caught tampering.

Speaker 3 Like you have to be really, really bad at this to get caught tampering. And they got caught tampering.
And of course, like the receiver's coach also gets suspended.

Speaker 3 John Budmayer, former former Badger quarterback, big cat,

Speaker 3 he got suspended too, which led to a bunch of people asking me on my show,

Speaker 3 Iowa has a receivers coach? What does he do all day? Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 3 and so, but this is this is such an interesting one because Iowa, like, look at Iowa's schedule and think about

Speaker 3 if their offense is slightly better, if it's slightly better.

Speaker 2 We've had the same conversation for like the last 10 years. Like if they're just competent on offense.

Speaker 3 But they did, but they fired Brian Ference and they brought in Tim Lester. So they do have a new offensive coordinator.

Speaker 3 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, but Cade McNamara is a starter.

Speaker 3 And they are semi-functional as an offense. They're still going to be great on defense.

Speaker 3 You could have a Nebraska-Iowa game on Black Friday that could potentially affect the college football playoff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Do that high on Nebraska because we just had Will Compton on and heard.

Speaker 1 What did he say?

Speaker 2 Certainly they're going to start 7-0

Speaker 2 and then we'll see what happens.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 For Wanda Brown. It's so bad because they'll have that little number next to their name and it will just be,

Speaker 1 and I I think it might be a rude awakening when they go to Columbus.

Speaker 2 So Nebraska's quarterbacks.

Speaker 3 I mean, they just got to, like, they haven't been to a bowl game since 2016. Like, if they just make a bowl game, that's enough.

Speaker 3 But if they can be better than that, and by the way, like, if Dylan Ryol is the guy as a true freshman quarterback, he's going to get so many tractor NIL deals.

Speaker 3 Like, he's going to be the tractor magnate of Nebraska. And

Speaker 3 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. Yeah.

Speaker 2 yeah so so how good is he

Speaker 3 that's a great question we we don't know we we we don't know you you watch him play in the spring game you're like whoo look at all his arm slots very mahomes-esque but you also go four high schools in four years

Speaker 3 flip from ohio state flip from georgia like so there's all that too

Speaker 3 i need to see it I need to see it. We're going to get a good chance to see it because they play Colorado in week two.

Speaker 3 And for all of the talk about Colorado, whether it's Deion saying this or that or the now resigned assistant who is trying to get the sweet, sweet Saudi money for the NIL.

Speaker 2 That's a wild story.

Speaker 3 I know. It's incredible.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 they have a pretty good D-line that they have imported through the portal.

Speaker 3 If Dylan Riola can handle that, he can handle most of what's on the schedule.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So with Colorado, I feel like Deion's been especially spicy this year.

Speaker 2 What are his latest things that he said? Like, I 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,

Speaker 1 I think they ranked him.

Speaker 3 Didn't they rank him 15th out of 16

Speaker 2 Big 12 coaches? It's probably Fornelli. We can play Tom Fornelly is now

Speaker 3 Fernelli definitely voted in that one. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he's mad at that reporter. He's mad at another local reporter that's written some bad things about him.

Speaker 2 And then he's just like, the way he's been talking to the media has not given me confidence in Dion's team this year.

Speaker 3 That press conference, I did a lot of reading between the lines on that press conference because I thought it was, it was, he was telegraphing some stuff there. So

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 It'll be very entertaining for me. But that press conference, every time like he got asked about his D line, he talked about how much he loved his D line.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 That's a giant red flag.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Giant red. Like, 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

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But I don't know they're going to be good enough to compete in the Big 12.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, Andy, I got one last question question for you. You'll obviously be on again this fall.
We're so excited for college football to be back.

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Speaker 1 All right, so last question. Give us the four buys.
Give us right now

Speaker 1 who is going to be the highest ranked conference champions.

Speaker 1 I feel like Ohio State and Georgia you can kind of pencil in, but the other two are tough.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I do have Ohio State and Georgia. I am very basic when it comes to that.
I think both of those are the best teams in their leagues. I have Alabama.
Sorry.

Speaker 3 I have Alabama at number five because I have they're my number three in my poll.

Speaker 3 But I have Florida State winning the ACC.

Speaker 3 We're recording this after the Dublin game, so I may look incredibly stupid. Georgia Techs won that game.
That'd be brutal.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy. Well, I bet on Florida State, so it'd be brutal for me, too.

Speaker 2 We're back for Thursday night games with Utah and all those. those games.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, I thought they were playing last Thursday, PFT.

Speaker 1 I was just as disappointed. I just can't wait.

Speaker 2 I can't wait for football to be gone.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize till after when we started the show and PFT said football is back. That's what he was referring to.
Well, no, because it was.

Speaker 3 I heard him say Lindenwood, and I'm like, wait a second.

Speaker 3 Was there like a SCP 22 game starting a week earlier that I didn't know about?

Speaker 3 I should be fired.

Speaker 2 So what happened was I pulled out my phone because I knew the week zero schedule. I know what's happening this Saturday.

Speaker 2 And then for whatever reason, I scrolled down on the app and the first games that it showed me were I thought week zero. And I saw Lindenwood.

Speaker 2 I was like, Yeah, Lindenwood's probably playing week zero. Like, that wouldn't shock me.
Oh, Lindenwood had a third round game. Absolutely.
But yeah, that was a mistake. Hand up.
Misread the schedule.

Speaker 2 I just want college football to be back.

Speaker 3 So, my number four seed is my Big 12 champ. I am going with Kansas State, though.
I will say

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 I've been driving the Avery Johnson bandwagon. I'm going to keep driving it.
I might drive it off a cliff, though.

Speaker 3 I got some information last week, and

Speaker 3 I'm a little worried.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 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 guys.

Speaker 3 And naturally, it's a bunch of SEC teams that that have the most. Like Ole Miss has 21.
Georgia and Texas A ⁇ M have 20.

Speaker 3 So I was looking for the Big 12. Like, who has the most? Utah has 13.

Speaker 1 They're always like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I may have made a mistake here.

Speaker 3 I'm just saying it now.

Speaker 1 In terms of coaches, you know, he's probably one of the most underrated. He's probably one of the best coaches.
No one really says like in that top three.

Speaker 3 And Kyle Whittingham will kick your ass. I finally figured out, because Kyle grew his hair out a few years ago.

Speaker 3 I finally figured out after they beat USC in the Pac-12 Championship game a couple years ago, who he looks like.

Speaker 3 If you watch anything Stallone does now, like the reality show with the daughters or the, or the Tulsa King show,

Speaker 3 Kyle Whittingham looks like Stallone looks now.

Speaker 1 And he's

Speaker 1 mind bar.

Speaker 3 And Kyle Whittingham will beat your ass. I'm telling you right now, hasn't missed a workout in like, like he has a Lou Gehrig workout streak going, but he'll beat your ass.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he looks wiry, wiry, but strong, like very lean man.

Speaker 1 All right, so I'll give you that one. Kansas State slash Utah.

Speaker 2 That's fair.

Speaker 3 Oh, I'll take it. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we didn't talk about USC at all.

Speaker 2 What are the expectations? I'm high on it here because their defense, they can't be worse. I heard that they're tackling in practice sometimes now.

Speaker 3 Would be nice. Yeah.

Speaker 3 This has been my frustration with Lincoln Riley because he's a smart person.

Speaker 3 Clearly a very great, very good offensive coach, great evaluator and teacher of quarterbacks. But

Speaker 3 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 there they're not tackling as the season goes on like their tackling gets worse and worse and worse so deanton lynn the new defensive coordinator i imagine he came in and said look we got to tack 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.

Speaker 3 So they cannot be worse on defense. You know who else can't be worse on defense? LSU, who they play in the season opening.
Because LSU's defense was awful last year.

Speaker 3 So they went out and hired Blake Baker from Missouri as their DC.

Speaker 3 LSU's kind of the same players with new coaches. USC, they changed a lot of the players out, too.
Danton Lynn went and got some guys that fit what he wants.

Speaker 3 Part of the deal with Alex Grench, the old USC defensive coordinator, I firmly believe that Alex Grinch's mind was poisoned when he was the defensive coordinator at Washington State.

Speaker 3 And he had this defensive tackle named Hercules Matafa, who was 225 pounds, but was awesome. Like, this is a dude who could do like backflips off a 30-foot cliff at home in Hawaii.
And he was amazing.

Speaker 3 And so Alex Grinch, 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.
Herc could do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 I know you've got Miller Moss as your Heisman guy, Big Cat. Night likes Miller Moss.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 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.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, uh, but 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.
So USC plays LSU.

Speaker 3 They might lose that game. They open Big Ten play against Michigan.
They might lose that game.

Speaker 3 The Badgers come to the Coliseum for USC's fourth game.

Speaker 3 We might see USC in a can't lose and or must-win situation.

Speaker 3 against the Badgers because if they're one and two going in the Wisconsin game and their defense is shown any signs of leakiness, Phil Longo is going to be licking his chops

Speaker 3 to unleash Tyler Van Dyke on USC's defense.

Speaker 1 And it would be an Alex Grinch revenge game. He's the safeties coach at the Badgers because I know people are giving me shit.
They're like, you have Alex Grinch. He's not allowed to decide

Speaker 1 the alignment arc. Yeah, right.
I was like, he's not the defensive coordinator. He cannot fuck it up at that bad.
Like, yes, he could fuck it up. The safeties could be bad, but

Speaker 1 we're limiting the issues here.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
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.

Speaker 1 He's putting out pods every single week, multiple times a week on Three Network. And there's no better time of year.

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Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 Water.

Speaker 2 Water? That was a good one.

Speaker 11 We'd already done it before and didn't realize it till after.

Speaker 2 So, and how did you do?

Speaker 1 I can't remember. Not well.
It was the old studio. So, so Hank's basically bringing in a ringer.

Speaker 1 What was my third one? Oh, it was your third. What was the other one?

Speaker 5 Sounds you don't like to hear.

Speaker 2 Okay. Did you have Hank's yawn on that?

Speaker 1 That's my yawn on that. Oh, that's right.
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 He caught it from you.

Speaker 1 So Hank's bringing in a ringer. His dad.

Speaker 1 I thought that's nice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's nice. Listen, Hank and I are pretty much neck and neck, and it's...
It's nice to be able to have a dad that you can bring in from Mount Rushmore. Yeah, Hank.

Speaker 2 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. Yeah.
That's fair.

Speaker 1 That's fair.

Speaker 1 So I've clinched. I've officially clinched.
Congrats. Thank you.
So it is now a two-man race between Hank and PFT.

Speaker 1 Before we do, so we're going to do the Mount Rushmore business jargon, which was selected by Hank and PFT.

Speaker 1 Max and I are just, we're basically just playing out. We're sitting the starters.

Speaker 2 Well, there was an idea to have Hank and I go mano a mano. Yeah, but then it was the rest of it

Speaker 2 the score. And that's a different style.
That's a different format of Mount Rushmore. We've never done that before.
Yeah, so

Speaker 1 what are the standings? How far back is Hank? How many points are you back? I think three. Three points.
I hope three.

Speaker 1 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 with 52, Hank with 49.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So you have a blind spot there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So before we start that, though, I would like some thoughts on the summer of Hank.

Speaker 1 Summer of Hank has been unbelievable. Yeah.
What would you rank? Was it Missoula's duckboat or was it being the

Speaker 1 keeper of the light?

Speaker 1 The ringer of the bell of the lighthouse.

Speaker 5 I think the duckboat parade, I don't see how that could top, ever be topped.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but he did, I mean, the lighthouse. Yeah, he did keep the lighthouse.

Speaker 5 It was an epic fan reaction to the lighthouse. Yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 Did you have an epic reaction to when Hank down to Dallas this year and accidentally slipped and put a hole in the wall?

Speaker 1 That was funny. Yeah.
Content. Yeah.
Content machine. Tiffany Gomeas.

Speaker 2 Is she invited to Thanksgiving this year? No. Okay.

Speaker 1 How do you feel about Hank and his prospects of dunking?

Speaker 5 There's a possibility.

Speaker 1 Now, is that, how do you feel about Hank's prospects of doing steroids to dunk?

Speaker 5 Not a fan of the steroids. Okay.

Speaker 2 You raised it better than that, Hank.

Speaker 3 He's been working hard.

Speaker 1 Yep. There is some dunk.
Has he? Wait, has he?

Speaker 5 His uncle can dunk. In my prime, I could dunk a volleyball, so there is some, you know, he's got a shot.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, dunking a volleyball will not pay out this bet.

Speaker 5 No, but the basketballs you guys have out there are palmable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, true. When you say he's been working hard, what has he been telling you?

Speaker 1 I would like to know.

Speaker 5 He's been going to the gym. We've seen videos.
He sent examples of his workouts.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's an improvement from nothing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It is.
It is.

Speaker 2 We were 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 I got dunkered

Speaker 1 now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 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, I'm reaching for the rim.

Speaker 11 I can touch the rim, but I can't get above it.

Speaker 1 Did you listen to Friday's show? Yeah.

Speaker 1 What did you think about Hank's fart in our face? Just air, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's not uncommon in our family.

Speaker 1 We should have said too in Hank's defense because our good friend Keith Yandel texted me after listening to Friday's show. He's like, what the fuck is Hank's problem? Hank was violently hungover.

Speaker 1 So we were taping at 9 a.m.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 11 Very entertaining coworkers.

Speaker 1 That's true, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 How much corporate experience do you have when it comes to the business jargon? Do you have a significant amount?

Speaker 5 I have a lot. I mean, you know, 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.

Speaker 1 yeah has it changed i 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 about yeah right it's none of this makes sense uh okay so do i have first pick yeah yep i have first pick oh tough one max how are you playing these i don't know i don't really care okay because i don't really i'm wrestling with starters anyone who like it i could get laughed in every other one going forward because I'm putting very little effort into these right now.

Speaker 2 Not even for the listeners? That's kind of mean.

Speaker 4 Well, I don't want to take first place, and then you guys just can't have those points. Right.

Speaker 1 No, you got to play it out.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I don't think you should think like that. But yeah, you should.

Speaker 2 After all, this is a podcast.

Speaker 1 There are people who are listening to thoughts, Max. Yeah.
Okay, so I have 1-1.

Speaker 1 Hmm. Okay.
I guess I'll just go with...

Speaker 1 I have a list, and I somehow wrote one thing down twice, so I think that's sublimely telling me that I should pick that as 1-1.

Speaker 1 I'll go with circle back. It's the most annoying.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 You circled back on circle back. Yeah, I did.

Speaker 1 I have it twice. It's just when someone says, let's circle back on this,

Speaker 1 just shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 I don't know why you're saying it like that. Just say, hey, I'll hit you later.

Speaker 11 They don't want to come to a conclusion, but they want the meeting to end. Right.

Speaker 1 Right. And circling back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't even understand it. I'm just going to circle around and back to it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a great pick. I had that as my 1-1.

Speaker 11 Just leaves it open to you can just, they can hit you back up at any point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 11 And then say, oh, I'm circling back.

Speaker 1 How many of these do you use now, Hank, that you're corporate?

Speaker 1 Not as, I mean, a decent amount. Do you circle back? I don't think I've ever used circle back.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We'll circle back. Circle back.

Speaker 2 Okay. Let's talk about it later.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
When? Who knows?

Speaker 2 Team Lockwood.

Speaker 5 I think we're going to go with the logical next thing, which is put a pin in it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.
We're putting pins in it. Okay.

Speaker 11 Similar to circle back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's put a pin in it. That one makes me want to punch someone in the face.

Speaker 2 What's the difference between putting a pin in it and circling back?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 They're a little more definitive. Yeah, they all don't mean shit.

Speaker 2 Is that just a reminder to circle back?

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 2 And And then we'll circle back at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like every single one that we pick means absolutely nothing.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 It's like Hank said, it's just trying to find a way to finish a meeting without an actual conclusion. Yep.
Uh, Max, meatball,

Speaker 1 meatball. Um, hey, should we get some meatballs?

Speaker 4 I'm kind of going to do another one that also kind of sounds like circling back.

Speaker 4 Uh, let's table this conversation.

Speaker 1 Tabling it, tabling it.

Speaker 2 Okay, had that too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Tabling it sucks. Table and it sucks.
All right, PFT, you got two picks.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 1 And it's also the worst about touch base is it's always like, do you have time to touch base on this?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just fucking tell me when you want to talk.

Speaker 2 It just means talk.

Speaker 2 Let's touch base later. Why don't you just talk to me now?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 You already emailed me. Just do the meeting right now.
Tell me what I need to know right now.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You circle forward.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 2 I think if somebody told me to touch base on on something, I would just, I would leave. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Your second pick.

Speaker 2 It's something that you do

Speaker 2 right after you touch bass. Okay.

Speaker 2 You get on the same page.

Speaker 1 Oh. Let's get on the same page on this.

Speaker 2 I like that pick. Do I have time to change it? Nope.
Damn it. Because I feel like I've.

Speaker 1 No, I like that. All right.
All right. Get on the same page.
Get on the same page. Get on the same page.
Get on the same page.

Speaker 2 I'm second-guessing it now. No, that's okay.
I'm not on the same page with myself.

Speaker 1 No, you're good. Don't.

Speaker 1 Okay, all right. All right.
There wasn't. There's a lot of.
Yeah, there's a

Speaker 1 wow. Oh, wait.
Undrafted. Talking a little shit.
Talk a little shit over there. Now that I'm looking, it's not on my list.

Speaker 4 Not on mine. Although.

Speaker 1 Do you even have a list?

Speaker 1 I don't know any of this, this lingo.

Speaker 4 Like, I haven't done a

Speaker 2 second of this. It's not on Max's list.
You've never had an office job before, though.

Speaker 1 No. That's on.

Speaker 2 People are always getting on the same page. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm going to go.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of moving parts.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 There is a lot of moving parts.

Speaker 2 That's just saying, I don't want to do this.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know. No, that's saying it's like considering.
It's not my fault.

Speaker 11 It's not my fault. Yeah.
There's a lot of moving parts. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Like, we're trying to get it done, but there's a lot of moving parts.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's basically just corporate excuses. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1 It's an entire thing of corporate excuses.

Speaker 11 It's just a blame game. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I did have that on my list. Yeah.

Speaker 11 A lot of moving parts is good. Yep.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 Us, Team Lockwood. So I think keeping with making excuses, it's above my pay grade.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 For Hank, nothing's above his pay grade. That's a fact.

Speaker 1 He's the top.

Speaker 11 No, well, Big Cat, me and Big Cat have kind of played tennis sometimes where it'll be like, yeah, talk to Big Cat. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 No, I have way more, way more Big Cat to me where people come up to be like, Big Cat's and I had to talk to you. Yeah.
I'm like, what?

Speaker 1 It's the two people at Barstool who get the most, I just don't feel like answering, is Gaz and Hank. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, if anyone ever asks for a job from outside of these walls, I'm just like, Gaz will figure it, just here's Gaz's email. That's just it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then if someone asks asks for something that involves money or anything, I'm just like, Hank can answer.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's great to have somebody like that around.

Speaker 11 Or like a hard answer, like you don't want to ask.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk to Hank first.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Am I doing a good job? I don't know. Ask Hank.

Speaker 2 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. Well, I have to run by the board real quick.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'll get back to you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. I got two that are

Speaker 1 kind of related and they drive me fucking insane.

Speaker 1 One, I'll even say right now, like my brother-in-law says it to me all the time, and I fucking want to kill him when he says it.

Speaker 1 Ping you. I'm going to ping you.
What the fuck does that mean?

Speaker 2 Yep. What does ping?

Speaker 2 It could mean anything. It could mean send an email.

Speaker 2 It could mean...

Speaker 1 Just shut up and just say you're going to text me.

Speaker 2 It could mean a text. It could mean a phone call.
It could mean a homing pigeon. There's all sorts of stuff.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Hank knows that when he's on vacation. I hate when people say they're out of pocket.
Yeah. It drives me nuts.

Speaker 2 You have a fucking cell phone.

Speaker 1 Your whole work is in your pocket. What does that mean you're out of pocket?

Speaker 11 Or people that, yeah, automated emails. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You can answer a text. You're out of pocket?

Speaker 2 Drives me nuts. Wait, does out of pocket mean like you're only using what's in your pocket?

Speaker 1 Correct, but your pocket is your whole work. Yeah, that excuse me.
It makes no sense anymore.

Speaker 2 That excuse is done. Right.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 what do you mean you're out of your pockets? Right here.

Speaker 11 Yeah, people have automated emails and I'm like, when you get one kicked back, I think that means I can't get this question answered. Right.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't think I've ever done the email like kickback thing. No.
You have? Imagine if one

Speaker 1 of them. I did it once.

Speaker 3 You did?

Speaker 1 Yep. Here? The worst is text.
Have you guys ever gotten it on text? No. Text someone? I didn't know that was possible.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Hank actually made fun of me for a week when I I did it because

Speaker 4 I was out of the country.

Speaker 1 But you were still looking at me.

Speaker 4 And I just said, if you have any questions, ask memes.

Speaker 1 That's basically what I said. And I've never done it again because Hank ruined me

Speaker 4 when he sent me an email and he got it back.

Speaker 1 Was it professional, though?

Speaker 2 Where you're like, in lieu of contacting me, please reach out to me.

Speaker 3 I think I was just like,

Speaker 4 I'm out of the country this week. If you have any questions, here's Memes' email.

Speaker 2 I mean, that would have been a great way to do it is to use Memes' actual name and everybody. Yeah,

Speaker 4 I think I probably did. I was like, go to Memes' email.
I almost just said that.

Speaker 2 That person doesn't exist. Yeah,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 4 It's 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?

Speaker 1 But is someone else. And even then, I'll just still be like, hey, Pug, Pug, hey, memes, can you switch this? Yeah, someone else is on the email.
So, yeah, out of pocket and ping you. Ping me.

Speaker 1 Ping you, ping me. Anything ping fucking drives me nuts.
I'll ping you.

Speaker 2 I'll hit you in the head with a gong. Did you say ping?

Speaker 1 No, not a ping me. Thank God.
I have the same reaction to ping me as that. What does it mean?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's like, we're talking right now.

Speaker 5 Even the word ping in the context of it doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 Makes no sense. Makes no sense.
In theory,

Speaker 2 I think a lot of people want to sound more professional than they actually are.

Speaker 2 So saying, like, I'm going to text you later for some reason, they don't like the sound of that, but saying, I'll ping you. Yeah.
It's like, oh, that's businessy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I should be getting paid for using words like that. Ping.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 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 9.30 or whatever the time is. Give me that hard stop.

Speaker 1 Hard stop.

Speaker 5 Then I know meeting's over.

Speaker 1 You are alive. How do we feel about that pick good it was a bad pick

Speaker 2 love it no but it's 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

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 oh no

Speaker 4 we got a talk about situation

Speaker 11 we'll get it back you guys got to get on the state of page that was on the list that was on the list stop.

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my favorite Hank one is

Speaker 1 if you need me for the yak, I'll be around, which is just him saying I'm about to go golf.

Speaker 11 Oh, I say, do you need me for the golf?

Speaker 1 Oh, do you need me for the yak? Yeah, yeah. I'm about to go golf.
All right, Max.

Speaker 4 Don't have the bandwidth for that. Yep.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's a good one. Yep.

Speaker 1 This is basically saying you're an idiot.

Speaker 2 I'm lazy. What's saying I'm lazy? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like, I can't do that. But it's also literally saying you're an idiot.
You don't have the bandwidth. You're like

Speaker 1 a rudimentary computer.

Speaker 2 My brain doesn't connect at those speeds. Or dialogue.
Talk to somebody smarter.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Don't have the bandwidth.

Speaker 2 All right, so I got two now.

Speaker 2 And I like these two.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let me loop you in.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Looping in. I had that.
Looping in. And then for my last one, I'm going to go with a classic, tried and true,

Speaker 2 per my last email.

Speaker 2 Nice. Yeah, which is a nice passive-aggressive way of saying.
Subtle way of. It's saying, fuck you.
Yeah. Per my last email.
You dumbass. Yeah.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Saying there, yeah. You've you've or or you're just not responding to my emails.
Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 You do thanks for reaching out. Oh, yeah.
Every time.

Speaker 1 You start every time.

Speaker 4 If it's someone that isn't within bars, like if it's.

Speaker 1 I guess I just don't, we don't, we've never emailed. No,

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 1 Oh, that actually makes sense. So, you're, so it's usually when I send people to you because I'm sending, I'll have a conversation with someone like, here, just, just email our producer.
Kind of.

Speaker 1 And then you'll be like, thanks for reaching out. Thanks for reaching out.
And then I just dead end. Yeah, thanks for reaching out.

Speaker 4 But I don't think this is going to happen.

Speaker 1 That's very professional of us. Yeah, you can't do it.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking of one specific example in the last couple of months where someone asked me for something, and I was like, just please reach out to our producer, Max. He can handle.

Speaker 1 And then you just wrote, thanks for reaching out. Thanks for reaching out.
And that was it. That's it.
That's the end of it. Yep.
I was like, thanks for reaching out, Max.

Speaker 1 It was a way of me getting out of something.

Speaker 2 Do you have the autocomplete that starts up on your Gmail when you respond to stuff?

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 2 I wonder how much it's learned about you.

Speaker 4 It's probably learned a lot of thanks for reaching out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. The Lockwoods have to get back on the same page for this last one.

Speaker 11 We are on the same page,

Speaker 11 but we will probably be doing this afterwards. Let's take this offline.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Taking something offline is something offline.

Speaker 1 Offline, yeah. Okay.
My last pick. It's not,

Speaker 1 it just, again, these are, I just did like straight pet peeves. I cannot stand when anyone refers to anyone as a rock star.

Speaker 2 I had that on my list.

Speaker 1 It fucking drives me nuts.

Speaker 2 Calling somebody a rock star.

Speaker 1 You're not a rock star. You're working, like, you're working in accounting.
Not a rock star. That's literally not a rock star.

Speaker 2 I would also include ninja in that. Yeah.
They do ninja a lot, too. But yeah, any of those things, it's just.

Speaker 1 Oh, she's such a rock star. Oh, he's such a rock star.

Speaker 2 No, no.

Speaker 1 Actually, no, he's not a rock star.

Speaker 2 Talk to Greg. He's a rock star at accounting.

Speaker 1 If he was a rock star, he would not be talking to us. Yeah, I wonder.
He'd be a rock star doing drugs

Speaker 1 and living the best life ever.

Speaker 2 What professions do you think are the furthest away from being an actual rock star? Yeah, something something like in the CIA, like director of the CIA.

Speaker 1 They might be rock stars.

Speaker 2 Reach out to Leon Panetta. He's a rock star.

Speaker 1 If you're like assassinating heads of state, that's kind of rock star.

Speaker 11 Anyone that's living with an XL spreadsheet as far away from being a rock star.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I know you don't do that.

Speaker 2 Reach out to the head auditor over there.

Speaker 2 He's a rock star. He's a rock star.

Speaker 1 All right. What do we miss?

Speaker 11 NetNet. NetNet's a good one.

Speaker 2 That might be personal to us.

Speaker 2 We had one coworker that would say NetNet. I had, along the same lines of Rockstar, kind of somebody who says that I'm passionate about and then something that absolutely nobody is passionate about.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like someone's like, I'm passionate about real estate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no one's passionate. Picnic.

Speaker 5 Picnic.

Speaker 1 You guys know Picnic? No, it's Picnic.

Speaker 5 When someone screws up and they can't get their computer to work and you end up, it realizes it's the person. So you say that's a picnic issue.
Problem in chair, not in computer.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like that. That's good.
I like that. I uh, one I use personally, probably the only one on this list

Speaker 1 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.
I'm giving you the person.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 synergy.

Speaker 2 Synergy is that's like a classic one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a classic. That's an old school one.

Speaker 5 Think outside the box.

Speaker 2 Think outside the box, yeah.

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 They're not really telling you to do anything, they're just putting it on your radar.

Speaker 2 Yep, what about using the word effort as a verb? We're gonna effort this, yeah, we're gonna effort this.

Speaker 4 There's a lot that I don't know here.

Speaker 11 The other ones on my dad had a big list that I never even heard of. Picking up jello.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Oh, I like that. It's kind of like boiling the ocean.

Speaker 1 We need our next Baja Blast. Hurting cats.

Speaker 1 Hurting cats. Hurting cats.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Getting a 30,000-foot view of something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ways hurting cats would be hard, right? Difficult. Yeah.
It's like similar to picking up jello. Yeah, yeah.
I just picked up jello. I like picking up jello.

Speaker 4 I just had fiscal year on mine. I don't think that's really jargon, but you know, every time.

Speaker 4 I never really understand it.

Speaker 4 But it's a thing. I know it's a thing.

Speaker 1 The Qs. Hank, when it really is an entire Mount Rushmore of us just flexing that we don't have to do any of these things.

Speaker 2 Hank, what queue are we in right now?

Speaker 11 We are in Q3.

Speaker 2 Q3, okay. You sure?

Speaker 1 It's Q3. Yeah, it's definitely Q3.
Okay. Well, I thought everybody with the Q's.
Do we in the heart of Q3?

Speaker 10 But it depends on the fiscal year.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true, Matt.

Speaker 2 Don't some companies measure fiscal years in February? Yeah, like ours should be like after the Super Bowl. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's the fiscal year.

Speaker 2 You don't know what Q it is.

Speaker 1 Our Q should only be the football season. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Q1 hasn't even started.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're in pre-Q.

Speaker 4 We should do the fiscal years only the football season, and then everything else is just off-season.

Speaker 3 So like weeks one through four is Q1.

Speaker 1 Lovey Smith used to do that where he'd be like, yeah, one through four would be quarter one.

Speaker 2 We got to go three and one in the first quarter. That's how you want to start.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Best practices.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wear many hats.

Speaker 2 Yeah, wearing many hats is good.

Speaker 1 That means that person just isn't good at anything.

Speaker 2 Being a thought leader. Yeah.
That's such a funny term. Yeah, I'm a thought leader.
Yeah. In

Speaker 2 the accounting space.

Speaker 1 Low-hanging fruit.

Speaker 1 We did bandwidth. Low-hanging fruit.
Pack burner.

Speaker 5 Move the needle.

Speaker 1 Move the needle. Yeah.
Yeah. That's usually done by a rock star.

Speaker 2 Or a drug dealer. Yeah.

Speaker 11 I'll give you seven minutes of your day back.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 And in the meeting early. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 11 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, all right, everyone gets 10 minutes of their day back.

Speaker 1 And it's like, oh, my God, I can't exit this conversation.

Speaker 2 To get ready for your next meeting.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 What about telling somebody that you need to sharpen your pencil on this?

Speaker 2 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 so you can get into any meeting anywhere anytime what about calling slideshows decks is that just what they're called for you yeah i got a deck take a look at my deck yeah look at my deck

Speaker 1 yeah send me deck yeah that one yeah send me a picture of your deck We got to manage expectations.

Speaker 5 Got to tee this up.

Speaker 1 That means that whatever you're about to do is going to suck.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Over promise, under deliver. No, that's the wrong way to do it.
Under promise, over-delivered. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 If I had to deal with these words. Thousand percent.

Speaker 1 A hundred percent.

Speaker 1 Went to a thousand percent, though. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's been the pen, ever since pen has been like we've been just back to Barcelona. I've dealt with probably like 80% less of it.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 The people that believe these words, it is hilarious. Yeah.
Just passionate about it. It's crazy.

Speaker 11 People that know them, people, it is like an art form. Like seeing someone in a setting where they can just say nothing

Speaker 11 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 isn't saying anything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's, I mean, there's some jobs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's some jobs where it's just your entire job is just to meet.

Speaker 1 And that's it. You just go from meeting to meeting.

Speaker 2 I'm passionate about new strategies and etal.

Speaker 2 I had a guy tell me that one time. It's like, no, you're not passionate.
You just want people to think that you like your job.

Speaker 1 That's all that's. I need to buy something.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm very curious to know what Huey's picks for this would have been because, Huey, I don't, do you have any corporate experience at all?

Speaker 1 I didn't have a pick. Behind chef? Yeah, quid pro quo.
Quid pro quo? Okay. That was the only thing I was doing.
Patties.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, these are all over my head.

Speaker 1 Literally. That's a good one.

Speaker 11 They're above his pay grade.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they are above your pay grade.

Speaker 2 Memes, did you have any?

Speaker 1 Memes probably wants to kill anyone who says any of these.

Speaker 4 You guys nailed all of them.

Speaker 3 Good afternoon. That's a good one.

Speaker 4 What?

Speaker 3 Like when you start off an email?

Speaker 1 That's just normal life.

Speaker 1 Just like, fuck your afternoon. I love how memes...

Speaker 4 That's just like normal human interaction memes like fuck that.

Speaker 1 Just tell me what you want.

Speaker 1 You don't care about my afternoon. Just tell me what you want.
That's just real life. That has nothing to do with.

Speaker 4 If you see someone in the street, you say, good afternoon.

Speaker 1 If someone asked me how his weekend was, he's like, you motherfuckers. It's like, you don't give a shit.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 There's not enough time left in the day to make my afternoon good now.

Speaker 12 Yeah. You just made it significantly worse.

Speaker 1 Okay. I'm so miserable.
Oh, no, yeah. You talked me into that one, memes.

Speaker 2 That was a good one. Yeah.
Oh, man.

Speaker 1 All right. Well,

Speaker 1 great Mount Rush war.

Speaker 1 The final week is going to be intense. How do you boys think you did?

Speaker 2 I think I did pretty good. It would have been nice to have my dad here, but that's okay.
Hank rough is.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 2 I hope this was a great father-son moment.

Speaker 1 It's going to come down to the same page. And what was the third pick you guys had?

Speaker 11 Hardstop. Hardstop.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's going to be a battle between those two.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what happened on Hardstop?

Speaker 1 What did you point to? What was on our list? That was on our list. What did you point to, though? It was on our list.
What did you point to?

Speaker 2 It's a good pick. It was at the bottom of the list, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what did you point to?

Speaker 5 It was another one that got chosen later after that.

Speaker 1 Oh, which one was it? By PFT.

Speaker 2 Oh, no. So I took the pick.

Speaker 2 Was it Lupeen?

Speaker 11 No, per my last email.

Speaker 1 Per my last email.

Speaker 2 Oh, I swiped per my last email, and you guys went to the bottom.

Speaker 11 We were on the same page. That's all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got to be on the same page.

Speaker 5 We misread the pointing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that happens. You get lost in the snake.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 Big cat got lost in the snake, I think, after the first pick. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 12 Big time.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Let's finish with numbers. If you get this, Max has never gotten the lottery ball.
He has got the number, though.

Speaker 1 He has. Yes, I have.
Yes, I have. Mickey Mouse.
He's never gotten the lottery ball. It's Mickey Mouse.

Speaker 4 PFT hasn't gotten either.

Speaker 2 Not on this machine.

Speaker 11 Five.

Speaker 5 Seven. Eight.

Speaker 1 Twenty. Fifty-six.
42.

Speaker 2 Three. I'm giving 99 back to Pug.

Speaker 1 Most boys know we're doing 99. It was Pug.

Speaker 1 Pug's not here today.

Speaker 2 Probably would have gotten it.

Speaker 4 Shane always gets 21, but it won't be 21.

Speaker 11 Oh, my God.

Speaker 3 Is that 20?

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 Oh, you piece of shit.

Speaker 13 Now you got nothing. You got everything.

Speaker 1 No, I've gotten it. I've gotten it.
Nope. Oh, why are you so upset? Why are you upset? I've got it.

Speaker 13 I'm so upset. This is the best

Speaker 13 TFT. You're a piece of shit.
Yeah, he is.

Speaker 1 You're never going to get this.

Speaker 13 I really need you.

Speaker 1 I'm a piece of shit. I never fucking get it.

Speaker 1 I needed you to get it for him. I made a promise.
I fucked up.

Speaker 2 I pulled out all the stops. I went for 99 when Pug abandoned it.

Speaker 1 I did everything I could forget.

Speaker 13 Oh, you pieces of shit. This is the best.

Speaker 1 Cut his mic. I'm the best.

Speaker 13 Lottery ball king, number king.

Speaker 1 We've all.

Speaker 1 got his mic.

Speaker 1 I've gotten it. Have I gotten it twice? I might have gotten it twice.
Yeah, listen. So, I mean, congrats that you got it once.
Now, PFT, uh-oh.

Speaker 1 It's all on me. I'll take accountability.

Speaker 2 It's now firmly entered the phase of

Speaker 1 things.

Speaker 2 Memes, you've never gotten it, though, right?

Speaker 1 Memes has never gotten it, period. Damn, no.
Not in the old machine, not in the new machine, not on the road.

Speaker 1 Congrats, Max. Congrats, Max.
Good job.

Speaker 2 Good job, Max. Good job.

Speaker 1 I think I did guarantee that PFT would get it before you let me down. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I fucked up.

Speaker 1 You let me down big time. Fucked up.
So is it PFT has never gotten it? Huh?

Speaker 2 Never gotten it. Not on this machine.

Speaker 2 Memes, have you ever, ever gotten it?

Speaker 11 It's a tough.

Speaker 1 It's not so fun when the rab's got the gun.

Speaker 2 I'm going to have to prepare for people just yelling random numbers at me now. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Oh, no. Don't do that.
Don't do that. If you see PFT at Pub Punk or anywhere out and about

Speaker 11 walking Blake.

Speaker 2 DC Friday, Philly Saturday.

Speaker 11 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.

Speaker 1 I'm just mad because I usually said 20 before he could, and I didn't this time. I like that.
That's true.

Speaker 11 That's actually so true.

Speaker 2 No, I'll wear it. All right.

Speaker 3 See everyone on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 Love you guys.

Speaker 1 God damn, damn it, man.

Speaker 1 I don't know what I'm to say. I'll say it anyway.

Speaker 1 Today's another day to find you shy it away

Speaker 1 Oh, I'll be coming for your love, okay

Speaker 1 Shy it away

Speaker 1 Oh, I'll be coming for your love, okay

Speaker 1 Needless to say

Speaker 1 I'm upset in

Speaker 1 But I'll be stumbling away

Speaker 1 Slowly learning that life is okay

Speaker 1 Say up to me

Speaker 1 It's the better to be safe than sorry Say up to me

Speaker 1 Life's so better to be safe than sorry

Speaker 1 Things let me say

Speaker 1 my worries away

Speaker 1 You are things I've got to remember Be a shy and oy

Speaker 1 I'll be coming for you anyway

Speaker 1 Be a shy and oil

Speaker 1 I'll be coming for you anyway

Speaker 1 on me, take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 up,

Speaker 1 drink on me, I'll be

Speaker 1 gone,

Speaker 1 take

Speaker 1 me

Speaker 1 up,

Speaker 1 drink on me, I'll make

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 say

Speaker 1 we'll be all

Speaker 1 make

Speaker 1 you.