Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart & Wright Thompson, Hard Knocks With Peter Schrager, Mt Rushmore Of Soft Things & Hank Has A B10 Team

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Speaker 2 Experian is your big financial friend, helping you find ways to save, manage your credit, and apply for cards labeled No Ding Decline.

Speaker 3 No approval? No ding.

Speaker 2 Download the Experian app today. Disclaimer, applying for No Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores if you aren't initially approved.

Speaker 2 Initial approval will result in a hard inquiry, which will impact your credit scores.

Speaker 1 On today's part in my take, we have two for two interviews for the people.

Speaker 1 We have our good friend Peter Schrager recapping Hard Knocks episode two. So we're not going to start the show with it.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about it with Peter Schrager, who does the Hard Knocks podcast. He has an insight into the Bears and how they film it, also the Giants.

Speaker 1 We're going to also just talk training camp with Peter Schrager. Get us ready for some football.

Speaker 1 We also have an interesting, different interview with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and Wright Thompson, the incredible author.

Speaker 1 They have a new documentary out on ESPN today called Rhythm Masters, which was very cool, very unique,

Speaker 1 something a little different for the people. And we're going to do Mount Rushmore of Soft Things.

Speaker 1 We have hot seat, cool thrown. We have FAQs.

Speaker 1 We're going to maybe figure out who's ranked too high on the top 25 college football AP rankings. I think they're all too high.
Maybe Brandon Ayuk getting traded.

Speaker 1 And also, Memes is very upset as a Jets fan. So we've got a great show for you.

Speaker 4 When Cool Creamy Ranch meets tangy, bold Buffalo, the hole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Speaker 5 At participating, McDonald's.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

Speaker 1 And then I can't blame all on the sun.

Speaker 1 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 easy. Part of my take

Speaker 6 presented by

Speaker 1 welcome to part of my take presented by DraftKings. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now.
Use code TAKE. That's code take for new customers to get 150 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks.

Speaker 1 UFC 305 is coming up only on DraftKings. The crown is yours.
Today is Wednesday, August 14th,

Speaker 1 and the Jets have a problem. Is it a problem? It It could be a problem.
I think it's a problem.

Speaker 7 Is it a problem when you trade for a guy and then he just never shows up?

Speaker 1 Well, so Hassan Reddick, who was traded for by the Jets,

Speaker 1 is at an impasse with the Jets because, according to Hassan Reddick, they

Speaker 1 agreed to a new deal. The Jets are saying if they will only do

Speaker 1 a new deal once Reddick shows up to camp, and Reddick is saying he won't show up to camp until there's a new deal.

Speaker 7 So they're at an impasse.

Speaker 1 They got to meet on the Jersey turnpike.

Speaker 7 This is why you hold in.

Speaker 1 You don't hold out.

Speaker 7 I actually was. That's what they did with Darrell Rivas back when Hardknox was going with the Jets a long time ago.
He was holding out. They met at like a diner.

Speaker 1 Well, that's what I'm saying. They should do the Jets should just run a training camp practice from Hassan Reddick's backyard.
Yeah, and see if he should.

Speaker 7 Bring it to his house. Well, the problem is, I think he might be in Tokyo today.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 7 Or at least he posted something on Instagram that made it look like he was in Tokyo.

Speaker 1 Either way, it is high time for

Speaker 1 the Florios of the world out there. The Rossinis,

Speaker 1 our guy Memes, Die Hard Jets fan, is very upset. And I don't think he has a gripe other than it feels like the Jets are not handling this correctly.

Speaker 7 Well, when Memes doesn't like the news, he blames the reporter. It's like if your house gets hit by a tornado, you blame the weatherman.

Speaker 1 The phrase, don't shoot the messenger, shoot the message, just never has come into Memes' brain.

Speaker 7 I'm kind of with memes on that one. Oh, Oh, of course.
Because you can't shoot a message.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if someone gives you bad news, you hate that person.

Speaker 7 You can't shoot that person. That's what we do.
I looked it up, and it looks like Hassan Reddick,

Speaker 7 he's scheduled to make $14.25 million in base pay.

Speaker 7 He's missed 15 days of training camp, which means he's accumulated $850,000 in mandatory fines

Speaker 7 and $300,000 in discretionary fines. Now, for every week that he misses, he's going to miss that week's game check as well,

Speaker 7 which is 17th of the $14.25 million. So

Speaker 7 he owes the Jets over a million dollars right now for skipping work. Can you imagine if we find people for missing podcasts?

Speaker 7 Can you imagine how much money we would make, Big Cat?

Speaker 1 We'd make a lot of money.

Speaker 7 Something to think about. But this dude hates work so much that

Speaker 7 he's willing to pay a million dollars.

Speaker 1 Sounds like they should trade him to the Bears. Memes.

Speaker 1 Your thoughts?

Speaker 1 So yesterday I was pretty far up.

Speaker 7 Yesterday?

Speaker 1 This morning. Yesterday count today.
All of today.

Speaker 1 That was calm. That was calm.
Oh, that was calm-fired up. It was just the fuck off.

Speaker 7 Anything in the past was yesterday.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 This morning.

Speaker 1 They're like my three-year-old memes where she's like, yeah, I fell yesterday, and she's talking about a month ago. Yeah, I've calmed down since this morning.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Not really. And

Speaker 8 no, it is the Jets' fault.

Speaker 7 That was my first conclusion.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 But also Florio and Rossini's because they

Speaker 1 told you.

Speaker 7 Yeah, she's full-blown, Florio of the year.

Speaker 7 Wait, did you say she's full of ballone?

Speaker 1 No, she's full-blown Florio of the year. She's full-blown.

Speaker 7 She's full-blown, but also full of ballone.

Speaker 1 No. Full-blown.

Speaker 7 She's a system Florio.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit.

Speaker 7 That's the meanest thing you can say.

Speaker 1 Okay, so. Florio, what are you going to do? Can you give him to the Bears?

Speaker 8 No, so I don't think he's going anywhere.

Speaker 7 Trade him back to the Eagles.

Speaker 1 Flip him.

Speaker 7 Distressed asset?

Speaker 1 Memes was getting to the point today where he was just yelling other players' names and being like, take him.

Speaker 8 No, you should take that other player.

Speaker 1 Hank knows. Yeah, Hank.

Speaker 1 Do you have any players that are in contract disputes?

Speaker 1 Matthew Judon. Oh, you do know? Okay.
All right. And how is that going?

Speaker 1 They're working it out. Okay.

Speaker 1 Him and Mayo were on the sidelines. They're having a nice conversation, seem friendly and good.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Friendly and good.

Speaker 1 I think he'll be on the Patriots.

Speaker 7 Okay. I think they're friendly.
I don't know if they're good.

Speaker 1 Friendly and good.

Speaker 1 This is the offseason. This is how it goes in the preseason.

Speaker 1 You got to negotiate it. It sometimes takes a little while, but the Patriots, unlike the Jets, are a classy organization.
They're going to figure it out. I can't really say the same for the Jets.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Jets.

Speaker 7 Something seems weird where they traded for the guy, and usually when that happens, you negotiate at least the outline of what the terms of the new contract are going to be once you get there.

Speaker 1 The whole point of trading for him is you know he's going to sign the new contract.

Speaker 7 It's like when Chicago got Montez Sweat from the football team, they had a deal in place and then they executed it. It's not just like a one-year rental.
For the Jets, I feel like

Speaker 7 I don't know if it's on the Jets, if it's on his agent, or both.

Speaker 1 Maybe both. Maybe both.
Or Florio and Rossini.

Speaker 7 I'm going to call Rossini real quick because he needs to respond to allegations that she's assistant Florio.

Speaker 1 That are some heavy allegations. Hank, I'm really proud of you for knowing Matthew Judon's contract issues.
Thank you. We had a debate whether you would know.
Fuck. What do you mean? I'm locked in.

Speaker 1 Yay, that's why they call you Lockwood. I watched more preseason football last week than my entire life before this.
Really? One game? Like three quarters.

Speaker 7 Yeah, big time. Memes might be right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, she was probably on the phone with none of her sources.

Speaker 7 She's busy talking to no one.

Speaker 9 I said this to Memes yesterday. I was like, oh, yeah, we'll take a San Reddick back for a sixth-round pick.
And he was like, no, his value would be way higher now than what we traded him for. No.

Speaker 9 Legitimately thought.

Speaker 7 You think he's gone up?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 9 He was like, we would get more back than what we gave you.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't think that's how it works, memes. It might just go down.

Speaker 7 You should teach a finance course.

Speaker 1 It might.

Speaker 1 Okay, so memes, you got to get that figured out. Because I don't want you to be grumpy, memes.
And this feels like we need to just get him on the field.

Speaker 8 He's supposed to be positive. Just pay him.
The salary cap is not real.

Speaker 1 That's a fact. The neural insanes have taught us that many, many times.
Just give him the money.

Speaker 8 You have like one, maybe two years of Aaron Rodgers. Just give him money.

Speaker 8 Let's have a good season.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just make another vaccine.

Speaker 1 What the fuck does that mean?

Speaker 7 Jocelyn and Johnson.

Speaker 7 He's right. We're about to get another pandemic.

Speaker 1 I heard another pandemic. Bird flu.
All the pass rushers you want.

Speaker 7 Bird flu's happening recently. Nice pointing.
That's what Hassan Reddick has when he doesn't play after leaving the Eagles.

Speaker 1 I forget how much Hank can just exist and get in under Memes' skin when it comes to the Jets. Yeah, listen.
Or anything. Or anything.

Speaker 7 We hate on Hank a lot. A lot of it is deserved, but you have to appreciate the fact that when Hank is going up against somebody else, it's awesome.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 we were doing stuff today, and

Speaker 1 we had a little downtime, and we did the Mount Rush more of reasons why Hank can't exist. And what were some of the things we came up with? It was speaking or not speaking.

Speaker 7 Yawning. You've gotten in trouble for both.

Speaker 1 Being hungry. Being hungry.
Golfing. Having any hobbies.
Any hobbies. Anything that outside of work,

Speaker 1 any activity. Well, if your hobby was work, then I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 No one's hobby is work.

Speaker 9 No, sometimes you get mad at him for doing work as well.

Speaker 1 Yes. Really?

Speaker 1 When I ask you work questions, you get madass.

Speaker 1 Well, you also trapped me in a conference call this morning. Yeah, that was facts or fiction.
That's the only way to do it. Jake said to me this morning, it's like, hey, I'm going to ride with you.

Speaker 1 And I get in the car, and he just goes, oh, by the way, we have a conference call that I added you to. Starts in two minutes.
And then he shits. And I know I couldn't go anywhere.

Speaker 7 Liking music?

Speaker 1 Liking music? Yeah. Yeah, you've been on his ass for liking Billy Strings.

Speaker 7 Well, no, it's just funny. It's the only musician I've ever heard Hank name.
I think he only knows one musician. No, that's not true.

Speaker 1 Name another musician. Gucci Mane.
Oh, nice. Okay, fair.

Speaker 1 What else?

Speaker 1 Dressing nice. Yeah.
Yeah. Or, well, just dressing.
No matter how you dress. Dressing.

Speaker 1 We said being hungry. Yeah.
Or just

Speaker 1 thinking about anyone else. Like thinking, like you always think about other people.
Being heartfelt towards you guys. You guys get mad at me for that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's always, it's never ulterior motives. Not sure if that's right.
You're always thinking about other people. It's point-proven.

Speaker 7 Right. Waking up early to work out or sleeping in too late to not work can't exist.

Speaker 1 Yes, sleeping or waking, you're not allowed to do.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Now you guys are seeing stuff.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no, it's tough. It's tough being you.
I apologize for getting on your K-SAC.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
Yeah. You're a great kid.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 I have to exist. Is that the expression? Vacations.

Speaker 7 Yeah, if you think you're Jesus, that's okay.

Speaker 1 Not taking vacations. Yeah, wanting to get, you know, wanting to relax.
Right. Illegal.
Yeah. Illegal.
And then not relaxing. Illegal.
And then when I'm, yeah, when you guys. You're up our ass.

Speaker 7 Yeah, right. Taking your medicine, not taking your medicine.
Right.

Speaker 1 Either way. It would suck for us.

Speaker 1 People, I hope people are understanding. Like, this is truly what I have to deal with.
Truly. Right.
But also, it kind of works against you because we just described every part of your being

Speaker 1 is annoying in your mind. But yeah, no.
But then you're like, I want you around more, which is my entire view. I love having you around.

Speaker 1 Which one is it?

Speaker 1 I love having you around. I think both sides are around.
I love having you around.

Speaker 7 I think that Hank is right when he says that he can't exist, and then we're right when we say that you're just annoying. Right.

Speaker 1 And also, at the same time, if I was really annoying, you would think you just cut me out. No, I love having you around just to see how you can't exist.

Speaker 1 I want to watch you exist to be like, no, stop doing that.

Speaker 7 Existing. Hank's great when it's directed at somebody else.
When you focus all your energy on being somebody else's problem. I like that part.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I love you, Hank.
I love you guys too.

Speaker 7 Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 You finally said it back. You didn't say it back the other day in the car.

Speaker 1 When we were were fighting about on the way to.

Speaker 1 What were we on the way to? Oh, hard knocks.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We were on the way to hard knocks, and you were stalling me.

Speaker 1 All right, so we are going to talk about hard knocks with Peter Schringer. The other news, J.J.
McCarthy has a knee injury.

Speaker 7 Yeah, meniscus. Terrible loss.
So I think we should go to our senior meniscus correspondent, Max, who has dealt with one or two of these in the last years. Max, what can we expect?

Speaker 7 How soon can we expect him back on the court? Also,

Speaker 1 on the court? Yeah, on the court.

Speaker 7 Also, is he going to learn how to fall onto his neck as opposed to landing on his feet?

Speaker 9 He doesn't try to fall onto his neck.

Speaker 9 He should probably fall to brace impact if he were coming down from a dunk.

Speaker 1 But he's not dunking. He's playing football.
But

Speaker 9 I'm telling you what I know. Okay.
You asked me for my expertise. This is my expertise.

Speaker 9 He could be back. He'll probably be back in like two months, and then it'll linger for a little bit longer.
And then he'll have like a couple good games.

Speaker 9 And then if he has one bad game, you can just blame it on the meniscus.

Speaker 9 that's the problem, really the number one thing. Or he's just tired,

Speaker 9 or he's just tired.

Speaker 7 Is he going to get fat?

Speaker 9 No, he's not fat. He'll be like really strong, really athletic, probably the best at his position.

Speaker 7 Is he going to play like he's fat?

Speaker 9 No, no.

Speaker 9 Other people would maybe say that he plays like he's fat, but he's not actually fat. He's actually really athletic.

Speaker 9 And if he didn't have his meniscus, he would be in more shape, better shape conditionally. So

Speaker 1 conditioning-wise.

Speaker 9 No, not fat, but just not as good shape as he would have been

Speaker 9 if he didn't tear his meniscus.

Speaker 9 And it'll come back within the next couple of years. There'll always be the worry of, you know, the meniscus tore.
It could tear again. It probably will tear again.

Speaker 9 And it's always going to be in the back of your head. And you'll always be like, you know,

Speaker 9 what if he didn't tear the meniscus?

Speaker 1 Could have been. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 1 Shout out J.J. McCarthy for being a tough motherfucker because he tore his meniscus and then didn't didn't report it until the next day.
Yeah. And he was like, hey, should we check this out? It sucks.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 7 it just sucks. He did look really good in the preseason week one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they have Sam Darnold, but the best. That's a denial injury.
That's like a, I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep this off and I'll be

Speaker 1 everyone does when you, when the minute you get injured, especially if you're drunk and get injured and you're like, I'm fine. And then you wake up the next day and you're like, I can't walk.

Speaker 1 That's what happened with my foot.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I just walked it off, walked home that night, and then I woke up in the morning.
Nanobubbles didn't do do shit.

Speaker 1 But it really does suck for Vikings fans because you're excited about your new quarterback, and then he should be fine long term, but it still is like if he misses two months of his rookie season, that's big.

Speaker 7 Yeah, so I know that there are two different types of surgeries you can have on the meniscus. One is when you like cut it out, and the other is when you repair it, right? You sew it back together.

Speaker 7 Yeah. And so if you cut it out, you can play on that after a couple weeks.
If you sew it back together, it takes longer to heal, but then you're better off in the long term.

Speaker 1 Right, you don't get bone on bone like D. Wade had.

Speaker 7 Yeah, bone on bone could be an issue. So, Max, which one did

Speaker 7 who, I forget, which player do you root for that had meniscus surgery?

Speaker 1 I don't know what you're talking about. Was it Embiid?

Speaker 7 What kind did he have?

Speaker 9 Meniscus? I don't know.

Speaker 7 But did they, was it the long one or was it the cut it out and he's going to come right back?

Speaker 9 I think he, I think, I think he said both, honestly.

Speaker 1 I don't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I hope he's okay.

Speaker 7 He looked great. Yeah, I feel bad for Vikings.
It sucks. It's such a shitty thing.
Like, you've been through it before with Teddy Bridgewater.

Speaker 7 I hope nobody threw up this time, but yeah, I hope he's okay.

Speaker 1 Was it the Derek Carr seven-year bump that we talked about? Because Sam Darnold is in his seventh year, which is crazy. Yep.

Speaker 1 That he's been in the NFL for seven years, but Sam Darnold is now going to be the starter.

Speaker 1 Also, just a reminder that doing a fantasy draft before the end of preseason is insane.

Speaker 7 You got to do it Labor Day weekend. It's insane.

Speaker 1 Because Jameer Gibbs got hurt, too.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think it was a hamstring.

Speaker 1 Is he okay, Huey?

Speaker 1 He's going to be all right.

Speaker 8 Okay. He's going to be great.

Speaker 1 Because I saw there was some people who are concerned about that. But there's no worse feeling than being in preseason and getting that alert from Schefter and being like, wait, that's one of my guys.

Speaker 7 Especially if you have a rookie quarterback that you're excited about. Yeah, it sucks.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So sorry for Vikings fans.

Speaker 1 Okay. Before we do our Mount Rushmore, should we take a quick look at the top 25? And we also have some breaking moves.

Speaker 1 Breaking moves.

Speaker 1 Henry Lockwood.

Speaker 1 No, this is nothing to do with him existing, not existing, whatever.

Speaker 1 Henry Lockwood, after doing an extensive search where he just got drunk at bars and called it work last year, he has found his Big Ten team,

Speaker 1 which is

Speaker 1 the Washington Huskies. Oh, wow.
So you went to a Washington bar last year? No. Oh.

Speaker 1 I didn't declare them my Big Ten team for the record, but I am

Speaker 1 high on that. So why

Speaker 1 are they your Big Ten team? Because Belichick is a defensive coordinator. Bill Belichick.
Steve. Steve Belichick.

Speaker 1 I knew that. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Wait, wait. Did you actually think that Bill Belichick was going to be the defensive coordinator? No.

Speaker 1 But you said that earlier, and you didn't, like, you're like, Belichick's a defensive coordinator. I was like, you have to say Steve.

Speaker 1 Obviously, it's obviously Bill Belichick's not the defense coordinator. I understand, but you do have to say the the first name in that.
Okay, Steve Belchuk. Sorry.
I didn't think that.

Speaker 1 I thought that was a given.

Speaker 1 Bill Belichick was on Max Vee show yesterday or Tuesday, Monday, whatever.

Speaker 1 And he was talking about how he's just been hanging out around the team. And as has Pete Carroll.

Speaker 1 So the Washington Huskies have maybe the greatest coaching staff that's not an official coaching staff, but is a coaching staff.

Speaker 7 Get the old dogs getting back together.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 7 it does make sense for Hank to be a Huskies fan because they combine two of your great loves before games. They've got drinking and then they

Speaker 1 boats.

Speaker 7 You've got to go sailgating at some point.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 how do you like your Huskies in the Big Ten West? Well, that's what I asked Big Cat before. I was like, are they in the cupcake division or the hard division? And I found out that it's one division.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all one division. That sucks for you guys.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
But it's expanded playing.

Speaker 1 My Big Ten knowledge was just like, it's Ohio State, Michigan, and then Wisconsin comes out of the Cupcake.

Speaker 7 Yeah, the Legends and Leaders conferences.

Speaker 1 So, oh, it's like the Big Twenty?

Speaker 7 Yeah, they don't change the numbers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they haven't changed the numbers. It's 18.
18? Yeah. One

Speaker 1 conference? Yeah. How do they decide who gets to the Big Ten championship? Top two.
That's it. Yeah.
Could be Michigan, Ohio State playing back-to-back weekends. That's cool.
Yeah. Well,

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's cool.

Speaker 1 That's the thing. Well, you're just what's called.
I mean, what's the year? No, no, no, no. It's just screwed.
Well, no, because it's expanded playoffs.

Speaker 1 So you don't have to make it to the Big Ten championship to be in the playoffs.

Speaker 7 Got it.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 Washington schedule.

Speaker 1 The situation of Ohio State and Michigan playing each other in back-to-back weekends would probably suck because both teams would then be in the playoff most likely, and then you'd have a Big Ten championship game that would mean, yes, home field advantage, but also it would kind of take a little away from the rivalry.

Speaker 7 Wait, would there be a possibility that they played three weeks in a row?

Speaker 1 I don't think they can play three weeks in a row because I don't think that's how, I don't think they would ever bracket them that way.

Speaker 7 It would, but the possibility exists.

Speaker 1 I don't think so because I think it's automatic. I think automatic qualifiers would get a bye.

Speaker 7 They always get a bye.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I don't think it can exist.

Speaker 7 But we could get three matchups between them in the same year. Yes.
That's on the table. Yes.
It's tough to beat a team three times. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Could happen in the SEC as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Years that Georgia and Alabama play each other, they could play again, they could play again.

Speaker 7 Looking at the top 25, the thing that jumps out to me is

Speaker 1 things.

Speaker 1 That did happen. Wait, no, that didn't happen.
Did that happen? Did Georgia and Alabama play each other three times when they played in the national title? I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I think that was just the second time. Which year? Because they did play

Speaker 1 that memes.

Speaker 1 Because they could in the SEC championship. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah. They lost in the SEC championship and then won in the...

Speaker 1 Yeah. That was the Bryce Young year.
That's right. That's right.

Speaker 7 But the thing that jumped out to me was things being just as they should be, which is Iowa at number 25. Yeah, Iowa.
They should just stay at 24.

Speaker 1 And NC State at number 24.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, those two terms fit there. Iowa, it doesn't matter what they do, they should just always be number 25.

Speaker 1 Georgia 1, Ohio State 2, Oregon 3, Texas 4, Alabama 5. This is the year that if Ryan Day,

Speaker 1 he's got the squad. His defense is going to be nasty.
If Ryan Day doesn't do it, then the born on third stuff is going to start to really come true.

Speaker 7 Big matchup, October 12th, Penn State, Ohio State. Whoa.

Speaker 1 Getting ready for that in November. Lose that by 10.

Speaker 7 Or no, is that Oregon? That might be Oregon, Ohio State. I think that's the matchup on October 12th.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Oregon, Ohio. I mean, there's some great kids.
Washington, Iowa. And Washington.
Oh, yeah, Hank. Sorry, we forgot Hank was in the room.
Yeah, Hank.

Speaker 7 Are there a lot of U-dub bars in Chicago?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but if

Speaker 1 you have to start one.

Speaker 1 Hank, why don't you give us a quick win-loss for the Washington Huskies? All right, so I just looked at their schedule.

Speaker 1 They have a big Pac-12 schedule, is what I'm calling it.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Michigan's nine, but aren't they going to stink this year? No, they'll still be good. But

Speaker 1 they will not be. I will tell you this thing.
They will not be in the top 10 by October 5th. Okay.
Mark my word.

Speaker 1 Bull card.

Speaker 1 So that'll be a win.

Speaker 1 You just skip to the fifth week? Well, yeah. I mean, Rutgers, obviously, a win.
Northwestern, obviously a win. Washington State rivalry game, maybe not.

Speaker 7 Wait, where's Northwestern?

Speaker 1 Washington. Yeah.

Speaker 7 You would have to go to that if it was here.

Speaker 1 I would love to go to that. Also on a lake, right? Yeah.
Yes, literally this year. Because they're playing on the practice facility.

Speaker 7 Their stadium is.

Speaker 1 I mean, I probably will try and go to one of those games.

Speaker 7 It's going to be a sick end zone cam.

Speaker 1 I'm the sucker for water.

Speaker 1 Iowa win. Indiana win.
USC could be tough. Penn State win.
UCLA win. Oregon could be tough.
So, undefeated in two could be toughs.

Speaker 9 At Penn State.

Speaker 1 That doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 They do the whiteout.

Speaker 1 I think it is. Wow.
For Washington?

Speaker 1 That's classic. Are we talking to rival? No, I'm just thinking.
Are you talking to your own state? If you're a Penn State fan and you're like, I did it for Minnesota last year. Yeah, I guess that's.

Speaker 7 Heck, if I were you, I would say that's just a true mark of how respected Washington is, where Penn State's using their whiteout on the show.

Speaker 1 It is the whiteout. Good point.

Speaker 9 Washington is the whiteout.

Speaker 1 All right, maybe we'll go.

Speaker 1 I would love to.

Speaker 9 This is great. We should do this content.

Speaker 1 Yeah, content.

Speaker 1 All right, so what is that? 10-2?

Speaker 1 8-2?

Speaker 1 It was undefeated with 2. Could be tough.
1, 2, 3, 4. We are going to do a full college football preview in the coming weeks.
This is not it. So just don't.

Speaker 1 This is just our Washington Huskies preview.

Speaker 7 This is us just looking at a list of teams that Hank talking about.

Speaker 1 I love Hank's Washington Huskies that were Hank's Washington Huskies as of an hour ago. Yeah, I'm a loyal guy.
He's smitten. He's smitten.

Speaker 7 It's going to wear off, Hank.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 7 Your love of the Huskies.

Speaker 1 What happens when they play? Not my love of the Belichicks. What happens when they play a late night

Speaker 1 and Hanky's got some drinky?

Speaker 1 I'll just have to have some more drinking.

Speaker 1 Play 9.30. I'm not a Saturday drinky guy.
Big afternoon?

Speaker 1 Not during the football season.

Speaker 1 That's not true.

Speaker 9 We did a bar crawl last year to look for your Big Ten team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you literally.

Speaker 7 That was day drinking. And that was work.
That was also work, Max. That was work.

Speaker 1 Sponsored. Shout out to Corsley.

Speaker 1 I had to do that. I had no choice.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, I'm excited to watch Hank.
I'll tell you what. The Huskies have great colors and great gear.
They've got that to look for.

Speaker 7 Cool fans, too. Yep.

Speaker 1 Great coach. Spencer Hawes.

Speaker 7 Great stadium.

Speaker 1 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 You're buying this. You're doing what every econ, because you taught us this with your econ class.
Buy high, sell low. Yep.
Because they just went to the national championship.

Speaker 7 They've never been as good as they are.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 He's noticing the trend in the market. Hank's going to the moon.
See, that's your problem, Biquet.

Speaker 1 You're so good for on the moon. You couldn't be.

Speaker 1 uh their mascot is awesome worst time dubs you just missed an insane season hank get to know dubs the mascot he rocks yeah he's a good boy also the camera angle at the husky stadium is very high

Speaker 1 weirdly high

Speaker 7 wash up we should make penn state washington a rivalry yeah make a trophy hank yep that should be you got to make a trophy

Speaker 1 I'm down. Okay.
We'll make a trophy. I like that though.
Wash up. Wash up.

Speaker 1 Do we have anything else before we do?

Speaker 1 We're gonna do our Mount Rushmore, then we're gonna do Hot C, Cool Tarone, and get to our interviews. Do we have anything else before we get to our Mount Rushmore?

Speaker 1 I think we'll cover it in Hot C, Cool Tarone. Let's do our Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 7 Hey, it's PFT here, reminding you that Boarshead makes game day entertaining elevated and effortless.

Speaker 7 Whether you order catering platters ahead from your local Boars Head retailer, or you create your own spread at home with Boars Head premium deli meats and cheeses, you are sure to impress your guests.

Speaker 7 My favorites like oven gold turkey or blazing style chicken paired with their classic Vermont cheddar or creamy Munster cheese are sure to score big and help me elevate my entertainment every time, whether it's for a tailgate or a home gating celebration.

Speaker 7 Seriously, guys, it's a game-changing flavor for every gathering. Boarshead, committed to craft since 1905.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Mount Rushmore

Speaker 1 of Soft Things. Open-ended.
I love it. Shout-outs.

Speaker 1 I think I screenshotted it. Oh, no, I bookmarked it.

Speaker 7 Do you guys use bookmarks? I do sometimes, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, bookmarks are good. We've done this.
We've had this conversation. What do you mean? City Sweeney.
Oh, yeah. We don't, but then I did after that, I forget, I did some insult ones towards PFT.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah. Hank and I had a bookmark off.

Speaker 1 Matt, AWL, Matt, thank you very much for submitting this one. He submitted some good ones,

Speaker 1 open-ended ones. So the scores as of right now, after Hank didn't cheat, he went back to losing.
Isn't that interesting?

Speaker 7 Very interesting.

Speaker 1 Max has 57 points. I have 47.
Hank has 38. PFT has 38.
We got a tie. Also, Max is talking about possibly clinching.
What's your magic number, Max?

Speaker 9 I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 You said before that you need me to win this because you would clinch.

Speaker 7 I didn't say that.

Speaker 1 You said that verbatim. So what is your magic number? What are you looking at, Hank? I'm looking at my bookmarks.
I've never even seen this movie.

Speaker 7 Hank and I had a bookmark off.

Speaker 1 It's a quote tweet. It says, show the greatest I'm about to to die moment in cinema, I'll start.

Speaker 1 I bookmarked a movie reply. I've never seen this movie.
So that was accidental.

Speaker 1 Hank tweeted, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, when they announced that Dan Quinn was going to be the coach of the Commanders.

Speaker 7 Oh. I bookmarked it, and then Hank bookmarked my bookmark and said, your bookmark has now been bookmarked.
And I bookmarked that. And then Hank said, triple bookmark, no bookmark backs.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Bookmarked one of yours, big cat. What did you bookmark?

Speaker 7 Wait, what did you say, PFT? I was going to say somebody did an AI thick miley sign.

Speaker 10 Oh, I know which one you bookmarked.

Speaker 1 Because you retweeted it on draft night. No, this is 1-2-24.

Speaker 1 It says, if the Bears don't at least get to the NFC Championship game next season, you do apologize to Hank. And you said, no, I will apologize if they missed the playoffs without any major injuries.

Speaker 1 Bookmark it. So you have to apologize to me? No, you have to apologize to me.
If they missed the playoffs. Without any major injuries.
Major injuries. Okay.

Speaker 1 But then you should have to apologize to me if they make the playoffs. Okay.

Speaker 1 I'm the bear. I'm Bears over eight and a half wins.
Okay.

Speaker 1 All right, so Mount Rushmore of soft things.

Speaker 1 Who goes first? This is a big one for the boys in the bottom. We have eight left.
Yeah, Hank and I are in the next level. Eight Mount Rushmore's left.

Speaker 1 Who goes first? Plenty of time. Who's up?

Speaker 1 You're pointing in between me and PFT. PFT.
I think it's PFT.

Speaker 9 I go last. I know that.

Speaker 7 Okay, so I go first, Big Cat Hank. Second, then Max.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 7 Mount Rushmore soft things.

Speaker 7 1-1.

Speaker 7 I don't think this is a surprise. I'm going boobs.
Correct. Correct one-boobs is the correct 1-1 pick.
Yes, yes. Boobs are back.
Now, Sidney Sweeney brought boobs back. For a while, boobs were out.

Speaker 7 Now boobs are officially back.

Speaker 7 And I'm glad that they are. Yes.
Very soft. Good one.
And supple.

Speaker 1 1-1.

Speaker 7 Max hates boobs, by the way.

Speaker 1 Boobs.

Speaker 1 Good pick.

Speaker 1 Alright.

Speaker 1 Now I got to think. Now I got to think.

Speaker 1 That was, I mean, that was a lucky first.

Speaker 7 I'm very thankful I got to go first.

Speaker 1 First pick, yeah.

Speaker 1 I was going to say, hank after a loss, but I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 1 He's got his headphones off.

Speaker 1 Just hank. Just hank in general.
Okay, I'll go my 1-1. Well, my 1-1 was boobs.

Speaker 1 A dog's ears. Only 1-1-1.

Speaker 7 A dog's ears. Dogs.

Speaker 7 Super soft.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah.
Get a dog's ears. Super, super soft.

Speaker 7 They're like velvety.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, they're nice. Love petting a dog's ears.
Love a good dog's ear.

Speaker 1 I mean, this really doesn't even matter because there's no way PFT loses this draft getting boobs 1-1. No, there's a way.

Speaker 7 I'm not very good at Mount Rushmore's.

Speaker 1 Ice cream?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 You were asking it as a question?

Speaker 7 Is there any particular type of ice cream?

Speaker 1 For the graphics, it's just ice cream. Okay.
All right. Okay.

Speaker 1 Was that a question?

Speaker 1 No, I'm just. That's my answer.

Speaker 7 Ice cream's not that soft. Okay.
It's your answer. Soft serve.
That's what the correct answer should have been.

Speaker 9 Soft serve is what you want. Soft serve ice cream.

Speaker 1 On the graphic. Yeah, but he said

Speaker 1 he would prefer ice cream.

Speaker 1 He said, I want ice cream.

Speaker 9 You would want soft serve on the graphic, but you said you wanted road.

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 What do you mean it doesn't matter?

Speaker 1 Like, I'm going up against PFT. What just happened where you

Speaker 1 shooter?

Speaker 9 I don't understand why.

Speaker 9 What?

Speaker 9 You say he wins with boobs. He wins with.
Butt cheeks

Speaker 9 was still on the board.

Speaker 7 Yeah, butt cheeks is there. Butt cheeks is my boobs.

Speaker 9 Yeah, but

Speaker 1 a firm butt. Like, my butt cheeks aren't soft.
No, but

Speaker 1 come grab my butt cheeks. You'll get some bone.

Speaker 9 Okay, well, I'm taking butt cheeks.

Speaker 7 Not all butts are soft, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, not. I I mean, not all boobs.
Fake boobs, fake boobs aren't soft. I didn't say fake boobs.
I know.

Speaker 7 I said boobs.

Speaker 1 Correct. Boobs.
Yeah, fake boobs are not. Not soft.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I'm maybe the world's worst person at identifying fake boobs, too.

Speaker 1 I'm worse.

Speaker 7 I think every boob is real. Yeah.

Speaker 9 And then my next pick is going to be lineman with long sleeves.

Speaker 1 Okay. Good pick.
Good pick. Good pick.

Speaker 1 Is me? Yep. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I always get so confused with the draft order.

Speaker 7 Who's that?

Speaker 1 That was me. That's me being confused.

Speaker 7 Your voice.

Speaker 7 Wait, was that you doing an impression of yourself?

Speaker 1 I will go

Speaker 1 with cotton candy.

Speaker 1 Okay. Nice.
Good pick. Nice.
Literally air. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So soft, it's air.

Speaker 7 Is air soft?

Speaker 1 All right, who's next?

Speaker 1 Okay, my next pick, I'm going to go with

Speaker 1 going to sleep early on a bachelor party. Yeah.
Big time soft move. Yeah.
I had when everyone's there together, whooping it.

Speaker 1 It's soft things, though. That's the Mount Rushmore not soft.
Soft things. Well, it's a soft thing.

Speaker 7 I had taking a night off.

Speaker 1 Yeah, soft things. It's a soft thing.
It's a soft thing to do. God is.
Is it not a soft thing to do?

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 It is. It is.

Speaker 1 If you went to sleep at 9 o'clock on the first night of a bachelor party, I'd be like, that's a soft thing to do, bro. Yeah, it's a good pick.
Okay.

Speaker 7 All right, I'm going to go. I get two, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Sorry, I get lost in drafts sometimes.

Speaker 1 I forget where I am.

Speaker 7 It was me doing an impression of Hank. I'm doing an impression of Hank.

Speaker 1 Impression of Big Hat. Okay, my.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it was an impression of you.

Speaker 7 Me? Hank was doing an impression of you earlier, and then

Speaker 7 he was being sarcastic when he said he was doing an impression of himself.

Speaker 1 Got it. Yeah.
What was the impression of me?

Speaker 1 Is it my tick? My turn? Okay, got it.

Speaker 7 All right, I'm going to go with.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I get lost. I know, me too.
No,

Speaker 1 I can't exist.

Speaker 7 We have an impression off.

Speaker 1 I can't even exist.

Speaker 7 It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 Sorry for the listeners for that one. That was Hank.
He just yawned.

Speaker 7 I'm going to go with

Speaker 7 calling fouls and pick up.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Well,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's some times when you have to call a foul.

Speaker 7 Occasionally, but you know the type of foul I'm talking about. Yeah.
And then

Speaker 1 toilet paper.

Speaker 7 Soft.

Speaker 1 All right. I'll go with

Speaker 1 running out the clock in a video game when you're playing head-to-head with someone.

Speaker 1 Like kneeling, running out the clock. That is a soft move.
Play to win the game. Play to have fun.
Yep. Like, just three minutes left, and you just start running the ball and kneeling.

Speaker 7 Sucks.

Speaker 1 Soft.

Speaker 1 What was the fuck?

Speaker 9 Hank's just realizing these picks are there.

Speaker 1 No, I was going to say, I actually wanted to be aware of that.

Speaker 7 I had punting and Madden was my only like non- But wait, Hank, I thought you said that it was supposed to be soft things

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with puppies.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 I had puppies. I did too.
But I

Speaker 1 it's a great pick.

Speaker 7 I took puppies off because he said dog's ears. Yeah, but it's a good pick.

Speaker 1 pick. It's way different.

Speaker 1 It's a good pick. Way different.
Good job.

Speaker 9 I'm going to go with Ben Simmons.

Speaker 1 Good pick. Good pick.

Speaker 9 Now, this next one.

Speaker 9 I'll go soft pretzel.

Speaker 1 Ooh. Okay.
Good one. But is it soft?

Speaker 7 It's got a crunchy salt on there. It's got a little crust on it.

Speaker 7 I do love a good soft pretzel.

Speaker 1 I love a soft pretzel, but I wouldn't say that

Speaker 7 it's a soft thing.

Speaker 9 I want you to...

Speaker 9 Can you name what I just said?

Speaker 7 Soft pretzel.

Speaker 1 That's literally in the name.

Speaker 7 That means that it's softer than a normal pretzel.

Speaker 1 Kind of like yellow cheddar cheese.

Speaker 1 I'll wait for after. What? Is there not yellow cheddar cheese? Yeah, there is.
What? Say it.

Speaker 9 I don't want to give.

Speaker 9 I'm done. I don't want to give anyone a

Speaker 1 say it, pussy.

Speaker 9 Soft cheese is a thing.

Speaker 1 I was going to say soft cheese.

Speaker 1 I was going between soft cheese. Color.

Speaker 9 Breeze of soft cheese.

Speaker 1 I was just going to say soft cheese.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Hank.

Speaker 9 You got to speak over here, Henry.

Speaker 1 He's just thinking.

Speaker 1 I don't know what he's doing.

Speaker 1 I have a pick you wouldn't have thought of, you haven't thought of, and

Speaker 1 I'm still debating whether I think it will look bad on a graphic, but it's also the softest thing in the world.

Speaker 1 Wearing.

Speaker 1 He doesn't know where the sentence is going.

Speaker 1 Matching outfits with your significant other. Oh, nice.

Speaker 7 You think that's soft?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I kind kind of like it when they do that in airports, though. It's like we're a team.
No.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I have a pick.

Speaker 1 I think it's going to ruin my draft, but it's also like... To a family party.

Speaker 1 I think it's going to ruin my... I think it's going to ruin my.

Speaker 7 It sounds very personal.

Speaker 1 I think it's going to ruin my draft.

Speaker 1 I was trying to get creative. That was just like you were just coming up on the fly.
Yeah, it was a free ball. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, my last pick.

Speaker 1 It is the softest thing in the entire world, but I'm afraid that I'm going to get criticized by the AWLs, but that's fine. I'm going to do it because I have to stay true to myself.

Speaker 1 No pander picks like Max. I'm surprised he didn't do meatball.

Speaker 1 A newborn skin is literally the softest thing in the world. How's that going to look on the graphic? Probably not good, but I don't care because I have to stay true to myself.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you've ever touch a newborn skin, it's fucking insane. It's like.

Speaker 9 Did you want to say baby's bottom, but but that?

Speaker 1 No, no, because a newborn's skin, like,

Speaker 1 their hands, their everything, their head, everything is like the softest thing you've ever felt.

Speaker 7 I had baby hair on my list. Baby hair is very strong.

Speaker 9 Isn't that a saying? Baby's soft.

Speaker 1 Smooth. Smooth is smooth.
Okay. You do have that.
You have asses.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 Every ass.

Speaker 9 Not. Yeah.

Speaker 1 No baby ass. I mean, we fucked myself there, but.
I see you have butt cheeks. Parentheses, not baby ass.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 Butt cheeks above the age of 18.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I probably fucked myself there, but

Speaker 1 if the parent listeners of this show come through for me, because it is a fact. It's the softest thing in the world.
I mean, you're good. It doesn't matter.
Why?

Speaker 1 It's a two-horse race. Well, no, if I keep losing with 1-1, there's nothing you can do.

Speaker 7 You just took wearing matching outfits with your significant other to a family function.

Speaker 7 so that's soft. You don't think you have any part in this at all?

Speaker 9 I still can't believe you didn't say soft serve. It was right there.

Speaker 1 Soft serve. I put it on a serve.
It's the hardest of all the ice creams. I put it on a cone for you, Hank.
I said, Yeah. Is there any particular type? Whatever.

Speaker 1 I'm ready to play on CAA.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
Well, we don't beat them.

Speaker 1 That's true. Yeah.
All right, PFD, your last pick. Okay.

Speaker 7 My last pick,

Speaker 1 I'm going to take

Speaker 7 I'm going to run the football. I'm going to say pillows.

Speaker 1 Nobody took pillows.

Speaker 7 I had it on there. Pillows is like the softest thing in the world.

Speaker 1 I like a hard pillow. I like one hard pillow, one soft pillow.
Same.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 What got left off?

Speaker 3 Billy Football's hands.

Speaker 7 Yes. Yeah.
Soft hands.

Speaker 1 That's a good pick. Inside of a sweatshirt.
Marshmallows. New sweatshirt.

Speaker 7 Marshmallows is good.

Speaker 1 Marshmallows is great as well. Why don't you go marshmallows? Smashed potato.

Speaker 1 I'm upset I didn't say so. A Velour jumpsuit.
I had Velour. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Your dick after you've been drinking?

Speaker 1 Jellyfish.

Speaker 1 Butter.

Speaker 9 I almost went Ben Simmons, Carson Wentz.

Speaker 1 No, because butter.

Speaker 1 There's nothing worse.

Speaker 1 I feel like probably over half the time

Speaker 1 in a restaurant that gives you

Speaker 1 rolls with hard butter. Me? Yeah, what did you say? I said I almost went to the back.

Speaker 9 I almost went Ben Simmons, Carson Wentz back to back.

Speaker 1 Butter, yeah, no, I agree. The hard butter is the worst.

Speaker 1 I had going home before midnight in college.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Playing beer beer pong with water and a side beer. Yep.
I think that happened after when I was in college, but I've seen people do that, and that's the softest fucking thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 7 Throwing flags on taunting. Yeah.
ENFL taunting rules.

Speaker 1 Blocking people on Twitter during an argument.

Speaker 1 I understand people block people on Twitter, but when someone will get in an argument and then just block the person when they're about to reply, that's the softest thing in the world.

Speaker 7 Blocking people on Twitter probably should have been taken.

Speaker 1 That would have looked really good on the thing.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Apologizing. Yep.
Kind of soft.

Speaker 9 I never apologize. Kickers when they have to make a tackle.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 Kneeling in the first half with timeouts in your pocket. I think that's soft.
McVeigh. 45 seconds left.
McVay. Fucking run a play.
McVeigh. Hitting a guy after you gave up a home run to him.

Speaker 7 Did he pinch the home run?

Speaker 1 It's soft, though. Unwritten rules.
Don't strike him out next.

Speaker 7 Respect the rules.

Speaker 1 Strike him out. Not betting on the Super Bowl, soft.
Yeah. Like, not having an opinion on the Super Bowl, soft.

Speaker 7 Telling on someone.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Getting mad about hard knocks.
Yeah. I said getting mad about not talking on the podcast after you lose a game, even though your teams have won more championships than everyone else.

Speaker 1 That's a good one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 When you get one little loss. Talking on the podcast.
And then you just shut up.

Speaker 1 And you literally only talk when your team wins, which they do a lot. Yeah.
You still can't.

Speaker 1 Not filling out a March Madness bracket.

Speaker 7 That is soft.

Speaker 1 Emailing your professor after they after emailing a random person's professor after they make fun of you online.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and asking them if they'll kick you out of class because you made a joke about branding.

Speaker 1 Actually, though, Ravel also has the hardest move when he put JFK's headshot in fucking 8K at like 8 in the morning. Yeah.
Hank, do you have any honorable mentions, by the way? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hank, what are your honorable mentions?

Speaker 1 Hank, he tapped out on his draft.

Speaker 1 What the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 1 What do you got? I gave him all. Marshmallows, Jell-O, mashed potatoes, velour, jellyfish.
Jellyfish? Max, don't fucking listen.

Speaker 7 Huey, do you have the best of the rest?

Speaker 1 Cake. Oh, cake.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that was the only thing I was thinking.

Speaker 1 That was Max. Soft serve cake or ice cream?

Speaker 7 Yeah, Max took asses already.

Speaker 1 Any cake. All cake is soft cake.
Do you have any honorable mentions, Max?

Speaker 1 Oh, bunny rabbit.

Speaker 9 I was ripping them.

Speaker 1 Shit. Oh, sorry.
Bunny rabbit is pretty.

Speaker 9 I said soft cheese. I said

Speaker 9 kickers when they have to make a tackle. You would have loved that pick.

Speaker 7 Jamkowski.

Speaker 1 Do you have any honorable mentions, Big Cat? Yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 About you.

Speaker 9 I already gave him.

Speaker 1 Getting mad at your co-hosts because you're so annoying and they're just so annoyed with you existing?

Speaker 9 Hank.

Speaker 1 That could have been a good pick. Just Hank.

Speaker 7 Yeah, missing breakfast and then making everybody's life run into hell.

Speaker 1 Complaining about Mount Rushmore every season. That's an egg.
Every Mount Rushmore season, and then cheating on the rules that you gave out.

Speaker 1 Someone tweeted at me. I don't know if it's true or not.
They said that you have been on record saying your wife helped you with picks before.

Speaker 1 Facts. Which one was it? Which wife won.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's also in the family.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've gotten in trouble for picks. Also, that's in the family.

Speaker 1 You can't put us in jail.

Speaker 1 Right? I don't know how. You went outside the family.
I don't know how that works. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can't

Speaker 1 pro you can't.

Speaker 1 Can you not,

Speaker 1 if your significant other has to take the stand against you, isn't there the privilege? Yeah. So thrown out.

Speaker 7 Well, wait, Adriana went through that when she tried to go to that lawyer. They weren't married yet.
They weren't married yet. She was thinking about getting married so she wouldn't have to testify.

Speaker 7 But if it's.

Speaker 1 And then Silvio killed her.

Speaker 7 But if you're. Yeah.
No, that drove her out to that exit and she didn't know what was going to happen.

Speaker 1 The example that I said when I said I did talk to people about pics was I was getting chirped by someone on Saturday for my sandwich draft, and I was like, shut up, dude. Wait, in real life? Yes.

Speaker 1 And I was like, like at a party? Yes.

Speaker 1 It was someone I know, but they were like, oh, your fucking sandwich draft, dude, sucked. And I was like, all right, then, fucking genius.
Like, let's hear some steroid users.

Speaker 1 And they go, Barry Bonds, Lance Art. Like, they gave me nothing.
Man in the arena. And I came in dead last.
Man in the arena. And that's what I said.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's fair. But you also, the difference is she has maybe helped me with a pick or two.
You said that Liam gave you all your picks for the pizza draft.

Speaker 1 Well, that was also in a different era, that was a tainted era when you guys were no, no, it's not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not

Speaker 1 pre-tained. Oh, it was pre-tained.
It was pre-tained.

Speaker 1 You tape

Speaker 1 it before. That was our point for this whole discussion on Monday.
Your big claim about Mount Rushmore season. All right, spoiler, I suck at Mount Rushmore's and I just complain to try and mask it.

Speaker 9 I've also proven the taint wrong this year.

Speaker 1 That was a hard move by you, admitting that. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm mad. Did you just apologize? No, he just admitted that

Speaker 1 everything.

Speaker 1 He copped it. I try and muddy the water.

Speaker 7 I actually always respect that in a TV show or a movie where the guy that's on the stand gets so pissed off at the prosecutor that they just admit to massive crimes. That happened in the

Speaker 1 young thug trial. The guy said he was like, yeah, we went up and did that shit, like talking about a shooting,

Speaker 1 and then was like, well, you told me nothing I could say would get used against me at court, right?

Speaker 1 No, that was big of Hank. He literally just admitted to it all.
Yeah, it's hard. He just said he sent it all out.
Hard Hank. That was a hard move by you.

Speaker 7 I just got a call back from Rossini. Let's see what she has to say to me.

Speaker 7 Is this Diana Rossini?

Speaker 11 Yes, this is Diane Rossini. Who am I speaking with?

Speaker 1 Hey, Diana,

Speaker 7 this is part of my take.

Speaker 7 Earlier today, memes said that

Speaker 7 you're on the air. You're live the tape.

Speaker 7 Earlier today, Memes said that you were a system Florio at this point for your reporting on Hassan Reddick. Do you have any comments on him?

Speaker 11 I think that Memes needs to understand that Mike Florio, Diana Rossini, Tom Palisero, Adam Schefter, Ian Rappaport do not make the decisions for the New York Jets.

Speaker 11 The New York Jets make the decisions for the New York Jets. So while he does not like the messenger of the news, it's not our fault.
So I would say sorry, but I'm not really sorry.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 7 I think that's fair. Memes, do you have any retort?

Speaker 7 Nope. All right, he does have retort.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you mean bodybuilding?

Speaker 1 Good job, Diana.

Speaker 11 All right. Maybe he should follow me on Twitter and I can give him more jets.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 7 So you don't even follow her on Twitter and you're complaining about her tweets. Huh.

Speaker 1 That's soft.

Speaker 1 That's soft.

Speaker 1 Wow, that is soft.

Speaker 1 That's real soft. He's soft.

Speaker 7 Oh, yeah. We talked about the Italian angle earlier.
I think he's got some self-loathing.

Speaker 11 Yeah, something's wrong. It's basically if your name ends in a vowel, memes doesn't like you.
So I'm never going to forget this.

Speaker 1 That's true. Okay.
Well, thank you, Dinah.

Speaker 11 Okay. Hi, Max.

Speaker 1 Bye. Come on.

Speaker 1 That was soft by memes, right, Hank?

Speaker 1 Very soft. Insanely soft, memes.
All right, let's do hot seat cool turn. That was a great Mount Rushmore, guys.

Speaker 1 More open-ended ones, if anyone wants to tweet them at us. Those are the fun ones.
Yep. Because Hank just always goes with the most literal definition of it.

Speaker 7 Well, no, he gets mad at us for exploring the other options options when he also has those other options.

Speaker 1 I told you, I'm bad.

Speaker 1 A lot of my anger is just directed at myself through you guys.

Speaker 7 Hank, do you want me to help you with Mount Rushmore?

Speaker 1 I mean, again, like the sanctity of this whole contest has been...

Speaker 7 We're tied in last place, Hank.

Speaker 1 Not anymore. You're not out of the boobs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you didn't have boobs.

Speaker 7 Boobs are great.

Speaker 1 It's pretty nice.

Speaker 1 Okay. Convenient.
Yeah, very convenient. Although I'm the one who came up with it, so not convenient.
But you knew the order. No, I didn't.
You're also doesn't.

Speaker 1 I also don't know the order at any time. You're in the clear.
I don't know the order.

Speaker 7 You just made fun of Big Cat for never knowing Big Order.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you said I don't know the order. Muddy in the water.
No, you don't know how the order of who's picking when. Oh, got it.
All right, yeah.

Speaker 1 So how would I rig it if I don't know the order dated? Maybe you're playing the long game. Kaiser Soze of the order that never caught on for me to finish second place.

Speaker 7 Hank just lives life as devil's advocate.

Speaker 1 That is unfortunate. i've got like this mastermind and i'm somehow my mastermind has me 11 points down from max it doesn't but it does it you just can't come in last which i could still no

Speaker 1 okay let's do you might win hank sometimes you you you think that you're gonna lose and you end up winning you can't beat boobs it's true it's a fact boobs are a great

Speaker 1 card

Speaker 1 uh okay Hot sequel to Rome brought to you by our friends at Game Time. Did you know that you can get tickets to the Cubs Blue Jays game this weekend for $35?

Speaker 1 That's right with Game Time, the official ticketing partner, Barstool Sports. Shouldn't have to worry when you buy tickets to your next big event.

Speaker 1 Game Time is the fast and easy way to buy tickets to all the sports, music, comedy, and theater events near you.

Speaker 1 They have flash deals for sudden discounts, zone deals for when you're feeling flexible, and their lowest price guarantee means that if you can find the same seats for less anywhere else, Game Time will credit you 110% of the difference.

Speaker 1 Game Time is the best place for last-minute seats with up to 60% off your favorite events. What are you waiting for? I'm going to go buy those Cubs tickets now.

Speaker 1 Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with Game Time. Download the Game Time app.
Create an account. Use code PMT for $20 off your first purchase.
Terms apply. Download the Game Time app today.

Speaker 1 Last-minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed.

Speaker 12 The Pro Football Football Show is presented by the Chevy Silverado. Built for the hustle, ready for the game.
Chevy Silverado is America's most dependable full-size truck.

Speaker 12 Whether you're grinding through the week or gearing up for kickoff, the Silverado is one ride that's always game ready. Just like football, it's about grit, grind, and getting it done.

Speaker 12 Head to Chevy.com to learn more and build your own Chevy Silverado.

Speaker 1 Hot seat cool truck. My hot seat is, probably going to mess this pronunciation out, Hapaul Tel Aviv basketball team.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Our co-worker, they just signed Pat Bev, big contract signing, off-season for them. He was on his own podcast, Pat Bev Show, Martial Sports.
With Roan. With Roan, apologies.

Speaker 1 And he said, if a bomb goes off, I'm gone.

Speaker 1 When talking about playing

Speaker 1 in Tel Aviv. So like they gotta...
Check the forecast.

Speaker 1 They gotta worry about their whole

Speaker 1 country's bullshit if they want to keep Papev. I feel like that makes peace happen.

Speaker 7 I feel like that's not an unreasonable position to take, though.

Speaker 1 No, it's not. And maybe Israel's like, well, we want this team to do well.
He also said most of our Euro Cup games are in Bulgaria.

Speaker 7 Oh, they should sign Zion.

Speaker 1 Wait, that would be a good fit. Is he in

Speaker 1 where the regular season games?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 7 If a bomb goes off, I'm gone.

Speaker 7 Well, he could say that about any team, though. Like, if the b if a bomb went off at a Bucks game, he's probably gone too, right?

Speaker 1 Like, in dead?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, like, he's out.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Uh, he might stay.

Speaker 7 He might stay. Yeah.
He's got that dog.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Got a hot seat. My cool troll is Tom Brady.
No, why? I just he's joining YouTube.

Speaker 7 He's joining YouTube.

Speaker 1 He's mi he made a YouTube channel. He's gonna start posting vlogs.
He's about to take over. He's joining.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I thought he was, like, on

Speaker 1 the board of directors. I mean, he probably will be soon enough.
True.

Speaker 1 Raider Tom Brady?

Speaker 1 Raider owner, Tom Brady. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Speaking of videos, disc golf video with Jimmy Tatro is out now.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 7 I may have taken mushrooms before.

Speaker 1 I mean, if Tom Brady starts making disc golf videos, we're more in trouble. We're screwed.

Speaker 7 So you're going to do the Bryson thing?

Speaker 1 Just a breaking 50.

Speaker 1 golf. Disc golf.

Speaker 7 Content creator. Breaking 50, but years old playing in the NFL.

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 7 For the Raiders. Big great series.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right, PFT, your hot seat cool term.

Speaker 7 My hot seat

Speaker 7 is the Big Justice family.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 I just found out who this family was yesterday.

Speaker 1 Costco guys. Costco guys.

Speaker 9 They're more known.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're the Costco guys. Right.

Speaker 7 So I've seen them. I've seen them, but I've opted out of them.
And I'm sure that you guys have been through that over the years.

Speaker 7 So you see something that pops up online, a trend, and you're like, I'm going to opt out of it. I learned about them.

Speaker 1 You fucked up. I don't want to be a hater, man.
I can't stand it. You fucked up.
Well, you can hate them, but the Rizzler's electric.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Which one's the Rizzler?

Speaker 1 The little guy.

Speaker 7 Okay, so apparently they're on the hot seat because I'm hearing that the dad had this arrangement. He's been trying to go viral for years and years and years.
Yeah, he is.

Speaker 7 Am I still getting it right?

Speaker 1 Pretty much every person who ends up going viral probably was trying.

Speaker 7 Is that the time? Is that the only problem that people have with them?

Speaker 1 there's rumors that maybe there's something else i hope not i just saw someone being like we're gonna cancel big justice please don't leave big justice alone so they do the boom costco guys they do the boomer doom scale right yeah no i mean it's terrible internet but i like it what's what have they done doom do they ever do doom or is it always boom yeah um

Speaker 1 their

Speaker 1 cousin

Speaker 7 made a pizza with like a bunch of like gross shit on it and they doomed it they doomed that one yeah i need to well i just found out who they are so i'm like experiencing them for the first time.

Speaker 7 Just start the Rizzler. Just go to the Rizzler.
They're fascinating to me.

Speaker 1 The Rizzler's electric.

Speaker 7 How many booms, what's the scale?

Speaker 1 It's just a boom, boom, and then they can sometimes double boom.

Speaker 7 But I thought it was more, I thought it could be like three, four, five, six booms.

Speaker 1 Well, sometimes they do the buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-boom. And

Speaker 1 they'll add a bunch of buzz before.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Because it sounds like the ball scale.

Speaker 1 Boom. No, it's really just boom or doom.

Speaker 7 Okay, just one boom or whatever. It's binary.
Hank doesn't like them.

Speaker 1 No, he's very upset. Costco eyes can't exist.

Speaker 9 Sometimes they'll go to a place and they'll pick between two items. Yeah.
And

Speaker 9 they're supposed to boom or doom one of the items, but then they both kind of end up, they kind of end up booming both of them.

Speaker 1 And they'll sometimes have the Sam Clubs guys on who are the Indian father and son. Yeah.
That's kind of cool. See, Hank, it's like this.
I'm starting to get together.

Speaker 1 I'm starting to think that Hank has a little anti-Italian discrimination with him. No, I mean, listen, anyone can do their thing.
I'm happy that they're popular.

Speaker 1 I usually don't share my hater opinions.

Speaker 1 Would you like it more if they were on a golf course doing golf videos?

Speaker 1 It's not really my issue, it's not with them. I do think it's like an internet hive-mind personality where people are like, oh, these guys are electric.
They're so funny. Like, they're not.
Well, it's

Speaker 1 people see other people saying they like them, and then they're like, it's like a hive-mind brain rot. Like, oh,

Speaker 1 this is the flavor of the month. We love these guys.
Let me just throw something out there. No, you don't.
So there's this thing called irony.

Speaker 1 I don't, but no, I think that there's like, there's that section of the world where people understand irony, and then there's just like the sheep that are like, oh, yeah, like we fucking love Big Justice.

Speaker 7 I think it's like a lot of things on the internet where it might be fun to watch, but then when you find yourself explaining what it is, you like literally.

Speaker 1 Actually, you guys just explained it made me want to watch it.

Speaker 7 You start to like it less when you explain what it is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I don't want it. Yeah.
Dude, don't do that to the Rizzler. I like the Rizzler, I guess.

Speaker 1 The Rizzler did nothing wrong. No, he didn't.
He's a 400-foot bomb. No,

Speaker 1 the Rizzler is funny. And what's Little Justice? I have no issue with Little Justice.

Speaker 9 The Rizzler. He does sick bike tricks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he does. The bike.
Have you seen the bike tricks?

Speaker 1 We were talking about the boom guys.

Speaker 1 He did a video where he said he was going to do five bike tricks, and then he came back, he did one, and he was like, I kind of ran out of time.

Speaker 9 No, the other one's too dangerous.

Speaker 1 The other one's routine.

Speaker 9 Which, I mean, practicing, showing safety is good on the internet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 7 That's a good point. Yes.
Yeah, I appreciate that. I didn't know that this was going to have such a spirited conversation around it.

Speaker 1 Well, Hank's a hater.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not publicly, except for this.

Speaker 1 And the Colts kid? Yeah, I was just about to say

Speaker 1 you hate it. Seth with Flow.
That was a raw reaction. It was bad.

Speaker 7 I didn't realize that the chorus of that is the same as Our God is an awesome God. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I love Seth with Flow.

Speaker 7 He stole that from church.

Speaker 1 And Seth with Flow saw it, and everyone commented. He was like, Thanks

Speaker 1 part of my take for shouting me out. And all the comments were like, Hank's such a hater.
We'll get him.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I don't want to be a hater.

Speaker 1 This is just my like, I see this shit and I don't like it. I'm going to give you a what do you want me to say?

Speaker 7 I'm going to give your attitude today a doom.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's fine. Double doom.

Speaker 1 I'll try and watch tomorrow. I'll come around.
I liked it. They did the Los Polos.

Speaker 1 The problem is the only

Speaker 1 golf video.

Speaker 1 Well, your only idea is mini golf. No, there's

Speaker 1 that's a stolen joke.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, it's a good joke because it's true. Yeah, it was a good joke.
You didn't make it.

Speaker 1 Los Polos is a street. That gets a book.

Speaker 1 Him and his dad, his dad said the same thing. He's like, who the fuck are these? Like, another Italian kid.
He's like, who the fuck are these guys?

Speaker 1 Started talking shit, and then everyone was like, The Rizzler's going to get you. The Rizzo is going to get you.
Then they all did a stream together. That was funny.
That was funny.

Speaker 1 He remade the broadcast. It's like five minutes long.

Speaker 7 Again, I think the more you explain what

Speaker 1 the less I like. Yes.

Speaker 7 I just want to watch the videos and smile.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But that's fine. It's the internet.
It's supposed to be.

Speaker 7 Do you.

Speaker 1 Everyone do you. Yeah.
I'm not. I'm not.
Like, I'm not saying because I think one way you should. But yes, he's been trying to go viral for a very long time.

Speaker 1 He was a former

Speaker 1 independent wrestler. Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, so

Speaker 1 he's got this in him.

Speaker 7 He's about that content.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like the people who found his early videos don't realize he was also a wrestler going on the independent circuit. You tell me an independent circuit wrestler

Speaker 1 wants to make money going viral online? No, duh.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, sometimes when you're an inventor, it takes you a few dud and corruptions until you get something awesome.

Speaker 1 People laughed at

Speaker 1 Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs.
They fired him from Apple.

Speaker 7 Got fired. Then he took a loan, and then he came back and crushed him.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Hank would have been such a Steve Jobs hater.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Biggest. Because he doesn't golf.
That's the problem. Hank's only YouTube videos are golf.

Speaker 1 If I went to your algorithm right now, there's one other thing.

Speaker 1 Boops.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Who? Billy Strings. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Hit the line, Billy Strings.

Speaker 10 Imagine if Billy Strings did a golf video?

Speaker 1 Good good?

Speaker 1 That'd be great.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Billy Strings, come on the show. Do a video with us.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. Your cool throne?

Speaker 7 My cool throne is chess controversies. Have you guys heard of the chess controversies?

Speaker 1 There's another butt plug?

Speaker 7 No, this is, it's different. It's much more sinister than the butt plug.
There's a Russian grandmaster, I think she is. She was competing in a tournament against her opponent who's from Dagestan.

Speaker 7 And before the tournament, they caught her on camera.

Speaker 7 She snuck into the room, went up to the board that they were about to play, and smeared something on her opponent's pieces and on her side of the board. And then her opponent got deathly sick.
Ooh.

Speaker 7 Almost died.

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 7 So they went back, they reviewed the footage. It turns out that she sprayed mercury onto her side of the chessboard and almost killed her opponent.
Holy shit.

Speaker 7 So there's no butt-plug stuff in chess now. Hardcore.
They're actually trying to kill each other. Yeah.
It's almost like Belichick stuff.

Speaker 1 That's very hardcore.

Speaker 7 Belichick mate.

Speaker 1 Okay, my hot seats. This happened late Sunday Sunday after we recorded, but Matt Kucher, what a dickhead.
What a douchebag. The worst.
What did he do?

Speaker 1 Oh, Hank's going to defend him. Nice.
Okay, I like this. This is spicy.

Speaker 1 The Wyndham Championship.

Speaker 1 So they had bad weather Thursday and Friday. They had to fit in a bunch of rounds on Saturday and Sunday.
The, of course,

Speaker 1 the grounds crew did an incredible job. They got the whole thing in.

Speaker 1 Matt Kucher was in 12th place, didn't mean anything for the FedEx Cup, didn't mean anything for pretty much anything, hits into the group ahead of him on 18,

Speaker 1 and then just picks up his ball and leaves and says it's too dark and came back on Monday to finish half a hole while everyone else had finished. So

Speaker 1 he made people come back and sit there. It was actually very funny watching everyone clap.

Speaker 1 Douchebag move.

Speaker 7 Did he make his putt?

Speaker 1 I think he got the exact score he was going to get. Get a par.
He stayed at 12.

Speaker 7 So he two-putted.

Speaker 1 So, Hank? No, he was like halfway up the fairway when he came back. Okay.
Hank.

Speaker 1 I'm not defending him because Matt Kucher is a documented scumbag. He won a tournament.
He had like a fill-in caddy. He won like, I think, a million and a half or dollars or something.

Speaker 1 Paid his caddy like five grand. Yep.
I remember that. And there's been some other examples of him being a scumbag.
So I think in this case, it probably is just him being a scumbag.

Speaker 1 But I did see a golf journalist who had a thread breaking down why he might have been doing it, basically saying that he was in the last group, and the person he was playing with was had a four-shot lead.

Speaker 1 He had to play in the dark, he kind of blew his lead, and the group in front of them was playing super, super slow all day.

Speaker 1 There's a like a couple long videos of the guy who won, I think, Rai, the two-glove guy,

Speaker 1 taking like four minutes on putts, like taking forever. And that Kucher was basically standing up for the guy who lost the lead, but he didn't say it, which is obviously not.
And also,

Speaker 1 didn't that guy finish?

Speaker 1 He chose to finish, but Kucher was saying, like, he was just, you know, he was going through the motions.

Speaker 1 He didn't say this, but this is what the guy was saying, that maybe he was just trying to set an example of, like,

Speaker 1 the guy should have been playing faster in front of them. You got to take a stand.
But that's not. How is that taking...
I don't know how that takes a stand for the guy he's playing with.

Speaker 1 If the guy he's playing with was like, oh, good call, Matt Kucher. I'll come back Monday, too.
I understand. Well, at that point, he was already out of the league.
He already had lost.

Speaker 7 Sounds like he's taking him being a jerk and twisting it into, here's why I'm actually a hero.

Speaker 1 Did Matt Coucher write this article that you read, Hank? No.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the other point that he said was that if Matt Coucher had just come out and said all this instead of doing the little koi shit, people probably would have had his back, but he didn't.

Speaker 7 That's true.

Speaker 7 If he had been public about why he was doing that ahead of time, I'm looking back now at the Caddy controversy where he paid his Caddy five grand. And then later on,

Speaker 7 Kutra said that McElroy cost him $300,000 due to the two-point advantage in their season-long FedEx scup race. And then

Speaker 7 Rory said, and we all know what that money means to him.

Speaker 7 So apparently it's cheap.

Speaker 1 Super cheap and like a documented kind of scumbag. Maybe

Speaker 7 how about this? Flights, they're cheaper on Mondays.

Speaker 1 True. But he had to stay an extra day.

Speaker 7 Way cheaper.

Speaker 1 But he had to stay an extra day. PJ Torre had a funny tweet because they do like the, you know, every shot from like Brooks Kepa winning the U.S.
Open or whatever, and they show a million shots.

Speaker 1 They did every shot from Matt Kucher's finish Monday morning, and it was just three shots. Oh, I love that.

Speaker 7 Yeah, there's like a couple of random people clapping.

Speaker 1 Okay, and then my cool throne is

Speaker 1 Trump's comedic bone because he did the Elon Musk Twitter space. And listen, we don't get political on this podcast, but

Speaker 1 the retelling of the high-stakes stare down with Putin was one of the hardest times I've ever laughed. I'll play it for you.

Speaker 1 This is his telling of Putin and Trump negotiating the start of a war and what was going to happen.

Speaker 13 And again, I said to Vladimir Putin, I said, don't do it. You can't do it, Vladimir.
You do it.

Speaker 1 It's going to be a bad day.

Speaker 13 You cannot do it. And I told him things that what I do,

Speaker 13 and he said, no way.

Speaker 1 And I said, way.

Speaker 1 That's it. Good.

Speaker 1 I I mean, that's fucking funny.

Speaker 7 That's what all negotiations are, by the way. No way.

Speaker 7 That's the subtext to every negotiation ever.

Speaker 1 Way.

Speaker 1 Just say way and walk away.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a five-year-old response. He got him with.

Speaker 7 Yeah, way. Deep down inside, we are all five-year-olds.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. No way.
Way.

Speaker 1 Okay, Huey.

Speaker 1 My hot seat.

Speaker 8 The WNBA.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 I got a real story here. This one is legit.

Speaker 8 So there's a woman by the name of Deerica Hamby. She was on our 3x3 women's basketball team.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 8 She is in a little dispute right now with the league of the WNBA and the Las Vegas Aces.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 8 So I'll give you the rundown before I give you the headline.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 That's how it usually goes.

Speaker 7 Yep. When you read an article, yeah.

Speaker 8 In June 2022, she signed a contract extension.

Speaker 8 In July 2022, she got pregnant.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 8 And then what comes out afterwards. A baby.
Well,

Speaker 8 she alleges that in the following months that the Las Vegas Aces were quote-unquote unhappy with her.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 8 she's alleging that they

Speaker 8 were. So essentially in the contract she had, she was supposed to have team-provided housing.
And she was supposed to have tuition, school tuition for her daughter's private elementary school.

Speaker 1 She had an older kid. Older daughter, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 And she is alleging that the Vegas Aces

Speaker 8 did not give her that on top of the fact that they essentially wanted to trade her and wanted to push her out because she signed a big enough contract that they said was enough for two to three players.

Speaker 8 You know, the contract was a big enough contract. She's averaging 20 points, 10 rebounds right now.
She's doing very well.

Speaker 8 But the contract essentially, they they

Speaker 8 essentially

Speaker 8 wanted a few different players for her contract, just what Las Vegas is saying.

Speaker 1 Wait, read us the headline.

Speaker 7 Wait, so the Las Vegas Aces, they're owned by who again?

Speaker 7 What football player

Speaker 7 has an ownership stake in them, big cat?

Speaker 1 Tom Brady.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's interesting. Because this doesn't sound like something Tom Brady would do to a pregnant woman, kick her out.

Speaker 7 Read us the headline.

Speaker 1 So the official headline is

Speaker 8 she is essentially that the.

Speaker 1 Oh, I got it it right here. Sparks, Dierica, Hamby, Sues WNBA, Aces

Speaker 1 alleging discrimination.

Speaker 1 I think you should have read the headline first. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's kind of unorthodox. Well, hear me out.

Speaker 8 So this is the second time they're going into an investigation. The first time the Las Vegas Aces lost their 2025 first-round pick.

Speaker 1 For a pregnant lady? For a pregnant woman. Whoa.

Speaker 8 So essentially, and she's saying that the WNBA did not do a good enough job.

Speaker 1 So essentially, they're going back. She wants them to go back and

Speaker 1 go through all that and also have to pay for

Speaker 8 her money, the money she lost,

Speaker 1 her

Speaker 8 lawyer fees, all that extra stuff. Yeah, which they should do.
Which stuff that also,

Speaker 8 this would never happen

Speaker 8 in the NBA.

Speaker 1 Correct. Oh, yeah, because

Speaker 1 you can't get pregnant.

Speaker 7 Can you imagine if

Speaker 7 male football players could get pregnant and you're psyched about the upcoming season? Yeah. And and then you find out Jalen Hurts is going to have a kid, so he's going to be out all season.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 That would suck. The discourse that would surround the league.
Yeah. Yeah.
And

Speaker 8 essentially, that's why the aces, in her words, are saying why they weren't happy with her.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Because they signed this big contract.

Speaker 1 And she got pregnant. She gets pregnant a month later.
Well, that's not. I mean.
It's not her fault. Yeah, she should be able to get pregnant.
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 7 You should get pregnant when you want to get pregnant. And sometimes you don't plan it.

Speaker 8 And it was literally a month after.

Speaker 1 She probably

Speaker 8 got, yeah, started having sex with her once you got a big paycheck.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's true. To celebrate.
That's true. Yeah.
Yeah. Paycheck.
Yeah, paycheck sex.

Speaker 7 Guys love money. Yeah.
We love chicks with money.

Speaker 10 All right.

Speaker 1 And your cool throne? Oh, my cool throne, the Dallas Cowboys.

Speaker 7 Oh.

Speaker 8 They are the first league franchise in, I think, U.S. sports to surpass the $10 billion evaluation.

Speaker 1 This is good. I love this.

Speaker 8 No one's got more money than JJ.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I love these lists. They're kind of like the

Speaker 1 U.S.

Speaker 1 News and World top ranking of colleges. Yeah.
Where it's like none of this, it's all made up.

Speaker 7 Every school has been at least rumored to be one of the top 10 party schools in the US.

Speaker 1 Yes, and every school is also like they're the small IVs, the public IVs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's

Speaker 1 the price is what it sells for.

Speaker 1 The price is the price.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 7 They say that he could sell the team for $10 billion.

Speaker 1 But again, it doesn't matter if no one wants to buy it for $10 billion.

Speaker 7 I think Jerry Jones would buy the team right now for $10 billion from himself.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 How come they can't pay Dak and CD then? That's a good point. That's a good point.

Speaker 1 Should be able to

Speaker 1 mortgage some of it, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Take a second mortgage out.
Okay, let's get to our interviews. We got Peter Schruger.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk a little hard knocks, and then we have Mickey Hart and Wright Thompson. PFT, you got a couple words before that.

Speaker 15 All protein bars generally taste the same, but not one bars. One-made protein bars are actually delicious with Reese's and Hershey's.

Speaker 15 Only one Reese's Peanut Butter Lover's protein bar is made with Reese's peanut butter, and only one Hershey's cookies and cream protein bars is made with Hershey's cookie bits while delivering 18 grams of protein and 3 grams of sugar.

Speaker 15 One bars are the perfect protein bar to get you through your busy day, whether you need a quick pick-me-up between meetings or you need some fuel to power you through your next workout.

Speaker 15 One also has other delicious flavors like birthday cake, maple glazed donut, and blueberry cobbler. Find all One bars at a retailer near you or on amazon.com.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on our good, good friend. Two times in a week, because he did join us on the grit week van for the Mount Rushmore of Yellow.

Speaker 1 You got an insight into the madness that is part of my take. It is Peter Schrager.
He has the Hard Knocks podcast. He has Good Morning Football.
He's a reporter on Fox. He does everything.

Speaker 7 Does anyone ever call you the Schragermeister? No, I like that.

Speaker 1 I like that. Nice cold glass of Schragermeister.
Can I show you what else I am? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Possession of this book.

Speaker 1 Is that me?

Speaker 5 This is the Aaron Rodgers unauthorized biography. I got a copy.
I'm flipping through it. I'm about 100 pages in.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 1 Okay, there's probably a lot of slander on this biography. Yeah, on the Bears.
All right, so before we start, we should just address this was a win tonight for the three old guys sitting right here.

Speaker 1 We're not going to rub it in because it is live now on Max, but there was a delay getting the Hard Knocks episode up, and I know that PFT and I have been belittled, ridiculed, mocked for years now because we refused to cut the cord.

Speaker 1 Tonight was our Super Bowl because we got to watch Hard Knocks live and everyone else was mad about an app.

Speaker 1 So credit to us, guys, for never giving up.

Speaker 7 We did it. We did it, guys.
I knew this time would come. And it's interesting you call it the Super Bowl.
I thought of it more like training camp.

Speaker 7 This is like training camp for football season, especially college football season, when you know that there will be certain apps out there that aren't going to work on Saturday.

Speaker 7 And you're going to need these reps in the preseason to know that you need a redundancy plan in place. You need to know that you have good old-fashioned cable, nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 7 Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Speaker 7 So just let's use this opportunity to get better.

Speaker 5 I pay $200 plus dollars a month to a cable provider every single month. I barely even turn on the TV, but it's all in preparation for this moment.

Speaker 5 I think it's akin to, you know, you see that Michael Rubin Fanatics white party and like those who are in the know are there and they're all partying and we're all on the outside looking in.

Speaker 5 Watching all of these Bears media members be like, does anyone have HBO action? And like just us like taking photos of it and like doing selfies.

Speaker 5 Like I felt like we were at the party and they were all on the outside looking in. It felt pretty good.

Speaker 1 I've said it before, but I have a dear friend who cut the cord. It was probably like eight years ago,

Speaker 1 or maybe it was maybe it was like six years ago. And I was over his house for the USC, Ohio State, whatever bowl game they were playing in.

Speaker 1 And his stream kept on buffering. And I had a lot of money on the game.
And it was at that moment that I was like, I always have to have a backup plan.

Speaker 1 I know this is going to cost me too much money, but I don't care. I have to be able to watch my sports live.
And tonight we won.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 1 Schraeger, it was actually a great episode.

Speaker 1 It felt like they got back to football. It was like, and they spread the ball around.
Last episode was a lot of Eberflus. Tonight was like, you know, Keenan Allen, Roma Dunze.

Speaker 1 We had a DJ Moore moment, Jonathan Owens.

Speaker 15 So you watched these before, right?

Speaker 1 Do you get these before us?

Speaker 5 I get them like a few hours before they go live so I can do them. And then I interview a guest each week.
So the first week I interviewed Erlacher, who was amazing.

Speaker 5 And then this week, I just got off the phone with Ryan Poles, who has also seen the episode. And the GM and I were talking back and forth about it a little bit.

Speaker 5 And to your point, the first week was a lot of setting up characters. Here's Iber Fluss's glow up.
We're going to talk about his Ryan Reynolds hair. This week we get Jalen Johnson and we get...

Speaker 5 Keenan Allen going at it one-on-one at practice, actual football, and great access that we don't typically get to see when we just have the shaky cam footage from training camp where someone's watching from like the crowd.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 It was awesome. And then it sounds like Keenan Allen was conceding that, you know, yeah, this guy's been beating me all prior.
Like this guy had the best of me.

Speaker 5 So Bears' offense gets a lot of press, but like this was the episode for the Bears defense. And I was like, I know.

Speaker 1 It was. And so I have to ask, everyone should go listen to your Hard Knocks podcast, but can you tell us what maybe a quick summary of what Ryan Poles is feeling? I mean,

Speaker 1 I love him, but where is he at mentally with this team?

Speaker 5 Yeah, there was a quick little moment in the beginning of the episode where he's talking to Ian Cunningham, who is kind of his number two in Chicago.

Speaker 5 And he's like, have you noticed that Caleb's getting a little better on film? Like, he's picking it up a little bit, the rhythm. And he's like, uh-huh.
So he was talking about every single day.

Speaker 5 Like, Caleb's picking up things that he didn't have the day before. He's picking up coverages that he didn't see week one, now and week two.
But I thought was great.

Speaker 5 I was like, I kind of liked Caleb in episode one because for that rookie show, you can go up there and you can be like, here's my college fight song, or like, here's my favorite like new hip-hop song.

Speaker 5 Instead, Caleb comes out, he's horrible singing John Legends, ordinary people, and like, they're throwing shit at him, and he just gets the piss taken out of him, and he's smiling and he's laughing, and he's an equal with Tyson Bajant, Austin Reed, and Brett Rippen.

Speaker 5 And you're like, I like this guy. So I'm like, you have to like that.
And he's like, no, dude, that's Caleb. Like, he has never been an entitled guy.
He comes right in. He's one of the guys.

Speaker 5 And he's like, if you think he's shitty singing, you've got to see him golf. And the best part about it is he's a horrible golfer.

Speaker 7 But like, he comes out there and he like takes the swings and like is not as not scared a lot of these athletes have too much pride like Caleb's like I suck at golf I'm gonna play and I don't care and that's the ultimate confidence so like they're all happy it's going well yeah yeah it does seem like like they're pretty happy with him I wonder if Poles would have done the podcast if Caleb Williams hadn't played that well in preseason week one because like we got to see him go out there and do stuff that only a couple people can do in the NFL with his arm and so he's like yeah probably a little bit of relief from Ryan Poles like okay I at least I know I'm not a complete moron for taking this guy to the one.

Speaker 5 I did get this booked on Sunday night. So that does make sense.
The game was Saturday.

Speaker 5 One last thing on polls. I thought it was interesting because a lot of these guys clam up when it's not like football.

Speaker 5 I was like, you were in Kansas City when they drafted Mahomes, but you were also in Kansas City when they drafted Kelsey. Like, would you have ever thought? He's like, what?

Speaker 5 He's like, no, I would have never thought at that time that Kelsey would get through his rookie year. He was crazy.

Speaker 5 He's like, that's why we love Travis because Andy Reid found a a way to make it work. And like, he said that he and Kelsey saw each other before a game last year.

Speaker 5 And the two of them did like the Paul Rudd, Sean Evans meme of like, look at us. And he's like, I'm a GM.
And he's like, and I'm dating the number one pop star in the world.

Speaker 5 And it's like, the two of them had a huge embrace. And I'm like, all right.
So Paul's has a personality. He was pretty cool.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he is.

Speaker 1 Other quick hitters, because we have some questions, Schrager, about the rest of the NFL.

Speaker 9 And we don't want to do all bears, but

Speaker 1 these are just notes I took down, PFT, so you can add in anywhere.

Speaker 1 I love that they're scouting the refs. That was pretty cool.
Craig Rollstrad.

Speaker 5 I believe that gentleman's name is Harry Freed. I go deep.
The kid who is talking to Caleb and it's like, look,

Speaker 5 he's an athletic director in Seattle, and this is what he does. You're going to see him once a week.
That's how deep this is. I'd never seen that before.
That was cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was very cool.

Speaker 7 Private investigators for the refs.

Speaker 1 It's smart. Yeah.
Yeah. I loved seeing the scene at the Museum of Ice Cream just because I've been to the Museum of Ice Cream three times, both in New York City.

Speaker 1 I didn't know.

Speaker 5 Is that like a chain? Because Big Cat. It is.
I took my cat in New York City.

Speaker 7 He's a history buff.

Speaker 1 Well, listen, you go to the one in New York City. Is the one in Chicago the same?

Speaker 1 You got to go to the one in Chicago again.

Speaker 5 So it's kind of like a hillstone. Like, if there's a hillstone in any city, I'm trying that French dip there.

Speaker 1 I have to. I have no problem saying I've been to the Museum of Ice Cream three times.

Speaker 1 I'm not worried about it. And then

Speaker 1 the other one, and this one was like a very dad moment.

Speaker 1 DJ Moore before the game in Buffalo, his daughter being like, what's the Bumblebee's name and if?

Speaker 1 And like, that's, if you have kids, that's the most kids thing ever where like the world could be on fire and your kid is just like

Speaker 1 play that one song. Yeah, play that one song we listened to three weeks ago that has the cat in it.
And I'm like, I don't fucking know what song this is.

Speaker 5 And how and how up to date? Like. If came out like in June.
So I'm like, wow, that's not saying Frozen. That's not Beauty and the Beast.
That's not Aladdin. Like, give me the if if character.

Speaker 10 I'm like, if, I don't even, where'd you find if?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 Again, cable guy here. I don't even know where to find if.
That's incredible.

Speaker 1 Okay. I stupidly didn't plug my mic in after I spent the first 10 minutes being like, oh, I'm a genius for not cutting cords.
And look at me. That was the most karma thing ever.

Speaker 1 So you could hear me through my headphone, my airphone.

Speaker 1 I actually have, you know, wired headphones. You can hear me through that mic.
Now I'm plugged into my actual mic. Holy shit, that was a perfect way to start the show for me to be like victory lap.

Speaker 1 And then, hey, you are the old fuck. PFT, any other thoughts about hard knocks before we talk about Schrieger about other camp stuff?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I just made a quick list of three things that Big Cat's going to get mad about during hardships.

Speaker 1 I didn't get mad at all. Well,

Speaker 7 let me get to him. Let's see if you got mad.
Because last week he got mad about a few things, how they portrayed our dear sweet Caleb Williams.

Speaker 7 The first thing is I just predicted that Big Cat would yell at Max for not pressing the button.

Speaker 7 Did not. So maybe this is growth.
Maybe this is progress. Number two, you remember last week when you got upset when they showed Caleb Williams on screen when somebody used the word grinder?

Speaker 7 I was wondering if this week you got upset when Caleb was having trouble putting his shoulder pads on.

Speaker 1 No doubt. I know.

Speaker 7 And then Rome was like, he was like, hey, Rome, can you get my strap on?

Speaker 1 Sounds like you're thinking about me while you're watching Hard Knocks. Just keep going.

Speaker 7 Just sexually, only sexually. Yeah.

Speaker 7 That was pretty much it, honestly, because

Speaker 7 I feel like you would probably agree with Austin Reed when he got upset at Sean McDermott for challenging that completion. All Austin Reed wanted was just one completion.

Speaker 1 Yeah. What is Sean McDermott doing?

Speaker 7 Come on. Let's be nice.
Let's spread the ball around a little bit here.

Speaker 5 Can I shout out Austin Reed's parents? We have a correct production team. I'm like, give me this parents' names.
These people are great.

Speaker 5 Jen and Tom Reed, and they went to every one of his games from southern Illinois to West Florida to Western Kentucky. And now he's been to Canton and Buffalo.
I'm for those guys.

Speaker 7 Those are my favorite people.

Speaker 5 Good people.

Speaker 1 They're all.

Speaker 7 I also had on my list that you would get upset at HBO Max because you thought that maybe they were intentionally not letting people see the good Caleb Williams plays this week.

Speaker 1 No, again, I was watching on cable, so I was not mad. Listen, my complaints about the first week, I admitted that I was maybe a little triggered, but there also were some real complaints in there.

Speaker 1 They showed football this week. I wanted to see football, and that's what they did.
They showed a lot of football. A lot of football.

Speaker 1 And again, they spread the ball around. Like, I want to see everyone on the team.
And it felt like that this week, where they were giving a bunch of guys some love.

Speaker 1 You know, like at the end, when they were giving Austin Booker some love, like, it was just, I loved it. Like, you're learning.
Do you remember the running back out of Howard?

Speaker 5 He got a lot of love.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. Right.
Villas Jones fumbled the ball. I've seen that before.
many times. Then he had some nice runs.
But yeah,

Speaker 1 I have no complaints about this week's episode. I thought they did a great job.

Speaker 7 Also, I don't think that Simone Biles is human when they showed her climbing up that rope. Crazy.
That's just crazy.

Speaker 7 As a guy that used to jump up and then quickly put one arm above the other and then just fall. The fact that she can climb a rope to the ceiling in like three seconds is insane.

Speaker 7 Did you guys have that?

Speaker 5 The presidential fitness, the national fitness? I was never presidential. I was always national.
I couldn't do like the

Speaker 5 flex arm hang long enough.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Oh, you did the flex arm hang? Yeah, not easy.

Speaker 1 You didn't do the pull-ups? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not easy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I always had trouble with the mile run. I was always like 30 seconds too slow to get presidential in that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, Schraeger, give us three big stories that are going around in training camp right now and what's happening and maybe just some details because you're plugged in everywhere.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I've been to a few of them.

Speaker 5 And I'll say, like, One of the cool things at Jets Camp when I was there was that the Hassan Reddick story is like almost like a non-factor that and I I'm not minimizing it it's a crazy situation that you have a star pass rusher demand a not demand but request a trade get traded and they somehow didn't sign him to a long-term deal before they brought him in the building and he did the press conference and now he's not there and wants to be traded again but like I it's I live in New York City I'm amongst all these jet fans it's like last year they were burned so badly and they're like so scarred that they're not letting themselves get excited.

Speaker 5 Of all the practices i've been to the crispest practice i was was that was at this jets one and it's like they're really good on paper they were really good on paper last year but they added three really good offensive linemen to protect rogers they added players on defense like i'm trying not to get too excited because you know i've been down this road with the jets but i i'd say the jets are running a very crisp nicely somewhat under the radar training camp and in a year where it looks like the patriots the dolphins and even the bills might be taking a step back from where they were last year year.

Speaker 5 Like, this, I don't know. I don't want Jets fans to get too excited because I get it, but like, that was one of the crispest practices I've been to all summer, maybe in the last couple of summers.

Speaker 1 Ooh, interesting. I like

Speaker 7 about Brandon Ayuk. Is he going to get traded, or are we just going to play the Will Brandon Ayuk get traded game all year?

Speaker 5 You know, I do this daily morning show, and it's like, we have 32 teams, and we have so many stars.

Speaker 5 And like multiple days, we've started talking about Brandon Ayuk, and it's just like, now here's the wild thing with that situation.

Speaker 5 It was, they they thought they had a deal, then both sides went dark, and then it was like, all right, well, there's the Patriots, but then Bernard Nuke, I'm not going to the Patriots.

Speaker 5 So it's really down to one team, the Steelers, right now. And apparently there's a framework in place, but you need Ayuka and the Niners to agree upon it.
Like the Steelers aren't budging.

Speaker 5 Here's the crazy thing. His agent's a guy named Ryan Williams, who's a big agent in the league, whatever.
They have a bunch of guys. Ryan Williams and John Lynch are like lifelong.

Speaker 5 Buddies like best buddies like Ryan Williams invited John Lynch to his wedding like they are that tight So there's personal personal connections in this thing where to me that tells me all right at the end of the day

Speaker 5 if those are the two people who are running the business operation in this situation like they'll find a way to get Ayuk dressed and with the Niners and playing with this team and there'll be a contract that both sides are happy with and the Niners can go to bed at night but like for them to to to go and like dig their heels in on this one and then for

Speaker 5 for Ayuk's people to be like, well, he just, he cannot, he cannot take up, take step on the field until he gets more money.

Speaker 5 Like, I just have to think they both, they're in the, it's a beneficial place for both of them. Like, let's just get it done and, and find a way to make it happen.

Speaker 7 Wait, you said that he invited John Lynch to his wedding. Did John Lynch go to his wedding?

Speaker 1 Did he attend the wedding?

Speaker 5 John Lynch was at the wedding, like lifelong friends.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, yeah, it's always so interesting.

Speaker 7 Like, good morning, football. Would you rather lead off for the next two weeks with talking about the Dallas Cowboys every day?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 7 Or talking about Brandon Ayuk?

Speaker 5 You know, it's funny because our show is on so early. So, like, I always make this argument, and you guys can appreciate this.
I'm like,

Speaker 5 there are not that many Niners fans up right now.

Speaker 5 Like, I don't know if we need to start the first hour of the show talking about a second wide receiver on the 49ers, but I think it's a universal theme when you get the player that's like, I'm not coming to camp, but I am at camp, but I'm not taking part in practice.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 7 yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 5 Cowboys, that might sell better, but the Ayuk thing is more timely.

Speaker 1 So, and then the last one that I had a question about is what are the Vikings going to do with JJ McCarthy? Yeah.

Speaker 5 Look, that was that's, that's crappy news. That we just, we just got it today, obviously, that his knees messed up.
Um, and hopefully he'll be back.

Speaker 5 But that wasn't necessarily the planned week one anyway.

Speaker 5 The way I saw it or the way that I've been hearing it is that, like, and I know you can roll your eyes because we've seen Darnold with the Jets, with the, with the Panthers, with the Niners.

Speaker 5 We've seen Sam Darnold, right? We get what we're getting. Still in his 20s.
And like, everything I've heard is that, like, as great as J.J. McCarthy's been, like, Darnold's been even better in camp.

Speaker 5 They signed him to a $10 million deal.

Speaker 5 They feel confident that Darnold was going to start anyway out of the gates so this gives time for mccarthy but that's a really good situation for sam because it's kevin o'connell who's a former quarterback in the nfl it's josh mccown who's an 18-year veteran in the nfl he's he's the quarterback's coach out there and then you've got addison jefferson aaron jones and of course that great offensive line so like If Darnold was ever going to have a chance to get out and have a good start, it's with this team and what they have.

Speaker 5 The McCarthy thing, it's unfortunate because because I think everyone was excited. But again, 21-year-old kid, like super young.

Speaker 5 I don't think they were rolling him out of the gates the first month of the season anyway.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it sounds like they'll probably take the more cautious approach. It does suck.
It sucks beyond belief to have your rookie quarterback have that.

Speaker 1 But you also have to think long-term, it's not just this season. They're not in win-now mode.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 You know, PFT, I'll tell you this. You know, I talk to Cliff all the time,

Speaker 5 the offensive coordinator in Washington. Like, everyone's happy.
And Poles is is thrilled with Caleb. And I talked to Sean Payton, and he's thrilled with Bo Nick's.

Speaker 5 Like, you have no idea how good this kid is. Like, great.

Speaker 5 Like, what they're getting out there in Washington. Like, I'm not trying to get you too gassed up here, but

Speaker 5 holy shit, bro. Like, they're talking like this guy is the real deal in Washington.

Speaker 5 And Jaden Daniels has been everything they were hoping for and more in training camp as far as leadership, as far as on the field.

Speaker 5 And we saw him attempt three passes, but how calm did he look in that preseason game against the jets just moving the ball right up the field yeah i mean dan quinn called him top gun which is an awesome nickname

Speaker 7 because he he just buzzed the tower he didn't get permission but that the first pass that he threw dan quinn needs to teach him we're too close for missiles let's switch to guns because the first one that he threw on that little screen pass went like six feet over his head i'm gonna chalk that one up to adrenaline

Speaker 5 He had family in the building. It was a noon start.
He was ready to go, man.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I like how you said, I'm not going to gas you up too hard. And then you're like, holy shit, bro.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm gassed. All right.

Speaker 7 I can't get any more gassy than I am right now.

Speaker 7 I haven't felt this way in a long time.

Speaker 7 Maybe I'm just desperate to have any shred of positivity or hope.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 7 yeah, I'm getting drunk on all the Jaden Daniels Kool-Aids. So I'm happy that you told me that.

Speaker 7 You said earlier that the Jets looked like they were having a pretty good camp. Things look crisp.
I know

Speaker 7 you don't want to trash any teams, but can we put it this way? Like, which teams so far in camp have had the most questions?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm curious what we get with the Patriots, and I know Hank is a key part of

Speaker 5 this group here.

Speaker 5 I just, new coach, rookie quarterback, the preseason debut for all of them didn't do anything to blow anyone's hair back. So this could be a really interesting transition here in New England.

Speaker 5 And, you know,

Speaker 5 to have Iuk so openly say, like, I'm not going to New England. Everyone just kind of shrugged their shoulders and nod.
Like, that's, it's, it's not,

Speaker 5 it's a new era. I'll just say that.

Speaker 1 You counterpoint, Joe Milton.

Speaker 7 Maybe he saw Joe Milton play and he was like, ah, maybe.

Speaker 5 Fans of Michigan, fans of Tennessee, fans of college football have been hearing about Joe Milton for years. I think he's got a great rocket arm.
And we had him on Good Morning Football last year.

Speaker 5 He's a really good kid, but you know, you go in the sixth round and accuracy has always been an issue. So

Speaker 5 I wouldn't put Milton ahead of May just yet.

Speaker 7 It's phase one. We're in phase one of the Joe Milton experience.
And anyone that's paid attention to him in the past, you know what's coming, but just enjoy the ride.

Speaker 5 Enjoy it. Enjoy it.
And they used to do this with, I want to say it's either like Michael Bishop or Rohan Davey.

Speaker 5 Like they would, they would take out Brady at the end of a half, and they would throw in one of these just like rocket-armed guys just to throw the Hilmaries at the end.

Speaker 5 Like Belichick used to do that.

Speaker 5 I think it was Michael Bishop from Kansas State.

Speaker 5 I would not be shocked if we saw Joe Milton just throw a couple bombs during this season and they put him in there just to let him get one of those deep throws before the end of the half.

Speaker 5 I throw for you guys. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 I am so jealous of that Rob Dierdrek ridiculousness

Speaker 5 studio you guys have in Chicago where I'm at all hours watching just fun games happening.

Speaker 5 Big cat, I live in Brooklyn, obviously, used to live here, and I don't know since you left, but there is a craze in Brooklyn, and it's in Dumbo, and it's the sport called Padell.

Speaker 5 Are you aware of what Padell is?

Speaker 1 No, I've played it. I've played it.
You have. Okay.

Speaker 7 The sworn enemy of pickleball.

Speaker 1 Yes. It's pickleball.
It's the evil twin.

Speaker 5 So it's two-on-two. It's like pickleball, but you can go in the kitchen and all this thing.
It's more tennis than pickleball, but there's glass walls and you bang it off the walls.

Speaker 5 And I've been playing it all summer. They have it

Speaker 5 in Dumbo. And I am telling you, guys, if you built a Padel court in that Chicago gymnasium of yours, I will fly out once a week and I will play with you.
I am so addicted to this sport.

Speaker 5 It's not just me. I'm at the court and like Andrew Schultz, the comedian, walks in.
He plays, name dropped, doesn't say hello to me, doesn't know who the fuck I am, but like, still, he's there.

Speaker 5 There are other people there. Like, it's gaining steam, and I feel like you guys would love it.
And Big Cat is so up your alley where it's like, no, it's not tennis.

Speaker 1 You're not going to get it. But that's what they're trying to do.
They just, they're trying to basically figure out different ways to play tennis, which is a boring sport to play.

Speaker 1 And they're like, oh, let's make it small. Let's stay off the walls.
Like, hey, can you just admit tennis is boring?

Speaker 5 No, how dare you. PFTA, did you love it when you played?

Speaker 7 Okay, so I played one time and I got my ass kicked by a 65-year-old.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All these boomers are creating games that they just don't even have to move.

Speaker 7 They're so good at it. And they know all the angles and they know how to hit it off the wall and wait for it off the wall and hit it at just the right angle.
And it was

Speaker 1 humiliating. But like,

Speaker 1 that's what they do, though.

Speaker 5 I remember when you were doing those basketball workouts, and I was so jealous of you. I'm like, yes, that looks fun.
Like, you're getting a sweat in. This is what this is.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, because

Speaker 1 the boomers have created games where they basically like shrunk tennis so they can stand in one place and be like, I worked out.

Speaker 1 That's what they're doing.

Speaker 5 I'll tell you, you'll sweat your ass off in this one.

Speaker 7 I think the boomers created these sports just so they can stick it to millennials. Yeah.
So they can just kick the shit out of us at a sport and be like, see, I told you guys didn't work out.

Speaker 5 They never sell their houses. So no one our age can own a house.
They never leave their jobs. So they never want to leave the presidency.

Speaker 5 They just, they just, now they ruin all of our sports and recreation. I'm going to forget it.

Speaker 1 And what's the theme about all these sports? They just take a sport that already exists and just make it significantly smaller so they can cover all the ground. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 I will not stand for Padell. All right, I have one last question.

Speaker 2 Falls here, kids are back in school, vacations are over, and cozy season is officially on. You know what that means? Bombus season is on.

Speaker 2 Bombus makes the most comfortable socks ever, and they even make slippers, tees, underwear, all crafted from premium materials. Perfect for this time of year and cozying up for football watching.

Speaker 2 Their slippers are also Sherpa lined, which feels like you're walking on the clouds. Bombus really has it all.

Speaker 2 And if you head over to bombus.com/slash audio, you can use the code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombbas.com/slash audio.
Code audio at checkout.

Speaker 1 Who is going to be the week one starter in Pittsburgh?

Speaker 5 I think Russell Wilson.

Speaker 1 Yeah?

Speaker 5 I don't know the status of his calf. I just know that when they brought him in, it was like they put tunnel vision on.
They're like, Russell's our guy. Like, we're good.
Like, just feel.

Speaker 5 And Fields would, it's ironic because I remember covering this is going to date me.

Speaker 5 I remember covering the Seahawks in like 2012 when your guy, Russell Wilson, showed up there, and it was the late Tavares Jackson, and it was Matt Flynn, and everyone was like, it's an open competition.

Speaker 5 And Russell was a third-round pick and won the job outright. That's what they're saying in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 5 And I think, like, the irony is like, it would have to take Justin Fields to have a lights-out, undeniable preseason.

Speaker 5 And it would have to maybe take a not 100% Russell Wilson with that calf for Fields to start week one. But I think

Speaker 5 the plan is Russell Wilson week one.

Speaker 1 I think so, too. Yeah.

Speaker 7 What about your guy Canalis? What about the, do we have any canalises? Yes.

Speaker 1 Or your guy Tepper.

Speaker 7 Because

Speaker 7 I feel like.

Speaker 5 Did you see the Canalis video that came out where they were doing the rookie show and he said, fuck it, I'm jumping in. And he's saying, Bob Marley,

Speaker 5 every little thing is going to be all right to the team. And he sang it perfectly.
Thank you. So all is good in Carolina, guys.

Speaker 7 Okay, that's good.

Speaker 7 I'm glad that he's a good singer. That's important to have as a football coach.

Speaker 1 As an NFL head coach, it's good.

Speaker 7 Has there been any reason for optimism down there? I do feel for Panthers fans, you had a rough season one with Bryce Young, and the fact that C.J.

Speaker 7 Stroud was so good last year, and he went second overall. It's tough.
It's tough to make it through a season like that.

Speaker 7 Is there room for hope? Do we have hope in Carolina?

Speaker 5 Sure.

Speaker 1 And look,

Speaker 5 this offseason, they

Speaker 5 really spent a lot of money on guards.

Speaker 5 They spent a lot of money on Robert Hunt from

Speaker 5 the Dolphins, who's not a household name, but they broke the bank on him. They just want to build up this brick wall in front of Bryce Young.
And yes, he can see above it.

Speaker 5 And then in the draft, they got Laguette at wide receiver. They got Brooks at running back.
So like they got the big guys up front in free agency and they got some weapons on the outside.

Speaker 5 Last year had never had a shot. It was dead on arrival as far as no weapons, no protection, no chance.

Speaker 5 And now you have an offensive head coach and you brought a bunch of different skill position players in and now you have an offensive line.

Speaker 5 So the hope is this team is a little bit better, but they're not like a playoff team in my eyes.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You, I mean, you're a David Tepper apologist. I am.

Speaker 5 I loved his maniacal ways on Wall Street. I told you that last time I spoke with you.
Yes.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 5 I haven't spoken to Tepper. I assume he's on a yacht somewhere or something nice.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right.
Well, Shraigs, thank you so much. We'll see you again during the football season.
Everyone listen to the Hard Knocks podcast, especially now Ryan Poles is on this week's episode.

Speaker 1 And good one for us tonight for having

Speaker 1 Team Cable.

Speaker 10 Remember Tom Cable?

Speaker 5 We're Tom Cable, guys.

Speaker 1 Let's go. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 8 I love it. Great week.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Gaddi.

Speaker 7 Tonight was our night.

Speaker 5 Tonight was our night. Appreciate you guys.
Hard Knocks podcast. Find it.

Speaker 3 Whether I'm hosting game day at my place or taking my talents to the tailgate, Boarshead is my go-to for a spread that's as exciting as the game itself. Their platters are a hit every time.

Speaker 3 They've got everything you need to keep your guests coming back for more. And if you want to take it up a notch, grab a few dips.

Speaker 3 My personal personal favorite, the Blazing Buffalo Chicken, Hummus, or even one of their charcuterie collections for game-changing flavor.

Speaker 3 Boarshead helps me elevate my entertaining every time, whether it's for a tailgate or a home gating celebration.

Speaker 3 To upgrade your spread, visit your local Boarshead deli for platter options or build your own to make it perfect for your crowd. Boarshead, committed to craft since 1905.

Speaker 1 What's up guys? It's Big Cat here making my Irish entrance with proper number 12 Irish whiskey. How do you make an Irish entrance, you ask?

Speaker 1 It starts with a shot of Proper Number 12 Irish whiskey because real friends don't let friends Irish exit a party without a story to tell.

Speaker 1 Original Proper Number 12 is rich in a smooth blend of golden grain and single malt. Age four years in bourbon barrels.
Mix it up with some ginger ale for a classic and refreshing proper ginger.

Speaker 1 In the mood for something smooth but a little sweeter, try proper Irish apple, a delicious blend of proper's award-winning Irish whiskey with crisp, fresh notes of apple.

Speaker 1 So get out there and make your Irish entrance. Anything else just wouldn't be proper.

Speaker 7 And now, here, Wright Thompson and Mickey Hart.

Speaker 14 And now for something completely different.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on two very, very, very special guests. It is Mickey Hart, the legend himself from The Grateful Dead, and Wright Thompson, award-winning author.

Speaker 1 We don't read a lot of books, but we know Wright Thompson is a very good author. They have collabed for a new documentary that's coming out on ESPN that's going to be out today as we're airing this.

Speaker 1 It's called Rhythm Masters, a Mickey Heart Experience. I was lucky enough to watch it,

Speaker 1 and it's unbelievable. I want to say that from the jump.
What you guys produced was incredible. Mickey,

Speaker 1 I guess my first question is:

Speaker 1 what made you want to do this project? And kind of like,

Speaker 1 what was the fire that lit you off like hey i want to combine my world of drumming and sports in such a beautiful way

Speaker 14 oh thank you very much uh

Speaker 14 i guess you might call the genesis of it all was with bill walton uh of course bill and i were good friends and uh

Speaker 14 he once uh

Speaker 14 He once mentioned to me that he thought basketball was very much like a band, you know, a basketball team, and

Speaker 14 putting a ball through a hoop into a net was like string music. And I thought that was very interesting, you know, that he thought that he saw the musicality

Speaker 14 in

Speaker 14 basketball. And I thought, you know, and that started me thinking that, well, everything in this universe is full of rhythm.
You know, vibration is the basis of all life.

Speaker 14 And it just extends on and on and on over and over with the rhythm of life, the rhythm of anything, and the rhythm of the game, sports, for instance, was always intriguing to me. Since I, uh,

Speaker 14 when I grew up, when I was a little guy, I used to watch Bob Cousy, the great basketball player who kind of almost invented modern uh basketball.

Speaker 14 And I used to watch him, and it was actually in black and white

Speaker 14 back in the day.

Speaker 14 And he was my first uh sports hero. And

Speaker 14 I thought, well, this guy is, he's a great artist. I even knew that when I was a kid.
And so there is the art of sports and basketball, for instance. And all those things kind of keyed me.

Speaker 14 And writing about rhythm in different walks of life and so forth

Speaker 14 was

Speaker 14 It was another extension of the philosophy that rhythm is everywhere and you just have to find it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's fascinating. And Bill shows up a number of times throughout the movie.
Right off the very start, I think he's the first voice that you hear in the picture.

Speaker 7 I'm curious to know how he introduced himself to you for the first time. What was your first experience like meeting Bill Walton, you know, him being a massive, grateful dad fan?

Speaker 14 Well, it was back when he won the championship in

Speaker 14 Oregon.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 he came to one of our concerts and I looked out into the audience. It was a small place.
It wasn't much. It was a theater, kind of a larger theater.
And I thought everybody was sitting down.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 there was just one guy, you know, and I thought, wow, why is, you know, why is the audience sitting down? There's one guy standing up. And

Speaker 14 my equipment man, Remrod, he said, no, no, no, that's Bill Walton, you know, the basketball player, you know, the and I go, oh, really? Oh, I loved to watch him at UCLA.

Speaker 14 I saw a lot of the games, and I was a huge Bill Walton fan. And

Speaker 14 I knew he was a deadhead. And I just said, bring him back, bring him back stage.
And that's how I met Bill Walton. It was at a concert, and Bill and I started a relationship.

Speaker 14 I don't know how many years ago, 45, whatever that 40,

Speaker 14 you know, and became best friends over the years.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, we were lucky enough to interview him probably like six or seven years ago, and it was just, it was incredible.

Speaker 1 He he was one of those guys that if you spent an hour with him you felt like he was your best friend and it was yeah it was a blessing yeah

Speaker 1 exactly exactly yeah uh right you are we we were talking before this you are a deadhead i have to know uh because i'm a huge deadhead as well how like cool was it to be in this project and get so close to seeing how mickey works and how the creative process comes about for such a legendary guy guy like that.

Speaker 1 Like, I mean, it's, it's such a cool experience for you, I would imagine, as a deadhead.

Speaker 13 Well, I would say this:

Speaker 13 you know, it's very cool, obviously, because you're like, you know, when you're 15 years old, these guys don't seem real. And then, you know, so you meet them.

Speaker 13 But I'll tell you, for me, less than a deadhead, it was like, as a person who tries to have a creative life, to see Mickey's work ethic. Mickey, close your ears.

Speaker 13 I hate giving you compliments in front of you, but like,

Speaker 13 but I mean, his work ethic, that's exactly right.

Speaker 13 His work ethic and his relentless

Speaker 13 drive to be creative, to push himself, to stretch, to find the boundaries and move through them.

Speaker 13 It just was a real, it.

Speaker 13 Making this movie with him came for me at the exact right time in my own life, just as a reminder of how you approach a creative life and how you don't.

Speaker 13 And so, like, I don't know, you hear about these guys and you always wonder if the emperor has any clothes, you know, like what are these guys going to be like up close?

Speaker 13 And it didn't take long for us to understand that we were dealing with a mind at work with

Speaker 13 an incredibly smart, educated person who also had an intuitive sense of his one of the things he said that really stuck with me is: as you get older, you grow into your instrument, not out of it.

Speaker 13 And that really struck me as a, we are on a journey that lasts a lifetime, all of us. And it was just a good reminder for me of how to be.
I mean, I couldn't be more grateful for the experience.

Speaker 13 And like making the movie is the tax we all have to pay to have the journey.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 And just hearing your voice right, it just took me into fall. I just thought it was a Saturday morning and I'm ready for college football right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Like I can start talking about SEC football.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know you can.

Speaker 7 So did you have to kick him out of the recording booth? Do you want to do some voiceovers for this movie, Mickey?

Speaker 14 Right

Speaker 14 has been, he's been right

Speaker 14 a lot of times helping to produce and write some of this

Speaker 14 chatter.

Speaker 14 It was a pleasure working with him and Tori, Champagne, and ESPN in general. Such nice folks there,

Speaker 14 receptive to ideas and very loose and allowed me to have creative freedom with this. And,

Speaker 14 you know, that's really what it's all about when you're an artist. You have to have that kind of freedom to create something like Rhythm Masters, which I'm very proud of, actually.

Speaker 14 It's quite...

Speaker 14 quite a good story.

Speaker 14 It takes rhythm into a whole other land and it exposes the idea that rhythm is essential in life,

Speaker 14 just in sports, but and then of course in drumming, that's the basis of drumming is rhythm, but just in general, you know, it kind of

Speaker 14 gives you pause and makes you think about, well, doing something right is in rhythm or wrong is out of rhythm or hate

Speaker 14 or is out.

Speaker 14 peace is in, all that kind of, you know, the good rhythm and bad rhythm. Health is good rhythm.
Disease, bad rhythm. You know, winning is good rhythm.

Speaker 14 Bad rhythm is losing, all of that kind of stuff was told in this movie. So it's more than just a movie just about sports.
It

Speaker 14 really

Speaker 14 tells a lot about, it talks about life in general as well. And it's very important, especially to keep your equilibrium and your balance when

Speaker 14 you're famous. you know, as sports figures would be, and how they deal with it off the court.

Speaker 14 Especially, you know, all of these athletes that I interviewed had such a spiritual take on it. And very much like myself, it was very,

Speaker 14 it wasn't very different than how I think about rhythm and music and being in the now. And these things bring you into the moment.
And that's a very powerful

Speaker 14 emotional payload, if you will,

Speaker 14 dealing in,

Speaker 14 you know, at sports at this level, you know, the rhythm rhythm master level and uh

Speaker 14 you know it it

Speaker 14 also informed me as well

Speaker 14 uh about you know mario and jretti you know and uh marshawn lynch um

Speaker 14 babcusi um you know phil jackson all of these great players and uh influences

Speaker 14 influencers like phil jackson who's not only a great base basketball player but a a great human being and brilliant, you know, the Zen master, you know, really.

Speaker 14 And it was great to reconnect with Phil after a few years of not seeing him.

Speaker 14 So, yeah, it was really very nourishing for me to

Speaker 14 talk with all of these

Speaker 14 great players. Some of them are, you know, heroes to me.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Phil Jackson, talking about how he thinks about basketball in 4-4 time and the two beats for anything to happen was really interesting.

Speaker 7 There was one thing that you said that struck me, and that was that you can go fast while you're not moving. So, what does that mean?

Speaker 14 Well, it's about the power of concentration, the mind, and focus.

Speaker 14 And when you focus on something, you can go fast, you can go slow. When I'm up there and I'm playing like mad and I'm just going crazy, but inside, I'm very calm and

Speaker 14 balanced and

Speaker 14 happy and so forth so that allows you to be able to run a marathon or a sprint

Speaker 14 or

Speaker 14 just stand still you know sometimes i'm very still inside and outside

Speaker 14 you know it you know it's just uh it looks like a would look like a frenzy in a way but that's not really what's going on inside you have to really be collected and and focused in order to go go fast.

Speaker 14 And in the same way, to go really slow,

Speaker 14 you need to be able to have that balance to be able to encompass all speeds.

Speaker 14 So yeah, the mind is very powerful. So what the brain says, the body does.
So this really, basketball, football, mostly is about neurologic function.

Speaker 14 It's about how the brain operates and what signals it sends. And the brain is all about rhythm.

Speaker 14 You know, you got a trillion neurons firing every, you know, every second in your brain, and that's pure rhythm.

Speaker 14 So the ability to be able to coordinate your brain and your body movement, the idea of body-mind connection is everything in sports and in life and certainly in drumming.

Speaker 14 So you can go fast, you can go slow, you can stand still if you have the right headspace for it, because sports and music create a virtual headspace where you go, which is not like everyday life, like you're walking down the street or doing anything else.

Speaker 14 It's very different. And that's the high of it all.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I feel like you were about to say something, Ronnie. And I do want to just hear you talk.

Speaker 13 Well, I was going to say, like, when you talk about Mickey's like relentless relentless curiosity, I mean, the thing that drove it home for me was, I don't know if you remember last year's tour.

Speaker 13 I mean, the biggest two tours in the world were Taylor Swift's Aeros Tour and then Dead and Company's summer tour. And so we were out in

Speaker 13 San Francisco for that last couple of shows. And after the last night, we went immediately back to Mickey's dressing room.
I mean, the crowd is still sort of. singing not fade away.

Speaker 13 The drones are still up in the air. And he comes in and locks eyes.
And the very first thing he says is, am I going to have my sports highlights tomorrow?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 13 you know, my ears are, to quote Bob Seeger, I mean, my ears are still ringing from the echoes of the amplifiers.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 13 he's already moved on.

Speaker 1 And I just like, you know. Yeah, it's crazy.
I actually had that question, Mickey, because it's

Speaker 1 as a fan watching from afar. The Grateful Dead are counterculture and they're, and, you know, the hardest touring band in history.

Speaker 1 and like some people from afar might say oh well they you know they're just playing jam band music like whatever but the to to hear and read the stories about your guys work ethic and the days and and years that you guys built uh even before you became you know this incredible you know touring band you guys were playing day and night and it feels like that that work ethic and those hours put into it kind of get glossed over by maybe regular culture people and thinking like oh, yeah, they're just out there playing their band.

Speaker 1 You guys put in all these hours.

Speaker 1 So, what was it like when you were getting to that point where you can all speak the same language on stage in an improvisational way that is so hard to reach that point?

Speaker 1 And I think people don't give enough credit to how difficult how many hours get into that.

Speaker 14 Yeah, you bet. We practiced every day all day.
You know, there was, you know,

Speaker 14 we weren't sitting around smoking dope or anything.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 14 You know, even if we were, we were playing, you know, constantly. So,

Speaker 14 and also, you know, it happened right from the beginning. You know, Grateful Dead Music was magic right from the first, you know, drop of it.

Speaker 14 So it was just a matter of collectively getting it all together and presenting it to people. because the music was something we were discovering.
We were falling on every day.

Speaker 14 We learned something every day. The more you played, the more you learned.
And

Speaker 14 we didn't care really about, we weren't into the money or into the fame, and we didn't have hit records, we didn't do videos.

Speaker 14 So I don't know about counterculture, but we certainly weren't totally part of the music industry. We were maybe in parallel with it, but we certainly weren't part of it.

Speaker 14 We were in our own Grateful Dead world, spawning our Grateful Dead

Speaker 14 mythology on our own with great songs and loving people

Speaker 1 all around.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 we just had a great time in the early days.

Speaker 14 And then it just kind of blossomed over the years very slowly, very slowly, like a turtle, as opposed to the hare.

Speaker 14 And we're the turtle. But we finished the race.
And that's the important part.

Speaker 14 All those rock stars with their jewelry and

Speaker 14 the fancy hairs and all that,

Speaker 14 whatever, they fell by the wayside because it

Speaker 14 wasn't built on the right foundations. We were built to last.
And

Speaker 14 I knew that right from the beginning.

Speaker 14 I thought it would, you know, we were thinking about doing this for the rest of our lives, even when we were kids. We said, do you want to do this the rest of your life? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course you do.

Speaker 14 But it's hard to, you know, to actually manifest that. Yeah.

Speaker 14 You know, you can talk about it, but to actually do it, there was a lot of ups and downs and like rhythms, good rhythms, bad rhythms, fights,

Speaker 14 all kinds of things that we worked through to be able to

Speaker 14 come out on top, as it were. Like Wright said, it was a great tour.
The sphere was great. It was really an honor to be able to play there.
And, you know, it was... It was

Speaker 14 yet again a new experience for us.

Speaker 14 And that nourished us and so all this nourishment over the years if you play you get nourished if you really play hard you play like you really mean it and we meant it we were not kidding around it was none of that you know

Speaker 1 it was it was the music first yeah everything else followed but the music was first always and still is yeah the sphere was incredible i was lucky enough to go i i basically spent the month after telling everyone how incredible it was and how my life will never be the same after going to the sphere.

Speaker 1 One, I mean, the drums and space, the visuals, and what you put together there were just out of this world good.

Speaker 1 I know you can't say, but I'm hoping that the sphere is not done for Dead and Company and maybe there's a future dates coming up because I was lucky enough on the second night I went, I was lucky enough to sit with John Mayer in his green room and I just spent 30 minutes profusely thanking him for keeping the music alive, and I want to thank you as well.

Speaker 1 But tell me there's going to be some more spheres dates, or at least give me a wink.

Speaker 14 Yeah,

Speaker 14 there's no reason why there wouldn't be.

Speaker 1 Okay, I love that answer. I love that answer.

Speaker 14 Let's put it, let's leave it at that.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes, because it's all I've been thinking about is getting back to the sphere. I got to get back to the sphere.
So, right, Ed,

Speaker 1 I'm not joking. PFD can attest to it.
I've been telling everyone.

Speaker 7 Like, the people that leave Avatar, they won't talk about, they won't shut up about how great Pandora, the planet, looks, and how they wish that they lived on Pandora. That's Big Cat with the sphere.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She's like, I got to get back there.

Speaker 1 Nothing is the sphere. My life is not the same without being in the sphere.

Speaker 14 It's the next step.

Speaker 14 You know, we play stadiums, which are made for baseball.

Speaker 14 football. You know, we play places that are not meant for music, really,

Speaker 14 or lights, you know, just pretty lame, you know, lights show behind you one screen. And once you see the sphere, then you understand what the future is

Speaker 14 of music and visuals. Yeah.
And when they come together, it's very powerful.

Speaker 14 It was a real challenge playing in the sphere for a lot of reasons. Firstly,

Speaker 14 it's a new sonic environment that we had to get used to because we've never played.

Speaker 14 I mean, I thought it was suicide suicide to play in a sphere, actually. I mean, sonically,

Speaker 14 it's just not done.

Speaker 14 But with all of the artificial intelligence and the 1600 speakers and the high-deaf

Speaker 14 visuals,

Speaker 14 we made it come alive. We put a lot of time into making it

Speaker 14 feel like the Great Flame, you know, just like us. And so,

Speaker 14 and also to be able to stay focused for 30 shows in the same place.

Speaker 14 We never did that. Maybe we played 13 or 12 days at Madison Square Garden in a row, but we never played 30 dates any place.

Speaker 14 So, to be able to stay focused was also a big deal. You know, only playing three nights.
Normally, our pace is two nights on, one off, two nights on.

Speaker 14 And once in a while, we'll play three

Speaker 14 because of the vocals. You know, it's hard

Speaker 14 for them to

Speaker 14 do four in a row.

Speaker 14 It's very, very hard. So,

Speaker 14 yeah, I think that discipline was part of it.

Speaker 14 And as you get older, you have more discipline. And younger,

Speaker 14 you're just...

Speaker 14 The fuel is just youth.

Speaker 14 But as you get older, then you got to conjure another kind of power.

Speaker 14 And everybody really is drama-free. It's really a great band now.

Speaker 1 It's phenomenal. It's like just watching the iterations, and it's just, it's great.

Speaker 1 I can't thank you enough. And like I said, the drums in the space was incredible.
I was one of the people laying on the floor. I don't know if you expected that to happen,

Speaker 1 that people were going to lay on the floor because of the vibrations, but that did happen.

Speaker 14 Yeah, it gave me pause when they said, Oh, they're all lying on the floor doing it. I go, What?

Speaker 14 You got to be kidding.

Speaker 14 That never happened. People normally don't do that.

Speaker 14 You know, in the sphere, you can feel the vibrations,

Speaker 14 especially in the seats. It's just haptic seats.
There's vibratory, there's speakers in the seats, and you can feel the vibrations when I go downtown, when I go low.

Speaker 14 And so, but the visuals, looking up at the visuals and how

Speaker 14 it kind of goes with

Speaker 14 the percussion, with the drums, the drums sound, for some reason, sound really good in the sphere, better than any place else.

Speaker 14 Nobody can really quite describe the impact

Speaker 14 that the drums deliver in the sphere for me.

Speaker 14 And that was just a lucky, there was the luck of the draw that it just so happens that drums sound amazing in that place.

Speaker 13 you know mickey i was going to ask you know one of the things i thought in the sphere was it

Speaker 13 the one of those last couple of nights i was there it reminded me of that the the power and the communal spirit reminded me of that story uh you were saying about after woodstock when you had your black lab and you could hear sly and the family stone and i i just wonder if you would mind telling these guys that because that that makes the hair stand up on my arms still when i think about the sort of the communion of live music.

Speaker 14 Yeah, well, that was a major moment. I remember being on the hill.
It was after our set, I guess,

Speaker 14 and it was at night and there were fires going all on the valley. You can see them all over.
And Sly was just killing it. And they were all singing, want to take you higher, higher.

Speaker 14 So you hear 500,000 people.

Speaker 14 going higher, higher. And, you know, I never heard anything like, no one has ever heard anything like that before.

Speaker 14 And I was good friends with the drummer, Greg Erico, masterful drummer, amazing drummer. And he was nailing it.
And

Speaker 14 it was total rapture, really. I mean, it was awesome.
I mean, in the idea of awe as an awesome, you know, it really, you just had to sit back and go, wow, the power that we had.

Speaker 14 We weren't alone. He was 500,000 of us.

Speaker 14 No one's ever been able to assemble, I bet in those days anyway, you know, 500 of a thousand of anything.

Speaker 14 Let alone people being friendly and loving and hear the music is taking you to a place that you've never been before. Now, that's power.
And you talk about rhythm mastery.

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 14 that moment, that night, they had it. And also, Michael Shreve, master drummer, master

Speaker 14 with Santana. Michael was a student of mine years and years ago before the Grateful Dead.

Speaker 14 He was one of my students. And there he was on the stage playing just out of his mind.
Just incredible.

Speaker 14 So I was really proud of him that night, you know,

Speaker 14 when he played, when he performed. So Woodstock was really

Speaker 14 It was very interesting and life-affirming, actually, for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, It's very cool.

Speaker 7 And I'm sure you've gotten this question before, but I have to imagine that being in a band like The Grateful Dead, it feels like it was something that was always meant to happen.

Speaker 7 You guys fit in so well together. It's been such an amazing journey.
People's lives have been changed. You've made so many friends.
Was there a moment when you guys started to play?

Speaker 7 I'm sure you've played in other bands before, but as you're starting to either rehearse or play your first shows with The Grateful Dead, where you knew that something was different and something was special about this band?

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 14 absolutely. When I first heard, well, they were already just changed their names to the Grateful Dead.
They were Warlocks.

Speaker 14 The band was called Warlocks back then. And they just changed it to Grateful Dead.

Speaker 14 And I was invited to their concerts. And when I first heard the band,

Speaker 14 I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was so loud and it was so outs.
out there.

Speaker 14 The music was just blossoming.

Speaker 14 It was a blues band back then and they were playing the blues like i had never heard the blues before and then i sat in and that was it you know we just came together and said wow this is the grateful dead you know and so you know jerry said man we could take this around the world

Speaker 14 you know and we did yeah yeah actually you know and so yeah i knew it right from the very first moment that grateful dead music was special really special And over the years, we nurtured that, you know, and,

Speaker 14 you know, and created what you now know as Grateful Dead music. It's a genre of music, really, you know.
And

Speaker 14 with this,

Speaker 14 and we were improvisational.

Speaker 14 And that was

Speaker 14 different back then.

Speaker 14 You only improvised in jazz. The Grateful Dead was like a big, loud jazz band, you know, in a way, uh with a big backbeat yeah yeah so you could dance to this jazz and

Speaker 14 you know everybody was listening to cold train and you know all the great jazz guys

Speaker 14 uh and i was listening to indian classical music so very complicated rhythmically and that's one of the things i brought to the brew was that rhythmic complexity.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Yeah. And then we just shot from there, you know, that we took off.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I love the idea of a music executive somewhere listening to The Grateful Dead in the 19, I don't know, maybe the 1970s and figuring like, we got to figure out a way to recreate this and try to make it like commercial and try to come up with a formula for it while everything that you guys have done has been organic and just something that's naturally happened between you and your fan base throughout the years.

Speaker 7 Were there other bands that

Speaker 7 tried to copy what you guys were doing as it went along? And you're like, you don't have it, man. It's not, it's not the same thing.

Speaker 14 In the beginning, nobody could copy it because

Speaker 14 it was so new, they didn't know how to do it. You know,

Speaker 14 I mean,

Speaker 14 when you invent something,

Speaker 14 then that's different. The people couldn't, you know, at first they couldn't understand it because,

Speaker 14 you know, it was so different,

Speaker 14 you know, than any other kind of music. It's so intense.
back then.

Speaker 14 You know, remember, we were just kids playing hard, really fast, hard music you know and very complicated actually and then it got simpler and we started to learn how to uh you know work at these uh these these incredible tempos and being able to go three four five

Speaker 14 even more hours every night back then there was no unions and there was so we could play

Speaker 14 you know we could play till we drop.

Speaker 14 At the Fillmore East, we would start at about 8:30 and wound up about 7 o'clock the next morning.

Speaker 14 So, you know, there was nobody to tell us to stop. We didn't.
Now you have to, you know, now we've limited to three, three and a half hours, which is reasonable now.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Right. I had a question for you.
So you are, your, your life has been sports and covering sports.

Speaker 1 You, you wrote a great book called The Cost of These Dreams, Sports Stories and Other Serious Business, which everyone, I should say, everyone go buy it on Amazon. It's a great, great book.

Speaker 1 But you've covered sports your whole life. Sports are your life.

Speaker 1 Was there something that you uncovered in making this and being around Mickey that you're like, wow, I never thought of sports this way?

Speaker 13 You know, that's a great question.

Speaker 13 I never thought about that exactly like that before. Yes.

Speaker 13 And it came through in several ways. One

Speaker 13 was

Speaker 13 Mickey was asking these athletes questions that it seemed to me that they had had never been asked before and had been dying to be asked.

Speaker 13 And so I think that, you know, athletes are physical geniuses who move through a grid with other people. And I think that sometimes they have trouble articulating.

Speaker 13 They'll say the games seem to slow down.

Speaker 13 And it sounds like a cliche, but really it's just a physical genius who can't find the vocabulary to say exactly the complex things that are going on in their heads.

Speaker 13 And Mickey was asking, I mean, I need to just send you the full unedited Marshawn Lynch conversation because we use, would love to, we use 90 seconds of it.

Speaker 13 And I'm telling you, that's the best sports interview I've ever heard. Yeah.
And you should just run it because, like, Mickey got Marshawn, and Marshawn got Mickey.

Speaker 13 They immediately understood each other as sort of fellow travelers along the same path. And, you know, that happened with Jack Nicholas.
I mean, Jack Nicholas is famously prickly.

Speaker 13 And I didn't tell Mickey that beforehand. I thought it'd just be a fun social experiment to see what happened.
And,

Speaker 13 but so Jack started off prickly, but by the end,

Speaker 13 he was

Speaker 13 putty in Mickey's hands. And so, and so I think it's that these guys spend a lot, these guys and gals, men and women, spend a lot of time thinking about

Speaker 13 their interior life, their their mental health. And I don't mean like

Speaker 13 reacting to stress. I mean, literally, how do you process information? How do you deal with failure and success and egos and all of this?

Speaker 13 And so it feels like they were getting asked questions that they'd never been asked before and

Speaker 13 have always wanted to be asked. There are three or four questions that became stock questions for Mickey that I'm definitely stealing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like,

Speaker 13 yeah, I'll ask everybody going forward three or four of these questions.

Speaker 1 And you're right, because I'm watching it, like

Speaker 1 it was phenomenal. Everyone should watch it.
It's so unique and so different than what

Speaker 1 you think, like ESPN documentary. It's so different and out of the box from that.
But the Joe Montana part where he's describing a five-step drop and a three-step drop and the rhythm of it.

Speaker 1 And it's like, I almost got lost in it. I was like, oh, my God, like, I never, you just think like a quarterback drops back.
That's something you see. It's a small part of the game.

Speaker 1 And just having him dissect it to such a minute level,

Speaker 1 it was incredible. You're right.
Like, I didn't even realize it till you just said that point of having the guys talk about it in a way that they had never spoken about it.

Speaker 13 I mean, I've written about Joe Montana.

Speaker 13 I've spent a lot of time with Joe and Jennifer Montana and wrote what I think is a very revealing story about him, in which he said all sorts of stuff he'd never said before.

Speaker 13 And he said stuff on this interview with Mickey that I'd never heard him say before. And that was very early in the process, too.
And I was,

Speaker 13 it was interesting because Mickey said to me in our first conversation, we went up to his house

Speaker 13 in somewhere in Northern California. And

Speaker 1 he,

Speaker 1 that's right.

Speaker 13 And he was like, I can get them there. And I sort of clocked that.
And like, I made a little note. And it was like, Mickey says he can get them there.
But I was like, all right.

Speaker 13 tough guy let's see you know all right big rock and roll star let's see how well you interview somebody And just

Speaker 13 after Joe Montana, I knew this is going to be really special. Yeah.
Because Joe has been interviewed over and over and over and over.

Speaker 13 And this was new shit. And

Speaker 13 from that point on, I just, I couldn't schedule enough interviews.

Speaker 1 Yeah. By the way, I read the Joe Montana

Speaker 1 piece you did. That was phenomenal.
Again, go buy Wright's book. I can't recommend it enough.

Speaker 7 Read everything he's ever written.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. Like

Speaker 1 I even forgot that I had written or read your Joe montana piece that was i remember reading it and being like wow i'd never even like i feel like i actually know joe montana now so mickey was there one specific uh interview so kind of like the same question to write where you asked someone something or an athlete revealed something that you had never thought of sports that way

Speaker 14 well of course the marshawn lynch like Wright said, was extraordinary because he talked about the spiritual side immediately. I walk on the field.

Speaker 14 I look at the nearest goalposts, I circle the field to the right, I circle the field to the left, I think about the people I'm going to hit and

Speaker 14 pray that they won't get hurt. And he was very, just

Speaker 14 all kinds of wonderful things. Then there's the Phil Jackson interview where he really lays it out,

Speaker 14 two beats, one beat, two beats, more than two beats, you're out of time. So he really broke it down.
You know, he put that quadrant. He goes here and here and here.

Speaker 14 And if you don't do this in two beats, and he talks about it in beats, which is which relates to drumming. You know, you can say, Oh, beat is everybody knows what a beat is.

Speaker 14 And so, Phil was, of course, a very articulate, very articulate. And everybody, Bob Coozy, you know, he just talks about the art of the game and

Speaker 14 it has an art form. And

Speaker 14 Mario and Dreddy says, the engine is vibrating. It's like a song, he says.

Speaker 1 And when he said that, he goes, oh, yeah, Mario. That's it.

Speaker 14 It is a song.

Speaker 1 It was really good. Yeah.

Speaker 14 So the game is a song. Yeah.

Speaker 14 A lot of athletes, they don't, they see it as musical.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And that really just,

Speaker 14 you know,

Speaker 14 I heard how Bill

Speaker 14 spoke of it, but he was a deadhead and he was talking about, well,

Speaker 14 I tell you, one time we were backstage with his son, Luke. Luke was

Speaker 14 the coach of the,

Speaker 14 what do you call it, the Warriors. And

Speaker 14 he's back there and he's saying to Luke, he said, Luke, it's halftime. He said, okay, you got to come out the first,

Speaker 14 like with Bertha, you know, and then you,

Speaker 14 then you bring it back to playing the band kind of a thing.

Speaker 8 And then you

Speaker 14 and I said, Bill, you think you're going to break, man.

Speaker 14 You know, he's the coach, you know,

Speaker 14 spectators here.

Speaker 14 But he saw it in musical terms. And a lot of, and that's one of the

Speaker 14 most interesting parts of it, besides the spiritual nature, which I knew athletes had to have it. And in order to access

Speaker 14 the flow state where everything moves and you're not even thinking about it and you're in the moment and all of these things, which rhythm masters have to know,

Speaker 14 if you don't know that, you're not a rhythm master in anything, whether you're painting a fence or you're a

Speaker 14 great carpenter or you drive a great semi. These are all rhythm masters because they were able to get into that flow state and to be

Speaker 14 in the now. So it doesn't have to be drums or drumming, or it doesn't have to be sports.
You can be a rhythm master in anything

Speaker 14 if you know how to get into these states, these flow states, which is about consciousness. Yeah.
And be aware of who you are.

Speaker 14 and what you're doing and where you're going and then also to be able to let it go

Speaker 14 and then just be in the moment. You can think in a myth over and over and over again, but you have to let thinking go and just be.

Speaker 14 And that's not easy when you're in the middle of, you know,

Speaker 14 when you're in the middle of that,

Speaker 14 you know, that cathartic moment. So

Speaker 14 that's what I brought back from this. I had a great time interviewing

Speaker 14 all of these athletes. And like Wright says, you know, some of them were a little, they didn't know how to approach the interview.

Speaker 14 You know, they thought this was going to be a straight interview about how great they were. But that really wasn't really on my mind at all because they were all great.
That's why I talked to them.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Getting down to the human level that was the real outstanding part for me.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you had these moments where you're looking up and Mike Piazza is talking about tigers and Ozzie Smith is talking about Newtonian physics.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you're just like,

Speaker 1 where am I? Yeah.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I just was like, okay.

Speaker 13 I mean, one of the things you learn, one of the things you learn if you're riding shotgun with Mickey is just hang on.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Like, you know, the circus is in town. And so,

Speaker 13 you know, my five-year-old thought Mickey was like some sort of magic creature. You know,

Speaker 13 she didn't know he was.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, I know, but she didn't know that.

Speaker 13 She just ran right up to him and gave him this huge hug out of nowhere. And then I later found out that Mickey had given her cookies.

Speaker 1 So that was,

Speaker 13 but no, it just, man, the experience of watching him

Speaker 13 do this work

Speaker 13 as someone who was a fan of the music. You know, they say, don't meet your heroes.
And I mean, we're very lucky to report that, you know, he's got, he's an incredibly,

Speaker 13 incredibly talented musician, thinker, and writer, but just also a good guy. Like, he had fun.
This was a fun project. There was very little drama, as he said.

Speaker 13 It was, you know, Torrey Champagne, who Mickey and I both call the adult in the room,

Speaker 13 did a lot of work and really brought the thing home. And

Speaker 13 I just had a great time doing it. And I mean,

Speaker 13 that's what I'm grateful for.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I mean, being able to tap into something that an athlete at the peak of their game has always thought in their own, either they thought it consciously or they've known it their entire lives.

Speaker 7 And it's how they go about their business.

Speaker 7 They think about approaching something as simple as a three-step drop in this very personal way that you can tap into and immediately have them speaking your same language that you understand.

Speaker 7 It ties back into like just the universal nature of rhythm, which I think is a really interesting thing to dive into.

Speaker 7 And then you talked about getting in that flow state, being still,

Speaker 7 but going fast at the same time. I think you discovered the zone.
I think that's what being in the zone is.

Speaker 7 When an athlete says like everything slows down, I think now we can do more work to quantify what the zone is and try to figure out how to get there.

Speaker 7 It's fascinating stuff to dive into. I'm curious to know,

Speaker 7 as a drummer, to me, there might be a difference between sports at their highest level and playing music at the highest level, but maybe I'm wrong about this.

Speaker 7 And that's the inherent nature of competition that you have in sports.

Speaker 7 And in music, I feel like it's not as much of a competition against somebody else, beating somebody else, as it is doing, you know, maximizing your own ability or playing to the highest of your capability.

Speaker 7 But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is a competitive drive in a lot of musicians.

Speaker 14 Yeah, maybe there are, you know, but that's second fiddle, actually. The most important thing is,

Speaker 14 you know, when I go on stage,

Speaker 14 I try to empty my mind. and try to be very relaxed and I try to make everybody on the stage play good.
You know, I'm for them. You know, I'm trying to lay down a real good group.
So,

Speaker 14 you know, Bob or whoever can, you know, just ride on it, you know, and have a great time.

Speaker 14 And then I get down to business, you know, and but the most important thing is to make everybody feel like they're part of a team. And there's no competition on the stage, absolutely none.
And

Speaker 14 if you might be competing in your minds with some other drummers, some far away,

Speaker 14 thoughts and stuff, but really it comes down to,

Speaker 14 I think the empathy in music and the empathy in sports are really important. People don't realize how much people care for their teammates.
It's a love.

Speaker 14 You're attached to them in some way. You don't have to go home with them

Speaker 14 and hang out all the time. But when you're together, you feel this connection.
And that's part of getting into the zone. Now, when you talk about the flow state,

Speaker 14 it really came together with me when I started writing my first book, Drumming at the Edge of Magic, in 1990, I think it was. And I started

Speaker 14 investigating these trance

Speaker 14 religions. Santeria, Condomble,

Speaker 14 and most of the cultures out there in the world have to do with trance, Indian music, and even

Speaker 14 American music music had that, you know, even the early rock and roll, there was these trance states that we would get into that

Speaker 14 we couldn't define. And then all of a sudden we realized that it was just focus and concentration and moving into these others, these other mindsets and allowing the body to flow.

Speaker 14 And now we can articulate it. And that's what's been happening in the last

Speaker 14 30, 40 years is that we know a lot more about how to get into these trance states, which basically that's what all of these things are.

Speaker 14 Trance is not a bad word or anything, you know, it's not, it's a strange word. When you go down the highway and you miss an exit and you're daydreaming, you're in a big puppy trance.
Yeah. You know,

Speaker 14 not harmful or anything. These things aren't harmful.
But they're. Once you know how to go in and out of them and how to stay there,

Speaker 14 then that's the key to be able to win. And all of these rhythm masters that I interviewed are winners.
They know how to go there. They know how to stay there.
And they know how to win.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 14 sports is just, you know,

Speaker 14 just a miniature of life is what we do with rhythm only in sports. It's all about rhythm.
Without rhythm, there could be no sports.

Speaker 14 You know, you'd just be running into each other and, you know, and

Speaker 14 not having no teams. You know, there was no teamwork or any of that stuff.
So the basis of it all is rhythm.

Speaker 14 Whether they realize it or not, now

Speaker 14 it's going to be an educational moment.

Speaker 14 This film could be looked at in those terms for a lot of people and allowing their minds to be able to understand what they're doing or what they did or other people looking at sports in a different way.

Speaker 14 You know, it's these are very complicated.

Speaker 14 These are states of minds.

Speaker 14 Unless you know what you're doing and how to get there and how to stay there, you can't win

Speaker 14 because you just swim it upstream. So that it tells a lot of stories,

Speaker 14 this

Speaker 14 rhythm masters work. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So this has been phenomenal. We appreciate both of your times.
I have one last question.

Speaker 1 It's a robot question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com promo code, take 20% off your first purchase, q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts.

Speaker 1 So everyone, please do watch Rhythm Masters out debuting tonight on ESPN as you're listening to this.

Speaker 1 Mickey,

Speaker 7 this is a dumb question.

Speaker 1 I'm sure you've gotten a million times, but when someone asked me, you know, what is your, explain your love for the Grateful Dead. I basically say, listen, the beauty of

Speaker 1 is that I don't even know what my favorite, like, song or show is because it changes every day.

Speaker 1 And I'll find a show that I'd never heard and that will be my favorite show or a song that something unlocks in my brain I'm like oh my gosh I'm listening to this song and I never listened to it this way

Speaker 1 but is there a specific time and place that you look back to and you're like everyone has their own favorites but your own personal like that's that's where it was that was what I look back at and I daydream about maybe that year or that little era or whatever it may be

Speaker 1 that you just something that unlocks in your brain when you find yourself, you know, kind of drifting off.

Speaker 14 Well, one show was really

Speaker 14 in Cornell in 77,

Speaker 14 that 77 show in Cornell. There were a few songs that night that was superb, just beyond, you know, anything we've ever played before.

Speaker 14 But, you know, there are nights just sprinkled all through the 60 years of playing.

Speaker 14 When you play good,

Speaker 14 that's,

Speaker 14 that's it.

Speaker 14 If it's even one song, sometimes it happens and then the rest of the songs you can't quite get it. But whenever the magic happens,

Speaker 14 then that's everything.

Speaker 14 That's your whole life. Remember, I've been playing most of my

Speaker 14 life, my whole life, actually, pretty much. I've been playing for 70, some odd, 75 years.

Speaker 14 So,

Speaker 14 you know, it's everything, you know, you put everything you have into it and it gives it back to you, you know,

Speaker 14 in a lot of ways. It makes you happy

Speaker 14 and

Speaker 14 it does things to you

Speaker 14 physiologically, whereas it reduces your stress. It makes it makes a better life.

Speaker 14 It makes you learn how to love.

Speaker 14 Because that's what music does and that's what sports does.

Speaker 14 You know, you can't play great sports and not love it. And so, you learn about love, you learn about empathy, and you learn about the good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And

Speaker 14 so it's much deeper than just playing a sport.

Speaker 14 The benefits you get from it are extraordinary. The more you put in, the more you get back.
The longer you can stay there, the better it is. And never quit, never stop unless you have to.

Speaker 14 And that's, of course, a lot of times it's ripped away with injuries and so forth. Same thing happens in my work, injuries all the time.
You know,

Speaker 14 you have to overcome them and you have to heal yourself and come back again. So it's just not like getting up there and playing the drums.
You have to train. Every tour, I train

Speaker 14 for months. to get up there and be able to relax and just

Speaker 14 you know not hurt myself yeah and it's the same way in sports you know, so you have to understand that these players are really,

Speaker 14 they put in so much time.

Speaker 14 All of us, any professional that's at this level, you know, has to give their heart to it. And

Speaker 14 there are benefits to that when you give yourself up and your heart to

Speaker 14 something.

Speaker 14 It is really hard to describe, but

Speaker 14 But what you take away from it and what you take from that power into your regular life is really what's important. What do you, I hope that the people don't leave the music

Speaker 14 at the hall, you know, at the venue, that they take that feeling home and do good with it.

Speaker 14 And that's really the payoff for me.

Speaker 14 If I know that's happening, then I've done a good job and I feel great about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 14 It's not just about the concert. It's about what you do with that feeling.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, Mickey, thank you so much.
And Wright, thank you so much. Everyone, go watch it.
It was an incredible movie. And, Mickey, I'm holding you to it.

Speaker 1 You did say that you guys were going to do some more sphere dates.

Speaker 1 That's me.

Speaker 1 You might not have exactly said that, but that's what I took from it.

Speaker 1 That's not exactly what you said, but that's exactly what I heard. And

Speaker 1 it's all up to interpretation.

Speaker 1 But he didn't say it. Yeah, but yeah, but that's what he meant.
Yeah, that's what you meant. So thank you so much.
This was a thrill, and we really appreciate it. And everyone go see Rhythm Masters.

Speaker 1 And thanks so much, guys.

Speaker 14 Thanks for asking. Thanks for asking.
Good questions, guys.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 7 It was a pleasure. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 6 Sebastian Menescalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is coming to Hulu on November 21st.

Speaker 1 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd. Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep

Speaker 1 coming.

Speaker 6 Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right. Premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.
Terms apply.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's finish up. We got a couple FAQs.
It's been a long show.

Speaker 7 Long show.

Speaker 1 Long show.

Speaker 1 Way too much talking. A lot of fun.
Way too much talking for myself. Listen, football's going to be back soon.
This was fun. I had fun today.
Yeah, don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, too much Hank and too much hating from Hank, and that's all right.

Speaker 1 But I will say this: memes, he sent me some hater questions. I was like, send them.

Speaker 1 And then he just instead sent me questions that are going to make it look like I asked these and they're set up questions. So

Speaker 1 rude.

Speaker 1 Long time AWL. Memes can't exist.
I've noticed that it seems like every single guy in the crew now loves the West. Colorado Grit Week, Arizona Super Bowl, Chill Week.
Have you ever thought?

Speaker 1 Again, I'm not. I'm not at.
This is, I did not pick these questions. Have you ever thought about a winter trip out west? Oh, winter trip out west.

Speaker 7 We don't really do winter trips.

Speaker 1 I think you guys would love an app-prez ski trip after the Super Bowl. Maybe hit the slopes, check out some other sports scenes, and it's a vibe.

Speaker 7 Aprez ski. Much love.

Speaker 1 Yeah. What is it? Apre? Apre.

Speaker 7 Apre after ski.

Speaker 7 We don't usually travel that much in the wintertime because we've got football on TV, and then we've got the Super Bowl. I guess we did go out west last year for the Super Bowl to Vegas.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 But yeah, we don't really travel that much in the wintertime.

Speaker 1 I love it out west. Yeah, I had a great time.
We're going going to go to Tahoe every year. Grit week will not be out west next year.

Speaker 1 We did, I think we've actually. Talking about San Diego week.
We've kind of done a good, if you look at the grit week year after year, the last time we went out west was five years ago.

Speaker 1 So this was the first time in five years that we did it. It just happened that we did Tahoe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Tahoe will be every year. Yeah.

Speaker 7 I mean, the West Coast is a hidden gem. It is.

Speaker 1 Los Angeles. Talk about it.

Speaker 7 Los Angeles is great.

Speaker 1 California.

Speaker 7 California. Malibu, hidden gem.

Speaker 1 They should write some songs about California.

Speaker 7 I don't think that would play.

Speaker 1 The boo. Where is the furthest place you would travel if it meant you got to interview one of your white whales?

Speaker 1 White whale.

Speaker 7 So, like, Katie, Belichick, Miley, who else?

Speaker 1 Yao Ming. Brady.

Speaker 1 Brady.

Speaker 7 Yao Ming, White Whale?

Speaker 1 Key West.

Speaker 1 I would go.

Speaker 7 I would go to Brazil.

Speaker 1 They would eventually be back.

Speaker 7 Brady probably wouldn't be in Brazil. So I don't know why.

Speaker 1 Colombia. It wouldn't make sense in my head.
I'd be like, aren't you coming back?

Speaker 9 Hank, would you go to Hawaii to interview Tom Brady? Yep.

Speaker 9 Wow.

Speaker 1 I've interviewed the shot. That's far.
That's far. I guess.
Hawaii. I'd go to Europe.
Hank, would you go to

Speaker 7 the British?

Speaker 1 But I would just simply say, aren't they coming back? What if the answer was no? Katie's never coming back.

Speaker 7 He might not. He was having fun on that water slide.

Speaker 1 Dude, I love that water slide pick. He is the most relatable.
Put your arms up like a little kid.

Speaker 1 Our last last one. Hey guys, just curious how close of friends you are outside the show.
Do you consider each other more of coworkers or friends? Family.

Speaker 7 I think, yeah, it's closer than friends.

Speaker 1 Actually, Mickey Hart kind of got on it where it was like he had a a line there in the interview where he was like, you know, maybe you're not spending every second outside of it, but when you're when you're in it together, there's no bond like it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And that's kind of how it is.
I mean, I spend outside of my immediately family, I spend the majority of my time with everyone in this room. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're not going out on Friday night because we're spending 70 hours together. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And also, like, if you've got three kids, it's probably not. Yeah.
You probably can't be like, hey, I'm going to hit happy hour.

Speaker 1 I would say

Speaker 1 it's as close to family as you can get.

Speaker 1 I consider you guys my family. Yeah, I do too.
That's what I'm saying. Like, it is, it's

Speaker 7 family. I was thinking about that the other day.
Like, the fact that we've been working together for

Speaker 1 eight years?

Speaker 7 Nine years? Eight years? Eight years? Is it eight full years now?

Speaker 1 Eight full years, eight and a half, eight and a half years, 11 for me and big cat, yeah, yeah, eight and a half years.

Speaker 7 And like most shows, if you work with anybody for eight and a half years, there will be little petty conflicts that end up driving the show up.

Speaker 7 Not us, not us, no petty conflicts, none of that, no, and the fact that we've avoided going at each other's throats at all, yeah, completely.

Speaker 7 It's actually great, it's very healthy for me and Big Cat to have Hank in this show.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, he absolutely is a he's he's nuclear deterrent, yeah.

Speaker 1 He, it is crazy, though.

Speaker 1 I mean, even

Speaker 1 what recently it was Deesus and Mero, you know, the whole documentary about Francesa and

Speaker 1 Mad Dog just not speaking off air. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 1 we are very blessed. What? No, that's what you do.
I mean, I think that

Speaker 1 you guys have joined in hating me, and that has helped you guys out. That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 It's a very useful position.

Speaker 1 I was thinking the other day, I don't know if I said this on the show, but I feel like the first 10 years of your life, you don't really remember, or like you're not really in control of.

Speaker 1 It's basically your parents, you know, they set up your play dates, they set up what you're doing, they set up your hobbies, whatever.

Speaker 1 And then 10 to 20, you're kind of in more control. You know what you're doing, you know what you like.

Speaker 1 But so it's basically 10 to 20, 20 to 30 for me, and it's like half my life has been with you guys. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I texted you guys.

Speaker 1 But you guys were out.

Speaker 7 Right. I get what you're saying.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The last week of August when I was here and you guys were out, I texted you like, what, day two? And I was like, I miss you guys.

Speaker 1 Because it was like, obviously, there's a lot of people that I work with here, and I love all of them, but

Speaker 1 it was very weird not having you guys here. I was just like, I kept on like kind of wandering around being like, oh, I wonder what Max is up to.
I wonder what PFT is up to. Oh, shit, they're not here.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So don't ever leave again. Okay.

Speaker 1 Hank. No.
What do you mean, no? I will leave again. God damn it.
Vacations.

Speaker 7 I feel like coming to work is a vacation. No, it's about to be.

Speaker 1 That is true.

Speaker 1 Well, you don't think that.

Speaker 7 I do.

Speaker 1 I just like, like, again, whatever.

Speaker 1 We've been doing it for so long. I've said this a million times.

Speaker 1 We work a lot.

Speaker 1 I like to recharge and refresh. Play a lot.

Speaker 7 And by recharge and refresh, come back violently hungover.

Speaker 1 It's a hair to water show.

Speaker 7 That's true. On Sunday?

Speaker 1 It was Sunday.

Speaker 1 Just for the record, too.

Speaker 1 I wanted to say that, Hank, for a moment, I felt bad for saying that you were hungover on Sunday's show, but it was, like, to me, there's hangovers, irregular hangovers, like don't mention it.

Speaker 1 Your body like couldn't, your whole aura was zapped out of you. Yeah, I was like, fully, I was fully depressed yesterday.

Speaker 1 I had to. It was like a, it was, it was shocking to see you even try to come up with words.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I wanted to let everyone know.
I was in a full, full state of depression on my

Speaker 7 post-elevator depression.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
It was worth it.

Speaker 1 All right. Good show.
Let's do numbers. 20.
17. 8.
56.

Speaker 9 3.

Speaker 1 Shane?

Speaker 9 I got to wait for Pug. I always go after Pug.
But 21.

Speaker 7 Pug's going to take 99.

Speaker 9 Pug is 99.

Speaker 9 Here he is. Here he is.

Speaker 1 Say it, Pug. Pug.
99, Pug.

Speaker 7 By the way, Pug's dream is to have somebody recognize him at some point when we're out. So please, next time you see Pug, just go up to him and be like, Pug, I dig your vibe.

Speaker 1 61.

Speaker 7 Love you guys.

Speaker 7 Dog in the way, please, with the machines scattered around the room. I don't know what

Speaker 7 to say, I'll take it anyway.

Speaker 7 They made it for me.

Speaker 7 Happy technology, Jay's an update. The following

Speaker 7 side, the lion's room,

Speaker 7 Feeding on the plate. I'm coming for your love of day.
Shiny.

Speaker 7 Look at us now.

Speaker 7 So in love with the way we are. I'm coming for your love of day.

Speaker 7 Bring on me.

Speaker 7 Satan needs to say

Speaker 7 they rock us to sleep.

Speaker 7 Digital family,

Speaker 7 so let's wait.

Speaker 7 Or is it true?

Speaker 7 Can't you believe it?

Speaker 7 Say on the side, meeting your son.

Speaker 7 Can you hear the sleep?

Speaker 7 So you love the way we are.

Speaker 7 Listen, Betty, Tiffany, say for somebody.

Speaker 7 Things I can say,

Speaker 7 is it all I want? Just fight up reasonably.

Speaker 7 You are the things I've got to remember. You shine away.

Speaker 7 Love can live anyway.

Speaker 7 Love can live many ways.

Speaker 7 Take on me.

Speaker 7 Take on me. I'll make

Speaker 7 you

Speaker 7 take on me.

Speaker 7 Take on me. island.

Speaker 7 Take on the earth and me.

Speaker 7 Take on the turning

Speaker 7 on

Speaker 7 the table.