Stephen A. Smith, NFL Conference Championship, Hot Seat/Cool Throne & Guys On Chicks

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I mean, where else can you pair wall-to-wall hoops with hard-to-find whiskey? Only at Twin Peaks, the number one sports bar. On today's Pardon My Take, Stephen A.
Smith. Yep.

In studio. Pair wall-to-wall hoops with hard-to-find whiskey.
Only at Twin Peaks, the number one sports bar.

On today's part of my take, Stephen A. Smith.

Yup.

In studio, Stephen A. Smith.

We haven't recorded it yet.

I'm going to say it was incredible.

I'm just going to call our shot.

We nailed it, PFT.

Credit to us.

I'm going to say it was preposterous.

Are you going to drop that in front of us? I'm going to do an impression.

I'll do a Stephen A. Smith impression to his face.
I feel like it would be disingenuous to talk shit about the man behind his back and not do it to his face. Yeah.
So great interview. Calling our shot.
Great interview. We have Hot Seat Cool Throne.
Guys on Chicks. Going to talk a little football.
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Boy! Boy! Now in the street there is violence And then I love the solid work to be done No place to hang out or wash in And then I can't blame all on the sun Oh no, we're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue And then we'll take it higher Oh, we're gonna rock down to Electric do it. It's part of my take, presented by Barstool Sports.
Welcome to part of my take. Today is Wednesday, January 25th, and PFT.
I don't know where we want to start because I'm ready for football to already get here. My body was rejecting no football on Monday night.
Yeah, it just occurred to me that I came down with COVID right after the NFL regular season ended. I think our bodies, they crave football.
Yes, I'm feeling fatigue. I'm not sick, but I feel immense fatigue from maybe waking up like four times in the middle of the night, but mostly because of football.
I've got an idea. Here's a good way to start the show.
Let's have a debate, Big Cat. Okay.
Embrace debate. Let's get old school PMT with it.
Who's the better quarterback? Patrick Mahomes or Joe Burrow? Now, before you answer that, I want to know who's the better quarterback at quarterbacking and then who's the better player playing quarterback. Okay.
The better quarterback at quarterbacking is going to... Wait.
What was the second one? The better player who happens to play quarterback. Oh.
Hmm. Tell you what, we can include the NFC too.
I think Burrow might be the better quarterback at quarterbacking. I think Joe Burrow is the best quarterback at quarterbacking in the NFL right now.
I'd agree. And then Mahomes is the best player at quarterbacking.
I think he's a very good quarterback who happens to be a football player. Right.
Okay, yeah, no, no, no. We're on the same page.
Wait, so no. So Joe Burrow is a great quarterback who just happens to play football.
Right. Patrick Mahomes is a great football player who just happens to play quarterback.
Yes. Got it.
Yes. That makes sense.
And then Brock Purdy is just a fucking G. The man.
Won't be able to survive the link. Brock Purdy is top G in the NFL right now.
I have a question. And now, obviously, we're not the smartest.
I've been gambling my whole life, and I think I understand some stuff. The fact that this Kansas City Chiefs are now two-and-a-half-point underdogs, are we sure Patrick Mahomes is playing in this game? It's weird.
I don't know if we're sure. It's weird.
I think he is. I would bet if he had a gun to my head, I'd say yes, hampered.
But the fact that they are now two and a half point underdogs makes me feel like, what's going on here? This is Las Vegas doing the old Wile E. Coyote trick to us.
Yeah. They've got a big cardboard box that's propped up by a stick with a string to it.
And underneath the box, it says plus 2.5. It's begging us to come over there and take that plus.
And they want us to take the Chiefs so bad. And what would the Roadrunner do in this situation? Yeah.
And on top of all this, last night it moved and everyone was like, oh, that's weird. And then Patrick Holmes tweeted out a video being like, see you on Sunday, Kansas City.
And it was like a highlight video from the game against the Jaguars.

So maybe he's trying to give people some comfort knowing that he'll be there.

But just because he's there doesn't mean he's going to play.

I think he's going to be there.

I think he's going to play.

But he's not going to be 100%.

Now they've got to just scheme it up.

Now, you know what?

We'll find out on Sunday if Patrick Mahomes is a good quarterback at quarterbacking. Because he won't be able to run around.
He won't rely on being a football player. Can Patrick Mahomes be a pocket passer? So this is a narrative game that we have developing for Patrick Mahomes because Joe Burrows owned him for the last couple of years.
3-0. So this is actually, it's the perfect storm that we have of a narrative that will be created.
And I don't know ahead of time if you can judge Patrick Mahomes on how he plays this weekend because he is injured. He's definitely not 100%.
But that's not going to stop anybody from turning this into a narrative. That won't matter any year.
Yeah, history will not remember this. This will be Patrick Maffrod can't win the big one.
Maffrod only won in 2020 because Joe Burrow wasn't in the league yet. Oh, yeah.
Manning 2.0. Yeah, he is.
Can't win on the road

in the playoffs. That is being thrown out there

that Joe Burrow's going to be Tom Brady

and Patrick Mahomes will be Peyton Manning.

Joe Burrow will just own him

and win the titles,

which he hasn't won any yet, so we're maybe getting a little ahead of this.

And Patrick Mahomes is just

the man in the regular season and can't

win the big one, even though he has won the big one.

So it really doesn't make sense, but we're a narrative podcast. Was it the big one? He beat Jimmy Garoppolo.
Yeah. Yeah.
He beat Jimmy Garoppolo. And Kyle Shanahan's shit for brains.
It was Super Bowl Kyle. I am.
We didn't talk about it. There's a couple of things that we missed on Sunday that I want to talk about.
One was, and someone pointed this out, and I think it's fair. We didn't give any criticism to Sean McDermott, who probably deserves some, because this is, like thinking back to that Bengals-Bills game, you're a defensive coach, and your defense looked like they didn't even want to be out there.
So he definitely, you know, he's fine. I saw someone was throwing out there the Marty Schottenheimer, you know, taking the Chargers 14-2 and losing and then firing him.
I don't think Sean McDermott's getting fired, but it does, even two days removed from the game, it feels almost worse for the Bills right now and how that all devolved. And then the other thing...
This is tough for Bills fans who probably skipped Monday's show. I know.
And now they're catching the delayed onset muscle soreness. I agree with you.
I think Sean McDermott deserves some of the blame, definitely. I think we did talk about it on Sunday, how he's a defensive guy, and their defense looks soft.
Soft. Soft.
It looked pretty bad. And offensively, Ken Dorsey definitely, their offense didn't look good either.
No. And Josh Allen probably hurt, but still we have to go with the narrative that we're dealt right now.
Yeah. And he didn't play well.
But the defense is going to be defense you suspect. You suspect.
You suspect. You're absolutely suspect.
That's a sus D. And the other thing we didn't talk about coaching-wise is Kyle Shanahan, and we might have touched on it, he did have a couple moments in that Cowboys 49ers game where he was old-school Kyle in that, I mean, it basically is his brain stops and he can't figure out if he wants to be aggressive or conservative and then just some somehow winds up like in the middle yeah and how everything just falls apart for him that end of the first half where he was like what are you doing like are you are you calling timeouts you're not they ended up getting three points but I Kyle Shanahan the narrative of Kyle Shanahan incredible coach friend of the program I love watching his football teams play, but he is there.
There is some legacy decision making that's going to be on the line for him in the next couple of games. If they get to the Super Bowl of like, can he make that right decision in the big moments when the, when the, when the lights are brightest? Yeah, this is, this is a Kyle Shanahan legacy postseason, I think.
Because everything about the guy has been, he's one of the best coaches, top three, top four coach in the NFL. He needs to get out of his own way.
Now Matt Nagy had the BU written on his play card. He needs to just have like be literally anyone else written on his play card.
I'm actually a little, since you brought up Matt Nagy, I'm a little worried now that we have head coaching openings and Eric Biennemi might get a job. That would mean that Matt Nagy would be the offensive coordinator of the Chiefs and he would start getting a lot of credit for Patrick Mahomes being great.
And then he would probably get hired by somebody else down the line. Well, he's already muddied the waters with reports that Mitch could never learn his system.
Which, you know, a good head coach, that's really smart. And I don't know what happened then with Andy Dalton or Nick Foles, who he brought in, but either way, he's in the right spot.
Or Sean Glennon. Yeah, or Mike Glennon.
Mike Glennon, other Glennon. Yeah, he's in the right spot to get another job because he's going to just ascend in Kansas City.
Imagine if he got the Kansas City head coaching job. Post-Reed? That would break me.
That would break me. What if he won a Super Bowl? Yes, that would break me.
He would win a Super Bowl. Matt Nagy's Super Bowl champion.
He wouldn't win a Super Bowl because Patrick Mahomes is Peyton Manning. That's true.
Patrick Mahomes' next Super Bowl is going to be with another team. But no, congrats because then you'll get to see Matt Nagy lose in multiple AFC Championship games with Patrick Mahomes.
I'm just thinking about people who might have tuned in for the first time a part of my take to listen to Stephen A. Smith and what we just said in the first 20 minutes.
Welcome to the show. It makes complete and total sense.
Oh, we've made – we've never had better clarity. No, this is perfect.
It actually is. Here's how my last couple days have been going.
I've been thinking a lot about that play that I talked about on Sunday, the two-point conversion that the dolphins had back in 2019 and then joe burrow would be my quarterback forever yeah and my life would be just immensely happier in all facets of it really yep uh so i i had shane make a photoshop of joe just wearing commanders how does he look he looks awesome yeah and then i sent it to joe and I was like, this could have been us. And what he said.
And Joe said, thank God. Oh, yeah.
So. Thank God it wasn't.
Thank God it wasn't. Yeah.
So that made me feel worse, which in a way makes me feel better because it snapped me out of my delusion. But you have to remember, I've said this before to you, our franchises, they will never have nice things.
Like if Patrick Mahomes was drafted by the Bears, the Bears have ruined him yeah if the commanders drafted Joe Burrow they would have ruined him well I mean they would have made him play right after his appendectomy our field tried and like he would have died we yeah the commanders actually did our best to try to ruin Joe Burrow as an NFL quarterback so you can't think about it like that I'm happy for him yeah yeah I'm happy for him you're really happy for him yeah this is like uh you know you don't want it would be it'd be like adopting a dog into you know uh like a lean-to which you know is open up to the weather and and you know i want my i want the dogs that i love to be adopted in a mansion well no it'd be like lena dunham adopting another dog right and then it's like thank god that dog dodged a bullet by not having to live with her yes jake Jake, what were you going to say? Did you guys, speaking of Bears Commanders, did you see the tweet about the playoff win drought? Yeah, I did see that. Six teams have not won a game in the playoffs in 10 years, and four of them are fans of teams sitting in this room.
Oh, man. Bears Commanders, Jets, Dolphins, Lions, Raiders, so we're cursed.
Yeah. Hank's a winner, but lottery ball cancels it out.
He's cursed with us. Max is just free.
Max has lost two straight championships. And he got no hit.
We talked about the best rooms. One last thing before we do best rooms.
Eli Apple. You still got two games left, dude.
Eli Apple. What's going on on the guy from the group assignment that didn't go to class at all comes in collects his a and then he duggies out of the room like laughing at everybody they got a b plus he just went nuclear last night on twitter uh on stefan diggs and and josh allen and then did the heart emoji that demar hamlin's been doing and then was like, no, I wasn't trying to disrespect him.

It was like, well, it kind of felt like that.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not offended because shit-talking is shit-talking,

but if you're a Bengals player, you're probably like, hey, Eli Apple,

maybe let's just cool down and focus on the fact that we have a big game on Sunday.

Here's where Eli Apple could get himself into trouble.

He's not a great player.

He's a great shit-talker.

Yeah.

And he loves doing it.

I focus on the fact that we have a big game on Sunday. Here's where Eli Apple could get himself into trouble.
He's not a great player. He's a great shit talker.
Yeah. And he loves doing it.
I don't know. Burned him for the suit.
I actually don't know if he's a great shit talker. He's just a prolific shit talker.
He talks a lot of it. So Eli is basically dancing on people's graves in Buffalo.
They won the game. That's his right.
But then he's going to go play the Chiefs. If he gets burned in in the Chiefs game which Eli Apple throughout his history has been burned once or twice before he gets burned the Bengals lose that game people are going to talk shit to Eli Apple and then Eli Apple is going to tag in his mom on Twitter yeah to have his mom yell at people for getting mad at her son well that's where it becomes not fair because you can't you can't fire back at somebody's mom.
Unless you're Zach Wilson. Yeah, and his mom will be watching from home because I don't know if you saw, but his mom said tickets to the AFC Championship game is way too expensive and someone tagged Eli Apple and said tell Eli Apple to pay for it and he replied Mama can watch from the crib.
Okay. He's a troll to his own family.
He's trolling his mom. At some point, you kind of have to respect the fact that Eli Apple, it's the opposite of backing it up on the field.
He just gets on Twitter and he just goes after me. He's an internet troll.
He's Eli Lockwood. And I have to defend him in that because I do like a good internet troll.
Yeah, he's good at it. But I'm just saying, he's he's going to send his mom at people that are clapping back at him.
Yes. And I don't like that.
Yeah. Leave mom's out of it.
I just got out of yours. Rooms.
Best rooms. When your home system or appliance breaks down, American Home Shield will help fix or replace the covered item, no matter its age.
Visit ahs.com slash listen for 20% off any plan. see ahs.com slash contracts for coverage details limitations and exclusions uh so yeah we talked about this about um there are a lot of good rooms these teams are very good there's a lot of dudes on these teams a lot of dudes that hang out in rooms together so we can power rank the remaining rooms of the four playoff teams i I had the Chiefs coaches room first overall.
Okay. With Matt Nagy in there.
With Matt Nagy in there, yeah. Now, is this like rooms you'd want to hang out in personally or just talent rooms? Talent.
Talent. The Eagles offensive line room was my second room.
It's number one, yeah. That I had.
Yeah, yeah. Do you have that number one? I had a number one.
I can live with them being number one. I think that's fair.
Yeah, and then I had number two, the Bengals wide receiver room. I had the Bengals wide receiver room three, in this case, behind the 49ers wide back room.
Ooh. Because I think that you get Christian McCaffrey, Debo, Ayuk, and Kittle all in that same room.
I think they hang out. And maybe together.
I feel like it's running back room, wide receiver room. Well, they all play every position.
Yeah, it's wide back. Christian McCaffrey plays out wide.
I understand that. Do you? I do.
I just don't know. I don't know if you do.
Hank doesn't understand the concept of a running back lining up not under center. But do you think they all meet together? Yeah, I do.
Okay. I would say so.
All right. They probably don't let Elijah Mitchell join because he doesn't line out as a wide receiver.
So he probably hangs out in the running back room. He probably shows up by himself.
And he's like, where is everyone? Yeah. Oh, they're doing cool plays in the other room.
I had the 49ers offensive line room also ranked in my top five because not only do you get Trent Williams, Mike McGlinchey, but you also get their offensive line coach, who is Chris Forrester. Oh.
Just a party guy. Yeah.
You remember Chris Forrester from Miami? Yes. He was coaching lines down for the Dolphins.
Remember that? Yes, the best party guy. Yeah.
Yeah, that guy gets down. Yeah, there's so – I mean, it is crazy to think about how talented.
Like, I was looking at it, and the defensive lines, I actually think all four defensive lines playing on Sunday have a case. Yeah.
Because they all have – oh, Max is shaking his head.

They all have just absolute studs.

And, you know, Bosa might be the best of all of them,

but in terms of depth, like the Bengals have been doing has been insane.

And the Eagles have depth.

And the Chiefs – I mean, so here's one prediction. The Eagles have a historic defensive line this year.

Yeah, they do.

They actually are, what, third in sacks all time?

All time. All time.
Third. So not historic.
I mean, that's in the conversation. What about 10th? Only team in the history of the NFL to have four different guys have over 10 sacks.
All right, that's historic. I'll give you that.
I actually think that the conversation last week about the Bengals' offensive line, this week Chris Jones is going to wreck some shit. Because we all watched that Bills-Bengals game, and we're like, wow, the Bengals offensive line played incredible, because they did.
The Bills don't have Chris Jones. Chris Jones is going to be a problem.
They don't have Frank Clark. Yeah, mark that right now, problem.
Problem Chris Jones. Yeah, he's going to be a problem.
I think the Bengals' defensive line is the best defensive line that's remaining. Better than the Eagles and the Niners? I think so.
I think between DJ Reader, you got Trey Hendrickson, and then you got Sam Hubbard. Yeah.
That's a good room. No, that's what I'm saying.
All four, it's almost like these teams are built well. Yeah, no, that's a good point.
Hey, hey, wait a second. Are they the best defensive line at playing football or are they the best defensive line at being defensive lines? Wait a second.
It feels like this roster construction actually worked out. Damn it.
49ers linebacker room would be pretty good room to be in. Oh, Eagles quarterback room.
Eagles quarterback room. Yeah.
Hang out with Hertz and Minshew. Minshew, yeah.
Yeah, no, there's some – I mean, I'm very excited for these games on Sunday. Very, very excited.
Robbie Gold's room, never missed a field goal in the playoffs. Yeah, who's the Eagles kicker again? Jake Elliott.
Jake Elliott. He's pretty good.
He's underrated. So that's our room breakdown.
Okay. It really was like I started looking at all the rosters like, yeah, I guess these teams are the four best teams.
Pretty good. Feels like they got it right.
And I know that the committee got it right. They voted it right.
And I know that there's some people could say that's hindsight because those are the four remaining teams. But if you remember in, I think it was early November, remember we had the conversation and we said that there were only six teams that could go to win the Super Bowl.
And it was these four teams and the Bills and the Cowboys. So we were on this for a while.
We were breaking it down and being like, here are the teams. It feels like it's set.
Here are the teams that could win a Super Bowl. Everyone else is just kind of along for the ride.
We know ball. I actually think I included the C words in that conversation.
Yeah, it might have been seven. That's when I was into my C words

face. Yeah, that's okay.
You got out of it.

Never again. Anything else before we do

Hot Seat Cool Throne?

We're doing Tom Brady and Aaron

Rodgers Destination season. I saw that.

We're hitting that hard. Tom Brady said, I don't know where the fuck

I'm doing. I'll let you know when I figure it the

fuck out. Something along those lines.

I'm guessing that Hank is writing his own fan fiction about what's going to happen with Tom Brady. I think it depends what happens with the 49ers.
He got a little testy with Jim Gray. Did you see that? I did see that.
I'll fucking tell you when I fucking know. Yeah, that was kind of awkward.
Yeah, it was. I was like, is he joking? And couldn't really figure it out.
He was joking. Yeah.
And I just want to say, too, I'm very... He definitely was.
No, he's a kidder. Yeah, he was joking.
Jim Gray, one of the greatest comedians of all time, Jim Gray. I saw that there was some...
The commanders are a possible destination for Aaron Rodgers, and everyone's tagging me and being like, oh, you're going to have to listen to PFT talk about Aaron Rodgers every week. I am very...
I'll be very clear about this. If Aaron Rodgers goes anywhere else, I will root for him to win a Super Bowl because it will be hilarious if he wins the same amount of Super Bowls on another team in like a year or two that he did with the Packers in 16 years.
I don't think people really understand the dynamic that Big Cat has with Aaron Rodgers because people were tagging me in that being like, man, this is going to be bad. This is going to be bad for PMT.

No.

Big Cat just hates the Packers.

Right.

Aaron Rodgers happened to be the quarterback on the Packers.

And he does stick it to the Bears.

But the minute he's gone, it would be very funny if he won a Super Bowl with another

team.

Yeah.

And let me be very clear.

I will go on an ayahuasca trip if Aaron Rodgers becomes a quarterback of the Commanders.

I'll match.

You want to go?

I'll match.

You want to go down to Ecuador?

Yeah.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match.

We'll match I you want to go I'll match you want to go down to Ecuador yeah boys boys trip to Ecuador no chicks allowed we'll match let's go to Ecuador I'll do anything to get him off the Packers I will get him on the commanders I would I would change my entire mindset I would do it yeah I would I would do anything Billy what do you think about Aaron Rodgers joining the New York Jets a team that's owned by the guy that makes the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Interesting.
Yeah. Seems like a conflict of interest.
Or he could be going to investigate. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Sort of the source.
Yeah. That's smart.
Hey, Woody. So what was in that? Yeah.
The files. Hey, come on.
Yeah. Just give me some access.
I heard you didn't know what was in it. Yeah.
Which one do you think? Woody is the first Johnson or the second Johnson? Who's the other Johnson? Is it like two brothers? I think it's two brothers, the Johnson bros. Is it their dad or is it them? No idea.
I'm looking it up right now. It's an all-time funny move to name your kid Woody Johnson.
Yeah, Woody Johnson. I guess if you're really rich, you're like, yeah, it'll be fine.
Yeah, no, Robert Wood Johnson was the before Johnson & Johnson, and the founding of Johnson & Johnson was Robert Wood Johnson, James Wood Johnson, and Edward Meade Johnson. So one of the Johnsons kept out.
Yeah, what's up with the third one? Johnson & Johnson and Johnson? Yeah. Wow.
Johnson Cube. So one of them.
So it seems like Robert Wood Johnson was the guy who started the whole thing. He's the first Johnson.
Who's the second? James Wood or Edward Meade? That should have been Johnson and Sons. Yeah.
They're brothers. Oh, all three were brothers.
Yeah, so Robert Wood started it, and they joined. James Wood and Edward Meade joined him.
Hmm. By the way, Kansas City Chiefs owners, the hunts, not ketchup, not ketchup hunts.
Oh yeah. Okay.
That was let down. Yeah.
That's too bad with the Tom. I got the answer.
I got the answer. Edward Meade Johnson is the one Johnson that's out.

I'm okay.

Why was he out?

Because the first president was Robert Wood Johnson, and the first logo resembled the signature of James Wood Johnson.

Okay.

So Robert Meade, you suck.

He's the odd Johnson.

Yeah, Edward Meade, you're a crumb bum.

He could have been a priest.

That happens. Yeah, he's a crumb bum.
Because he couldn't use his Johnson? Yeah. Yeah, could have been.
Robert Kraft. You've been around for a long ass time.
Not Kraft mac and cheese. Yeah.
The Kraft Corporation. People forget that.
Yeah. Dan Snyder, not the pretzel guy.
Mm-hmm. That's true.
Bullshit. It is bullshit.
We've been lied to our entire lives who's actually like one of these like rich people with the name that actually has i mean jim ursay what you see is what you get yeah yeah yeah it's jerry jones jerry jones yeah your guy yeah big j is your guy j yeah you should have you know what i vote that hank should have to be a Cowboys fan for an entire season after this. Why? Can I bet a future? Because I bet a future? Can I bet a future? Can I bet a future? I don't think you should.
Bet the future next year again. You got off too easy.
If there's good value, I might, but. There will be good value because Dak's going to be their quarterback.
I also like, that's the other thing. People are like, oh, we're for the Cowboys.
It's like, the only reason that happened is because the Patriots are out. Hank, let me ask.
I can't fake it. Let me ask you a question, though.
Do you think that Cooper Rush wins that game? I think he does. I think we need to have the conversation.
I haven't seen it. Cooper Rush would have won that game for the Dallas Cowboys.
Oh, I think Skip did that. I think there's a good one.
He did it this morning. There's probably 15 to 25 quarterbacks that could have won that game.
Yeah, easily.

He was bad, very bad.

The one thing I was going to say with the 49ers and Tom Brady is that I just can't wrap my head around any world

where a rookie quarterback goes in the link

and beats the number one seed Eagles.

So then I think that means the 49ers will get Brady.

But if that somehow happens and he beats the Eagles at home as a rookie, then it'd be hard to... It's going to be a lot harder for Tom to end up there.
In my opinion. It might not matter either way.
I think Brock Purdy's their quarterback next year. But what if he just goes and throws a stinker? He's their quarterback no matter what.
He throws four interceptions and his looks... He hasn't looked like...
Did he cry? Did he cry? Yeah, he looks lost. No, did he cry? Did he cry in the four interceptions? Probably.
Okay, then maybe he's not. But if he doesn't cry, I think he can live with it.
I don't think he cried. He didn't cry? I didn't see any cries.
Alright, so then I think he's their quarterback of the future. I think he might be.
Even if Brady wants to come. Because it's like Brock Purdy could have been any quarterback and they'd still be in this spot, no? No, that's not true.
If he was Dak Prescott. Dak Prescott would have won that game.
No, absolutely not. Trayvon Diggs would have picked off Dak Prescott six times that game.
No, Dak Prescott is bad, but he'd be unbelievable with the 49ers. Sounds like you're slandering Brock Purdy again.
I just have a – it's a theory I have no matter what. It's a system play.

Rookie quarterbacks in the playoffs, young quarterbacks, are going to struggle.

Yeah, you had that burn you last week.

Yes, and the week before.

Right.

So now – But it's a philosophy.

It's a life philosophy.

It doesn't change you every year.

Right.

It's the same – when I said it for Jared, I got crucified too,

and that was like – it had nothing to do with Jared.

It's just my philosophy.

Okay. Hank's philosophy.
You live by it. Getting crucified is one of my favorite things.
Yeah. Billy? Never mind.
Nope. Okay.
Brain turned off. I literally had his hand raised and everything.
I'm looking at Skip here. Skip says that the Cowboys should trade Dak for Aaron Rodgers right now.
Okay. I agree with that.
I think that would be a good trade for the Cowboys. Yeah.
What, Billy? Okay, hypothetical. Brock Purdy wins the Super Bowl with the 49ers.
Uh-huh. Do they start him and keep him for the next season? Wait, what? Yes.
I mean... We were just saying that they might keep him even if he threw four interceptions and cried.
You would have to be a miserable franchise to take the guy that just took your NFC team to a Super Bowl title for the first time in, like, forever. I forgot the last caveat.
And then bench them the next year. I said, I think he's the starting quarterback.
That would never happen. But Tom Brady is on the market.
Yeah, I still think it's Brock Purdy. You just weren't paying attention to any of that conversation.
I know. That was great, Billy.
I was writing it down. Then I got there, and I was like, did they say that? I think they were just talking about that.
Yeah, we were. We were just talking about that.
Hey, podcasting's hard. Yeah.
Again, welcome to all the new listeners. We were writing that question down.
Here for Stephen A. Smith.
I had it in my notes to bring up at some point. This is good.
We need to set the bar as low as possible for any new listeners that have shown up today. This the show we're stupid yep but we love ball all right let's do a hot seat cool throne all protein bars generally taste the same but not one bars one made protein bars are actually delicious with Reese's and Hershey's only one Reese's peanut butter lovers 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 three grams of sugar.
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There's a lot of backlash. It's obviously, you know, there's a lot of backlash at UFC too, so I'm trying to determine whether or not him and his league are on the hot seat or if it's something that's going to be here for a while i'm i'm going to say when it comes to all publicity is good publicity that doesn't include hitting your wife yeah what about important caveat i'm talking about the league but that's true that's fair i watch some of the league and i i understand the excitement about it because you know knockouts are fun i still can't get over the fact that it that it's just weird watching someone who isn't playing defense.
Like in UFC and boxing, you have your hands up, you can defend yourself. In this, watching someone get knocked out when they have to have their hands behind their back, there's just something about it that's just weird to watch.
If people like it, I'm not going to judge them. I personally am like, this is kind of of weird it's like signing up for a sucker punch competition right and you know that it's coming but it is it it's basically like who's going to get concussed first right and that's i think a lot of people aren't really into that you know what it is it's great for clips like it's the clips are hilarious great for putting clips on putting clips on social media.
People are going to fucking love those things.

Clip show.

I can't see myself like sitting down to tune in for a full half hour of people just slapping each other in the face.

It also, there's the element to like what makes a good slapper or slappy.

You know what I mean?

Like, you know what a good boxer is.

You know what a good boxer, it takes a lot of talent, a lot of skill, a lot of training, a lot of years. Same with UFC.
Slapping is just like you can. You slap.
You slap. How can you slap? Now, here's a way that it could work.
If they just have Greg Hardy compete in it every week and have somebody that's just way bigger than Greg Hardy beat the shit out of him. Yes.
If I get to watch Greg Hardy getting knocked out every week, then I'm back in on the slap. Yes.
Yes. All right, so we'll see.
Yeah, I think it's not going to last long, but I have been enjoying the clips, so I'm kind of on both sides. I don't think it's going to last long just because in almost every show, there's a two-a-situation fencing position on the floor.
Not good. Also, it's very visually.
The guy who does... Yeah, like the swollen heads and stuff yeah like you know that guy like i also think i'm the ufc sometimes is too violent for me so i also might not be the target audience like sometimes i'm like this is disgusting you know that guy who played in the nfl who's like leading uh brain studies chris something winsky yeah nowinski he he tweeted he's like what's next who a stabbing? And I was like, I'd watch that.
Like, yeah, that's kind of a good idea. Again, I wouldn't watch a full episode.
No, I'd watch it once. But I'd watch the clips.
Yeah, right. I'd be curious to see how can you survive a stabbing? You watch any clip that pops up, any viral clip.
Yeah, the timeline has the videos. What was the one you posted? The animal one.
Yeah, I mean, literally when you log into the Barstool back end, it has a note that says, please stop putting dead animals on the blog. Nazis are off limits too.
It's literally just a Billy football warning. What exactly was the video? I forget.
Max had an issue with. Describe the video.
Describe the video. And I can't blog that? That's like tons of clicks that are just being left on the table.
I don't know. Do you really think that would be the biggest blog of the week? A wolf and a cougar fight? I think it would be a decent medium blog.
You know, base hit. Base hit.
Just get on base. Yeah, come on.
What animal becomes a home run? An elephant? Like a great white? Like an evil animal. An evil animal animal i think like killer whale versus great like uh what's an evil animal like uh like a raging like one of those jaguars that you see attacking people and like but they're in their they're in the jaguars home yeah the woman that got out of the zoo and the and the tiger came and snatched her yeah but then someone went after then that animal.
And then it was like, hero, mom saves child from crazed animals. An evil animal like a five-year-old that sneaks down into a gorilla enclosure.
Yes. Can you please refresh my memory, though? It's going to bother me.
What was the video in question? It was a crazy video of a leopard that usually hunts wild boars getting messed up by a bunch of wild boars. And I was like, whoa, that's a role reversal.
Yeah. But it was a little...
It was a little graphic. It was a little graphic.
Yeah. I think grizzly bear fights with each other.
Those always play. Oh, yeah.
That's an easy triple. Yeah.
Easy. Yeah.
Oh, dude. The one that was up the other week where it was two grizzly bears fighting each other, and then there were wolves in the background watching the fight like spectators.
I blogged that. Literally, grizzly bear fights are the gift that just keep on giving.
Yeah. That's way better than the slap boxing.
I'm going to start a league where we just film grizzly bears in the wild, and we just know which each one is, and then whenever they fight, you do a whole league, and then you can bet on it. That's a good idea.
That's actually a very good idea. Grizzly bear fights, but only in the wild.
Yeah. I like that, Billy.
Okay. Yeah.
All right. Bare knuckle boxing.
There you go. Hank, what's your cool throw? My cool throw is our guy, Tommy Paul.
He's in the Elite Eight, plays tonight. Heavy favorite.
Oh, yeah. I'm a huge Tommy Paul guy.
Will he play jokovic if he wins if they both win yeah every time i hear that i mean that's exciting every time i hear tommy paul i think that you're talking about like another tommy fury yeah a mix of the tommy fury jake paul he plays a uh fellow american tonight ben shelton 20 years old first time leaving the country oh it's for this tournament he's not for the bright lights. So we're guaranteed an American in the semifinals, probably against Djokovic.
Tommy Paul, let's go. Djokovic's gonna fucking wipe the floor with Tommy Paul.
TP Army, let's do it. No offense to Tommy Paul.
And then the Red Sox acquired Adalberto Mondesi. That guy sucks.
Huge pickup for us. He stinks.
Huge. Raul Mondesi Jr., Adalberto Mondesi.
that guy sucks huge pickup for us nice he stinks huge Raul Modese Jr Adalberto Modese the bane of my existence as a fantasy baseball where do you think he fits in in the lineup Hank the injured list no I think he's gonna I think he's gonna stay healthy and he's gonna he's gonna put up a lot of singles doubles triples like Billy was saying bear on bear fights his leg is probably made out of the same stuff that Michael Thomas's hamstrings made out of. I thought you won the league.
No, I came in second place two years in a row because Adalberto Mondesi gets fucking injured every single year. Well, that's on you.
For drafting him. Yeah.
Yeah, well, Hank just got him. Yeah, that's on you, Hank.
Now he's your problem. He's your problem.
I can't wait. Okay.
Good luck. All right.
You're going to hate him. PFT, your hot seat, Coutron? My hot seat is John Shire.
Oh, yeah. John Shire.
I'm surprised that it's taken us this long as a podcast to put John Shire on the hot seat, but he's in ninth place in the ACC as Duke's head coach, and I, for one, miss Coach K. Oh, so much.
I watched that entire game last night. I had Virginia Tech, and I couldn't get the hate up.
Oh, that's a racial finish. Oh, yeah, I mean, the Virginia Tech.
Did you see the Virginia Tech player? I did. Throat punched.
Check out my CBB in 60. I broke it down.
Yeah, there we go. Listen, if Coach K was on that bench, there's no chance that that 30 play happens.
Coach K would have stopped it with an icy glare, probably talked to the kid at halftime before he had a chance to punch and just been like, hey, you're too good a player to do what I know

that you're about to do.

I just think that as a podcast, we need to acknowledge that we miss Coach K.

Oh, big time.

College basketball was better when you had a villain.

The greatest foil.

It's probably why my body's betraying me right now

because I don't have someone to get up in the morning and go after.

And Duke being ninth in the ACC, I mean, tough week for Cowboys fans. Brutal.
Brutal. My cool throne is Oscar season.
Oh, yeah. It's Oscar season.
They announced the nominees this morning. And there's a lot of good movies that I haven't seen yet, so now get to go and when football is over watch all of those but i've uh i don't think banshees of slither and make it yeah it did it got a lot of nominations all quiet on the western front got a lot i watched that movie is it good yeah so i watched it on friday night and i watched it because i was like i can't wait to tweet about how i read the book and the book was better yeah and And I got halfway through.
And I was like, I was definitely thinking of Farewell to Arms. Okay.
Another World War I book. Because I was like, wait.
I thought this book was about an Italian soldier, not a German soldier. And then I got halfway through.
And I was like, yeah, I'm thinking of the wrong book. Was Farewell to Arms, was that George Bernard Shaw? It's German.
Okay, different guy. Yeah.
No, no. Was that the Spanish? Hemingway.
Yeah, is that Spanish? Farewell to that Spanish Civil War? No, I think it's World War I. I thought it was the Spanish Civil War.
I think that's to whom the bell tolls. But either way.
Anyways, All Quiet on the Western Front was a great book. You read it? I did in high school.
They kind of butchered the ending in the movie. Did they? Don't spoil it.
That the Germans lost? Don't spoil it. You didn't like that part? No, no, no.
It's World War I, by the way. Yeah, Farewell to Arms is the Italian campaign of World War I.
So I got halfway through the movie, and I was like, I thought this was supposed to be about Italians. Yeah.
So I'm going to watch the Oscars, but I'm going to be very disappointed when there's no slap. Yeah.
Somebody has to get slapped at this year's Oscars. Bring Will Smith.
Just have him sit front row. Why? Oh, no.
You don't have to be in the slap club. Yeah.
Get Will Smith in the slap league. You're also not going to watch the Oscars.
No, I'm not. I'm not.
But I'm going to watch the clips. I'm going to see all the clips.
And then I'm going to be like, Glass Onion got robbed. We actually were taping the show last year during the Oscars, not watching the Oscars.
And then that happened after, and we're like, what? This is crazy. I think when we were kids and before there were all these different options of all the different sports channels that you had to watch, and really it was just like the Oscars was like showbiz's big night.
You took it a lot more seriously now that we've grown up and we see the world from a different perspective. They really just sucking their own dicks yeah it's so you're saying you like the oscars when it was like kings of la like weinstein yeah yeah when hollywood yeah right that's what it meant something exactly yeah no it's true it is just a big uh dick sucking competition unless top gun wins in which case I'm back in on Hollywood.
I'm Mr. Hollywood

at that point. Speaking of movies, Cocaine Bear

comes out pretty soon. Okay.

Good to know. Definitely going to be an Oscar nominee.

My other cool throne is

RG3 because

he's a girl dad. Yes.

Greta had her lovely daughter

so congratulations to the happy

couple. She was in labor

for three weeks

when Robert Griffin had to leave the college football playoff semifinal. Thanks to Southwest Airlines for somehow getting the flight out of there that day.
I think he's the only person in America that flew on Southwest that week. So he got home, thankfully, just in the nick of time to be there with Greta as she started being in labor for three weeks.
And they just had a beautiful daughter.

So happy to see that at RG3. Good job, buddy.
That's huge. That's huge.
Healthy daughter. We're ready to go.
RG3. There's a long flight around the world to get to that Southwest.
All right. My hot seat is my age.
And PFT, well, you're only turning 28. But my birthday is coming up on birthday weeks next week, but it has nothing to do with my birthday, because birthdays are stupid.
It's that I was watching Monday Night Raw, the 30th anniversary, last night, and DX came out, D-Generation X came out, and they are old. And it was sad.
And it's like, the one thing that will show you your age is when your favorite wrestlers or favorite porn stars get old and you're like what happened to time it's bad yeah so it kind of hit me it was like nostalgia but then i they they hobbled out there and i was like oh man this is this this kind of sucks yeah i remember when i saw ron jeremy a couple weeks ago really yeah threw me for a loop yeah uh it's not great do they have x-poc out there uh they did x-pac was out there i can't imagine that x-pac aged well no he has not wrestlers don't age well no they don't that's fine you know what they give their all they're like they're like a star that burns bright for a short amount of time yeah supernova triple h looked the best because he's been able to stay on the you know ww trt all these years uh but yeah it was uh it was nice But yeah, it was nice to hear the music, have that nostalgia wash over me, and then I was like, damn, I'm old. Is the WWE just not selling to the Saudis? Was that just a hoax? Yeah, it seems like it.
It was some sort of rumor. I don't know if it's true or not, but I know their stock price went way, way up.
Yeah. Just from being linked to MBS.
So. So part of my take is in negotiations with Mohamed Vinsalman.
We have talked to him. To sell the podcast.
Yes. So if you want to advertise with us, rates just went up.
Yes. And then my cool throne is Pickleball.
The new professional Pickleball League is coming Thursdays, the first game. Who's the guy on our team, on the DC team? Sam Corey, Sam Quarry, AWL.
All right. So, and Stella Blue is a sponsor on the D.C.
pickleball team jersey. We actually.
Kind of cool. I think we helped to name their team.
Yeah. They were looking for a team name, and we said, what about the D.C.
pickleball team? Yeah. And they were like, God damn, that's genius.
We love it. So, I don't really know anything about pickleball.
I do know that when we play against LeBron's team. Or KD's team.
No, KD, did he? He's on our team. He's on our team, yeah.
I think we're co-investors. Shit, I think that means he has to drink some Celle Blue.
I also may have just made that up. Yeah, I think Furlander and Kate Upton are DC pickleball team founders.
I love Kate Upton. I do too.
So check it out. It has a 23.08 team duper.
Duper? What's a duper? Dynamic Universal Pickleball rating. Okay.
And then the first games are Thursday. Where can you watch, Jake? I think the championships are going to be on regular TV.
I saw something with ESPN or CBS getting rights to it. So I'm looking at the jersey right now.
Still blue coffee on the back of the jersey. Look at that.
Query, Bates, you know, all the names. So I'm excited.
It looks cool. Pickleball's the next up.
We're going to be playing pickleball in Arizona, right? Yeah, we are. Yeah.
Sport of the future. Hell yes.
I'm excited. Yeah, it's going to be me and PFT versus Hank and Jake.
We are heavy underdogs. Heavy.
But heavy favorites in the hearts and minds of the AWL. What does that mean, Hank? For coming out looking good in this video.
You're heavy squared underdogs. Jake's going to moan, and Hank's going to take it too seriously, and everyone's going to be like, fuck this guy.
I've never played. You're going to moan.
You're saying you're not going to moan? I'll moan. Yeah, exactly.
You're going to moan. You're going to moan.
You're going to moan. So check it out.
like you also could have set the teams and i know i want to ride with my guy yeah i mean it's fine yeah it's fine we also have our guys we got old man strength right you wouldn't know about that you wouldn't know about that right yeah you're a little boy still my 20s um not for long still am wow hank's gonna be 30 is? It's tough. That is tough.
I've known you for the entirety of your 20s. Do you have your first gray hair yet? I thought I saw gray in your beard.
No, not my beard. I've gotten haircuts, though, and I've looked down and been like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I don't think it's official official though i'm not not big cat status

okay all right that was dc pickleball still blue coffee what do you mean i'm not that's fine that's fine no no that's fine factor i mean i did see a picture from like five years ago zero gray hair so it has just come on like an onslaught billy your hot seat cool throat that chat ai bot chat GPT, it passed the Wharton MBA exam.

What?

You, wait. cool to run that chat ai bot chat gpt it passed the wharton mba exam what you wait ai is able to get an mba oh the the yeah the one who writes blogs yeah okay the one that billy uses billy's billy's robot slave i actually graduated from business school congratulations do you guys have graduation gifts for him no but i don't actually use that to write blogs just a few times it was just twice so wait it got an mba yeah it passed the exam so that shows how stupid an mba is yeah right yep yeah fuck your business degree that's what i always throw in the trash you know what they should do well this you know what this actually is scary to me because it's reached the point where it can now pass you know a high level degree program so at what point is it it feels like it's about to figure out that it's a robot pretty soon it's about to become self-aware is what I'm saying like if it's already good enough to answer these open-ended questions how many more revisions of it how many more like iterations of them releasing the software is it going to take until it realizes it's a robot and then we're all fucked? It seems like that's a very dangerous place that we're coming up to here.
Well, Microsoft just bought it for like $10 billion and they're charging $42 a month for it. So Bill Gates has it now.
Yeah. Okay, that's fine.
He probably doesn't want to do anything bad with it. And my cool throne is...
He probably just bought it so that he could write love poems to his high school girlfriend. True.
My cool throne is the East River. The video Donnie and I did is probably out by now.
If you're listening to this, go tune in on Donnie Does' YouTube. It should be out if you're listening to this.
Wanton Don. Wanton Don.
Come on, Billy. Wanton Don.

What is it Donnie does YouTube?

It's probably some.

No, it's his old YouTube channel.

Oh.

Okay, Wanton Don.

Wanton Don.

And it will be out Tuesday at 8 p.m., but you'll probably be listening to this on Wednesday.

Let's go.

It's going to be a good video, right?

Check it out.

It's sick.

I mean.

We're going to get to see the bottom of the East River, right?

Yeah.

We're going to get to see the bone that you pulled out, right? Exactly. Yeah.
Okay. That's awesome that you guys got to do that.
It sounds like you had a good team behind you. What's the status of the Chiefs video? Chiefs video.
We're going through some edits right now. Evan's looking through the footage as we speak.
Oh, okay. And we're sitting down to do some serious construction.
You've got a lot of construction. Yeah.
You've got a lot of projects going on right now. What about the New York Media versus Jets quarterback? Yeah, that's coming up soon.
Next week. It's on my document.
You're going to put it out next week? Next week I will be working on it. Sometimes Billy just says words.
Yeah. And then he's like, oh shit, why did I say that word? That was a mistake.
Super Bowl. That was the wrong word.
Super Bowl week. Super Bowl week is coming out.
He'll be working on it Super Bowl week. It's a a work in progress Unless I get another new project It's actually in progress I did a little work on it But the progress was stopped I have a premise There's a paper that relates to what's going on now It has to do with large corporations And CEOs have a premise, but the premise was that was already explored on this podcast.
Yeah, but I wrote a blog. You found another article about this same thing, so you're just going to plagiarize that? Well, it's called Quotation and Reference.
I'd like to see the biblioteca. I'm going to put the bibliography together.
Yeah. We're excited.
An annotated bibliography I'll put in. Oh, wow.
Okay, well, now you're just making more promises. MLS format.
MLS, MLIA. I like APA.
Nice. So if we could convert that to APA, that'd be great.
We could put in APA and Chicago. Okay.
So what's interesting about this is Billy's going to be really working on the script for it at exactly the same time that ChatGPT, the AI program, comes back online. I just wanted to point that out.
The script for what the Jets the Jets thing you know what was the best back in the day is doing is just playing with all the formatting for every single paper you ever had to write like you know indenting the sides doing the space between the paragraphs just make you could make like a three page paper into a five page here's the biggest cheat. You get the periods.
You make the periods like 10 sizes larger, and it makes it longer. Is it obvious, though? No, it's not obvious at all.
You make the periods 10 sizes, so you have giant dots at the end of the screen? That's the most obvious thing ever. It's very obvious.
But it looks like a font thing. It probably also doesn't even make that much of a difference if just a period is big.
No, no. If you have like a 10-page paper or like a 9-page paper.
And you just change all the periods. And you just command F the periods and then jack them all up.
Your periods are on steroids? But if they're like 12. That's amazing.
If you jack it up from like 12 to like 18 for the periods, it's going to make it longer. Damn.
The more you know. Wow.
I just always mess. always hit the commas too while you're at it i just always mess with the margins yeah the margins the indent the indentation yeah you'd also do uh you add uh uh numbers to each page that will give you a couple lines away oh this is the best oh at the end of a page you can hit the return button like two extra times and resume what you were thinking on the next page.
Nobody will ever be like, wow, that's a lot of space left at the bottom. Yeah.
It's great to think about doing all that stuff when you could have just tried a little harder, but no. No.
I mean, I actually think that one of the best things that college teaches you. That was my general outlook.
College teaches you how to get better at cheating. Wait.
And how to get better at like fudging assignments, which is most of the brain activity you're going to be using as an adult in the workforce. Yes, yes.
Wait, Hank, when you would turn in an assignment, you would just say it's in God's hands now? Yeah, well, I would not give myself enough time and then I'd be up the night before just trying to get it done and then trying to finagle ways to make it longer. Never give myself enough time to edit it properly usually and then it would get time for the deadline and then it's in God's hands.
Okay. I like that.
Would you say a little prayer as you hand it in? Prayer that I don't read it or something happens. There's a fire in the building.
Spill coffee all over it. Alright, Jake.
Hot seat. Cool.
I didn't graduate college um our league kobe no we're team in the major league pickleball which is tennis channel there's another league that just got oh okay okay tune into tennis channel tennis channel for the mlp i love that i have the tennis channel yes yeah uh my hot seat is our childhoods splash mountain and disney just closed oh 30 years i never not my childhood i never went to disney majority of people is disneyland i never went oh closing there too in la yeah i went to that once too i think it hasn't closed yet there but it's closing no people would like that i would get like chirped for that i did not i went. I just realized that.
I never... Yeah, my...
We never went to Disney World, Disneyland. I always felt a little left out.
But now, as I see people do it with kids, I'm like, I get what my parents were thinking. This would suck.
For them. Are you going to do it? No.
No. Hell no.
Hell no. Universal Studios, maybe.
No Disney World, no Disneyland. They're both great no no i'm a florida kid too so like i'm not standing in line for universal was my bar mitzvah theme that's sick what was what was part of it so like every table was a different ride oh that's awesome yeah who are the guest mascots that's not a thing oh celebrities like you know like spider-man did spider-man show upMan show up? Jurassic Park ride? Yeah.
I vividly remember doing it. I never saw the movie, but I remember doing that ride.
You go down, the T-Rex is going to hit you. Yeah.
That was fun. Yeah, so Splash Mountain, they're rebranding.
Were you a Disney World kid? Everything about Splash Mountain is just pretty basic. It's like a roller coaster water slide.
I had theme parks that were in Virginia that I used to go to,

so my parents would never be like,

we're going to go to Florida.

We've got a perfectly good roller coaster in the backyard.

So you never went to Disney World?

I may have gone when I was like two or three.

Okay, that doesn't count.

Isn't like Busch Gardens near there?

There's one in Tampa.

Yeah, we got Busch Gardens.

Oh, yeah, in Virginia.

We got Busch Gardens.

We got Paramount's King's Dominion that I used to go to all the time.

Get a nice airbrushed t-shirt and a funnel cake.

I'm happy with the fact that I was never a Disney World kid.

I almost died at Disney World.

Really?

Yeah, I was the youngest of four.

God damn it.

I just walked out of the hotel and jumped in the pool, didn't know how to swim.

What a badass.

That's pretty sick.

You're a fucking moron, but you're also badass. Some random six-year-old came and saved me oh wow what a beta six-year-old you're 16 uh yes r.i.p.
splash mountain uh my cool throne is cooperstown by the time this is out we'll have our answers on uh baseball hall of fame so i want to read quickly and get your guys yes or no to see if we're right. Okay.
Dan Heron, yes. You ready? Carlos Beltran.
Yes, sure. Todd Helton.
Yes. No.
Manny Ramirez. Yes.
Scott Rowland. Yes.
No. No.
You guys are being generous. No.
No, everyone's a yes. This is my opinion, or this is what I think will happen, not what I think myself, but getting in the MLB is hard.
Manny probably won't, but he should be. Billy Wagner.
Manny almost definitely won. Andy Pettit.
Billy Wagner just because I think of that home run he gave up in Houston. Andy Pettit.
No, that was Brad Lidge. Yeah.
That was Brad Lidge. No.
Pettit and Ramirez are hard because of the steroids. But Pettit apologized for steroids, so it's different.
Yeah, I think you've got to know the rules. I think everybody that's nominated should get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Yeah. Andrew Jones? Yeah.
Gary Sheffield? Yeah. No.
I mean, best swing. Best pre-swing.
Torrey Hunter? No. Yeah, no, he was great at defense.
He was great at defense. Jeff Kent? No.
No, he's the one. I'm gonna vote no on Jeff Kent.
And then lastly?? Andrew Jones is better at defense. Lastly, A-Rod.
Yes. No.
Yes. And maybe some wild cards, but those are the most likely.
You can't have Manny in and not A-Rod in. I can.
What are your rules? It's Hank's ballot. Well, we'll see tonight.
Barry's not on there? This is... The newcomers? I think most of them are newcomers.
That will actually be interesting. I can read the full list if you want.
I would imagine he's not going to get in, but, I mean, what is he like? Wait, Bonds isn't on the thing. Is he third or fourth all time in home runs? I think Bonds, so the rules are.
Manny barely did steroids. Well, no, he never got caught with steroids.
He just got caught with stuff that covers up steroids. Steroid blockers.
Yeah, yeah. He was taking like estrogen.
Yeah, like pregnancy like so with with barry i think he's not on the ballot anymore because in baseball the rules are like you have to hit a certain threshold and stay above a certain threshold and if you don't then you just drop off for forever yeah there's like 30 guys on this list but i think those are the most popular that's why this whole thing is a joke the best player of all time is done in the that's what i'm saying just let everybody in everybody in. So we'll see.
I do not care any longer. They've ripped my childhood from me, which was caring about the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Maybe it'll be zero again. Didn't that happen recently? That always rocks.
It's just funny that baseball writers take themselves so seriously. Oh, it's Tom Verducci.
We just need all these guys to die, and then maybe we can get the real players in the Hall of Fame who deserve to be in there. Okay, let's get to Stephen A.
Smith. Should we do it? Let's do it.
Hey, it's Rhea from Chicks in the Office. It's officially mini-skort season, and Abercrombie has the ones to go out in.
Their Scarlet Mini is a classic. It's one of those skirts that fits the outfit vibe for any plans.
And I'm excited to style their new Sienna skort. It's a little more fl and it's perfect for date night make plans to go out in abercrombie shop their newest arrivals in store and online okay we now welcome on a very very special guest it is the man the myth the legend stephen a smith in studio he has out.
It's called Straight Shooter, a memoir of second chances in first takes. I love the title, by the way.
Thank you. Let's start there.
First of all, thank you. We're so happy you're here.
The name of the show is Pardon My Take, which we took from Pardon the Interruption in first takes, so we appreciate that. We got sued about that temporarily.
They wrote us a cease and desist letter yeah and we wrote them a cease and desist letter back saying cease and desist sending us cease and desist letters but it got y'all got and y'all got away with that yeah you helped us yeah yeah it was it was great so we've been doing it for seven years now so we owe we owe some gratitude to you but let's talk about the book first so what made you decide to write a book right now like what was the the moment like hey i have enough stories now because i imagine you're a guy who's got a lot of stories the thing is is that i first of all sports books themselves they've never moved me and i knew that if i wrote a book um the first order of business was going to be that it needed to be about me and the reason why it needed to be about me is because the seat that I sit in where you're literally starting off people's day and you're tackling issues and you're tackling people pertaining to those issues. I felt like if I'm going to do that, folks have a right to know a little something about me, where I come from,'ve been through my thought process how it's come to be my perspectives how I reach them the kind of trials and tribulations I've endured not every single thing that I've gone through in my life because nobody tells all their business at least I'd hope not but I think that for the most part just doing enough to give an accurate depiction to the public at large about who you are what you're all about where you come from the kind of trials and tribulations you've endured when you've been knocked down how you've reacted to it particularly in the world of sports because there's winners and losers yeah and there's adversity everywhere and if you're writing about what people should handle and how they should do things and why they should do it this way and all of that stuff who the hell are you to be quiet when it comes to yourself so I thought about writing this book um years ago when I got fired from ESPN in 2009 not then but after they brought me back in 2011 because they were an abundance of people that wanted me to write my book because I eventually was going to have to talk about ESPN in the book.
Right. But my mother, God rest her soul, she passed away in 2017 after a long battle with cancer.
She was diagnosed with cancer in 2011. And mom said, you will not write this book as long as I'm alive.
You got to listen to that. Because she knew that I was going to talk about my relationship with my father.
Because celebrating her, I had to point out the trials and tribulations she endured. And in order to do that, it inevitably took me to my father.
She knew I would do that and did not want to be on this earth when that information was released because she was a very, very private person. So she gave me her blessing to write the book under one condition and that was she was dead and gone so so this book is i mean it means a lot to you i would assume because that's there like you said a lot of private you know conversations your relationship with your father what's if if people are buying this book and you should go buy it right now it's out right now straight shooter what's the one thing you hope people will take away from it like you know they they thought of steven a this way and then they read the book and they're like no he's a little bit different than i thought there's always somebody out there rooting for you and looking to give you a helping hand if you're willing to go for it yourself and i'm a guy like you know i'm a black dude that's outspoken at times.
I've been called militant and stuff like that. And people find themselves shocked.
And it's like, oh, my God, you know, I mean, you see him with Sean Hannity or you see him with these folks or you see him taking issues and black folks don't agree with him or whatever. Well, I'm a fair minded dude.
And I'm one of those people that I don't give a shit who you are you know if you're right you're right yeah if you're wrong you're wrong and and i have as much as i love my blackness to the core and i love my community to the core and i side with us most of the time sometimes if we're wrong and y'all are right i'm gonna say so and sometimes things ain't ain't about race and it ain't about bigotry and it ain't about prejudice and all of these other things. It's just about somebody having more facts and being right and their perspective is right on compared to yours.
And I'm a fair minded enough dude to be able to point that out about anybody. And so for me, that has opened the floodgates for people to be receptive to me, want to engage in dialogue, want to have conversation, which has helped propel me the way I am today.
Yeah. If it wasn't for having that kind of mentality and believing that there were people who were fair minded and decent out there and that I could trust them to at least be that.
Then who knows what would where that that kind of narrow mindedness would have prevented me from traveling. traveling.
You can also get a lot more nuance out when you're writing a book, I would imagine. You can take your time, really delve into what your thoughts are on a subject, expand on that a little bit.
On TV, you have this window that you have to hit, and you know that you have to be a showman inside that window as well, which, I mean, you are one of the all-time great showmen when it comes to being on television when you're writing a book where you did you struggle at all with uh how do I how do I keep that same you know entertaining persona that people know watch the book wasn't about entertainment at all um the book was about substance and it was about getting right to the heart of the matter I opened up the talking about losing my mother. I came out swinging with my emotions because I wanted to send a message immediately.
This was not a sports book. This was a book about me.
This was my memoir. And so for me, I wasn't trying to entertain.
I was trying to make sure that I touched on the issues that had happened in my career, the controversies that I had been involved in, the trials and tribulations that I experienced because I wanted people to see that when I'm on the air going off about what a dude should do and why and what they need to watch out for and what minefields and pitfalls they've got to navigate themselves around or over or through or whatever the case may be. My positions and my perspective come from a certain place and I wanted to showcase all of those things to the world and that's why I wrote the book yeah great and uh I mean just your name in general Stephen A.
Smith it carries like a certain weight too it's a great name it's like Stephen A. Smith it sounds like a writer sounds like somebody that knows what they're talking about have you always been Stephen A.
Smith or was there a time when you were Stephen Smith and then you decided I'm gonna throw the A in there nah man I was always Steve or Stephen until I was in college and remember I got left back in the third grade the June of my third grade of elementary school and then I got promoted back to my right grade because I had a first grade reading. I got promoted back to the right grade that September.
I went to the fourth grade that September, completed the fourth grade, still had a first grade reading level at the end of that year and got left back again. And this time it was for the whole year.
And so for me, when I fast forward to my years in college, I'm graduating as an honor roll student. I'm writing for the school newspaper.
And this guy that got left back not once but twice because he had reading comprehension issues suddenly is a writer and a reporter. And there was no one as great as my sister Linda was in helping me to read.
And a family friend around the corner named Tiver who helped me to read. there was no one as great as my sister Linda was in helping me to read

and a family friend around the corner named Tiver who helped me to read.

There was no one more deserving of my gratitude than my mother.

And my mother named me Stephen Anthony Smith,

and I always hated my name because I hated how it was spelled.

I wish it was spelled I wish it

was spelled with a V instead of a PH because when she'd get mad she called me Stefan and I hated that name Stefan growing up this is before Steph Curry yeah I was just saying now it's a pretty cool name that was a pretty cool name but back then it wasn't and so because she named me and she believed in me I added the A to my byline as a tribute to her. My very first byline as a reporter at the News August on Winston-Salem State University's campus newspaper.
It said Stephen A. Smith.
It was a tribute to my mother. And then obviously as I grew into business, everybody says Stephen A.
Stephen A. Yeah.
It's a great name. So I want to talk to you

about your college career real quick because

so you started at FIT

right here, right? And then you

transferred to Winston-Salem. Yep.

Now, you're gonna

have to look me in the eye and tell me this actually happened.

Your tryout for the basketball

team. You hit 17

threes in a row. 17 straight threes.

17 threes in a row in your tryout? Never before since. This was a scrimmage? No.
Oh, okay. You just shoot.
What happened was is that a guy by the name of Harold Funny Kitt used to go to Winston-Salem State University in the 70s after Earl of Pearl Monroe left. And he was still tightly associated with the school and tightly associated with Clarence Big House Gaines who was the legendary coach down there helped with John McClendon to integrate the sport of basketball you know the Duke players that played against the black players at you know at on campus in the middle of the night when no one knew about it they were played a role in being responsible for that game being organized and played and And so what happened is that he told Coach Gaines he had a player for him to see.
And Coach Gaines had him bring me down there on the weekend. And I went out on the court.
And before I stepped out on the court, rather, Coach Gaines looked at me. And then he looked at him.
He said, is this the little motherfucker you've been bragging about?

You know, and he said, that's him.

And the funny kid looked at me afterwards and he said, I got you here.

You're on your own now.

Handle your business.

And I went out on a basketball court and I was passing the ball, just running, rotation offense, stuff like that, running around, passing the ball, passing the ball.

I hadn't shot.

I was just trying to get warmed up. Coach Gaines halted practice.
He looked at me, 6'6", 280 pounds, but he was sleeping. He was sitting on the bleachers.
He said, come here. He said, didn't Funny say that you was a shooter? I said, yes.
He said, well, shoot and i went out there and i hit 17 17 17 straight three pointers i couldn't miss that's incredible and when i did that he signed me to a scholarship on the spot that's incredible and do you ever like think back like you know maybe daydreaming like man remember when i hit 17 straight oh hell

yes i never did it since of course of course i dreamed about it you know no question about it i was healthy that day my knees weren't hurt i hadn't cracked my kneecap in half and halted any kind of of unforeseen dreams that i may have had or whatever the case may be but that was my shining moment because it was immense pressure i went down there to get a basketball scholarship yeah and the pressure was on and i showed up and i handled my business so so like i think some people don't realize because you're such a star now and you're on tv every single day and you're on every program you got radio you got podcasts everything yeah no mercy podcast check it out um they don't realize that you grinded for a very long time as a beat reporter yeah do you do you miss that like the no okay I don't miss it was it was it obviously you know being able to be a beat reporter for that many years I would assume gave you a ton of training into having opinions and knowing how players interact and it gave me that it gave me contacts networks resources that I still have to this very day um I'm forever connected to the NBA community because of the work that I did all of those years as a beat writer so that is true um and do I miss I miss being at the games I miss being inside those locker rooms because excuse me I miss that because when I was there I wasn't guessing about anything I was connected to every story I reported when I wanted what I wanted to report it but I knew everything I knew all I knew where all the bodies lied because I was that connected to the teams and so because of that the relationship that you cultivate are invaluable and they last a career and all of that stuff is true I don't miss like having to be on a row 200 plus days out of the year i don't miss covering shoot around practices and during the daytime i don't miss having to go to meaningless games yeah the big games i never get tired of but the meaningless games you know if either 76ers and you know you're playing detroit or you're playing you know i don't know the Wizards or somebody yeah whatever you think about the cities that you want to go to you ain't think about the teams you know and so and my career has changed I mean what's hard I think the thing for me that's hard right now to sort of like piggyback and add to the question that you asked was that I wish I could just go to any game yeah but now I'm more popular than 95 of the players yeah and so because of that it's a challenge I have to go really early or I have to go really late and I have to leave really early or leave really late just not to be mobbed. You know, and I say that with affection.
People usually don't bother me. They're not heckling me.
They want a picture. They want an autograph.
They want a debate or all of that stuff. And I don't debate for free, so I ain't doing that.
I just came up with a great business model. But they do that.
But I'm just saying you have some guys that never want to go to games. They just want to sit in front of the microphone and talk on camera and talk.
And that's fine because the business allows for that. I'm one of those dudes that like to go to the games.
I like to talk to people I have to talk about. I'm not running from anybody.
And I hate the fact that I can't get to games as much as I used to, but my schedule just won't allow it because of all the obligations I have. You're the hardest working man in show business.
Do you have a personal life? Oh, I have a personal life. Yeah? What's it like when you're off the clock? That's not a concern.
Well, I mean, we know you're a bottom feeder. I'm good.
Well, you know what? Somebody, you know what? my definition of a bottom feeder wasn't what other people's was they were like do you know what that is I was just talking about somebody with a fat ass that's what I was talking about that's what I was talking about but but but but but yeah I I live well that's good that's good to hear there was a blog that was onstool Sports. Our good friend Coley wrote it and said Stephen A.
Smith is horny at all hours of the day. And you read that aloud on your show.
He's crazy. You said not every hour, maybe one or two.
I said maybe not every hour. Not every hour, maybe one or two, yeah.
When are the freak hours for Stephen A. Smith? That's healthy.
What I'm saying to you is this. If you're a man, you should appreciate that.
Because when you stop being horny altogether, you got problems. Yeah, that's true.
You got to see a doctor. It wasn't to say that, oh, my goodness, I'm walking around just horny or whatever.
It's to say that, wait a minute, I'm still active. I'm still flowing.
There's still blood circulating. I'm good.
That's what that was meant to me. Thank you, because I'm not going to name any names, but there's some people in this room that shame other people in this room and they bonk them and they say, hey, you're too horny.
I'm just a red blooded American man. Yeah.
No, you ain't got nothing to do with American. You're a man.
I don't know whether you're from Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. It don't matter where you're from.
You're a man. You want to feel that way.
That's right. You want to feel that blood flowing through your veins.
Respect. Yes.
That's it. There's nothing wrong with it.
By the way, I should have- As long as you know how to act. Yeah, exactly.
I should have started this show by saying congratulations because Monday was a huge day for you. Yes, it was.
I mean, and we have- Hank is a diehard Cowboys fan. So he had to sit here.
He had his Dak Prescott jersey on. He had his jean shorts, his whole thing.
Are those the best days, like, when you have a take that you know, like, when it comes, you know, to fruition and, like, I can cash in this take, you got a little extra pep in your step going in the studio? Yeah, yeah, because – well, Michael Irvin helps because he's so outrageous, you know, that the opportunity to humble him was a beautiful, beautiful moment. But I tell you, it's like, yeah, we got a sports show.
It's everybody's job when you're doing this business to entertain to some degree. But let me tell you something.
I'm not bullshitting when I talk about Cowboy fans. I mean what I say about them.
It's him right there. He believed it.
They are the most delusional, disgusting fan base in American history. I mean, it doesn't matter what happens to them.
Give it 15 minutes. All right, we'll do it next year.
Yeah. We're going to win the Super Bowl next year.
You know we're going to win the Super Bowl next year, right? It's just nauseated. They don't take any time to smell their stench, which is why it's so enjoyable when they lose over and over and over again it's a really really beautiful thing and so to me i'm not joking i mean it when i say it but in the same breath i know that first take is a lot more than that and so i'm i'm cool with it i love those moments nobody gives me those moments but i have a lot of good moments.
That's like your Super Bowl, though, when they get eliminated. It is for me.
Such pathetic fashion, too. For me.
And when everything that you said, like we had to take this year, I'm sure you've had similar thoughts about Kirk Cousins and how his season was inevitably going to end. And we were right down to the exact play that it was going to end on.
We did the victory lap to end all victory laps that Monday. But for you, have Dak Prescott go out there, and he tried to throw six interceptions.
He tried. He really tried.
He made a concerted effort to do that. He really did.
He really did. And they all know it.
The last play that they had was just the ice, the coup de grace, the perfect ending to the season. That's your Super Bowl.
You need a touchdown, man. You're playing against the top defense in the NFL and you're just going to throw like a five-yard pass.
It's like, really? You just can't make it up, man. And this is after, this is after a year earlier you couldn't get the ball off for 13 seconds.
Yeah, exactly. It's a beautiful thing.
Literally, Hank thinks, like he thought this was the year. He thought this was the year.
They always do. Yeah, it's crazy.
They always do. He's already talked himself into that.
That is the beauty of it all. It's like, it's 27 years and counting.
And I keep telling people, just be patient. They won't let you down.
Just watch, no matter what you do. And I even pulled the trick this year.
Keyshawn and Marcus Spears called me out on it this morning because they were absolutely right. They said, see, he did this because what happened is that the Cowboys can't stop listening to their fans.
And the fans were a bit suspect about them because of last year. But then when they started playing well, I went and did my A-list and called the Dallas Cowboys the number one team in the NFL.
That's smart. Knowing that everybody would gravitate towards it.
All their fans would gravitate toward it. They'd get bold.
They'd start talking about what we were going to do. And as a result, the team would feel the pressure.
Yeah. Mountain.
And they would fold. And that's exactly what happened.
It's a beautiful thing. It was a complete setup by me.
I must admit. Credit to you.
A great one. You should get a lot of credit for that loss.
It was a complete setup by me, and I did it on purpose, and I love every second of it. There's a genius to it because you set the expectation so high for him knowing that anything besides Super Bowl, that's failure.
I mean, you're the Dallas Cowboys. Yeah.
Right? Listen. You're not out here playing for an NFC championship.
But it goes deeper than that. I looked at them this year, and I saw Micah Parsons leading that defense, and Trayvon Diggs, and I said, these boys ain't no joke.
And if their offense could get things together, they really, really could win it all. So what's the one thing that could disrupt them? Expectations.
And I put them in number one. There you go.
So you've talked about running for president before. I'm not going to ask you about the potential presidency in your future.
But if you were to become the president of the Dallas Cowboys, fix that team right now this offseason, how do you fix them? I'd get Sean Payton. Yep.
Even if I had to give up an ass to pick to get him, I'd get him. Because Dak Prescott is my most important player.
I have to maximize his potential. And because I have to maximize his potential, who better to do it? Especially a coach that's a Super Bowl champion, that religiously had one of the more prolific offenses in football that also even though he had Alvin Kamara didn't rely on the conventional running game to pull it off he utilized Alvin Kamara in ways the Dallas Cowboys wish to utilize Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard and so when when I think about it from that perspective, that's why I would say he's the man for the job.
Yeah. Yeah.
Makes sense. If I can't get him, I'd probably put Quinn in at the position.
But I don't really – listen, they weren't perfect, but I really don't blame McCarthy for this loss as much as I blame Kellen Moore.

Yeah.

Kellen Moore and Dak Prescott.

Yeah.

Dak Prescott played like garbage, and Kellen Moore,

there's certain players you can't call

because you got to know who your quarterback is.

You got to move him out of the pocket.

You got to get him on the move.

You got to get him scrambling a little bit.

You got to do stuff like that, and he didn't do that.

You got to utilize him the way the Eagles tend to utilize Jalen Hurts

from the move him out of the pocket. You got to get him on the move.
You got to get him scrambling a little bit. You know, you got to do stuff like that.

And he didn't do that.

You got to utilize him the way the Eagles tend to utilize Jalen Hurts from time to time.

Some people are saying Cooper Rush would have won that game.

Well, you could say Cooper Rush would have won that game,

but I don't think Cooper Rush is better than Dak Prescott.

And Cooper Rush could beat a lot of teams.

I don't know if he beats San Francisco.

The one thing that I will say is this.

San Francisco defense is elite.

At the end of the third quarter, they were tied

9-9. One

thing I will say about Cooper Rush is

he wouldn't have turned the ball

over. Yeah.
I don't

know if he would have been as effective as Dak

Prescott, but he would have been safer.

Yep. And the way that defense was playing, I think that's all you needed.

Yeah.

So the opposite of the Cowboys take, because you were right, you set them up, it was beautiful.

Do you get upset at yourself when you have a take that's wrong?

No.

Because remember, you did have a streak, was it 2011 to 2017?

Six consecutive NBA Finals appearances wrong but six consecutive and two of those were just the Cavs and the Warriors back to back let me help y'all out with something let me help y'all out with something and the heat you couldn't guess the heat first order of business I'm considered a veteran in this. A lot of people look up to me and see

what I've accomplished or whatever.

Allow me to bestow y'all

with lesson number one.

The beauty is in being wrong.

It's showing

that you're fallible. You're flawed.

You're human just like

everybody else.

You know how many people are boring

as hell on television

because they are literally so rigid

because they're scared of being wrong?

It's true.

Tell me one person in the history of sports

who's been right every time.

There is no one.

Lenny Dykstra.

No, please.

That was Stonks.

No, he missed one.

He missed one.

He missed one.

503 and one all time.

I'm just telling you, it happens.

It's no big deal.

That's number one.

Number two, let's analyze this.

I picked Miami to lose to the Spurs.

First of all, I picked LeBron and Miami to beat Dallas.

I did not know that LeBron James wasn't going to be able to take Jason Terry.

I like this.

Game three.

Eight points?

Eight points in game three?

Four straight fourth quarters.

Yeah.

Okay, I didn't know that.

I picked the Spurs to beat Miami.

What happens?

Chris Bosh.

I didn't know that Greg Popovich would take Tim Duncan

out the damn game when all you needed was a rebound to secure a championship.

And instead, Chris Bosh grabs the offensive rebound off a miss from LeBron

and throws it out to Ray Allen, who hits it from the right corner.

And ultimately, they win game six and propel game seven.

I picked San Antonio to win that series in six. okay? I didn't know that was going to happen, okay? All right? Next year, Dwayne Wade's hurt, okay? We didn't know that was going to happen, and then this is the biggie.
This is the biggie. And of all the predictions I made, I will never accept culpability for this.
It's 2016. I picked the Golden State Warriors.
Not only did I pick them to win in five, I picked each game they would win. I said they would go into Cleveland.
They would win the first two in Oakland.

They would turn around at the Oracle.

They would turn around. They would lose game

three. They would go to game

four, if I remember correctly.

Whatever the way it went down. Because I don't remember.

I picked every game right.

And I said they're going to take them out

in game four in Cleveland

and they're going to go back

to Golden State, the Oracle and win it in game five. Game four, LeBron and them is about to lose the game.
LeBron gets frustrated. He takes Draymond Green, throws him to the floor.
Draymond Green gets up and flicks his hand at him or whatever the case may be. No technicals called.
They're whole bit but somehow some way revisionist history comes in and the nba decides to give lebron james and cleveland a stimulus package okay they suspend draymond for game five because he had accumulated tech enough tax right bogey gets hurt that game yeah igguodala gets hurt that game. So your two defensive cornerstones for that franchise got hurt in the game five that Draymond was suspended in.
And then obviously they lost the game six when both LeBron and Kyrie had over 40, and then they won game seven. My point is I don't – y'all could talk to me.
I don't give a damn. That is the one final that I will never accept being wrong about because the NBA suspended Draymond Green.
They take them out in five. They win that series in five games.
I love what you just did because you told us, you know, it's okay to be wrong, everyone's fallible, and then you went on to explain how you actually were right about all these. I wasn't right about all of them.
I just told you. What kind of? Tim Duncan should have been in the game.
I just told you, but I accepted defeats. Would all of them accept the Draymond Green suspension? Fair.
Also fair. You didn't know that LeBron James couldn't deal with Jason Terry, too.
Right. But my point is, but I accept it, because that's stuff that happened on a basketball court.
But if you're the NBA, the NBA suspended Draymond for something

he didn't even receive a tech in.

Right.

And then on top of it all, not only did he receive the tech,

did he not receive the tech, you end up giving him a technical foul

that would suspend him for the game.

Right.

No.

I am not accepting that.

All of those other things were on the basketball court.

Popovich made his decision.

LeBron didn't show up in the fourth quarter or whatever the case may be with these other things. But that one, no, that was the league office.
No. Hell no.
I'm not accepting that. Can I ask you a quick question about this? Do you know when you're ramping up and you're like, I'm cooking? Because you were just cooking.
No. I'm just saying what I feel.
I love it. I get caught in a moment.
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That's www.nobullproject.com backslash barstool for 30% off. You have a great style, though.
I've always admired this about you. I went to actually go see a taping of first take live back in 2014 2015 and watching you and skip go back and forth was like it was like a boxing match a little bit and you've got this way where you you get really loud you start yelling but then you get really soft and you make people lean in and you bring them in and as they draw and they start to listen to you then you just come back and you hit them over the top with like you you crescendo and decrescendo almost like an artist or like a composer do you do any of that consciously or is that just how you've always been that's how i am but i also am mindful that it works yeah yeah it definitely works because what happens is is that first of all when i yelling all the time, I was high octane at the earlier parts of my career.
Number one, I was coming across angry a lot of times when I wasn't mad at all. And so I had to be mindful of that and accept accountability for that and how other people were looking at me.
I had to instead of looking at people and thinking that they were wrong or they were stereotyping or whatever, I had to look myself and say wait a minute they have a right to interpret how they want what they're seeing you know it's my job to communicate in such a way that shows them I'm having a good time because I really was having a good time that was one thing but the other thing was my health I kept developing acid reflux because the combination of how you use your voice and what you drink most times now I'm drinking water. I was drinking soda all the time back then and stuff like that.
That stuff has an effect on you. You'd be surprised how talking for a living can make you unhealthy because you're inhaling and exhaling.
You're using your vocal cords. You're doing things.
You're exercising the body in ways you don't even fathom. Yeah.
And then you wake up one day and all of a sudden it's a little bit more difficult to get out of bed. It's a little bit more difficult to have that extra energy.
It's a little bit more difficult to have that passion and that fervent, all of that stuff. And something is wrong.
You don't even know. It's going on I don't I don't feel right or whatever maybe it's something I ate maybe it's something I drank or whatever the case may be but it's what you're doing to your body because what you do in terms of how you use your throat your vocal cords your diaphragm all of this other stuff everybody doesn't do that every day you think they do because they talk every day but no not no, not like you, not like me.
And so when you realize that, it's like, wait a minute, I'm in it for the long haul. I'm after the marathon, not the sprint.
I got to be healthy and I got to guard myself better. It's good too because the way that you vary it up, I think it makes when you do get loud, it makes it more impactful.
People listen more because of that change in it. Yeah, but the thing about it also is that, listen, you know, in our business, there's a lot of people who truly, truly believe the definition of entertainment is showing people what you know.
Excuse me. That's not true.
How you communicate with them is what entertains them. Sure, you have to know what you're talking about for the most part.
Doesn't mean you're flawless and you're not going to make mistakes, but for the most part, you got to know what you're talking about. But outside of that, it's how you communicate.
I can't go on first take talking like Shaq and expect people to watch. They're not going to watch that.
They'll watch it on TNT at night with Barkley on the other end of the table and Kenny Smith with Ernie Johnson. But you're not going to watch first take like that in the morning.
You're getting people up. You're getting them hyped about their day.
You're starting off their day yeah you got to be the spark plug you got to be the engine that revs up when that key turns yeah you can't lead that to somebody else yeah and so i understand that and that's how i come at it with that's how i go with it so first take and we can cut this part because i want your honest uh take here uh you've got anything no no we'll'll cut it. We'll cut it when you profess what I think the answer is.
So you've gone through Max and then you now have Mad Dog. You have different people.
You miss Skip, right? You miss Skip. You miss going back and forth with Skip.
You're bringing all these people in to just slay them. You miss the foil that was Skip Biff.
First of all, you don't have to cut anything I say. No obviously i'm just telling you and i would tell you this right now i will always miss skip skip is my guy i love him i don't always agree with him i didn't agree with him when he was on the set with me i don't agree with him sometimes that he's off the set with me and doing his own show uh we've gone our separate ways.
He's doing what he's doing.

I'm doing what I'm doing.

I'll never root against him.

I'll always be grateful to him for what he has done for my career because there is no Stephen A with first take if it were not for Skip Bayless.

He's the one that went to Jamie Horowitz and the bosses

and fought for me to be on first take with him.

I owe him an incredible debt of gratitude, and I will never forget that. But at this stage and point in my life i'm happier without him okay um i'm not going back that's not what i want anymore but it has nothing to do with a debate show is that i have other aspirations yeah i've been named the executive producer of first take so i have that going on i have my own production company, Mr.
S.A.S. Productions,

where I want to produce scripted and unscripted

content for TV and films.

I have my own podcast, No Mercy,

that I do

three days a week.

I've got a lot of aspirations. I want to do

late night television one day,

potentially succeed Jimmy Kimmel

if at all possible.

That would be electric. I did it once.
And the day that I did it I did it in August of 2021 and without any promotion I was the second highest rated show behind Stephen Gobert and so I look at it from the aspect I have all these aspirations a lot of times when people ask me questions about Skip it's like oh do you miss him oh don't you Oh, don't you want to work with him again? First Take is great. Nobody can tell me that there's a better morning show than First Take.
We have a great time. We're having a lot of fun.
We got a lot of people with a lot of knowledge and we understand what that letter E stands for with ESPN. It's entertainment and we try to have a really, really good time.
There's a lot of great shows and there's a lot of great talent

out there

and I think what makes it great

is that I've opened

the floodgates

for everybody to come on.

I try to bring

a lot of people on

and let them know

because I've been blessed

and fortunate enough.

Look, this ride

has to end for me someday.

Don't say that.

And sometimes

you get to a point

where it's about your legacy

and what I mean by that is not about the show the show's been number one for 11 straight years it was number one the month after i arrived and it's been number one every week every month every year ever since then and i'm proud of that but what would make me prouder is that one day when this ride ends and the show continues and there's a whole bunch of talent that's coming on the show and they all looking and they like my man Stephen A got us here he looked out for us he put us in this position because guess what you can't be the best forever and you're not going to be number one forever sometimes even when you are number one you just get tired and you want to do other things and so for me i love doing first take i can do it for a few more years i guess um and i never want to leave sports i just don't want to be limited to it yeah if i'm going to be limited to it you will see me say goodbye to sports before somebody tells me that sports is all i'm allowed to do i will never allow that to happen in my life again it just doesn't do that for me if that's all I'm doing. And if I'm helping people along the way get themselves, if you listen to me, just think about it.
You always hear me talking and no one can tell me. They don't hear me talking and I don't bring up other names and other talents.
And it's not just for people that work with me. It's people at other networks.
Why? Because that's what we're supposed to be doing this for. That's what we're supposed to be doing this for.
I'm not supposed to be rooting against y'all. I don't want you to be me.
I want my show to be number one, but I don't want you to fail. I'm not supposed to be rooting against people.
You're supposed to be rooting for guys to come up and do big things. That's what this is all about.
There's room for a lot of us. I like that.
And that's my attitude. Yeah.
You have to spotlight on somebody else or come back on you twice as bright. Now, all that said, I just really, I would personally really enjoy it if you did get back with Skip for maybe like a one-time thing.
Let's say, hypothetically, the cowboys get to a super bowl super bowl week right steven a verse skip reunited now there are some times when you do the cowboys thing when you when you gloat about how right you are about the cowboys i get the sense like yeah you're talking to max or whatever the case might be but you're thinking Skip. You're like, I'm sending this message out to Skip.

I know that Skip's watching, and I know he's just getting torn up by watching.

Not at all.

My message is to those damn Cowboy fans that get on my nerves in the streets

throughout America when I run into them.

Old and young, black and white, Latino, Asian, Native American, Jewish,

Gentile, it doesn't matter.

Cowboy fans are everywhere. And no one gets on my nerves more than them.
It's to them. I'm not thinking about Skip.
I'm not thinking about other people that work at ESPN outside of Michael Irvin. I will think about Michael Irvin because he talks so much trash.
You know, Mr. Motivational.
And then when they win in playoff games like they did against Tampa Bay, he and Jerry's booth hugging and kissing everybody and slapping high fives with the wives and the kids. It's just so annoying to see him do that.
Yeah, I look forward to bringing him down, but that's because I look at him like I look at the pom-pom Cowboy fans out there. That makes sense.
Maybe the day LeBron James retires, you can have one final MJ versus LeBron. Listen, man.
I mean, if you talk about one final day with Skip Bayless, I'd welcome that any day of the week just to pay homage to what he's done for me. And to beat him again.
And to beat him again. I've always beaten him.
I've always beaten him. You're undefeated.
But to beat him again. I tell him.
He ain't never beat me in a debate. But still in all, but it would be fun one final day, one final show or something like that.
But that's all. I mean, other than that, I'm good.
I respect what you're saying. You don't need to go back to recapture something that you had in the past.
It might have been great. It might have been wonderful.
The relationship might still be good to this day. You wish him nothing but the best.
But you're doing other things. It would just be nice to have a one-time event for maybe some of the kids that never got to see it.
Like I grew up watching in the golden age, in my opinion. Yeah, but if they never got to see it, why would they care? See, you want to see it.
You want it bad because you know because you saw it. Yeah.
If they never saw it, why would they care? It would blow their minds. I mean, you are doing a special show with Mike and the Mad Dog, right? Yes, I am.
So they're coming on first take. February 1st, yeah.
Are you guys going to take callers? You should take sports Wednesday. Sorry.
I doubt it. I doubt it.
It's first take. Yeah.
So it's not going to be callers. But I will tell you that Mike and the Mad Dog, I'm proud to have them on mad dog i love i love him to death he's just hilarious to me um and but in terms of mike francis and mad dog i have such respect for them we are where we are in this business in large part because of them what they established and i know that you know for anything that's going to be successful we're usually targeting the younger demographic and i understand that but the young have to learn to respect those that need and deserve to be paid homage to i like that when you think about francesa and mad dog what radio became, what the podcast world ultimately morphed into, it's by and large because of Mike and the Mad Dog.
They set the standard and they opened the floodgates for advertisers and sponsors and networks to see this as an avenue of income to be created,

which created jobs for a whole bunch of people throughout this country.

What an incredible level of gratitude we owe them.

And so for me, the fact that they wanted

to come on First Take to reunite with one another

is an honor.

It's awesome.

And I'm looking forward to having them.

You may have, we only have a few more questions.

I know you got a busy day.

You are the hardest working man in showbiz.

You may have answered this already at some other time,

but what was the picture for Take a Look, Y'all?

Take a Look, Y'all.

You don't know that tweet?

I do not know.

Please do.

This might be just you not looking at any of your mentions.

Do you remember this one?

I really don't.

Are you serious? I swear to you. 2015, it's a famous tweet.
You tweeted, take a look, y'all, and it was just the IMG JPEG, but no picture. Because I don't know that shit.
You know, I mean, come on, man. No one's ever asked you? I really, really don't.
I mean, listen, I don't know. Like, listen, I'll try some copy on it, and that's why I think that was when ESPN came to me and said, let us handle your social media account.
Now I got my own people handling it, of course. But I mean, I still don't know how to.
I know how to write a message or a tweet or whatever. But all of that other stuff, I don't know that shit.
So no one's ever asked you what the picture was? I didn't know what you were talking about, but now that you did. Somebody's asked me about that before.
But I still never know when they asked. I'm like, what are you talking about? I would love to know what Take a Look Y'all was.
What was that picture? I have no clue. What date was it? It was May 26, 2015.
Almost eight years ago. It was May what? May 26, 2015.
I had no idea. Probably right around the NBA Finals.
Yeah, maybe Chris Paul losing a playoff game, him looking sad maybe. Yeah, Conference Finals.
Conference Finals. Okay.
Fin Finals always in June. Take a look, y'all.
Got to know it. Another question, are we still staying off the weed? Absolutely.
Okay. Absolutely.
I mean, I will tell you, there have been times when I've been stressed enough, I have wondered, is it wise for me to stay off the weed? I will admit that because you see people that are smoking weed, they just seem so relaxed. They're caring the world.
Everything's good, but I'm like, I gotta be consistent. In all seriousness, man, I've never looked.
I got family members that smoke some weed. You know what I'm saying? That's always been.
I'm from Hollis, Queens, New York City. Please.
Weed was everywhere. We get that.
My issue is, in all seriousness, is with fellas that are athletes that I have allowed it to cost them their money. I know basketball players who've lost tens of millions of dollars in future earnings because they were potheads.
That makes no sense to me. I've never seen a joint worth seven figures in my life.
I don't understand shit like that. It makes no sense to me i've never seen a joint worth seven figures in my life i don't understand shit like that it makes no sense to me and so for me it's like don't let it cost you your money and then people would get so upset they would come at me wrong and then snoop dogg called into my radio show in la one year and went off on people like steven a he ain't selling out he looking out he trying to help you he said i can do this in my field you can't because snoop dogg is one of my boys right and so i'm like what do you mean i have a problem with people who are weed that's my boy if i had a problem with anybody wouldn't it be him yeah yeah because ain't too many people smoke more weed than snoop now right they put new mean in the green rooms okay so but but i don't care because it doesn't cost him his money and that's what i'm talking about yeah yeah i mean that that makes sense um you've done some great acting before general hospital yeah i got a recurrent role on there it seems like you you enjoy it you got the acting never thought i never thought that i would but i i'm starting to enjoy it and fantasize about really taking it seriously for this one reason.
I love the fact that you can get away with doing anything the role calls for you to do. You know, it's like, wait a minute, I could be a villain.
You know, I could kill somebody. I could do this.
I could do that. I could do that.
And it's perfectly fine because it's all acting because it's all acting. That's a great point.
And then not only that, it comes in handy when you do what we do. Because when I'm on the air, listen, everybody ain't likable.
Some people get on my damn nerves. And knowing a little acting helps.
It can bail you out of situations you didn't realize you'd need to be bailed out of. So acting does have its positive points.
And I think it's something that's worth me considering. We're actually in the film business.
We're working with Adam Sandler on a movie. So we developed this a few years ago.
He did a good movie with the movie LeBron produced. He did a basketball player.
Adam Sandler did a great job as a scout for the 76ers. Yeah.
Apparently, he's a pretty good player himself, too. So we've been working with him.
We've got a number of people loosely attached to do voices. It's animated.
We would love for you to be a part of this project. Animated? It's an animated film.
It's a holiday classic. Okay.
Kids film? Kids film. It's about sled dogs, a team of sled dogs.
Okay. They get lost in the woods.
Okay. That's not a no.
Money needs to be right. Money needs to be right.
Yeah, the money will be right. Adam's taking care of it.
Adam is putting the full weight of Happy Madison behind it. I feel like if you were a dog, if you were to voice a dog, what breed of dog would you want to be? German Shepherd.
Okay, done. Done.
All right. Easy.
I can make that happen. Yeah.
One stroke of the pen. Yeah, you pen.
Yeah, you get that. Easy.
One last question I had was, how's the shoulder? I gotta say, I took exception to something that you did this summer. Okay.
You took a lot of time off for a shoulder injury. Yeah.
A lot. Nick Saban called me out.
Adam Silva called me out. I mean, that was funny, man.
They got me good. I gotta admit that.
That had nothing to do with it being August and not having any sports on to talk about. It was just you need that time to recuperate.
No, what happened is, man, is that they had me doing first take. I was doing Stephen A's World.
I was doing the NBA Countdown. And I was like, you know, I don't think people realize how much time I haven't taken off throughout the year.
Yeah. I said, man, hell with this.
I need some time because they told me, you know, I was walking around. I had both torn rotator cups.
I was walking around for like five years, and so they went in there June 29th to be exact. June 29th.
And Hospital for Special Surgery, New York City. They found I had a torn rotator cuff, a torn bicep, a bone spur, and a torn label.
And you were playing through all that. I was like, what the hell is going on here? I would have said just shoot me up.
I'll go out there. I would do it for free.
Love of the game. But here's what I'm saying.
What I was saying was, yeah, I could come on the air, but damn that. I've been working, working, working.
I want to relax. And you know something? It's funny.
I'm like this. There's some people miss me for a change.
Yeah, we did. You see me every day.
You hear from me every day. How many times people, oh, what the hell does Stephen A.
say today? Oh, this guy. Oh, please.
Who the hell cares what he is? He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Why listen to him? I'm like, all right.
You're going to miss me when I'm gone when i'm gone it's smart you know and so i went away and i took off longer than i've ever taken off ever you know and so i was like hey that's what it is and you know and not only that covid did a number on me when i got covid not this time i had covid a few months ago i was fine in like three days it was just nipples and all that stuff when i got covid last september man 102.7 degree fever 103 degree fever um you know sweating bullets waking up in the middle of the night like fully clothed like, like I jumped in a pool. That's how much I was sweating.
Having illusion, you know, just delusional, just out of my mind. And New Year's Eve, I'm in the emergency room in the hospital in New Jersey.
And the doctor comes to me and she says, her name was Dr. Booth.
I'll never forget it. She said, go try these steroids.

And it's antibiotic.

And we'll know in three hours whether you're fine.

That's how strong this stuff is.

We'll know in three hours.

If we don't know in three hours, we have to call your family.

You're in a world of trouble. I double pneumonia pneumonia in both lungs um persistent cough wasn't breathing right obviously um i was in bad shape and i never felt like that and i was so pissed off because my sister god bless her she had covid my sister to smoke every day.
She three days i'm like i don't i don't smoke you know i'm saying i'm a casual drink at best i can't believe i'm going through i ain't never done drugs i'm like what the hell is going on how am i in this position i was furious you know but they was like it's for those three hours you know i was in a world of Yeah. And so because I didn't know what direction it was going in, you know.
And so when that happened, I was like, I work hard. I do this.
But there's so much more to life than what I'm living. I make enough money.
I should be enjoying myself a hell of a lot more than I'm doing. But I don't because everybody else is clanking champagne glasses at my party but me they busy partying I'm busy working I need to get into some of that partying some of that relaxation some of that enjoyment so I can enjoy the fruits of my labor and that's why I ultimately took that time off for that month in the summer it's a good deserved it.
You definitely did. I was just giving you some shit about it because you were saying it was the shoulder, and I was like, man, this was LeBron taking a month off.
No, no, but I'm saying it was. Yeah, you broke everything.
You broke everything. You broke everything.
You broke everything. But it was also good timing.
We missed you. We use that line, right? But here's where it doesn't apply.
Load management. LeBron and them automatically get a minimum of three to four months off.
Right.

Yeah.

First take on all year.

Right.

That's true.

So I want to hear that.

I want to see you take more vacations.

I do.

Because I want you around for a while.

I want no stress from Stephen A. Smith.

Right.

I want you to enjoy the fruits of your life.

You know what?

As Don King once said to me, from your lips to God's ears, I'm going to think about that.

Okay.

You know, I mean, it ain't going to be a month. I'm not going to do that because, you know, I mean, the ratings weren't the same and the show wasn't the same.
But I will tell you that I'm definitely going to sprinkle time off during the year. You deserve it.
You deserve it. If you take a week off and you see ratings go down, you come back and you're like, they need to know.
Save the show. But you know what? But But that's the thing and that's the difference between me now and years ago.
See, I don't like that now. I'm mad if the ratings drop because I know we got great people on the show that can keep the ratings up.
Now, can they do it 250 days out of the year like I do? Probably not. But the point is, is that we got tremendous talent at ESPN and my attitude and in the sports world period and because remember we bring people that's not from ESPN onto the show and so it's just important to me that you know I'm a part of a franchise like I'm the guy responsible for building a franchise that doesn't fold if I'm gone yeah I'm cool with that I'm cool cool.
I truly am because it ain't forever. Now, I don't want it to happen tomorrow because I got two and a half years left on my deal.
I want to be successful. But I'm saying that when it's my time, it's my time, man.
And it's like I don't want to be pushed out the door. I don't want to be somebody that everybody says, all right, it's time time for you to go but when I know it's time if that's sooner than later I'm good with it yeah as long as I have something to fall back on I'm good with it I love it I love it so straight shooter go check it out now a memoir of second chances and first takes my last last question yeah Kevin Durant refuses to come on this show and debate us right is he hiding from you too no um he's been on my show before he's never scared to debate um he believes and when it comes to basketball let's face reality we don't know as much as him no he's a basketball savant he is he's a basketball i know quite yeah but he's a basketball savant he's a basketball savant.
Kevin Durant and LeBron James is something special as well. You know, you have certain dudes that they just believe certain things are beneath them.
That's their attitude. I don't agree with it, especially since they want to pop shit every time we say something they don't like.
But in the same breath, I'm like, hey, that's the way it goes. it and you just deal with what you got to deal with they do have that right when it comes to the sport of basketball but when it comes to issue related matters you usually don't yeah and people are entitled to their opinion by the way i love that you uh have i saw you at the ufc in madison square garden uh we were sitting there because patty or uh molly the meatball is one of our fighters.
So we were sitting front row. You have the iPhone on your hip.
I thought that was just, I don't see that very often anymore. Power move.
Yeah, where am I supposed to put it? In my jacket or something? Or in your pocket? You were in jeans. Yeah, but I don't like pulling it out of my pocket.
And I don't like putting it in my inside pocket because then it dips. I just hadn't seen it in a while.
And it's not even. And I instantly respected it.
I don't like it like that. You got a holster in case somebody calls and it's not.
That's right. You whipped it out.
And I used to have two phones. I used to have two phones, but then that just makes you look crazy suspicious.
Well, yeah, so it's true. We talked to Mike Irvin about that.
I'm trying to have peace at home. Michael Irvin actually told us he's got two phones, one for people that are trying to get money from him and the other for people that are trying to give him money.
So he likes picking up that phone. I don't blame him.
Because he was the playmaker since the 80s. He kind of knows what he's doing.
Well, thank you very much. Yes, this has been great.
Everyone go buy the book, Straight Shooter. It's out now.
Obviously, you know where to find him on ESPN. You have your podcast, No Mercy.
StraightShooterBook.com as well. You can go there online.
I don't want to light a fire, but we are the number one sports podcast, not you. Dude, don't tell me.
I don't have a sports podcast. Not yet.
A podcast. I didn't want one.
Shit. Oh, God damn it.
I walked in that trap. I didn't want a sports.
I didn't want a sports. I've done everything there is to do in sports.
I didn't want to do a sports podcast. I really didn't want to do a sports podcast.
I just don't want you to start one. If you wanted to do one, would you be number one? ESPN wanted me to do a sports podcast for the longest time.
I wasn't interested. Would you be number one? You know what? I don't know.
You know why? Because you already see me talking about so many sports opinions on First Take. If you only did a podcast.
Oh, no, I'd be number one. I don't know about that.
I'd be number one. Without question.
I wouldn't even worry about it. If I did a sports podcast and I didn't have any other outlets, the only way you could find me was to come to my podcast? Oh, please.
I mean, I'd easily be number one then. All right.
I got an audio book out too. Okay.
And you read it? Oh, I mean, that would be, you have to have that. Yes.
So on your way out, just so you know, we do have one last surprise here. We do have Skip Bayless and we got him to come here.
You want to bring him in? Some Skip Bayless look alike because the damn show ain't Skip. No, it's not Skip.
Skip ain't flying. It's not Skip.
Skip ain't flying. Skip don't want to leave LA.
Yeah, that's true. That's a fact.
All right, well, thank you so much, Stephen A. Smith.
You're always welcome on anytime you want to come on. We really appreciate it.
I appreciate y'all having me, man. Thank you.
It was a lot of fun. Stephen A.
Smith was brought to you by our very good friends over at the Barstool store because that's us. Right now you can shop on Football Girl, Football Guy, and PMT Football Patch Trucker Hat merch over there.
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Wear what the pros wear, store.barstoolsports.com. All right, let's finish up with some guys on chicks henry henry time to read henry sup dad cat pft and boys i went home this weekend and got roasted by my mom saying the reason i'm still single is because my hair changes color every week do you think guys are afraid to ask a girl out with dyed hair or is my mom just stuck in the past with a conservative view on what guys want i think i think that when it comes to girls hair guys just don't guys don't recognize girls when they change their hair all the time so like i'll see a girl with uh short hair and maybe i'm used to seeing her long hair but her hair is put up and i won't actually recognize that that's the same person sometimes you guys have too many different variables on your face and hair that you can change up it gets confusing it also depends like is she saying like she's got she's going from like blonde to brunette or is she like going purple purple I stand with your mom wow you won't you won't find I mean you won't find you won't find a boyfriend if you do that why not because it's just weird what if you see people hair colors, it's weird.
I don't know. I see it and I'm like, what's going on here? I like weird hair colors if it's just a consistent weird hair color, though.
If you don't change it up. I don't know.
Anytime I see someone with green hair, purple hair, I'm just like, what's up, weirdo? What if they're styling it, though? Are we still doing it? Is there someone I'm forgetting? Is Max laughing? Is there someone I'm thinking... Like, am I mocking someone we know? This may have been written by an employee that works here.
Is there someone here who has weird hair? What? No, no, what is it? No, tell me. That's fine.
I... From upstairs, like, sent it to me.
It was like, will you ask this? And then memes forgot to send it last time. And does she, what color is her hair? It changes a lot.
It changes, like, every week. It's like purple a lot of times.
You want to come talk to me? I'll echo what your mom's saying. Like, I'm sorry.
Oh, yes. You are scaring guys off because you don't know, like, green hair.
Come on. It's Animal Kingdom.
Those colors mean poisonous. Yeah.
Thank you, Billy billy yeah are we still doing the thing where girls are dying their hair gray and trying to look like they're 60 years old that was a gray is a gray color that was that was kind of that was like but it was like silver that kind of like a silver silver no but there were some girls that i saw that were like 28 years old that dyed their hair,

and now they intentionally look like they're 60.

Wait, what colors is she dyeing her hair?

Give me some of the colors.

I've seen purple.

I've seen pink.

I don't know what else.

I've seen those two colors.

Yeah.

Your mom is right.

Sorry that we have to be the ones to tell you this.

I disagree. I think it's fine, but you just have to stick with one color.
But not have it be purple or purple. No, you can do purple if you stay with purple.
If you switch it up all the time, then it's like, what is this, a mood ring type thing? Yeah, confusing. I went to a liberal arts college.
There was a lot of colored hair. You stayed away.

Oh, okay.

Because they were usually going to get into an argument with you

about some sort of political thing.

Like your stance on World War II.

Yeah.

How you think Dana White wasn't in the wrong.

That kind of stuff.

Wasn't even Tamar Hamlin.

Billy sometimes thinks that.

Yeah, Tamar Hamlin.

You're definitely in on that, right?

What? That's a body double? Dude. I saw it on Twitter last night.
Someone tweeted something like, I just stumbled upon the fact that there are people out there who think that it's a Damar Hamlin body double, and the first thought in my head was like, Billy's definitely in this room. Okay, okay, okay.
Trust Tree, I don't think he's dead. Okay.
Oh, wow. But you don't think it was him at the game? It was very snowy, that shot, conveniently.
So, I mean, I did bring this up on Sunday. Yeah, yeah.
Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. I thought that was a joke.
You guys shot me down immediately. I did not think it was a serious thing.
Well, because it wasn't a serious thing at all. But I did get a couple people that DMed me that were like, hey, I just want to acknowledge you, PFT.
I heard that you brought up the DeMar Hamlin stunt double thing, and it's bullshit that everybody just shot that down, immediately moved on. I'm with you, but I understand why you couldn't explore that more fully.
And then I went to the guy's profile, and he's just insane. Right.
So Billy kind of Billy kind of Billy wants to believe. It's not a hundred it's like one of those things where it's like it's there.
So with any conspiracy theory let me ask you just a simple question. Jamar Hamlin went into the locker room to see his Bills players, all the teammates.
And then they realized it wasn't him and played badly. No, no, no.
But you're saying now that the entire team is like not one person has told another person that it was a body double. Because all it would take is one person to text a friend being like, dude, they brought in a body double.
And then it becomes and then it's fire. You know, like, look, no, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, like, it was just there was just like, I looked at the evidence.
I'm not. I didn't get any conclusions.
talking about here. That part that, though, with conspiracy theories, do you know how many people would have to be in on it and not say anything? That's when it always falls apart.
Okay, okay, okay. There would have to be, like, literally hundreds of people in Buffalo in that stadium to be in on that.
Well, to be fair, if any team could pull it off, I think it would be the Bills. They are, like, a very insulated.
You know what? How crazy would it have been if DeMar Hamlin was a twin like the McCourtney twins? Yeah. Where then we'd really get the conspiracies cooking.
Like, is one dead? Is one alive? Did they switch him out? Why was he wearing goggles? It was snowy. I don't think he was wearing goggles.
I think that might have been a lie. He was wearing some he was wearing some when he was when he was driving in he was okay snowy he had he had a mask on that covered up his mouth and his nose he had a sheisty which probably has something to do with the fact that he's uh immunocompromised because his heart stopped right right and then um they probably didn't want him like interacting with the public that much because he probably still has a bunch of broken ribs and maybe a cracked sternum because he got CPR for like 12 minutes.
True, true. Yeah.
But that was then what? It is kind of crazy that it snowed so much. And the Bills did play bad after he went to the locker room.
God's kind of in on this, too. That's the most convincing argument is that the Bills lost.
But then they would definitely say we lost because a body double showed up. Yeah, it was fake.
That's the easiest excuse ever ever. Like Stephon Diggs would be like, hey, the reason why we sucked was a fake DeMar showed up.
So now, wait, now we might be looking at like an Avril Lavigne type situation where next year, whoever, well, you think DeMar's a clone next year? Yeah, maybe. No, I'm just raising it so we can have the conversation.
I knew it was one of those things where I was like, this is going to get me. This is going to get me.
They're totally going to make fun of me if I even mention any of this. No, I knew you were in on it.
I saw it and I was like, yeah, this is Billy. I'll be in on it.
Yeah. Oh, you'll be in on it.
It's a bit. It's a bit.
I wasn't going to raise it until you were like, you definitely think that. And you do.
I don't. I do think that Billy consciously sometimes raises sometimes raises his hand he's like I will sacrifice my brain and I will believe in this just because as a bit I want to believe in it exactly but then you buy into it there's so many people would have to have been involved in that and not one person text anyone I'm dude I mean you probably could even tell from up close okay all right two left one is a great great business opportunity.
One, I'm just. I mean, you probably could even tell from up close.
Okay.

All right.

Two left.

One is a great,

great business opportunity.

One.

I'm just going to hope this is fake.

Hey,

PMT fellas.

I've got a wild question today.

Me and my boyfriend have been together for four years.

He might propose soon.

I love him,

but we have an issue.

He may have got my cousin pregnant.

They went to a New Year's party together and I couldn't go because of work. He went with my cousin who is kind of my best friend and they are friends too.
They both got super fucked up and she just had a pregnancy test and it came back positive. They both blacked out and don't remember the night and so did their connection to the party.
They woke up in different beds alone which is good but there are no other guys we have a connection to at the party. I haven't confronted my boyfriend or asked him, what should I do? Thanks, guys.
Love you. This is wild.
I'm just gonna hope this is like a movie plot that we're not. So, alright, let me see if I got this straight.
Because the two options aren't great. Let me see if I get this straight.
Your boyfriend went to a wedding. Your cousin was at the wedding.
No, New Year's party. New Year's party your your cousin was there best friend slash cousin one of those one of those deals and they both got blacked out yep didn't sleep in the same room as each other nope but then now she's pregnant and she didn't have sex with anybody else that she knows of that she knows of i mean it's the easy solution she has to have the baby and you have to raise the as your own child.
And just never talk about it again. This has got to be the plot of the movie.
I hope so, but it's juicy enough that I want to throw it out there. That's actually like a very salacious family secret that you can then, like, you know, the parents who raised the child, even though the mother wasn't actually the mother, can tell the child when the child's like 40.
Does that count as cheating, really? You blacked out? You're both blacked out. And his best friend.
And you didn't even sleep over. Yeah, his family.
You didn't even sleep over. You woke up.
You don't remember it. You never had any intention on doing it.
It just kind of happened. Yeah.
I hope that's a plot to a movie, but if it's not, I want up yeah follow up it seems like yeah let's do come to the studio we'll do a live pregnancy show yes like more yeah we'll pay for airfare immaculate conception could be jesus could be second coming yep yep fact all right last one hey boys my boyfriend is obsessed with this startup idea after listening to PMT last week. Last week, after Billy talked about cats not thriving in apartments, he had an idea for a subscription-based box service where he captures rats in New York City and sends them monthly to cat owners for their cats to hunt.
He even has gone as far as creating a logo and buying rat hunting equipment. Please tell him this is a stupid idea.
He also has another startup idea where instead of

euthanizing your old cat, you host

a large party with 3,000 cats

and have your elderly cat OD

so it goes out with a bang.

He calls it Project X for cats.

I like both these ideas.

So it's like a catnip? OD on catnip

at the end? I have a box

full of catnip that got sent to me.

Why? I was going to smoke it with Donnie. Okay.
That's a good answer. Experiment.
Yep. Totally normal answer.
Duh. So you're going to catch rats and send it to people.
I'm in. Where can we invest? So the premise is to give your cat exercise.
The premise is to let rats loose in your apartment. Yeah, I was going to say, do you really think that there's a big market out there for people that want more rats in their apartment? We don't know.
Untap Market. I'm in.
I want more ideas from this guy. What the hell? I want all the ideas.
You know what I actually learned the other day? There's a huge market for pigeons. There's actually people capture pigeons in Philadelphia and sell them to hunting places to shoot.
And it's good to get paraphernalia to jail. Pigeon racing, Mike Tyson.
Also, they're delicious. Ever had squab? So good.
You didn't have a question about girls going on the guy trips? Oh, yeah. Last one.

My boyfriend's 30th birthday is this weekend. Husband.
My husband's 30th birthday is this weekend. Are they still? It's kind of dicey, right? Yeah.
My husband's 30th birthday is this weekend. Is your husband rich? My husband's 30th birthday is this weekend.
He's having all the boys out to a place, some ski village. Aspen.
All of the girlfriends and wives were invited but they can no longer go. He's asking me to go but it's just going to be me and five guys.
Should I go or not? No. Yeah, definitely.
But he wants me to go. No, you should go.
It sounds like he said he wants me to go. Here's the thing.
He really, really does. It sounds like he really wants you to go.
Plus, you know what? You're cool. You're not like all the other girls.
It's not like it's a big thing that you're invading a guys trip. You're the cool girl.
You're pretty much one of the guys. You should go.
Go. Would he be scared to tell you you can't come? No.
Totally. Definitely not.
Really? You don't think that he's, like, afraid of you? No. We're married.
We can tell each other anything. Quick question.
On this trip, is your husband going to be allowed to jack off? Well, no. That's why she would go.
To monitor him? Yeah. Got it.
Is this dan orlovsky yeah that's swept barstool this past week to the mean girl pod yeah shout out to me they really embraced debate with that one they did i think my favorite part of that debate was uh the response of like you know it's because like most people that are married hate each other yeah yeah that one was was tough. That's definitely from somebody who has never been married before.

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

Numbers.

Hank, have you ever gotten this?

No. Have you thought about the 12 that you got wrong the other night?

Yeah.

It hurts, doesn't it?

Mm-hmm.

You want another 12?

Yeah.

No.

No.

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

Let's give them two. No, no, no.
We'll wait until the Cowboys lose again, then we'll give them 12. No.
I don't think so. I don't think so.
Let's give him two.

No, no, no.

We'll wait until the Cowboys lose again, then we'll give him 12.

69.

It'll be 13, actually.

Let's go with 42.

42.

Jackie Robinson?

Yeah.

Someone actually DM me.

In honor of Hall of Fame, though?

Someone DM me some logic behind it. All right, I'll go 17.

I was cool with it.

18.

I'm going to 69.

20.

No, I already did.

Oh, you already took 69? Yeah. 92.
All right, Hank. You've never gotten this? No, I have not.
Are you sure? I think so. Come on, Jackie.
Oh, what did you say, PFT? 92. 97.
That was really close for me. Third time.
Love you guys. 97.
You're never getting it. Jack rabbits are different.
Have you admitted that? Wait, that's two out of three shows. Oh.
Wow, that's so easy. It's never been easier.
Have you admitted it to yourself that you're never getting it? No I believe I'm not even going to say it I'll say it after I win The second you admit to yourself that you're never going to get it You're going to get it right afterwards No, that's giving up You want to do one more? For money, for money, 69 Yeah, this counts, this counts. 42.
17. 69.
97.

20.

18.

Back to back, 97.

It's hot.

It's hot right now.

50.

Oh, damn.

You're never going to get it.

Eighth time, now tied for second.

That one did count, so make sure you add it to Hank's never getting it list.

Domestic rabbits can't breed with wild rabbits.

Too genetically dissimilar We'll be coming for your love again Shine away I'll be coming for your love again Needless to say Our hearts and heads Spocky and stone away Slow down my mind Say it to me Thanks, baby. Let's see.
I won't sit here. It's about me.
It's over there. Wait.

I'm sorry.

I'm not my job.

Okay. Stay up to me.

I'm not afraid to be safe and sorry.

Stay up to me.

I'm not afraid to be safe and sorry.

Stay up to me.

Stay up to me.

Stay up to me.

Stay up to me.

Stay up to me.

Stay up to me. Take on me Thank you.
I'll be coming to you anyway. Take on me.
I am. Take on me.
Take on me.

Take on me.

Take on me. I'm out.