Coach Jim Calhoun, Grit Week 2021 & Mt Rushmore Of Songs To Listen To While Driving

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Speaker 3 So, y'all know that we're big fans of Cracker Barrel.

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Speaker 5 On today's Pardon My take, Grit Week 2021 is finally here. We're hitting the road.
We have an incredible interview with Jim Calhoun to start the week off.

Speaker 5 We actually went up to Connecticut to interview him on Thursday. We're going to be on the road.
We're going to be traveling around old school style in the grittiest parts of the country.

Speaker 5 Kind of a throwback to our first grit week, second grit week as well. We also have

Speaker 5 preseason football, who's back of the week, a Monday reading from Billy, and

Speaker 5 the Mount Rushmore of Road Trip Songs. Is that correct? Yes, road trip songs.

Speaker 6 When cool, creamy ranch meets tangy, bold buffalo, the whole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Speaker 4 At participating, McDonald's.

Speaker 5 Okay, let's go.

Speaker 5 Down in the streets, there is violence,

Speaker 5 and there's lots of work to be done. But I know that's a wonderful

Speaker 5 place to hang out the washing.

Speaker 5 And you can't blame it all on the sun. But let them know we're gonna rap on to electric marvino.

Speaker 5 I never take it higher, higher, higher.

Speaker 5 We're gonna run onto electric oven. Let's do it.
I'm rapid, take it higher, higher, higher, hallelujah.

Speaker 5 I'm so hot like a soldier,

Speaker 5 and I can't afford a king on TV. You know you woman said,

Speaker 5 Keep it in my eyes, I'm a worrier,

Speaker 5 and I can't afford fitness young man. Oh, make we run onto electric oven.
Let's do it. I'm back, we're taking higher, higher, higher, higher.

Speaker 5 We're gonna run onto electric

Speaker 1 Pardon my take presented by virtual sports.

Speaker 5 Welcome to part of my take presented by Coors Light. It's the official beer of summer.
It's also the official beer of Grit Week 2021. Today is Monday, August 16th, and welcome to Grit Week.

Speaker 5 Did we do the special Grit Week music? Yeah, we did.

Speaker 7 The Special Electric Avenue?

Speaker 5 Yeah. Who's that?

Speaker 7 Is that Powerman 5000, a little PM 5K? Who knows?

Speaker 5 Who cares? It's fucking Grit Week.

Speaker 7 And guess what? Football is back.

Speaker 5 Football is all the way back.

Speaker 7 It's sponsored by Coors Life. Big guy.

Speaker 5 I don't know if you've seen these new cams. I have.

Speaker 7 They're incredible. We finally made it in life where our faces are on beer cans.

Speaker 5 On a can.

Speaker 7 My face has been inside beer for a long time. Now it's beautiful.

Speaker 5 It's beautiful. And it's Grit Week.
And it's your real face piece. And it's real face.

Speaker 5 How about that?

Speaker 7 Getting out of the Avvi life.

Speaker 5 You look good. You look skinny.

Speaker 7 I do, yeah. Well, they had the same photographer take this picture as the one that came out discord.

Speaker 5 I look skinny, too. I don't know why.

Speaker 7 They really, yeah, they really gave us jawlines.

Speaker 5 Grit week is here. We're in the studio right now.
We're literally hopping on the the bus the minute we finish taping the show. We have Jim Calhoun, which some people are saying is a top 10 interview.

Speaker 5 That's pretty much just me and Liam, but I think you would agree, too.

Speaker 7 He was awesome.

Speaker 5 Incredible. Incredible.

Speaker 7 I'm going to talk to him for three hours.

Speaker 5 It's rare that we have those interviews where it's like, I don't want to leave. I just want to hang out with you.
He was definitely one of those guys. So we have that.
We're going to be on the road.

Speaker 5 We're going to be out. We're going to D.C.
We're going to Pittsburgh. We're going to Cleveland.
We're going to Buffalo. We'll see if you see the van, if you see the RV on the way, give us a honk.

Speaker 5 It's a silver bullet. It is literally a silver bullet.
It's wrapped in Coors Light. We look awesome on it.
But yes, preseason football is here.

Speaker 5 Are we overreacting? Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 7 But I think you only have to react in the preseason. Everything is overreaction.
I do have my list of rookie rankings.

Speaker 5 Well, if Justin Fields isn't number one, then I don't know what you're doing.

Speaker 7 Okay, well, no, he's 1A. He's tied for 1A.
Okay. Number one is the guy that thought that he actually became Aaron Donald while wearing an Aaron Donald jersey.

Speaker 5 Yes, with the woman who threw a full drink at him with his back turned, and then he decided to take on the entire row in front of him.

Speaker 7 That guy had the off-white Aaron Donald jersey. He's probably the only person that owns that ugly ass.
That's the one that has like the 17 different fonts on it. Yes.

Speaker 7 So he showed up wearing the Aaron Donald jersey and he became Aaron Donald. He was like, oh, you're going to triple team me? That's fine.
I'll take you guys all on.

Speaker 7 The lady, the ultimate agent of chaos, who just lobs a Diet Coke over the top, hits the guy, and then he just goes fucking berserk.

Speaker 5 Crazy.

Speaker 7 That guy, and yeah, he kind of did get his ass kicked. He did, but in a hilarious way.

Speaker 5 They're punching his butt. It was body shot.

Speaker 5 They were literally kicking his ass.

Speaker 7 Some men pay good money to go to Thailand and have that same procedure done on them. Yes.

Speaker 5 So the Chargers played the Rams. These jerseys make no sense.
I saw a picture afterwards of like Northwestern players.

Speaker 5 I think it was actually Coach Fitz tweeted out like Northwestern NFL players, and I couldn't figure out who was on the Chargers and who was on the Rams because they're wearing the same jersey.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it it was ridiculous. But yeah, as far as the actual rookie rankings go, I think it's a tie between Trey Lance, Justin Fields, Mac Jones, and Kellen Mond.

Speaker 5 Well, if we're going just based on yardage and having to throw a touchdown pass, then Justin Fields is number one. And I'm not going to overreact.

Speaker 7 And Vicat, he did run for a touchdown.

Speaker 5 So I'm not going to overreact. I'm going to just, I'm going to be cool with it.
Nice dab sneeze there, Billy.

Speaker 5 But it was fun. It made me feel alive.
I have one problem with the preseason, though.

Speaker 5 I think that the preseason

Speaker 5 should mimic the regular season and that we should have a full Sunday of football with a red zone to get us ready. Because, like, the random start times and, like, oh, it's Sunday.
It's Sunday.

Speaker 5 That's normal. Sunday at one is a game, but there was a Thursday night game.
There was a Friday night game. There was a game on Saturday at one.
There was a game at four.

Speaker 5 Give me, let me actually practice what it feels like to get up on a Sunday and get my body ready and watch every team play.

Speaker 7 It's preseason for us fans as well.

Speaker 5 It's a dude. But it just like comes to get in rhythm.

Speaker 7 I need to get in rhythm. They need to have all the games on, at least in like an easy way for me to watch.
I'm sick of having to look up every single time, like, how do I watch this game?

Speaker 7 What illegal site can I stream this game off?

Speaker 7 It's tough. It's tough for us on fans, but you know what? This is why we, this is our version of two days in the offseason.
This is how we get ready during training camp.

Speaker 5 Tim Tebow got a Target. That was it?

Speaker 7 Well, that wasn't it. He also had a devastating crackback.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 Tim Tebow, you know what?

Speaker 7 For all the people who had a great time making fun of Tim Tebow because, yeah, maybe he missed his block and maybe he hit his own teammate harder than he blocked the real guy, but he did his job.

Speaker 7 He set the edge. That's a plus play, as Danny Woodhead said.

Speaker 7 So I don't know. I'd like to see Trevor Lawrence maybe target Tim a couple times.

Speaker 5 He did once. Yeah, but then

Speaker 7 Tayvon Austin caught it.

Speaker 5 Stole it. Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 7 Stole it from him. Tim Tebow should get a half a reception for that.

Speaker 5 There was a lot of overreacting, myself included.

Speaker 5 But there's a lot of talk, too, that maybe this is the best quarterback class of all time. That was also thrown out there.

Speaker 7 It's a big time league. The future is bright for the NFL right now.

Speaker 5 Good hands. They're in good hands.
And throw in Jordan Love, too, who looked okay, even though he had to have an MRI afterwards, which came back clean. But why get an MRI?

Speaker 7 Yeah, there's nothing to be worried about.

Speaker 7 It's just getting an MRI. Interesting.

Speaker 5 The only other note I had from preseason football is the taunting rule fucking sucks. It's going to be brutal.
And

Speaker 5 it's going to be similar. What was the rule that they implemented a few years ago that we basically complained out of the league?

Speaker 7 It was the

Speaker 7 pass interference reviewable penalty was one, right?

Speaker 5 No, but that one we unfortunately had to deal with for a full year. There was something that they did.

Speaker 7 There was targeting on the offense, like lowering the crown of your head. People were like, you're going to call that on every single run?

Speaker 5 There was some rule that I remember having to deal with it in the preseason in the first few weeks, and then we just complained it away.

Speaker 7 We need to do that with the taunting rule it is the dumbest rule ever it's there was the the colts game was when a running back um i can't remember who it was leMay maybe he ran for a nice first down got up flexed 15 yard penalty and if you saw the way that the ref threw the flag on that I actually have a problem with the ref if you're going to expect these guys to not taunt after a play as an official you have to hold yourself to the same standard the ref did one of those things where he threw the flag as high as he could in the air yes could have landed on anybody it was very dangerous like playing lawn darts with a thing.

Speaker 7 And if you're a ref and you're calling a taunting penalty, you need to not taunt while you're calling that penalty. Correct.
And if you do taunt, you should get a penalty. Yes.

Speaker 7 And you should have to go take

Speaker 5 the sidelines should get flags.

Speaker 7 Yeah, the players should get a flag.

Speaker 5 Every player should have one flag.

Speaker 7 No, give it to the coaches.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, but

Speaker 5 they can't. You think that Belichick will be able to tell the difference between the red and the yellow flag? Like, he's just

Speaker 5 grabbing anything out of his. That's true.
He's just grabbing anything out of his sock in disgust.

Speaker 7 All right, then it should be the coach's son. Perfect.

Speaker 7 So Steve Belichick should have the flag.

Speaker 5 Should just run around with the flag, be able to flag the official.

Speaker 7 Deuce Gruden should have the flag.

Speaker 5 It was great, though. Preseason football, you can't tell anything, but you also, like I said last week, you can just look at it however you want.

Speaker 5 Like, I watched the whole Bears game, and I watched Justin Fields be electric, and everyone's like, well, dude, it's against the second-team defense. I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 5 And then I watched Trey Lance, and I was like, well, he kind of sucks. Everyone's overreacting because he had an 80-yard pass.
Yeah, but that was the best. Yeah, but

Speaker 5 that's just how you watch preseason.

Speaker 7 I'm digesting the preseason by only watching the highlights that the NFL main account tweets out.

Speaker 7 If I'm not specifically watching that game, I will only know what you did in that game by your most spectacular highlight.

Speaker 7 So if we're going off that, I would say Trey Lance, number one, Justin Fields, number two. Trevor Lawrence had that one pass.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 35-yard pass.

Speaker 7 The entire stands stood up and their mouths were wide open like they had never seen a quarterback before. It is Jacksonville.
It's been a couple years since Blake was in town.

Speaker 7 But they flipped out, so I'm going to put that number three. And then Sam Ellinger had a really good face, right, Billy?

Speaker 5 Billy is amazing debut. Amazing debut.
And his hair looks awesome.

Speaker 5 He's got like the spiky, kind of punky quarterback look going.

Speaker 7 I'm just going to put this one in the tickler. I think, I'm going to zig well everybody's ags.
I think Mac Jones might be the rookie of the year.

Speaker 5 Oh, because he looked good, too.

Speaker 7 He looked good. He wasn't spectacular.
No. But Belichuck doesn't need him to be spectacular.
Yeah. Just manage the game.
If Mac Jones goes, oh, fuck now. I'm going to have to do math.

Speaker 7 If Mac Jones goes...

Speaker 5 Probably he's not going to start, right? Maybe he will. I don't know.

Speaker 7 Probably not. Cam Newton, I noticed that his pass didn't look like he had completely forgotten how to throw football.
Yeah. So he's maybe a little bit better than he was last year.

Speaker 7 But let's just say Mac Jones gets in after this, like week four. If he gets in week four, then how many games? 13 games?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 7 If he goes

Speaker 7 nine and four,

Speaker 7 I think he gets rookie of the year.

Speaker 5 But I think if Trevor Lawrence throws more than 20 touchdown passes, he gets rookie of the year.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean? Because it always, especially because the Jaguars, he's not expected to win. He just has to worry about stats.

Speaker 7 Yeah, if Drew Locke is kind of in a rookie season again, I noticed that. We're just treating everybody.

Speaker 5 Jordan Love in another rookie season?

Speaker 7 Every year it's like Drew Locke, you know, he's a young kid. He's still learning how to play the game.

Speaker 5 He did throw that one bomb, which looked good. No, he looked pretty good for a rookie for sure.
Yes, for a rookie, he looked good.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I'm still going to go with Mac Jones as my rookie of the year.

Speaker 5 I got something. Yeah.
The Ravens have won 18 straight preseas. I saw that, yes.

Speaker 5 It's crazy. Dynasty.
It's nuts. Harbaud is not taking his foot off the gas.
But Jameis Winston looked good. Jameis Winston looked good.
Start Jameis Winston.

Speaker 7 I saw some bad news, though. There was one article that said that Taysom Hill is

Speaker 7 the assumed starter for the year. That's bullshit.
It is bullshit. Hashtag start Jameis.
It's bullshit. Give me Jameis.
Feed me Jameis.

Speaker 5 How can you start Taysom Hill? Because then you can't use him for the gadget place. Right.
Like, you need to start Jameis just so that you can bring... Well, even start Jameis.
Do it like

Speaker 5 start Jameis and then take him out after the first series and have Taysom Hill. Just let Jameis start though.

Speaker 7 Jameis is kind of a gimmick quarterback, too. He is like a gadget himself.
Yeah. He's a walking gadget.
They're both changes of paces from each other. Right.

Speaker 5 So just, yeah. So that's what I'm saying.
Like go old school like college football. Let him split it up by quarters or drives.

Speaker 7 Why don't we have them both on the field at the same time?

Speaker 5 That works too. I'd be like, they did that last year with Drew Brees and Taysom.
Yeah. Yeah, you can absolutely do that.

Speaker 5 All right, anything else? I mean, it's fun to see football. It does feel a little weird when you invest like a few hours.
You're like, okay, and that didn't matter. Yeah.
Like,

Speaker 5 even little things where they're downing the ball with way too much time left, you know, not even trying to win games, like weird shit like that. You're like, oh, yeah, this game doesn't matter.

Speaker 7 It is kind of a throwback if you're having to watch the game on normal channels. By normal channels, I mean not the red zone.

Speaker 7 So if they're airing like a game on NFL Network and then a game on CBS, having to time the return from commercial break thing where you get back to the game right before the snap happens.

Speaker 7 I'm really good at that. I haven't gotten to flex that muscle in a long time because I'm a red zone guy for the most part.
And when we're in the office, we've got all the TVs set up.

Speaker 7 But it's good to just smash that last channel button. I don't get enough practice with that.

Speaker 5 Seriously, though, dude, at least the third week of preseason should be all Sunday games with a Sunday night game and let us practice.

Speaker 7 It was very cool to see Ryan Fitzpatrick in a Washington football team uniform. I didn't know how he was going to look.
He's worn almost every other uniform in the NFL.

Speaker 7 He looks awesome in the Burgundy.

Speaker 5 He looks good in anything. Yeah.
You could put him in any uniform and he'd look like normal. All right, other big news coming from the weekend.
Our lacrosse team, the Water Dogs, are number one seed.

Speaker 5 And that's talking lacrosse.

Speaker 7 Job done. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean,

Speaker 5 they sucked. They were terrible.
We nagged them into being good. We told them to shoot more.
They now lead the league in shooting.

Speaker 5 I didn't even watch because I knew they were going to win.

Speaker 5 That's how good hands they're in now. I don't even watch.

Speaker 5 Well, also because football's back, so it's like even preseason. Real football's better than lacrosse, but I still knew that they were going to win.

Speaker 7 Real sports are happening. So you don't need to watch.
We can follow along online and figure out what's going to happen, but it is us against the world. Like nobody believed in the water dogs.

Speaker 7 No one did. The mainstream media, all these talking heads that have podcasts out there just hated the water dogs.
And you know what? The boys persevered. Yeah.

Speaker 7 So backstory, they fought through the hate. You know what? A hungry dog is a dangerous dog.
That's true. Don't feed your dogs in the morning.
Two wins away.

Speaker 5 Feed them all at night. Buy to the semifinals.

Speaker 5 Buy to the semifinals? Win the semis? Yeah, two wins away from winning the whole thing.

Speaker 5 Problem again, though, and I don't. Listen, everyone should watch lacrosse because we do own the team, but

Speaker 5 pretty sure the playoffs are on NFL Sunday. No, so the semifinals are on Labor Day weekend.

Speaker 5 Oh, okay, so we'll watch

Speaker 5 the championship. So actually, noon, week two, NFL Sunday.
If the Water Dogs want to be the best dogs possible, they would lose in the semifinals. So we don't have to watch them in the finals.

Speaker 5 I'm just saying it right now. I wouldn't be.
I wouldn't. That would be, I could spin that as, hey, that was a growth season.
You can't win it. You can't win the whole show in your second year.

Speaker 7 Worst case scenario is...

Speaker 5 Sounds like you don't want them to win. No, no, no.
No, I don't.

Speaker 5 I just said I do not. I don't want to have to be burdened with them on an NFL Sunday.

Speaker 7 Worst case scenario is they win the semifinals, they make it to the finals, and then they embarrass us on an NFL Sunday, and then throw us all the way off when we're having to get focused and think about what we're going to bet on for the afternoon games.

Speaker 7 We can't be dealing with the mental anguish of our water dog shitting the bed.

Speaker 5 I'm no time expert, but doesn't football not start till one? Football starts. And what time's the game? The championship games at noon either.
So can they get the game in in 45 minutes?

Speaker 5 You can get half time. Get running clock.
If they could get the game in in 45 minutes, I'm in. I'm in.
I'm in for that game.

Speaker 5 Just hurry it up.

Speaker 7 If they get to the championship, can Jake and I go?

Speaker 5 Yeah, sure. Yeah, whatever.
I don't care. It's NFL Sunday.
That'd be the dumbest decision of your life.

Speaker 7 You can go, but you'll be fired just for making a terrible choice.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 well, I know, but we'd be back by when. Yeah, Billy, you'll be back.

Speaker 7 You'll be right on time.

Speaker 5 You can go.

Speaker 5 You can go. I will just judge you as a human being.

Speaker 7 I'll put it this way.

Speaker 5 We'll have it on.

Speaker 5 I was going to say a TV, but we're not. We'll have it on a laptop if they get to the finals.

Speaker 7 I don't think that anybody should watch the finals unless Jake is announcing them.

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 5 I'm not going to hardball with them.

Speaker 5 I might

Speaker 5 still want to watch it because it's NFL Summit.

Speaker 7 We'll put it on one of the televisions if Jake is announcing it.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's either me or Ceciliano.

Speaker 5 Oh, God.

Speaker 5 La Crosse or Ceciliano? Rock in a hard place. Yeah, Jesus Christ.
The devil's choice.

Speaker 7 Death? Is death an option? If you want.

Speaker 7 I did notice that our friend Randy Scott at ESPN had some bad words to say about us. Yeah.
Said that ownership of the suspect, Randy, listen, we're on good terms with you, Randy.

Speaker 7 We like you, Randy, but we will turn on you so fucking fast. We'll put you in that Ciciliano bucket.
Yeah,

Speaker 5 you're going to get an opinion about you, which you don't want to.

Speaker 5 Which is an opinion about you.

Speaker 7 Right now is my opinion of Randy Scott is he's a nice guy. Yeah,

Speaker 5 I like Randy Scott.

Speaker 7 Good guy. But I don't love you.

Speaker 5 If I have to think about you, Randy Scott, like for more than a minute, it's going to get bad. It's going to turn bad on you fast.
Yeah, we're not suspect.

Speaker 7 Suspect of being great owners it's us against you know what it really is it's not even the team against it's me and you against the world yeah at this point absolutely we've got hank is too hank and hank we've got we've got espn hating on us we've got our own twitter account fucking being part of the lamestream media hating on us are you not your fake news are you not an owner hank are you are you an o-word

Speaker 7 I still have to sign the thing you haven't signed the paperwork

Speaker 7 sign the papers sign the papers me and big cat we signed in blood yes blood in blood out of the world

Speaker 5 forever uh all right um Let's do who's back of the week and then we'll get to Jim Calhoun. By the way, yeah, let's do who's back of the week.
Then we'll get to Jim Calhoun.

Speaker 5 I was going to say something, but we're going to save it for after the Jim Calhoun interview.

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Speaker 5 Who's back of the week? Henry.

Speaker 5 How's your riffleball game? We lost in a Sweet 16. Gotcha.
Good run, though. But you've won it before.
We've won it before. It's an extremely hard tournament to win.
How many...

Speaker 5 What was the youngest person you played against?

Speaker 5 Probably like 18. Really? I thought you played against some like 13-year-olds.
No, it's gotten more competitive. Okay, there are some.

Speaker 5 There's probably like, I don't know, it's a 64-team tournament, so there's probably like 10 teams of like young people, some teams with all girls.

Speaker 5 But no,

Speaker 5 I also was gone for most of the day. I came back for the playoffs.
Are there any brawls? Won one playoff game. There actually was a brawl.
There was an old guy.

Speaker 5 Absolute asshole. He just throws too hard.
It's a charity tournament. Everyone's like, he's playing with his two sons.
He's like, dude, what are you doing?

Speaker 5 We've had problems with him in the past. That guy had a whole big thing.
He lost in the championship, though. Do you know what, though?

Speaker 5 I respect that guy because he's got issues that he has unattended for many, many years, and he just takes them out in a charity whiffleball tournament every year.

Speaker 7 That guy and his family, they're the O'Doyle family.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
But you know what I mean? Like, he probably should have seen a therapist a while ago. He has decided not to.
Go to BetterHelp if you want to.

Speaker 7 No, just watch Ted Lasso.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but or watch Ted Lasso

Speaker 5 or follow our friend B.W. Carlin.
It's okay to not be okay. Or you could just go to a charity wiffleball game and fight with everyone and throw gas.
Yeah, just throw absolute gas.

Speaker 5 It's either or. Yeah, it's either or.

Speaker 7 You don't have to say it's okay to not be okay because I think there's a better way around that. It's just saying positive vibes only.

Speaker 5 Yeah, positive vibes.

Speaker 7 So if you say positive vibes only, then you don't even have to worry about not being okay. Yep.

Speaker 5 Shout out to the Connor Brothers back-to-back champs. They were my neighbors growing up.
Dynasty?

Speaker 5 I'm not going to say that I influenced them because I played with their cousins growing up and they were too young to even play and they just watched us.

Speaker 5 I'm not going to say I inspired their passion for the game game and I'm the reason they won back-to-back championships. But I kind of added.
Dynasty? I like that. They've won two.

Speaker 5 There's been a couple back-to-back champs. I don't think anyone's won three.
So we'll see you next year.

Speaker 7 You're like Jimi Hendrix to John Mayer. If it weren't for you, there would be no them.

Speaker 5 Pretty much. Beautiful.
But speaking of brawls, fights in the stands, we talked about it before, but the video is great.

Speaker 5 The lady, it's one of those things where you see the video and then the other video comes out of the lady just taking the Coke and throwing it and just like literally just a match throwing it into a gasoline thing, and just turns into a brawl.

Speaker 5 The guy put up a good fight. He had the upper ground, and he was, I don't know what you would call his punches.
Well, he did a full-time windmill.

Speaker 5 He punched four people with one punch. He did a full, like, how can you slap backhand across the entire row? I also,

Speaker 5 and listen, there's going to be fights in NFL stadiums, but it felt a little wrong. Like, that stadium's new.
It's like going to a new house and ruining it. You know what I mean? Wait a couple years.

Speaker 5 Let it work itself in. You know what I mean? When you see a fight in the Oakland Coliseum, you're like, okay, this makes sense.
Or in Philadelphia, but like this one. But it's like, who's who's...

Speaker 5 It's a new house. Take your shoes off.
Yeah, but whose house is it? Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So I actually think that's on Rams fans.

Speaker 7 Fighting in public should be allowed as long as you all agree. No face shots.

Speaker 7 You should be allowed to just body everybody up all day long.

Speaker 5 It's called the We All Have to Go to Work on Monday rule.

Speaker 7 Exactly. Yeah, kidney shots, that's fine.
Reggie's break a couple ribs, go for it. Kick some shins.
Maybe one knee to the balls. That's okay.

Speaker 7 In the late stages of the fight. Yep.

Speaker 5 But yeah, that's pretty much it. All right.
Cool. Good.
Who's back? Awesome.

Speaker 5 Awesome. Who's back?

Speaker 7 My who's back of the week is the Taliban. Yeah.
The Taliban's back big time. Unfortunately, they are.
So the United States, we're evacuating Afghanistan.

Speaker 7 The Taliban is in the process of taking back over the country. Hank's shaking his head like, no, no.

Speaker 5 No, no, no, no. Is this hard factor? It's true.

Speaker 7 No, I I mean, are you saying the Taliban's not back?

Speaker 5 Did they ever leave? No, well,

Speaker 5 good point. Good point.
Probably.

Speaker 5 We're actually a scholar here.

Speaker 7 This is way too smart of a subject for us to really understand. The best way to describe it would be through a series of the office gifts.
So if you were to describe the Afghan war.

Speaker 5 We were Michael when the fire came.

Speaker 7 Yeah, Michael went. Well, initially, yeah, we were Michael when the fire came at first.
And then we were Kevin spilling the chili.

Speaker 7 And then we were Dwight and Michael raising the roof after we won, and then Michael snip, snap, snip, snap, and then Michael showing off his tiny little television, the R.

Speaker 7 Kelly television, and that's Obama's drone strike program being like, I got this. And then

Speaker 7 at the end, it's.

Speaker 5 How long did you think about this? It's just weekend.

Speaker 7 No, I thought about it on the way into the office. Got it, okay.
And then at the end, it's the senile old CEO getting pushed out, and that's Joe Biden. The Taliban is now hosting the meeting.
Got it.

Speaker 7 Boom. That's all you need to know about Afghanistan.
Okay.

Speaker 5 So yeah, the Taliban is back. PFT is celebrating.

Speaker 7 Also, my other who's back is just baseball.

Speaker 5 Major League. Yeah, well, I was my.
Can I do it? Who's back?

Speaker 7 Oh, I thought you were going to go Taliban.

Speaker 5 No, I was going to go baseball because the Thursday night game, we taped early. We were up in Connecticut after our Jim Calhoun interview, but that game was fucking awesome.
The Field of Dreams game.

Speaker 5 It's rare that baseball does something that everyone is like, holy shit, this was incredible. They did it.
That was fucking sick. And the uniforms are awesome.

Speaker 5 And Tom verducci was living out his like greatest fantasies by dress dressing up as an old-timey reporter by the way home runs into the cornfield he had that outfit ready to go he didn't have to go out and buy that yeah no he's got he's got a closet he was waiting for the day funny apps yeah and then uh obviously tim anderson hitting the walk-off was incredible with the fireworks and everything i know that good job baseball good job baseball you know that and the taunting and the taunting yeah you know that rob manford's going to be like we're going to mandate corn be planted in every outfield he's going to ruin overdo He's going to overdo the field of dreams.

Speaker 7 It was a great game, though. It was so awesome to watch.

Speaker 5 It was cool. It was awesome.

Speaker 7 Tony LaRusso looking at the corn and being like, I could make, just give me a bonfire and some metal. I'll make it still out here in center field.
Yeah,

Speaker 5 Tony LaRusa, God,

Speaker 5 he's going to win manager of the year. He is.
Like, that's going to be so funny when that happens. And everyone's going to be, what do we do now?

Speaker 7 There's something about baseball where actually, like, the drunkest team that fights the most is usually the team that wins. I don't know what it is about the the sport, but I love it.

Speaker 5 All right, Jake, your who's back of the week. Who's back of the week? Unfortunately, is father time because Roger Federer has opted out of the U.S.
Open. He's getting knee surgery.

Speaker 5 He's out for many months, so some are saying this is the day of the day. What a shame.

Speaker 5 So Djokovic is healthy, though? I believe he's playing in the U.S. Open.
That's coming up in a few weeks. Interesting.

Speaker 7 So this is

Speaker 7 how old is Federer right now? He's 40.

Speaker 7 A 40-year-old doesn't really get knee surgery and then be like, okay, I'm ready to come back. It's not like an Adrian Peterson.

Speaker 5 No, I'm sure it's a little cleanup. You think so? Yeah, it's cleanup.

Speaker 5 He'll be back. He said he's out for many months.
Oh, what is it? Many months. And Djokovic is going to keep on trucking.
You can't celebrate this. Oh, I absolutely can.
It's sports, baby.

Speaker 5 My guy is going to win it all.

Speaker 7 Is Djokovic allowed in the United States?

Speaker 5 Yeah. Why wouldn't he be? Are you sure? Aren't we going? U.S.
Open? No. Yeah, totally.
I'll be there. It's unfortunately when they're playing.

Speaker 7 There's a lacrosse game on, so I can't make it.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so that's unfortunate. Shame about about it, actually.
For the sport. For the sport.
Yeah. I agree.
It does. It is.
He's a legend. A legend was what you took the words out of my mouth.

Speaker 5 I can think of all the times that I watched Federer play. That one time when Jokovich beat him in Wimbledon, that was pretty much the only time.
And I have nothing but fond memories.

Speaker 5 So hopefully he's good in retirement. Is he the only Swiss person? Or he comes back.
Or he comes back.

Speaker 7 Is he the only Swiss person that you can name?

Speaker 7 I don't think that there's another. I think it's.

Speaker 5 Sam Fabrinka, another person. What about Caroline Woznor's Aki? Is she the Aki? Is she? Is she actually Swiss hot? No, is she Swiss? No, I don't think so.
The Swiss misleading.

Speaker 7 She's Danish.

Speaker 5 Danish mislaid. That's the same shit.
Come on. They're both red and white flags.
Yeah, that's

Speaker 5 why I'm on

Speaker 7 just North Switzerland. So hopefully the Fed comes.

Speaker 5 If the Danes had come up with a fucking cool

Speaker 5 knife before the Swiss, we would be talking about them today.

Speaker 7 Yeah, or if the Swiss had learned how to clap in an aesthetically pleasing way. Yes.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, same thing. All right, Billy, your who's back of the week.

Speaker 7 My who's back of the week is bulking season. Summer is winding down.
Our friend Roan commented that since it was time.

Speaker 7 What? What? We talked about this, I think, on Friday's show.

Speaker 5 But that's a closing follow-up to follow-up. Billy's show.
Oh, okay. This is a follow-up.
So it's

Speaker 5 like an encore to the song.

Speaker 7 I think that we should all just start bulking.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 That's not hard for me.

Speaker 5 I've got a football season.

Speaker 7 I've decided to lose weight.

Speaker 5 Oh.

Speaker 7 But I'll probably be going back on that week three. But it's a good time.

Speaker 5 I think he's going to get a six-pack. We're going to be on a caloric.
If we want to just redo the whole segment.

Speaker 5 Are you going to get a six-pack? Grit week next year? Can I call it? Yeah. Okay.
All right. I actually have come up with.
I've said it. I really meant it.
I've come up with my own

Speaker 7 Big Ben 7 diet that I think we can stick to.

Speaker 5 The foods here. You just know.
It's perfect.

Speaker 5 We're going to be operating a caloric surplus. It's going to be after Grit Week that we'll start.

Speaker 5 Yeah. All right.
We're coming out right now.

Speaker 5 Our order of like 500 chicken wings just showed up.

Speaker 7 We're going to be operating a caloric surplus, so we have to do powerlifting.

Speaker 5 Oh, work out. Okay.
All right, we're going to put it on good mass.

Speaker 7 All right, so what I'll be doing is I'm going to be doing, just I'll eat a salad for lunch every day. And then on Sunday, that's my cheat day.
I'll eat whatever I want. Okay.

Speaker 7 And then don't ask me what I eat on Saturdays. That's my diet.

Speaker 5 That works. That works.
All right, Billy. Good.
Who's back? Can you go get the food? Yep. All right.
Awesome.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we're going to bulk. That's perfect.
We're going to bulk. All right, let's get to our interview.
We have Jim Calhoun. Great, great interview.
Sat down with him in his office for a while.

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Speaker 5 The perfect guy to start off Grit Week because you embody grit and hard coaching and, you know, hard work. So we ask this to every guest we have on Grit Week.

Speaker 5 What does grit mean to you and what does it look like on the basketball court?

Speaker 8 It probably likes to get your fucking ass up to court.

Speaker 8 My point being is simply is that life's something you need to attack.

Speaker 8 And I've always felt this that if you don't do it, okay, someone else will and beat you.

Speaker 8 And so I've always been, it probably is kind of a life story and you don't want to hear the whole life story, but losing your dad at 15,

Speaker 8 getting a full scholarship to UMass, but in turn having to come home and work for two years as a stone cutter, that's going to give you some grit. It's going to give you some grit.

Speaker 8 And that means you get up in the morning and have to do the things that are pissed off at the world, go into Charlestown, maybe get in a fight, do the things that guys do at that day and age.

Speaker 8 Fighting was pretty good. I was actually not bad because I was a PAL boxer when I was a kid.

Speaker 8 Point being, though, with four sisters home, a five-year-old brother, who now is, by the way, a cardiologist, a mass general. Point being

Speaker 8 is that I had responsibility early. And kind of the only way you get going.

Speaker 8 My high school coach was great and a lot of the tendencies I have as a coach, he was there for me the whole time after I played for him, after I came home.

Speaker 8 He says, you're going to get the hell out of this town before you get some girl pregnant and you're here for life. It's a great message.
And I didn't really have the smooth, my dad was incredible.

Speaker 8 You know, he had a Merchant Marine Academy graduate, engineer, incredible guy.

Speaker 8 Losing him was a big facet. I had a great mother.
My dad was like Kerry Grant, the actor, kind of tall, silent guy.

Speaker 8 He was the light heavyweight champ, by the way, of the Merchant Marines, which got to do with the boxing. And it was being superintendent for the gas company and the whole area.

Speaker 8 And when he died, it took a big part of me. And

Speaker 8 my mother was, you guys won't know this, you kind of know it, maybe, Goldie Horn.

Speaker 8 The blonde, cute, all that kind of stuff. Anyways, my dad had lost his wife and childbirth of my older sister.
So it's a family that, but we stayed together.

Speaker 8 And through those years, stone-cutting, find out who I was, find out who I was not, and then my high school coach pushing my ass to get to college were back, and things would have felt pretty good for me.

Speaker 8 But all that time, trying to find out who I was, how do I get there? And people have said, where?

Speaker 8 I don't know. Just be better today than you were yesterday.
And they have a saying that I did years, we had a book about it too,

Speaker 8 you know, win every day. And I know you might have heard those things, but I was saying that years ago without knowing what I meant.

Speaker 8 And I didn't really say it per se, but maybe I'd start reading again out of high school. Maybe I'd start running again.
Maybe through picking up 100-pound markers, that's without an hour. Markers up.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 every day I'd go from 183 pounds to about 200 by the time I got to college and looking a little different.

Speaker 8 And my point being, it was all grit. It was all hard work.

Speaker 8 And I didn't have automatic answers. It wasn't like you go to college.
You take this course, this course, bang, degree, here you go. It wasn't like that at all.

Speaker 8 I was trying to find who I was, what I was. And I know one thing, I didn't want to go to a shed

Speaker 8 at 5 a.m., and start cutting stone and picking up markers and doing those things. And

Speaker 8 I wanted to get out of there. I remember an old Italian guy who was a tool maker, makes those beautiful things you see on the tombstones, said to me, don't bang your hands up.

Speaker 8 You'll fail when you're 50. He was right about that.
But more importantly, he said, you want to get out of here.

Speaker 8 And he's just one of those guys who had philosophy, still spoken with the broken English. Okay, Italian accent.
You want to get out of here.

Speaker 8 And I got out of there. And I got back to college to help of my high school principal, my coach.

Speaker 8 But I can tell you, all it was a fight. When people saw me, I guess, fighting,

Speaker 8 if they, I didn't ask them to, I didn't want them to, they kind of went back and say, this guy's had a little kind of different life than your average kid, goes to college, scholarship, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 8 And so that's kind of what my grid is. My grid is finding a way when there doesn't appear to be one.
Finding a way

Speaker 8 when nobody else thinks you can. Was that motivation? Yeah.
I'd be a son of a bitch lying to you right now if I told you that,

Speaker 8 okay,

Speaker 8 you think I can't?

Speaker 8 I may die doing it, but I can.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think you've got all of America ready to run through a brick wall right now.

Speaker 7 Well, but we all face that.

Speaker 8 I've faced cancer. You know, I've faced cancer a couple different times.

Speaker 8 I've faced some other things in my life, and I just think simply that the idea,

Speaker 8 you know, I don't want to be ever judged sometime what I say, like get your fucking ass up to court. I want to be judged on,

Speaker 8 you need me? Hey, Ben, Gordon, or whoever it may be, when you need me, call me. I'm here for you.

Speaker 8 I don't need Kimber when he's, Kimber doesn't need me, excuse me, when he signed a $138 million contract. I called him right after they traded him from Boston.

Speaker 8 That's kind of who I he didn't, going back to New York, I'll get out, I'll go to practice, et cetera. But he don't need me right this time.

Speaker 8 I just thought after that he could trade it, it was a good time to call him. Yeah.
It wasn't a change.

Speaker 8 He's still going to make a lot of money and still be the great Kimber he is or any of my other guys. I want to be there when they need me.

Speaker 8 Just like my high school coach and others, my sisters, my sisters did everything for me to help me get back to college. And I think that sometimes I don't want to be understood to some degree.

Speaker 8 I just want to be accepted for what I've done and all the people in my life. Yeah, okay, I love it.

Speaker 7 You mentioned win every day. I see you've got a bottle of sanitizer over there that says win the day.
I've heard you say win the day probably hundreds of times.

Speaker 7 How do you know if you're beating the day?

Speaker 7 Are you winning against the day or what are you winning?

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 8 you always talk to yourself. We screw up our lives more than anything else.
I guarantee you that.

Speaker 8 True?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 7 It's really true.

Speaker 8 So you are in control of what you do.

Speaker 8 Your destiny is what you're going to do. Now,

Speaker 8 what are you doing today to get better? You know, obviously you're here talking to somebody, doing your job, I guess it may be. But how do you enhance your life when you don't have that time?

Speaker 8 Or when you guys weren't big deals?

Speaker 7 I haven't had a carb yet today. It's like 10.30.
So I think as of right now, I'm winning the day.

Speaker 5 I only hit my snooze twice this morning. That's pretty good.

Speaker 8 You guys are making great progress.

Speaker 5 I want to tell you right now.

Speaker 5 I feel it. I feel it in the room.
We've got a 28-month meeting

Speaker 5 now.

Speaker 8 No, but it could mean anything when you don't have anything. And you say, you know, when I ask these particular questions, let me listen to this other guy, see how he does it.

Speaker 8 Let me try to, and I don't mean like,

Speaker 8 you know, I've stolen from the very best.

Speaker 8 I watched what Dean did, and the game was very simple for him. He was obviously very innovative.
Dean Smith, who he came very close to.

Speaker 8 I watch people, because I really want to learn from other people and then adapt it to who I am. And I think the biggest fool is saying, well, I did it all myself.

Speaker 5 Bullshit.

Speaker 8 The reason I have a house in Hilton Head and a house down in Point Judith. Played the Donald Ross golf course and all the other things is my kids.

Speaker 8 If I'm not available for them, then I betrayed what I said to them the first day. If I recruit you now, I'm recruiting you for a lifetime.
I'll be here when the ball doesn't bounce anymore.

Speaker 8 I want you to understand that. And I just think that winning the day takes all kinds of different things.
And I think that's very, very important to everything in your life.

Speaker 8 And, you know, do we all have moments of despair?

Speaker 5 Without a question.

Speaker 8 Do we all have moments of questions that people are very kind in talking about some of the things I have to fight back from, especially when the ESPN and the ESPN stuff did all that story?

Speaker 8 And that's cool.

Speaker 8 But we have moments of in a car someplace saying, What the fuck?

Speaker 8 Here I am, 79 years old, driving to St. Joe's to coach a game.

Speaker 8 And then I realize that these kids, that they need me.

Speaker 8 Well, I don't know if they desperately need me, but I do know this much.

Speaker 8 I had good people at a point in my life

Speaker 8 when I used some direction. If a lot of my players, they have some similar circumstances without maybe having a male or other type of leadership in the house.

Speaker 8 I want my kids, quite frankly, family lives quite a distance from here. You don't have any place to go.
And I think that's really important. I think,

Speaker 8 and when I get satisfaction, you said, you know, what's a win? That might be a win.

Speaker 8 I get that phone call, hoping these guys, you know, someone's talking about the here because we're in our women's program and trying to get the kids more help.

Speaker 8 I said, understand, these dudes are going to be different. He's not going to be Sally

Speaker 8 from Simsbury. He's going to be a kid from the hard inner city who's trying to, in many ways, at times get over.
You don't understand that.

Speaker 8 Because that's the way to get by. I had one time went from like the kid in the block whose family had one of the first TVs.
I know that makes me ancient, because I am.

Speaker 8 But my point being, to a guy then who didn't have much money.

Speaker 8 When my dad had died, it wasn't like all the stuff, the pensions and where, I mean, all that. My mother having a very difficult time.

Speaker 8 We had some really, really, really difficult financial times where things didn't go well at all. My mother was still a saint.

Speaker 8 And my point to all this simply is that if you can be there for somebody, that's a big deal, by the way, one person, you can be there for them. I'll tell you one thing you don't realize.
About

Speaker 8 2013, they had a testimony to our program and what it did.

Speaker 8 And all the guys show up, high school teams I coached, kids from Northeastern University where I coached, and a whole bunch of my former players. When they started telling me stories,

Speaker 8 my throat got dry.

Speaker 8 My eyes filled up. Because they told me things I didn't know, things I might have said to them

Speaker 8 that helped change things.

Speaker 8 Things I might have kicked their ass. Said, don't you bring your fucking ass back into this gym until you understand it's you that's fucking you up.
Do you understand me?

Speaker 8 It's you that's screwing this whole deal up. I'm here for you.

Speaker 8 And I'll be here for you now. But as soon as that ball stops dribbling, ain't gonna be nobody there for you.
It's a whole new game, man.

Speaker 8 And I just think, so it might be love. It might be a different kind of expression of love, but you've got to be there for them.

Speaker 5 So that's love.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think that is a very pure definition of love, actually. It's like,

Speaker 7 I'll tell you the truth when you need to hear the truth. And if you fall in hard times, I'm always going to be here.

Speaker 7 I think that's as close to love as anything that you can get.

Speaker 8 I agree 100%.

Speaker 8 And it's easy to come in and say, hey, you're wonderful. You're great.
You're the big cat. Whatever it may be.
But man, you got to understand.

Speaker 8 You're fucking up. You're screwing this whole deal up for no reason.
For no goddamn reason except your own. You have so, and then,

Speaker 8 I'll tell you, a number of years ago, it's kind of a correlation, and I get on the kids during a game, but it's all instantaneous.

Speaker 8 Understand, right after that, next play, next play, next play.

Speaker 8 And I found out you could open people's ears. So you come over to the sidelines, you can tell them hot.
You just went for a steal, the guy went and dunked. First thing I say is, you know what?

Speaker 8 You're one of the greatest players ever coached. Your ears are out here here someplace

Speaker 8 instead of you lazy son of a bitch.

Speaker 8 But your ears listen. Then you say you lazy son of a bitch.

Speaker 8 But you understand the point I'm making. I found out that when people hear kind of what they want to hear and then the message comes afterwards, if you start off with this, this, and that,

Speaker 8 it doesn't. And I want to tell them they are special.
You're all special in your own particular way. But you screw up too.
You know, and you, and I'm not, you know what?

Speaker 8 I'm the one guy who, when I say, I'm going to coach you, I take it seriously. I take this shit really seriously.

Speaker 7 It's called shit sandwich where you give them something nice, the ugly truth, and then something nice on the other end. All the way out.

Speaker 5 Deserve the end.

Speaker 5 Yes. So I want to talk about Big East basketball.
I know you're, like I said at the start, I...

Speaker 5 think deep down you might be just as proud, if not more proud, of the Big East titles than the NCAA titles because that stretch of Big East basketball when you had so many legends, Hall of Famers, Hall of Fame coaches, Hall of Fame players playing in the league.

Speaker 5 So you built UConn. You came to a program that was not a lot and you made it a lot.

Speaker 5 What was it like in that era of coaching against Hall of Famers and building a program and watching other guys build programs like all around the league

Speaker 5 in terms of toughness and what it was like to coach against those guys?

Speaker 8 Yeah, the first meeting I went to had a very successful, we were very successful at Northeast. And we went to NCAA tournament five out of six years.
I had really good teams.

Speaker 8 I mean, we beat a great St. Joe's team 29 and one, and, you know, we had success, okay? We beat Fresno State with Rod Higgins and then lost to Utah.

Speaker 8 So, you know, we had really good players and got really good. So I go to Yukon, the first coaches meeting, it was actually in Puerto Rico.

Speaker 8 So remember, like yesterday, you walk into the room, and there's Rowley. There's Louie H.

Speaker 5 Hey, Irish, hey, Irish.

Speaker 8 That was his name. You never come to Jim, never coach, call me Irish.

Speaker 5 Anyhow,

Speaker 8 and so,

Speaker 8 and then, and Rowley walking around and everything else, and Bettino, who I don't like he doesn't like me and that's cool tell you one thing a man can coach yeah all the other bullshit aside you know if you ever

Speaker 8 play for him if you play for him you got a chance to win yeah i mean it honestly you know once again you don't have to love everybody yeah pj calismo who was our social leader at the time one of the greatest guys he was a bachelor you know a guy friend of mine from nike went to his uh his uh apartment to They were going out to eat someplace, and he saw on the desk some mail.

Speaker 8 There were two Nike checks for the past four months. He just went to his house and he was a bad loan to run his life.
He does now.

Speaker 8 But anyways, all the guys, Jimmy Bohim, and anyways, oh, I only got a birdie.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry.

Speaker 8 Boeheim. Come on, man.

Speaker 5 Whatever the case may be.

Speaker 8 You know, I mean, but it was a great era.

Speaker 8 Boy, do I miss it.

Speaker 8 Boy, do we all miss it? You know, Jimmy and all of us who aren't, it's not going anymore. Oh, it's great being in the AC6.

Speaker 8 It's not great. It's much better fighting your own neighborhood, the guys you know, the guys you have to recruit against.
What caused the biggest problems amongst coaches?

Speaker 8 Recruiting, and then after that, recruiting, and after that, recruiting. Something is said during a recruiting meeting that's misinterpreted.

Speaker 8 The story that people had about a coach in Pittsburgh who said that

Speaker 8 Louis had cancer and was getting out of coaching, talking to a recruit.

Speaker 8 I have no idea. And quite frankly, just like like the tide, it washed over.
Yeah, but that's where if you think some of these things develop, that's where they develop.

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Speaker 7 Now, more Jim Calhoun.

Speaker 5 Well, who is the one guy who

Speaker 5 someone else in the Big East got that you thought you were going to get and he turns out to be a great player and you're like, dude?

Speaker 8 Not quite as great, but it was Billy Curley. Billy Curley wanted to play in the NBA.
As a college player, Billy Curley was one of the best guys.

Speaker 8 So the story is that his dad wanted to stay around Boston, which he did eventually. And he was us filling over BC.
I can't think of the fourth team.

Speaker 8 Anyway, so he eliminates everybody and then went to a visit at BC for four or five hours. Hey, went home.

Speaker 8 We're going to get that phone call. And he's going to call us tomorrow about five.
It gets to be five, gets me six, gets to be seven, no call.

Speaker 8 And then word gets out, he just committed to BC. And I guess, I mean, everything was set up, even the great delay, because his father's a great guy, and I love Billy Curl.
He's a terrific player.

Speaker 8 One of those guys

Speaker 8 that

Speaker 8 would win college games here. You know, played some in the NBA, but he was a terrific player, hard-working son of a gun.
And I really thought we had him.

Speaker 8 We also had a guy you might saw in the Olympics. Kevin Durant committed to us on a visit.

Speaker 8 And Kevin Durant was not a bad player.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he's a decent.

Speaker 7 He didn't do anything in the tournament.

Speaker 7 You might have dodged a bullet on that one, huh?

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 8 he went on a trip. Nike rained a trip, I believe it was to France, and they'd put together freshmen and seniors.
And they sent like 12 kids over. Well, I called the people.

Speaker 8 I said, look, we're recruiting a kid named Durant. His name wasn't quite that big yet.
Can you move him with Rudy Gay?

Speaker 8 Not that I was thinking about those things, but obviously only 24-7. And they get back, and when they get off the plane, they shook hands.
They're going to be roommates.

Speaker 8 And then

Speaker 8 silence went away, and then he went to tech.

Speaker 5 I noticed you didn't say Ryan Gomes.

Speaker 8 Ryan Gomes is a terrific kid. I've actually talked with Ryan because I said, you and I have been married in heaven.

Speaker 5 Or hell.

Speaker 8 And, well, it's because you had to understand what the hoard was.

Speaker 8 There was 16.

Speaker 8 17 daily newspapers, not like three or four now and all the different social media, et cetera.

Speaker 8 And they'd come in, and I'd have guys, I'd look at them when we were doing something, they'd be looking at my desk and finding things.

Speaker 5 You know, a lot of them are Woj,

Speaker 8 who's now on and was a pain in the ass and playing English, who he was. And

Speaker 8 he wrote a time, he wrote one time in a column, as Calhoun drove away in his Lexus, which is true,

Speaker 8 I was going out to recruiting, and all these poor kids at camp.

Speaker 8 Well, their parents are paying 200 bucks. They ain't that poor.
Number one.

Speaker 8 Number two, it just was a stupid thing to put, like, at my camp i went away to recruit one day he saw me go away and left the poor kids there we had councils yeah right my point being is is that but but that kind of was the the atmosphere if he now that he's winning that's making he's got to be perfect and pure and i gotta by the way i need to get some words to put down Yeah, don't expect you to like get into the back of a cab.

Speaker 8 No, no, I wasn't just saying that. I was saying I was leading the kids kind of afterwards in the luxuries, he put clearly.

Speaker 8 But he also thought, like, maybe I should stay at the camp all day I know but I had to go recruit I mean yeah that's our whole lifeblood so you gotta keep the machine going yeah

Speaker 8 it is you know when these guys tell you it's 24-7

Speaker 8 I think we all try to make it more than that I think we try to make it you know 26-9 if we can right because you can't find it enough time

Speaker 8 in recruiting and today

Speaker 8 it's a little different I'm not sure it takes as much time.

Speaker 8 It takes more awareness of every piece that's moving. I have no idea when I see what 1,500, 1,600 kids transferring.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I know it's a different game.

Speaker 8 Well, it's a different game, but I don't think it's a good game. And I don't mean to say the game.
When kids compete, the kids compete. I still love it.

Speaker 8 When my kids play out here, they want to win too, you know. And so you still have some of the same things.
The problem is,

Speaker 8 are we in fact making, and once again, I know some, you know, we took, I think, in 26 years, three transfers total at Yukon. Not that, I feel building a program.

Speaker 8 The guy who's got it right is Jay Wright.

Speaker 8 He discovered it through injuries, playing small, four out, because Jay's one of my favorite people of all time. He's a great guy, great coach.

Speaker 8 I don't like the stun of a bitch because he's too good looking with the nice suits or the money, all that bullshit.

Speaker 8 But I keep telling him, you're not Judge Clooney. Just understand that.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 the biggie is obviously like you've got... A bunch of coaches in there all coming up at around the same time.

Speaker 7 You refer to each other sometimes as being friends, but are you really friends with like a Boheim or

Speaker 5 John Thompson?

Speaker 8 John Thompson, God rest his soul, John Thompson, I very close.

Speaker 8 When I was tried out for the Celtics, I was a free agent, and I tried out for the Celtics, and I'm going to stay over at Camp Millbrook down in Marshville, Massachusetts.

Speaker 8 Red would have his, quote, glamour camp down there. Red wouldn't pay for anything.
So therefore, you worked. Bob Branham played for the Celtics with Randed, and you came down and you scrimmaged.

Speaker 8 And so we scrimmaged, and I'm going to win, take a shower, and I walk into the door. It was covered.
It was John.

Speaker 8 You You know, all 6, 11, 300 pounds of them.

Speaker 8 And from that time, we became pretty good friends. And when we had a problem with Alonzo and the Dove Henfeldt, where they were called supposedly names, I don't know what happened.

Speaker 8 We put them on the phone late that night. That's how it was done back in the day, too.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 8 friends.

Speaker 8 Friends are a funny word, you know.

Speaker 8 I only have a couple really real friends. I mean, I have a lot of acquaintances, people I like.
I hope they like me.

Speaker 8 But friends are a hard thing because you're doing something hard. It's not quite like boxing in the sense while you're in the ring, you're trying to kill a guy, okay?

Speaker 8 But it's like boxing while you're coaching. I mean, it's competitive, and

Speaker 8 you know, and

Speaker 8 it's not not being a good person, you still can be a good person. Just, you know, I'm going to try to run my damn program.
I don't give a shit what you guys,

Speaker 8 I'm going to run my program. Are you going to bump heads? Oh, without question.
I mean,

Speaker 8 it is so set up. You know, when we first came to Yukon, we did something different.
Everybody was, the best kids in the East we couldn't get, even out of Connecticut.

Speaker 8 All of some of the great Charles Smith and some of these guys all went out to BC, Villanova, other places. So I said, we still get them, though.
You start thinking, where'd they come from?

Speaker 8 They came from Louisiana, Seattle, Washington. Darzelle, South Carolina, Ray.
You start going where the players came from. We'll find another way.

Speaker 8 We talked before, I'll find a way to get players to become the at that time find a way the Southeast Conference of football and the biggies basketball the two hottest things I've ever seen at that time yet six out of nine of us are in the hall of fame that coached in

Speaker 8 and I mean like as you said legendary guys I always respected Rolly. He wasn't my favorite guy, but that doesn't, I'm sure I wasn't his.
But my point being is that, boy, could he coach with a clock?

Speaker 8 Yeah. The moment the clock came, it became problems.
And I don't mean he could really coach.

Speaker 8 And everybody in that league could do something. You know what I'm saying? There was nobody that lasted

Speaker 8 long if you couldn't do something. If you couldn't get players, if you couldn't coach them up once you get them, if you couldn't motivate them, you said, keep it going.

Speaker 8 Keep it going is much more difficult than building.

Speaker 7 Yeah. So was there ever a time when...

Speaker 7 you were approached by an NBA team that wanted you to come and did you ever actually give it like serious consideration? Maybe

Speaker 7 I can coach in the league.

Speaker 8 Well, Richard Hamilton was a first draft choice, and I remember going down with the people from Washington and Wes, Unsolved, and people, and they said, Would you like to coach?

Speaker 8 And Wes was living out on the farm and just an incredible guy and great player. And,

Speaker 8 you know, the more I thought about it, and for once I was rational, my ego said, Yeah, I can coach these guys. But it's not my personality.

Speaker 8 My personality, they're not going to take me to get your fucking ass up the court. That's not going to happen.
You know, I'm a man coach. Yeah, you are.

Speaker 8 And secondly, coach, I make three times as much as you, and I'm four times more valuable. Point being,

Speaker 8 my best thing is to take my own life experiences and attach them to a college kid who might need me. Not that I couldn't help guys.
If I ever went to the NBA, I did think about a couple things about

Speaker 8 your job in the NBA is to help to make them great, help to get the minutes, help them get along. You got enough things there, a long career.
Those things are right there. That's your job.

Speaker 8 And you've got to realize that. In college,

Speaker 8 it's getting them something they don't even know they want, a degree. Getting them things, maturity, a kick in the ass.

Speaker 8 Things that happen that you know some of the things that

Speaker 8 I aspired and did because my own life circumstances. I had plenty to build off.
I tell my kids all the time that I want you guys to understand, you know,

Speaker 8 there's nothing racial, there's nothing regional about poverty. I've been poor.
They turned the lights up in my house when I was a kid. That's my dad died.

Speaker 8 So, like, this poverty shit, I don't want to hear it. We got to find a way to get around it.

Speaker 8 You know,

Speaker 8 you're going to beat the man. You got to be somebody

Speaker 8 in position to get the man. Get yourself for that position, then you'll have a fair voice.
That's an important thing.

Speaker 8 I had a great guy who eventually became the chancellor of UMass Boston, Keith Motley, from Pittsburgh, one of the great people of my life. Keith was a good player for me.
He was 6'7 ⁇ , 240.

Speaker 8 He eventually got a black belt in karate. Not a guy I just grew with.
and

Speaker 8 he just simply

Speaker 8 encapsulated what you're supposed to be he eventually worked at northeastern event you got his PhD and we used to talk about this all the time about all the different situations that can happen to you like all of us and I just think it's a lot of it's from your own life experiences from where you're from

Speaker 8 We were kidding one time, we had a team down in Disney outside of Northeastern and the kids are in the store and you know what's in the store at Disney, right? All the cameras.

Speaker 5 So we get out,

Speaker 8 let's get going, guys. All of a sudden, people come out.
Scary. Someone had put some things.

Speaker 8 And I'm saying, you son of a bitch.

Speaker 8 The kid, get over there. And Keith said, you stupid bastard.
How'd you get caught? He's a guy with a PhD.

Speaker 8 His idea was

Speaker 8 the kid didn't recognize the room he was in.

Speaker 8 Cameras and all this stuff. Why'd you allow that? I was pissed he had committed theft.

Speaker 8 Keith was excited that he'd been stupid in a social situation. We both meant the same thing, but from a little different background.

Speaker 8 And I think that's really important. I, you know, once again, if you ever knew what I learned from Keith Motley, from

Speaker 8 Kimber Walker about dignity, Reggie Lewis about joy, some of the guys I've had, a Mecca Ogre for about me not being so smart. I mean, he's the smartest guy I ever met.
He really is.

Speaker 8 I would say that Bill Clinton, Obama, and

Speaker 8 Mech. And my point is, your kids teach you so much.
If you're willing to learn from them, you don't always say, oh boy, that's brilliant. God damn, he's got a better approach than I do.

Speaker 8 He can put life in boxes. If you're just strength training, okay, don't talk to him about basketball or school.
If he's in the library, leave him alone. He's at academics.
Yeah. On the court.

Speaker 8 And those are the things that I think people can teach you. Your life experiences,

Speaker 8 the great fortunate people you're out to meet, incredibly important.

Speaker 5 Okay, so you mentioned a bunch of legends that you coached. Two-part question.

Speaker 5 One, best pure basketball player you ever coached, and two, the guy that you thought you did your best job with in terms of growth, where they came in as one guy and they graduated and either went to the NBA or on with life as something totally different.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I really don't have, quote, a greatest. The greatest scorer might have been either Reggie Lewis or

Speaker 5 Ray Allen.

Speaker 8 Ray Allen, people had no idea what a great athlete he was.

Speaker 8 The most funky play I had, that there's no way he should have been as great as he was, and he's one of my favorite people of all time, Richard Hamilton. Oh, okay.
Could run forever.

Speaker 8 People forget, two-time all-star, MVP of the Final Four,

Speaker 8 you know, he just would wear you out. We used to have the small guys had to run like a 5, 20 mile or something.

Speaker 8 Richard ran like in some ridiculous, like, you know, 450 or something, could run, and that could tie it.

Speaker 8 But I would say the guys that could just score the ball.

Speaker 5 Yeah. All-around player,

Speaker 8 it's hard because he had a lot of injuries. Coron Butler's right there.
There wasn't much Coron Butler couldn't do. And by the way, when he left UConn,

Speaker 8 I went to Basin, Wisconsin, went into the, as he called it, the hood.

Speaker 5 Yeah, we had him on the show. He told the story.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 And he said, and everybody was looking around and I'm saying, what are you looking at me for? Yeah. Well, it was the reason.

Speaker 5 I was the only one that looked like me.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 Coron Butler was so special as a kid, but his hands, he could grip the ball and dunk anything. He could pass it.
I mean, he had an 11-year career, and now he's doing great with Miami.

Speaker 8 He was on ESPN, but one of the special guys I've had all time. As I said, you know,

Speaker 8 I went to school like a lot of people, started some graduate work, all that different stuff, read a lot of books. The best lessons that I ever had,

Speaker 8 and they don't know a lot of them, other players we had. So, you know,

Speaker 8 clearly Karan could do more things than any other player I had.

Speaker 8 I think that

Speaker 8 the guy who made the most big plays for us is Kimber Waka. Yeah.
Only because two Final Fours, national championship.

Speaker 8 And by the way, he did it

Speaker 8 by never disrupting,

Speaker 8 only encouraging.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so I have a question about that 2011 team. All-time team, all-time run.

Speaker 5 So for people who don't remember, UConn starts the season 17 and 2. They're ranked.
They go to the Maui. They win the Maui.
They're playing great.

Speaker 5 End up end of January to the Big East tournament. Lose lose 7 of 11.
Yep. Start the Big East tournament, win five in a row, five straight days, then go to

Speaker 5 the March Madness, win six in a row. So they finished the season losing seven of 11, then finished the postseason winning 11 straight.
What did you say to the guys before the Big East tournament?

Speaker 5 Because it was, it felt, I remember being like, oh, well, UConn, forget them.

Speaker 5 They're fading at the wrong time here. And then everything reversed.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we were ready in person. The emergencies quickly in Hawaii

Speaker 8 in the Maui tournament was and I tell this is the best one of the best Kimber stories of maybe indicative of who he is. We're playing in Maui.
We beat a

Speaker 8 really good Wichita team. We beat then Michigan State and then we killed Kentucky.
Ray averages, I'm just giving you, Kimber averages 30 something again.

Speaker 8 So it's over with. We get on the bus and it's hard as health like it is right now.
And we're waiting half an hour. MVP.
National people are all there in Maui. That was quote, the tournament.
And

Speaker 8 he gets on the bus.

Speaker 8 Swear to God, he's got the big trophy. MVP.

Speaker 8 The entire bus,

Speaker 8 not solicited by anybody, stood up and started clapping. No one, you might hear, hey, great.
No. The entire bus, no one said a word, got up and started clapping.

Speaker 8 And the reason that is so profound, because you know athletes and all of us are athletes. I would have scored more if I got the ball.
Yeah, he started him. He got all the minutes, whatever it may be.

Speaker 8 There was not an ounce of that on that bus. And that's, someone said to me, how much do the kids respect Kimber?

Speaker 8 That is indicative because if you're around athletes, we all think we can do better than you. We have to.
But that momentary, hourly, daily, at that particular time, saying like, he did this for us

Speaker 8 is amazing. That kind of correlates.
Eventually, we go through the season, we have injuries, and then at 17, too, they thought they had won the world.

Speaker 8 And we then lose a three-pointer to Notre Dame. I didn't go right through it because we weren't that far away from being really good.
My job then wasn't magical, was to stay on their ass.

Speaker 8 I mean, different maybe than other times, but understand you have it there. You got to put this freaking thing together and stop worrying about records.
Lose a couple? Oh,

Speaker 8 like watching my Red Sox recently. Holy shit.

Speaker 8 Why 20 last night? You know why 20 runs last night. But anyways, just give me like four to save the other 14.
But point being is we just stayed together. The hardest thing to do

Speaker 8 in losing is staying together. Well,

Speaker 7 which would you rather have happened? Would you rather

Speaker 7 lose like the Red Sox did last night and give up 20 runs?

Speaker 5 Or would you... What's up? Oh, they scored 20.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 would you rather suffer a bad loss or would you rather have a really close loss like a six overtime game in a tournament?

Speaker 5 I knew we were there.

Speaker 8 I didn't know we were going to win a championship. I'd be stupid to tell you that because we had all freshmen.

Speaker 8 But we did have three pros in the back court. Jeremy Lamb could score on anybody even by the end of that time.
Shabazz Napier and Kimber Walker.

Speaker 8 Alex Iake, who didn't play in the league, but probably should have, great, you know, averaged like 11, 12 rebounds a game. We had a shot blocker.

Speaker 8 Guy led the country in rebounding when he transferred it to Vegas, Roscoe Smith. We had talent.

Speaker 8 Giphy, who played in the Olympics for the German team, we were pretty pretty good. We're young.
We had to, unfortunately, we had to get punched in the face a few times and then respond.

Speaker 8 And we kind of always respond. It doesn't mean I can get on this shit.
You're going to blow this,

Speaker 8 whatever it may be. But we stayed together.
And you say that that sounds easy.

Speaker 5 It's not easy. Yeah, I mean, it was an incredible run, 11 in a row.

Speaker 5 And now I do, I'm not going to make you apologize for the national championship game, but that was maybe the worst basketball game ever played. You say that.

Speaker 5 People, just a refresher, UConn, Butler. UConn won the national title.
They shot 9% from three. Butler, I think, shot

Speaker 5 18% from the field. That was tough to watch.

Speaker 5 I wasn't sure.

Speaker 8 There's a really good column. I've got it someplace because it's the only thing keeping me psychologically, well, not sound, but semi-sound.
And

Speaker 8 remember, we blocked 12 shots.

Speaker 5 All right, so good point.

Speaker 8 We bothered 19 shots. These are taken by the Antlers.
It was the most bothered shots we had all season. So we got into this shit and said, I don't care what you guys are saying.

Speaker 8 We should score in this team. We only put up 54, although we put up 30-something in the second half.
I said, we're not going to let them score.

Speaker 8 Oh, and by the way, you'll notice we don't take many threes in the second half. Take it to the rim.
They can't stop us. And eventually we wore them down.
Was it a bad game?

Speaker 8 When you win the game, it's never bad.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm speaking from a place, too, that I, pretty much any big game, you know, national title, championship game, I like to bet the over. So 53-41, you really feel stupid.

Speaker 8 Well, let me tell you something. Do you know what the great thing about what we did at Yukon?

Speaker 8 We won a lot of different ways. You know, the week of pressure,

Speaker 8 okay, back in the team when Leighton makes a shot and all those great things, find Leighton run stuff.

Speaker 8 At one particular point with a Mecca, Charlie Villanueva, Hilton Armstrong, Josh Boone, I'll keep on going, Rudy Gay, et cetera, who led the country in shot blocking nine straight years.

Speaker 8 We led the country in steals at a particular point before before that.

Speaker 8 We won in a lot of different ways because the coach was halfway smart, not real smart, but halfway smart, because he adapted to his talent. Fit in my system.
The system is what you have.

Speaker 8 You try to get the plays you want. They've got to be tough with us and they've got to be able to run with us.
But we won a lot of different ways to get...

Speaker 8 Some teams who want to play the margins so close all the time, they lose in the tournament. You know why?

Speaker 8 Because they can't play another way.

Speaker 8 We could have pressed, but Butler wasn't a team to press. But I knew their size, lack thereof.
We can beat them inside.

Speaker 8 And my point being, we're a pretty good team because we beat a pretty good Kentucky team in the semis.

Speaker 5 But you're a great team. Just that championship game.

Speaker 8 But no, it wasn't good. But once again, we got into a slug fest.
Yeah. And you know what?

Speaker 8 The guy who was coaching the team, I don't know if you know, he ended up with the Celtics, had a good career there, now is going to be a genius. And he's a great guy.
I love Brad a great deal.

Speaker 8 But he made sure it stayed ugly. Yeah.
And so simply, what do you do when you're in a mud fight? Duck your head or you throw mud back.

Speaker 8 We found a different kind of mud to throw at them and we watered them to death. My point being.

Speaker 5 I love that.

Speaker 7 I'm going to steal that from you.

Speaker 5 Yeah. But you're right because the coaching, like we talk about in all sports, that the best coaches, they don't have a plan.
They don't have a system.

Speaker 5 Their system changes year to year, game to game, depending on the players they have.

Speaker 8 We beat Gonzaga, I think it was 99, to go to the National Championship. And they were an entirely different kind of team then.

Speaker 8 And you can keep on going. Good coaches.

Speaker 8 I mean Dean

Speaker 8 is different because you can tell Dean's work up there for me as far as the kind of coach he was and the kind of person he was. But they had their system.

Speaker 8 But they get pretty much from Perkins to Worthy. They got a lot of the same kind of players could do it.
That wasn't an ideal. We had all guards we pressed all the time.
We had all great bigs.

Speaker 8 I mean, all those big guys

Speaker 8 were first round draft choices. And Mecca was number two in the draft.
And my point being,

Speaker 8 my point being to this, so we had to adapt to our personnel, but keeping some things never changed. We always ran, not in that game.

Speaker 8 But if that's all we could do, we would have lost that championship.

Speaker 8 And I think that's incredibly important. It's really important to understand, you know, you get into that.

Speaker 8 It isn't like, oh shit, we're in that. No, how do we get out of that?

Speaker 5 And beat them.

Speaker 8 And that's the most singular thing is being pissed. God, this game sucks.

Speaker 5 It's awful. I don't want to.
What are you going to quit? Go home? Take my ball?

Speaker 8 No, it ain't going to happen. So what do you just, I had a fear going in that we couldn't pace the game.
We wanted pace and space. That's us.
We've been at here at St. Joseph's.
We have a 90-day game.

Speaker 8 Not surprising, because that's how we play.

Speaker 8 My influence in basketball initially was red all back. Why'd they wear black sneakers? So on the fast break, they could see the flash of the sneaker.

Speaker 8 They're the only one in basketball to wear them at the time. They got them from Cornverse.
And my point being,

Speaker 8 I mean, all that integrated stuff, I look, I work pretty hard at perfect myself. I was never an external genius.
I'm not captain video. That's not what I do.

Speaker 8 I find out what you can do, and then I try to beat you with what we can do, or adjust in a game that I hated in the sense of stylistically. But you know,

Speaker 8 when we put the trophy up,

Speaker 8 said national champ, and if I had been pissed about the game that it played,

Speaker 8 Brad would have hosted it because I'd be fighting.

Speaker 8 I'd be fighting reality.

Speaker 8 You can't fight reality.

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Speaker 7 So what would you say is maybe not maybe it's not the same team that produced the best results, but what would you say looking back over your career is the best year of coaching that you did, the one that you're most proud of?

Speaker 8 That team, to some degree, because I was always, you know, grabbing a freshman and say,

Speaker 8 you can try to go home if you want, son, but you need to stay here and become a man, or whatever the case may be.

Speaker 8 I think the magical team might have been, 0-4 was a far and away when people say how talented.

Speaker 8 If we had lost the national championship, I would have been pissed because number two in the draft and Mecca over, Ben Gordon

Speaker 8 still could have played forever.

Speaker 8 Charlie Villanueva, Josh Boone, Hilton Armstrong, Marcus Williams, six first-round draft choosers.

Speaker 8 Not all at once, but okay, we don't have that. That's not like, and that may be Kentucky and other teams.
That's not us. And that was the best team.
I should say, best talent.

Speaker 8 The best team, no question, 99. You remember Rip?

Speaker 8 You'll always remember Khalid Alameen.

Speaker 8 Always. Khalid Alamein is one of the great characters who I played basketball.
Yes.

Speaker 8 When I told him,

Speaker 8 he's telling all the reporters about Ramadan, and then I see him putting, you know, subs.

Speaker 5 Come on, man.

Speaker 8 Or hot dogs before games.

Speaker 8 Ricky Moore, who's a terrific little defensive player.

Speaker 8 Jake Vosko, who did play 10 years in the league, but two really legitimate, Kevin Freeman, one of the toughest guys I ever had, made that into a 34-2 team.

Speaker 8 By the time we got to that Sunday, after being in Ohio State and getting ready for Duke, Duke didn't show up for whatever reason.

Speaker 8 And they were really good. Everybody thought they were the best.
At one point, we were 24-0. People forgot that.
You all should notice,

Speaker 8 and I do bet only on horses, but we've been told the greatest differential before the championship game was 9 to 10 points us.

Speaker 5 Yeah, 9.5 points. You guys were 9.5 points on the game.

Speaker 8 We were 30, 3, and 2. Yeah.
And the only other team that had been number one that year. And we were so,

Speaker 8 we knew and felt each other like a pulse in a heart. We knew.
So you knew if Rip wasn't doing that. I'm just saying, we brought this kid Elbert Morin in the championship game at 14.

Speaker 8 We had answers, and everybody on the team, him more importantly, accepted those answers and understood what we were trying to do.

Speaker 8 That was a pretty special team. Yeah.

Speaker 5 All right, so one of my favorite things is Jim Calhoun versus the media. Okay.
I alluded to it earlier with the Ryan Gomes.

Speaker 5 It's one of my favorite clips. There's two that are my favorite, but the I fucked up, if you want to write it, write it five times.

Speaker 8 And I did.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I checked that loud player, Karan Gardo. What a son of a bitch I was.
How stupid can I be?

Speaker 5 And you fucking asked me about that, man?

Speaker 8 I mean, just say, you're stupid.

Speaker 5 Okay, we both go out and have a beer, okay? Yeah, well, so that's my,

Speaker 5 the thing that I love about you, Verse of Media, is that you had sometimes an adversarial relationship, but I always thought that, like, you, you always were there to answer the questions.

Speaker 8 If you call me, even, even, I was fighting with Jeff Jacobs here at the Hafikan.

Speaker 8 Okay, Jeff, what the fuck you want? Here you go.

Speaker 8 I'll answer the question. Just don't ask me stupid questions.
Don't ask me if I'm I'm going to give money back. And I keep saying that, not a thin dime.
We make $5 million at this university.

Speaker 5 Anybody else? Yeah, I know.

Speaker 5 From that,

Speaker 5 I make a lot more than that. And then the other line in that one that's the best is, can you do me a favor? Why don't you shut up? Yeah.

Speaker 8 And the last one was, and my grandkids told me this. Hey, Papa.
Get some facts.

Speaker 5 Come back and see me. Get some facts and come back and see me.

Speaker 7 Or if you'd like to meet me outside, I'd be happy to get it.

Speaker 8 You guys said my grandson,

Speaker 8 17 now, Sam, has his own podcast. And he's like crazy.
He would be in heaven here if he's with you guys.

Speaker 5 But my point is. Yeah, I mean, you're, so like, every time that I make a mistake,

Speaker 5 I just post the clip. I just say, I fucked up clip.
It's the best thing ever. And I think that, like, you don't see that anymore in Spanish.

Speaker 8 Well, let me tell you how you feel a little bit.

Speaker 8 Why I like Belichick is because I knew Belichick a little bit, but more importantly, Belichick was in Cleveland. and it was a big quarterback controversy.
And he said he never ran it. The media did.

Speaker 8 And eventually it cost him a job. And he said, I'll never let those son of a bitches ever get the edge on me

Speaker 8 on to Cincinnati. I mean, that's kind of what it is.
My thing was simply, I'm here for you. I'll answer every question.
But don't insult my intelligence.

Speaker 8 Don't be a political reporter, come in and ask me if I'm going to give money back.

Speaker 5 You know, what the heck, man?

Speaker 8 I mean, and by the way, if you hear in the background, the the other reporters are saying, shut up, you know,

Speaker 8 once again,

Speaker 8 what's a good day? Well, party starts a little fight, and then you go from there. But

Speaker 5 for somebody,

Speaker 8 I'll tell you this, this is a very honest, like I fucked up kind of thing.

Speaker 5 It's not really that,

Speaker 8 but

Speaker 8 that's how I'm built.

Speaker 8 And I can still love you and hug you.

Speaker 8 When David Solomon, one of the guys who used to bust my ass all the time, when he died in an olive Olival accident going home,

Speaker 8 it was like a loss of my life. I mean, he's a terrific guy.
Phil Charis, who's now SIDD, I mean, these are the guys who reported, who just ended up becoming good friends.

Speaker 8 And I think what they did eventually is respect me, because I'll answer any question. I'm not running away from you.
And I'll tell you exactly how I feel.

Speaker 8 And it probably, as I said, if I knew your backgrounds, I'd kind of know why you are what you are in a lot of ways. And I mean that very honestly.

Speaker 5 People read things,

Speaker 8 listen sometimes. I want to kind of know what you say, but what you've done, what you do, and why'd you become who you are.
And I think that there's no question here

Speaker 8 if you're an 18-year-old kid coming home from UMass, full scholarship, world on the plate, but have lost your dad, have no money, having to work in

Speaker 8 stone cutters and get up early every morning, pump gas.

Speaker 8 I mean, when I was playing football, we'd have a one o'clock game. I'd be up at five, pump gas for three hours, go up to play tight end.

Speaker 8 And my point being,

Speaker 8 I don't want sympathy. It was just something I had to do to help my family.
And it was never one of those things that I wouldn't do it. By leaving school, I mean, once again, I don't know.

Speaker 8 Some people say they don't know what a silver spoon is.

Speaker 5 Silver, God damn, you're lucky.

Speaker 8 You know, you're lucky with platinum.

Speaker 8 But my point being,

Speaker 8 It creates a thing

Speaker 8 where I love doing things for people, whether it be Autism Speaks, I have a granddaughter, whether it be the Catalan Cardiology Center, because I lost both my mom and dad through cardiac disease, whether it be helping people

Speaker 8 in charities. I'm not saying Mr.
Good Guy, what I'm saying to you is when you're in the position to have this, the microphone, make sure you use it for others who can't have one, can't be heard.

Speaker 8 Make sure you become a voice for those to be heard. I want to be judged by that, on what my players think.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I become

Speaker 8 the father I didn't have to a lot of my players. My father would tell me stories about the Cape of Good Hope, about racial issues way back in the day, going around

Speaker 8 in the merchant ship, him as a ship's engineer.

Speaker 8 I mean, just the different things. And a hero took me to football games, started when I was eight years old.
Every Saturday, I think the whole thing came down to be like, why is he like he is?

Speaker 8 Well, he's half crazy. Okay, fine.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 8 he has things that have been instilled in him about values and family and love. And I think that's really, really important.
Being gritty, as we started off by saying,

Speaker 8 is a natural,

Speaker 8 I think, production product of my life.

Speaker 8 I mean, because I didn't like things. I love things.

Speaker 8 You know, I used to have a friend who was a teacher coach, she used to save me in high school, said, I've never seen a guy, my wife used to make meatloaf sandwiches, and he's fallen in love with his lunch.

Speaker 8 Passion is something I have a lot of.

Speaker 7 I think that one thing that I've learned already through this interview is that grit is fundamentally an expression of something that you love. Exactly right.

Speaker 7 You'll never be able to truly demonstrate grit in something that you don't really care about. And that's, you can say, I've got grit.

Speaker 5 You can say, hey, coach, I'll do whatever you say.

Speaker 7 I'll be the first one in, the last one out. But unless you truly love what you're doing, you will never actually show that grit.

Speaker 8 I'm 79 years old, sitting here, ready to coach a bunch of Division III kids. I I can tell you right now, I know this is going to be shocking to you, it's not for the money.

Speaker 8 One thing the Catholic, and I'm Catholic, one thing the Catholics do is we

Speaker 8 take a vow of poverty, I guess.

Speaker 8 Looking at my paycheck, no, but I'm here because of the kids.

Speaker 7 Well, one thing I love is you retired from basketball to go coach more basketball.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 8 yeah, you tucked my wife.

Speaker 8 No, but I do think that

Speaker 8 when you're on the field and you say, and you couldn't be more accurate, by the way, what you said,

Speaker 8 in August, middle of August, it's easy to say how hard you're going to work. You know, about the third day, third week, it gets the old hat.
And we're just getting started.

Speaker 8 You know, when I tell you you've got a chance to be a great player, I actually fucking mean it. And I actually do take this shit really seriously.

Speaker 8 And if you tell me you want to go and play basketball after this,

Speaker 8 you know, it's kind of strange. I actually take that seriously.
That you actually bullshit me.

Speaker 8 And that's the way I'm going to treat you. And then when I got in practice, they,

Speaker 8 are you going to goddamn it run?

Speaker 8 You sure you want to be a player now?

Speaker 8 And that's when the rubber,

Speaker 5 you know, I actually really love it.

Speaker 8 You got to care about it. And I don't get up in the morning to do anything that I don't really love.
You know, I mean, I love theater. I love watching people

Speaker 8 go into other worlds and I'm fascinated by that. I love reading.

Speaker 8 I love things where you watch people pursue things and I have great respect for those who did it. I don't care if you're born

Speaker 8 Brady.

Speaker 8 I don't care if you're born like Brady. Obviously had a very good upbringing, great family, et cetera.
Brady's got a little different tool than most of us have, right?

Speaker 8 He don't want to just be good. He really wants to be good.
You know, and I think when you see that, so you don't have to have a hard scrabbled life to do that.

Speaker 8 You know, we get brought out in different ways. You know what brings us out mainly? Circumstance.

Speaker 8 What did I fall back on? That 18-year-old guy coming back from college, running around, punching people, do all the different things. And then I turned that into what I can give to my players.

Speaker 8 How I got out of that. Took my players to my house, and I live on like right behind Pomfort School or Prop School.
And we have about 50 acres.

Speaker 8 Trust me, there's nothing but beer and deer out there, so it's not exactly

Speaker 5 a hidden ranch.

Speaker 8 But it's all done over, it's etc., et cetera.

Speaker 8 And downstairs that I had lined up is I I got like, I think 40, 40 rings, championship rings, national championship, whatever it may be, and trophies and keys to the city.

Speaker 8 And I could see them all looking around. And I said to them, you know,

Speaker 8 fellas, I started out like you.

Speaker 8 Actually, I didn't. I started like you, some of my guys who are from

Speaker 8 better circumstances financially, but I ended up here.

Speaker 8 So you're all looking around.

Speaker 8 I said,

Speaker 8 everything's obtainable

Speaker 8 if you understand what it needs to take to get to where you want to be, where you want to be, not where I want to be, where you are. It's all obtainable.
I can tell you that.

Speaker 8 And I just want to tell you a couple things. A few days, I felt like, really? I've got to put this much into that.

Speaker 8 And the passion I had for it, of course I do. Because I'm getting this incredible pleasure.
I mean, walk out of a gym after getting on a kid and said, just seeing that slight turn,

Speaker 8 it's progress.

Speaker 8 We're getting there. He took his first step.
He actually understands. So I think all those things are incredibly important.

Speaker 8 And I can tell you that my wife used to say to me, like, I love going to bed with you. I said, it's really kind.
I appreciate that. Actually, nice compliment.

Speaker 8 And she said, but you can't keep bringing those 14 guys into bed every night.

Speaker 8 And by that, she means mentally, I'll say, middle of saying them, I'll say,

Speaker 8 Did you see what TJ?

Speaker 5 didn't do today.

Speaker 5 Yeah, what are you doing? You know what I'm saying about, yeah. What is this?

Speaker 8 And I find nothing wrong with that. I would find that my high school coach, Fred Herger, who died relatively young, but was a great coach, kicked me in the ass.

Speaker 8 Literally, if I didn't follow my shot, he kicked me in the ass. Today, I guess I'd get him for abuse.
I wouldn't, because he got me to a full scholarship, got me to my life.

Speaker 8 But my point being is that he was there when I needed him. And that's what I really wanted to be all the time.

Speaker 8 I guess I was trying to kind of replace kids' fathers or male figures in their lives with some who didn't have or didn't have the kind of situation that needed to have plenty to have great fathers.

Speaker 8 I don't mean that. But understand,

Speaker 8 it's really, really important to have somebody there. You know, everybody needs somebody.
And

Speaker 8 maybe I'm good in some ways because I understand what it's like to have, quote, privilege, white privilege. I also understand what it's like to have no money.
And Jasper's, if mom could

Speaker 8 Western Union, way back in the day, 20 bucks for the week.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 All right. So I have one last question.

Speaker 5 You were always

Speaker 5 great at working the refs. Who was your match in that? Who was the guy that, when you went up against another team or another coach, you're like, all right, he's going to get every call.
So

Speaker 5 I got to be on my A game today.

Speaker 8 Two things.

Speaker 5 Time.

Speaker 8 So Jay Wright, one of his early games at Villanova, he's had this XL, 15,000 people like it used to be all the content.

Speaker 8 He gets thrown out. Jay Wright, yeah, Jay Wright.

Speaker 8 So I go in afterwards. I said, Jay, man,

Speaker 8 you don't have stripes yet.

Speaker 8 I said, when John does this with the towel, I used to turn to everybody, we're fucked.

Speaker 5 Oh, Louis does.

Speaker 5 Mickey, Mickey.

Speaker 8 Mickey Crowdie, you might be yelling at. Oh, boy.

Speaker 8 Stripes, the respect.

Speaker 8 Jim Burr was the toughest guy. And you know what made him tough? He was so goddamn good.
Auntie, cranky.

Speaker 5 I remember yelling at him, Jim, you screwed that fucking thing up, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, Jim.

Speaker 8 He looked at me and said, you don't think I know it? You don't think I feel worse?

Speaker 8 I started to have respect for him, and then I started doing tape. I have no idea how he looked through human beings, but he could.

Speaker 8 He was a terrific official.

Speaker 8 A lot of great people that I've met through officials, some of those officials, I wouldn't do that for, I don't care how much I love anything.

Speaker 8 I wouldn't have just both everybody, 50% of the people are going to hate you on every call, and sometimes 100%.

Speaker 8 My point being, though, is that, you know, they're part of the game. And the good ones, you know, the guys who show about, you talk about the game changing.

Speaker 8 You know, I wasn't a guy with a water bottle and the hair. And I don't think anybody would use the word self-promoter with me.

Speaker 5 I would agree.

Speaker 8 You know, I mean,

Speaker 8 I talked to Lud Olson about this.

Speaker 8 He said, you and I are kind of two pieces apart, even you more, because you're in that area of like, and I talk about the great coaches, Roy Williams, and great coach, obviously, Mike and stuff, they don't mention us.

Speaker 8 Yeah. He said, haven't you won three times?

Speaker 5 It's true.

Speaker 8 But you know yourself, so after a game at the Biggies, I'm not being anything but very honest, I had choices where to go. You can tell I love the Biggies, just the greatest life ever.
Okay.

Speaker 8 I'd take my family out to eat. All the guys went to

Speaker 8 where Media all went, CBS and everybody went over there. That wasn't my deal.

Speaker 8 I mean, and that probably gets back to lost my father. My family's incredibly still close.
My sisters, my brother, family. I always tell the story about first final four.

Speaker 8 In the finals, we had 94 tickets for Calhoun's there,

Speaker 8 to give you an idea. That's what my family means to me.
And I just simply think,

Speaker 8 would I trade it then?

Speaker 5 Of course not. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Because I wouldn't trade the 17 championships.

Speaker 8 I got there my way. And that's why, whether I like Rick or not, he's a terrific coach.
I actually like John Calaperi.

Speaker 8 I do business differently than he does, but regardless, my point being is that, you know, I don't have really, I mean, for me to get a guy like Rick who can really, really coach, I have no problem telling you he can really, really coach.

Speaker 8 I think that's respect. And respect is probably what he'd want and I'd want from him.

Speaker 8 And you don't have to like everybody to do the same thing. I don't like self-promoters.
And I watch... guys, they give it almost like a billboard at halftime.

Speaker 8 Just coach a freaking game. Will you please? I don't want, we got a build championship thing.
You win games, there'll be championships.

Speaker 5 I like you just slipped in a would you please. Yeah.
Those are my favorites.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Would you please?

Speaker 7 I'm looking around the room here, and you have

Speaker 7 maybe the most impressive collection of pictures in any office that I've ever been in. You have Magic and Bird here.

Speaker 8 That changed basketball.

Speaker 7 Change basketball. You've got Kimball Walker in this picture over here, hitting a last-second shot, saying, I will forever be your son in the autograph.

Speaker 7 You've got the winningest coaches in college basketball history, of which you are one of the top eight that's pictured in this frame.

Speaker 7 And then the biggest picture that you have in this office is your hole in one. Oh, really? Right above your desk.

Speaker 7 Is that your most proud accomplishment?

Speaker 8 Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good.
All I know is I tried a lot more to do that than I tried to win games. I only coached something like, let's say, I have 900 and something and

Speaker 8 1300, 1400. Thousands of those balls were hit to get that one to go in.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Because you know what? And you use the word, and

Speaker 8 I think that anybody, you could hate me, you like me, make a difference. You can't say I'm not passionate.

Speaker 5 I love to play golf.

Speaker 8 I love the passion of it. I like beating your ass.
I love when you hand me the 20 afterwards.

Speaker 5 And I get pissed when you don't.

Speaker 8 I don't do the windmills.

Speaker 8 You know, the helicopter. But when I was younger,

Speaker 8 when I was younger, I became a better golfer when I stopped fighting me, because me was getting in the way of me.

Speaker 8 And a lot of things, by the way, and golf is symbolic.

Speaker 8 You got to stay with what you're going to do. But I love getting out.
A guy once told me, what a waste of time.

Speaker 8 If you guys knew how many deals I set on a golf course to do this for this company, I would speak, do all the different things. And great people, more importantly, I've met on the golf course.

Speaker 8 And find out more about people when you play golf with them. And so I just think that that's great pleasure for me.
That's like having solitude, only four of us, okay?

Speaker 8 And in turn, intimacy with somebody at the same same time and I just think that's that's a cool cool thing but yes it was it was raining it was great and you know I once again I just think accomplishments you know I

Speaker 8 here's about here's my last thing about my life story so I'm a big Hamilton fan of that I'm at the O'Neill theater and the Bushnell boards because I told you I really like theater I think it's amazing what people can do and so Hamilton became big I in and at the O'Neill Lynn Manuel Miranda wrote what is out now in a movie in the heights.

Speaker 8 I saw it. Great.
Then he did Hamilton, and I met him, sat down. First thing he said, I don't play.
He went to Wesley and I'm right up the street.

Speaker 8 So he was in school while we were going through our stuff.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 8 in that, after Hamilton dies, and his wife is up there, and she said,

Speaker 5 Spoiler.

Speaker 7 I haven't seen it yet.

Speaker 8 That's okay. He's already died.
No, no,

Speaker 5 he's already died.

Speaker 7 Aaron Burr. Spoiler.

Speaker 5 No, his wife. Who did it? Okay.

Speaker 5 Says,

Speaker 8 who lives? Who dies? Who tells you a story?

Speaker 8 My son, who was President of Converse, President of Dockers at a very young age, does very well, et cetera. Both my son, Jeff, he has his own company too.
But my point was,

Speaker 8 who lives? Who dies? I can't understand that. They had terminal cancer and they think, thank God we were able to save it.
So who lives?

Speaker 8 Who dies, but most importantly at the end, for all of us, a legacy, I guess it's called, who tells your story?

Speaker 8 It's who tells your story and how they tell your story. And so because she then goes into a soliloquy all about

Speaker 8 starting the New York Times, starting this, Hamilton's things, all the things he did in his life. But no one told his story about the real Hamilton.

Speaker 8 And I just think, I've taken that, who lives, who dies, because that helps you sometimes with grief. But who tells your story? Like, who's going to tell your story? Think about it.

Speaker 8 And what do you want them to tell? And I just truly think it's, that's why I never judge

Speaker 8 a book by its cover or a story about someone in the newspaper or someone telling me that.

Speaker 5 I want to know,

Speaker 8 as I said before, what you did. And what you did tells me, okay, that's your story.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's great.

Speaker 7 I do have one very, very last thing. I promise it's the last thing I want to talk about.
I realize we didn't get a chance to mention it.

Speaker 7 I was doing a little bit of reading about you before we sat down, and I didn't know the story, but you were competing or you were participating in a 50-mile charity bike race at one point.

Speaker 8 My big race. Your big race.

Speaker 7 Yeah, this is what, like 15 years ago, something like that?

Speaker 8 Your buck bike, yeah, 12, 15 years ago.

Speaker 7 And you went over the handlebars of your bike.

Speaker 8 35 miles an hour.

Speaker 7 35 miles an hour. I read conflicting reports.
Some say you broke five ribs, some say you broke eight. It's kind of like a Drew Brees situation where

Speaker 7 how many ribs did you actually break?

Speaker 8 They came up with six at first. It would have been eight, I think.
But I went, what I didn't, it was a shadow, so I couldn't see a small pothole. Hit it, went over the top, smashed my helmet.

Speaker 8 Helmet saved me, but landed and broke the ribs. But the adrenaline, I think we were probably close to, it was 50 miles, we were probably close to 38, 39 miles out.

Speaker 8 So I went over, scrapes and all that kind of stuff. And so I said, I need a new helmet, and they're trying to get the, just scrapes and marks.

Speaker 8 Not realizing because the adrenaline and all the, you know, you're out that I was out doing that, that I had, you know, banged my ribs up pretty good.

Speaker 8 So I get back on the bike, went the last 12, got there. I still see it like it was today.

Speaker 8 Coach, you're all right, you're all right. I finished, I finished, we're fine.
We were raising this money for the Calhoun Cardiology Center, et cetera. Standing against the car,

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 8 Ray was there, Scotty Burrell was there, Donnie Marshall was there, and I all of a sudden just slipped down.

Speaker 8 I was riding with my doctor, my cardiologist, who's a great friend of mine, Peter Schulman, and I still remember, I said, I'm going home. He said, no, you're going to hospital.

Speaker 8 And so I guess I finished the race with eight broken ribs. Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's a big deal. Yeah.
That's grit. That is grit for sure.
Coach, this has been awesome. We really appreciate your time.

Speaker 5 Justin, just one last, just for the record, you don't regret passing on Ryan Gomes.

Speaker 8 Ryan Gomes, a great kid.

Speaker 5 Thanks so much. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Appreciate it.

Speaker 4 The Pro Football Football Show is presented by the Chevy Silverado. Built for the hustle, ready for the game.
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Speaker 4 Whether you're grinding through the week or gearing up for kickoff, the Silverado is one ride that's always game ready. Just like football, it's about grit, grind, and getting it done.

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Speaker 5 All right, that was a great interview.

Speaker 5 He also gave us balls on the way out. He signed three basketballs.
I got one that said I fucked up.

Speaker 7 I got one that said not a dime back. Yep.

Speaker 5 What did yours say, Hank? They're not bad. Just a fucking cool ass guy.
He's the man.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 5 And it is so funny that, I mean, PFT mentioned it during the interview that he retired from coaching basketball to coach some more basketball. That's that's grit.
In a little bit lower stakes.

Speaker 7 That's grit. But you know what? Like, I actually did learn from it.
He connected a big dot for me about grit, that grit is love.

Speaker 5 I like that.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 5 So thank you to Jim Calhoun. That was a lot of fun.

Speaker 5 All right. So we're going to do the Mount Rushmore.
It's brought to you by our friend at Coors Light. By the way, 8 p.m.
Eastern, Monday night.

Speaker 5 So tonight, the disc golf, the first ever, pardon my take, invitational disc golf tournament is going to be live on YouTube. We will be in the chat, commenting, talking to the people.

Speaker 5 So please make sure you get in there, watch it with us as we premiere it, like it, subscribe, do all the good stuff. Also, Tuesday night, we're going to be in Cleveland.

Speaker 5 We need an AWL's house to watch hard knocks at.

Speaker 5 Really, the only requirement is don't be a creep. No freaks.
Actually, no, no, no.

Speaker 7 I take that back. Freaks are okay, but don't be a creep.

Speaker 5 Creep.

Speaker 7 No creeps. You can be a nerd.
Don't be a dork. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So maybe send Jake an email.

Speaker 5 What's the email? Or should we? No, I was going to give it to Billy. Holy shit.
No,

Speaker 5 just say, kiss. So I believe it's PMT intern at barcelonsports.com.
Billy, Billy, so we would be at someone's house. We would be the guy in Ohio who had the zoo where the lions got released and shit.

Speaker 5 This guy's not a creep. He just has 17 animals.
I would find us a house that you guys might not like the house.

Speaker 7 We do not trust your judgment.

Speaker 5 Okay. We would be fucking sitting with all types of animals in our lap.

Speaker 7 We would get grocelosis. We'd get diseases that only cattle get.
But I'd be perfectly fine organizing it and accomplishing the task.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I know that part. You're right.
You're right. You've been doing a great job and you are right that you could do it, but I don't, I would prefer Jake to do this task.

Speaker 7 It would just be a paintball facility. Like they got a TV in the waiting room.

Speaker 5 That would actually be sick. So if you do have a paintball facility, maybe we'll consider it.

Speaker 7 Or like a low-key zoo.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but send it to Jake and we'll pick one AWO. We'll come watch Hard Knocks with you on Tuesday night.
Make sure you have HBO proper,

Speaker 5 not the fucking streaming shit.

Speaker 7 I would like to watch it live.

Speaker 5 I would like to watch it live. So proper.
I want to see proof of the subscription.

Speaker 5 All right, we're going to do our Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore is brought to you by our friends at Coors Light.
All of Grit Week is. So this is

Speaker 5 Henry, who is now winning every Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 5 Congrats to him. Hubba.

Speaker 5 Hubba. Hubba.

Speaker 5 Hubba? Chubba.

Speaker 5 Chubba Hubbard. PFT, we should team up.
Fucking everyone's creating super teams here.

Speaker 7 Do me and you want to team up and then...

Speaker 5 Maybe not for this one, but for the next one. Let's fucking do it and dominate the team.

Speaker 7 What if fools? What if we went like 1v1v1 teams?

Speaker 5 It actually would be...

Speaker 5 We actually have like, we would have the perfect like age gap. That's what I'm saying.
Yeah. Okay.
So Mitch. Damn, you guys are consolidating? We We might later on this week.

Speaker 5 We might during grit week because everyone else is teaming up. Couldn't be me.

Speaker 5 You started the Super Team era.

Speaker 7 Listen, we're trying to ring Chase, too.

Speaker 7 If you can't beat them, join them.

Speaker 5 All right. Well, we'll decide later this week if we want to team up.
But either way, Hank is winning everything. Mount Rushmore of Road Trip Songs.
So songs you listen to on a road trip.

Speaker 5 Songs to listen to while driving. It doesn't have to be a road trip.

Speaker 5 We should actually do this

Speaker 5 again, maybe next year or whatever, but we could do full albums too. Because this, when I started thinking about it, I started thinking full albums.

Speaker 7 Because a full album speaks to you in a different way than individual songs can. So, Hank, but you're saying just songs in a car.

Speaker 5 I texted what I said: songs to listen to while driving.

Speaker 7 I was thinking road trip.

Speaker 5 Mine will be road trip. I think that's fine.
Whatever's going on. I can pull up the text.
It literally says songs. That's fine.

Speaker 7 No, I'm just going to do road trip.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, you're not. Yeah, you interpreted however you chose to.
I'm prepared. I can only say.
It's fine either way. Yeah, I'm prepared.
I'm prepared. It's fine.

Speaker 5 A road trip, I mean, it's driving. Right, right, right.
It's a longer driving. It's a short road trip.

Speaker 5 Every time you get in a car, it's a road trip.

Speaker 7 We actually have to make a distinction. No, we don't.

Speaker 5 We should do it. Yeah, the distinction was made when I said songs to listen to while driving.
Okay.

Speaker 7 I'm just going to stick with my list. I've prepared.

Speaker 5 So I'm fine with my ideas. I'm going to be unconfused.
I also think that this is going to be a very difficult Mount Rushboard because I'm

Speaker 7 music taste is subjective.

Speaker 5 So it will be, it'll throw some curveballs at people. All right, numbers.
17,

Speaker 5 69,

Speaker 7 18,

Speaker 5 74,

Speaker 5 7.

Speaker 5 Fuck Hank. Hank just keeps on winning.
This guy is hot.

Speaker 5 So hot.

Speaker 5 Let's go.

Speaker 5 Oh, you don't want to go first? No, I'm going to go one. Okay.
Wait, no, you got to go and you got to just pick the direction.

Speaker 5 I'm well aware of.

Speaker 5 Hey, Bubba Jackson. I'm going to tell him which side you're happy right now, and I'm happy.
I'm happy too, though. No, so you should be happy.

Speaker 5 I understand how it works. I'm just thinking.
Okay. But I sensed a little unhappiness, and I'm happy right now.
So by law, you have to. Right, you're right.
I'm happy. Okay,

Speaker 5 appreciate it.

Speaker 5 One, well, it was Billy and Jake second. Okay, damn it.

Speaker 5 I don't think I've gone first at all this Mount Rushmore season. All right, here we go.
Hank,

Speaker 5 Atlantic City, the band.

Speaker 7 Great song.

Speaker 5 One of the best songs ever written. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yep. Good song.
Good choice.

Speaker 7 One of those times where the cover of the song is better than the original.

Speaker 5 Good choice.

Speaker 7 Life is a Highway.

Speaker 5 Rascal Flag. Good choice.

Speaker 5 I think we're going to be very literal with some of these uh songs because i'll go uh i'll go trucking grateful dead off the europe 72. okay so we're just gonna go literal songs

Speaker 5 i had well no i had i i was hoping you're gonna pick a different grateful dead one i knew liam was gonna give you that one

Speaker 5 no he didn't actually oh whoa okay that's that was me okay i'm gonna go with my 1-1 still on the board i think everyone's i don't think anything's gonna get stolen bohemian rhapsody okay yep that's a good one one great great driving song.

Speaker 7 Thought it would have been off the board by now.

Speaker 7 My second, I'm gonna go with

Speaker 5 Highway to Hell, ACDC. Okay.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 5 I will go with my second pick. I will go

Speaker 5 Reeling in the Years, Steely Dan.

Speaker 5 Great song to listen to. Not familiar.
We're going to have to listen to it. Really? Yeah.
You don't know it? Dang.

Speaker 5 Realing in the Years.

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 5 It's one of those songs that you like start thinking about your whole life while driving. I like to think about either the day, the weather of the day,

Speaker 5 or your whole life when I'm driving. I agree with two options.
I agree.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and it gets like, it's like a little.

Speaker 5 I also like my driving songs to make me drive faster. Realing in the years is one of those songs.

Speaker 7 I think if you're listening to the Allman Brothers or Steely Dan, you should be ineligible to get a speeding ticket.

Speaker 5 Or Queens of Stone Age.

Speaker 7 Fast Car, Tracy Tracy Chapman.

Speaker 5 Okay, so you are going very literal. I like this.
That's a good point.

Speaker 7 I just thought these would all be picked already. So you just thought car songs.
You're like, car, yeah.

Speaker 5 Well, we know. No, that's

Speaker 5 Billy's third-round pick is Wheels on the Bus.

Speaker 7 No, no, Fast Car. We listen to that, not on.

Speaker 5 No, it's a great song. It's a great song.
There's no,

Speaker 5 that's a life. That's a you run back your whole life and you hear that song.
Remember,

Speaker 5 I feel the night. A be someone, a be someone.
And then you're like, shit, I'm no one.

Speaker 7 Not you. No, but you're in a car going fast.
That's true. And then you're like, yeah, we're going fast.

Speaker 5 Good pick. Good pick.
Good pick. I will go with The Gambler, Kenny Rogers.

Speaker 7 That's a great car song, yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 And my

Speaker 5 life perspective one would be Landslide Fleetwood Mac. Ah, okay.
Good choice. A little depressing, but you know, you want to feel something when you're driving, either really good, really bad.

Speaker 5 You want to just, or not bad, but like that, that song will, that song will make you think things that you've forgotten about for a while.

Speaker 7 There are two kinds of road trip songs, I think. One's where you just turn off your brain and rock out, and the other is where you want to feel a feeling.
That's a great feel-a-feeling song. Yep.

Speaker 5 I actually had a Fleetwood Mac song that was going to be on my honorable mentions. Not that.
Me too. Oh, what is it? Dreams? No, The Chain.

Speaker 5 Great beat. Like a good driving beat.
I listened to the whole album when I was driving home yesterday. That's actually what that album inspired of all time.
That album inspired this Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 7 That album was inspired by cocaine.

Speaker 5 A lot of it.

Speaker 5 Heartbreak number one. Heartbreak one.

Speaker 7 Cocaine two. That kind of go hand in hand.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 7 R.I.P. Billy Mays.

Speaker 5 Billy doesn't like my list, so I'm going to load management. Do you have wheels on the bus? We're going to do load management this game.
Okay. Missed it out.
Whoa. He doesn't like my list.

Speaker 5 Trouble and paint. Okay, well, then you'll say your list at the end.
Okay, go ahead. I got three songs on my list.
Okay.

Speaker 7 You're not a music guy. All right, this one's awesome to roll around when you got the boys in the car.
Boys are back in town.

Speaker 5 Then Lizzie is in the Okay, good one, Billy.

Speaker 7 Good song.

Speaker 5 All right, I will go with Almond Brothers Blue Sky. That is one of my favorite songs to listen to on a summer day when the sky is blue.

Speaker 5 And it's a great driving song.

Speaker 5 Just a feel-good song.

Speaker 7 Okay, my last two.

Speaker 7 I'm going to go

Speaker 7 Nice for What?

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 5 Oh, such a fucking song.

Speaker 5 You made a mock of

Speaker 5 everything.

Speaker 7 I love that song. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 7 I actually love that. I only love my mom and my bed.

Speaker 5 Holy God.

Speaker 7 Sorry. Okay.
And then my last one, Blinded by the Light, Manfred Man. Okay.
Manfred Man, they are actually the same band that sings Dooa Diddy, that shitty song.

Speaker 5 But they also seem. I don't know that you were talking about it.
Huh? Yeah. That's also not

Speaker 5 nice for what. You used the wrong lyrics for the song you said.

Speaker 7 I'm singing Nice for What when I'm in the car, though.

Speaker 5 But you did. Yeah, but the lyrics that you said are God's.

Speaker 7 I was just apologizing.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 7 I was just using Drake, my muse, as another way to apologize.

Speaker 5 Got it.

Speaker 7 But yeah, Blinded by the Light, Man for Man, great sing-along song in the car.

Speaker 5 Great intro song for this podcast.

Speaker 5 That's right. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. All right, my last pick.
I'm going to go with, this is, again, a very literal. We all do very literal things on this one, but night moves, Bob Seeger.

Speaker 5 Late at night, just fucking when you're alone in the car.

Speaker 5 When you're like the only one on the highway, there's fucking nothing like that. Nothing like that.

Speaker 5 I remember when.

Speaker 7 Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen.

Speaker 5 Billy, you crush us. Yeah.
You crush us. Can we hear Jake's? Wait, I still have a pick.
Do you think that he's going to steal one of yours? No, he's not. Okay, go ahead, Jake.
Give us your two.

Speaker 5 I had all the small things blink one of you two. Okay, good song.
And home Phillip Phillips. Okay.

Speaker 5 Which one is that?

Speaker 5 Can you see me home? Home.

Speaker 5 No, not different. No, that's Edward Sharp.

Speaker 7 Magnetic Zeroes. Yeah.

Speaker 5 That's a good song. That's a good driving song, too.
How did yours go?

Speaker 5 So just know you're not alone.

Speaker 5 I'm going to make this. Make this

Speaker 5 shit. Is that like from an Apple commercial? Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's a good song.

Speaker 7 I thought that was Lumineers.

Speaker 5 Camp? Yeah, it's a Camp song.

Speaker 5 My last song, this is like

Speaker 5 beginning of a road trip. You and your boys are going to get like...

Speaker 5 First song you play on a road trip, Steady Mobbin, Lil Wayne. Oh,

Speaker 5 okay.

Speaker 5 All right. That was a good amount rush for it.
I feel like we all did a good job. We all put our best effort, except for PFT's Drake pick.

Speaker 7 I like that song a lot. I know you do.

Speaker 5 I'm so much that you quoted the wrong layer. No, I've also

Speaker 7 without a follow, without a mention. Yeah, but I've learned that I can evolve, and if I can change, then you can change, and everybody can change.
I don't think you've ever played that song in a car.

Speaker 5 I've listened to that song in a car many times. Billy, I just

Speaker 5 died. Good flag.

Speaker 7 I just drove back from Asgard. Great flag thrown two days ago.
Good flag. And I played Drake on the way back.

Speaker 5 I don't believe you. All right, let's go.
Honorable Mentions, Road to Nowhere, Talking Heads is on my list.

Speaker 7 I had Dragula. Okay.
Rob Zombie on my

Speaker 7 that's a fucking sick song. Yes.

Speaker 5 Send Me On My Way, Rusted Root. Okay.
Divided Sky Fish is a great car song. Boys.
It's like three songs in one.

Speaker 7 Boys of Summer. Great driving song.

Speaker 5 A Thousand Miles, Vanessa Carlton. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5 Night Swimming.

Speaker 7 I had Ramblin' Man on there, too. Yeah.

Speaker 7 That was my Ellman Brothers.

Speaker 5 Higher Love, Steve Winwood. That's a good one.

Speaker 7 Turn up. You know what's a great shit?

Speaker 5 She's feeling good.

Speaker 7 Is Radar Love, Golden Earring.

Speaker 7 Down by the River, Neil Young.

Speaker 5 Oh, okay. Little Neil Young.

Speaker 7 Paradise by the Dashboard Light. If you want to get some meatloaf, if you want to start screaming lyrics in your car.

Speaker 5 Paradise by Cold Play.

Speaker 5 Yep. Todd.

Speaker 5 Pink Floyd. Go with the Flow, Queens of the Stone Age.
Again, you shouldn't be given a ticket for that.

Speaker 7 Good for you.

Speaker 7 Olivia. Greengrass and High Tides.

Speaker 5 It's a good list. Good list, guys.
I think Billy won. I think Billy crushed it.
Yeah, Billy did crush it. He went the literal route that, like,

Speaker 5 you can't not see yourself in a car listening to FastCar. Like, it was smart.
Did you have wheels on the bus?

Speaker 7 That's a bus song.

Speaker 5 Still, that's when you get on the bus. Yeah.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 5 Okay, so reminder, 8 p.m. tonight, disc golf.
Hammer it. Let's get everyone watching.
Billy, would you like to do your Monday reading?

Speaker 5 I would like you to read your blog, The Mincey Experiment, because it was so good and so billy. And I would like us to follow along the Mincey experiment on this show.
Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 5 I'd like to co-opt the Mincey experiment if we can. I'd like to get updates about Mincey, maybe even have Mincy on the show.
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 7 I don't know.

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 7 You can have him on your own show. He's a Skell.

Speaker 7 All right. So,

Speaker 5 okay.

Speaker 7 I recently moved into an apartment next to a vacancy that I share balcony.

Speaker 7 The way the two apartments are set up, there was a serious potential for whoever to move in having a problem with my several exotic animals, late-night workouts, and a dog that poops on the balcony.

Speaker 7 It's more of a fire escape.

Speaker 5 Basically, just

Speaker 7 it's a fire escape type thing that leads to an outdoor area, but I'd have to share that with the neighbor.

Speaker 5 Got it. Was balcony on the amenities when you got the apartment?

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 5 It's not a balcony. Good question.

Speaker 7 It also sounds like that.

Speaker 7 What Billy is, like, the ultimate perfect example for you would be to have somebody that you know that moves in next door right because if not that would be like a four-hour conversation for you to explain your whole life your whole thing that you got going on to them wait so the balcon the the fire escape leads to something else yes what but you're not supposed to take it but you take it it leads to the little outdoor garden area but you take it often yeah so i was supposed to share it with whoever moved in the garden area yeah so i like split it but now i I don't have to split it.

Speaker 5 What, with a piece of tape?

Speaker 7 No, I actually Hank had a cool fence from when he moved out. Oh, sick.

Speaker 5 Okay, nice.

Speaker 7 Nice. But now I don't have to use it because Mincy's moving in.

Speaker 5 We're going to share the garden. Love it.

Speaker 5 So the garden's only accessible through the fire escape. That feels weird.

Speaker 7 Yes. How far above the ground is this fire escape? It's about 10 feet, but there's a stair way down.

Speaker 5 And there's nothing, there's no basement apartment or ground floor?

Speaker 7 No, that's like

Speaker 5 a little storefront.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it's more of a where the super chills. Okay.

Speaker 5 It's like a workshop, has the electrical stuff. I think I got the layout.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So. So it would have really fucked you up if someone else made it.
Some dark and molded.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it could have been like a lot of problems.

Speaker 5 Yeah, right.

Speaker 7 Dog poop, like noise.

Speaker 5 Hedgehog. Yeah.
Frogs.

Speaker 7 Legal.

Speaker 5 Normal New Jersey problems. Squat rack.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 We'll get to that.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Not that I don't like strangers.
I'm able to vibe with everyone. But sometimes strangers don't don't necessarily vibe with me.

Speaker 7 I've been telling people I know who are looking at new places to move in. Rather to have someone I know live next to me than some random who would most likely not be chill.

Speaker 7 Through word of mouth and trial and error, I now have a new neighbor. The Louisiana legend, Ben Mintz.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 7 Now, this is actually not a joke or a prank. The Fran and Mintz roommate thing was a prank by...

Speaker 7 Tommy Smokes. I don't really understand it.
I promise this is not. At first, I didn't believe Mintz was actually going to look at the apartment.

Speaker 7 That was until one morning in bed, I heard that sweet southern drawl outside my window. Mincey was touring the place.
It was actually really funny.

Speaker 7 I was like waking up, and I just hear Mincey outside my window

Speaker 5 on the balcony. Love it.
That was

Speaker 5 not a balcony. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 5 What's up, fellas? Pretty good.

Speaker 7 Even though Mintz and I have over a 16-year age difference, we have many interests in common, such as grilling, fitness, and sports, which is more than enough for two dudes to chill.

Speaker 5 Yup. Wait, wait, listen again?

Speaker 7 Grilling, fitness, and sports.

Speaker 5 Okay, so that's it. That's it.
Pretty much everything.

Speaker 7 What I love about that is, yeah,

Speaker 7 if you have that Venn diagram overlapping, you're good. But also, it's like fitness

Speaker 7 also includes grilling and sports inside of it. Yes, yes.
So it's like, it's the ultimate, like... Super bro symbiotic relationship you've got.
Trifecta.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Holy Trinity.

Speaker 7 Anyway, after Mintz looked at his new place, I showed him him around mine, and he noticed how I had a squat rack and weights in my kitchen, and asked if he would be cool if he worked out there with me.

Speaker 7 Now, trust me, my kitchen is not that very large. I live alone, and there's just no point in putting a dining table in a space for one person.

Speaker 5 Yep.

Speaker 7 A squat rack is much more efficient. Maybe Mintz will get a dining table in his apartment we can have dinner in now that he's living there.
This is perfect.

Speaker 7 So what you guys are doing is you're creating one super dorm room where like you don't have to have all the normal stuff in your place because you also technically kind of live in Mincy's place.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 5 Yeah, there's a chance that Billy tries to tear down one of these walls, a non-load-bearing wall.

Speaker 5 Fortunately, there's a hallway between the apartments, but the balconies connect, and maybe like do some. Maybe

Speaker 5 if you just start putting all your furniture in the hallway, people will get the picture that it's not theirs anyway. That's your long hallway.

Speaker 7 What you should do is the thing where you're like, okay, let's pull all our money together. And Mincy, we'll put the big TV in your place.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 And then we can pool all your money together and put the beer pong table in mine.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 5 Now that...

Speaker 7 Wait, sorry.

Speaker 7 Now that Mince wants to work out with me, there's a huge potential for me to put on serious masks because I'll have someone there to spot me. I wasn't going to...
I mean, how terrible.

Speaker 5 That's my favorite part that you were not realizing your gains because you had no one to spot you in your squat rack in your kitchen. Well, I was really

Speaker 7 lifting alone.

Speaker 5 Right, you're not going to fucking push.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, it would be really, really terrible if I couldn't get the bar. It would call it

Speaker 5 Brian Rosillo. It'd kill yourself with your scout.
Exactly.

Speaker 7 Honestly, you would be a legend if that's how you do it. I know, but that would just be really bad.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I don't want you to die, but if you had to pick a way to go, would it rather be like, I don't know, a car accident? Or would it be like you got crushed under the weight of your own max?

Speaker 7 Not alone with my dog in the apartment.

Speaker 5 Yeah, think about the dog. Yeah, Whitey would eat.

Speaker 5 Your dog would eat you? Yeah, dogs eat. When he got hungry, they eat.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 We would know that you were dead right away. True.

Speaker 5 We'd just be like, we'd be so mad at you.

Speaker 7 After like the fifth or sixth hour that you didn't show up, he'd be like, okay, something might be wrong.

Speaker 5 Yeah, listen, if you die that way,

Speaker 5 we don't want you to die, but if you ever die that way, we can't be held accountable for the anger that we feel for you being late until we figure out that you're dead. You see what I'm saying?

Speaker 5 Like,

Speaker 5 you'll probably get fired. in the time that you die in the time we realize you're dead.

Speaker 7 So don't have to pay out that insurance. Anyway, totally irrational fear, but

Speaker 7 so now I will have someone there to spot me, and Mince will continue the insane transformation he's been on since his drinking days. He's lost like 50 pounds.
Yep.

Speaker 5 But he's, you're going to get to it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 Ben has dropped a ton of weight, and he says he hit a plateau and would love for me to help him get to the next level.

Speaker 7 He asked me to actually be in charge of buying all the food for the both of us, and he will work out with me.

Speaker 7 What he doesn't realize is I have already devised a complete diet, supplement, and exercise plan that I've been trying to get Big Cat and PFT to fully commit to for years.

Speaker 7 Now I have the perfect opportunity to control all the variables and in turn Ben Mintz into a lab rat turned muscle hamster.

Speaker 5 It's still crazy to me that like when you got hired or when you were our intern, when you were 18 years old, we just put our like nutrition in your hands and you know a lot now.

Speaker 5 You knew nothing. Remember he would be like he almost killed us.
We'd be like, hey, is this kettle? And he'd be like, yeah. Wait, hold on one sec.
And then you just go Google.

Speaker 7 I think that Billy actually gave us kidney stones. Yeah.
That's the reason why we have it because we didn't follow.

Speaker 7 Well, so you say that you have like a strict nutrition and dietary and workout plan that you've already put together that you've been trying to get us on.

Speaker 7 I'm going to throw a flag on that, Billy, because I don't think that you actually have a plan because you've never told us

Speaker 5 on that.

Speaker 7 Your plan is just like, if they ask me to work out, that'd be sweet and I'll work out with them. But you have never said like, okay, here's your dietary restrictions.

Speaker 7 Well, basically, it would be just low-carb, and I've been trying to get you guys to do that, but you keep saying

Speaker 5 I'm trying to do low-carbon

Speaker 7 salad for lunch every day. What I would tell you guys to do is ketosis, and then you accidentally don't do ketosis, and then you just end up on a low-carb diet.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and also just that's actually smart.

Speaker 5 That's like shooting for the moon, Linden. Exactly, so that's that's really the plan.

Speaker 7 Okay, so I now control Ben Mintz's diet and exercise. So, basically, he is my pet.

Speaker 5 This is a 34-year-old male. 38.
38? He's your pet. And you're being serious.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 I mean, basically, I'm going to, like, really whip this guy's.

Speaker 5 All of your experiments, you can now take out on Ben Mitchell.

Speaker 7 Well, basically, I control all the variables. Like, literally, he's not going to be able to eat a meal.

Speaker 5 You should maybe chain him up. Yeah, well, in off hours.
Billy, you don't know, you know.

Speaker 7 Why don't you be like, let's get a deep freezer and we'll get like a big-ass fridge for your apartment.

Speaker 7 So that way, you know that he doesn't have food in his yeah you got to make sure he has no food in his apartment i'll actually check no but he's got a meat guy hookup so we're just going to be

Speaker 5 grilling all of this so you guys are just fucking it's going to be bulking season is going to be insane and i got a grill who's in charge of seizing the food ben or you

Speaker 7 probably ben yeah i was saying

Speaker 5 i take a louisiana guy

Speaker 7 um

Speaker 7 I'm going to pump this guy full of creatine, get up squatting heavy, and see what happens.

Speaker 5 We're about to add muscle mass onto that newly slimmed mint's frame and it's going to be awesome lots of stuff in the works expect to see some before photos from minty soon the minty spair is about to begin i love it i'm so excited for this it was a great blog billy's become a very very good blogger uh but that one was i i read it on friday and i texted you right away i was like we need to talk about this because you have a pet and i'm excited to see the results it's going to be really it is a human being we should say that again it's been mint is yeah he's a man he's a man with his own

Speaker 5 he's sign he's signed up for all this. We should need to get him some consent forms.

Speaker 7 So, Billy, you have to be prepared for when Mintz goes through his first couple weeks and he puts on weight because I think you're mostly focused in terms of the traditional Billy workout methods.

Speaker 7 Like, how jack can I make this person? So, he's probably going to put on like five pounds of muscle, and then he's going to be like, Billy, let's go,

Speaker 5 like, hanging out.

Speaker 7 He'll get that. The plan is, is we're going to get him on a specific supplement regimen that will be able to break through that first wall of soreness

Speaker 7 and you know when the muscles are really getting ramped up what what supplement is that we're going to go with dispartic acid arganine creatine i like when billy counts on his fingers yeah we need these we need these consent forms because if you kill him like we gotta be basically he's gonna be high t ben mint this guy's gonna come in here pick central is gonna be insane that's gonna be awesome this guy isn't gonna take any shit because his hormone levels are gonna be out of control he's gonna probably all natural try to fuck you.

Speaker 5 All natural, but it's going to be fun. Okay.
So I'm very pleased.

Speaker 7 What are your goals? Not for Ben, for you. Oh, for me,

Speaker 7 I've gotten pretty skinny and I want to get back to squatting around 400, which is reasonable.

Speaker 5 Do you have that weight in your kitchen?

Speaker 7 Well, I was going to, when I got past 315, 385 was going to steal weights from here.

Speaker 5 Got it. Okay.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, that's fine.

Speaker 7 So maybe you'll be able to start benching more than what, 285? Well, I don't know if I'm going to break 300. The boxing got in the way of that, but I think we'll get back there.

Speaker 7 Okay, but when I said, like, what are your goals for you? I meant like as a trainer. How are you going to know when you feel good?

Speaker 5 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, about your experiment.

Speaker 7 Well, when I don't know, when Ben Mintz is jacked, and everyone's like, wow.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think that's actually.

Speaker 7 I'm actually aiming to get it really going by Christmas. And then I think me and Chef Donnie are going to release

Speaker 5 like a cookbook, exercise plan, like life plan book yes by black friday yes that's the aim but i'm testing on ben mints now okay i love i like that you are gonna become like some mix of like uh the p90x guy and tony robbins i think this is your perfect self Trying.

Speaker 7 This is as close as we get to a Russian scientist in our mix.

Speaker 7 You know what you actually need to incorporate is check his piss. Yep.
See what nutrients he's lacking, that sort of thing.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we got to put it to a lap.

Speaker 7 You got to send his piss away. True.

Speaker 5 That's, again, consent forms. We need to get him to sign his white.
But he's not going to be...

Speaker 7 We don't need to test him for doping. He's not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 5 No, no, no. You're going to dope him.

Speaker 7 I actually got to make sure he's not doping and cheating.

Speaker 5 No, you got to make sure he's not doping. Oh.
Because you're going to dope him. No, I'm not.

Speaker 7 But you do need to see, like, the nutrient levels, the mineral levels. You've got to make sure he's going to optimize his diet.

Speaker 5 You've got to make sure he's taking the steroids you give him.

Speaker 7 I'm not going to give him steroids.

Speaker 5 I promise.

Speaker 7 You're going to mix it

Speaker 7 into his peanut butter like a dog. Maybe a little, you know,

Speaker 5 vaping into his ear. That's fine.
It's fine. Do you have any recap or should we just go to the numbers? Yeah.

Speaker 7 So basically, here's a list of all of the empires that tried to invade Afghanistan. Okay.

Speaker 7 The Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Arab Empire, the Turkish Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire.

Speaker 5 This is like going to play a VCU, right?

Speaker 7 Not the Roman Empire, surprisingly. The British Empire, the Soviet Union.
I wouldn't consider it was an invasion we did, but also the U.S.

Speaker 5 just kind of crashed at their house for 20 years.

Speaker 7 They're the ultimate trap game. They're a big-time trap game.
They're the team that no one wants to play.

Speaker 5 They've got rivalry.

Speaker 7 Like, throughout the record books, no matter who you are, when you play Afghanistan. Also, in Washington State, two consenting adults can have a fist fight and it's sanctioned.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Kwame Brown talks that.

Speaker 5 Mutual combat state. Yes.
Regarding

Speaker 5 what we talked about earlier. Yeah, that's all.
All right, numbers, and then we're off on the road. Did we? Reminder, 8 p.m.
tomorrow. 8.
What?

Speaker 7 I was going to say, like, did we gentrify Afghanistan while we were there? That would have been a good way to keep the Taliban from coming back. It's build like a Hooters.
It's forbidden.

Speaker 5 Say. 18.

Speaker 5 Paper source. 99.
Yeah, paper. Maybe there's a paper source.
Maybe like

Speaker 7 a nice brunch place that nobody can get into.

Speaker 7 What is that?

Speaker 5 66.

Speaker 7 60.

Speaker 5 All right. We're going to grit week right now.

Speaker 7 Everyone tune in tomorrow night, 8 p.m.

Speaker 5 to see you out on the road. Oh, yeah, talking soccer.
There it was.

Speaker 7 Squirrels can survive terminal velocity. Love you guys.

Speaker 7 I'm the say, but I'll stay anyway.

Speaker 7 These are not good day to find you. Talking away,

Speaker 7 I'll be coming for it. Okay,

Speaker 7 oh,

Speaker 7 I'll be

Speaker 7 God

Speaker 7 in the

Speaker 7 song.

Speaker 7 to say

Speaker 7 a pause in hell.

Speaker 7 Let's be stopped by away.

Speaker 7 Slowly learning the life is open.

Speaker 7 Say I believe

Speaker 7 it's no better to be slavery than so routine.

Speaker 7 God

Speaker 7 we

Speaker 7 All the things I just said.

Speaker 7 Oh, is it like the world

Speaker 7 to play my world easy.

Speaker 7 You all the things I've got to remember.

Speaker 7 I'm side away.

Speaker 7 I'll be coming through anyway.

Speaker 7 God,

Speaker 7 I'll be

Speaker 7 God.

Speaker 7 we

Speaker 7 are

Speaker 7 free.