NFL Future Leans, the Yankees Malaise, Amy Bradley Theories, a Scheffler Makeover, and Hulk Hogan’s Career With Joe House, Jack-O, and David Shoemaker

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So first we have Joe House and I are talking about NFL futures that have really jumped out to us so far, meaning gambling stuff, divisions, teams that we're worried about, hitting that at the top.

Then for old time's sake, my buddy Jacko, John O'Connell, coming right in.

He demanded a spot to vent about the Yankees for 15 minutes.

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And I brought in David Shoemaker from the ringer to talk about Hulk's career and just the apex of it and just everything that we saw and everything we felt and thought.

So that is the podcast.

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All right, we're taping mid-Sunday afternoon.

The man, the myth, the legend, Joe House, is here.

We're texting so much about NFL futures and liens and feels.

It's still July.

We are six weeks away from week one of the NFL season house.

Some of these odds are going to move around.

We've been talking about it non-stop.

We're going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about some happy Gilmore.

We're going to bring Jacko in to talk about the Yankees and true crime.

But let's start with NFL really quick.

First of all, how many bets have you fired off?

Because you live in a state where gambling is actually legal.

Yeah, I was going through the inventory.

I, I, you know, I'm always a little nervous because now with the markets open in March, it's like, oh, so there were some numbers I liked early.

I got on Green Bay to win the Super Bowl at 22 to 1.

That's held steady.

I would have booked that for you.

She just sent that to me.

I mean, no, I just winning the Super Bowl.

I just like some of the long shot.

Really, this is like, you know, some of the long shot kind of stuff.

And then then as as we get more information then i start laying in so i i have been

over indexing my skepticism of cincinnati this season uh just way too many bets like what every four days i wake up in the morning and i look at at the total and i'm like i cincinnati I don't like what they're doing.

They haven't improved the defense and they still don't have an answer on the offensive line.

And if Joe Burrow gets hurt, we've seen this.

They are horrendous.

So I keep betting against Cincinnati.

I have them missing the playoffs.

I have them on the under.

A lot of skepticism about Minnesota.

So they're going to be.

Wait, hold on.

Cincinnati.

On Cincinnati, I talked to you about this on the phone the other day.

And I was saying how my theory, how they become the fantasy football team that spent all their money, all their $200 on the three guys and then did $1 guys everywhere else.

And you were like, you mean like I did in two years ago in fantasy football?

And guess what?

You didn't win.

No, I did that more in basketball than anything else.

But yeah, either way, it's not a winning strategy.

It's not a winning strategy.

So, Raheem was on this a year ago, who's on the Ringer Gambling Show with you and has popped on this pod from time to time about the concept of if they're out on a team,

go really out, go on some of those alt unders.

And so,

the Cincinnati's, what, minus nine and a half?

Is the overall total?

Yeah, it's nine and a half.

Right.

So

you're saying I think Cincinnati is going to be awful or not as good as people think or they're one borough injury away.

You're going under seven and a half.

You get plus 280 on FanDuel.

If you went under five and a half, which I guess would be some really

bad injuries.

That's eight to one.

I'm just saying.

We've seen this.

We saw it last year with the Niners, where if you had just said, you know what, I don't like the look of the Niners.

I don't like the smell of them.

I'm just going to go hard under.

And that's the way to do it.

So, all right.

So, Cincinnati's one.

And I agree with you because I think they're top heavy.

And I think the odds are reflecting the ideal situation with all of their playmakers.

I don't like teams that can't block and can't cover.

So that's a problem.

The thing that keeps coming back to me, and I'll have more time to get into the roster and so forth.

This is just the July season.

Six weeks.

That was a career season out of Joe Burrow last year.

They got the career season out of him.

He was awesome.

He was incredible all season long with those weapons.

And I mean, he's capable of replicating it, but a lot of stuff went right for them on offense.

And they still missed the playoffs.

They still came up short because that offensive line subjects him to just too much abuse.

And there are games where that offense underperforms.

They tend to happen early in the season, especially.

But that defense was just an abomination.

And I just haven't seen anything.

Again, we'll get into the rosters, but I just wanted to make sure that my skepticism was baked into my portfolio early on.

Well, as you know, I love doing the player rankings every year, and I felt like it really helped me last year.

And I spent even more time on them this year

trying to perfect my formula like a scientist.

Cincinnati did not do great

in the setup.

You take out Burrow and Chase.

I gave them a minus one for their offensive line.

I only had five offensive lines where I was like, not only do you get a zero, I'm giving you a minus one.

Higgins,

you know, who hasn't been as healthy the last two years, but when he is healthy, he's great.

And then Hendrickson, assuming he's coming back.

And I think Chase Brown was good for them.

And that's about it.

That's their team, you know, and they went nine and eight last year, had some bad end of the game luck, but they're also pretty top heavy.

Minnesota, you and I share the same concerns because this is my favorite week to really start looking at this.

Like on the positive side, Josh Simmons, who the Chiefs got at the end of the first round, left tackle, hurt his knee.

Everyone was like, oh, shit, if they get, they can get him healthy in time for the season, this is like getting a top 10 pick.

Right.

It's like, all right, I've heard that one before.

I'm not going to trust that if that's cool.

Well, guess what?

He looks great in training camp.

And now they went from like this offensive line that was the biggest reason they lost in the Super Bowl.

They had Joe Tooney playing outside as a guard at left tackle.

And now they have Simmons.

They spent some free agent money.

They actually have too much, too many guys.

They might have like a decent guy not even starting.

But this Simmons, if he can be left tackle, kind of changes how I feel about the Chiefs.

I don't know about you.

Well, and

you know, some of the smart folks that are doing some of the assessing of fortunes like this iteration of the Chiefs better than last year, the team that went 15-2,

mainly because it seems like

they are able to be physical, and it will be by virtue of what you're describing with Simmons, physical on the offensive side.

You know, they're not, Kelsey will become a possession receiver.

They have two vertical threats, you know, whenever the suspension is done

with Rice.

The receivers will be better.

Hollywood Browns back.

Right.

Like, they actually weirdly should be better, except they're not going to go 11-0 in the one-score games again.

But it's leading to something I want to talk about in a second.

But let's do the Minnesota thing because this is the opposite of the Josh Simmons piece.

The couple days of McCarthy we've had and some of the quotes from the players already where it just feels like work in progress is maybe being generous.

Yeah.

It made me nervous, House.

Well, with good reason.

I mean,

I have a lot of admiration for the Minnesota organization and for them doing what they did last season, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

They were at times dominant and they were able to play physical football and it led all the way up to that unbelievable week 17 game against Detroit.

But Sam Darnold was incredible for them.

He and O'Connell were in such harmony.

There was

a a synergy there, if we can, you know, use all of the stupid business words, but it just made so much sense.

And you could see the team believing in Darnold.

And that we had that famous locker room video.

Amazing.

They gave him the ball and they're just going fucking crazy and they're lifting them up.

So I don't criticize them for not paying Darnold,

but they lost something meaningful, in my humble opinion.

And we were supposed to believe that the one-hour sessions, you know, some of the stories coming out with Minnesota.

Oh, talk about, tell that story.

What was he that story?

A story about, you know, O'Connell made a point of ensuring no matter what in his schedule, he had an hour to sit down with McCarthy every single week of the NFL season.

So they could

last year, yes, yes, while while McCarthy was injured, so they could talk about, you know, things that were going on, what McCarthy was seeing, and just, you know, that undivided undivided attention between the quarterback and the head coach, the offensive mastermind.

That's great.

I'm glad they have a great relationship.

Need to see that dude get on the football field and throw the rock more than 10 yards.

It's tough because there's two things going against him.

The rookie quarterback piece.

Actually, three.

The rookie quarterback piece.

the I'm coming off a major injury piece, and then the I haven't played football in two years piece.

And and he's young.

So you have all these things working against you.

And I get it.

They had to play it the way they had to play it because he's on a rookie contract.

They made a big investment in him last year.

It wouldn't have made sense to pay Darnold.

I get it.

But that doesn't mean I have to like Minnesota this year.

The other thing that sucks is that other than the quarterback position, the most important position on the field, they're goddamn good on both sides of the ball.

And there are a bunch of veterans on that football team with an expectation of high performance based on how they did last year.

And if he comes in and sucks, like, you know, that's not an easy situation to navigate.

So I just have a lot of skepticism.

I know I won't be betting on the over.

The over right now, I guess it's eight and a half is minus 150.

If you wanted to go over 10 and a half for them, plus 180.

But we're also looking at, you know, the biggest drop-offs.

in

NFL history of teams just dropping six wins, seven wins.

It's not a thing that happens very much.

You know, so what was that record last year?

14 and 3?

Yes, 14.

Yeah.

So you think like, all right, what are the biggest drop-offs ever?

We've had some wins go up.

I don't even have the list of the drop-offs, but usually it's like six, seven wins is the max for going from

point A to point B.

So for them to go from 14 wins to eight wins, that's like almost historic.

We had it like the San Francisco.

there's always a team san francisco last year backed up that much yeah

i mean there are think about there's a brand about all the that happened to them last year to make that happen it was like the all-time year from hell season starting with their first-round pick getting shot in downtown that was it when i saw that i was like oh

we started going under on all the san francisco stuff so I am uh a little skeptical of uh this team.

Anyone else?

Because I have a team that jumped out to me that I mentioned Nate Tice last week.

Oh, I'm a little bit more.

And it ties into

a bigger thing I want to talk about.

I'm all ears.

You tell me.

I just really like this Broncos team.

Oh, okay, sure.

And I've looked at it from every way.

I actually asked FanDuel, and they said a lot of the action on the Broncos has been

basically all positive, which makes me a little nervous for division, for the overs.

But when I did my rankings, they just have a lot of good players all over the place.

They have a top four offensive line.

They got better in some subtle ways.

They definitely got better on defense.

They have a rookie running back that if they hit with him with Harvey,

then that's going to be significant because the running backs were bad last year.

They have Knicks in year two.

The schedule is a little favorable in general for the AFC West.

And I had them in my rankings.

I had them like right hovering around where KC is for a number, like just for like player personnel.

Player personnel.

Yeah, I had them above the Chargers.

I had them a little bit above the Rams.

Like, I had them.

When I laid everything out, they were higher than I thought.

And when that happened last year, those teams were usually good.

I think what's got to be driving that is your defensive numbers, right?

Because that defense was already excellent.

And then they added two very good players.

Now, we'll see what they have left.

I didn't have Him Fang as

a chipper.

I had six chips on their defense.

Benito, Franklin Myers, Allen, Greenlaw, Sertan, and Jones.

That's six of their 11 guys made the list.

And they're all like legitimately, you have to put them in the top 15, top 17 range.

And then Sean Payton, year two, they got a little taste last year, which I like.

And I think with the AFC, when you take out Baltimore and you take out Buffalo and you take out KC, it's really it for,

oh, no, I don't want to see that team.

I agree.

You're right.

So could they crack crack top three

um for the for the over-unders for them that it's nine and a half is over it's plus one ten the division odds i think they're plus 330

and i i just i think those odds are going to move i think that's going to be the team that i think i think things are going to shift are you in or out on them i'm in and i like their defense quite a bit um i love the idea of of building the way that they built and what they surrounded boneks with and and payton getting his guy in next

the um

the aspect of

that bet

for them,

would you say plus 330 to win the division?

Yeah.

That's just a Patrick Mahomes gets hurt to bet.

Do we do that?

Well, no,

if Simmons wasn't going to be ready for the season on their line and I was worried about the Chiefs line again, I might have thought about it.

But the only thing with the Chiefs, man, you look at their schedule and

like what they did to them from a TV game standpoint and a night game standpoint.

It's fucking bonkers.

Hold on, I have it here.

They have

how many night games?

I have eight games that are either at night on Christmas or in Europe.

So

they only play...

There's 17 games total.

They only play nine normal Sunday games and then eight just completely wacky crazy.

They start the season in Brazil.

Week three, they're Sunday night.

Week five, Monday night.

Week six, Sunday night.

Week eight, Monday night.

Thanksgiving, they play Sunday night, Christmas.

And then the Raiders game, for all we know, could be a night game.

Like that schedule has made me nervous.

Well, the same thing is true.

And I'm agreeing that there is, you know, we're going to see regression for the one score stuff.

And, you know, even though we both think personnel-wise, they're right where they were last year.

But, you know, 12 wins is still plenty good um

you describing all of those night games all those island games sadly washington has the exact same very very very similar oh i'm aware let's talk very similar very similar i was a little down on the washington team what's

you want to go half glass full or glass half empty i'm i'm i'm only glass half full so you should do the glass half empty well do the glass half full and i'll do the empty

That offense is better than last year.

And yes, there will be regression in terms of their effectiveness on fourth down, especially.

They're not going to be 87%

effective on converting fourth downs this upcoming season, but they still have that multiplicity and they will keep defenses on their heels.

They're not going to change their philosophy.

or approach.

And so overall, even though they won't be 20 of 23 on fourth down, they're going to play four down offensive football.

And

with the addition of Debo Samuel and the additions on the offensive line, now look.

Debo Samuel.

Well, no, I mean, he's just going to be put into the perfect role for him.

That's all.

They're not going to, it's not like a perfect role.

He's built around him.

He's a penis.

Is he in shape yet?

He needs the calories.

He's going to be

out there trying to earn another contract.

Let that man eat.

He's going to get his touches.

I'm not worried.

And take some of the pressure off of Austin Eckler.

Like, is it touches of a bagel?

It's a team of yards after contact.

And if some of that contact, look, he needs to build up the fortitude to take that first hit.

I don't have no issue whatsoever.

Let that man eat.

In fact, I'll take him around Washington, D.C., and make sure that he's well-fed.

Deba, stay away from Joe House.

Nah, nah, he's we're good.

Me and Dee

are on the same page.

But

I'm not worried about the offense.

And I, you know, it's hilarious with Tunsell,

led the league last year and accepted penalties from that position.

But

his blocking rates, his grades are still very, very good.

The defense remains a work in progress, and they lost

some important guys there.

So we'll see.

That schedule you mentioned, they have the same issue.

that KC has eight games that are either net games or Euro games.

And they're playing on Christmas too.

So here's here's the other issue with them.

I was ranking the divisions, which I can't wait for you to talk about for just who I think is going to be the best division in each conference.

And I think you can make a legitimate case that they're playing the two best divisions in each conference.

They're playing the AFC West.

They're playing the NFC North.

Those are eight games where the worst teams you're going to play are either Minnesota or Chicago in the NFC North, and probably Vegas in the AFC West, who I kind of like as at least being a little frisky with the new coach.

So you have that.

They're playing a second-place schedule, which is Miami, the Chargers, and Seattle.

And two of those teams could be good.

And Miami seems like they lucked out with that one, but it's just, it's a murderer's row.

And then, you know, it's got to be mentioned.

The

Jaden Daniels, just

the reason people were worried about him when he came into the league was he's skinny.

True.

What kind of hits is he going to take?

So those would be my concerns, House.

From a player, from a talent standpoint, they did okay in my rankings.

They were, you know,

they were kind of upper middle class.

That's fine.

I'll take it.

Believe me.

I had them in the Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Washington range, basically.

Oh, I see.

For talent.

Okay.

But a lot of it depends on how you rank Daniels and

where you think he's going to be.

So some of the bets that

we were looking at, and this sparked, we have have a thread, Miyu,

Sal, and Hench that we've had for a long time that we named after J.T.

Thor,

a guy who carried us on the last day of the season a couple years ago.

What was that?

The Charlotte over?

What did we have?

It was incredible.

We had whoever Charlotte was playing, we had their under.

It was a Cleveland under.

Yeah, we needed Charlotte to beat Cleveland.

They put, JT Thor was on Charlotte, and Cleveland deliberately decided to tank the last game of the season.

I don't remember the circumstances why.

And Charlotte was trying to tank too, but JT Thor was like, I'm not tanking.

I'm trying to impress people and looked at Carl Malone in the mid-90s.

Anyway, so we always text bets and we finally got excited about one.

And it was plus 158 on FanDuel when we were texting about it.

Now it has dropped to plus 145.

The bet is New Orleans and Cleveland.

both to finish fourth in their divisions.

I feel even better about it than I did a week ago.

I love this bet.

Um, there's some people we could throw it in, but it's it's my favorite one, right?

Is this your favorite too?

Yeah, so far, it's it's very simple.

I, the other bet that I've made on the other side of it is um Baltimore and Buffalo to win their respective divisions, that's plus 120 on the FanDuel Sportsbook.

So, I like to have a positive bet to go along with our negative bet.

You know, for Carmen,

just all go negative.

Yeah, that's right.

I don't, I don't see any scenario where Cleveland makes makes the third place spot unless there's some sort of horrible injury to somebody.

And even then, I don't know if they're.

Have you seen the odds?

I couldn't find them.

I don't know if they're out yet.

My favorite bet for Cleveland will be last team to get a win this NFL season.

Oh, their schedule is

excruciatingly tough at the outset.

And there are some unbelievable betting opportunities.

Let's go through it for the audience because I looked at this too, and it was one of the reasons I sent you guys that last place text.

Plus, not to mention we have no idea who their quarterback was.

Kenny Pickett's already hurt.

Yeah, so they're home Cincy at Baltimore, home Green Bay at Dallas, playing Minnesota and London at Pittsburgh, home Dolphins at Pats, at Jets, Ravens, at Raiders, Niners, or the first 12, basically.

So I guess the best chance would be Dolphins week seven.

That's their first, best chance.

I agree.

Unless they upset somebody.

But they'll be

Bengals game.

I haven't looked at the lines yet, but they'll be at least like

plus five higher.

They'll be plus five or higher in every game until that Miami game.

So I don't see any case for Cleveland to not be in fourth place.

And I don't even think they care.

I think they're going to use this year to figure out.

They paid Miles Garrett.

He's now he can't say anything.

He took the money.

They don't really have a lot of talent anywhere.

And

that's just the way it goes.

But the New Orleans, New Orleans, even though that division's obviously worse,

that was one of only, I only had two teams that I gave minus twos for their quarterbacks, and it was New Orleans and Cleveland.

Yeah, I mean, the thing that's a tiny bit scary with New Orleans is that their offensive line is not horrendous.

Right.

There are one good thing about that.

Offensive lines, and they do still have guys that, you know, you see some spectacular plays out of Chris Olave, some spectacular.

Alvin Kamaro was like kind of a dog for as long as he could be healthy last season, which, you know,

he's in harm's way quite a bit, especially with Derek Carr.

Well, Olave, unfortunately, Olave has that concussion thing that I think he's had four or five.

I just hate it.

It's hard to pencil him in for an entire season anymore.

New Orleans has, I would argue, the least amount of talent in either conference.

Combined with this David Carr piece, Derek Carr.

I just called him by his brother.

That'll be the first of many mistakes in the podcast for me.

Derek Carr, whichever car,

but having to, whatever that salary cap, not being able to plan for a QB anyway.

So we like that.

It's plus 145.

New Orleans, Cleveland.

And then you can get a little frisky if you want.

You can throw Tennessee in there

for them to be in fourth place.

That was plus $4.93.

Now it's plus $520.

Or you can go Cleveland, New Orleans, Miami.

If you want to really go nuts.

That's plus 724 house.

If you think Miami can be the worst team in the AFC East, and I think they can.

I want to tell you, I have lost some of my enthusiasm for Tennessee as the worst team in the AFC South because when you go in and start looking at,

I honestly, I did this out loud on many of our shows.

They had all the hallmarks of a team that was point shaving, except for they weren't.

I mean, it wasn't an allegation.

They just were the point-shaving Titans because their

level of special teams play was historically bad.

And Will Levis was,

I think our good pal Warren Sharp called him a double agent.

I mean, no, nobody, he led the NFL in opposing touchdowns, like letting other teams score.

And he was, you know, a,

by

however many measures you want to use, the worst quarterback in the entire NFL.

And so if you.

He was certainly the worst quarterback to gamble on last year.

Well, they went 2-15 against the spread.

The first time he looked competent, and then he would become Will Levis and just pull.

Yeah.

So it was always better to be against Will Levis.

Yeah, yeah.

2-15 against the spread.

Another historical outcome.

So here's,

I mean, it's not like a strong case for Tennessee.

It's just they got rid of the worst quarterback in the league and replaced him with a rookie.

And the rookie is a great unknown, who knows?

And they got a legit special teams coach on the team.

So, you know, they

congratulations.

But rookie QB offensive line might not be

horrific.

I think they didn't get a minus one.

They weren't a bottom five offensive line.

Division's not good.

Division's not good.

Another possible.

That's why I didn't like, oh, let me plow into adding Tennessee to the parlay.

The parlay that we absolutely did.

But we did, though.

We did.

But I mean, it wasn't the same.

It wasn't the same denominator.

Less units.

That's right.

Well, there's a Cleveland, Cleveland, New Orleans, Miami, Tennessee all to finish fourth place is plus 18-20.

18-1 odds.

I think that's a pretty good long shot.

And you could probably go against it.

Miami is the Jets are in that conference.

How the Jets?

The Jets have some talent.

We said this last year.

I know, but they have a better coaching situation.

My fear with the Jets is, or a positive fear, is they might actually have an identity.

I don't know if I like the identity.

I don't know if it's an identity that will win 10 games, but

with fields and they have a better than average offensive line, right?

They do.

And maybe they're just going to be a pound-the-ball,

multiple running backs, hard to play, a lot of like 16 to 13 type games.

And I can kind of see what they might be all right right they have enough enough chippers on defense

maybe i don't see it with miami at all i don't understand what that team is and that the first coach fired stuff hasn't come out yet but i think mick daniel has to be uh lingering for that one right sure yeah he's he's gonna be in the top three for sure

most shocking one on that list could be mike tomlin

I just don't see it.

I know.

I just don't see it.

Who else would you have on the first coach fired list?

I don't know.

All of the eligible candidates got fired.

All of them.

We have so many new coaches.

Right.

I guess like Zach Taylor would have to be mentioned.

If since he went to the next one, he comes out slow again.

He'll be there.

Dayball may be at the giant.

He'll be number one.

Horrific.

Don't you think he'll be number?

Or did he get another

year's worth of dispensation?

I would have McDaniel first.

Okay.

Yeah.

But that's just me.

So speaking of divisions,

so

I was trying to figure out.

We did this.

Sal and I did this when we did the over-under pod.

So I'll have a final answer on this.

But if you go most wins by division and you go least wins by division.

It's a good way to think of it because last year, one of the things that helped me with my futures was I went all in on divisions or I was all out on divisions.

We had the most wins by a division last year.

Was the NFC North had 45 wins.

The year before, the AFC North had 43.

And the year before that, the NFC East had 43.

Those are our top three: 43, 43, 45.

So we know the best division in the 17-game schedule is going to be in the 43 to 45 range, which is a lot of wins.

You need one really good team,

another really good team, and then the other ones are probably around nine to 10 wins.

Who is that this year, House?

Who would be your best bet?

Because I'm going to have Fandel do some

division things for us, like win totals for divisions, divisions against each other.

I have a pick.

Who's your most reliable division this year?

For me, it's the AFC West.

I think that they're really kind of built for it.

They have the best coaches in the entire NFL, in my humble opinion, now with Pete Carroll.

I mean, you could say whatever you want, make fun of Pete for the last couple of years in Seattle, but the culture will change and they have talent and they're headed in the right direction.

What we saw out of Peyton and Harbaugh and the way that they immediately arrived and immediately kicked those teams into gear.

And then the Chiefs are just the Chiefs.

And so, you know,

you can get, I see like a 38 to 42 win sort of possibility for those four teams.

And I can't get there with any of the other divisions.

So, the over-unders right now, Casey's 11.5, Denver's nine and a half, Chargers nine and a half, Vegas, seven and a half.

So, if you add those up, we're at 38.

Yeah.

And if we're going over,

if you think that division is actually going to overachieve, that puts us in that range.

Here's the fun wrinkle.

That division plays the AFC South and the NFC East.

So, you have the AFC South, which I do not think is going to be good, and the NFC East, which other than Philly, if your your team goes backwards, if Dallas stays in the middle and then the Giants are bad, it's just probably the best.

The best outcome would be South and South.

But the next best outcome, I think, is

this.

So

I'm with you, House.

You're agreeing with me.

Okay.

I am.

That was the one I had.

That was the one I had as well, the AFC West.

I think there's an interesting Vegas case

where it's basically just QB coach, which we've seen.

You saw it last year on your team.

Yeah.

Change QB, bring in a competent one.

Change the coach, bring in a competent one.

That's usually worth five wins.

It just is.

You know, and that team was, I think their record was even a little better than we thought it was going to be last year.

But

I don't know.

Could they go nine and eight?

Sure.

Sure.

The Christian Wilkinson.

I didn't love the Christian Wilkinson.

Didn't love that.

That was, that was, I thought, a red flag.

But then you flip it the other way.

Who's going to be the worst?

All right.

Well, what are the numbers for that?

Last year, worst division.

AFC South 25.

We thought it was going to be the NFC South.

And we did.

We had special fan duel bets.

We went under, I think, 29.5.

It actually did hit, but it was a little closer and a little hairier than we thought because Tampa turned out to be pretty good.

But anyway, last year, AFC South 25.

Year before, NFC South, 27.

Year before that, AFC South 23.

So let's call it somewhere between 23 and 27

will be our range.

And the two candidates are the two South divisions.

So we have the AFC South.

They're playing the AFC West and the NFC West.

So that's at least eight of the games plus each other.

NFC South is playing the AFC East and the NFC West.

So slight advantage to the AFC South.

AFC South has Houston 9.5, Indy, 7.5, Jacksonville, 7.5, Tennessee, 5.5.

NFC South has Tampa Bay at 9.5 wins.

Atlanta, 7.5, Carolina, 6.5.

New Orleans, 5.5.

So they're one win less.

NFC South is at 12,

29.

AFC South is at, AFC South is at 30 for just if you take the FanDo outs together.

Yeah.

And Yet House.

I think I like the AFC South to be the worst division.

What do you have?

I agree with you.

Oh, I thought you were going to have NFC South.

I was ready for that.

I'm not.

And the reason I don't is because I think that Tampa will be good again.

But I think that there is, speaking of double agents, speaking of saboteurs, going back and looking at what Kirk Cousins did to that Atlanta Falcons team,

it's astonishing.

They have a cause of action against that man.

They were six and three, and that offense was very good until it got to the the red zone.

He led the

Falcons led the league in turnovers in the second half of close games, you know, like games where they were sort of within one score.

And Kirk Cousins

had seven

picks before he got benched in the second half of close games and finished his,

some might say career.

with one touchdown and nine interceptions before they finally benched him for Michael Pennix.

I mean, they were, that was a legit playoff team talent-wise.

Now, look, Atlanta had plenty of challenges.

They had no pass rush.

They tried to address that this offseason.

But I think the ceiling for Atlanta is high.

And I, you know, got to look at some.

Higher.

I would say higher.

Higher.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

I had that as well because I actually like Tampa this year.

Like when I did my, at least this first pass of the rankings, I was surprised by how high Tampa was, including the fact that they have one of the best four lines in the league.

They brought back continuity and offense, except for the coaches.

And

it looks like they're in a pretty easy division.

I don't feel as good about Houston as I do about Tampa.

So even if you're looking at those two teams versus each other, I just have more questions and concerns with Houston than I do with Tampa.

I think Tampa's going to be good.

They are good.

They had to address their secondary.

They were a bottom three defense in terms of yards per game and overall total passing yards.

They just give up an S ton.

They gave up a lot of career games to opposing quarterbacks.

So they have to have some improvement there.

And it is, once again, a new offensive coordinator for Baker, but it doesn't seem to matter.

He just gets cooking.

And it's a guy that was

already there.

So it seems like it'll be fine.

The talent is good.

The offensive line is good.

So I like Tampa having it.

It's a little easier when you have everybody back and you have the same system and all that stuff.

The same thing with Tampa is Tristan Wurfs is hurt and out for a little bit.

Looks like he might not be there for the beginning of the season.

He's a pretty important offensive lineman.

So that might be like a, you know, you mark him down a game kind of thing.

I didn't love that piece.

Yeah.

But Houston just lost Joe Mixon for God knows how long.

You know, so, you know, I'm just a little more worried about them.

So we're going to tell FanDuel.

We're going to try to do an AFC South versus NFC South, some sort of hit that they're going to put a couple futures up on FanDuel that House and I are going to approve and we'll try to figure out.

Before we go, New Orleans, Tennessee, Cleveland, Miami, all to miss the playoffs.

Plus 109.

Good.

Let's do that.

Plus money.

We like plus money.

Saints, Titans, Browns, Dolphins.

I just don't see any of those teams making the playoffs.

Miami would be the threatening one.

That's who messes it up for us.

Yeah.

Like if the Pats are worse than people think, if the Jets are worse than people think, and they somehow go nine and eight and get a seven seed.

On the flip side, Baltimore, Kansas City, Philadelphia, yes, they all make the playoffs.

14 teams in the playoffs, plus one-on-one.

That's another one.

Who messes that up?

That's money.

Who messes it up?

We like those.

Philadelphia.

I mean, I can't.

I have to admit, I don't know how to make the case.

I don't know who messes that up.

Even odds.

Let's do that as well.

I mean, I would say Philadelphia on the theory that, first of all, I hate Philadelphia because they beat the hell out of the

ball.

But that's no, the reason, here's the thing.

If you want to make a case to fade them a tiny bit, it is that they have, you know, significant turnover personnel-wise on defense, and it takes a minute to get that fan to your defense.

That's a, that's the best I could do.

That's the best I could do.

Uh, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna bring in our buddy Jacko.

Yeah.

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Obviously, Genti on Vegas is going to be

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I still like Hampton on the Chargers to get a lot of touchdowns.

I think he's going to be good right away.

My sleeper would be R.J.

Harvey on Denver because Denver has top four offensive line.

And I just think

he's immediately going to put up points.

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All right, house is still here.

A very special tree for us.

My buddy Jacko, it's been a while.

We were all together, how many years ago?

That may now be 37 years ago.

Incredible.

You know, I was talking to somebody, a buddy of mine was sending his son off to college.

And we were talking, he had like some two-day orientation that they went to at the University of Oregon, where they got to meet everyone.

They were going to be in the hall.

You flew in, you flew back.

And I ended up telling him Jacko's story about how he was introduced to his roommate, our friend Nicaeda.

And I feel like you could just tell that right now, what happened.

So So we would get at Holy Cross.

They would send us the name of who you're rooming with and a phone number, and that was it.

Right.

And an address, I think.

So like I learned that Nikaida, who is not actually Japanese, although it sounds like it should be a Japanese name.

So I'm like, Holy Cross is like 90% Irish.

And I'm going to have the one Japanese roommate at Holy Cross, which is fine.

But I'm just like, this will be unique.

So I call Nikaida.

And this to tell you like what a simpler time it was, like there was no social media of any kinds.

There was no like Twitter, Facebook, you couldn't, or Snapchat, whatever the kids use these days.

So you couldn't like see anybody ahead of time.

So you would just cold call this person and you were encouraged to talk ahead of time.

And meanwhile, my parents, and to tell you how, what a different time this was, my parents had bought me like a fridge and a hard landline phone, which was a big deal at the time.

So I call Nick Aida and I'm listing off all these things that I have for our room.

And I'm like, I have a fridge and, you know, my parents have a phone for our room.

And we're good with this, and we're good with that.

And he was kind of grasping at straws to see like what he could bring.

And he's like,

I've got a bunch of hangers.

And I'm like, hangers?

I'm like, does he think like my shirts are just on the floor right now?

Like, oh, thank God, I'll finally have a place.

I'll finally have something to do with my shirts and coats.

Because I was wondering what I was going to do about that.

So I felt bad for him.

But so we told that story in college.

And of course, Nick and I are fast friends now.

But, and then like Holy Cross Alumni Magazine a couple of years ago had had a thing about going off to school and it had all the things you need.

And one of them was like a big package of hangers.

And I'm like, Aita was ahead of the time.

Who knew?

He was 30 years ahead of the curve.

Yeah, we, and now you have a fantasy football team with them called the Wire Hangers.

Exactly.

So it's, it's lived on.

It's lived on.

Although you had a similar story, because I remember when you called your freshman, your roommate, and he was like, I have to call you back.

I'm entertaining some guests.

And you had a vision like he was circulating like a tray with Cheetos on it or something, like to all of his friends.

Such an awkward thing.

So awkward.

My daughter started college last year, and now they encourage you to like go on, you know, social media and try to find a roommate ahead of time,

which I don't particularly care for because if you get rejected, like you start off behind the eight ball, like there's already people you dislike or dislike you by the time you set foot on campus, you know?

I don't care for that.

But I mean, it worked out for her.

She's, she's going back sophomore year with the same roommate.

So so it's all good.

Who knew college roommates was like Tinder?

Like, swipe left, swipe.

Did you know this house?

It would have made sense, though, because I will say from my own experience, I got paired up with a very nice guy

from like central Massachusetts.

And I was describing to him my interests and stuff.

And I would like really into the Washington, D.C.

music scene, you know, the punk scene here.

And I was describing, you know, all the, you know, how I spent my time that way.

And he tried to connect.

Like he was, you know, we were on the phone hanging.

He's like, well, my high school had punk day,

which

we all get dressed up.

It's like, okay, that's a, you know, different kind of thing than what I'm talking about.

But,

you know,

every day is punk day for me.

That's Tuesday for me.

That's right.

The day that ended Y.

We were roommates for one year.

There you go.

Then you had the great Jeff Mazer.

Yeah.

All right.

There's a lot of things we're going to try to do with the three of us.

We're going to start here, Jacko.

All right.

Yankees have not won a World Series.

There are kids now turning 21 who are legally able to drink who don't remember really what it was like when the Yankees won the World Series.

They could say they did because they were like four or five.

You absolutely to test their GM.

You absolutely to test their coach and

you fly off the handle anytime something goes wrong.

So now Aaron Judge, who's been Superman, and now he's hurt.

It seemed like there was some Tommy John stuff potentially, but they're saying he's fine, at least for a little bit.

They averted disaster there, yes.

Yeah.

Just give us, give it, just walk us through your emotions as we head into August.

Well, I mean, you could just play any podcast I've appeared on since 2018, and it's the same story.

Like, literally, like, there's no updates.

It's the darkest time in my Yankee fandom history.

I am 55 years young, so I've been a fan cognizantly of the Yankees since about 1977 when I was seven years old.

And there's just, there's just no hope.

Like, yes, you say I fly off the handle.

That's true.

I can't help but react to some things that occur.

But I'm like, why are you doing this?

Like, what's the point?

Nothing's going to change.

It's like yelling at like the weather.

Like, what's it doing for me?

It's not doing any good.

The owner doesn't care.

Like, it's, we could, we could reenact all this again.

The owner doesn't care because he gets 40,000 people a night ordering chicken buckets and beers and sodas and he makes a fortune.

So he owns his own TV network.

He doesn't care.

The GM has a job for life.

Like he's been there, you know, I did a thing a while ago.

This is like he's on the third pope, like the second British monarch and like the sixth president.

It's the, it's the biggest job security on earth.

Literally, he's been there longer than the pope.

and like the king of england it's ridiculous and he's never ever going to get fired because he's hal's buddy they're like brothers so it would be like like i would think like if you put me in charge of the ringer content right?

And I'm like, you're like, John, I don't think we need the 50th Harford Whalers or Pogues podcast.

I think like 49 is probably enough.

You'd be like, I love you, but we got to make some changes here.

Like it's not working out.

Hal Steinbrenner's like, nope, it's all good.

It's great.

I love it.

And you have Aaron Boone, who.

is not fit to lead a pet store, let alone a major league baseball team.

And the New York Yankees, you know, a multi-billion dollar franchise.

The whole thing's a disgrace, but like it doesn't change.

And yeah, like they have, and last year I was going to console myself and say, well, you know, they haven't even been to a World Series since 2009, which they won.

And they went to one.

And I'm like, all right, I'll give them a pass.

But then they lose the World Series in the most embarrassing, mortifying fashion.

in the history, one of the, one of the worst performances in the history of baseball.

Like that fifth inning in game five, I will still have nightmares about that like on my deathbed.

It's so bad and so horrendous.

So like you can't even give them a break on that because they got through a very weak American league to win a pennant.

And okay, a pennant's still a pennant, but you can't like mortifyingly embarrass yourself in your first World Series in 16 years.

You just can't.

And then they're like, well, we're going to come back stronger.

We're going to be better defensively.

And they got worse.

Like, you can't make it up.

They got worse.

How do you, and they all have this fake swagger that they get from, you know, special advisor to the owner, Nick Swisher, who is the king of fake swagger.

And he like runs the organization with Cashman.

And they're like, well, the league's caught up to us and we're still the best team in the league.

Based on what?

When Aaron Boone says these things at press conferences, I just want one media member to say, like, you have all this confidence.

What is that based on?

Like, what is it based on that this team is going to rebound, that it's all right in front of them and you're going to turn the corner?

Based on what?

It's delusional.

Like, it is delusional.

It's like me saying, I'm going to win the decathlon in the next Olympics.

What is that based on?

Oh, no, I'm going to do it.

Don't worry about that.

Based on what?

There is no track record or history to say that you were going to do anything.

And the media is just like, oh, okay, they're going to do it.

It's all right in front of them and writes it down.

Oh, the whole thing is just disgraceful.

Disgraceful.

Wow.

House, you thought you had it bad with your baseball team.

I do have it bad with my baseball team.

The Yankees were in the effing World Series last year.

Yes.

Yes, it was in Bear, but they were in the World Series.

That is, it's very good.

It's a very, they won the pennant.

That's very good.

House, there's a lot of people at Yankee, like younger, and I'm not killing House.

I love House, but a a lot of like younger Yankees Twitter is like, oh, they've been in the playoffs 20 years, you know, out of the past 22, and they went to the World Series.

Listen, that's great if you're the Kansas City Royals.

That's fantastic.

You could hang up the banner, like the 2014 Colts with the AFC finalist banner.

Go ahead and hang that.

That's great.

If you're the New York Yankees, you are the creme de la creme of North American sports franchises.

Making the playoffs is not enough.

And normally I would give you, I would say, cut them some slack and say, winning a pennant is good.

We'll take that, but not when you lose in the way that they did.

You just can't lose like that.

I went to bed that night after the game and my wife had gone to bed before me.

And she said, I was sighing so heavily, she thought someone died.

I worked with a woman whose husband is a big Yankee fan.

And I went to work the next day.

And I said, how did your husband take last night's loss?

And she goes, well, I went to bed early.

And then when I woke up this morning, there was a bottle of scotch that was empty on the table.

And And I'm like, yeah, that's about right.

That's exactly right.

So you can't tell me, well, we went to the World Series.

It was great.

When my wife thinks somebody died, and another woman I know, her husband drinks a bottle of scotch to console himself after that.

Like, you can't be like, well, we still got that pendant to root for.

Well, and then Cole gets hurt.

Now Judge is hurt.

And then you have, this is something you and our buddy John Dostremski has been on it forever.

It's basically Yankee prospect porn where they just tout these prospects that are coming up so that they don't spend money on other people because they have the next Lou Garricks coming up.

Right.

The next Eric Jeters coming up.

And they did this with Bull Pay especially where they were like, this guy is so special, you're not going to believe it.

And now it's turned on him to the point that I actually feel bad for him as a Red Sox fan.

Like, I feel bad for him and his family.

And I hate the Yankees.

Like, I hate them almost the most, other than maybe the Lakers, but that's how badly it's gone.

Why did they do this with their prospects?

Well, because Hal doesn't want to spend money and they have to justify it some way.

So he didn't want to spend money on like Trey Turner and Corey Seeger.

And even before Volpe was a thing, he didn't want to spend money on Manny Machado.

And they never went out and got Bryce Harper.

And then they're like, there's like a joke about, you know, on Twitter or elsewhere where somebody's like, I want McDonald's.

And I think it's like an old Eddie Murphy joke.

Like, we have McDonald's at home.

So the Yankees are like, we don't need like an all-star

shortstop.

We have one at home just waiting, Anthony Volpe.

And they overhyped him, and he's Italian, so they could play that up because the Yankees have a history of great Italian players in New York, largely Italian, Yankee fans, DiMaggio and Lazzari, the whole Resuto, the whole nine yards.

And he grew up a Yankee fan.

He grew up in New York.

So they're like, oh, this kid, he's going to be great.

He's awesome.

And they put too much pressure on the kid and he stinks.

Like, it's his third year and he stinks.

And people got all excited because he had a halfway decent postseason last year.

But that was like a very small sample size.

And it turned out to be a fluke and he stinks and he can't hit and he, but he makes up for not hitting by not being able to field either.

So it's like, what, what is he doing?

And the Yankees always do this where, you know, Clint Frazier was going to be the next great thing.

Greg Bird was going to be the next great thing.

And Gary Sanchez was going to be Johnny Bench.

And they do it because Hal doesn't want to spend money and he's enamored of the of the of the Tampa Bay Rays business model of doing it, paying, you know, 75 cents for a roster.

And it doesn't work.

And I guess it could work if you had a GM who knew what he was doing, but the GM's been there too long and everybody in the system has been there too long and they don't know what they're doing.

And they've shown that clearly.

But so Volpe, I almost feel bad for him myself because he can't help that he just stinks.

And fans put too much in him because they're like, well, I guess if we're not going to get a competent major league shortstop all-star, Anthony Volpe will be that on the cheap and we'll love it.

And he's our homegrown guy and prospects and yay.

And I read about him in baseball prospectus and and all that

it's horrible everything's horrible well at least torres didn't go to the tigers and lead off the all-star game right i mean that's a great point like they when they traded uh chapman for torres and tores was the number one prospect in baseball and they made another trade where they got clint frazier and he was supposedly like one of the top 10 prospects in baseball and the yankees destroyed both of them now glaber was okay as a yankee but he never lived up to the top prospect in baseball billing they couldn't get him to run to first base on a consistent basis And they coddled him and they never got the best out of him because Aaron Boone is like your big brother, like managing the team and he's not an authority figure.

And he lets him get away with murder and he covers for everybody.

And you ended up with, like, you know, I had a thing the other day and a guy corrected me because I said they haven't, they developed Aaron Judge, who's a, you know, generational player, who they weren't even that high on as a prospect.

And they lucked out with him.

They were higher on Greg Bird and Sanchez and Volpe later on than they ever were with Judge.

And they lucked out with him.

But who else have they developed?

And a guy said, Well, Luis Heal won the rookie of the year last year.

Okay, he's a pitcher, and I think it was probably a weak field, and he's been hurt all year.

So I forgot about him.

But before that, like, who's the prospect that this wonderful analytics department of Brian Cashman has developed?

You can't go back and find anybody that they've developed in their own system except for Judge.

And I'll give you Heal, who won Rookie of the Year.

But like,

they washed out on Torres by and large.

They washed out on Frasier, et cetera.

You got your guy Schlittler.

Yeah, they got him and they have spent they have this kid Spencer Jones and the minors and they're probably going to trade them for like a you know backup third baseman because they don't have it or a relief pitcher that's going to be brutal.

So yeah, yeah, they get this.

I like Schlittler because he or whatever you say his name because he throws 100 miles an hour and they need more of that.

He threw like the first game he pitched, he had the six fastest pitches for the Yankees all year, which tells you something else.

So I like him, but like, you know, pitchers, who knows if they're going to work out?

He looks good in a small sample, but who knows?

Who knows?

I promise.

This is a good faith question.

I promise.

Oh, boy.

How different?

How different do you think the season would be if Juan Soto was still on the team?

Because I will tell you that I think that they did make a legit effort to sign Soto.

I think they did too, but I think Steve Cohen was never going to be outbid.

And if the Yankees went to a billion, Steve Cohen was going to go to a billion and one dollar.

And it's very clear when Soto was complaining about losing out on a $100,000 bonus for not making the World Series, I mean, for not making the All-Star team, that he was always going to go to the highest bidder, whatever team that was.

So, yeah, I do think they made a good faith effort to get him.

And I would say, like, on paper,

getting Bellinger, Cody Bellinger, who's been good, and getting Max Freed as like the backup plan

were two good things.

And I think Soto certainly had the capability of masking some of their offensive troubles because they haven't been able to get a clutch hit in about 10 years and it's all like basically home run or nothing for the most part although their offensive stats this year are good but that's a little phony because it's from a couple big games they don't have any level of consistency and they don't believe in clutch and they the way i don't know what they teach in the minor leagues but it's not defense or like any kind of competent hitting i don't think they teach anything i think nick swisher takes him out to dinner and tells you how to do a home run trot or something.

Wow, Johnny's more down on the Yankees than I am on the Red Sox.

I actually had a big comeback season with the Red Sox, and I've watched the ton of the season and I've enjoyed it.

You traded Devers and then you got better.

It was the Ewing theory.

It was the biggest Ewing theory of all time.

It turns out when you trade your overweight

superstar guy who won't help the team by playing first base and didn't seem like he was very happy and felt betrayed by everybody.

Maybe it was a good thing to have him move on.

Apparently.

And he proved it right because he went to the Giants and Will Clark's like, hey, I'd love to meet with you and and work on first base.

And he was like, no, I'm good.

No, thanks.

I think he played there eventually last week.

The problem is the Red Sox sold it to the fans as like, no, no, and then we're going to use the Deborah's money.

We'll spend it on.

And we're still waiting.

Yeah, exactly.

But we have these young prospects that are actually,

you know, pretty special.

Like this Roman Anthony thing is.

This is like appointment viewing.

This is a rare case of the prospect that

they might have actually.

Yeah, they might have actually not been full of shit.

He's pretty great.

Even wears my old Fred Lynn number 19, which brings joy to my heart.

House, what did you do?

Did you know Fred Lynn's number?

Really?

I didn't wear it.

Yeah, he's wearing Fred Lynn's number.

House, when did you deal with Bryce Harper when you were watching him?

What about Bryce Harper?

Like right away?

When they had Bryce Harper, like right away, right?

Yes, immediately.

Amazing.

Immediately.

Yes.

But thank you.

That's what this Roman Anthony thing's like.

It's like he just clearly has it.

We've had a wealth of those kinds of things come through Washington, Juan Soto, and now James Wood, who is an absolute goddamn stud, six foot seven, runs the bases, so fleet of foot.

But the organization is

speaking of abominations, you know, in this holding pattern because the family that owns them can't figure out how to sell it, you know, for max price.

So they speaking of teams that won't spend any money, I mean, I'm not.

How hard is it to sell a baseball team?

It's really,

it's very peculiar to me.

Well, I have a question for both of you because you each hate this team for different reasons.

But does it annoy you that the Mets kind of have their mojo back?

Jacko, do you care about the Mets at all as a Yankee fan or are you just American Labor League?

I never really used to care.

I never used to care about the Mets.

It was like the Don Draper, I don't think about you at all thing.

But then I kind of got my backup a couple of years ago.

There was like a Mets Red Sox game on ESPN, and everybody was joyously chanting Yankees suck at the same time.

And I got kind of mad about the Mets.

You're like, what?

I was like, what?

I got my back.

Mets, who the fuck are you?

The Mets, shut up, you know?

So I got my back up a little bit.

So, yeah, I mean, there's always a thing about, you know, who's going to be the dominant team in New York to the extent anybody pays attention to that.

Like, who's the big kid on the block?

And when they got Soto, you know, they talked a lot of trash.

And it was like, all right, the Yankees are in a rough patch, rough decade, but let's not, let's not go nuts about who the big boy in town is, you know?

So the Mets are cute, you know, like let them have their cute little fun.

Oh, you're giving them too cute.

Oh, I love it.

It's dismissive.

Jackos, one of my favorite Jackos.

If you had Steve Cohen as the Yankees owner, though, you'd be delighted.

Oh, I would be in love.

Yeah, you would.

I would be in love.

House, you would love it too, House.

I would, of course, I would.

I mean, you're kidding me.

I don't care about the Mets either.

I care much more about the Phillies and honestly, the Cardinals, because the Cardinals beat the Nationals a bunch of times in the playoffs.

I like them less.

Well, I feel really good about not only the Red Red Sox, but baseball.

I don't want to say I gave up on baseball, but I definitely took a pretty long hiatus, partly from Mookie Bets, partly for how long the games, we won the four titles.

But I really did kind of deep down miss it.

And

getting back into it, especially when Tatum got hurt.

And just kind of all of a sudden, they kind of slid into a void in a lot of different ways.

But I think the biggest thing that I've loved, and we've talked about it last year too, is just how much faster the games move and how much more enjoyable it is day to day to be like, oh, it's the sixth inning, and you just have it in your, in your head, you're like, oh, this will be another 45 to 50 minutes.

I can actually stay and watch the end of this versus wherever we were before, where you just like time stopped.

You had no idea how long anything was going to be.

It might be the pick clock is the greatest.

Yeah, you went to be like, hey, are we going to watch that show?

It'd be like, I don't, this game might be another three hours.

I don't know.

Their innovation with that, I think, is one of the most important things anyone did this century.

Like, baseball, to me, is like pretty entertaining again.

And I can't believe they fixed it, Jacko.

Well, especially you and I, you know, veterans of the Yankee Red Sock Wars, where a game would start at 7 o'clock and go until 12.30 in the morning because, you know, guys are stepping out of the box and they're adjusting their gloves and they're shaking dirt off their spikes and there's a million pitching changes in the whole nine yards.

So it was like, you know, I got to go to work tomorrow.

Can we please end this one way or another?

You know, it was like a marathon.

It was ridiculous.

So the pitch count is fantastic.

It's such a smart innovation and to speed things up, which was, I was always, you know, I'm an old school conservative guy.

So I'm like, what are we making these changes for?

But I'm like, oh, that was actually good.

Good stuff.

Good job, Manfred.

I will tell you, my kid, my kid, this is how we're, he turns 15 this upcoming week.

We're going up to New York to kind of celebrate.

And I said, here's all the stuff we can do.

The Yankees, unfortunately, are not in town when we're going to be in town, but the Mets are in town.

He's like, F yes, I'll go to a Mets game.

I definitely want to go because he knows that he's not going to be held hostage for hours and hours and hours.

And

he does get to see Juan Soto, who is his favorite player when he's in Washington.

But yeah, we're going to go to, he's like, yeah, I want to go see a Mets, the Mets game.

Well, my son's the same way.

He's been watching more this year, but a big piece of it for him was the MLB, the video game.

My video game game for my family is fantastic this year.

And it's gotten him really into some of the players.

And then, you know, they also, I can't believe they figured this out either, but they, the all-star game was pretty fun to watch this year.

And I thought the home runoff with Schwarber was awesome.

Like, I watched the entire game.

I can't, I don't remember the last time I've watched the all-star game start to finish, basically.

And I thought the home runoff was good.

Baseball, making a comeback, Jacko, in every aspect, except for the Yankees, who are the basically the early 90s Yankees again.

I wish I could enjoy it.

Yeah, that's great.

Good stuff.

Are you nervous about the Red Sox at all?

We're kind of breathing down our necks a little bit.

Beat the Dodgers today.

Part of me, I saw that.

Part of me is I really am at the point where I want them at this point to lose as much as possible.

And I know nothing is going to change, but I just want them to wear the embarrassment.

Like, I know Boone will never leave.

Cashman is never, ever going to leave.

It's not going to make any difference to Steinbrenner because 40,000 people will go.

It's just like a place to go and see and be seen and enjoy the experience.

So nothing will change, but I would like them to have the embarrassment just attached to them like

a scarlet red letter.

House, can you believe what you're hearing, House?

He's now spite rooting against the Yankees for the, for, for this.

sake of a greater purpose.

I understand.

It's a sacrifice, and I admire it as a sports fan.

Well, House does it with the Wizards every year as he roots for a good draft pick.

Let's take a break, and I want to talk about golf and true crime with you guys.

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All right.

So, I was going to do this with house last week and I forgot.

And now Jacko's here.

And I know, even though I didn't prep Jacko at all for this,

Scotty Scheffler, who crushed the British Open a week ago,

and

is, I think, unequivocally now the best golfer since Tiger Woods.

But he's boring, Jacko.

He is.

It's not his fault.

There's, yeah, I know you're the typical, you're a casual golf fan.

You will come in for the majors.

Yep.

And it's fun to watch somebody be really good, but something's missing with Scotty Scheffler.

And I want to dive into this because it's not his fault.

I feel bad even talking about it.

Sometimes you just don't have it.

But do you,

I just wanted to make sure you agree with the premise.

Like, this is probably not fixable from a personality standpoint.

100%.

Maybe they could bring in Nick Swisher to coach him on swagger.

Like, I don't know.

Maybe Nick Swisher could leave the Yankees alone and go join the Scotty Scheffler team and give him a little swagger.

And he could like fist bump after like a swing his fists after a big putt or something.

But no, it's true.

And I've read this.

There was just something on the ringer.

I'll give the ringer a shout out about after he won and, you know, his press conferences are just, and he's sort of matter of fact about it.

Like there doesn't seem to be like even like a lot of joy.

He's like an automaton when he wins.

And even like getting arrested, you know, during a tournament at the PGA didn't even really make him interesting.

And normally that would be like, you know, the guy would be fired up or mad or whatever.

And it's just not in his demeanor.

He's just like this amazing golf robot but yeah that's true he doesn't i don't think you get clicks certainly not like for tiger or even for like uh you know de chambeau or something right or kepka like those guys or roary right those guys bring eyeballs i don't think he does that at all right Well, what's weird is the golf audience has been pretty good.

But House, I know you, poor House is stuck doing a golf podcast with Nathan where they have to talk about Scotty Sheffar after he beats everybody by six strokes.

House, what do you, do you, have you tried different methods to sound excited after these tournaments?

Like, do you drink after?

Do I even need to ask?

Well,

a couple of things.

In the first place, he

does not possess the outward charisma.

He's not even in the same league.

We, you know, Jacko just ran through the top guys.

Jordan Speet, when Jordan Spieth was at the top of the game, like.

magnetic, you know,

all kinds of generations coming together because he was a phenom.

He was young.

He was the golden child.

Scheffler just has, you know, been a very quiet kind of executioner kind of style of golfer.

Now, there is a personality, and the story of the British Open, in advance of him going out and kicking everybody's ass, was an interview that he gave at the press conference where he talked about getting life fulfillment from something other than golf, that he liked golf, that he liked to beat the pants off of everybody, but it wasn't the true thing that gave him, you know, joy in his heart.

It didn't.

And it was a, you know, there was a lot of reaction in the golf community about, you know, wow, he doesn't really have the fire.

Like, you know, people were sort of wondering

what he was trying to convey.

There is, he's a very thoughtful guy.

And when you can get stuff out of him, now I will say, I mean, I hope you don't mind.

He, he did

at the British Open, the Open Championship, let out a very long fart that a boom mic picked up.

And

he confessed the fart and it was it was very funny you know so there is uh something there he just doesn't exude the charisma and to the the observation jacko made he was the number one player in the world at the pga championship trying to turn his car into the entrance of the major championship and the cop stopped him and had no idea who the hell he was and put him in the handcuffs and whisked him away.

So that we've

some great athletes, and it always feels like it's a diss to talk about it.

But sometimes, like Tim Duncan, House and I revere Tim Duncan.

I think he's the best power forward of all time.

I'll fully admit, if people were going to say he was really boring when he played, I'm like, I don't really have much of a counter-argument.

I'm, I'm in, like, because I love Tim Duncan.

Like, right.

Oh, no, if you went to the game, like to watch the way he interacted with his teammates, it was so cool.

And

it's still not exciting.

It's not like Anthony Edwards.

I think of Anthony Edwards things.

John Stockton was another one.

Scheffler as Pete Sampras.

I've heard that.

Sampress is another analogy.

And I think

that's a good comp because Sampras really was excellent for the stretch, you know, when he was on top.

And he had a nice foil with Agassiz.

And Scheffler has a kind of foil, which should be, it should be Rory, but Rory is a tiny bit inconsistent.

It could be Bryson, but Bryson was a little up and down this season as well.

Well, here's the, I wrote down top five signs when a superstar athlete is probably boring.

Number one, they're boring.

Number two, they play professional golf or professional tennis is usually a red flag.

Number three, you feel bad that you think they're boring, which I think we're in that stage here.

It's like, I don't even like we're doing this segment.

He seems like a great guy.

It's not his fault.

We know a a bunch of, we have a bunch of friends who it's like, it's not their job to be the life of the party.

He's just going and kicking everyone's ass.

Number four,

and they did, this happened during the British Open.

The announcers were talking.

They were trying to almost

almost promote that he's less boring than he used to be.

But the way they were doing it was like, well, Scotty,

you know, he's made a lot of an effort recently to

open up and to be more personable and to share more.

And it's like, well, that's, you're definitely boring if outsiders are grasping at here.

He's like, hey, he's opening up.

I remember they said that with Sampras.

And then the fifth one, which hasn't happened yet, is the media narrative shifting to people worrying that you're so boring, you might actually hurt the sport.

which I don't, House, we're not there yet.

No, right?

And I don't think golf isn't that way because if he continues on the

streak that he's on of like very high, he's won, you know, he's finished in the top three of 10 of the last 16 majors.

He's won four of the last 16 majors.

Like if

those are Tiger style numbers, if he continues on that, that accomplishment all by itself is thrilling to the golf community.

I don't know the answer as to whether or not you guys will, you know, make it appointment TV to catch the PGA championship because he's up by six strokes, you know, going into a Sunday.

Yeah, he's just out at that point.

Maybe so.

It's going to be

great someday when you look at everybody's legacy and you're like Bobby Jones, you know, the first great American golfer and Ben Hogan, you know, came back from a year after a car crash and, you know, was a superstar and Arnold Palmer, the people's champion, and Nicholas, the best ever.

And Tiger revolutionized the game.

And Scotty Scheffler, remember that time he farted?

The fart hurt around the world?

Maybe he doesn't.

He was just a cold-hearted killer, but he farted that one time.

That was something, huh?

Maybe farting could be his vice.

Well, House, I was thinking two things with him: one, having a reliable rival that where there's like real dislike, I think would really help.

So he's just, we're just going to have to just feed some sort of Bryson versus him or Rory versus him or we have the Ryder Cup coming up, so there could be somebody on the European side, either John Rahm or Rory McElroy.

Talking shit to Shefford.

Yes, trying, trying to get it out of him.

The other thing is, maybe we need to work.

Maybe he needs more of a character as a caddy.

Like a fight.

Maybe like a Shane Gillis type.

Maybe somebody who's like a complete wild card.

And Shuffler is super loyal to him, but he keeps offending people with like jokes.

I don't know.

Maybe there's something we could work on with the caddy thing.

The only other thing is

the thing that really works is for...

Something bad to happen off the field and then you have to rally back and come back.

Right.

The comeback.

Yeah.

We don't want that to happen with Scotty.

That's the third way this could play out.

But other than this, House, I think Ryder Cup is our best chance

to have him be like the Rambo in the mid-80s defending America's honor.

Then he becomes the patriot and the hero Scotty Scheffler.

And now I have some momentum with something.

The challenge is.

What if the USA is down on Sunday, right?

And he's the guy that needs to come back

like a miracle on ice deal or something.

That would be grass.

And know, he leads the charge to win the Ryder Cup.

That would be a good narrative for him.

That sounds great.

The challenge for him is the shadow that Bryson D.

Chambeau will cast at the Ryder Cup because he has become like, you know, the captain of America.

Like he, when he's the people's champion.

He's the people's champion.

When he beat Rory McElroy at the U.S.

Open out at Pinehurst, they were chanting USA as he was walking up the fairway with his chance to win the tournament.

So,

but Scotty, yeah, some kind of comeback thing at the rider cup could help don't be um speaking of golf happy gilmore too jacko hasn't seen it yet uh i watched it house watch it we don't have to talk long about it um you know it's it's if you love the first movie it's kind of a must watch i was very surprised by all the cameos i'm gonna hold off on a review um

but

it was it was terrible it's well but it was terrible but it was also good like i I kind of enjoyed having all these people in my life.

It was it.

House.

The most fascinating thing to me is it was basically a two-hour critique of the live tour.

That seemed to be the actual purpose of the movie is to use this fake live tour thing they had as a proxy to make them the villains.

And

then to just bring in a bunch of actual golfer cameos.

And let's just say

probably John Daly, who doesn't golf anymore, was the best one.

But some of the other ones,

I don't expect them to maybe move into acting full-time.

Probably not.

It's just there's cameos.

It's kind of like they didn't fully have a script, so they loaded as many cameos as they possibly could.

I enjoyed that.

House, was there any interesting piece for you with all the PJ golfers that were in there?

No, no, no.

I like very much Adam Sandler sitting at a table with Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaz.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, that was like, you know, and those guys happen to do lines?

Yeah, the Fred Couples.

Fred Couples was there.

there, yeah, yeah.

They kept bringing Fred Couples uh blueberry parfait, I think.

That was that that resonated.

Another dessert, Mr.

Couples.

Oh, why?

Yes, yes, please.

That certainly struck a chord with me.

So it was a little nostalgia ride.

That's right.

I agree with that.

It was what it was, Jacko.

I still think Jacko's gonna, Jacko, you'll end up watching it.

Oh, yeah, no, yeah, I'm sure.

I'll tune in at some point.

See how much I can take.

It's fine.

All right.

What, but what we really want to talk about on Netflix is the,

you have me with Missing Girl and a Cruise.

Right.

I think Cruise is it.

This has been a huge summer for cruise documentaries because Poop Cruise was great.

I'll never go on a cruise.

Have either of you ever been on a cruise?

No.

I have.

I went on one of the Disney cruises.

We took my kid for his birthday.

When was that?

I think it was

his ninth birthday or his 10th birthday or maybe somewhere in one of those.

And he was in a transition year where he was too young to get access to the video game room that he really wanted to be in and too old,

the age-appropriate room.

He's like, this is boring

as F.

I don't want no part of any of this.

So we basically, you know, had to pay for Wi-Fi so he could play some of the video games that he wanted to play and then, you know, placate him with chicken fingers.

This sounds worse than the poop cruise.

He wanted to get off as quickly as possible.

As soon as it became apparent that he wasn't allowed into the video game room, that he wanted to be in.

We went to shows and stuff.

We tried.

He's like, I went off.

We made a mistake.

Exactly.

I'm never doing it.

One of the things I love about cruises, and they dive into this and this, it's called Amy Bradley is Missing.

But one of the things they dive into is like cruises, there's basically like no laws once you get in a cruise.

Right.

You see, like, that's it.

You just don't know.

Anything's possible.

Did you know this?

Because I didn't fully know this.

No, I didn't realize to the extent extent to which the cruise is like its own entity unto itself,

including laws or lack thereof.

Yeah, I was unaware.

But this documentary made it all too aware.

I will never, and I have two daughters.

My daughters will never get anywhere near the ocean, let alone not even on a cruise.

That's how I felt.

I'm discouraged.

all my immediate family from ever being on a cruise.

One of the things when the girl, so this, this Amy Bradley goes missing in the wee hours, like 5.30 house.

She's in the cabin next to her dad who sees her.

She's on like the little.

She's in the cabin with her dad.

Oh, yeah.

She's on the balcony.

It's her, her 21-year-old brother, and her parents.

They had one cabin.

And he's on the balcony.

She's sleeping on the balcony.

Yeah.

Right.

Maybe she's having a drink or a cigarette or something.

And then a half hour later doesn't see her at all.

And nobody knows what happens.

Never seen again.

One of the great things that she has

told me about it.

Well, yeah.

That's what I thought.

I'm like, why is this three episodes?

I'm like, she fell in the ocean.

She got up to throw up or she threw herself off the boat and that was ballgame.

But it turns out maybe not the case.

Okay.

Well, they zag against that because, well, first of all, the crews, they don't like send the alarm that somebody's, they let everybody off like three hours later in Carousel, whatever it's called.

Carousel.

And that's another, I'm on like six missteps and mispronunciations of this pod.

I'm in rare summer form.

But they let her off.

They let everyone off, but they don't know where she is yet.

And that actually makes it worse.

So then the theories become she's actually out there.

She was kidnapped.

She's part of sex trafficking.

And then a couple different people see her.

And how's the whole doc is like these people being like, I was in a bathroom.

And there was, and I knew it was weird because somebody was monitoring her.

And then I realized two years later, that's who it was.

It was Amy.

And her family, like basically just, I don't know, losing their minds, like trying to figure out what happened to her.

Now it's been 25, 26 years, Jacko.

Yeah, since 1998.

Holy cow.

And there's a, there's like, there's a guy that they want you to hate who was the cruise director.

And he couldn't be like any more nonchalant about this.

And it was like, did you ever think about like shutting the boat down?

And he's like, well, yeah, she was missing, but there was 2,500 other people that wanted to go to Curacao or whatever.

Right.

Right.

So, and I was like, yeah, she would have, she jumped off the boat, unfortunately, or fell off the boat.

But then there's a lot of conspiracies where people seem to see her after the fact, and there's some weird internet things.

And

it's horrible for the family.

It's horrific because they, you know, like they still have her car like washed and tuned up to come back to the camera.

They kept her Miata.

Oh, Miata.

It's just, I can't even imagine what they go through.

And it's just got to be horrific.

But, and basically, the behavior of everybody involved in this doesn't make like a lick of sense for the most part.

Like the FBI, they're like, we can't do that.

We can't investigate that.

We can't do this.

And I'm like, no, but I think you could.

Like, what are we doing?

What are we doing here?

And there seems like things to follow up on.

Carousel seems like a lot of shady stuff might be going on there, too.

They're afraid to alert the police.

I think like if you, since we've already trashed cruises, we might as well trash the entire Caribbean, too.

Like everybody goes to a vacation in the Caribbean and you think like, oh, it's all good at the resort or whatever.

But like Curaçao had like this underbelly of like mob mobsterism and prostitution.

And it was like areas you can't even go to.

And the police are like, eh, you know, I was like, Jesus, it's kind of trouble.

House is going next week now.

House just booked the flight.

You're checking a lot of my boxes, Johnny.

You're checking a lot of my boxes.

Not talking house out of this.

Yeah.

So.

The big thing was there was some picture and it was on like a prostitution site that looked like her seven years later.

And it really did look like her, Jacko.

That was the one round.

That was the scary part.

Yeah.

And then there was a thought that maybe she got pregnant and that the rest of the world.

The travelers were like, you'll lose your kid.

Right.

There was, she, she turned out she came out to her parents.

And then the question was, is that why she jumped?

Because she was hiding the secret.

Her parents didn't accept her.

So they go through all the machinations of what might have happened.

And then you think it's leading to some ending where it's like we're gonna find out what happened yeah

and then it's like that's it we never found out what happened no and then you just kind of go from there to to the internet and you go to like reddit and hope there's some amy bradley site which of course there is and it's like 2 30 in the morning and i'm reading the amy bradley reddit site trying to find out what the happened

I don't know.

And I still don't know what happened.

It's well done.

And they, and they, it's like a big, it's like a three episode unsolved mysteries, essentially, like, because it doesn't get solved.

And unfortunately for her family, and it's horrible.

And my wife is currently in Ireland with her sister.

I hope she may be at a Cold Play show.

I'm not sure, but let's hope.

So I was by myself and I'm like watching it down here in my finished basement and it like freaked me out.

And I'm like, I'm like, they're going to come traffic me?

Like, what?

You're not on a cruise ship.

Come on.

I watched the, I watched the, the Idaho College Murders one, too, on Amazon.

And that's four episodes and probably should have been two.

But that one,

you know, they do,

You guys got to watch that one because basically, and it's a terrible story, but the guy who ends up being the killer is somebody who is studying like criminology and

clearly lost his mind and was like, now I want to see if I can commit one of these terrible murders and nobody will be able to catch me because I've gone to school for this.

And this fucking dumbass leaves a cell phone on as he drives to and from where the murder sites were.

So all they had to do was ping his cell phone.

Like, no, to all the future murderers out there, leave the cell phone phone in your house.

I don't know.

Like, they didn't cover that in this criminology course, apparently, Jacko.

I don't know.

No, that's like surprised by how poor his performance was.

It's day one serial killer stuff.

Leave the cell phone in your house.

Speaking of serial killers and Netflix, I just, I'm five years late to the party, but I just banged through two seasons of the only two seasons of Mindhunter.

Oh.

Which was good.

That was so, so good.

Oh, that was a great show.

And I'm so bummed out that it ended.

And then I was like, there was rumors they were going to bring it back.

And oh, so well done.

It was so good.

But yeah, between that, this cruise one, I've been freaked out a lot.

But I'd rather watch these depressing, horrible things than the Yankees.

So that's where it's come to.

How's your natural crime or you are?

No, I enjoy it very much.

What was the one about the guy in Wisconsin?

That I was.

No, railroaded.

The guy who.

Oh, his family.

That's like the, that's like early COVID stuff.

What the hell was that called?

Making of a a murderer or something yes yes exactly that that that that yeah i i thought that was uh

very riveting i enjoyed it very much and the and the uh murder the the the podcast that turned into um getting the conviction overturned here in in the in the in up and near baltimore i think this true crime stuff is never going to end No, people love it.

It's one of the few things you can watch, like if you're a couple.

It's kind of a something for everybody, which a lot of these shows don't.

Johnny, there's a show on Netflix called Hunting Wives that I would recommend.

Somebody else was just talking about that.

It's a scripted, just a lot of nudity and a very horny show about at least Texas House.

There's a murder.

You get to see a dead body early, so you know what you're in for.

And then

it gets really horny.

And it's right in your wheelhouse.

I've known you for a while.

And I just watched Your Friends and Neighbors with Friend of the Pod, John Hamm, your friend.

That was a good one.

That was a good one.

All of these shows start with the murder in the first minute, and then we go backwards.

Yeah.

That's the model.

So

if we ever do the Scotty Schoffer story to make him more interesting, it'll start with his caddy being murdered in the first minute.

Hopefully, somebody left their cell phone behind.

House, could we get him a more exciting caddy?

Like in wrestling, when

they would give the boring wrestler a good manager, like a fun manager.

A lot of people would say that his caddy is the like the thing.

Secret sauce?

Yes, yes.

Because the guy caddied for Bubba Watson before and won two masters with Bubba Watson and now has all these majors being on Scotty's bag.

And they have a symbiosis.

They're both, you know, they have the same religious background, religious belief.

They, they, they pray together.

There's a whole thing with the families.

So it's probably not going to happen.

All right.

We've answered it all.

Ryder Cup is the key.

Jacko's turned his back on the Yankees and don't go on a cruise.

House, great to see you as always.

Jacko, a true pleasure.

I'm glad you're well.

Talk to you soon, my brother.

All right, boys.

Thanks for coming on.

Anytime.

Thanks.

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All right, we're taping this Sunday afternoon.

He already wrote about Hulk Hogan for the ringer.com, a great website.

Talked about on the Ringer Wrestling Show.

David Shoemaker is here.

We've been working together since 2011.

There's been a lot of ups and downs with wrestling.

We worked on the Mr.

McMahon documentary series together.

Knew the Hulk Hogan Day was going to come at some point.

Age 71.

Very complicated death.

It was interesting when somebody has this outsize importance on a sport, or in this case, a

what do we call it now?

Professional

and entertainment sport, sports entertainment, whatever we're using these days.

I've gone full circle to just saying sport again.

Let's go back.

We'll go back.

Somebody who was like basically, he wasn't Babe Ruth for this sport, but more like Michael Jordan.

And then the last 20 years becomes this huge part of the legacy.

I want to go, I want to skip all that and come back to it later and just go back to the 80s specifically and what happened.

And you wrote about a lot of it.

Yeah.

Does wrestling become wrestling without Hulk Hogan is the big question.

And everyone has asked this.

Dave Meltzer wrote about it in his newsletter this week about,

could you argue that a lot of this stuff might have been in motion already?

The grease, the greases were skidded.

The skids were greased.

Yeah.

I still feel like it had to have him involved for it to happen.

Yeah, I mean, listen, in everything in pro wrestling, there's a lot of what's accepted as truth or what's told as truth is just BS, right?

Everything's sort of a work.

Everything's trying to get the storyteller over or put forward some angle.

So truth is really hard to come by.

I do think that

wrestling and going national would have happened with or without Vince McMahon, with or without the WWF, with or without Hulk Hogan, for that matter.

Uh, I think you know, it was already on some cable TV networks, and as those things expanded, I think that you know, Georgia Wrestling, or who, or if it was the Crocketts, whoever it was, the AWA, world-class, somebody would have become a real big national promotion.

Um, but it's undeniable that Vince McMahon had a very specific eye for a certain style of this professional wrestling that really worked on a national level in and out of almost everybody's lives.

And Hulk Hogan was undeniably a big part of that.

Even if you just look at the Hogan part, I've tried to run this counterfactual in my head so many times.

Like, what if it was Dusty Rhodes?

What if it was Paul Orndorf?

What if it was, you know, what if, what if superstar Billy Graham had been at his peak right then?

What, you know, what if it had been Ric Flair, for that matter?

Like, there's so many things.

I think it could have worked.

I still find it hard to believe.

I mean, Dusty's really, you know, Vince dropped a bomb on us that he was considering considering Dusty when we were doing the documentary.

He was considering Dusty for that Hogan spot.

And

I mean, Dusty is the only guy with that level of sort of baby face star power.

But I think it works within the same way.

It's just not.

I mean,

I started watching wrestling as a kid because it was like real-life comic books.

You know, it was like, it was the, it was the muscles.

It was the screaming.

It was the, you know, it was the monologues.

Hulk Hogan was just a a real life toy, a real-life superhero.

And there was just, and he was just incredibly special as a performer, even though it's easy to look back now and say his matches were repetitive, his storylines were repetitive, you know, whatever you want to say.

He was just an incredibly special performer.

Repetitive is a compliment.

It was the same formula every time.

So I think it was three things.

I think it was Vince.

I think it was Cable.

And I think it was Hulk Hogan.

Yeah.

But I think the Cable piece was the most important because cable was pushed everything from local to national.

You know, when I was growing up on the East Coast,

we got WWF and I didn't even really know there were other

wrestling federations.

I remember being in Boston after my parents got divorced and, you know, spending weekends with my dad and stuff in the mid-80s and they had Texas on.

And being like, what's this?

There's, you know, you only knew it from the wrestling magazines.

Never saw any of those guys.

And then all of a sudden they were, they were on.

So stuff was popping up but uh i think the cable pushing in national was a big piece vince having the vision to understand that this was happening in the moment and trying to mobilize like i have to beat everybody else to this spot

but i don't think it happens without hogan and i think if he doesn't have hogan i think he tries to beat people but i think the the the south has a much better chance maybe to go national because they had TBS already.

Right.

And I think maybe TBS and the South and if Ric Flair had become the biggest star, maybe if Kerry von Erich doesn't get in a motorcycle accident, there's some what-ifs on that side that it plays out differently.

And maybe they're, and maybe they're the ones, not WWF.

It needed to be Hogan.

I think so.

I mean, I just don't think you can overstate the degree to which Hulk Hogan just worked in mainstream pop culture in those days.

For one thing, he was six, whatever he was.

They said 6'8.

He was a legit 6'5, you know, back in those days.

And he would go on the tonight show or whatever and just tower over everybody.

And that, in the in the days, you know, I mean, obviously, wrestling's always walked this fine line between how real it is and how

how

kind of wink-wink they're being in public.

But to its earliest days, the most important thing was to have wrestlers look like guys who could beat you up, right?

So, Hogan, like, but Hogan, but Hogan looked like that guy, but he also was a sort of circus clown personality.

He could go on these shows and laugh at himself and laugh at everybody else, you know, and

he fit on MTV, you know, he fit on, like i said late night shows he was just sort of you know i think people looked at him we had the dolly parton bit in that you know documentary early on i mean there was i think people just looked at him and they immediately could process what they were looking at and part of that was that it was a wrestling that was somewhat self-aware because he was so corny you know but but also just so cool well you can't overstate Rocky III.

And when we were working on the Mr.

McMahon dock, Rocky 3 was such a big part of it because Rocky 3 was, you know, Star Star Wars was the biggest multi-sequel franchise we had, but Rocky, Rocky 2, Rocky 3 was in the conversation.

And his cameo,

extended cameo in Rocky 3, which it was funny.

I was in a text this weekend with Sal and Gus and a couple other people.

We were like, where does Thunderlips just rank in the Rocky characters rankings?

Like just for like, just characters who just hit a home run.

And Thunderlips is just in the top five.

He comes in.

It's an all-time Deion Waiters performance that we would talk about on the rewatchables and just crushes six minutes of it.

And it was just so clear he was this larger-than-life wrestling star.

And after that happened,

then I didn't, you know, he was at AWA, which I think they were running some stuff on ESPN, but I don't really remember seeing him that much.

I was watching a ton of wrestling, but I do remember the whole storyline with Backlund, the chic beating Backlund, Hulk Hogan coming in as reinforcements for Backlund.

Then

I watched him win the title live on the MSG network.

Yeah.

Because at that point, I was in Connecticut.

My parents had been divorced.

I was there and it was on.

And it was, it was, I can't tell you how exciting it was.

I came along right after that.

I was actually repeating that.

I wrote about this in the piece.

I was going back through the timeline saying, I remember being, I remember where I was, then I watched that, where it was, then I watched that.

And I almost said, I remember being in my

TV room when Hogan beat the sheik.

I was like, no, no, no, no.

I wasn't watching it.

I started watching because Hogan beat the chic, because of this like tidal wave of like, you know, popularity that came after that.

It just felt, it felt new because Backlund had gotten stale.

And I think he had had four and a half plus years and he was just this babyfaced all-American.

And it just, it felt a little stale.

There was other stuff going on, other battles, other villains, and Andre was looming over everything.

But it just, it felt like we needed, we needed, we needed a hero, which was where we were in America, because that's when Stallone has First Blood, that's in 82 or 83, but leads to Rambo First Blood 2 2 in 85.

We have Schwarzenegger coming in.

We have Ronald Reagan taking on the Russians.

And we did this when we did the documentary, this little section about like, you know, testosterone superheroes defending America.

Hulk leaned into that as much as anybody.

Like after they changed the Eye of the Tiger song and he does the Real American, like this was a real way to market yourself.

I am your patriotic superhero.

It wasn't going to happen with Bob Backlund.

No.

I mean, and Bob Backlund, in some ways, and more traditional lens might have fit that role a little bit better, but it was just a different casting call when it came to 80s pop culture, right?

I mean, it was, it's exactly like you said.

The competition, you know, when pro wrestling is at its best, it's not competing against pro wrestling.

It's competing against other things in the mainstream.

And you're right.

I mean, what its competition then was those action movies, you know, I mean, that, that was it.

For me, like I said, younger.

I mean, it literally, wrestling literally came on after Saturday morning cartoons.

So at some point, you just got, you, you, you were watching, you know, these muscle-bound dudes on cartoons, and then you just sort of got old enough to watch the real thing you've you matured at six years old or whatever well but it was never cool either and that that's one of the things that shifted in the mid 80s was as it became more mainstream there was this weird validation that came with that like ah maybe i'm not a fucking complete loser like it's this is now an mtv like shit's happening Yeah, I mean, we've been through, I guess, three of those at least now in our lifetimes where wrestling got cool again.

And

everybody and every wrestling fan has that same feeling every time.

Remember, I talked to the guys who were filmed the curtain call video in the Attitude Era days, and they were told their story about meeting each other.

They were like, we were the only two guys wearing wrestling t-shirts at high school.

And then everybody started wearing wrestling t-shirts, you know?

And they were kind of despondent.

They're like, oh, no, we're not, we're not,

we didn't want to be nerds, but now we're sad that we're not unique.

But yeah, Hogan, it really did just change everything, man.

I mean, like, you know, I think I was always the biggest wrestling fan amongst my friends, you know, when I was when I was a kid, but everybody was into wrestling.

Like, every boy that I grew up with, like, could tell you what happened on Saturday Night's main event, you know, and Hulk Hogan was such a big part of that.

The other big part of every big wrestling movement moment is expansion.

And they went from, you know, zero pay-per-views to, I think they were at three when Hogan left the first time, but there's, you know, these huge pay-the they went through closed circuit.

They went, you know, do onto pay-per-view and then the Saturday Night's main event phenomenon.

And that's to say nothing of the MTV shows and all this.

I mean,

it was just enormous as a cultural influence at that point in time.

Yeah, there was just little checkpoints.

I think Thunderlips helped.

Hogan coming over, Hogan winning the title and that becoming like a huge thing.

The Slaughter versus Sheik kind of showdown, that really helped from

just where we were in a Cold War standpoint.

MTV, having Cindy Lopper

kind of be involved and make it seem like she thought wrestling was cool.

It was like, okay.

And then WrestleMania.

But even after WrestleMania, it was on USA, had that Tuesday Night Titan show.

It was like a talk show.

Vince McMahon did the Letterman anniversary thing.

That was a big deal.

And then Hogan just started selling out everywhere.

And the mainstream media started writing about it, talking about it, doing news segments about it.

I still feel like after he won the title, That first year or so that he had,

he was about as big as any athlete, sports entertainment.

Like this dude's just selling out NBA.

He could have sold out NBA arenas in you name the city every night, night after night.

It just didn't matter.

Everyone went to go see him or wanted to see him.

Yeah.

That was it.

I don't know if it was Melchizedek.

I think it was Alvarez actually who said that you put Hogan's name on the marquee and it sells an extra 4,000 tickets that day.

You know, like it's just, and that's, you know, it's just immediate name recognition.

People buy tickets.

And it was, I mean, the business just blew up.

It was, it was absolutely crazy.

And I know, I mean, and there were times, I have one memory.

I wrote about it in the piece about seeing Hogan when I was pretty young.

And I was trying to find the date of the show and get it all specific.

I looked back and they had three house shows in one night.

On the night that I saw him, they were all in Kentucky.

They were also working in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Like they were just going wall to wall with this product because of, in large part, because of this celebrity that Hulk Hogan brought.

And a lot of the stuff he was doing had been done in different forms before him.

It wasn't like he was Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, but he

elevated or perfected certain things.

Like when Paul Orndorf turned on him, because everyone always points to Macho Man turning on him, which was the most famous one.

And that was on the main event show at that point.

But Orndorf turning on him, which was basically the Zabisco San Martino, wait, I thought we were, but I thought you guys were buddies.

Oh my God, you turned on him.

I mean,

that's been wrestling 101.

But when that happened, And then Hogan just, we just had this steady stream of either he was buddies with them and the guy turned because they were jealous.

They couldn't beat Hogan.

So they had to get him back or

just like these weird villains that would come in out of nowhere.

Oh, there's some of the bills.

Yeah, big monsters that our patriotic superhero had to defeat.

And it was the same recipe.

They would beat the shit out of him.

They would beat the shit out of him.

He'd hulk up.

He'd come back.

And the match would end this.

Wag the finger.

Yeah, wag the finger, punches of the face, clothesline, leg drop.

It was a

tried and true recipe.

And And you're right, they did.

I mean, the Orndorf thing

was similar to the Zabisco San Martino thing, except the same thing with Orndorf and Macho Man.

If you look back, Hogan's kind of actually the asshole in all those situations.

Like, that's sort of the low-key thing about Hogan to his career is he wrestled like a heel.

He sort of was a heel to his friends, but he was still the babyface of record.

He was still the one that they had to turn against.

And talk about repetition.

One of my least favorite Hogan moments moments when he came back at WrestleMania 9 after Bret Hart lost to Yokozuna to just be to take the title from Yokozuna.

That was the same thing that happened with Backlund and the Sheik, basically.

He came back,

you know,

he's like, yeah, I'm buddies with the, with the, with the champ, the now ex-champ.

And I'm just going to take the belt while he's, well, he's out of the picture.

He's, yeah, he's kind of a jerk at times in character, but people kind of love that.

You know, they loved him no matter what he did.

I think that's what made Hogan so irrepressible.

But you're right to mention those moments.

I mean, after WrestleMania 3, when it was him and Andre, and we don't have to skip over that entirely, I mean, you know, WrestleMania, I mean, the Macho Man match at WrestleMania was absolutely huge.

The mega powers colliding.

And then the Warrior match, where he was supposed to pass the torch to the Ultimate Warrior, did pass the torch in a very good match at WrestleMania to the Ultimate Warrior.

But that was massive matches.

Well, I mean, going back to Andre, which I should have mentioned sooner, which has been written about and discussed ad nauseum.

And we've been involved in multiple documentaries about

that one.

And heard multiple versions of the events from Hogan himself.

Yeah, yeah, Hogan couldn't keep track of

what he told us.

But

I can just say this, like

the Leonard versus Hagler fight was within two weekends of it.

And it might have even been within one weekend of it.

And Leonard coming out of retirement, Sugar Ray.

to fight Hagler.

And it was just like one of the biggest boxing fights of all time.

Everyone was so excited about it.

And Hogan Andre was around there, and I love both.

And I was equally excited for both.

Yeah.

Like, that's that's it felt like they were on par that this matchup was on par with the biggest possible boxing event that we could have.

And that's just where it was.

And it kept going.

And the Macho Man, I think that's been underrated over the years, how big that was, and how they used the main event.

You look back at some of the main event ratings.

What did I send you that one time a couple of months ago?

I texted you how it was like 26 million people watching

one of the main events.

The Hogan-Andre main event that had the twin referees.

Another famous moment.

I think it was either, I think it was 33 million people, which is still the

record.

That would be bigger than a Super Bowl now.

Yeah, that was the other thing with Hogan.

You know, there were so many.

So many things like that were going on, but there was some great unintentional comedy with him when he would try to act.

You know, like

when he would, when the pinnacle was him versus Macho Man over Miss Elizabeth in the hospital room, and Macho Man telling him, you got jellicurs.

Yeah.

You got jellicurs.

And Hogan's doing the what do you mean?

What do you mean, Macho?

And it's just, so we're, we're kind of making fun of him as we're idolizing him in the 80s.

It's like, this guy's a complete idiot, but we love him anyway.

It's totally true.

I mean, listen, he got in the, in the Hogan-Andre feud, in the, in the Pipers Pit segment where that sets the whole thing up,

when Andre grabs his shirt and tears it off.

He unintentionally grabbed his necklace and tore it off too, and it cut Hogan in the chest, and Hogan was holding the necklace and he's bleeding.

Yeah.

And aside, that's one of those serendipitous things that makes wrestling so amazing because without the blood,

he's doing the same shit you were just describing.

He's like, why, Andre, why?

But the blood makes it feel like a real moment.

And we're just all totally roped in.

I mean, Andre was also, of all of those big, menacing bad guys, I think the only one who was really bigger than him, who looked like he could beat up Hulk Hogan.

So, uh, um, that that was that helped a lot too.

And of course, Andre's history, I mean, he was just terrifying.

Yeah, and meanwhile, he could barely move.

So, so you have Hogan, much like Stallone, much like Schwarzenegger, much like some of our other favorites from that era, where there's like unintentional comedy, they're a one-on-one, we love them.

Um, it's there's a question of how long, how long can you keep this going?

How long, what's the shelf life of a gimmick like this?

And we hit the 90s and he's had this phenomenal run, but then we have the steroid trial.

He's still hulking up.

It's just not working the same way.

The crowd's starting to flip a tiny bit and it leads to him eventually starting to do TV shows, going to WCW, but then...

and probably ending up with this other incredible moment, you know, with this, with WCW and NWO and him becoming the third man and him, Hogan going heel, which

is in the running for biggest wrestling moment of all time.

I don't know if it's first, but it's in the top four, right?

Oh,

dude, I feel like I should have an answer prepared for this.

Yeah, it's definitely, it's, it's definitely up there.

I mean, top four, it has to be mentioned.

It absolutely changed everything.

Is it the biggest moment of Hulk Hogan's career?

I mean, maybe you can make the case that everything he did led up to this moment.

Like it was the culmination of 30 years in the ring that made it so poignant.

Well,

to reinvent something that seemed like it had run its course,

I think is one of the hardest things to do.

You know, it's like we've seen athletes try to, like Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay.

Even that seems somewhat realistic.

Hogan reinventing himself, becoming the biggest heel in the business and basically flipping WWE versus WCW was like the odds on that were like 100 to 1.

No, it was, it was really, I mean, it was really improbable.

And, you know, just like in a wrestling match where you got to, if you have a big moment coming, you kind of like, they, they, they lower the stakes a little bit for like the four minutes leading up to it.

You know, they're not going to do anything too crazy.

They accidentally did that in WCW by making his first couple, his first year and a half there just the most boring thing possible.

You know, he was there just replaying the hits.

It was just like a fake, it was like, it was like what wrestling is in a movie, you know, just this, just silly Hulk Hogan feuds against people you didn't care about.

And then all, but, you know, the announcers are there, Tony Schiavone, God bless him, screaming his head off like this is the most important thing in the world.

When he came down to the ring to take, you know, to

presumably take on the outsiders, and then he joined them.

I mean, that was just an absolutely

irreplaceable moment in pro wrestling history.

He's the third man.

No.

So he gets like one more year out of that.

And then it seems over again.

WCW completely falls apart.

There's some great stuff that I, in the couple days after he passed, some stuff I even forgot about, like the 2000 bash on the beach and

just when it's, it's gone so bad.

We're like almost Dirk Diggwer jerking off in the church parking lot level like grizzly.

That's how bad it goes.

But then we have the merger.

He comes back and then he has another iconic all-time moment against The Rock in WrestleMania, which probably the best moment of the whole match was when they're just in the ring beforehand, staring at each other and the crowd's going ape shit.

And they just kind of do the facing different directions move, just kind of soaking it in.

And

he ends up winning the title.

I think I even wrote about this for ESP in the magazine about like Hogan's last comeback.

So this was the last great thing for him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, listen, the WCW-NWO run was, it was just a few years and it had some great moments.

You know, everyone remembers the sting sting feud everyone remembers yeah you know goldberg and the georgia dome everybody remembers you know uh hogan versus uh losing the title of lex luger which was an incredibly transformative moment if you were at just the right age to really love lex luger um

it was i mean there's a lot of good moments but by the end he was just you know the internet had come to exist and hogan was sort of got was one of the first guys that really got saddled with the baggage of being a guy who was like kind of hard to work with backstage or had too much creative control let's just say it wasn't really Yeah.

He had both.

I mean, listen, the moment that he passed on, I got like five texts in a row that were just like some version of the joke.

He said to St.

Peter, that's not going to work for me, brother.

You know, like,

that phrase is just everywhere, you know, when it comes to any joke about wrestlers being hard to work with backstage.

But, you know, he had all this baggage and it, and then not coming over immediately when WWF bought WCW was not his fault at all, but like it kind of saddled him with a little bit more.

When he finally showed up, you know, we were excited to see the NWO again, but like, you know, no one quite knew.

Hogan was not just like, it wasn't not a triumphant return for him until that match.

That match against The Rock

was

another just a moment that can only exist in wrestling where the entire, I mean, God bless Canada, the entire crowd just decided, we will accept you back, Hulk Hogan.

And that's, and it happened in this match.

He enters as the heel.

he walks out as the biggest baby face that business has ever seen once again and

you know i don't want to rewrite history but if he had hung up the boots that night he probably would have gone down as the greatest wrestler that ever lived like full stop you know i mean people would still be making the case for the guys who could work better from bell to bell you know like flair and macho whoever else but like but i mean hogan i mean that was that was the that to me i was the end i don't i don't care about the man feud you know it was just sort of another just they i mean they kind of they had to do it it, but whatever.

The Mr.

America run was funny, but whatever.

Him winning the title is probably the epilogue.

And then anything after that, literally everything after that, you could probably toss in the

garbage bag.

So

the cheat sheets were bad for him.

Once that really started, the dirt sheets and the, what did I call them, the cheat sheets?

No, I'm washed up like Hogan.

The dirt sheets.

That was bad because that was the first time people like us were like, wait, Hogan's a dick?

Yeah.

I didn't, Wade Hogan.

Everybody hits working with him.

It wasn't even so much that he was a dick because it was just that he had the power and the influence to demand a creative control in his contract.

And they said, yes, you know, like, he's like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to stop doing Thunder in Paradise unless you give me creative control.

You know, they're like, okay, we'll get.

And the people that are paying this money don't, I mean, this isn't the promoters.

They don't, this is time.

This is Turner.

You know, I mean, like, this is, this is the whole, the big parent company.

They just think Hulk Hogan's famous.

Whatever it takes, we'll bring him in.

Unfortunately, every instinct he has was,

and then Hulk will come in and Hulk will pin so-and-so.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

That was my idea.

Unfortunately, that's what almost every wrestler thinks.

He also did help out a lot of people along the way.

You know, I talked to Kevin Sullivan before he passed along, and he was leading that Dungeon of Doom stable that Hogan was feuding with before the NWO.

And he was like, oh, yeah, all those guys were just Hogan's buddies.

And we just had to keep him employed.

So I just made this thing up for everybody to do something.

You know, that was just Hogan.

Hogan had a lot of dudes, but Brutus the Barber, you know, the nasty boys who kept jobs for a long time because they were associated with him.

So I guess, you know, I'm sure they're going to miss him, especially.

Well, sometimes this happens.

Sometimes you die at the perfect time for a career move.

Not obviously for yourself, because dying is never a win.

But from a career standpoint, sometimes people can die at the perfect time.

People can last way too long.

Or in some cases, the post-career stuff can then overshadow whatever happened in the career, which I think is a big piece of what, I mean, the scandal with him and Bubba, Bubba the Love Sponge and the sex tape and the all the N-word stuff and the racist stuff, like it's just, it's really rough.

And he was never really apologetic enough about it, you know, and then even when he went to talk to the roster.

That apology didn't work.

And

that might have been the worst part of it.

I mean, I went back through as I was writing my piece and this is so morbid, but I was like, if he had died, like, what are the moments that he could have died and he would have been remembered purely positively?

I mean, it's kind of any moment before that tape came out.

But really, if he had, I mean, listen, he had all the success in Japan before his WWE run.

If he had, if he had like, you know, just disappeared, I won't say died, just disappeared after WrestleMania 1, it would have been like, you know,

Jim Morrison.

Like, it would have been one of these like crazy, like, look at this run.

And then he's just gone.

And, like, whatever.

Obviously, I used to say that about the Smashing Pumpkins guy.

Oh, yeah.

if he had just disappeared in 1998 and nobody ever saw him again we would be like genius yeah

like sometimes that's and then sometimes all the stuff you do after ends up infecting how you think of the best stuff it's true but like yeah that it was basically the past if anything before the past 15 years and he would have just been the greatest icon this business has ever seen i mean hogan's knows best the reality show wasn't like deplorable you know it was just like you understood why he did it and it kind of made him look like a goof and kind of weirdly obsessed with his daughter but like you get it like it was it was cool that there was a wrestler getting that kind of attention

uh but yeah the raw was the shocking one did you go to that first netflix raw i can't remember no i was not there i was not there i was watching it at home but the boos were just as loud uh in my home oh my lord i went with ben you know and ben's always He's not reading up on what the legends, how they're fucking up their lives post-career.

He just knows Hogan from the wrestling stuff.

And Hogan came out and

it wasn't like oh some people are booing him some people are cheering him this was like just passionate booze and the most fascinating thing about it

you know in the old days he would have fed off the crowd and flipped

and he would have been like oh that i'm getting a ton of heat right now let me actually play off that and be like how dare you you guys are so ungrateful everything i did for this country and he just would have flipped it the way honestly Rock kind of flipped it a little bit during the lead up to WrestleMania last year.

But he didn't.

And he seemed like he was just going through his plan.

He was confused.

He had Jimmy Hart behind him waving a flag.

And it was awful.

It really was like, and I think it would have been a bigger story, but tragically, the next day was when the fire started ripping through California.

And there wasn't a lot of like dissection for three days of what happened at this Netflix Raw event.

But I got to say, in the moment, Shoemaker, I was like

i was dumbfounded i couldn't believe like it was like actual hatred it felt like and i don't think it was just the trump stuff i think it was a variety of things no i mean you mentioned it before when he gave the when he came back and again this is the dirt sheets getting the better of hogan when he came back to give the speech to the locker room after you know kind of being banned for a year and a half after the racist the the racist video came out yeah He had apologized in the news.

He apologized in ABC News and in People Magazine.

And an apology, the fact desk, when I I was writing my P, he said, are you sure we're going to use the word apology here?

Because the words I'm sorry are never spoken, but it's, I was like, yeah, it's kind of an apology, whatever.

But it was an acknowledgement.

It was an acknowledgement that he was, that he, you know, regrets it or whatever.

But then he came back into the locker room and instead of saying,

I'm sorry to the for hurt, I'm sorry for being a racist.

I'm sorry for hurting you.

I'm sorry for saying these things.

He said, you guys better watch out for hidden cameras because they can really ruin your life.

And then

everybody there, I know guys are in that locker room, but they're just like, I'm done with with them.

I can't.

I just can't, you know, after that.

And fans all knew about it too.

So that was a lot of what went into it.

I mean, WWE does this thing now, and they have a very, very savvy, very, very savvy PR department.

But they'll do this thing.

You'll see them do this thing where they leak out a story like, WWE considering a relationship with Hulk Hogan's beer company.

And then two days later, it happens.

And it's almost like they're doing a trial balloon, but deliberately not waiting for the results.

Just so after it happens, they can say, hey, we put out a trial balloon, you know, like, right.

And they did it with Hogan, and they said, Oh, he's going to come promote his beer.

But now that just meant all the fans were ready for it, right?

So instead of it being a surprise that Hogan's there, and like, you know, he just happens to be wearing a beer tier shirt, and he's there, a beer tea shirt, and he's there to hug everybody.

They were all just like, he's coming back, but only to sell us some bad beer.

Like, what?

And they, and, and these were already had these issues with him, and it seems so contrived.

And they were ready for it.

And he came out and just got the biggest booze that you could possibly get, man.

It's just, it's like fans really hate when they feel like the wrestlers don't care about wrestling, right?

It's why, like, you know, when Brock Lesnar and Goldberg were at WrestleMania 20 or whatever, they were both leaving the company, the fans hated.

Like, you guys don't even want to be here.

Get the hell out of here.

They got booed the whole match.

I mean, if you come back just to sell beer, the fans are just like, get the hell out of here, dude.

Like, come on.

You can't even apologize, right?

You want us to buy your beer?

Like, let's see, that's so funny.

I mean, it was a rare misread by the room,

especially and by the WWE and TKO to think that that was a good idea.

No, and to have

no way to back out of it.

Oh, you're holding up a Hogan glass.

I'm showing you the Hogan glass.

I have all these old WWE glasses from the 80s, but this is like, this is where we were.

This was like a cartoon superhero.

I'm holding up if you're watching the video pod.

The Hokamania and the glass with the,

you know, this was, the guy was a merchandise machine.

He was,

I genuinely felt like on par with Stallone and and everybody else from that era, from how famous he was.

I would probably didn't make as much money as Stallone, but he definitely sold more t-shirts than those guys.

Yeah.

And, you know, you think back and you think it was him and Vince

growing this company, blowing it out.

And then the steroid trial happened.

And it seems like both of them are done, but they're not.

And it keeps going for another 30 years.

And now one's gone and in

a pretty fairly disgraceful way, even in death.

And then the other one is just gone, Vince, and we probably will never see him again, but he's out of it.

He sold the company.

To say it's been a rocky five years for him would be an understatement.

And we'll see how it plays out legally.

But it's just, this was the backbone of this entire business.

And both of them just left in disgrace.

Yeah.

I mean, you know.

Maybe it shouldn't be too shocking.

I remember when the, when the tape came out, when I, when the tape came out about Hogan, I was talking to, this might have been on one of those early early cheap heat episodes or something with Rosenberg, but I remember saying,

this is super disappointing.

Now, you know, if we could magically, you know, if we could, if we could, an angel came down and gave us a list of all the other wrestlers who said the N-word and, you know, private conversations, I think it would be a pretty long list.

You know,

you look around the world, you don't, you know, maybe we shouldn't have been too shocked about that sort of disgrace, especially as we enter the modern world.

Wrestling is a very, very odd space.

But yeah, I I mean, it's

when Vince put out that statement about, you know, like acknowledging Hogan's death, it was just like, I'm sure he wasn't super excited to do it, but it was like, do we really need this right now?

I don't know.

The last time I saw Hogan, I think, was when he did the interview for the, for the, for the Vince doc.

Yeah.

Uh, we went down to Florida and, you know, I was there as the sort of bullshit detector on set.

And there, what can you do with Hulk Hogan?

You know, I mean, it's just all bullshit.

But,

you know, he looked okay at that point.

He was walking around with like a staff, like a giant.

He, I guess, you know, he's he's not going to be carried using a cane, he's Hulk Hogan.

So he had like a giant walking stick that he, that was like seven feet tall that got him from his like super tall truck in and out.

And he was always very open about the physical pain he'd been in since he retired.

And even while he was wrestling, you know, he got multiple hip replacements, I think four, three or four hip replacements.

And had I remember at one point, there was, he was, he couldn't sit in a folding chair to sign autographs for 15 minutes.

You know, like he was in that kind of physical pain.

Um, but he was sort of getting around.

And then, but, you know, he was very, he was much more complimentary of Vince in that interview than I expected him to be.

You know,

he was much more.

And again, the truth varies in Hogan's mind from moment to moment, you know, like whatever.

But it did seem like there was some sort of,

it was time to just sort of make peace with everything and

go out on a good note vibe coming from him.

Well, I can't imagine what he put into his body over

like a 40-year stretch.

So to

live to 71 and then die of heart failure, I can't say neither of us would have been shocked by that one.

This was, you're talking about ground zero with steroids of the 70s and 80s before the steroids were even that good.

You know, they just made you bulky and watery.

And all these guys were doing it.

And, you know, it's, we're not breaking any news here, but there's.

There's just a slew of wrestlers who have died at ages younger than this.

So even getting to 71.

No, I mean, mean, this is, yeah, you're right.

This is, and this isn't even like you got a sports doctor.

This is like you bought them from another dude in the gym locker room in Tampa or whatever, you know, steroids.

These are horse steroids.

This is like terrible shit to be putting in your body.

And yeah, a lot of people, it's just like hearts exploded, you know, when they were in their 30s and 40s, and certainly in their 50s.

Um,

yeah, I mean, it's crazy, and it's crazy to see him.

I mean, we've all seen video of him working out with the back brace on.

You know, Hogan had to, he was Hogan until the day he died.

He always had the

tad, the little bit of stringy white hair, and the the mustache and the muscles and the tan.

And, and, um,

you know, that was always part of the gimmick, brother.

You know, he lived it till the end.

I guess, you know, when we look back now, that rumor about him dying a few weeks ago that Bubba the Love Sponge put out was probably closer to true at the time it was dismissed, but that seemed like the beginning of the, I mean, that, you know, you could probably draw a straight line.

And, and, um,

well, to put to put a bow on this,

I still feel like Rock

had the total package as a wrestler in the best possible way with the mic skills combined with what an athlete he was growing up in the business.

I still have him one for kind of overall talent.

I think Hogan is the most popular I've ever seen.

I wasn't, I didn't see Bruno in his peak or some of these guys from the earlier and the mid-70s, but I can't imagine anyone got a louder pop than Hogan, especially in the 80s, walking into a 17,000-seat arena as people, and I feel like those crowds, kind of pre-85, were wired a little differently anyway.

They would just lose their fucking minds at every match.

Yeah.

And then, and then Ric Flair is probably,

you know,

he's like the LeBron of all this, right?

Like the longest, best career, did the most things.

But if you're going to start some sort of list, I feel like those three have to be on it.

Are there two other people you feel like have to be on it?

I'm not saying about Rushmore.

I'm just saying like just the guys that

i would you know i would always

austin above the rock i mean just because he had a very long career with a bunch of different stuff you know a bunch of different angles and the heights of the attitude era with i mean that was his it was the glass breaking you know the rock is you can make a case for the rock especially since all this you know he's made all these movies he's gotten so much more famous and he's come back now

he was overqualified to be a wrestler he's the only one you could say like i actually am slumming at doing this i've got to go become a movie star yeah it's true um you know there's some people in the modern era that tried to make the case for roman reigns or CM Punk or John Cena.

I think Cena would get a lot of votes now that he's on his retirement tour.

Yeah.

You know, I find it really hard to separate Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes.

I mean, a lot of their careers were very separate, but Dusty was the one guy that had that sort of charisma, you know, that sort of magic.

It's really hard.

But Hogan, I mean, I think that you look back and it's pretty easy to say that Hogan stands above everybody else.

You know, I mean, it's like you look back at the first like eight years, you know, whatever of Hogan's, of the Hokamania era.

I mean, who is the second most important character?

Like, who is second on the call sheet?

It's probably mean, Gene Okerlund, you know, like it's like it's it's Hogan.

This was like a one-man show for almost a decade, you know, and it was just the people that, that, that orbited around him.

It's really,

it's, I mean, it's, he is, he's pretty singular, you know, and again, not a great professional wrestler bell developed, but he told the stories in the ring, and maybe that's the most important part.

Yeah, and there's only a couple guys left now:

Ric Flair, still hanging on.

Vince, still hanging on, but we're looking at

pretty soon, I think everybody from the 70s and 80s is going to be gone.

True.

And everybody from the 90s is somehow still wrestling.

So

I don't know how we're going to reconcile this.

Yeah.

Well, the medicine's better.

David Shoemaker, great to see you, as always.

Thanks for popping up.

Great to see you too, man.

Thanks.

All right, that's it for the podcast.

Thanks to Shoemaker and Jacko and House.

Thanks to Eduardo and Gahau as well.

Don't forget, you can watch all of the videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel.

We have new rewatchables coming too as well on Monday night.

And I'm going to be back midweek with one more podcast on this feed.

See you then.

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