The Big Suey: The Steak & The Oatmeal (feat. Domonique Foxworth and David Samson)

All right, Smirnoff.

Official vodka of the NFL, the world's number one vodka.

Here's the deal: game day is everything.

The noise, the rituals, the passion, the dip, the wings, the dip again.

Smirnoff belongs in that mix because if you're tailgating or hosting or just sitting there checking your fantasy lineup every 30 seconds, you need Smirnoff.

Otherwise, it's not a real game day.

They've been doing this since 1864, which is.

I don't even want to do the math.

A long time.

They're award-winning.

They make cocktails super easy and they're all about bringing fans together.

So yeah, we do game days.

That's their thing.

And if you're over 21, you should too.

Grab a bottle of Smirnoff at your local retailer and head to Smirnoff.com to find recipes of delicious cocktails perfect for game day.

Please drink responsibly.

Smirnoff, number 21 vodka.

Distilled from grain, 40% alcohol by volume.

The Smirnoff Company, New York, New York.

Please do not share with anyone under legal drinking age.

At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments.

It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

I didn't think the pain from the shingles rash would affect simple everyday tasks like bathing, getting dressed, or even walking around.

I was wrong.

Though not everyone at risk will develop it, 99% of people over the age of 50 already have the virus that causes shingles, and it could reactivate at any time.

I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks.

Don't learn the hard way, like I did.

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today.

Sponsored by GSK.

Welcome to the Big Sue,

presented by DraftKings.

Why are you listening to this show?

It's a podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebatard podcast.

I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that.

In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging.

I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries that if they're just there.

If that hasn't happened to you guys, I've done it.

And now, here's the marching man to nowhere, fat face, and the habitual liar.

This episode of the Dan Levitz Art Show, Stu Gats, is presented by DraftKings.

DraftKings, the crown is yours.

Dominique Foxworth is going to spend the hour with us.

We're going to go in and out of football.

Maybe I can get him to argue with David Sampson about what I was just saying about the salary cap, because I don't imagine that they agree on this.

But before we get to Dominique, real quick, I want to go to David Sampson because I want to ask him about that Ballmer interview.

And he's more informed than most here when he's looked at all of these legal documents and he has read the fine print on what it is that Pablo's reporting is.

So thank you, gentlemen, for joining us.

And before we get to David's expertise on this, just tell me what your thoughts are

about the salary cap.

I'm going to both of you here, bad judgment.

It's just bad judgment.

You got the opportunity, right?

You have a choice.

You have a choice.

There's some steak in front of you and there's some Dale oatmeal.

And you're like, hey, hey, guys, we're going to get to the steak, but let's kick it off with a question for the oatmeal.

Anyway, back to you, Dan.

The oatmeal?

What does that even mean?

Day-old oatmeal.

Are you talking about the story or are you talking about me?

Green, go ahead.

Do your show, buddy.

Knock yourself out, big dog.

No, I'm not going to say a word until you answer that question.

Are you calling the Pablo story with Ballmer the oatmeal because NFL football season started?

Or are you calling you the steak and me the oatmeal?

If you have to ask who the oatmeal is, I got bad news, David.

I don't need to be here, Dan.

Enjoy your time with fun.

I'll

honestly.

We'll figure it out.

Dominique, for what?

Sensitive little man.

No, it's not that I'm sensitive.

I'm tired of it.

Whatever, dude.

What are you tired of?

I'm sensitive.

It's ridiculous.

It's a ridiculous start to the show.

It's a great start.

It is a great start.

You know what is entertaining?

Tension.

You know what we got?

No, because I don't have tension, but steak.

This ain't tension.

No, this is idiocy.

We now turn to our chief shitzer to broker peace.

Dan, make this right.

Well,

so, Chris, were you saying that if

you don't know who the oatmeal is, then you're the oatmeal?

Bad job making it right.

Zagak.

David, you're super rich.

Why do you put up with this?

You shouldn't be doing this.

I agree.

I'm on David's side.

You should not subject yourself to this.

Why put up with this?

Nonsense.

David.

That was here four seconds.

It was called oatmeal.

Can we be nice to our our guests?

First of all, Dominique came here.

No, look, you guys missed what actually happened.

Dominique rolling in and telling me how to do my show, first of all.

That's what just happened.

Who can't get better?

Are you uncoachable now?

I mean, I feel like everyone needs some coaching, right?

There's coaching on mobility.

There's coaching in private.

There's coaching in public.

I'm a football player, man.

We do this shit in public.

You get cooked, you get cooked.

Everybody know you got burnt.

Oh, I got to sneak behind closed doors.

I'm not afraid.

Sometimes I mess up.

We talk about messing up.

Sometimes you mess up.

We gotta talk about messing up.

It's okay.

Don't mean you're a bad person.

It just means you need a little coaching, baby.

I'm just saying, are you angry?

You can dress up oatmeal.

You can put fruit in it, maple syrup, ground pork, ground sugar, bananas, raisins.

Raisins.

In fact, right now, at this time, I'm more in the mood for oatmeal.

Yep.

Yeah.

Exactly.

It's morning time.

It was a compliment.

High and fiber.

We eat steak for breakfast.

We seem a long way removed from these days when

David Sampson jumped into Dominique's arms like a spider monkey and they enjoyed a long embrace.

David, we're having you on because of the Ballmer interview and because you're informed.

So tell me, what are the holes that can be poked in that Ballmer interview when he's coming out there and doing the public relations crisis move?

Well, you have to understand that there's two things happening.

One, there is the criminal part of this, which is the fraud, which is the reason why there's a guilty plea by one of the co-founders of Aspiration.

You do not want to talk about aspiration publicly.

You don't want to do anything where there is any sort of ongoing investigation.

Very different than what the NBA is doing.

That's an internal investigation where, yes, he could be suspended, he could be fined, but it's not criminal in any way.

So he chooses ESPN instead of Pablo.

He chooses Shelburne, Ramona, instead of doing it with what I would call an area where there's going to be a serious journalist asking questions because this this was the biggest softball 16 minutes I've ever seen.

She had an opportunity to ask him, I'm sorry, you introduced Aspiration to Kawhi Leonard and then that's the last you heard from either one of them, yet you invested $50 million in aspiration, yet Kawhi Leonard is your close friend player and no other conversation took place.

She didn't even ask him that.

He just stated on the interview, yeah, introduced him.

That's totally legal under the CBA and that's it.

That was the end of the story.

That's a huge missed opportunity.

And I don't know whether she had been given the questions or he had been given the questions.

David, she's a good journalist, but this is deep water.

This is deep water stuff here.

And Pablo's done seven months of research.

And yes.

But why would she agree to do it then?

If you're not going to do it, she's a great journalist, but you're telling me you watched that 16 minutes and you said to yourself, wow, she really asked the tough questions?

No, I did not think that, but I think it's hard for people to ask the tough questions right now, given that everyone is really far behind on this story.

But when he says he, you can just go by what he said in the interview because he had talking points, obviously from, it may have even been from the NBA.

It's not a coincidence that he sat down with ESPN.

It's not a coincidence that it happened yesterday because he's had two statements now and one interview and the NBA has an ongoing investigation.

So if there's nothing going on, there is no reason to give any sort of interview.

And the one he gave to me made it even worse.

When he was asked,

why did they give Kawhi so much money?

A reasonable question that he should have been prepared to answer.

His only answer was, I don't know how much money.

Well, it's right there and the Pablo Torrey finds out it was $28 million.

And so she said to him, hey, it's $28 million.

And his answer was, yeah, I got conned also.

So Kawhi and I together got scammed by scammers, but that was not and should not have been the point of the interview.

The point should have been, hey, Steve, did you not communicate with Kawhi at all about what this was?

But we never heard it.

What are the other holes in the interview worth noting?

I think that it's important to know that he said.

specifically that there's a lot of mystery around Kawhi Leonard.

He doesn't speak much.

So then my next question would have been, had I been sitting there, well then, Steve, why did a company invest $28 million in him to be a pitch person if he is a man of mystery who doesn't speak much?

Doesn't it need to be the opposite?

I found that to be surprising.

Number three, he said he has not spoken with Kawhi at all about this.

That sounds a little bit like horse hockey to me, because when a player is owed money, and Dominique can speak to this, once you get out your steak knife, if you are owed money, the player and the agent tend to call the team president or owner and say, excuse me, where's my money?

I'm having a problem collecting from this company that you are an owner of.

But there's been no conversation between the two of them.

I'm not buying it at all.

Any other things that we should know?

Because again,

I want everyone to know that when you're talking about 3,000 documents and seven months of work, there's a lot of stuff that David has gone through through here.

What else should have been asked last night that wasn't asked?

And what are some things that Ballmer could do better as someone who knows what crisis management and public relations management has to look like?

Well, let me start with number one.

In statement one, given to the PTFO episode when it aired, it said that he has information that will prove Pablo's allegations to be false.

And Ramona said, well, you know, provably false, that disappeared from statement two.

When they released another statement, they no longer included those words.

So what is it that you had that was provably false?

And Bahumer said, I have emails of introduction that I gave over to the government as part of discovery, as part of a criminal investigation.

I gave them all the emails.

All it is is, hey, aspiration, meet Kawhi.

Hey, Kawhi, meet aspiration.

Well, that's not sufficient.

What you could have followed up with, well,

what else was part of the negotiation with Uncle Dennis that was not part of the discovery?

Because remember, the government is not interested in salary cap circumvention.

The government was interested in fraud.

And that's not what Pablo is discussing vis-a-vis Kawhi and Steve.

So instead of conflating the issues, we could separate them and then get Steve to answer questions.

And what I would have advised him, Dan, is under no circumstances to speak with ESPN until you are more prepared and you've got to deal with Adam Silver as to what your punishment is going to be.

Dominique, do you have any thoughts here about the last three days that include Mark Cuban on Pablo Torre finds out this morning?

Lots of, lots of thoughts.

So the first thought is

David is fun and I like David.

And we worked really hard and I thought David and I built a relationship that was more locker room adjacent and like you rib your friends.

So David, I would like to extend an apology i mean no disrespect you're a sweetheart and oatmeal is freaking delicious that aside and healthy and good for you and good for you like i i and steak bad for your heart not not too much steak oatmeal it ain't bad for nothing it's delicious add a little brown sugar brown sugar dominique We don't want to be my brown sugar.

Holy now you're going too far.

Try to be your friend and try to make up with you and you go too far.

I feel like you're hitting on me, which combined.

combined with the fact that you koala me like yeah I'm getting a little concerned but fortunately we're not in the same location but as for the Kawhi Leonard story there's a number of things that jump out to me first like what is the burden of proof because I listened to Pablo's episode and I've been reading the stuff that's coming out and

I think Pablo does a great job of building a case around a lot of like insinuation which like it seems obvious to all of us and we can go back through all the facts in his case but there is no like smoking gun like there's an email that says this and i don't know what the burden of proof is for the nba for these type of things so that's the question when they say provably false that extends that creates a burden for them that i think is much higher than they probably want which is why it probably came out of um it took out of future statements but i think pablo there's not not like an email that says this is what we're doing which is hard for him the other thing that is just hilarious is i love that metalark is doing investigative research on no-show jobs.

As I look at Dan in a completely empty studio, like you guys are no-show job experts out there knocking it out the park.

Look at lonely dad.

I love it.

I didn't have to work Fridays last year.

There's so much fun.

Also, can I say one more thing about that?

Pablo, I get that Pablo's doing reporting and a true journalist does not care who he takes down, but salary cap circumvention, kind of awesome.

It's kind of great.

The guys who are the most valuable and most talented have

an unfair and illegal in most industries cap put on their wages and finding a way to get them some money.

I get that it's breaking a rule, but

some rules need to be broken.

You're saying that there was

anything that Pablo had other than insinuation.

I should point out that the salary cap circumvention came from all the sources within the company who went to Pablo and one of them on the record in a modulated voice said, yeah, that's what we were told that this $28 million completely out of market endorsement deal was for the purposes of salary cap circumvention.

So it was not Pablo actually who made this up and tried to put pieces of a puzzle together using froggy DNA.

It was the employees of the company.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not suggesting that Pablo's wrong.

And I'm not suggesting that his story is not based in enough fact to go with.

Like, I don't think that he would put himself at legal risk in that way.

My point is that if anything is going to come out of this, I don't know what the NBA needs for proof.

And I don't know if anyone is going to speak to the NBA after, if the biggest, most damning evidence they have is someone in the company said it.

I'm not sure that anybody in that company at this point, given what's happening, is interested or well, former company, I guess, is interested in stepping up and telling the NBA that, or even if that's enough to hold water.

So I think it doesn't necessarily matter to Pablo if Ballmer or the Clippers are punished.

It matters to the rest of the teams in the league.

My only point is I'm not sure that something will come of this because it's a little different if you're like, hey, like Pablo's previous reports had like real documents that had actual names and like explicit reasons for things happening.

So I think that's, I don't mean this as a criticism of Pablo.

I just mean this as going forward, is anything going to come of it?

That's what the question kind of floating around in my head.

want to have some skin in the game put your money and larceny's award-winning bourbon where your mouth is whether you enjoy sipping it straight or mixing it in a cocktail the true pros know larceny raises the stakes in flavor with every pour with multiple awards between the two larseny's small batch and barrel proof are no strangers to the winner's circle as a weeded bourbon you can count on larceny to keep it smooth no matter the spread Don't gamble with what's in your glass.

Go all in and seize tonight with Larseny bourbon.

Add a winning spirit to your bourbon roster with the smooth taste of larceny.

Find a bottle near you at larcenybourbin.com.

The Dan Levittard show is brought to you by Larseny Bourbon, Bardstown, Kentucky.

46% alcohol by volume.

Think wisely, drink wisely.

I want to talk about home security for a minute.

For the longest time, I thought it was just alarms and sirens that once somebody breaks in, you deal with it.

But when you think about it, That's already too late.

That's reactive.

I had my car broken into on my property a while back.

The only thing I could do was call 911.

That's reactive.

I don't like living things up to chance.

That's why I decided to install Simply Safe.

Why?

Because they flipped the idea of home security by making it proactive.

Their Active Guard Outdoor Protection uses AI-powered cameras to actually identify people lurking around your property.

And here's the key.

SimplySafe's monitoring agents step in before anything goes down.

They'll talk directly to intruders through the camera, light them up with spotlights, and even call the cops if they need to.

That's not reacting.

That's stopping crime before it starts.

No contracts, no hidden fees.

That's why they've been named best home security system by U.S.

News and World Report five years in a row.

And they back it up with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

SimplySafe is offering Lebatrad show listeners 50% off a new system with professional monitoring.

Plus, your first month is free.

Visit simplysafe.com/slash DLB to claim the offer.

That's simply safe.com/slash DLB.

There's no safe like SimplySafe.

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Ryan.

One thing about me that everybody knows: I absolutely love Miller Light.

You know what else I love?

You.

That's right, you.

Listening on your way to work right now, wondering whether or not today is the day to tell your boss what you really think of the new reports he needs filled out every week.

I absolutely love you.

That's why I'm thrilled to tell you that we are again partnering with Miller Light to give you a chance to play along with weekend observations.

Starting September 22nd, you'll be able to go to draftkings.com and guess what will happen during weekend observations on the show Monday, September 29th.

How many beeps will there be?

Who's the first person to interrupt?

How many people will talk about the used chances to win a national title?

Spoiler alert, definitely me.

The winner will get a trip for you and a guest to come to Miami and hang with us at Flanagans for Thursday night football on October 30th and a visit to the studio to see a taping of the show.

Make sure you go to DraftKings and play free to win.

And then tune in to the show and check out how you did.

Must be 21 plus to enter.

Eligibility restrictions apply.

Void where prohibited.

See DraftKings.com for details.

Don Lebatard.

I may take it one step further.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

You're getting sexier by the moment.

Slow down.

We haven't even gotten.

Stugats.

Jason Sanders, you're unnoticed.

Oh my God.

Come on in spite of him.

Oh, wow.

I love you, Duke.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

I think on Mark Cuban's show, I'm Pablo's show that it dropped that I watched at 5 a.m.

And I don't know why, Dan, you have him as head of MetalArc, why he's dropping episodes at 5 a.m.

Although it's fantastic for me, but for those who are not, you and I actually are the only people I know watching it at 5 a.m.

But that said, Cuban said something fascinating on that episode that's out right now where he said, I'm Team Balmer.

However, If it's true, then I am Team Mavericks.

I own 27% of the Mavericks, and they're done.

The GM, any executives, bomber, and that would be great for the Mavericks.

And Adam Silver's right now taking the temperature of 29 men, Cuban not amongst them, to figure out exactly how deep and far Adam Silver has to go.

I think that's the interesting part too, is that we often misunderstand that like the league or the commissioner is in charge and running the show and like policing all of this.

So many of the things that happen in pro sports like that we view as the league coming down on a team or owner or player or an organization or a partner.

Like we view that as like the commissioner and this like

faceless league is doing it.

No, the people people behind the scenes with the power are most of the time lobbying the support enough owners or enough powerful owners to get what they want to happen to happen.

And like we see it, we saw it often in with like deflate gate and bounty gate and those sorts of things in the NFL.

It seems like it's more of a reaction.

And honestly, this like swing to more punitive.

punishments for players who were mixed up in any sort of allegations.

Like that comes from the owners.

And my guess is that if the decision to move forward with the Balmer allegations in the past was not driven by the owners, the decision for what they will do now will be driven by the owners and how they feel about it and what they want done about it.

But Balmer happens to be one of the more powerful owners.

So, like, that plays a part in the leverage because what's going to happen is just like any political situation is you want your friends and you have to trade favors oftentimes to be able to get the things that you want.

So, if you are seen as the owner who's rallying support around some punishment for Ballmer, then when the things come up, when you, your organization gets in trouble or you want a rule changed or you want more revenue sharing, you're not going to be able to call on Ballmer to get that vote.

So that's how a lot of times these things behind the scenes work, which I guess maybe I shouldn't be saying that.

Maybe, David, you disagree.

No, I think it's interesting when you're inside the room and you're talking about owner v owner, you definitely have to think about revenue sharing.

You think about who's got the power, but people often mistake rich for power the richest owner in baseball when i entered was a guy named carl polad who was the owner of the minnesota twins a team that was going to be contracted they didn't have a new ballpark at target field they were playing at the metro dome so there's not necessarily correlation steve cone he could not he's the richest owner in baseball he couldn't get 23 votes together right now to do what he wants at all so when you say that steve ballmer is the seventh richest guy and i think pablo corrected it he's now seven there's been some sort of downtick in Microsoft, I guess, but seventh richest guy, not the sixth.

So at the end, he doesn't make him the most powerful owner because the power comes in packs.

And that's what the commissioner tries to protect against is too many different packs and having any one of them be enough to block any sort of vote.

So that's why Adam is going right now figuring out and he's annoyed with all this.

And NBA executives have said internally that the NBA is furious about Pablo and this report because they're forced to scurry around and deal with the 29 owners on an issue they'd rather not talk about.

How do the owners, other owners feel about

Ballmer

self-financing the stadium?

Because like when that happened, I know we all as fans are like, cool, finally, one of these guys who can afford it can pay for it.

But my assumption would be the rest of the owners would be annoyed by creating that sort of expectation and frustrated, which would put Ballmer in a situation where he's costing these guys billions of dollars, which would make him probably not the most popular and not have the most power.

It would have a group of owners salivating the opportunity to stick it to him in this situation.

Yeah, I don't want to open up an old woo, Dominique, but I'll tell you, when we did Marlin's Park deal, the other owners were not happy with it because it was not enough public money.

And I know it's going to sound crazy to Mike and to Billy, but when the San Francisco Giants did a fully private stadium, the only reason they did that is that there was a threat to move to Tampa back then, and they needed Tampa as an expansion city, and there was no public money coming fast enough, and they had to get out of candlestick.

So they do not like private financing of buildings because it screws everything up.

In the NFL, nobody does a new stadium in the NFL without public financing.

Yeah, I mean, I remember clearly from the CBA negotiators I participated in.

It was when I got my eyes open to like how there are divisions and there is a political fight inside all of that is Jerry Jones was more upset with other owners than he was with players.

He was one of the owners who wanted to get back on the field.

And the things that he wanted more than anything was a requirement and an incentive for teams to generate more local revenue.

And then like it all became kind of clear and crystallized to me is that it's no different than any other collection of people, that the power, it comes from some

mass of opinions and group.

Like no individual to your point the money isn't there or the money itself isn't going to get you anything just like in the rest of the world like the money isn't going to get you what you want what will get you that is some

contingence of people who are willing to sacrifice and and make decisions and push for the things that you want and the idea of them having to work in that way is i don't know entertaining dave you should have write a script about that

You've written a script.

Not about that, though.

Billy's been trying to ask you guys a question for about seven minutes.

Billy, what do you mean?

Is it funny?

We need to be funny.

Dan, I'm sorry to take over and pretend.

Billy, you were trying to ask a question.

I'll take my show back here and ask you to ask a question.

Way to go.

Grab them things, Dan.

Well, I was going to say, how crazy is it to think that the owners don't actually want Steve Ballmer to be disciplined here, right?

Because once you kind of, even if he is proven to have been cheating against them, we're pretending like the rest of them are all clean and they want people kind of looking into what they've been doing to potentially skirt salary cap also.

I would think the owners wouldn't really want him to be disciplined, even though he may or may not have cheated to get an upper hand against them.

I think they do actually, because I think they will want him punished and I think he's going to get punished because there's not only the fact that it's great to bring down the big guy.

Baseball would do anything to find Stevie Cohn continuing to do the things in baseball that he did with his business that he got in trouble for.

But when it comes to what Balmer did, there's also the question of what amount of revenue may have been hidden from the books of the Clippers, which would change the finances and the money that's going between teams.

We spent time, Billy, every day trying to sneak around and see whether the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, whether they were hiding revenue.

And we would go.

One of the reasons we go on the road with the team is you're looking around, you're keeping track of their signage behind the plate, outfield wall.

You're looking at different promotions because you have a way to audit what revenue they're actually announcing as part of revenue sharing.

So that

basketball union, when I worked there, like we were, we had to audit basketball-related revenue because they were like hiding money, essentially.

And we got a bunch of money back.

It's something that you do on a regular basis.

And you can think about, again, it's Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, the reporting that has Jerry Jones trying to keep Robert Kraft out of Hall of Fame.

I think some of the motivation is personal.

Some of the motivation is professional.

And my guess would be there are a lot of different things driving teams.

Some of it is making more money.

Some of it is winning championships.

My guess is that the small market teams definitely want to do something about this.

They're probably also, that's like a voting block generally.

And they are always trying to do something to be able to level the playing field because there is no other way that they can compete if you're going to circumvent the cap.

And I think generally all the owners.

even if they are doing this, they don't want to be doing this.

They would like to be, if they've created the expectation amongst the greatest of players that there's going to be some sort of side deal, they would like to eliminate that expectation.

My guess is because that's costing them more money.

That's normally the driving force behind all the decisions that are made from the ownership and league side is like, how can we make more money?

We want to play a game in Brazil.

Hell yeah.

This is going to help grow our game.

We want to add another game to the end of the season.

Sure.

Do you want to reduce the salary cap?

You want to motivate guys to have higher local revenue.

Like that's normally a good starting place for the decision.

Of course, emotional things might make you, because you hate another older or whatever, that might make you make a different decision or you owe it to someone else.

But generally, if they can find a way to get on the same page, it's always about reducing the overhead cost and putting more money in their pockets.

So I'm guessing that's the starting point.

If something else other than that happens, it's going to be for either some sort of personal reason.

And I don't think it's fear that they'll get caught doing it also, because I think they want to stop.

So Dominique.

So I'll be happy for for it to be over dominique it's interesting you talk about salary cap versus non-salary cap what's not counted in the salary cap is what your off-court expenses are and one of the ways that teams like the clippers or teams like the dodgers flex is they spend a tremendous amount of money and i almost had the votes you needed 23 didn't have it but damn close to put a salary cap on off field expenses within baseball front offices because what's happening is and the Clippers are doing this, the Dodgers definitely do this.

You're getting spent to death.

And

a lot of the teams can't keep up.

Let me ask you guys this before I let you go.

Again, nothing personal is the name of the podcast.

David covers terrain that no one else in the podcast space is covering.

I don't know how you guys feel about the general existence of a salary cap.

I was saying before you came on here, it's asinine that Juan Soto is going to make $200 million more guaranteed, even though if he doesn't play another game today from injury, then LeBron James made in a career that was six years longer.

Tell me, David, how you feel about the salary cap.

And Dominique, you chime in here wherever it is you disagree.

I think that the difference, you're comparing apples to oranges, and Juan Soto's a lot younger than LeBron James.

And so you have to look at also Times.

There are players who played in the 80s and 90s who should have in theory.

Look at, by the way, look at the career earnings of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan and then compare to some of the schleppers in the NBA who will make more in their career than they do.

Again, how do you feel about the salary cap as a concept?

Baseball does not have one and therefore its players get bigger guaranteed contracts.

I'm fine without a salary cap because I don't want a salary floor and you can't have one without the other.

And that's been the big, big problem within baseball.

I think that's a good point by David.

And I think it's one of the risky things, I think, about getting engaged in any of these sort of arguments is that all of this stuff can be manipulated.

Like there's tons of different levers.

And when you focus on the salary cap itself as the only lever, there are other ways around it because baseball is celebrated and deservedly so for being a very strong union that has fought off the salary cap, but they have found other ways to suppress the salaries.

Like by a division of revenue, I think the last time I saw it was probably like six to eight years ago.

baseball players get a smaller percentage of total revenue than the other major sports Because Juan Soto and players like that get enormous contracts and have a disproportionate amount of power in the union, the salary cap is a thing that we all focus on.

And I think baseball players celebrate like, look at us, we fought off the salary cap again while they are at like 40%

of league revenue.

And it's just like

the idea where you think about it is like, yeah, we got this.

So in football, we think about it.

It's like freezing.

You got to get both though.

When you got the power of Mahomes or LeBron James, what you have to get is both, no salary cap and not any of the other restrictions that are given away.

Because look at how

David's sitting here smiling because he knows what the players were given.

David knows how many negotiations he's gone into where they're like, oh, you want more Mike and Ikes in the clubhouse?

Sure, we'll do that for you.

And we're going to grab this $100 million over here when you're not looking.

And Dominique, I would hate to have you on the other side of any of these negotiations because you just did it.

You actually put in words the exact exact thing that baseball union has not been able to put in words where you put forward the salary cap, salary cap, salary cap.

All right, we'll give up on that, but we'll take a debt service rule.

We'll take a luxury tax threshold that's at $217 million

and we'll still only give you 46% of revenue, but it's up to us, whatever number we want to get to.

And then you win the press conference every year when you sign somebody to a $200 million contract or a billion dollar contract.

And then we all are like man baseball is killing it then you look at it and i i mean i felt the same way i i was researching to do an episode about um free agency and the salary cap i ended up not doing it yet we might do it later but it was just the point that we celebrate what we consider modern day free agency in the nfl and other sports but free agency really does not exist in pro sports yet we pretend as if it exists but like all of these arbitrations the draft like in

the uh franchise tag, like all of these things act against restrictive free agency.

They act against keeping you to true free agency, but we call it free agency and you guys call it free agency too.

And we're all like, yeah, we're free agents.

And in the back room, you're stuffing money in your pockets.

It's not that.

We're just not free.

I just want to be clear.

It's not about stuffing money in the pockets.

It's using the word free agency and go all the way back to Kurt Flood, do whatever you want.

But make no mistake, there's nothing free about players.

David Sampson, get out of here.

Good talking to you.

Nothing personal is the name of the podcast.

He's done a lot of good work with Pablo, and they have advanced.

The story's been

on

Pablo Torrey Finds Out, which dropped at 5 o'clock this morning with Mark Cuban.

Hey, friends, crack open Hampton Farms in-shell peanuts for the crunch you crave.

Try their salted, unsalted, and Cajun hot nuts with seven grams of protein per serving.

More than any other nut.

Find Hampton Farms in the produce section or online at HamptonFarms.com.

I developed it, and the blistering rash lasted for weeks.

Don't learn the hard way, like I did.

Talk to your doctor or pharmacist today.

Sponsored by GSK.

Don Lebatard.

I took my son to the barbershop, get a haircut, and my man gave out some limp dap.

Oh, no.

Damn, damn, damn.

Stugats.

I disowned him.

I threw him right under the bus.

I was like, whose kid is that out here dishing out limp dap?

This is the Don Lebatar show with the Stugats.

Dominique, your thoughts last night from the game, will that stick to Jalen Carter?

Will everything that happened there stick to him?

I don't think so.

I think his interview after the game

seemed to be, he seemed to be much more in control of his emotions and behavior and the way that he discussed it seemed to be fine.

I think a lot of how we react to this is

how we feel about a player.

before he does something like this and how he handles it.

I think Jalen Carter had moved to a place that he distanced himself from some of the, the issues that he had in college and had become the story about him was him being a great player.

And then after the game, he handled it as well as I think you could handle a situation like that.

So I don't think that it sticks to him.

And honestly,

there is a plausible, like the, the video of Dak, like there's a plausible defense for him, not that it makes it right or that I believe that Dak was trying to spit on him, but I don't think that sticks to Jalen Carter.

He's going to dominate in the middle of that D-line for years to come, and we're not going to be like, he's the spit guy.

Like, that's not going to stick to him in any way.

So there are some hyperbolic takes going on right now.

One game sample, we were all hungry for football.

So some of the narratives that are out there is CeeDee Lamb's drops, hurting the Cowboys, and now everyone's kind of really putting that aspect of his game under a microscope.

You have the lack of production from the wide receivers at Philadelphia, A.J.

Brown being that talking point.

And you also have Dak Prescott looking good, slimmed down, looking healthy, looking like Dallas can be better.

Which of those three takes that are kind of running wild right now on social media are probably the most relevant and have the most juice to them?

Yeah, I mean, I think the Dak Prescott one is the most relevant.

That was the hope is that this team only chance of winning is having two really effective receivers and a quarterback like Dak, who I think is one of those guys.

I remember Tom Brady made the point not too long ago that the modern quarterbacks aren't like making decisions at the line.

They aren't the classic Peyton Manning field general types.

That's exactly what Dak Prescott is.

That's kind of what he does.

best and he looked he looked sharp last night and it's funny how the stats can skew the performance because he had like a 50 something qbr when i was like dak looked great and jalen hurts had like a 98 qbr which is insanely high not that he wasn't that good but i thought dak looked sharper than jalen hurts last night so i think the dak point we know how high his ceiling ceiling can be, and we know that this defense is going to have some issues, but I think that will make this team competitive if he can stay healthy and he can be awesome all season long.

As for the other ones, like CD had some drop issues last year, but I don't expect that to be a long-term lasting concern.

And there are a couple other things that I think are interesting about this game that...

To your point, we don't want to overreact.

The Eagles lost a couple, like to the Bucs early last year.

They lost another, I think, NFC South team early last year.

They were bad at the start of the season.

Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, Kellen Moore did kind of reshape the offense after that Bucs loss.

That was a transformative loss for their champions.

Dominique says, though, I'll let you continue your point here.

Please staple it to what it is that you're saying here.

I have a hard time with what the analysis of Jalen Hurts is because when I watch him play, it's always going to be some form of 11 for 14.

And oh,

it's a buck 50.

And over the last couple of years, we've seen a lot of these quarterbacks are going for 150 yards because the game has changed.

And he's got so much help that I have a hard time doing individual measurements with him.

Yeah, I mean, I think the idea of having to do individual measurements is like born of sports media in general, which is fine.

It's something that we have to do, but it don't really matter.

Like,

he's not playing tennis.

Like, I switched over last night to the U.S.

Open a little bit.

And like, that's somebody out there all alone.

Like, Jalen Hurts, it doesn't matter.

As long as this team is built the way that they're built then it's pretty clear that he's capable of operating this at a high level and yesterday it's his um

it feels like he's not listening to the noise which i think is hard and i mean that because a lot of players would take this as a challenge.

They would enter the season.

And honestly, I thought Jalen Hurts was going to enter this season and try to put up numbers to be able to say, like, I'm just like these other guys.

But he's like, nah, it's third down.

Or actually, you did on first out a bunch of times.

It's it's first and 10 you guys gonna play man or you're not gonna blitz me i'm gonna run it i'm not looking to trick you into believing that i'm something that uh i don't have to be and i will do that if if it's called on me like we saw we've seen him be able to win the game with his arm before but it's a lot less risky to do it with your legs and like i i guess i respect it i don't enjoy it as much as i enjoy watching a more uh diverse style of quarterback play but i respect it and you know who probably don't like it?

AJ Brown.

It's going to be a ton.

It appears it might be a long year for my guy, AJ Brown.

There's always something with AJ Brown.

One thing's for sure, though, both these teams seem fun to watch live.

Those tickets are going to be highly in demand, Dominique.

And if you're like me, you like to travel the country and watch some great football with iconic brands.

Hard to find tickets sometimes on the primary market.

So you know where I turn to, Dominique?

I turn to game time.

I take the guesswork out of buying my NFL tickets with Game Time.

Go ahead and download the app right now, Dominique.

Create an account.

Use code Dan for $20 off your first purchase, okay?

That's code Dan.

Terms apply.

Swipe, tap, ticket, go.

As football season is here, Dominique, I want to ask you about something I've been parroting over the last couple of weeks since the Micah Parsons trade, where I am saying if you are inclined to somehow try to figure out how Jerry Jones can defend this as a football move beyond run defense, We need to improve our run defense.

The way that you make the argument on behalf of Jerry Jones trading Micah Parsons is he realizes that he's got an expensive quarterback in his 10th year who's not going to get better, and he's lost the division to cheaper quarterbacks who are younger, who may indeed get better in Jaden Daniels and Jalen Hurts.

Mike pointed out earlier, Jalen Hurts not so cheap anymore, actually, but the point stands on you've got two in your division that are better than you, younger than you, and Dak is in his 10th season.

Dak is good for 12 wins a season, but if you want to correct the gulf between you and them, you have to do something about the fact that Dak's not going to get any better than what it is you saw last night.

Yeah, I appreciate that you are trying to do this.

Like I got into an argument on GitUp because I was doing the same thing.

After a full summer of saying, what is Jerry doing?

Jerry's mishandling this.

And then a week of us all saying, how did he blow this?

This was such a bad trade.

I was like, well, let's try to figure out how this would make sense and everyone said i was stupid but like you have to at least extend some

like

benefit of the doubt to try to understand this and like um i guess it was the penix draft where i was kind of on an island where my point was and that point was You don't let Kirk Cousins keep you from drafting a franchise, which you believe could be a franchise changing quarterback if it comes up.

It's harder to make that same rationale around the Micah Parsons decision because you can always be critical of the return for a player of that value.

However, the logic behind it, like it kind of feels stable where it's this team went 12 and 5 for three years in a row and did not get close to winning a Super Bowl.

If we are going to rebuild this team or we're going to win the Super Bowl soon, we're going to have to make some drastic changes.

The problem is you wish that Jerry Jones would have made this decision in March and gotten a better price for it, but it doesn't change the fact that I understand the logic behind it.

It's just the value that he got for it seemed like a mistake.

And also like there was no, I'm happy that a player demanded a trade and got a trade.

But also, if he wasn't going to be out there, then you could have waited and tried to get more.

But it's just being critical.

It's one of the other things that's completely like difficult about having your GM and your owner be the same person is if this was about personal feelings, which a lot of people have said it is

between the GM and the player, that's why the owner's there because he can show up and say, All right, I don't care about your feelings.

This guy's a great football player.

We're going to sign.

We will talk to you again next week.

And your student, your studio, your studio looks nice.

Dude, we've been talking about it all day.

Your studio, you look nice.

You look great.

You look clean.

It's all right.

Sexy, sexy steak.

Oh, man.

David Sampson, brown sugar.

Bye, guys.

Hey, everyone.

It's Mike Ryan.

One thing about me that everybody knows, I absolutely love Miller Light.

You know what else I love?

You.

That's right.

You.

Listening on your way to work right now, wondering whether or not today is the day to tell your boss what you really think of the new reports he needs filled out every week.

I absolutely love you.

That's why I'm thrilled to tell you that we are again partnering with Miller Light to give you a chance to play along with weekend observations.

Starting September 22nd, you'll be able to go to draftkings.com and guess what will happen during weekend observations on the show Monday, September 29th.

How many beeps will there be?

Who's the first person to interrupt?

How many people will talk about the used chances to win a national title?

Spoiler alert, definitely me.

The winner will get a trip for you and a guest to come to Miami and hang with us at Flanagans for Thursday night football on October 30th and a visit to the studio to see a taping of the show.

Make sure you go to DraftKings and play free to win and then tune into the show and check out how you did.

Must be 21 plus to enter.

eligibility restrictions apply, void where prohibited.

See draftkings.com for details.