Local Hour: The Harvard Huckster Milks The Cow

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Pablo!

No.

We're not allowing it.

No, I don't think we can do that on this one.

Just because he's still milking from this trough and having Mark Cuban come in, I don't know.

Was there any breaking news in this story?

I thought, what is Billy shaking his head about here?

I don't know what, I don't think this is worthy of that.

Is there going to be discipline?

Can we get to the discipline portion of this investigation?

Not until Pablo gets all of his clicks beforehand because he's the only information center on this story.

No discipline.

You get a 90-minute cat fight.

I ask a question off air, but I didn't get an answer, so I'll just ask on air.

Can we talk about the fact that, like, Mark Cuban interrupted a very important company meeting because he was recording, I guess, like slightly before, and he just showed up in a company meeting when they were recording this, which was kind of crazy.

He's just like, look, he's like, I'm Mark Cuban.

He's just like waving around at people.

Like, all right, Mark, like, hit the road, Jack.

Like, we got business to tend to here.

I did think it was funny that right about when we were going to start the company meeting, I see Cynthia just point excitedly at a screen in New York where Mark Cuban has popped up in Pablo Torres office.

And she was just legitimately delighted to see that he was there.

And I wanted to say, hey, Cynthia, wrong Cuban.

Like, we were about to start, you know, and she was just excited that the Shark Tank guy was wandering around Pablo's offices too.

As far as I can tell, just argue with him some more when Mark Cuban is out there pretty alone.

Although I have some withering criticism of Pablo Torre here that I want to read you guys and Pablo when he's on with us later.

Somebody goes after Pablo pretty hard.

I haven't seen a whole lot of people going after Pablo.

I'll look forward to that.

I'm at the point where I'm just ready to let this investigation play out.

I mean, the Mark Cuban episodes, I argue politics often, too much, many would say.

And it reminded me a lot of that.

Just a refusal to capitulate, a refusal to give you an inch, a refusal to take a standard logic leap.

And I was just like,

all right.

I got you, Mark.

No one's changing your mind.

To me, that was like the most interesting part of this.

It wasn't any new information, but it was essentially looking at two people who have two diametrically opposed ways of looking at a story.

You have one person in Pablo who looks at the humanity, who looks at

seven sources.

You can use that that way, Chris.

I think you're using that too strongly, and it can only be used in times when there's breaking news, not just when there's an argument on Pablo's podcast.

You can't just use that every time you want Jeremy to stop talking.

He has seven sources, human beings.

He's making logical leaps from one fancy next.

And you're looking at Mark Cuban, who is unwilling to look at any fact and link it from one thing to another.

He's using AI as his research tool, literally

putting in like ad reads for the AI software that he uses.

It's two diametrically opposed ways of looking at the world for an hour and a half of yelling at each other.

This is the Don Levatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.

I had not actually read this entire story of criticizing Pablo Torre until right now during that hockey intro.

And I just noticed that this person goes after me too.

So

do you guys want to hear somebody really criticize Pablo Torre?

And then I will tell you afterward who it is and you tell me whether that person was right or wrong in doing this as Pablo Torre again does what Pablo Torre does, which is get attention for himself.

And you guys say correctly, just tell me at this point when the investigation is over, but do you know how rare it is in any time in anybody's sports journalism career for them to be the epicenter of where you have to go for the only new information there is on a story that people crave, but media partners aren't covering the way that a dissatisfied public would like a story covered.

So Pablo is absolutely milking this cow.

This cow is being milked, even though this udder has stopped giving milk for the moment, or the milk is stuck for the moment, and it's just Mark Cuban coming around every once in a while and pinching a teat and running off.

Are they teats on an udder?

I mean, you said farm machine last week.

You didn't answer my question.

What is the thing you squeeze on a cow?

That's an udder.

The nipples.

Those are nipples.

They are nipples.

On an udder?

Yeah, teats.

Yeah.

Teats.

There you go.

I called it a teat, and then it didn't seem like the right word, and then I went to udder, and then I went to farm machine.

Then I started losing confidence, and then you just barked nipples.

What's with the farm fascination as of late?

I don't know.

I don't know.

This is a late stage, like, you know what?

When we finish here,

me and Val want to go and own a farm.

I can see that.

I can see Dan having a farm.

I think you like the idea of it.

No, you couldn't.

I'm not doing anything on a farm.

No, the chickens.

You're going to have chickens.

He was so excited about me planting a tree for some reason.

The udder is the entire apparatus and the teats are

part of the udder.

There you go.

We've been applying cynicism to this episode.

This is a very good episode because he gets more Cuban.

in studio and they argue for 90 minutes and that is very appealing to many if you're looking for story advancement there's some of that here more cuban doesn't really allow for that because he keeps interrupting pablo with nonsense really um i he we want to be good partners to Pablo.

This is an episode.

If you like people fighting, go for it.

If you want a story advancement, listen to the previous episodes.

I would also say if you've only sort of tangentially followed this story, this is a good way of kind of getting all of the information from both perspectives out there, not necessarily in an easy-flowing way, but to be able to kind of recap where the story's at.

I just haven't heard anyone other than Mark Cuban providing a different perspective to Pablo's.

I haven't heard anything but applause for Pablo, save for Mark Cuban.

But the headline on this story is, any investigation of Steve Ballmer should center on one dude, Pablo Torre.

Good morning, Pablo Torre.

Before we ramrod Steve Ballmer from the NBA,

should we investigate whether this Harvard huckster still should be employed in the media business?

How's that for a first sentence?

Huckster.

Harvard huckster.

The Harvard huckster is going to join us in an hour and 15 minutes.

He accused the Clippers owner of circumventing the league's sacred salary caps through a sordid deal with Aspiration.

Now Commissioner Adam Silver has announced that the NBA vetted and approved the green banking company in

2021.

What it means in 2025, Kawhi Leonard, in signing a sponsorship with Aspiration in 2022, did nothing to violate the league's collective bargaining agreement.

If Ballmer signs a deal with Pepsi, as Silver has said, Leonard can sign a contract with Pepsi afterwards.

Should the league operate this way?

Fact is, 30 owners make the endorsement rules, not Pablo Torre.

The financial firm crashed, which sends co-founder Joe Sandberg to prison, yet no one cares.

The league doesn't demand a probe of all sponsorship agreements.

Torrey could have informed us before he went ape on the air.

He didn't.

So the Clippers will continue to perform in good faith at Intuit Dome near the airport, despite a so-called legal investigation that might not end until next spring while proving that former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was right in trashing Torre on social media.

I appreciate journalists who try to find the truth.

I do not appreciate journalists who swing and miss and sell themselves as smarter than the audience.

Torrey has done this on Around the Horn, the second ESPN show he allowed to fade off the air.

And

it's time his editors at the athletic tell him he's leading the majors in strikeouts.

Earlier this year, he reported Jordan Hudson would be leaving the North Carolina football program despite her status as Bill Belichick's girlfriend.

She has not left at all, yet Tori never apologized.

Nor will he apologize for Ballmer.

He will continue to wait until the playoffs end and a law firm decides the league was right.

By then, he'll be finding out something else that may or may not be true.

Torrey should probe all 30 teams.

What else would he find?

He will say the league has a lucrative deal with ESPN.

Seriously, Baxter Holmes is a journalist more trustworthy than Torrey.

The problem with Pablo is that he has worked for Dan Lebatar, who urges him to chase people.

That is a weekly meeting in this person's.

That's the one that Mark Cuban crashed the other day.

It's calendar.

Yeah.

Who are we going after now?

Cracking a story means you must know the entire truth before going public.

Who helped bring Torrey and Lebatard to Metal Arc Media?

John Skipper, who left ESPN as president after a cocaine scandal.

I'm beginning to know where this is from.

Oh, boy.

Any guesses from someone other than Mike?

Any guesses who the author of this story is?

I think it was Armando Salguero.

A good guess.

It is not Armando Salghero, who wouldn't care once at all all about Around the Horn fading.

Who is Jason Whitlock?

Yes, Jason Whitlock.

No?

No?

Oh, that's a shocking

shocking.

Same category of disgraced jester fool.

Jay Mariotti.

I was worried.

I was going to catch Jay.

Wow.

Because of the Around the Horn thing.

Yeah.

I had to search the entire internet to find one person who was willing to take Mark Cube inside and go after Pablo Torre.

He really loves you, man.

Yeah.

Well,

I think Jay is hurt by the way everything ended for him at ESPN.

That's one way to put it.

I think that

Jay has been writing things since then that suggest that he's a bit embittered that others are having some success that he's not having.

Careful.

We do have that weekly meeting, Jay.

Might chase you.

You would not like what we find there.

We could do next

web crawler search on that one, pal.

if you're if you're pablo though i a honest question honest question because he got criticized for this on jordan hudson when he kept going to that click well and when you think of i don't know do we do you guys even know what uh the technical definition of a muckraker is like an old-timey muckraker he's the modern in the modern age applying new school journalism principles and old school journalism principles he's trying to do what is popular in the internet age with young people while applying old newspaper standards.

But it can be viewed as muckraking if you'd like to.

He's certainly not afraid to stick his face in with his facts on any argument because he believes the facts are on his side.

But I ask you, if you're the only one dominating a story, if that story makes your empire, the business you're building, stronger and stronger because people keep coming over to just you for the information.

Like this is this is a super rare thing where only one person has information that

a segment of the audience, hundreds of thousands of people, really crave and aren't getting anywhere else.

Well, like, if we're going to treat this criticism seriously, I would appreciate if you're going to attack someone's journalism by doing some journalism of your own.

Jay has those chops.

He doesn't offer any journalism of his own.

He tries to poke holes in Pablo's by just taking the side of the man.

Even Mark Cuban,

admittedly, in this episode, does his own journalism, has people reach out to him to have a counter argument, just to say, just to dismiss Pablo's intentions and dismiss all the journalism thereafter without doing any of your own is lazy even for Jay.

Pablo!

Put it on the poll, who has done journalism less recently, Dan Lebetard or Jay Mariotti?

Because you say he has those chops.

I ain't seen him in a long time.

Like, I don't know what.

He's been giving his opinion for a long time.

He hasn't been doing the reporting on journalism in a really long time I mean the the point of that whole thing is to take shots at Pablo you and and I guess the journalism there and defend Steve Ballmer.

That's another thing

you got to be a real weirdo here to just cape up I understand why Mark Cuban is because he's an owner.

He's of that class everybody else that is not an NBA owner.

Why are you rooting for Steve Ballmer?

Let me slow you down on this though because that's because you hate media that much.

That part I found curious at the beginning but people backed off like at the beginning i found really weird the number of people who didn't want to believe the first story the first story was an initial backlash against the media and a weird defense of the seventh richest man in the world but after that all of those people except mark cubin and jay mariotti have gone away because pablo keeps hitting people in the face uh with uh with a fish like the and it's just an assortment of facts uh that that can't really be disputed because he's reporting facts.

He's not really giving his opinion here.

How is it?

Can you explain this to me?

Because this has happened in the last few years.

It kind of snuck up on me the same way

two football games on Monday night did.

When did that start?

That's just the new norm.

It's probably the fourth time this season it's happening.

It's happening again next week.

That means more of the Monday Night Football weeks are double headers.

That 715er always sneaks up on it.

It's just a double header.

I like it.

I don't hate it.

No,

I kind of hate it just because I'm worried about Chris Fowler.

He can say no to one assignment.

I feel like if we just say no to one, the throat will settle.

I don't know and missed the announcement on when they decided to give us two Monday night games.

I used to think, oh, there's been a weathered, something weather-related or a suspension or

some sort of scheduling calamity that makes it so that there are two Monday night games.

I didn't see the announcement that we were now going to two Monday night games.

Is it because they just want to give ESPN more games and they're a better partner with ESPN?

The NFL now owns 10% of ESPN.

Is that like, what's the reason for this?

I mean, they're paying more now.

The Bucs are playing the Lions on Monday night.

That is a great game.

That is a perfect standalone Monday night football game.

That game is kicking off at 7 because you got Texan Seahawks kicking off at 10 p.m.

after that.

The Bucs have played on Monday night twice this season, both of them, this doubleheader format.

I used to think, okay, we're taking in data, like the NFL Europe thing.

Like, let's see how people react.

And then you're 15 years into the experiment and you're like, okay, this is just what it is now.

And for Monday night football, it feels like this is just what it is now.

The majority of the season is going to be double headers.

There's also games in Europe every single week, like through mid-November now.

Like every Sunday, there's a 9 a.m.

game East Coast Lord's time zone because every week there's a game in Europe.

I do believe this is our first 10 p.m.

one.

All the other ones, I believe, have been 7.15, 8.15.

But how much is this going to change?

And I was not aware that we were changing.

this.

I understand the logic.

What's better than three hours of Monday night football?

Six hours of Monday night football.

What's better better than some football?

More football.

What's better than just Monday night football?

Football on Thursdays and football on Sunday morning and football and football and football on Christmas and football on Thanksgiving.

I understand that they want all the time slots, even the time slots that haven't been invented, but I am confused and do think it's at least partially diluted that there used to be one game we were all watching on Monday night.

And now I got to have two screens if I want to watch all the games being played on Monday night.

Well, that's the thing about like yesterday.

Yesterday there was a 7 o'clock start and like an 8.30 start or something.

So they were both being played at the same time.

At least this coming Monday, it's staggered somewhat so you can watch both games.

But that 10 o'clock game can honestly start 11.30 or 12.

That's fine.

I don't care about what's going on.

Billy, I feel pretty confident.

Texans Seahawks, 10 o'clock.

We're not going to make it.

Oh, no.

I started that game later, so I don't even see the start of it, so I don't feel like I need to stay up.

Not going to make it.

In terms of being wrong, I was almost introduced to Mark Cuban being wrong when he announced that football was headed to a saturation point that would eventually end up with us wanting less football.

He said that about 10 years ago during the concussion crisis, and that has not happened.

It's just more and more football everywhere.

And there's stuff from the games last night that I do want to talk about before we get to Diana Rossini and an assortment of others.

But the question I'm asking you about feeding at this particular trough, isn't it what everybody would do if they were trying to grow their business and they had their teeth in a story that

clearly is something that is leading to Pablo Torre finds out growing at a rate that almost no other sports podcast since

New Heights, like new sports podcasts, the entire landscape is so fractured and so many audiences are in so many different places that sports podcasts aren't really growing.

You're not getting a ton of new sports podcasts that are growing.

This one is, and it's because, at least in part, he has seized on two stories that make people taste all the other offerings that he has.

He's got his own promotional vehicle in that he's got exclusive content at a time that everybody wants exclusive content.

The Chinese are potentially stealing Yannick Sinner's brainwaves to train super soldiers.

That was in the middle of all the other reporting.

But yes, we're a media company and the Kawhi investigation from this podcast is doing numbers, bro.

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Don Lebatard.

Our Panther group chat, we're confident against the lightning.

This is a different team.

You're a Panther group chat.

No, no, I think

no, but dude, you're so wrong on that.

We've been terrified of this team forever.

And I think there's a different energy where the Panthers, they want the lightning.

Stugats.

I want t-shirts made for for this Panther run.

What could be this Panther run?

Our Panther group chat.

We're not afraid of the lightning.

That's a tagline for World RAR3.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

We'll have Pablo on and we will read him Jay Mariotti's criticism.

The Harvard Huckster will join us in about an hour.

But locally, we've got a handful of stories that I want to get to that we haven't had time over the last few days to get to.

So I will ask you guys which from among these is most interesting to you as a group.

Because

last week, and we haven't been talking about Inner Miami soccer all that much, and when we do, we're generally just talking about Messi.

It's the only thing that we discuss around here as it

regards this team.

But Jordi Alba announced his retirement after signing an extension, and he is one of three signature international names that this team has

had outside of Messi, correct?

And that was weird.

That struck me as weird.

What didn't strike me as weird, and we didn't talk about this at all, and we should have, this was, I aired here, Eric Spolstra being named the head of Team USA while being, from the video room across the street here,

the longest tenured coach in the NBA and in a GM survey, the coach that 52% of the GMs, that's a lot, to to get that kind of consensus on something as subjective as coaching.

52% of the coaches in the NBA say Eric Spolster is still the best coach in the NBA, even though last year he called a timeout he didn't have at the end of a game and cost them the game and had probably his worst year ever, I think.

I think it was his worst year ever.

And that shows in the numbers because I believe last year he won it with 60%.

So like, whatever happened this year, they are people holding that timeout against them, it seems.

And then I want to get to McDaniel saying Tua was wrong.

And the Panthers lost last night.

Reinhardt scored a shorthanded goal.

I thought they were going to beat Philadelphia when they got down 3-2, and then they started allowing empty net goals, and I'm sure Roy was crushed.

He thought they were going to go undefeated this season.

Yeah, 82-00.

Yeah, that's exactly what I thought there.

Which one do you guys want to tackle?

Which of the four is most interesting?

I want to feast on the Dolphins.

Yeah, the Jordi Alba story, like we can, we can circle back to that with Greg Cody in here, my beloved football lover and Greg Cody.

I'd like to chew on that story with him.

Where is he today?

I was expecting him.

I was expecting him and Stugatz today.

Where is Greg Cody today?

Greg is at the doctor's office finding out whether he needs to have surgery.

He will be in tomorrow.

And Stugatz is there for emotional support.

Greg Cody's knee is hurting, and he's probably going to need surgery there, I would think.

The way that he was walking yesterday would suggest to me that that's not something small that he's got going.

Tony said yesterday that he could probably just rehab it.

Well, that's that.

Oh, yep, that's it.

We will have Tony's top five somewhere from in South Florida later today.

What do you have for me on the Dolphins?

Can you get for me, please, the Mike McDaniel sound?

I'm surprised that all of you haven't brought up anything yet today on Nick Wright's poker game last night where he was offering, if he did well, $5,000 for the shipping container.

Roy, you were not here.

He was offering $5,000 for the shipping container in a big poker game that he had last night, if he ended up winning big money.

That's one of those things that doesn't show up on a 1099 exactly.

So how are we to verify any of that or ask him like, hey, how'd it go?

Under the table.

Yeah, he could be lying, but he did kind of offer it to you guys.

Do you guys have video?

Because he did send us some video here.

We should get that.

I know he sent Chris Cody at the very least some video about how he did, but I'm surprised you guys have not already asked me today how he did, given that there was going to be $5,000 split among you.

That was just free money that Nick Wright offered to give away yesterday.

Yesterday was kind of confusing because I think we're still all trying to sort out the car's involvement and the financials of the situation.

Are we trying to acquire a car, take Nick Wright a car?

Then there was a doubling down, I think, and someone mentioned escrow at one point in time.

And it seemed as though the bets were being escalated to being long-term bets.

So I think everything's still being sorted out.

Well, I don't think it's being sorted out.

I did indeed wire him money that I was hoping and expecting would end up in the shipping container because I owe him this money and now I only have two outstanding debts.

Let's see if, Roy, nobody here knew the answer.

I have two outstanding debts around here, bets that I have not paid off in my lifetime.

One was mentioned yesterday and I don't remember what I lost and I think this is a contrivance of Mike Ryan and others just to get me to pose like Prince Fielder on the body issue swinging a bat nude.

It has been reported by you guys that I owe that bet, but nobody remembers what it's for.

And I'm pretty sure you guys are making that up.

And I don't need to pay a bet, even though I went to a dollar store to buy Prince Fielder's body tattoos.

I don't have to pay a bet unless you guys can prove that I owe it.

But there is one that still gnaws at me because I don't like to owe people anything.

There is a bet that I made on the air years ago that I did not pay and have not paid that I still owe.

It still bothers me and no one can figure it out.

Certainly somebody in the audience.

It bothers you just do it.

Well, it requires me getting on an airplane and running in a mascot race.

On an airplane?

I feel like I'd remember this.

I don't have to run.

The race would not be on the airplane.

Do you dream this?

The mascots are

running to the airplane.

No, Roy, do you have me?

Roy.

Roy, you have me running in a mascot race on the aisles of an airplane.

No, running to the actual gate.

I don't know, Dan.

Took you very literal there.

Yeah.

Joe's been on a long time.

You used to be able to do that.

Yeah, don't pin Roy down here.

You're the weird one.

What bit is this?

How am I?

You guys still don't know what I'm talking about?

None of you.

I do.

But I know that you're talking about a mascot race at a stadium, I presume.

In Milwaukee.

Yes.

I bet Matt Mitrion that he would not beat Kimbo Slice

in a UFC fight.

And I don't remember what the stakes were for him, but the stakes for me were that I had to rise.

He must be from Milwaukee, right?

Like, I'm assuming that that's the reason he was putting me in.

Bloomington, Illinois.

Okay, I don't know why it was then.

I don't know why he was putting me in some sort of sausage costume.

Chris, are you listening to what Nick Wright left you now?

He left a voice message.

We'll send it to video so that we can all find out together how he did in his poker game.

But before we get to that, let's play the Mike McDaniel sound.

If you're not familiar with what Tua did, he basically volunteered after that Chargers' loss, and we all reacted kind of the same way to this: like, ooh, that's not leadership.

Greg Cody disagreed, but most people thought that Tua saying, volunteering, that his players, his teammates were late to a players-only meeting, it ended up somehow becoming the talking point that was even larger than the Dolphins losing the game.

So Mike McDaniel had to address it yesterday, and he does it in his meandering style, which everyone has gotten tired of because it often includes words chosen incorrectly.

Like it often has words in it that he's trying to use that he thinks mean one thing, but don't mean what he thinks they mean.

You know, regardless of intent and

you know what was on to his mind

after a loss as the franchise quarterback, that's not the forum to displace that.

I think he knows that now I do honestly believe it was not, there's no ill intention, but you're talking about,

I think, kind of a misguided represent representation of

player orchestrated film sessions.

And, you know, the bottom line is no one's going to be happy and always is looking for reasons

for failure to succeed.

So you're trying to look for reasons that,

you know, you can attribute to losses.

And there's a, you know, heavy is the crown of being a franchise quarterback.

There are a number of things in there I want to get to, but what is the phrase you use?

Misrepresentation of player-organized film sessions.

Is he saying that those weren't player-only meetings, that they're being filed as player-only meetings by Tua because people are late for them?

I think he's saying he called it a players-only meeting.

It's players-run film sessions.

Like, I don't know if there's a difference there.

Yeah, if you're reading between the lines,

maybe Tua's insinuation is that, no, it's a lot stronger.

Your attendance is more strongly recommended when Mike McDaniel is saying, like, this is just like a group film study that they do.

I didn't take it this way, and I'd be interested from a reporter who covers the team.

What I thought Mike McDaniel was saying there, even though he used twice as many words as he had to use in order to say it, is that Tua called them players-only meetings because they are meetings that only the players are in.

But it's not the emergency players-only meeting that you call when there's a panic and you want to make sure that away from the coaches, you're doing things that not even the coaches do to hold you accountable.

I think that what Mike McDaniel was saying there is these are just film sessions.

Some guys showed up late, and now Tua is calling them players-only meetings and when you say they're late for players only meetings you're creating a you're you're furthering dysfunction that we've had for a year around here where people think I'm not in charge we're not in control and the players don't actually care but there is no it to Tua's point there is no difference in if you're if we all agree we're doing a film session that no coaches are part of and you're late to that that's the same No look no as a players only meeting.

Like, that's not good.

That doesn't mean everyone's bought in.

But I disagree.

Given that these guys are all at the facility for 12 hours a day, and that it's, it's, given that the whole thing's a military school, there is a difference to me between a film session and somebody and to a call to players-only meeting.

To me, there's a difference between those two things.

But the way the coach explained that, I don't know what he's talking about when he says it's a misrepresentation of players gathering, but it's the least interesting part of what he said there by saying his quarterback shouldn't have done that because now he's put his coach in a position where his coach is publicly against his quarterback and saying the quarterback led wrong there.

We eat it when it comes to being accountable as quarterbacks.

We do not point the fingers at others.

When do you ever see that?

You guys tell me after losses with frustration, you get all the cliches.

They wanted it more.

We weren't trying hard enough.

Whatever.

We've got to explain the losses.

It never comes from the quarterback in a way that makes the coach have to address it the next day and makes the coach and the quarterback look like they're not aligned.

Give me all the examples that you guys have of in a press conference, like there are a bunch of shitty teams in the NFL.

There's only one with a quarterback who has his coach this week coming out afterward and saying, My quarterback said the wrong thing after that game.

There's only one.

There's only one team in the league where that is happening and it's just not what the quarterback ever does.

That's not the job of a quarterback is to pretend like you're responsible for everything, even in instances when you're not responsible for stuff.

Every October, my pets get just as excited as the rest of the family.

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Hey audience, I got a special treat for you because I want to talk to you about Miller Light, but I want to talk to you about Miller Light with my good friend Rose.

Hey Rose!

Hi everybody!

When we hang out and we hang out often, we're friends.

I consider us friends.

Yeah, me too.

We're often toasting the good times.

And what am I toasting with?

With Miller Light.

That's right, Miller Light.

Whether you're hanging out with your dear friend Rose or at game day, it just hits different when you got a Miller Light in your hand.

From jaw-dropping touchdowns to fantasy heartbreaks, it's a beer that has been there for every moment.

50 years of great taste, simple ingredients, and that iconic golden color that you can spot across the room.

And it's just not the color of the beer, which is brilliant.

That beautiful white can.

How beautiful is that?

Is that you doing the sound of a can opening?

Is that your favorite sound?

Um, no, it is a horsey.

A horsey?

All right, we'll stop doing that.

And here's a kicker.

Miller Light is just 96 calories, 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

The original light beer since 1975.

That's right.

And still hitting different five decades later.

You're so good at this, Rose.

I know.

So whatever your game day looks like, remember, Miller time is always a good time.

Look at us.

We're a great tag team.

High five again.

Can you do that beer sound one more time?

And the horse sound one more time?

I regret asking you about that one, but the Miller Light sound is good.

Miller Light.

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It's Miller.

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Celebrate responsive.

Leave.

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Sin.

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On sess.

No, it says.

Oh, ses.

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Don Levatard.

I may take it one step further.

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute.

Wait, wait, wait.

You're getting sexier by the moment.

Slow down.

We haven't even gotten.

Jason Sanders, you're unnoticed.

Oh, my god.

What in spite of him?

Oh, wow.

I love you, Duke.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with his two guards.

It's making everybody come crazy, bro.

I don't know if you've listened to local radio.

It's a fun scam.

The big dog.

You know who I'm talking about, right?

There's only one big dog.

But he's not even anti-Tua.

He's just getting trolled here by his producers.

Yes, but it's making everybody crazy because no one can actually agree on what's being said here.

But here, courtesy of the big dog.

Go look at his numbers.

I know they're terrible.

Okay.

Bad example.

Okay.

All right.

Hey, we got to go to break here.

We got more time.

No, no, don't throw me in with Omar.

Don't throw me with Omar.

He says dumbass stuff.

Not Omar.

He does too, but

the Tua stuff.

Like, I'm tired of our writers defending every every time he says something.

You spent the last 10 minutes.

Anyway, what?

You spent the last 10 minutes defending himself.

I'm not benching me.

I'm not benching him.

You want to bench him because you sound like a.

You're talking about bending the guy.

You want to bench him because he said something stupid yesterday.

That's not the reason.

That's reason.

That's the reason.

I told you weeks ago I want to bench the guy.

And I told you weeks ago they're not benching him.

Yeah, you also told me they were going to beat Carolina, and you told me they were going to be.

I'll throw the other topic in there.

They did cover yesterday, though.

So you won there.

And by the way,

this is not just a two-a-thing.

It's not just a two-a thing.

We got a defensive problem.

Okay, Omar.

Chargers had 400 yards.

What?

You don't want to hear it, dumbass.

You just hear.

You listen to what you want to listen to, Woody.

No wonder your wife wants to punch you in the face half the time.

Hey, right now, I want to talk to you about air around the clock air conditioning and plumbing.

Around the clock at night.

No wonder your wife wants to punch you.

He's still doing it the same way, and I love that he's still doing it the same way.

Hey, right now, I want to talk to you about around the clock air conditioning and plumbing.

He's still got that fastball.

Now, the fastball may have always been 93 miles per hour, but it is pain in the black.

1997-93 was another thing.

No wonder your wife wants to punch you in the face half the time.

Hey, right now, I want to talk to you about the face.

Chris Cody said the other day,

and it really

brought what I'm going to call sheer delight into my life from a different time.

Felt a little bit like eating those Hampton Farms peanuts does in terms of taking me back to my youth.

Chris Cody comes in the other day and just volunteers to me.

I wanted to punch the radio on the way in because of what the big dog was saying about Jonathan Gannon.

Yeah, it was him and the producer.

They were on the same page with, you can't yell at a guy anymore.

And I'm like, he hit him.

And they're both just like, come on.

Like, what happened?

Back in my day, you could yell at a guy.

I'm like, he hit him.

I'm like shouting at my, I wanted to call in.

I wanted to find out Hollywood's number so I could text him.

Put it on the poll at Lebatar's show.

Do you still shout at your radio?

Do you think his wife does want to punch that?

They probably made that part up.

No, this is, that's his move.

When I, that the part that made me smile is what he does in his pivot, which has been his pivot for 30 years, which is some form of, how are the ladies treating you?

The ladies hate you.

Or the ladies love you.

Those are like, that's it.

No wonder your wife wants to punch you in the face half the time.

Hey, right now I want to talk to you about around around the clock air conditioning and plumbing.

Billy, does it, you are moved sometimes when DJ Zaz, DJ Laz, TJ Zaz would be a totally different creature.

DJ Laz, the pimp with the limp, is on the radio or Kenny Walker is on the radio.

Does Joe Rose still do this for you locally?

No.

No, wow.

No, not really.

I mean, he hasn't not been on the radio.

He's just been on the radio for my entire life, forever.

Yeah.

So it's not nostalgic if I hear him.

I've never not heard him.

It's just always there.

You've outgrown the entire Joe Rose experience.

At one time, you did care what Joe Rose was saying about things, did you not?

Or you never cared?

I think we always cared how he said them.

That was always a thing for me with Joe.

It wasn't what he said.

It was how he said it.

Yo, you hardened media veterans now.

Never had a soft spot for Joe Rose yelling at the radio before it is that you yelling on the radio before you became graduates of the radio.

And therefore, you never, you never were interested in anything Joe Rose was doing here locally when he was dominating the entire market.

I used to be a coworker at Joe Rose.

I have always been more into Joe Rose for the ad reads.

I like Joe Rose on TV.

Joe Rose on the radio was never really like my thing.

I listened to Footy in the morning.

You don't want to hear it, dumbass?

I don't have a bad thing to say about you, Mr.

Rose.

You're a legend, and you have a huge head.

Have you ever accused him of, in your area and field of expertise, painting his hair black?

Yeah, I mean, he's kind of fallen off a little bit, a little bit more salt than the pepper.

But yeah, I mean, he was a TV newsman for quite a while.

Yeah, that's what they do.

The Eric Spolstra story of him leading Team USA,

I don't think that we should just because he's the longest tenured coach in the market.

And I guess to many people listening to this, he's an old guy now.

But he started in this organization as somebody who started at the very bottom of the organization.

We talked to Kevin Harlan last Friday, and I did not know that he started as a ballboy.

Mike McDaniel started as a ballboy for the Denver Broncos.

It's not the most common thing to go and arrive at all of your dreams by snaking through.

Eric Spolstra's loved basketball all his life.

snaking through the entire system so that you're now the coach of Team USA.

You're replacing Greg, you know, Greg Popovich, Mike Shaszewski.

This is the top of your profession where you're honoring your country and quiet as it's kept, because he's Filipino Jackson, another country where he has enormous support, enormous support, because he is representation that you do not have in leadership in American sports very often.

Eric Spolstra is a giant pillar now from the video room across the street.

Like from

fetching errant free throws for guys who are shooting free throws during practice, he goes from the very bottom rung of the basketball ladder over his career to somebody who is now representing us worldwide as the face and voice of

one of our proudest Olympic teams.

And the origins you talk about in his career, the real rarity is that it all happened with one organization.

Because you mentioned, right, McDaniel, a ballboy with the Broncos, but you end up in all of these different coaching spots working your way up the ladder.

The thing that's the craziest about Spolstra's experience is that it's all been here

from the jump.

It's all been under Riley's wing.

And now he's blossomed into this coach that is the most well-respected coach in the league and now leading maybe the greatest United States team that we have, maybe outside of gymnastics.

It's so impressive.

And I mean, it couldn't happen to a better guy.

The thing that is interesting about what you just said, the nature of the tenure, the nature of the stability, we just talked yesterday about James Franklin, who was, I guess, 34 and 8 in his last 42 games, and how quickly his job...

security vanished when he's one of the longest tenured ones.

It does really make me wonder whether we'll be allowed to see another story like this, whether there will be organizational stability enough anywhere that you can just withstand that 17 games into 2010, LeBron doesn't want you anymore as the coach, and you have the backing right behind you of the president who's saying, no, I'm not going to protect myself.

We're seeing this with the Dolphins, okay?

What's happening with the Dolphins is no one wants the blame.

Why would anyone want to be the one responsible for it's all falling apart?

I think James James Franklin fast forwards everything in college sports, makes it all the more professional because even as it was expected, that's one of the guys who had some sort of security.

That's one of the highest paid guys 12 years.

And I'm going to say it again, 34 and 8 in his last 42.

That doesn't lose a lot of jobs in America.

Like that, that record I can put at any, maybe Alabama, maybe,

maybe.

But 34 and 8, you don't lose your job.

And we've just, we've changed all of the rules by throwing money at it.

So who's the next guy?

It's not just throwing money at it, it's people throwing money at it.

If

guys like boosters and guys and girls like boosters were funding Mike McDaniel's salary at the Miami Dolphins, he would have been gone weeks ago.

You're saying that rich owners are more tolerant?

There are more voices in the room.

Than boosters?

Yeah.

It's good.

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