Transcript of Oregon HC Dan Lanning, Nebraska HC Matt Rhule, Tarik Skubal is a Dodger, Mt Rushmore of Worst Places Your Wife/Girlfriend Takes You

Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Hey, it's Ria from Chicks in the Office. When I think of denim, I think of Abercrombie. It's just that iconic. I mean, I practically live in Abercrombie denim at this point. Their High Rise '90s Relax is my go-to everyday jeans when I'm in the city, and I've been wearing their Low Rise Ultra Loose out in SoHo love it with a cute top and a kitten heel for dinner. Between classic fit and the viral Curve Love fit that eliminates waist gap, there's literally a pair for everyone. It's truly denim made iconic. Shop Abercrombie denim and more in the app, online, and in stores. On today's part of My Take presented by DraftKings, we have Oregon head coach Dan Lanning and Nebraska head coach Matt Ruhle, the last of our Big Ten media week. Interviews. We are going to talk some national sports podcast topics, as like, uh, Tarik Skubal is now a Los Angeles Dodger and Major League Baseball might be ruined. That's what people are saying. We'll address that. The trade deadline is coming Monday, 3 o'clock.

NFL training camps, who's back of the week, and we have the Mount Rushmore of worst places your wife or girlfriend takes you to. So it's a great Monday show. We're getting closer and closer to football. We're officially in a football month, and it's all brought to you by our friends at Chevy. Summer's in full swing. That means no schedules, no plans, just more of the good stuff. Chevy Silverado makes that possible. There's a reason Chevy's called the heartbeat of America, and the Silverado keeps the heartbeat strong. These trucks work hard so you can chill harder. Whether that's getting out of town, heading to the lake, or just not turning around when you probably should. It's got the capability, the space, and the muscle— everything you need for a proper summer. Coolers, gear, whatever your version of chill looks like. Because at the end of the day, Silverado helps you tackle more of what you love. And let's be honest, you've earned this summer. Now it's time to go get it. So roll the windows down, turn the music up, and just listen. That's the heartbeat of America. That's today's Chevrolet. Head over to chevy.com to learn more today.

Get yourself in a Chevy Silverado. That is America right there. So head to chevy.com to learn more today. Okay, let's go. Welcome to Part of My Tape, presented by DraftKings. The crown is yours. Today is Monday, August 3rd, and Tarik Scubal is a Los Angeles Dodger in Major League Baseball. Get ready to learn lockout, baby.

Did the Dodgers ruin sports? Yes, the Dodgers ruined baseball. Everyone's upset with the Dodgers. Granted, any other team could have put together an offer.

Correct.

To trade for Schuble.

Correct.

It's not a free agent signing. It's a trade.

It's a trade. So any other team could have done it. Any other team could have afforded to pay Schuble if they want to, even if they want to take on his entire salary this season. That was something that I think, I believe just about every team in baseball.

Well, yes and no.

Should be equipped to do. Now that's in theory.

Yes and no.

Yeah.

Now in practice, the team that would be most likely to actually trade for him would be a team that felt like they had an inside track on negotiating getting an extension with him.

Correct.

At the end of this season, uh, if we do have another season of baseball, this might be the last year of baseball of all time. Um, so yes, the Dodgers did have a leg up. They do have a lot of deferred money that they can offer in the future.

Um, $1 billion.

They do have a Sweetheart TV deal, which I've tried to understand. Can't do it so many times. Can't figure it out.

Can't do it.

It's just easier for me to say that they're cheating.

Yeah, it's all right. So, uh, I, I, I— we've made this point before, we've talked about this ad nauseam. I do think that it's— yes, the initial reaction is fuck the Dodgers. Uh, I, I thought that right away on Saturday night. Uh, Max actually— I like— you know, it's, it's bad when Max side texted me. We were just both lamenting. Uh, the Cubs have since made a move and Kevin Gossman. So that, that I'm excited about that. But the Dodgers are able to operate from a position of strength that no other team really can right now, and that's because they have not only the money but they have prospects, and they're okay with getting rid of the prospects because they don't need to rely on the prospects for their future success like a Brewers or a Rays or a small market team that basically— like, the Brewers have a ton of really good prospects. They could have made a better offer to the Tigers to get Tarik Skubal. But the Brewers, in order to be successful going forward, have to have cost-controlled prospects get good and become Major League Baseball players and have those guys be really good on a cheaper deal so that they can continue to win and be a competitive team.

So it's like the Dodgers, they can trade their prospects. And if the— if whatever doesn't work out, guess what? They can just go get a free agent. Whereas other teams can't do that. They can— they, they have a room for error that other teams don't have. I still maintain, and you see, you see it kind of shifting a little bit, the Dodgers doing this. And if the Dodgers do win another World Series, a third in a row, which that's not guaranteed by the way, like I, I know that everyone's like, oh, there's just no reason to play the Reds.

They almost lost last year.

Crazy things happen. They went to Game 7 last year. They had needed like a weekend They got swept this weekend. Yeah. So who they play?

Red Sox.

Okay, there you go. This game's not over.

Just, just heads up, top of the 8th.

No, but crazy shit happens. Like, especially like the, the, the, um, everyone, everyone tweeting out and posting the Dodgers, uh, rotation. Guess what? In a 5-game series, like, that's when you could get them because you can't start, you know, like, I, I think Tarik Skubal and Yamamoto are very scary when you could hypothetically see both those guys a total of 4 times, maybe 5 times depending on like short rest. That's when it gets fucking crazy. But in a 5-game series, shortened series, you steal one of them, you never know what happens.

But yeah, and Ohtani hasn't really pitched since when? Since like—

no, yeah, his knee's—

I don't think—

well, I think that's part of the reason why they went out and got so aggressive is because they don't think Ohtani's gonna play.

But if you look at their lineup though, is what I'm saying, like yes, they've got 2 studs, right? And then they've got some other guys that you could look at and be like, these guys could be absolute studs.

Well, yeah, they have cyungs everywhere and they're coming—

and they could be a crazy lineup to face, but nothing's guaranteed, even if it's a 7-game series. Like, the thing is, it was, it was so close last year. We were so close to having the Blue Jays beat them. It does feel like we can try to fight it as much as we want. And the Dodgers somehow, some way are just going to figure out a way to outspend everybody. And this was just— I, I know they wanted Schubel and I know they want to extend Schubel. But also, this is them saying like, yeah, we know that the Brewers were trying to get him. This is as much about keeping him away from the Brewers as it is getting him to Los Angeles.

So, so back to what I was saying about the Dodgers and everyone getting upset. I kind of made this point last week when I was like, you know what, let's go, we'll go to the Dodgers. So everyone's just like, it's just going to ruin baseball and we'll go to a lockout. You do kind of see that. The court of public opinion is starting— is shifting towards actually maybe backing the owners, saying we need a salary cap, which is a rare thing for— I feel like, you know, in this day and age, people are savvy enough to be like, no, fuck these billionaires, they, they make money every single year and then they cry poor and it's bullshit. But you're getting to a point where the competitive advantage is so severe in baseball, and I still maintain The biggest problem is the, the, a lot of these owners just don't spend money. It's not as much the Dodgers, it's the, the Pirates and the, and the Royals and some of these small market teams that just won't put out a competitive team. But either way, I think that a lockout's gonna happen. I think actually the court of public opinion is like, yeah, we do need a salary cap now, which makes me think maybe this is— I don't know if you've seen Frank the Tank, and I think KFC have been on this— that this is just all collusion.

And the owners are just letting the Dodgers get these guys because everyone is going to get to the new CBA and be like, how can we not have a lockout? The Dodgers are going to win it every single year under the, under the current circumstances.

And there were two times that they went to discovery back in the MLBPA filed a lawsuit to get access to some of the documents, some of the communications from the owners to try to prove collusion. It happened in the 1980s. It happened, I believe, in 2008. I think it's probably going to happen again with this because it does feel like this is pushing, like the narrative is swinging now in favor of the owners. Yeah, they want their salary cap and the salary cap is probably going to happen. But actually, well, the owners are saying here's the real like crossroads, right? The owners are saying we need a salary cap, 100% non-negotiable. Players are saying non-negotiable, no salary cap. That's non-negotiable. So you can see that there is a— we're going to have to agree to disagree a little bit on that one. Now, the salary floor is what the owners are putting out.

That's where you got to negotiate.

That's where the negotiate happens. We'll see just how high that floor could be.

That's where the Pirates and the owners that are not serious owners, that's where they fuck everyone.

But I think if you're the MLBPA and where they're coming from is they have the understanding that, that baseball right now has had the best union of, uh, I guess you could say the NBA has had a pretty good players union as well. Um, but they've been pushing back against the idea of a salary cap for forever. They will have to live going forward 20, 30 years from now, if they are the one, if they're the union that finally agrees to give the owners a salary cap, they will have to live going forward, knowing that they're the ones that did that, that every future player has a salary cap because of this negotiation. And I don't think that's what the union heads want to be known for as their legacy. So that's going to be a tricky thing to negotiate. Now, the floor, we'll see how high the floor offer is going to be, because that's going to have everything to do with whether or not they, they can find some common ground. But it does feel like there's just, there's no way. The only way I could see it happening to get the cap is if the union convinced the owners, you need to open up the books, have them audited, give us the real numbers of how much you're making, how much your expenses are, show me where the money is.

And then and only then can we have a real conversation about maybe having a salary cap.

Either way, right now it kind of sucks. I mean, Max, you were, like I said, we were texting last night. It sucks. I mean, I'm happy the Cubs are actually doing something. The Phillies have not done anything as far as I know.

Yeah, not yet. Well, the one random guy on Twitter said that Mike Trout is a done deal to the Phillies.

Oh, OK. Nice. Congratulations on that.

Yep.

That guy.

Rain chasing Mike Trout.

Yep.

So but it sucks. It sucks. If you're an NL team, it sucks. I don't know how you beat the Dodgers in the 7-game series.

I don't— it doesn't make any sense there.

You know, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense why this trade happened on Saturday. That's what doesn't make sense to me. If we're doing the— if we're doing the, the Brian Windhorst—

this is a good point.

If we're doing Brian Windhorst, when's the trade deadline?

It's tomorrow.

It's Monday. It does make a little sense why that offer would have been there on Monday.

No, I know, but the Tigers are most likely going to also trade Casey Mize, and you had to do Tarik Skubal before you do Casey Mize. So that was probably the thought process of Scott Harris and the Tigers organization. It's like, let's get this one out of the way then, because they're gonna— they're basically reloading everything. They're, they went forward a couple years ago and last year, and it's like they've been teetering on that line of are we gonna make a run, are we not. They played well for a little bit, but I think that's the reasoning is that they had to get down— they had to do Tarik Skubal so then they could then go down the road of hey, now we're gonna get rid of Casey Mize as well, who should— who also will get a good price.

But I feel like if you're if you're shopping your ace, you can wait a little bit longer and get other competing offers. Like, as the weekend goes on and as Monday goes on, I don't think you're going to get any worse offers.

But you see what I'm saying? They had to— they, they're going to trade another— they're going to trade their other great pitcher.

Yeah.

So they— I think they had to do this so that— because otherwise it's like you're talking— you don't know what your, your future is going to look like until you get rid of Tarik Skubal, see what you have.

Yeah.

Then you get— then, all right, we got these prospects. Now we're going to figure out what we're going to do with Casey Mize. That's, that's, that's the reasoning as far as I see it.

I think you could probably walk and chew gum at the same time.

And I mean, we're not that far away from the trade deadline. It was 36 hours before the trade deadline.

Yeah, but I mean, the offers are only going to get better.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how many teams are actually going to be offering because again, you're— it's a, it's a 2-month rental for Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers are the only team— they're the most likely team to sign Tarik Skubal to his future deal. So it's like, how many— the Brewers, again, like, the Brewers could have offered more, but the Brewers have to say, are we going to offer guys that could be cost-controlled for the next 6 years for 2 months of Tarik Skubal? They're not gonna. So that's probably what— why it was probably a limited amount of teams that were, were in on Tarik Skubal, as far as I can tell. Maybe sucks.

Maybe the Dodgers just know that we're not gonna ever have baseball again, so they might as well give them the whole farm system.

It sucks. It sucks.

It's obviously good for— it's obviously good for the Tigers owner. Like, I know that it is a little conspiracy theory, blah blah blah, but they're all in this together because the bigger picture right now is what is going to happen next year. I agree.

I agree.

So I refuse to believe that that didn't have something to do with it.

No, I said it last week when I was like, if Tarik Skubal goes to the Dodgers, you'll see the flooding of people say like, hey, this is fucking bullshit and it's all broken. And yet it does seem— I mean, we all know it's broken. We're about to have a lock. We're about to have no baseball.

We got to get it. Which sucks. I mean, you can't compete with this, with this rotation, although it is injured.

But like, Blake Snell has been injured. Glass now has been injured.

They're going to— they're going to—

I know.

Yeah, no, they'll probably have— that's the thing is the Dodgers are so good. They have Cy Young they have Cy Young pitchers that are going to most likely be like the 8th inning guy in, in, in the World Series.

Their 6 highest paid pitchers would be the 18th highest payroll. Yeah, that's fucking crazy.

1.1 million deferred. It's their, their rotation. You don't need that many pitchers. That's the craziest part. Everyone's throwing out— did you see, Max? Everyone's throwing out their, their like the Dodgers second, their second rotation. Yeah, but they were saying like this is their their, their 5 starters and they just didn't put in Robleski, who's like one of their best pitchers.

I was seeing stuff that they have their top 5 starters and then they have another 5 starters that would still be one of the better rotations in baseball. Yeah, it's so fucked.

It's fucked.

Yeah. Their top 5 would be, according to this graphic, Scubal, Ohtani, Glasnow, Snell, Yamamoto.

Yeah.

And Glasnow and Snell have— I mean, Snell, I think, is about to come back and Glass is going to come back in like a month.

And Ohtani is probably going to Yeah, he'll pitch in the playoffs.

He's not gonna— hopefully he doesn't pitch in, in the regular season. Yeah, PCA. Yeah, yeah.

See, look at this, they just have another rotation.

I am excited that the Cubs are all just like top 50 guy prospects.

Look at—

there's Tarik Skubal, he's, he's just shaking everyone's hands. The Dodgers just do things better. I learned today, I was telling you guys before, I learned today that the Dodgers have a plane just for the players where they all— like, usually when a team leaves, they have to wait an extra hour, hour and a half to get all their gear on the plane. The, the game ends, if they have a, uh, have a road trip, the game ends, the Dodgers players just get on the plane and they go, and then all the gear comes later, and it saves them an hour and a half, which I know that's not a lot, but it's like you stack that over 162 They're just better.

It's a good organization. I don't— I, I have to hate the Dodgers because that's what you do when a team becomes like the big bad evil empire like the Yankees did back around the turn of the century in like late '90s, early 2000s, when it seemed like they were just buying everybody.

Isn't it so funny?

They're running baseball. You also get so—

Hal Steinbrenner, like the Yankees owner, he can't even afford the Yankees. It's gotten so out of hand. Like, he can't be— the Yankees can't be the Yankees. There are only two teams that can do this. It's the Mets and the Dodgers. And that wasn't a compliment, Memes, because you guys— Memes is so checked out, he thought the trade deadline was Tuesday. Oh no, he has— he is not even—

Tuesday, Monday.

Yeah, the Knicks have ruined me.

They really have. He said he was like, oh, we got trade deadline on Tuesday. It's like, what are you talking about, dude? It's like 12 hours to go. Whatever. The Dodgers ruined— no, no, the Dodgers ruined, ruined baseball. But again, I think that's OK because we need to—

we need to—

to be fixed. We need it to be fixed.

If you're the Tigers right now, are you— you're still maybe holding on to some hope that like maybe Schubel's just— maybe it's just a rental and then he's gonna— he's gonna negotiate with us and come back?

Zero.

He's gonna test the market?

0.0%. And, and the Dodgers— I mean, the, the Tigers, like, the only thing you could say the Tigers might have done incorrectly is like, should they have traded Schubel before the season and getting a little bit more? But you also have a team that was, you know, why, you know, won the Central or I don't think they won the Central last year because remember the Guardians caught them and then the Guardians lost. But like they've been competitive and in the playoffs. So you can't just like pull the plug on that. I— yeah, it sucks. I feel bad for Tigers fans. Tarik Skubal, that's a guy that should be a Tiger for life. Like you should be rooting for him for life. He's an unbelievable pitcher. He's a hoss. He's a— he's a fucking killer. That's a guy that you should be able to— your team should be able to afford to keep him. And it should be like, that's a guy who's just a legend of your organization.

And then Skeens is the other— someday it's out there.

And then someday, you know, the Savannah Bananas come to Detroit and Schubel pitches.

Yeah.

For the Bananas.

Yes.

Skeens.

Skeens is the other name that's out there. If he goes to the Dodgers, we should just— other teams should just be like, fuck you.

I mean, Skeens hasn't been great. Skeens hasn't been Skeens this year. He's been not the same.

His velocity is way down.

Yeah, well, he would just go to the Dodgers and just be Skeens again.

Yeah, no, he would.

I think, I think he'll be fine. I did see the graph that showed like how over the course of every, every start that he's had in his career, how many pitches that he's thrown like 98 plus, uh, which seems kind of like an arbitrary number to draw the line at, but it's, it has dipped down quite a bit.

Yeah, no, he hasn't been good. He's, I mean, for Paul Skeens, he's He's still a good pitcher overall, but he's not Paul Skeens. Um, all right, what else? Freddy Peralta got traded to the Rays. Rays are going all in. I like to— I mean, the MLB trade deadline, I— it's, it's fun. I mean, I'm happy that, like I said, the Cubs did something. They still got to do more. The Phillies got to do something. You got— I mean, I think the Yankees have to do something. Are the Red Sox gonna do something? They should. Yeah, uh, oh no, they made that trade last week. I think the White Sox, the White Sox, uh, Made a trade on Saturday night, which is good. Like, the White Sox are competitive. They're going for it.

The Nats are now selling.

They're officially selling.

Yeah, officially selling. We got swept by the Braves this weekend, so we need pitchers. So we traded Luis Garcia, who's leading the NL in slugging, really good against right-handed pitchers, doesn't really hit against lefties, but traded him to the Yankees. And the Yankees sent back like, basically they're like, hey, we're just going to give you every arm. Do you want arms? Okay, we've got young arms, some old arms. The hope is that one of those arms will turn into a rotation guy at some point.

Someone's going to get Mason Miller.

Maybe Mason Miller would be awesome. Mason Miller is like—

Padres are still in the— in the— I think they're in the playoffs right now, so I don't really understand that one.

But I feel like Mason Miller, we would— we should be talking about Mason Miller more. Yeah, I mean, he's incredible in general for how good he is.

He's absolutely insane. Do you see, uh, by the way, so Tarik Skubal is gonna— I think his first, his first start is scheduled for Wrigley on Tuesday night. And then in a weird— this would be a fun quirk, only baseball— Kevin Gausman, his first start for the Cubs could be Thursday against the Blue Jays because we have one game makeup. Wouldn't that be funny?

Yeah.

So he would— the one-game makeup would be against his former team.

Yeah, it'd be crazy.

Yeah, wild.

Are you going to get your check in front of Scooble again?

I don't think I— the Cubs couldn't turn around fast enough. I was going to maybe get it on Monday. I was— I was— it would have been funny if it was just another replay of me getting a check and just Scooble was in a different jersey 2 weeks later. Maybe still, maybe they can do it on Tuesday. That'd be cool. I'd do that. I'd go. I'll get my check. I get my check on Tuesday.

All right.

What else? Trade deadline, Max. Do you have any, any wishes?

I don't know. I mean, Trout would be awesome just because he's—

he's an Eagles.

Yeah, he's an Eagle. He's basically on the Eagles. But again, I just have a guy on the Eagles.

I don't— I don't think he wants to play for a team that's going to be in the playoffs.

Yes, he does.

No, I think he likes not playing in October so he can watch Eagles games.

He might not like— yeah, that's good.

Like, that's what he does. Like, but he was in Philly.

He could just go to the game.

Yes, I need that on a—

I need that on a quote card though, that Mike Trout would be awesome because we basically have an Eagles player on the Phillies.

Yeah, that's true. But I, I am conflicted because if they go and, and are buyers, I'm gonna get excited about it, but I don't know who we can add to compete with the Dodgers. Like They were better. They were way better than us going into this weekend. They were way better than us going into this year. And like, they're, they're, they just got the best pitcher in baseball.

Anything can happen though.

But with a staff like that, it's so hard. It's so hard.

I'm looking up who has the best average against Schubel. Joshua Corona-Grower, the guy that got his nut blown up. Last week. He bats 1,000 against him. You should trade for that guy. Kruk would love him. A guy like that.

Kruk. Yeah, Kruk's the best. I don't know. I— if they don't make any moves, it'll suck, but I'll be like, you know what, whatever, the Dodgers are going to win anyway. If they do make moves, I'll convince myself.

I'm not ready to give— I'm not ready to give the title to the Dodgers. I'm not. I'm not. I think baseball's fluke. I mean, remember the Dodgers when— remember the Dodgers would complain like before they started winning all these World Series, they would complain that the 5-game— while like DS was unfair because they just kept losing it, they lost in it a couple of times and they had like over 100-win seasons.

Yeah.

Am I—

I'm remembering that correctly. Remember they lost to the Padres? They lost some series where it was like, oh, it's bullshit. They're so good. And they did. They lost.

Yeah.

The best team in baseball. But weird shit happens.

Yeah.

Look at—

yeah, look it up. Come on, Max. They would— so they won the last 2 World Series. Yeah, yeah, they lost. They lost the Diamondbacks in the DS 2 years, 3 years ago. And what happened? This guy—

like, the roster is just so much better now.

But we said— we say that a lot. This is a super team. I'll give you that. This is— this is maybe the most egregious Dodgers Dodger team of all time. Uh, but weird things can happen, Max. And you guys were so close. Remember that last— Tony wasn't even on this team, Max. Remember that Thursday night?

Let's stop it.

Eagles are playing against the Giants.

What was that, game 4 or game 5? No, that was game 4. Okay, so you weren't that close. Max is taking off his headphones.

Well, he's— that was like the worst night of my life in PFT. He's just going to talk about it.

Yeah, well, I mean, if that's the worst night of your life, you had a pretty good life.

Damn good life, dude. Damn good life.

Yeah, I've had a good life.

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So I'm looking at DraftKings right now. The Dodgers are +150 to win the World Series. That's insane. But hey, guess what? The, the, the Thunder were like +200 all year. What happened to them? Wemby got them. What happened to Wemby? I actually don't remember what happened to Wemby. So much shit has happened.

Yeah.

World Cup.

Yeah.

World Cup.

Yeah.

World Cup got Wemby. Yeah. France lost in the World Cup. That's fact. Okay, other, other stories. Anything, anything we want to touch on? The Tony Romo is now not— no longer, as of right now, going to be calling games, at least for Week 1. J.J. Watt has taken his place. I feel like this might be it for Tony Romo with CBS.

It does feel like they might use this as an excuse.

Here's what Tony Romo has in his back pocket that could potentially save him. Jerry Jones. Did you hear Jerry Jones talking about Tony Roman, how much he loves him? And he's just like, he's, he, he's gotten hit, he'll get back up. Jerry Jones, he's gonna put some screws to CBS if he, if, if they try to can his boy.

Yeah, he's not—

that might be the power play that you have because, you know, Jerry Jones loves that all the Cowboys have jobs in media.

So CBS, they— I, I can see what they're doing right now because the writing was somewhat on the wall where maybe they weren't super— you don't let those reports leak out last year about Tony Romo, about how like he needs to prep more for games. Those don't, those don't get leaked out unintentionally. And the fact that maybe there might be some sort of an excuse, I don't know what kind of leave, like what are they hoping to see from Tony? Are they negotiating a buyout right now? Is that why he's on leave?

I don't know.

Is he seeking treatment? Is he at grandma and grandpa's house?

He might be.

Where is Tony?

I do feel— I feel bad that JJ Watt is like— JJ Watt is really good at announcing and he's going to be really good with Jim Nantz. And it kind of sucks that like he's— he's been put in this predicament where it's like, oh, you're getting this job. We don't know if it's your job. Just give JJ the job. He's good. He'll do great. He'll fucking— he will do his homework.

He'll be really good. He's great. You've got like Greg Olsen is great. Tom Brady has gotten better. We might be entering the golden age of announcers.

Yeah. So Tony Romo on ice for now. I cannot believe— I cannot believe we had him on the show a month ago and this has all transpired. It's insane. Like, we were— we were begging CBS to get rid of him.

I know.

And then we spent an hour with him. We're like, that guy was cool.

I mean, he was a cool guy to us. He's a cool guy to us. But I mean, This, this was in motion well before we ever sat down with Tony Romo.

That—

no.

Yeah, they might not have been super happy with how, how much they're paying. Oh, you know what this goes to show is like every time I see what the salary of like an in-game analyst is for either Fox or CBS, it blows my mind. Yeah, it's crazy to me how much these guys get paid. Yeah.

All right. I'm going to rip through some training camp stories you tell. Stop if we want to talk at length about any of them. Deebo Samuel back on the 49ers.

I'm glad he's back.

Also, the 49ers substation has taken all of them again.

Ricky Pearsall, PCL, didn't heal correctly. He's probably out for the year. Yeah, and so the substation gets bigger. Have you seen that, like, the, the highlight clips from the practices? Yeah, you can't tell me that the substation was that big last year. I think it just gets stronger. It adds, it just keeps growing.

And Also, um, look at that thing, Kyle. Yeah, it's so huge. Kyle Shanahan is like, this concussion is a serious deal. Did you hear, like, he did an interview last week where I think he had, he had to keep his eyes closed because like the, in like the noise of practice is fucking with him. He said that his decision-making is delayed. So I hope he gets better, but like, that's, that seems like it should be a bigger deal that one of the best head coaches in the NFL is having delayed decision-making.

Yeah, it's not good. I hope he's okay. Who do you think, like, if there has to be like an in-game interim coach? I know Chris Forrester is running the show right now on kind of an interim basis. You think he's going to be the one that's like calling timeouts, doing everything on game day?

I think it has to be Jim Tomsula. They got to bring him back.

I would love that.

Bring Jim, Jim Tomsula back. Let him just fucking go.

Let's see who else we got here. We got Raheem Morris.

That's okay.

Clay Kubiak.

Okay.

Chris Forester.

Okay.

Matt Eberflus. Oh, we might have to see what Matt Eberflus has in store.

Get a job. Holy shit. Yeah, it really is incredible. If you're—

if you—

if you raise— if you rise to the ranks of head coach or coordinator in the NFL, you just have a job.

Yeah.

Forever.

Yeah.

Someone will hire you.

Let's see who else. Anybody? Anyone else want this gig?

Did you see Matt Nagy's offense has been characterized as disjointed for the Giants so far? I love early training camp stories because they're just like, okay, there's been this, like, just— it's just basically clichés. And, you know, the offense looks good, but the defense looks better. So maybe that's good. All right. Other stories. Saints sign Chris Olave to a 4-year extension. Great for our guy, Shock. Jadavian Clowney is still playing football. Oh yeah, on the Texans. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, he's just done a series of 1-year deals. He's, he's been bouncing around the league a little bit. This feels like full circle. Maybe, maybe his last season.

I don't know, we've said that probably a thousand times.

Yeah, but that defense, good for them.

Yeah. Uh, Jaden Daniels gave his mom a piggyback ride.

That's not true, that was a complete— that was AI.

Was it actually?

Yeah, it was fake.

Yeah, I know it was fake. Well, you guys were on top of that.

You were.

Yeah, you were on top of that.

Was real.

Yeah, that one was real.

It was me.

He was getting way back.

Right after practice in Ashburn, I hopped on Jayden's back. It's a little fun thing that we do after practice and we do the we and I say we and he like runs across the field. It's a fun, fun little game that we have. And then somebody took that picture and put Jayden's mom on my face.

Are you saying Football Crave is not a trustworthy Twitter account?

I don't know if Football Crave is the one that did the Photoshop or— you know, there's— there's—

Football Crave was all over it.

There's a new law against that sort of thing now.

Oh, really?

So just, you know, I would be careful. Just make sure that you be on the lookout. Don't put Jayden's mom on my face ever again. You'll get sued.

Travis Kelce's got a belly.

He's having a good time.

Yeah, he just got married. Lay off the guy.

Yeah, he's got some— never mind. Not going to say what I was about to say right there. Good job, PFT, biting your tongue. At the last second before you said something awful.

But yeah, he, he does. He does look a little bit larger.

Yeah, he looks. Yeah, he looks happy.

He looks happy.

There was also a loser. He's going to lose that.

Yeah. Plays way into shape.

I like these guys, especially veterans. They show up, they look fat, and then they just take one big shit and do a couple of crunches and they're good. That's it. I'm getting that. They get in the cold tub for 5 minutes and they fucking have abs again.

I'm convinced Mahomes is just going to be back to the bad man again. Oh, dude, I saw so many, so many clips of him in practice. That's Like people are just— they're trying to dunk on Mahomes. Oh, like day 1, day 2 training camp, he threw a pass into his center's head. I saw that clip. Yeah, very funny clip. He's just— he's going to be good. He's going to be really good again this year. Yeah, the Madman's back.

The Chiefs are— I mean, remember the Chiefs last year? They were like the snakebitten team, like where they were just losing games that they should have won and all this shit. They're going to be good. And people are going to say, what the fuck? How'd this happen? They're going to be good. I completely agree with you. If Travis Kelce can take that big shit. Yeah, he'll be able to take that big shit.

He'll be okay.

Taysom Hill is a free agent, might play for the Broncos, which would rock.

Yeah, no duh.

That would be so sick.

When he, when he did his goodbye to the Saints, immediately was like, yeah, I know, I know one coach that's probably going to give him a call. Sean Payton is absolutely in love with Taysom Hill. So yeah, I'm sure he'll be a Bronco before the week's over.

And then we also had an incredible fan fight at Steelers camp, which I loved so much because it was— we say it all the time, but this time of summer, like, if your team is fighting each other, it means it's time for football. Like, you gotta, you gotta maybe do a— maybe the Steelers need to do a practice with the Eagles so we can get some, you know, Eagles fans fighting Steelers fans. I see live in Pickensburg kind of thing. But the best part of the Steelers fight is we had a grown man in a Steelers helmet be the voice of reason and be like, be men, show up and be like, be men. And I think Pat Fryermuth might have stolen a child too during this fight. He got it in a good way. He still— he took a child out of harm's way. So shout out Pat Fryermuth. Good guy award.

They need to do joint practices for the fans too. Yes, I'm saying the fans are— the fans are sick of hitting each other, right? They need to have some actual opposition. I'm saying And then there was some news about Miles Garrett. He's dealing with a little soreness in his lower half.

Okay.

Per Sean McVay.

That's like a hockey injury right there.

Yeah, lower body injury for Miles Garrett. So McVay is not having him practice. I guess that's 3 days in a row that Miles Garrett has not practiced. It doesn't matter. He'll be fine.

Aaron Donald will probably be a Ram soon. I saw, I think Schrager said that the arrow's pointing up. Towards him becoming— oh, Albert Breer said it. Okay. So he's going to— he's going to be— he's going to be on the Rams.

If I was him, I would just go over to Australia right now.

What's happening with Los Angeles? They're just getting all the good teams.

Yeah.

Rams are going to win it all.

Yep.

What?

Memes just said they need an earthquake.

Memes.

Memes. They don't need an earthquake.

Memes.

Like what? What size memes? You got to clarify.

Big one.

Big one. Memes, memes. They don't need an earthquake.

The joke.

OK, any, any other, any other news from training camps? You got one, Max? You're looking at me. Yeah, well, Nick Sirianni, Howie Roseman did a press conference in shades that looked kind of cool.

Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, I don't—

I'm—

I was just told to not worry about the quarterback competition. In Minnesota, even though it looks like Kyler—

Kyler's playing better.

Well, he had one— he had one good day and everyone said— is saying that this is Kyler's job, it's Kyler's job. But, but JJ's played better in every other game, every other practice. But there was one day Saturday, Kyler played a lot better and was getting all the first-team reps. But that's only because it's a new quarterback trying to learn a new offense. And it's not that I was given a script of what— of what to say here.

Got it. But also, like, this is the time of year that you want your quarterback to make mistakes. Yeah, right.

You want to—

you want to take some shots.

You want—

you want them to really be pushing it. Then you can always dial it back.

Correct.

Yep.

I think 9 is going to be the starter this year. My depth chart is number 1, 9.

The official—

yeah, the official number 2, 3 irrelevant.

Yeah, agreed.

Yep.

9, 9, 1.

Uh, Jalen Hurts. Said that he wrote 100% alignment, zero entitlement in his notebook during Nick Sirianni's address to the team at the start of training camp.

Sounds like he wasn't listening.

He's got a notebook that he writes in when coach is talking.

He was just writing shit while coach was talking?

Yeah.

That's called taking notes.

I don't see it. It sounds like alignment was zero entitlement.

Is that what Sirianni said?

It would make more sense if the article said that that was the message that Nick Sirianni was giving and that Jalen Hurts was taking notes. It sounds like he was just doodling.

Like he was writing his name like Jalen Sirianni.

Yeah.

Well, he's staring at coach.

Yeah.

Jalen Hurts is going to have a great year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Great year. OK, DeVonta Smith might have 1,800 yards. Birds are going to be OK.

Birds are going to be good. You're buying because it's an off year where you have a real offensive coordinator, right?

Everyone just keeps saying he's an evil genius.

Sean Mannion.

Yeah. Love hearing the evil genius.

What does that mean, evil?

I don't know.

That's just what— that's just what people are saying.

Evil genius.

Yeah. You want— I want— you want your football coach to be a little bit evil.

I'm excited for Hard Knocks on Tuesday night.

We're going to—

we're going to watch the first episode and record after. That is really the official, official start of football season. It's not the Hall of Fame game. It's Hard Knocks.

It is kind of weird that they decided that they were going to just like forget the rule about if a team made the playoffs.

Yeah.

And so it's just the Super Bowl champions could be a—

well, I think they had to forget the rule because there's 17 Hard Knocks now.

Yeah.

Like there's in-season, there's right OTA, there's Hard Knocks. It feels like every 2 seconds you turn around, there's a Hard Knocks, right?

In preparation for the Hall of Fame game, our friend Warren Sharpe tweeted out, you know, you ever go on like Pro Football Reference and it always has like all the players' nicknames and you get to learn nicknames that you never knew existed. Brice Young, his nickname is the Carolina Reaper. Oh, have you ever heard that?

No, but I like it.

It's a pretty good nickname.

I like it a lot.

The pepper.

Yeah. So it's going to be— well, Bryce Young's not going to play. We're going to get some fun quarterbacks. Panthers versus Cardinals. Yep. That's going to be a lot of fun.

Wait, let's see who's back.

I want to see the depth chart.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, is Carson Beck going to play? Probably not. They don't even play like the 1s and 2s anymore in this game, right? Oh, Gardner Minshew, Keaton Slovis. Yeah, USC, Pitt fame.

Did he—

he came on the show, didn't he? Yeah, I think he was a guest on the show. Keaton Slovis. So we could have Keaton Slovis and Gardner Minshew versus, uh, Kenny Pickett.

Wow.

And Haynes King.

Haynes King.

This is gonna be fun. A Georgia Tech-Pitt match. We're going to watch ACC football on Thursday night.

I can't wait.

I'm so excited.

It's going to be the uniforms. We're going to get to see the uniforms.

The Cardinals, by the way. Yeah, I think you mentioned it. The Cardinals having an over-under win total of 2.5 is very— I got to take the—

it's crazy.

They're going to win 3.5. Oh, 3.5.

The all-time—

I thought it was 2.5.

No, it's 3.5.

They are tanking.

All-time lowest was 3 wins, and that was the expansion Panthers and Jaguars.

Okay, so it's 3.

So it's 3.5.

I might have to take this. They have the hardest schedule in the NFL, but it would also be so fun to like have them stuck at 3 wins week, week 18, just being like, come on, they're just trying to win a game.

They don't have any tape on, on LaFleur. That's the thing.

Yeah. And they have Jeremiah Love, who should have won Heisman.

They got Jeremiah Love.

Yeah, that's huge.

I have seen a couple of clips of him in training camp where like they hand the ball to him. And there's instantly 4 guys in the backfield. Yeah, but maybe that, maybe that's just that nasty, uh, uh, Arizona Cardinals defense.

It is also funny, they have Tyler Allgeier, who he feels like he just follows really good running backs. Yeah, he's like, yeah, you know what, let's throw this guy out there too. Smart strategy. You don't want to burn Jeremiah Love for a team that has an over-under of 3.5 wins.

Let's see. And so, uh, class of 2026 in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for the Hall of Fame game, we got Drew Brees. Okay, getting inducted. Who do you think is going to get—

oh, that's kind of a slap that he didn't Saints to play in this game. Yeah, he's, he's the headliner, is he not? Larry Fitz as well.

Well, he's not retired, but he is going to the Hall of Fame. Yeah, Larry Fitz.

Yep.

Uh, Luke Keekly, that would, that would mean the Panthers. Adam Vinatieri. Okay, Colts legend. And then Roger Craig.

Okay, what a good class. Drew Brees, it does not feel like Drew Brees has been retired for 5 years.

No, no. It doesn't.

That kind of fucks me up.

Where's that, uh, where's the picture?

Oh, the certificate. I keep it— the passing yardage.

Keep it in a very nice space right behind my, my spot, my desk, uh, on the floor. And I think I got a stain on it now. But look at that, isn't that nice?

Beautiful.

It's beautiful.

NFL record most passing yards.

I actually saw him in Tahoe. He's like, that's bullshit. They gave that to you and not me. I was like, sorry, Drew, sell it to him.

I should. Yeah, hold it hostage.

We should hold it hostage.

Do you think Drew Brees—

this would be nice to go next to Larry Fitzgerald's official retirement.

It will.

Yeah, this will be— we'll have our own personal class of 2026 Hall of Fame enshrinement.

Yeah.

Here.

You think Drew Brees will, will acknowledge his daughter at the—

I think he's got to do it first. Yeah, I think he's going to maybe make a joke of it. Or not, because he doesn't know she exists.

Yeah.

No, he definitely will. That would be very funny if he, if he, if he holds out till the very end and maybe gives her some extra shine.

I've got a new—

it's just good to talk football with the boys. I feel good talking ball.

I've got a new slogan. Maybe we can think about doing for like maybe the part of my take 2026 NFL season slogan.

Okay, we need one.

Chop wood, carry water.

Is that from Nick Sirianni?

Oh, is it?

Yeah, I like that. Chop wood, carry water.

Wood, carry water.

Chop wood, carry water. What are we building?

I don't know.

What are we building?

Chop wood, carry water. He's not paying attention. Oh, he's not. He's ADD kicked in.

Yeah.

Hey, what do you like about chop wood, carry water? Rocky's real to me.

Which is more important, chopping wood or carrying water?

Hmm.

Chopping wood.

Why?

What do you do? You're going to live without water.

But chopping wood is— sorry, water chopping wood's grittier.

Did he say it like that? Chop wood, carry wood.

It might have been chop water, water, and they might have mistranscribed it. Chop water, carry water.

I say water except for when I say I'm water ice, something water ice.

And if I'm like watering down a drink, what are you putting in the drink?

If I put water, I'm watering it down.

How often are you watering down drinks?

Sometimes iced teas too. I don't like iced tea. That's too sweet.

So I see watered down.

I drank a lot with you. I don't think I've ever heard you say I'm going to water this down.

I've also don't think I've ever heard you say something's too sweet.

I think that sometimes iced tea is too sweet. I like it. I like it a little bit watered down.

OK. OK. Yeah.

OK. All right.

Chop wood.

OK. All right. Yeah. Chop wood.

Give us something about the Bucks. I saw Baker kind of walk back his comments.

He walked back a little bit. That's refreshing. He's still standing on the whole, uh, we're getting into football now, don't want to hear about it, they'll pay for it. He did walk it back, which feels good going into the season because he said there wouldn't be— it wouldn't leak into the locker room, but you don't want any animosity.

Yeah, so that feel—

that did feel fantastic. Another thing I saw out of training camp, uh, you guys saw, it could be the Shador Show in Cleveland.

Oh, I've seen a little bit of both. I also saw a tweet that, that, uh, the best quarterback on the Browns roster is not Shador or Deshaun Watson.

It's your door time.

You think so?

I think so. Yeah. He said, he said that he, he found himself in a routine now and then he learned a lot from last season.

Okay.

Now wait, is it— are they saying that, that what's his name? Dylan Gabriel Green, the guy from Arkansas?

No, I think Dylan Gabriel, but maybe it's Taylen Green because we saw—

I think I speak for America when I say we, we had our fill of Dylan Gabriel last year.

I don't want to say that I'd be okay with no more Dylan Gabriel. I don't want to say that because I would love for the Browns to start Dylan Gabriel so we can bet against them.

System. I— yep, that's a good point.

Yeah. Remember what was the quarterback that would— what was the quarterback the Browns started that was just an auto? Like, I made— I think they only did it like once or twice. Fuck. DTR.

DTR.

Yeah, DTR was my favorite. Holy shit, DTR.

Thank you.

There was just nothing about him that was—

dude, he just wasn't—

or quarterback.

He shouldn't have been out there, and they're just like, we're starting DTR. It's like, all right, I'm betting against you.

I'm sure he's a nice guy.

Yeah, we need those guys to be in the ecosystem to have confidence, to be like Yeah, you know what? We're starting Dylan Gabriel. I'm like, thank you. I needed one free win this week.

I would like to see Taylen Green. That would be fun. Oh no. Again, I go back to the funniest. I would like to see Deshaun Watson play good for a couple of weeks and then the Browns give him an extension. That would be very funny.

That would be very funny. All right. It's good to talk ball.

How's Patriots looking?

Great.

AJ Brown, Christian Gonzalez going at it every day. Iron sharpens iron.

Mm-hmm.

AJ Brown confirmed, uh, ate some of Michael May's cookies. Okay, so that relationship's going great.

Oh, that's great.

It's really good.

That's great.

Love to see that.

Love to see that. Yeah.

Has, uh, Vrabel gone to the podium with like orphans or—

I mean, that was just the Patriots. They were doing a thing to like help, you know, shine a light on a charity for dogs, and Vrabel participated.

He also brought his kid.

Oh, good.

The next day.

Oh, coach brought a kid to training camp. Wow.

I mean, yeah, Sirianni is kind of stealing his whole thing. Vrabel's initial was like, yeah, chop wood if we win a Super Bowl.

I like— you get it?

No.

Cut his dick off. Yeah, that sounds like good training camp going on.

I also may have got duped. Now I'm thinking about that.

But what? No, you're saying it wasn't?

What about him bringing his kid?

Oh, are his kids like adults?

Yes, because they're very much—

that's why I think that I could—

I'm, I thought that was a little weird in real time.

I did realize it, guys.

I got, I got a bad feeling that AI is just going to wreck our shit as a pod.

Well, no, me specifically.

Yeah, I am a big, big fat idiot.

Yeah, dummy.

I did see it when I saw the initial Jaden piggyback ride with his mom. I did have to examine that to double-check. Yeah, they know exactly what we want. The AI is smarter than all of us already.

The, uh, I— the one thing that has come out of— well, two things came out of Bears camp. Caleb Williams lost some weight, looks great. And then Ben Johnson, like, attacked the regression narrative head-on. He was like, yeah, we're the number one regression candidate also because Liam Cohn and the McVay Mafia are still in their feels because Ben Johnson doesn't want to shake a hand.

They're still—

oh dude, they're all still— they're all— they all hate Ben Johnson, which I fucking love. But the McVay Mafia, because it all started— Liam Cohn was like, no one talks about us, you know, you'll turn— you go to NFL.com, there'll be 10 highlights of Cale Williams. No, we had a better season than them or something like that. And, uh, Ben Johnson's like, yeah, we are the number one regression team, so people are going to talk about us and they're going to try to say that we're going to regress. But it is McVay Mafia being upset. They all are upset. They would, they would want to fight Ben Johnson if they could. Like, they don't want to like gang up and beat him. Ben Johnson would beat all their asses.

I do love, I do love how much they hate the guy. Oh, uh, I, I also saw that our good friend Will Levis gave a little quote to the newspapers the other day, said, I don't think that there's 32 quarterbacks better than me. He's not done yet.

Yep.

I'd like to see Will Levis out there again.

If Dylan Gabriel is one of the 32, then I agree with—

I would 100% agree with that.

Without a doubt.

Okay.

What other quarterbacks is Will Levis better than?

Jacoby.

Right now, starting Jacoby Brissett.

Yep.

9.

Yeah.

No, I don't know.

Yeah, I don't watch him. I disagree.

Watch your mouth.

I agree. No. Okay.

No, no, not even close.

No.

Um, who's starting for the Dolphins?

Uh, Malik Willis. Yeah, who's back?

He did, he did well last year. I keep having to remind myself Geno Smith's back on the Jets.

That's right.

Yeah.

Why, why do you have to keep reminding? I don't know, because I keep asking myself who's gonna be the jet, and I'm like, oh yeah, Geno's back. Because we remember we, we said we're not talking about last year when it comes to Geno and Pete Carroll. So I don't— it's like a gap year. I didn't even know that. I thought he retired last year because we're doing— we're following through on our, our promise.

Fair, but you should know. You should know that.

Okay, you got to be better. I know now.

I'm finding myself more and more day in, day out Atlanta curious going into this year. We've got— I mean, I don't know with Penix and Tua what's going to happen there.

That might be another one that he's better.

I mean, But Pettit's—

to a combo is quite something.

I think Stefanski is a real leftist.

That is leftist of me. I agree 100%. But guess what? My son's a lefty, so I'm allowed to say it.

Yeah, I feel like Stefanski is a good coach.

Yeah, no, he's a really good coach. I don't know if he's— I don't know if those are the quarterbacks he might need to get. His quarterback might not be on the roster right now.

I don't know if Cousins is going to be great for Vegas. The thing is, with, with the Raiders, I don't know when they're going to start Mendoza, because if you look at their schedule, their schedule is actually— Las Vegas has a crazy schedule. There's no great place to put—

well, I mean, because they're bad.

Yeah, but they're— look at the schedule, pull it up.

I know, but bad teams always— if you look at any bad team schedule, you're like, that's a really hard schedule, because you're playing the win-loss game. You're like, that team's bad.

Sure, but if you look at the Raiders schedule in particular, I mean, it's tough to figure out where you would put Mendoza to make his first week one, the Dolphins. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But they've already said they don't want him to start week one.

Week one, the Dolphins. Week three, the Saints isn't like a terrible spot. Chargers, it's not that hard of a schedule. Jets, but the Jets in week seven, that could be a place to start him. He's gonna play.

They have some easy games, but what I'm saying is if you look at their schedule, it's not like It's not like they're set up in a good spot for a rookie to come in.

I think they're just gonna have to do Week 1 Dolphins. They're gonna go back on their word.

That's probably the smart way to do it.

Yeah.

Okay, let's do who's back of the week, and then we will get to our interviews. We have Dan Lanning and Matt Rule, um, awesome interviews. I do like— I actually enjoy the fact that we are now being accused of being Big Ten biased because we did a bunch of interviews when they were in our backyard. It just reminds you that college football fan bases are the most insane, and I love that about them. Like, people are mad that we interviewed a bunch of head coaches because they're not the head coaches of their respective conference. I like that. I want them.

Also, the Big Ten has, I think, the more entertaining coaches of any conference.

Well, it's not even that. They literally were doing media week 10 minutes from our office. We're going to go interview them. Yeah, like, that's it. That's a layup. No travel. Get 7— what do we do, 6, 6, 7, 6, 7 really good interviews. There you go, Zach. Um, the Kurt Cignetti, by the way, I still can't get over the handshake. We went and watched some tape and he, he did it to Kaelen DeBoer before the Rose Bowl.

Yeah, that's his thing. So I, I contacted, uh, I don't want to throw anybody's name under the bus, um, some friends of the show, people who are also big J's in college football media, they've confirmed the same thing. They also said that—

you're talking about Tom?

Yeah, Tom Fornelli.

Yeah.

And Andy Staples. But they, they also said that this is a Saban thing too.

Yeah.

Apparently Saban's known for having a really bad handshake.

But I think this is mental warfare.

It might be.

I'll stay with that. I think Kurt Signe is doing it to fuck you up and he fucked us up.

But I also think that there's a reason. It's, it's a small part, but it is part of the reason I think that he didn't get a head coaching job till he was 50.

Yeah.

Because if you go on interviews and you've got two guys that the athletic director really likes looking at and they don't have a big body of work behind them. If one of them has the worst handshake that you've ever felt in your life, that might be enough to push that guy off to the side.

But Kurt Signetti now has the answer that works where he just can say, I'm not here to shake hands. I'm here to coach ball.

Yeah, it's just the handshake.

And he wins. He wins.

Handshake is candy ass.

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Hank, um, who's back of the week? Wemby. Wemby's back.

Why?

Star of the NBA Finals. Uh, Nike came out, came out with their, like, his official logo. Unbelievable. It's a VW and it's like in the, you know, the, the V and the W make an alien head. One of the better athlete logos I've seen in a while.

Memes, can I, uh, who's back? Can I see this logo? But memes, can I say something to you real quick? You've got to start stepping in when we keep doing this because you're getting dangerously close to like Gonzaga territory where we're going to make the joke so many times that we're actually going to forget the Knicks won a title.

No, you're not.

Yeah, you will always remember.

No, I'm telling you, Zach, maybe you got to start stepping in.

Is a historic run. You'll never forget.

I understand.

100 years.

You understand what this show does? We, we joke ourselves into reality.

In your heart of hearts, you know, he's got it done.

The way Hank said that he was the star of the NBA Finals, I was like, shit, was he?

I mean, I think if you looked at who got the most mentions on social media, it's probably Wemby.

That's, that's his new logo. Not for me.

Didn't he just—

It's a V, a W, and see the alien.

Oh, I see it now.

All right, that's for me.

Didn't he have a—

That looks like a guy with a beard.

I thought there was a logo that came out like 6 months ago. When they did that big commercial and it was like a cornfield.

I think that was like a teaser. That was like a teaser for—

wait, where's the alien?

If you made a circle around it, like the underneath the V. Oh, I see.

I was looking at it as a beard, a guy with a beard and a soul patch at first. So, but it looks kind of like the Guy Fawkes, like, smile, or it actually kind of looks like a front and back chick with a big-ass booty. See, that's a booty in the front and then the pussy's up top.

I'm seeing maybe some spread legs.

Oh, yeah.

And then the thing up top is like the bikini bottom.

Yeah.

Rorschach back. Was that Rorschach test?

Yeah.

So you guys are doing—

Yeah.

Yeah, we're doing it right now.

Also, cinema's back.

Why?

Biggest domestic box office weekend of all time this weekend.

Odyssey.

Spider-Man.

They did another one.

New Spider-Man. Yep. Brand new day. Brand new Spider-Man. Brand new day. 355 mil. Odyssey made 51 mil. Toy Story 5, 6.33 mil.

Who's in? I saw The Invite. It was really good.

Who's Spider-Man?

Tom Holland.

Also, Tom Holland is like all— you can't escape him this week.

And Zendaya also in Spider-Man.

She is.

And she's in Odyssey.

Yeah.

I got to see these. Well, I'm not going to see Spider-Man, but I got to see The Odyssey.

Odyssey's good.

Is it?

I'm going tomorrow. Are you? Yeah.

What time?

70 mil.

Whoa. You have 70 mil?

70mm film.

Well, you're a filmmaker.

No, no, I used to be.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I used to be.

Why don't they make more of those theaters?

This didn't help, by the way. Whoever's making this.

Yeah, I made that circle. It doesn't look like an alien with the circle. I made—

well, you didn't.

I still can't see the alien, really.

What do you mean I didn't? What, what, what didn't I do?

You're supposed to circle like the bottom is supposed to be the circle.

He looks like an alien wearing a sick pair of Oakleys. I got it.

Okay, I just don't understand what he's saying.

It's all right.

Hank, you liked Odyssey?

I like Odyssey a lot.

Okay, too long.

No, I saw it last Sunday night after we recorded. Didn't fall asleep during it. Top 5 Nolan movie.

I mean, that's a— there's a lot of good Nolan movies.

Yeah.

Yeah. I thought it was pretty good. It's long. It felt— I have been thinking about it a lot since I've seen it.

Like, offhand, I saw— didn't really think about it much after.

You didn't understand offhand.

And I haven't had that much interest in watching it again.

You didn't understand it.

The Odyssey I saw, and the more, you know, the the farther away I got from it, the more I've been thinking about it, and I will definitely watch it again, maybe even try and go 70mm.

Didn't you say after Oppenheimer you didn't understand why there was black and white? Half the movie's in black and white. No, I'm pretty sure you said that.

I thought that it was, uh, it's a long movie, but it never felt long to me. Yeah, which is a good— that's a mark of, I think, a really good long movie.

Yeah. Tom Holland, not the best performance out of—

I agree.

Like, he was—

he was in Spider-Man?

In Odyssey.

Got I agree. Was inspired by him.

No, no.

Also didn't really feel the sparks between Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon.

So you think maybe he was a little too focused on Spider-Man?

Yeah, it could have been.

I think he might have forgotten which role he was playing.

Is, is, is— are the movies back? Is this one of those like Gen Z? Don't they don't drink, but they go to movies?

Well, you know, streaming, COVID, cinema's dead. Like all these, all these movies are going to Netflix and HBO.

No, we had Nicole Kidman in that ad. She was just like, come back to the movies. And we all did.

And they are.

Yeah. Yeah. People are listening.

Sometimes heartache feels good in a place like this.

Mm-hmm.

Send them back.

What's Liv doing?

What do you mean?

What is it? We added the quota.

They have an event next week. Okay.

Oh, what event?

In New York.

Bankruptcy filing?

Is it a—

It's at Trump's course where Trump won the senior club championship.

Is it a tournament?

Are they—

Or is it an event? It's a—

it's a live event.

Trump play.

They should. I agree.

Are they at the federal court?

I was— so, Max, I was thinking about this because we were trying to figure out who the mystery bid might be for LIV. I think Trump might just buy LIV and do the Trump Golf Tour and just win it. Yeah, just— yeah, I would watch too.

I would watch.

Hell yeah. Like, everybody's televised except for him. And then so he gets to say whatever number he thinks that he shot at the end of every round. And so if he beat— like, he might beat Michael Kim.

Yeah.

No, it should be televised.

Kim's not on live. Anthony Kim.

Sorry.

None of it is live. It's all— you only see his good shots.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like his shot.

Yeah.

Okay. You're right.

So they follow it.

They follow it. But you don't see all of his shots. There's no Trump tracker. You— in fact, that's a national security threat. If there's a Trump tracker, that account gets shut down immediately. And then whatever he says he shot, that's what we go with. And then we see like 3 highlights from his round. I would watch that.

See?

Okay, uh, you're— who's back, PFT?

Uh, my who's back of the week is Carl Ravitch. Yeah, Carl Ravitch is back. He got let go unceremoniously from ESPN last week, and, um, then he's just back on the air and he's just still calling games. I guess they gave him an option if he wanted to do more games for ESPN. He was like, yeah, sure. So I guess he's not fired after all. So that's kind of cool.

That's kind of— should have been fired.

I agree. That's kind of the Barstool Sports way, which is if you just— if you get fired, just keep showing up and then eventually you can— you can just continue to work for the company.

Buy the Pardon My Take book. Yeah, we— Hank, you talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. Hank just kept showing up.

My other—

Hank's original resume in the Pardon My book out on August 18th.

Yep. My other Who's Back of the Week is Kendrick Perkins, Big Perk, back on TV doing his analyst thing. He's a really sharp guy. Oh yeah, very sharp guy. I've always liked Kendrick Perkins, uh, Celtic legend actually.

Definitely, Perk. So he's the one champion.

The one thing that you might say about Perk is he might have, you know, some bias where he will openly root for the Celtics sometimes. He's like, shows him a little too much favor. So he dropped his top 5.

What? No one says that.

I say it.

Okay, you said it.

Well, you said people.

People may say I'm a person.

I'll say it too.

Yeah.

So that was people.

Yeah. People are saying it, but I forget what are we saying? He dropped that he's a little biased.

Oh, he's biased.

There's the Celtics.

I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Against—

that's most people.

Yeah, most people.

Most people.

So he dropped his top 5 list in the East. They didn't.

Whatever.

What? What?

Who's— who's— who's backing this, Hank?

It's PFT.

You had cinema.

Yeah. You talked about Spider-Man on a national sports podcast.

We're talking about Spider-Man last week.

Say what you're going to say, Hank.

Kendrick Perkins used to talk shit about, like, Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum, and then they, like, didn't invite him to any of the— like, he's not— he's not welcome in the building.

Was he wrong?

So then he talked shit, or he was— he was just— he wasn't wrong. He was just early.

He was talking shit.

Oh, okay.

Was he talking shit memes?

Memes, what's wrong?

Sneezing.

No sneezing. Okay. Uh, he was analyzing.

He was analyzing.

He's analyzing.

He's a good analyst, isn't he, Memes?

Did you see the sound that he made last week? Search Kendrick Perkins sound. I think he almost died on TV. Yeah. All right, boys, keep going. PFT, we'll play the sound after.

Okay. Number 1 in the East, 76ers. I think that's probably a fair—

okay.

Fair team to put at number 1. Um, they're, you know, I can't think of any other team in the East that would have a claim to that. Number 2 in the East, the Knicks. Okay, I guess they did play in the Finals last year.

Yeah.

Uh, number 3 in the East, the Hawks. Number 4 in the East, the Heat. Number 5 in the East, your Washington Wizards. Wow, top 5, top 5 team in the East.

Wow.

And I'm just going to completely gloss over the fact that he also had the Hawks at number 3. Yeah, top 5, because it's detrimental to my case. Um, but yeah, Perk knows ball. What can I say?

So the Celtics weren't on there?

I guess not.

Are you gonna get Steph Curry?

People are saying—

who?

Uh, John Corrales. Although I don't know, like, it's, it's aggregators and people online, like, they're all quoting John Corrales, who's like a real legit journalist. That what?

We have the perk sound.

I found the sound.

Listen to this sound.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

He made this sound on my pelvis.

I didn't know that my mic was on.

Listen to this sound.

The face that he makes too.

Listen to this sound. Austin last year as Jason Tatum was recovering.

And so all I'm saying is when you're looking at the way that they want to play.

And some of Austin last year as Jason Tatum was recovering. Last year as Jason Tatum was recovering.

That's the sound that Blake makes when he drinks his water too fast.

Oh, this is some like video game sound. It's like you get bonked on the head in Smash Brothers.

I think he had to sneeze and he was probably trying to like eat the sneeze.

What were you gonna say?

People, the online aggregators were quoting like, oh, the Celtics are trying to get Steph Curry. Here's what they're offering per Jon Krauss, who's like a legit reporter. So when I see that, I'm like, oh, this might be real. His report was basically like, the Celtics could have pieces and here's what they could offer. It wasn't like a report, like this was a negotiation that's actively happening. They're just like, he's, they're probably calling the Warriors. And if they are calling the Warriors, here's what they might offer. But it's not as legit as a report as I hoped when I saw like, got it.

The graph more like a wishing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In theory, this could happen, right?

Okay.

Right.

Okay. My who's back is weird baseball injuries because Harrison Bader is out for the year. I think this was finally reported on Friday. He got drunk on his scooter in San Francisco, hit a fire truck, and then the fire truck ran over his foot, which had already been injured. Yeah, he's out for the year now.

And I read that he had like— he's got a long history of having scooter accidents. Like going back to college, this was one of the red flags on—

that's very funny—

on his prospecting. He's like, hey, you might not want to let him ride scooters because he sucks at it.

It's just—

how did it come out he had to admit he was drunk? Like, how do you get that information?

People saw him out like doing a bar crawl basically on a scooter. The fact that he hit the fire truck and then the fire truck ran over him is just— how did that happen? If you just stopped that he hit a fire truck and hurt his foot, I'd be like Oh, well, all right. You know, that happened. The fire truck ran over.

Did the fire truck go in like reverse? I don't know. I don't get how. Because if you hit the back of it, maybe it was already going in reverse. But then I was thinking, don't, don't those big trucks, when they go in reverse, don't they make like a big, like a loud, like, yeah, they've got sirens beeping.

Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe he hit the side of it.

That, that. But it says he hit the back.

I don't know, but it's very funny.

I need to see footage.

The report is he went into the back of a fire truck and that fire truck then ran over his injured foot, which is insane.

Incredible.

Yeah.

Witnesses are saying that he was drinking at various points during the night before the scooter accident.

And then also Kevin Durant's back because did you guys see how he phrased his quote about the Sixers?

It was perfect.

It was perfect. So LeBron goes to the Sixers, ring-chasing allegations, super team allegations. You would think that Kevin Durant has every right to be like, hey, it's bullshit because they said this about me and now they're not saying about LeBron. But then the reaction would be, oh, Kevin Durant, you're a pussy, like, you know, you, you, you went to the team to beat you, everything. So he phrases perfectly. He said, when asked about LeBron James going to the 76ers, he says The last time they put 3 20-point scorers on a team, they said it was unfair, which was the Warriors team I was on. They've got 4 25-point scorers on this team, so hell yeah, I think they're going to be a contender. It's a perfect way to end it, to give— like, it wasn't a diss, it was a compliment. But yeah, he probably has a right to be a little upset.

I think it's different.

No.

How? Because the Warriors are just— the Sixers haven't won in 40 years.

I mean, you guys have a super team.

The Warriors just beat him.

You guys have a super team.

That's good.

See, you just did the thing that I said the people would do.

But the Warriors had just won.

You had a super team.

The Warriors had just won.

Super team.

They had won without him and then they added him so that the Sixers haven't won shit.

Namdi Asamoah again.

Yeah.

You're saying that between Jaylen Brown, LeBron, you guys are going to be so sick when they win.

Oh, the Warriors.

Well, because Hank's going to be the most—

that face. They're not going to win.

There's a lot. There's a long way to go before that happens.

Yeah, it's true. I mean, Perk did have him number one superteam.

It's crazy, Max, that you wouldn't say— you're saying the Dodgers have won the World Series, but you won't say the Sixers like they're the same team.

So true.

Baseball's completely the same team. Baseball's—

if you won't even do the Dodgers in the past 2 years, Sixers haven't won anything.

Yeah, they got LeBron and Jaylen Brown. All right, Zach, finish off.

Shout out Hank.

My Who's Back of the Week this week's going to be JJ Watt because JJ Watt made his kid development debut. He went, uh, Burnley FC drops new kids. Oh yeah, took him 2 years, which that's a commendable feat, uh, but 2 years and Somehow the lines don't exactly line up, boys.

Yeah.

On the shoulders.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You got to think, though, like they— he designed them for soccer players that aren't— don't have shoulders.

No, look, there's a guy right there.

Looks like a pretty standard shirt.

Trying to help him out.

Yeah.

I'll say this.

I think it's a fashion choice.

It's a nice cream.

Terrible choice. Everything else about the jersey is nice.

Yeah.

The cream. It's a good cream.

It's got to connect.

You know what? I bet if they wanted to, they could go back and fix that.

Yeah, probably. Probably wouldn't cost a lot.

Just a full remake.

Yeah, they got to connect them. Let's be honest. So they got to connect them. They got to connect them.

I feel you got to connect week one.

They're very attractive jerseys, except you got to connect them.

They're great jerseys. Other than that, got good jerseys.

Or is he just a hot dude?

No, both.

Fair, fair.

Both. Gotta say, what'd you do for the other 729 days, 23 hours, and 40 minutes? That's not nice.

Oh, design of the kit.

Ouch.

Did you guys see, by the way, the one last— who's back? Kyle Whittingham. I'd be nervous if I were a Michigan fan. You see his quote? He said, I just think a rivalry can be intense and emotional without the hatred factor. I don't think there's any place for that personally. Ah, dude.

Yeah, good luck.

You gotta fucking hate Ohio State. You don't think Ryan Day hates Michigan? He hates them. That's a crazy quote. You can't— you gotta have the hatred. Yeah, that's too nice. That's too nice for the rivalry. You gotta have the hatred. Okay, um, let's get to our interviews. We've got Dan Lanning, Matt Rule, and then we're gonna do our Mount Rushmore on the other side of both coaches.

Dan Lanning's brought to you by our good friends over at Jose Cuervo Devil's Reserve Cuervo, it's the best. Cuervo Devil's Reserve, it's pineapple jalapeño infused tequila, like a spicy marg in a bottle. Smooth, delicious. Devil's Reserve, it's the perfect drink for when mischief is on the menu and it's time to listen to the little devil on your shoulder. Pour around the shots, get ready to raise a little hell. It's available in multiple sizes. You got 50ml shooters, perfect to bring to your party or your tailgate. Go to your local liquor store or go to cuervo.com. Purchase your own bottle of Devil's Reserve and raise a little hell. Please drink responsibly. And now here's Dan Lanning.

Okay, we now welcome on a very, very special guest. It is Oregon head coach Dan Lanning. Coach, good to finally have you on. I know we only have you for a few minutes because it's Big Ten Media Day and you're getting pulled in a million directions, but we've wanted to have you on for a long time, so it's good to finally see you. Uh, I'll start with an easy one. Championship or bust this year?

Yeah, just easy question.

Yeah, easy, easy.

Uh, take care of business, right? What's in front of us. We'll see what— no, I wouldn't say that. I would say, uh, be the best version of us.

Okay.

Do you feel like that's where I'm sitting right now?

I think yes.

I—

listen, you're a fantastic head coach. I'm not— it's not— it's different than a hot seat. We've had coaches sitting here and we've blatantly said, hey, you're on the hot seat. You're not on the hot seat. You're far from the hot seat.

But it feels like this year you guys have a roster We got a good team.

I'm ready to say championship or bust.

That's—

are you cool with that?

I'm comfortable, please.

Okay.

Yeah, comfortable with it.

You're comfortable? I'm comfortable with you saying that.

Yeah.

You want to be the best, the best version of you, is that what you said? Absolutely.

I want to be the best team we can possibly be.

So there's things we—

well, there's things you can't predict, right? There's things that are going to happen within a season. I think every year, you know, the ball bounces a certain way, a player gets injured, things might happen. Um, but I do think we have a team that's really capable, for sure.

I actually— so I was listening to an interview that you were doing, and, and I had a question about it because you You wrote on a— was it a mirror?

Like your goals? Yeah, I always put my goals on the mirror.

Okay.

And one of your goals was to be the best father on the team, best husband on the team. Is that an analytical thing you guys break down? Like, you guys all sit around, it's like, who was a good dad this year?

100%.

Okay.

No, that was back when I was a GA at Arizona State. It was more of like a just competitive goal for myself because I could feel that that wasn't necessarily the internal focus. You know, you're competing to get a job at that point.

Right.

I'm making $1,200 a month. I'm on EBT, I'm riding a bike to work. It's like, hey, yeah, don't forget to be a dad.

Right, right. And you also took off— you had NFL coach on there and you took it off.

Yes. So that's off, not on there anymore.

Not going to get back on there.

No, I don't think so. You know, I'm in a different place in my life.

I like that.

I like—

I'm in a different place in my life.

Yeah.

I do think that Oregon, it could be one of those jobs where you always look for the next thing. I think that's something— it's larger than football coaches. It's, it's everywhere in life. But I feel like Oregon could be one of those jobs that if you decide, if you commit to Oregon, that would be a great place to spend your entire career.

It's unbelievable.

I look back later and be like, that's— I was just an Oregon guy, you know.

I don't know how much time you guys have got to spend. Have you spent any time in Eugene?

I haven't been. I really— wait, it's on my bucket list. I'd love to have you.

But there's things you don't really— I think outside looking in, you're like, oh, the jerseys, the helmets, the cool— the cool— the topography of the, the land. I mean, how the coast— I just got, got off the coast in Oregon. The mountains, it's just It's a really special place. And then it's a fan base that absolutely loves their team. So getting to spend time there, see the investment they have, it makes it special.

Do you ever get in the zone when you're giving a pregame speech? Because I don't know if you know this, but your pregame speeches go viral pretty much every year. I don't know how someone keeps, you know, taping those. You got to— you got to find the leak in your locker room because they just go out there every year. But you, you do motivate better than I think a lot of guys out there. And I watch him and I'm like, Fuck, this guy's awesome. So do you get in a zone where you're like, oh, I feel it now. I, I'm in a zone specifically for this speech.

Yeah. I think you're just trying to do your job in the moment. And, and I, I think motivation's overrated. You've probably heard me say it like these guys gotta go out and play the game. But ultimately as a coach, you're sitting there saying, okay, what can I say in this moment that's gonna allow these guys to perform? Uh, there's been a couple games that I thought I gave really good pregame speeches that didn't work.

So, mm-hmm.

It, that's not what it's about. Yeah. Um, but it's, it's certainly fun to, to say, okay, I'm gonna do the best I can to get these guys ready to go play.

Do you ever watch back your own? Tape and get motivated by yourself? No, I would do that all the time. Really? Yeah, I'd be like, look how awesome I looked.

Do you go back and watch your podcast?

No, actually I don't. Yeah, yeah, fuck. Also, you got me there. Yeah, I hate the sound of my own voice.

But if I were you, I mean, you're also very creative with some of the ways that you choose to motivate your players. Like, I remember, uh, I don't know how you came up with this one, but you decided to just smash a Washington helmet with a baseball bat. Um, that's really creative. That's so crazy.

You guys, you know what that was?

Right and left brain.

We had not been playing great in the second half of games. We'd struggled. And I called Coach Bellotti, who was, you know, Hall of Fame coach at Oregon. And I was like, hey, you got any ideas to come outta the second half? And I feel like we're making the corrections we need to make. He goes, yo, Dan, sometimes I would just, you know, smash shit. I said, all right. So that's where it started. You know, you just dig a little deeper and try to find something. And I didn't actually hit the helmet. You know, our strength coach Wilson Love did it with a big sledgehammer. Yeah, but now that helmet's sitting at the house. Turned out to be good.

Yeah, you smashed it. It worked. You smashed it when it works pretty good. What was it like at Georgia? Like, who was the one that was a good cop and who was the one that was bad cop? Like, between, between you and Kirby?

Oh man, everybody.

Because he's a pregame speech guy too.

Oh yeah, but he's always, he's always bad cop. Everybody else is good cop around Coach Smart. No, he's, uh, honestly, he has an unbelievable temperament. I always felt like Whenever things were rough and it wasn't going smooth, you know, you felt, you know, the calm in the storm a lot of times, especially in front of the players, right? Not necessarily always. And when you thought you might be doing really well, it was, you know, it was chaos. It was, it was bad cop. So I think he does— he understands people. He can really, uh, ride high and low, uh, and does a good job playing off of it.

Yeah, we can do like real quick because we don't have that much time, but I am fascinated to hear about the, uh, the first job that you got. And how you did that drive across the country.

Yeah.

How long was it? You were going—

Around 13 hours.

With Todd Graham, right, at Pitt?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was a high school coach at Park Hill South, was kind of waiting for an opportunity. I ended up meeting with Keith Patterson. When I first got to Pitt, nobody was there. I was waiting in the lobby and Eric Thatcher's the first guy I met. He's actually a scout now for the 49ers. And he said, hey, the coaches are gone. So I stayed the night, met with him the next day. They said, hey, we got a job for you for $800 a month. My wife was pregnant at the time. We had a 1-year-old. Didn't tell him I had a house, had a job. So it, you know, it didn't make a lot of sense, but it made a lot— it's made a lot of sense since.

So when you, when you decided to get in the car and drive, you didn't know if Coach was gonna be— it was unannounced?

Yeah. So I'd gotten a call around Christmas saying, "Hey, we might have a job for you. We'll call you after signing day." And they, they— I didn't get a phone call. And this is the closest I'd ever been to getting a Division I job.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

So I said, "Well, I guess, I guess I gotta just drive there." I'm gonna show up. So I went and did— I taught elementary PE, so I did elementary PE that day. I did after-school weights, and I drove through the night and drank a lot of Mountain Dew and listened to some crazy music.

And that's awesome.

Changed into a suit in the gas station right before I got there.

Do you remember what you were listening to on the way? That's a big factor.

Yeah, a little bit of anything and everything. I, you know, I, I— it feels like in 2011, were you still listening to burnt CDs? Is that still then, or—

that might have been probably right at the tail end.

It depends how old the Star Wars.

Yeah, because I feel like I didn't have— maybe I did have it at my first iPhone then. Yeah, it's hard to say.

Yeah, yeah, it's all kind of a blur. Yeah, I remember the Mountain Dew. I remember, you know, when you're really tired driving and you roll the window down, you're like, yeah, yeah, like yourself a little bit because I drove through the night. It was one of those moments. But, um, yeah, I don't really remember the music. I remember some of the phone conversations on the way. Yeah, people telling you like, what are you doing?

Turn around.

Yeah, it's an awesome story and it's an incredible rise that you've had. Was there another moment after Pitt? Because I think you went, what, Pitt, then ASU, and Sam Hooten, like all over the place. Was there another moment where you're like, is this gonna work out? Like, am I— especially with kids, like, you start to wonder after a while, right?

So, because we went, we went Pitt, Arizona State, Sam Houston State, and then I have one more year I could GA. And this is probably one of the best decisions I ever made, but I had to go interview. I interviewed at Alabama to be a GA there. It was the last year. This time there was a time frame of like how long you get to be a graduate assistant. Um, and, uh, I got the opportunity to GA with Nick Saban on that staff. You had Kirby Smart, Mario Cristobal, Mel Tucker, Billy Napier, Lane Kiffin. We win a national championship. It was probably the most I ever learned in football, you know, that year specifically of like, okay, here's where I got to go and get to. And then luckily enough, after that, I was able to join Mike Norvell at Memphis, was there 2 years and then Georgia for 4 before. Yeah, before coming here.

That's awesome. So, so this offseason has got to be pretty interesting for you because you got 2 new coordinators.

Yeah.

And then I don't know what the conversations were like behind the scenes. You had a quarterback that some were saying could go top 5 in the NFL draft this year. And with NIL, it's a little bit different now because there is an option they can go back to school and still make some money that way. You as a, as a coach, do you have a conversation with them? Do you say, hey, here's what we can do for you next year? Or because I know in the back of your head, it's also probably, you know, pretty important for you guys to go on to the next level, get paid, have success. That's good for the program, too. Um, so what were those conversations like this offseason?

Yeah, you try to be a sounding board and you try not to be selfish, right? Like, but you become so close to these players that you want them to make the best decision for them. Um, there's guys that come into my office and, you know, Ken Sadiq this past year, I'm like, Kenyon, you got to go to the NFL, you're going to be a first-round pick. It's a little different at quarterback, so that conversation was a little different for Dante just because of experience of quarterbacks that leave early and, and what that looks like. But it was really just a great conversation. It's like, whatever you decide I want to be a part of it and be there for you. Um, and then yeah, of course deep down you're like, I hope this— I get a chance to coach this guy one more time because it could be special.

Yeah. And your, uh, your coordinators, how'd you— so you promoted from within, right?

We're Will Stein guys, by the way.

Yeah, we are. Yeah.

Well, he just—

he basically was like, were you Will Stein UTSA guy?

No, no. So can I get a little—

it's literally like a month ago we started. Yeah, we hosted the Kentucky Sports Radio once a year, uh, for our friend Matt Jones and we had him call in and he's like, hey, I've been a listener since like day one. And we're like, well, if you like us, we like you.

So that's it. That's all it takes.

Yeah, we're Will Steinbacher.

It doesn't matter.

He could suck as a coach and we'll be like, no, that guy's awesome.

We loved Nathaniel Hackett for 14 weeks.

Yeah, right.

Because he was a friend of ours.

But he still likes the show.

No, Nathaniel Hackett just came on the show. There's a difference. Liking the show is lifetime.

Okay.

Coming on the show, you get like a year. You get like a comedy of errors on the football field before we start to call you out. So yeah, you've got at least a year.

I've heard you guys say some nice things. Yeah.

I've heard you say some other things.

You guys have been pretty good.

I love how you shoot it straight.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

It'd be a fun seat to sit in.

All right, so shooting it straight, what were you on after the Penn State game?

Great question. I like Zen.

Yeah.

I really don't talk about it though. So here we are, you broke me down, I'm vulnerable.

Okay.

But no, I stick 'em in my pocket and I ran out and so our guy got me some more and I have more. But honestly it was just juice, man. You've been a part of it.

It was awesome.

Yeah, it was great.

It's just juice.

But it's, you know, it's funny when your son has to be like, Dad, everybody at school says you're on drugs.

Yeah, no, I, I, I just had juice, man.

It's fun to be a part of that environment. Was wild.

Yeah, like we, we joked about it, but like at the end of the day, I would much rather have that than like a coach have a massive, massive win and then come off and be like, yeah, we didn't play well, like we're just trying to get to next week. It's like that, those, you got to celebrate those moments.

There was a moment in that game, and I know that Penn State season didn't turn out the way that, that—

oh no, you killed him, you killed James Franklin.

Well, We didn't. Yeah, it didn't work out after that. But in that game, there was a moment in that game where I said, hey, if we, if we win this game or lose this game, I'm really proud of our play. Like, they put everything they had, and I felt like coaches did too. Like, I was exhausted after that game.

Yeah.

And, uh, I didn't play a snap.

Yeah.

So it's just one of those games where you felt like you gave it all, and it was exciting to be a part of.

Yeah. So I like, I like the human emotion.

High on life, man.

Yeah.

I like that you had that type of, uh, enthusiasm. It was fun to watch.

Yeah. There was, uh, I, I don't know if you can take all the credit for winning that game because I think our guys might have had a little hand in that too. Our guy Max gave a pump-up speech to the crowd.

I heard he recorded—

he recorded a video. He did. He led the We Are chant that day, and it was so bad that Penn State football was like— yeah, Frank was like, I can't work here anymore, it's over. Yeah, it was, it was that bad.

Thanks, Max, I appreciate it.

It was pretty terrible stuff.

You go to a couple of our other games this year, it'll be—

yeah, you'll get them. We'll get them to any game you want. Is there a part of you that— now this is a loser question, and I apologize in advance, but is there any part of you that's like, hey, last 2 years didn't go well, but we did lose the national champion. So like, we know where we're, we're getting to these games where it's like we're on this stage. We just got to finish these games. You lost Indiana, you lost to Michigan. It's like you're there or no, or Ohio State. Ohio State. I forgot, it was Michigan, Ohio State, then Indiana. Big Ten just wins so many titles now. It's like you lose track, you know what I mean? As a conference, we just keep winning. But are you— is there any part of you that is like, we're, we're there, we're, we just gotta fucking get one over.

Like, well, I think a part of you recognizes what we've been able to accomplish the last few years is, is, um, certainly special. We've had a really good team the last few years, but the competitor in you wants to go take care of business. And there's only one team that gets to be happy at the end of the year, and it hasn't been us yet. So yeah, uh, that motivates you 100%.

I guess thinking now to the Indiana game, that game was over so fucking fast.

Yeah, turnovers start off rough. Yeah, you know, pick six. It was That wasn't a fun one to be a part of, but I know a lot of people would probably switch places with us and love to be at that game.

Yeah.

All right.

We know, we know you got to run in the second half.

I mean, I went to JMU. I'm glad that we lost to you. I don't want to be part of that game.

Good second half.

Great second half. Great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Kudos.

Incredible second half.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was the second half of the year. I've been telling people after that game was over, everyone was like, oh, that's garbage time shit. And I was like, actually, no, you did not want Jamie to score on that final.

Actually, both of our teams kind of pieced up Oregon because The Badgers scored a touchdown against you and that was about that. We didn't score touchdowns last year. No. So yeah.

What are you, are you guys doing it this year or what have you decided?

We're going to try to score touchdowns. Yeah.

Yeah.

We're, we're trying to slowly, you got to, you know, as a coach, you can't just do it. You can't overload the guys right away. So maybe like we'll do an install of the touchdown plays at some point. All right, Zach, Roback question. RHOPACK.com promo code, take 20% off your first purchase. Cuzos, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts, rowback.com. Go ahead, Zach.

What are you doing today, Coach? I, uh, did have a quick question for you. Uh, whether it's the, uh, kind of freshman dinners at the house or taking the entire team to the beach, I was curious if you could maybe speak to the importance of like building that relationship with the team, not just on the field but also off the field, that it seems that you do so well.

Yeah, I think everybody in right now in college football is trying to act like the only thing that matters is transaction. I think still it's transformation, you know, when it comes to relationships with your players. We've been really lucky Um, the last few years that we haven't lost starters in the transfer portal. You know, I think we're going into year 5 now and we've been able to keep the good players on our team. And I think a lot of it goes to the relationship that exists outside of that. And then just, you know, football's huge, right? But you know, the things that I've experienced in my— for my family, um, you know, moments in life make you recognize that football is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the only piece of the puzzle. So for me, I want our players to always recognize that, uh, and get to enjoy it. Maybe we don't smell the roses much, right? That's not we're not sitting there enjoying the journey, but you got to enjoy who you get to do the journey with. And we want to create those moments for them.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention, your tattoos are awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I'm getting some more. Yes.

What do you think about that?

Something that I'll show you guys once we're up.

You will. You kind of like you. You're a shocking tattoo guy where it's like, well, no, it's like because you see a coach, they always have, you know, long sleeves on.

Yeah.

They're on. Yeah. So like when I saw it, I was like, holy shit, those are some tats.

Like KD, Kevin Durant.

Yeah.

He's got like he takes the jersey off just tatted up. You should get barbed wire.

Barbed wire, you think that'd go a long way? I think we're bringing it back.

Tribal.

Yeah, that would be cool.

All right, so this is how you guys beat Penn State. Okay, this was— this is—

oh, I think I saw this.

Yeah, yeah, you saw it.

It's—

yeah, Max, you have to listen.

I want to warn you, you give some pretty inspiring speeches.

Not this good.

You're going to want to run directly through that wall afterwards.

All right, here we go.

So Max, Max, shut up.

Shut up, Max.

Shut up. We're doing an interview.

Oh, so it didn't go live?

No, it did. For the locker room, they said put it in.

What's up, Happy Valley? It's Hank and Max here from Pardon My Take.

Today's the day. Today is the day that we once again remind America who has the best stadium atmosphere in college football.

So we're gonna need everyone to get loud, we're gonna need everyone to get wild, and we're gonna need everyone to get unruly.

All right, now let me hear it from all 106,000 of you in the We are, we are, oh no, we are so good, man.

It's so good.

Yeah, why they're giving me a hard time. How intimidating was that to, to hear that live?

It was— was it—

they never put it— they never played it.

Yeah, no, they did, they did. So you guys had a— had an advantage there because that was, that was some of the worst stuff in our corner.

Yeah.

Oh, that was a fun environment.

That's part of what makes the Big Ten special.

It was great.

Yeah, getting to play in that, in that game, it was, uh, yeah, a lot of fun.

Last, last question. Is there one jersey combo that you're like, we can't lose in these? Like, we know—

I haven't thought—

no, you got to think about that.

Yeah, you have it. Yeah, you have to wear it every day because you guys have— no, no, no. But like the big game, if I knew that and thought about that.

Yeah, the big game.

Like these are the special, like almost like Batman or like a commemorative one to Phil and Bill Bowerman's relationship last year against Oregon State. That, that one certainly meant a lot.

Okay.

Done some cancer awareness ones that I'm a big fan of. I'm rocking Ollie's shoes right now. Ollie made these shoes at Doernbecher Hospital so that the money made off of these shoes go back to the children's hospitals.

That's awesome.

This guy wants to be a cook, so you see it's got like the spatula.

Oh, that's sick.

So we got like recipe food on the side.

So how many pairs of shoes do you have?

More than I ever in my life.

What size are you?

13.

Shit.

What are you?

12.

I would have been hitting you up for some shoes.

Yeah, would it work?

I got the—

What are you wearing? What are the Z— Oh, New Balance.

Yeah, I got the Grateful Dead ones. That was actually—

I'm a big Deadhead.

It was actually unfair. You guys played that game against my alma mater in Wisconsin. So that was, that was fun.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite gear. And I honestly, I mean, I like the Dead, but not— I think you're a bigger Deadhead.

Well, I mean, you are a drug guy. We saw you after Penn State.

No, no, no.

Is that what that means?

No.

So are you—

oh no, dude, we don't do drugs.

Is there, is there one, is there one uniform combo where you guys can't run the football? Because I do see some Oregon football uniforms and I'm like, a little candy ass. Yeah, be careful, but they're not going to be able to run the football.

If you see that, come out.

I'll let you know.

Let me know.

Yeah, early.

No, there are some candy Let me know when you see it. I need a message.

You're all fast, but there's a fine line.

What are the fast guys holding the football?

Yeah, but there's some guys— there's one that you get pushed around.

Yeah, so you're thinking maybe alternate uniform, big guys wear one uni. Yeah, fast guys.

Now we're talking.

Love it. Now we're talking.

All right, you do actually have to go. We've gone as long as possible. Thank you so much, Coach.

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Okay, we now welcome on a very, very special guest. It is head coach from Nebraska, Matt Rhule. Coach, good to see you. How are you feeling about the Cornhuskers? Let's start easy one. The, the, the— are the tides turning? Are we feeling like this is the year that everything kind of takes that big step forward you've been looking for?

I think so. You know, we spent 3 years, you know, we won, I think, 5 games our first year in the conference, 6 games the second year, won the bowl game, 7 games last year. And You know, this is the first group of guys I've had for 4 years. Now, college football has changed. They're not all those guys. But I brought, I brought 2 guys here to media day who've been there since before I got there. And so I think they kind of know what to expect. Like they know what the Big Ten's about. They know the teams we're playing. We have a great schedule, a tough schedule, but a chance for us to show what we can do. So I'll be honest with you, I'm excited about this group.

So because you are incredible at the turnaround, like the Temple Temple was one of the best jobs that anyone's ever done in terms of turning a team around. Baylor, same thing. Do you see some of the things that you started to see at Temple and Baylor with Nebraska where you're like, okay, these are the signs that I know things are going in the right direction?

Yeah, you know, I probably get— sometimes I get a little too much credit for what happened there. Like, you know, you win in football with good players and good coaches, right? And so it took us a couple of years at each of those two places. Like my first year at Baylor, we were 1-11. And there was no portal back then. Like, those kids, those are the same kids that went 11-1 in the regular season 2 years later. But it was just, you know, all pro players like Jalen Petrie and Terrell Bernard and those guys just growing up. And so I feel that way. I think we went into last year and everyone was like, year 3, year 3, Coach Rule does it in year 3. And, you know, we were off to a pretty— we were 6-2. We were kind of still relevant. And down the stretch, we just, you know, we didn't play well enough. But I see the guys, you know, bigger, faster, stronger. But more importantly, like, you know, you got to expect to win. Like, you can't, you can't walk into a fistfight hoping to win. You better, you better expect to win.

And so I see some grown men now that are like, all right, we know what we have to do. And, um, I mean, I'd be, I'd be, I'd be really disappointed if we weren't that type of team that in the middle of the year the coach is like, damn, we got to play them this week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Coach, I'm only going to ask you questions that were asked to you by, uh, Will Compton, uh, former linebacker. Um, what's your philosophy on being a man?

What's your philosophy on being a man?

Yeah, yeah, manliness.

What it— Will's projecting.

I think the true definition of man, like, we, we, you know, we try to throughout the course of our football program, we try to teach guys how to be a man, right? Like, and I think it's like sometimes it's simple things like just being on time and being respectful.

Yeah.

Um, I really think a true, a true man though, when he walks into a place, like, the place is better because he's there, right? Like, you make every place better. You make every person there that's maybe weaker than you or needs help, you make them feel a little safer. Like, you know, you just leave places better than you found them. And so I think to be a man, you have to be tough, you have to be an alpha, but you also have to be, uh, willing to sacrifice for those who need it. So being tough enough to do what's needed and being a savage when you have to, but being caring and loving and taking care of the people that, that depend on you, I think that's the ultimate. I'm proud of Will for his, uh, for the Dad's Podcast. You know, uh, I, I've enjoyed watching that and following that. I think that's, you know, that's what being a man is, man. Being funny, being tough, having a great time with your friends, and then turn around also being a good dad.

Yeah.

And making sure you podcast about it and tell everyone that you're a good dad. That's a very important piece.

You know, I never thought about it.

Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, yeah.

We should start a podcast called Being a Man and we just— man, you just do terrible things and then also just post the one good thing we did.

I think you're talking about the Tate brothers. That's pretty much exactly what they've been up to. Uh, I'm done We're done with Will Compton questions. Those are over now.

Was he taking notes when like, yeah, yeah, we all know how to be a man, but why don't you pretend that we don't?

We can rank burgers. We can do that next too if you want. No, I did have a serious question about the jobs that you've had because you go to these different places and I know that like Baylor has, you know, a history and what their offense has looked like there. Nebraska kind of the same way. How much do you have to lean into the DNA of a place and what it has been in the past and the past success that they've had? How much do you try to kind of absorb that and make it your own versus going and saying like, I know what I do well and what works for me and this is what we're going to do?

I think that's a— first of all, that's one of the best questions I'll get asked today. And, um, uh, if not the— this is my first interview of the day. It's also like, you guys, yeah, like, so we should just end it now because, yeah, because I, I, because as a coach, you know, you evolve. Like, this would be my 14th year as a head coach, and I remember my first year at Temple, I went in and we were terrible on defense. We were pretty good on offense. We had a dynamic young quarterback, PJ Walker. So next year I was like, "Hey, we're gonna be a spread team. We're gonna score 40." And we were 6-6. And I got to the end of the year and I was like, you know, I'd worked with Al Golden and we were Temple tough. Like we lined up in the I formation and we tried to kick your ass. And I was like, "Well, if it worked for Al and it worked for Steve," and I worked for Steve Adazio, like, "Why am I doing something different?" And so we went back to that and we beat everybody up.

And then I got to Baylor And that was probably, you know, hey, this is what I want to do. And I showed up there and, you know, I had 2 second-round receivers, Denzel Mims, Taequann Thornton. And I was like, all right, I learned then that each place you have to win differently at each place with a simple, like, an overall strategy. So our strategy's always been like, play great defense, you have to be able to run the football, um, you know, make plays in the passing game. And so it might look different. At Temple, it was the I-formation. At Baylor, it was a spread offense. But we were going to maintain that strategy with different tactics at each place. I get to Nebraska, Indiana. And Coach Osborne sits me down, he goes, now listen, there's going to be 40 to 50 mile an hour winds here when you play here. You don't really believe that or know what that feels like until you get out there and it's 90 degrees my first year against Rutgers and there are 50 mile an hour winds in your face. You're like, oh, now I know why they ran the option.

And, um, honestly, they've outlawed cut blocks. I would run the option right now. I mean, it's the perfect place to do that. If they will— yeah, we ran a couple option plays our first year and you'd come out and the fullback would have to block the guy high because he can't block him low. And back in the day, they cut that guy and the ball would go for 80. It would go for like 8. So, so, but we, we have to lean into like, hey, the DNA of Nebraska is to be the most physical team on the field. And we haven't always been. And so you say like, why do I feel good about this year? It's like, and you can say it, but it takes, it takes work and time to get those guys that are 280 to be 310, to get those guys that are 310 to be 315. And so, but I agree completely with what you're saying. Like, you need to look at that place. How have they been successful? Nebraska's won multiple national championships under both Coach Devaney and Coach Osborne. So I'd be a fool, you know, Coach Osborne came in and talked to us in June and talked about how they practiced.

Like, I'd be a fool not to always lean into what they did and how they did it.

Yeah, it's a great answer. Yeah.

All right, you want to go best question to worst question?

Please.

Uh, remember the time you spit on yourself? What happened there?

I guess I spit on myself.

No, but it was, it was when you're at Baylor, you like really spit on yourself.

So So I get, I probably would be diagnosed with like severe ADHD and like probably somewhat severe anxiety.

Okay.

And so, which I think makes a good football coach, right? Yeah. 'Cause you're always like on edge thinking about everything and you're always like worried about what could go. So like during the games, man, I get dehydrated. Like, I mean like crazy. And so I remember I was at Temple, like I would constantly do this with my lips. People were like tweeting about me like, is he on crack? Is he on meth? Like what's wrong with him? And then, you know, at Baylor I spit 'em, but I've done a lot. I mean, you guys come play golf with me, I'll spit 'em. I'm pissing on myself every other hole. It's like, you know, I'm like, but I think it should be celebrated honestly. Like I'm just a regular guy. Like some of these coaches are gonna come in here, they're gonna have $2,000 suits. They do CrossFit in the mornings. Like I'm just, I'm just an average Joe that gets to coach football.

Well, that's a follow-up is I, I do a blog every year about the NFL coaches picture on media day or sorry, the owners meeting.

Oh, I remember. I was expecting to come in and get after you.

Those pants, man. I mean, listen, I actually said it this year when I, when I wrote up the whole pictures. Is like, I think we've gotten too pretty in the NFL. Like, there's a lot of, you know, and we like these guys, but like Sean McVay and like, you know, Matt LaFleur, like, a little too pretty. We need to go back to the days where, you know, Coach Rule is rolling out. It's like, that guy's never seen an iron in his life, and he might have slept in a Toyota Corolla last night. Yeah, but like, that kind of stuff.

But like, don't you want that?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

They had like, they had the owner's party. It was so The first 2 years were COVID, so there was no owners meeting. So my, going into my last year, they had the owners meetings. And so they started playing music and all the head coaches and GMs and owners are there. Me and my wife Julie, now Julie's a beautiful woman, she dresses really nicely. But me, regular guy, Matt and Julie, we got out on the dance floor, started dancing. We're the only people out there dancing. People were like mesmerized, like tweeting about it. I'm like, yeah, like it's a party.

Like, yeah.

And then if the bar stays open till 2, like you should stay there till 2.

Yeah.

And so yeah, like the picture didn't come off great the next day, But I believe that secretly there were a lot of guys out there that look like me that like, that like are like, you know what, I kind of respect it.

I love that. Did you look in the mirror though before when you saw the pants? You're like, ah, this is looking a big deal.

I didn't look in the mirror this morning.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, because you go down there like, hey, we have meetings. So I'm like, all right, walk down to the meetings. We'll listen, you know, these guys, one super— whatever, you sit in the room with like, you know, Mike Tomlin. I'm like, I'll just let Mike talk and I'll listen. All of a sudden, okay, we're gonna go outside and take a picture.

Yeah.

And because I'm one of the younger guys, they put me in the front. Like, I was just hoping to— yeah, I don't think I've taken a picture where I'm in the front row since like elementary school. I thought I'd be in the back next to Rabel or somebody.

Yeah.

So when you go outside, there's somebody that arranges you? They told you like, you stand in the front?

Just like, you know, like those guys had a lot more seniority and they all sat there kind of like— as I just—

they probably knew to like call dibs on where to stand because they'd done it before.

I guarantee you someone had worse, worse attire on than I did.

They were in the back.

They were in the back. Like, and so I look, you know, things happen in life, you learn. It's like, next time I'm just gonna go wedge myself in the back. Or some coaches didn't even go to the picture.

Yeah.

Um, but then we wouldn't have anything to talk about now, right? So it's like, it just kind of—

it's one of my favorites. I mean, yeah, I'm looking at it right now. It's just, you look so good. You look comfortable. You look the most comfortable out of anyone by far.

And that is being a regular guy.

Yeah.

I don't think there's anything wrong. That might be my new podcast, Regular Guy.

Yeah, do it on the bus and you'll—

you'll— I told Adidas, like, Adidas has like the best clothing. It's like fits great for our players. And I'm like, you guys need like a dad bod collection. Like, like, yeah, guys that want to go get a quick walk in, a little workout in, but you know, that extra material, you don't want to go keto, whatever, just give me like a nice loose fit and drape.

You know what they make now? They make sweatpants that look exactly like blue jeans. So if you look at them from across the room, you think that somebody's wearing denim, and then you put them on and they're, they're literally just like the same material as, as the heather gray sweatpants with the elastic waist.

I love it.

We gotta start investing in those.

I love this.

I feel like that's the next iteration of athleisure.

Yeah, just for like full suits that are just sweatpants.

Yes, just as much stuff as you can make out of a tracksuit material as possible.

Yeah, I can tell you this, I'm wearing a suit today, and unless someone dies, I won't have a suit on again until I have to.

Yeah, this day next year.

This day next year.

Yes.

I, uh, I was talking to somebody when I was on my way in here, and they, they work in Nebraska and they a little bit about you as a head coach. I was like, what does he not like to talk about? And they told me to ask you about, I guess you're an incrementalist, it would be the way that you would put it. Like day-to-day type stuff. Like they told me to ask you about big goals.

Yeah, well.

Do you have big goals?

Oh, absolutely. But I, you know, I read a quote in a book one time that said, you know, goals are easy, execution is everything, right? So it's like, yeah, I came to Nebraska to win a national championship, to win a Big Ten title, But I walk by every day and there's 5 national championship trophies as I walk to my office. And so I think that's my goal. That's why I work the way I work. That's why our coaches work the way they work. But I'm also like, okay, but every team is gonna, 18 teams in the Big Ten are gonna walk out the first day and talk about winning the Big Ten championship. So like, all right, well just tell me what we did today. Like, and so I just very much believe in like, hey, that's our goal. Like, and that I state that with our players. Like we're here to get to the CFP win the national championship. Um, but to do that, we got to do this, we got to do this. And so, you know, I have a, I have a young daughter who's 11, and she's like, she's the youngest, she's wild, she's fun, and she mocks my opening press conference still to this day.

Well, you know, I said something like, um, it, it, it won't— it will take— it, it will take time, it will be hard, but it will get done. And it's like, I have to remind myself that sometimes, right? Like, you're sitting there and you're like, God, it's year 3 and it hasn't happened yet. I'm like, and we've done some good things, right? We had been 10 years since we went to back-to-back bowl games and we did that this year. But I wanna hoist a trophy. Yeah. And so I just try to approach it like this every single day. But like, like you get to a game, you wanna win the game. So what do you have to do? You got, you gotta win the first play. Like I went to the Knicks game 4 when they came back from 29 down. I'm a diehard Knicks fan. Like Coach Brunson's a Temple guy. I like, you know, I follow those guys and like we're down by 29 at half. So what do, what do you do? You wanna come back and win the game? Well, I guess what, win the first possession.

Yeah.

And so just getting our players— I speak that way for our players, right? Because they, they have these goals. All right, we'll just, just win the first play. And after the first play, whether we won or lost, just win the second play. And it's, it's boring, but like, it's, it's how to play golf, it's how to play football, it's how to kind of be a great dad for Will, it's how to be a good man for us. Like, it's just kind of is what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's well said because you're right. Like, I mean, you can make these lofty goals, but the follow-through is, you know, it's just doing it every day.

Every day.

Yeah. Um, when was the last time you did the bull in the that I was in it.

Yeah.

Um, was it Temple?

No, I did it at Baylor. I did it at Baylor.

Can you tell me the story about the first time you did it at Temple? Because it feels like I've read about it, and it was like that was part of the turnaround, was like Coach Rule being like, hey, look, I'm in this.

Yeah.

And I'm going up against guys twice my size, getting knocked around. This is what we got to do to become physical.

So, so previous to that, like, when Al Golden was the head coach, we were trying to turn it around. Like, across the street from us, we had had a vacant lot. I mean, this thing had like, you know, needles in it and like hypodermic needles. It was like a, like a crack den. It was awful, right? Now it's pretty now, but, um, and we had great players, but they were young. Muhammad Wilkerson was a first-round draft pick. Junior Galette was an All-Pro. And but at the time, they didn't know how to play. And so one day I was like, I forget who we're playing, I put on a jersey and I put on a helmet, and we took the starting defense out there, and I put the 11 guys, and I was just the— I was the D-line coach at the time, and I hit every single guy, like, you know, just 1, 2, all 11 in that lot. Like, I don't— how I didn't get whatever is amazing to me.

Yeah.

And so that story kind of was in the program and guys would hear about that. And I came back as the head coach and as we were trying to make that turn, you know, like we were— it wasn't that we weren't tough, we just didn't know how to be tough yet. They were just young, right? I had great players. I had Hassan Reddick was a first-round draft pick. Dion Dawkins is one of the best left tackles in pro football. But they were growing. And one day I just put the pads on. I was like, let's go.. And I think to your point, like, you know, like what, what can I, I'm 51 years old. I'm a white dude with white hair. Like what, how can I relate to someone who's 18, 19, 20? Well, they probably love their family and I love my family and they probably love football and I love football. So we, we do have two things we can always connect on. So putting the pads on was like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this with you guys. And I, I tell our seniors every year like, hey, achieve this goal and I'll put the pads on and give you all one last hit on me.

But they gotta earn it. Yeah. I hope Justin Evans— he's out here, he's £315— I hope he earns that goal. And my wife begs me not to do it.

Yeah, I would say that it's probably a point where you're like, hey, I probably should stop doing this.

But I, I just think they have to feel like, hey, you know what, you know, I'm tough. Yeah, that's me. Like, I, I know you see me like, you know, kind of whatever, but guys, I'm in this with you.

Yeah, I think you might miss it too. I think you might miss the contact.

Yeah, just don't miss the next day.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, when you do it, it's the most exhilarating thing in the world, and then the next day you wake up, you're like I'm like, yeah, yeah, I shouldn't have done that.

Yeah. Uh, can we go back to the attire just real quick? How did you decide to become a vest guy? And also, the vests that you've worn, are they like standard issue vests? Because they look, I guess for lack of a better word, like smockish. Like, they look like they're wider than a normal vest might be. I'm just curious, like, do you have somebody that's made those for you? Or how— and how did you go about that?

I usually just go get— I just tell them to get like a baseball cage jacket for me, Right? So like I wore that at, I wore that at Temple all the time. Yeah. And so my thing is always like whatever I wear to practice, so I'll wear the same thing to practice every day. I try to wear something similar in the game, right? Like, so I wear, I'll go out there in camp and I'll have a either a t-shirt and shorts on or I'll have shorts and a cage jacket every day. So it's hot, you know, you're kind of miserable in it, but it feels like camp. And then I've just always worn that through. Now at Baylor, it kind of went viral my last year there. It didn't have sleeves on it. They gave me a smock and I was like, yeah, what I'll wear this. And then we started winning, and we started winning and winning, and then we were undefeated. And then I was like, I better keep this on. And then it's funny, I got to Carolina, they're like, do you want to wear a smock? I was like, I never want to wear a smock again.

That was not my— and the last year I wore a collared shirt. And, uh, but I'll go, I'll go back to the cage jacket this year. Like, I, uh, we might be done with the smocks though. Yeah, just, just the one with the sleeves off it. Like, it, yeah, it just, you know, it's not— but maybe 5 years ago, but now it's like I just put a K jacket on, go rock out. Yeah.

Okay.

How is, uh, the Anthony Calandria coming from UNLV? He's an electric player. How has it been having him work into the program? And like, pretty big shoes to fill. Patrick Mahomes was a really good quarterback. So how's that been?

Yeah, I think Anthony's been awesome. You know, the day— it's funny, the day that, that he committed to us, we thought we had a quarterback. It didn't work out, and we were kind of scrambling, and we were like, who's out there? And we brought 3 really talented quarterbacks in. And I, it's, it, you know, I still believe, I worked for a guy, Steve Adagio, he was with Tim Tebow. And he's like, I don't care how the quarterback, his mechanics, I don't care about anything. Like, you just have to find a guy who has it. And like, you can't describe what it is until you see it. But when you see it, you can't. So I told our guys, I'm like, listen, who, we'll know within the first 5 minutes of each guy who the guy is. And I remember Anthony, like, you know, the way we do it, they pull out, they pull out to the 50-yard line of the stadium, they get out. Out and there's a highlight film playing. Like, they— and they walk in and all the whole staff's there. And he got out and I watched it, like, his juice when he shook everyone's hands.

I watched his juice, like, when he dapped everyone up. And I was like, that's our guy. And, um, yeah, he's played at Virginia. He's from Florida. He played at Virginia. Like, throwing in Nebraska is going to be way different, right? We're going to play in snow, probably. We're going to play in cold weather. And so the spring, then we moved Spring Ball up to February where it was still cold, and, uh, he was awesome. Like, it didn't affect him, didn't bother him. So So, you know, to, to, if I'm gonna be an incrementalist and I'm gonna be like, hey, every day process all that boring stuff that is needed. But like, if I'm gonna be that guy, I need another guy on the other side who's like, all right guys, I got this. Like, hey, yeah, listen to coach.

Mm-hmm.

But like, let, let's have some swagger about ourselves and like, and let's back it up. And the thing I've seen about Anthony is he's got juice, he's got belief in himself, he's got elite confidence, but he's also gonna back it up. He'll be a great, I believe, yin to my yang.

Yeah.

Have you ever had a quarterback that from time to time slipped up and wanted to call you Coach Reid?

I've never had that.

I've never had that.

It never happened. You sure?

I've never had that.

No, I've never had that. Okay.

All right. You mentioned Coach Adazio a couple of times. Was he always just on the be a dude? Because that was one of my— I mean, be a dude is a great mantra.

I still have that. Probably have that on my phone somewhere. Like, I'll just— dudes being dudes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, Coach Adazio, like, he really turned around my career. I worked with Al Golden. I was the OC, and Al went to Miami and didn't take me. And Steve came in, and Steve was like, listen, my mentor, a guy named George DeLeon, had been his mentor. He's like, I'll give you a job through the end of recruiting, and then, you know, you'll have to move on. And so I stayed through the end of recruiting, got to the day after recruiting, and was like, literally like packing up my stuff. He walked in, he's like, hey, you're no longer the OC, but I'll make you the tight ends coach if you wanna do it. And I stayed with him and I had the best year of my life coaching. Like, his energy, his passion, it's been misinterpreted maybe some other times, but like, this is a guy you would want to go to war with. And, uh, you know, 2 years to the day from the— I was cleaning out my office, 2 years later I was being named as the head coach at Temple. And if Steve doesn't give me that chance, if he doesn't keep me around— and he also kind of reignited a passion in me, like, these guys don't need a CEO.

Like, from the outside, they need a guy who's in the trenches with them. That's who Steve was. He was an O-line coach as the head coach. And I think that really shaped me as an early head coach.

Yeah, yeah. You— I mean, that, that's kind of crazy. So when Al Golden didn't take you, were you like, what, what the hell's going on?

Well, it's just business, man. Like, you know, he needed a— he needed a— he, you know, he went to hire like an NFL OC. He actually hired Jed Fish, who's now the head coach of Washington, a great friend of mine. Um, and then I think he had someone else after him. But, you know, I was proud. You know, I was the OC at Temple. We turned that place around. We won 9 games. We won 8 games. Um, but it was kind of— we ground-and-pound physical offense. It wasn't something that was going to excite the fans. And he, he went to Miami and took other people. Um, but you know, everything happens for a reason, right? You know, look back at your life and these things you think are the worst thing that ever happened to you, you look back, you're like, thank God for that.

Yeah.

And so had I gone to Miami, I don't know where I'd be right now. Had I— had Steve not kept me, I don't know where I'd be right now. But that's why I attack every day. Like, I'm pretty grateful to be sitting here today.

Yeah.

You mentioned Dion Dawkins earlier. Awesome guy. Guy, one of the funniest guys in the NFL, I think. Like, what was he like in college trying to coach him? Like, was it hard to get him focused and to make him be serious for a little bit? Because he's like bouncing all over the place.

First of all, he's the same exact guy. Yeah. Um, he's probably one of my favorite players I've ever coached. Like, I'll, I'll be sitting there, I'll get a FaceTime at like 1 o'clock in the morning, it says snow on it. He keeps changing his contact. I'm like, bro, I can't look up snow. Like, um, but you know, he— so I So I get the job at Temple and I'm still coaching at the Giants and he's in North Jersey and someone calls me and says, listen, there's a kid that was gonna go to Cincinnati. He just got dropped. And like, this was like a movie. Like I go over to his house, I'm sitting there with him and his tape wasn't very good, but he is a big physical kid. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, well, you know, trying to make a decision. I don't really know how to be a head coach yet. And I'm like, can you dunk a basketball? And he's like, I can dunk a basketball. And his uncle's there. His uncle's a great dude, Nappy. He's like, He's like, let's go to the park right now. Let's go to the park.

He'll dunk a basketball. 'Cause I'm like, is this guy explosive enough?

Right?

So I kind of walk outside and I'm like, I think that's against NCAA rules to dunk up. I'm like, I don't wanna get fired before I get started. I was like, you know, don't worry about it. Let me go think about it and I'll call you. And guys, like romantic comedy, I'm walking to my car with Alan Mogridge, who's my O-line coach at the time. I'm walking to my car and I stop. I'm like, what are you doing? I turn back around, I walk back to him like almost like we're gonna embrace and like, you know, some, you know, some movie. And I'm like, if you're there on Sunday, you have a scholarship. And he came there on Sunday. He ends up being a second-round draft pick. And he was so good for me because, you know, I'd be losing my mind, snapping out at someone. He'd go, Coach, Coach, people skills, man, people skills. Like, he just calmed me down. And, you know, I think, I think if you want to be the coach you want to be, you have to have guys like that that, like, aren't intimidated by you. And, and I'm so proud of what he's done.

Yeah, he is an overcomer. He's an amazing things.

That's a great story.

I love that. The fact that he was, he was willing to dunk. He got far enough, he was about to— you knew that he wasn't lying to you at that point.

That's right, that's right.

You wouldn't drag my ass all the way out here if like you were just going to graze the rim.

That's right.

So you knew all you needed to know.

Um, all right, well, Coach, thank you so much. We have one last question. Zach's going to ask it. It's the Roback question. R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com, promo code TAKE, 20% off your first purchase. Q-zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Roback.com, promo code take. Ready, Zach?

Yes, sir. How we doing today, Coach?

Good.

That's great to hear. I had a quick question for you. I was wondering, uh, how does doing a show like House Rules, when it comes time to recruit players, you know, it does seem like a unique window into the program. Do things like this come up with the families and with the players? And if so, what was the impact?

Yeah, so that's really, really the reason we decided to do it. I, um, I was recruiting a kid a year ago, and his mom was like, you know, all these coaches keep telling me, like, I'm gonna help your son become a man, I'm gonna help your son do this. She's like, I don't want them to worry about that. Like, that's my I'm like, "You're not gonna get a job." She's like, "But then I started watching at the time some of our behind the scenes videos that we do." We have some of the best content guys in the world. Steven and Trey are like, like they just blow my mind with what they can do. And they would show like me talking to the team or me, whatever. And she's like, "And then I kept hearing the way you were talking, how you were like talking about being a man, about being a good person and how it relates to football." And she's like, "I get it. I, I would want my son to play for you." And I realized like I spend all my time, like I get on YouTube, I watch like Mike McCarthy's opening, talk to his team.

Like, I, I want that access so I could be a better coach, then I should give it. And so, uh, this year, I mean, right now our recruiting class, I mean, we'll probably have a top 10, top 5 class. I think part of it is like the parents, the friends, uh, the recruit themselves, like they get a chance to be around us. You know, we did House Rules to really, you know, highlight our players. Our players every week, you know, we had a different segment with them because I want them to build their own brand and start to do this stuff. So I think it's really, really helped.

Yeah, good question.

Good question, Zach.

And I love the shirt. Yeah, absolutely love it.

Yeah, we got a couple diehard Knicks. They were actually— Memes and Zach were both at Game 5 when you guys won.

Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's crazy, like, I got back and everyone's like, oh, what was New York like? I saw there was a fight. I'm like, I grew up in New York City. I took the subway to school my whole life. I'm walking down the street in New York City, I got police officers are hugging like, yeah, random guys. Like, it was the best day ever. In that city, uh, when we came back and won that game.

So, um, they almost got jumped by some Spurs fans though in San Antonio.

Yeah, tough day. A couple guys were throwing bottles, but you know, you're better.

You just won a title, who cares?

Yeah, I like my chances with you two. You guys, unless there were 10 of them, I feel pretty good about you.

They saw memes and they turned their ass around.

Yeah, yeah, there could be potential in this 3-man.

Yeah, there you go, team up. Um, well, Coach, thank you so much. Best of luck this year and really appreciate it.

Thank you guys.

Thanks, Coach. Before we get to Mount Rushmore, it's brought to you by our good friends over at Kraken. This episode is brought to you by Kraken, the official crypto trading platform of Barstool Sports. Real quick, everyone acts like they called Bitcoin early. Sure you did, buddy. Same way you called the Eagles after they won. When markets dip, everyone disappears. Markets go up and suddenly it's a full stat pack. Everybody's Suzy Colbert. We're not doing that. If you're going to invest, just use a platform that works no matter what's happening. That's Kraken. Over 13 million people use Kraken globally. It's user-friendly, reliable, doesn't let you down when things get interesting. Here's what you're working with: you get 600+ tokens to trade, over 11,000 stocks and ETFs, recurring buys so you can stack while you're out living your life, whatever that means for you. When it comes to investing, get off the sidelines, get in the game with Kraken. Kraken.com/barstool.

Okay, time for Mount Rushmore. The scores right now are myself, Memes, and Max 36 points, PFT 28 points, Hank and Zach 26 points. We're now in August. It's go time. It's go time.

Regular season starts now.

Kumbaya, kumbaya out the window.

Yeah, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

You want to do that? Gloves off. All right, we're doing the Mount Rushmore of worst places your girlfriend or wife takes you. Is everyone ready?

Yep.

Okay, we— what is the order?

We're first.

We're first.

Hank, Zach second.

Okay.

Third.

Okay. All right. We're going to go one, one. Pretty simple one. Shopping.

Yep.

Easy.

Brutal.

All right.

Going shopping. There's just nothing worse. Clothes shopping, furniture shopping, any type of shopping. You know, you're just going to be stuck on your phone, sitting in a chair, walking around. Even if you go— even if you go shopping and it's for you, that's even bad.

That might be worse.

It might be worse. It's just shopping in general because then you get— you have to— oh, you look good in this. You know, you got to try on 7,000 things.

You're just going— the worst is when you're sitting outside of of the dressing room and it's just, oh, and it's just back and forth. What do you think of this? What do you think of this? What do you think of this? And then it's like, oh, you should try this on. You should try this.

Try this on. I know what size I wear. Yeah, it all sucks.

Yeah, sucks. Okay. You guys like that pick?

It's a good pick. We had it.

Yeah.

We are going to go with our one, one, which is court.

Hmm.

Oh, okay.

Court.

If your wife or girlfriend's taking you to court, it's, it's, it's a bad day.

Okay.

It's not, it's not a fun drive. You're not in a good spot.

It's relatable.

Crossed up.

Yeah, good one. That's good. Okay, court.

Good pick.

It seems like— was that Zach?

Everyone hates that. I would hate going to court.

That was your— you pick Zach?

Yeah, just something like, listen, if, if, if there's ever a worse place for your girlfriend or wife to take you, she takes you to courts, you're in a bad spot.

Yeah.

Yeah, who's gonna come back from that, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

I think she takes you to court, there's not even— you don't even get like the reconciliation intimacy.

Yeah, facts.

No, there's no fucking.

No, nope. Eh, court, court can make you horny.

Hate fucks one thing, court fucks—

I don't know. Okay, okay. Um, you have two picks.

Well, I was gonna take court first. Uh, so my number two, I'm gonna go I think he was being sarcastic.

I do too.

Go after him, dude.

No.

Kumbaya is out the window.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

No, listen, I'm not worried about what you guys think. I'm worried about the people.

Okay.

Okay. You second-guess yourself so hard.

Always.

Yeah.

We're in last place.

All right.

It's a— there's like—

I mean, I think our number 2 pick is out the window.

Half that.

Oh, I got it now.

I got it now.

How about a chance? You don't get a chance. Half the Mount Rushmore's after the first round, Hank looks and he looks like, like he's like, I did a different assignment than everyone else.

That's how it is. But I thought, whatever.

That was your 1-1 though.

Yeah.

Okay. And we're not, we're not, we're not, we are not, we are not doing our one.

Come on, Zach, you have to do your one too.

Come on.

And so that's a rule.

Okay.

All right. I'm gonna go to a work party where you don't know anyone.

Yeah, it's a good pick.

One of the work parties. I don't know anyone.

Add it on there.

And then next, I'm gonna go to their high school reunion.

Okay.

That's kind of a similar vibe. But I just keep thinking back to that video with Beav and Kate. She's getting out of the car.

Yeah, that's a good— Yeah. It's a good one.

Okay.

All right. The one-two.

One-two. Rip it. Rip one-two.

We can't. We're in last place.

You could probably get it on the way back.

Yeah.

What do you think about, uh, six? Hospital?

We're gonna go with the doctor.

Oh yeah. Okay.

We had it. Yeah. I get tricked and go. I'm like a dog in my house. I get tricked and go to the doctor. My wife would just be like, hey, you got to go to this address today. I'm like, what? And then I show up and the next thing you know, I'm getting my entire body scanned by someone who I've never met before.

Are you— are you saying like going to meet her, like going with her to a doctor?

Either or.

Yeah, the doctor.

Hey, like, or if you're going to the doctor and you're unhealthy and she's sitting there, you're like, oh shit, like, I feel even worse now. Like, you can't. Leave the doctor and be like, oh, it's good. Like, I'm in, I'm in great shape, I'm healthy. Like, if they're like, yeah, you're overweight and you got to fix some things, and she hears that, you have no choice but to like do it.

I want to know what your number 2 was so bad.

What are we doing, boys? We got our whole board. Yeah, we got our entire board.

I like, I like 15 or 11. Both of those I think are good.

What about 6?

Oh, 4.

6, 3.

Stop.

16.

Shut up. 3 is good too.

11.

No, no, no. All right, so you want, you want to do 15? What about 5? Oh, shut up.

I like 5 as well.

Shut up.

What about, do you still have your 1-1?

Or 17? 17, I love.

What about 18?

We could get that.

5, 20, 17.

We'll get on the, on the, on the bottom.

5, 20, 17, whichever one.

32.

Wait, 5, 20, 11. Let's do 5.

Okay. Oh no, 17 seems good.

Do yours first, then I'll do—

17 is really good.

Which one?

17.

Yeah, yeah. No, not 15.

We said 15.

Are we saying 15 or 11? What do you think?

What do you think, Hank? You realize you're prolonging this by yelling numbers because now I have all these numbers in my head.

Are we doing 15?

Let us just consult.

No, you consult beforehand.

We get so many picks. There's 3-man team. We have too many picks.

Workout class.

Yeah, workout class.

Any, any workout. They bring you to a yoga. Yeah, a Pilates.

It's the worst. Hit.

Men need to go to the gym to like do— go on the treadmill for like 15 minutes and then sit at a bench and work out every, every— you do a set and then you scroll on your phone and then you do another. That's what that's how men go to the gym. Yeah. The workout class is— that's, that's for, that's for the chicks.

You go to a barre class?

Yeah. Yeah. No, none of it. None of it.

No, none of that. And you know, it's good. It's going to be harder than an actual workout.

Way harder. Always.

Yeah.

They'll be like, you're going to like it. You're going to get a great workout. And I have no doubt that I'll get a great workout. And it's just, Max is right. There's a difference between like a guy working out at the gym and then a girl going in and doing like the little Yeah, the little calf raises, and it's easy for them.

And then we look like a bunch of stinky idiots and they make it seem like it's easy because they're like, okay, we're just going to do these 5 exercises like for 1-minute intervals. But then they forget to tell you that there's like 25 1-minute intervals and you don't get a break and you're out of shape and they're all better looking than you.

You feel like an asshole.

Yeah.

You're the only one that smells in the room somehow.

Yeah. Memes 5 or 17 for our next pick. I like 5, 17, and 20.

Did you see that video that Dana posted last week?

No, he did.

Went to a workout class and he was sweating on another girl's treadmill, and the girl went and made a complaint, made a complaint to the instructor.

This is so funny.

And then Dana went up to her and was like, yo, if you have a problem with me, you can just tell me and I'll move. It's so funny.

He was sweating on another treadmill.

He was on one treadmill.

That's hard to do.

That was running on the treadmill next to him. And she like got up and wiped off his sweat from her treadmill and then went to the instructor and said, get this guy away from me.

That's hard to do. That's hard to do. All right, Memes, what are we doing here?

I like 17.

All right. Double date with her best friend whose husband you hate the worst.

Good pick.

Just like you just— you just—

you just got to make conversation.

You just know. And you're like, hey, this is her best friend. So you're going to have the— it's— it's— you're always going to have to do it.

And it's—

yeah.

Good pick.

I love all my wife's friends' husbands, just for the record.

Record?

Yes, except that one. I actually have a muddy the water.

I actually don't think that I—

nah, there's one, Max. Shut up, there's one. Yeah, everyone has one.

I'm gonna get so— oh, I'm gonna get somebody. I'm gonna get so many texts tomorrow.

Oh, all right, do the one-two. No. Why?

What do you— what number are you thinking?

Do the one, two.

Seven. I like 7 or 11. Yeah.

Zach, which one was your second pick?

Which one was the second?

We know we have to know, Zach.

Is it one, two?

Tell you, we'll get to it. Honorable mentions.

I'm so—

rip 7.

All right, we're gonna go with Her Parents' House.

Okay, in-laws. Yeah, that's good. It's a good pick.

Okay, I'm gonna say, uh, for my next pick when she asked you to get into a fight for her with somebody.

What was the name of the bar?

How is it? What's the official title of it? What's the official title of it?

Good point. It's a really good point. Worst places. Worst place.

Worst places to go.

Is that wrong?

That's not a place.

Getting into a fight for her.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like somebody, somebody cuts in line. Hey, this guy just cut me in line.

That's not really a place though. The line.

Worst places to be taken by your wife or girlfriend. Yeah.

Into a fight. You brought into a fight with a stranger.

Has to say into a fight.

In—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stranger.

Yeah, into a fight. Into a fight with a stranger.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I, I think I'll let that stand. What do you think?

I think that's a good pick.

I mean, it's up to—

yeah, it's not a place, but you're the one battling.

It's not a place.

And you want to— you want to throw the flag there? I mean, I don't know how into a word— it in a phrase—

how is that? Word it into a way that's a weird understanding.

What's, what's the problem here? It started when she You know, out into a fight is in the line and into a fight is a place.

A fight is an action.

It's also a place.

You got to pick a place.

Like, is it like a boxing ring?

In a line?

Takes you to the octagon.

So you have to fight in a line for a movie in a fight with—

I don't understand what's so complicated about that.

I think word is in a way that defines a place.

I think into a fight lines up perfectly with the Mount Rushmore.

That's not a fight, that's not a place.

It works with the graphic.

That's a state of mind.

It works. No, it doesn't. It does work.

No, into a fight is not a place.

Fighting in line, maybe.

I think that works. No, it works perfectly into a fight in public setting. My pick is not in, in a line. My pick is into a fight. And in—

and so into a fight, where is the place?

The fight?

That the fight is not a place.

A fight is—

wait, wait, wait. Okay, Big Cat texted because we were— we went back and forth with suggestions. Big Cat says let's do worst places to be taken by your wife/girlfriend.

Worst places.

Worst places to be taken into a fight. That works. I don't understand what why you guys are pretending to— you guys do this all the time. You pretend to not understand, making discourse impossible.

This is great discourse.

It's a good fight.

This is excellent discourse.

Physical fight. Yeah, it's good.

Physical fight. Boots on ground. But boots on ground where?

So what's the actual phrasing on the—

into a fight?

I don't know how much more—

I don't know how much more clear.

But, but it— into a fight with a stranger.

Into— no, I, I don't— I've said it. 'Into a fight' is the pick.

But that's totally different because that could be into— people will assume it's into a fight with your wife or your girlfriend, and that's not what it is.

'Into a fight' is my pick.

That's— I don't—

I disagree.

Why can't I—

why can't I tell you the words that I would like for my pick?

Because that's not a place— and it's also not really what you're saying because it's— people are going to just assume it's a wife or girlfriend fight.

Yeah, that you're just fighting with them, right?

That's also, that's also a great example.

Not a place.

It's just not, it's just not a place.

It's just not a place.

You guys are stuck in language.

You keep saying Mount Rushmore was things your wife or girlfriend does. If it was Mount Rushmore of things your wife or girlfriend does, this would be a great pick.

Place, place is definitely up for debate. You guys had it in your mind that place had to be, had to be. No, I'm saying the definition of place is absolutely up for debate. You had it in your mind that it meant one thing. I had in my mind it could mean some other things.

I, I think you have to add stranger if you're going to put this in. I'm fine with having it, but you can't have it just be into a fight because that assumes, Hank, that's a fight with your wife or girlfriend.

I legitimately can't— don't even understand what he's saying. Like, you're just choosing—

you're just choosing— you're just like, you guys do not understand. How dumb are you?

It doesn't make sense to you, but it makes sense to me, so therefore I'm right.

What?

That's your argument?

That into a fight makes sense? I think it makes sense.

Yes.

It's not a place though.

The pick is Fight Club. You have to pick— is it— has to be—

oh, that— I'll take that as the words Fight Club.

Does it have to be a place, right?

Because that's a place. Fight Club is a real place. That's a fair pick. Fight Club with a stranger.

But if you pick— if you pick on a double date, a double date isn't a place. The place—

yeah, it is.

The place would be a restaurant. No, the place would be a movie. The place would be a physical place.

But a double date, you're going somewhere. That's a place that you're going. You know what a double date is. It's good. That's like, you know, you know what a fight is, but you don't know where it is. What are you talking about?

Where the double date is? That's what I'm saying. Like, it's not— not, not every pick has been a specific physical location.

Okay, well, fine, we'll take a double date at a restaurant. Great. Okay, now you got to find another way to phrase this because that's not—

yeah, like, I think into a fight's a good pick.

You have to—

you got—

you got— you have to put in what— what the—

like, name the location of the fight and you— and you're good.

Yeah, or, or who the fight is with, because it can't— because if it's just into a fight, people are gonna just see that and be like Oh, that's a fight with your wife or your girlfriend. That's not— that's not what the pic is.

It's also just not the prompt. You just get into a fight with the significant other is not— you're not— she's not bringing you anywhere. You leave for these pics. You're leaving your home to go somewhere else that your wife or girlfriend is bringing you. Where are you going to this fight?

Fight Club.

You're in a fight, but you could do that anywhere. That could literally be at home. That could be like—

what does that mean?

What does that fucking mean? Yes, you don't even need to be in the same room. It could be— it could be a text.

All right, so what's the exact— because I'll, I'll accept if it's in, in— into—

we haven't had one of these in a while—

into a fight on her behalf with a stranger. If you want that to be the pick that describes you. Yes.

No, that was, that was exactly what I was trying to say from the jump.

Well, no, then you change it to just into a fight.

Into a fight. But yeah, but the initial explanation that I gave was I'm fine with it.

I don't think it's anything of— I don't think it's close to what we're doing, but I think it's not a good pick that I'm fine with having it. If Hank and Hank—

Hank, this is up to you.

Sure.

Yeah.

So what are we doing?

Into a fight with a stranger.

On her behalf. In line. In line? No, no, no, possibly a line.

All right, so we're agreeing to a fight with a stranger on her behalf.

That's— that, that is completely fine because that is the initial explanation that I gave.

Fuck it.

Physical or verbal?

Don't think it matters.

Really?

I don't think that's in the eye of the beholder.

That's a really good question.

You're distracted from the fact that we've all been in a situation where it's like like, oh, you're being asked to take on a fight that's not your fight to begin with. Like, ah, shit, now this confrontation has to be on my shoulders.

Yeah, that is something that a wife and a girlfriend does that would be like the worst things they do, not worst places they take you.

Okay.

Whatever.

That's a different— not Rushmore.

Whatever. Hank, are you okay with it?

Yep.

All right. Now we can—

okay, you have a last one.

Then my last one is going to be, uh, To get a pedicure.

I was hoping you were going to say something.

I like it.

Same here. That was going to work.

No, I was hoping you were going to say something insane, like, no, get a pedicure, not a foot guy.

Don't want people to go all Dan Orlovsky.

I thought you like— it would have been great if you followed up with like, when she makes you take out the trash.

Man, that's, that's a bad play. The alley.

All right. Pedicure.

Yeah. To get a pedicure.

Okay. Okay. You guys have a pick?

Yeah, fuck it.

Yeah.

Our second pick, the abortion clinic.

Oh, no. Yeah, it's— I mean, yeah, that's not—

that's a bad trip.

That's a bad trip. No matter how you look at it, that's a bad place to go.

Yeah.

You're not happy. It's not happy times.

No. And it's— yeah, it's just bad.

So bad.

Is this— now, is this after court?

Who knows? They're separate things.

Mandated.

Yeah.

Can I mandate that?

What about if she makes you get into a fight with the doctor giving the abortion?

That would be worse. Yeah.

You want to— you don't want to do that before. That's after procedure.

Definitely not. Okay. What do we have for our last 5?

You want to do 5?

Yeah.

Okay. Or 2.

2, there's, there's the opposite.

I also like 20.

Mm.

20.

Yeah, it's very similar.

Yeah, it's similar to that one.

All right. You guys were kind of like dancing around it, but marriage counseling, that's a bad place to have to go to. So it's a really bad place. Things aren't going well.

Yeah.

You could just be working. You could be working on yourself. Yeah.

Like preventative.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Could be preventative. True. Uh, all right, honorable mentions. I feel like there's some hostility still in this room.

Yeah, it's been a pattern this Mount Rushmore season.

How so?

Yeah, and it's because I'm on my own, so I gotta fight all the battles at once. Don't have anybody on my team. It's just, you know, it's, it's easy to latch on. I, I feel like the problem is you started with Wenxi.

Who?

Yeah, yeah, into a fight. I, I We don't have to relitigate it. Into a fight, I still think counts as a place.

But I think we—

I don't think a lack of imagination to not understand that.

I don't think you're right with Wenxi.

I don't think there's any latching on there. I think we all just universally were like, that is not what we're talking about. And also, this Mount Rushmore season, you won Lava Lamp.

Yep.

You got gelato right after ice cream.

Just a bad pick.

But you— but like, I don't think anyone's been getting up on you.

Well, we gang up, but then you just keep the pick.

Yeah.

Yeah, right, exactly.

That was—

that's what—

but that wasn't what happened.

That wasn't a latching on. We all were like— I think we all were like, what is that pick? I think that was a universal—

it wasn't more— it was less of a what was that pick and that pick shouldn't count, which has happened before. But yes, Max is right, it usually ends up with me keeping the pick anyways.

Yeah, I mean, what's Mount Rushmore?

Yeah, if we're not going to yell at each other a little bit. Okay, honorable mentions. Taylor Swift concert. Max didn't want to do that because he's a Swiftie.

Why? There's people that are huge fans that— yeah.

Friend's baby shower.

Yep.

Male strip club.

Do those exist?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

Chippendales.

There's male strippers, but are there— is there male strip club?

Pretty sure.

Yeah.

Oh, memes. They just are.

Ballet.

But I feel like no one actually does ballet. Yeah, I mean, it would be horrendous.

Yeah.

Hike.

We said we hike.

It's not bad. Be if you're the sober driver for her girls' night.

Mm.

That's tough. That's a tough place to be.

We said brunch with her friends.

Yeah.

Brunch with her friends. Farmers market. But we realized that it's the act of going to the farmers market because then when you— once you get to the farmers market, it's actually just you're eating food.

Yeah, you get like good food, but it is—

I had, I had on here anything vegan, just anything vegan.

Not a place.

Doesn't really play count. It's not a place, but anything vegan. Because I just remember one time my wife took me to a farm-to-table restaurant and it was vegan, and I was— I've never been so more mad. Yeah, carrot steak.

I got—

I had a carrot steak for dinner, and I remind her of it like once a month. She's like, when are you gonna stop reminding me? I'm like, Like, I can't— I can't take back that trauma.

I went to one too, and I remember I just ate a bunch of dumplings.

They didn't have dumplings. I just ate like a fucking rabbit for 2 hours and was so hungry when I left.

I had to her adult cheerleading competition.

Not our—

not for our queen.

Nope, nope, nope. That's why I didn't pick it.

Yeah. School fundraisers aren't fun.

H1 for the kids.

No, no, no. But like the school fundraiser when the kids aren't there.

But the— but the point—

yeah, yeah, I get it. But you could fundraise from home too. Yeah, you could do that from home.

To the mechanics.

Mechanic. Yeah, I actually like that pick.

Cars in the shop.

You look like an idiot. Yeah, it's just basically your wife or girlfriend's putting you in a mano a mano situation that you will 100% lose.

I feel uncomfortable talking to the mechanic.

You're a man.

Can you talk to him? And then you feel like way less of a man talking to them.

Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Let's see, do we have any others?

Her friend's house to help move.

Yeah.

Anytime you get signed up to move stuff just because you're the male, that sucks. Yeah. Do you think the Swifties would have voted against Taylor Swift concert?

Max is just probably such a fucking— I feel like Taylor Swift concert, you figure out a way to have a good time.

Yeah, I guess there would be. I do have her chair.

They're bangers.

Yeah, definitely bangers.

Do you have her chair? Also, I just want to go on the record, Memes was very little help in this. He just was like, dude, he's just looking at me and Max the whole time being like, you guys are fucking losers. Basically, you get bossed around. He's such an alpha, Memes. All right, good. Mount Rushmore got a little contentious. It's fine. It's August. No more kumbaya.

You guys scoffed at court and did marriage counseling.

Yeah, that was our fourth pick.

Wait, what's your second pick?

The Doc.

I mean, marriage counseling probably happens more than court divorce.

Honestly, I don't know.

Yeah, but I mean, don't really get to court all the time.

Divorce court would be, I think, a good pick.

That's what it is.

Wife or girlfriend? Yeah.

Yeah.

But girlfriends don't take you to divorce court.

That's true.

So you just said court. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So we should have said— we should— well, we're fine. Yeah, we said we—

yeah, we're—

we're marriage counseling. Yeah. Okay. Good show, boys. Contentious.

Would that be couples counseling?

Yeah, it sounds like a fight.

What?

Court's just a fight in front of a judge. Yeah, sure. Think about it.

True.

Yeah.

At a physical location.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a fight. Show up at— yeah.

I really wanted in, in a line to be on the crap.

Actually, just in line in general. Any line might have been a good pick.

Yeah, it would have been a good pick to stand, to wait. Anytime you're asked to go somewhere that has a long—

to wait Wait in line with her.

Yes, I waited in line to get into a bar this weekend for the first time in like 5 years.

Oh yeah, that's right. Listen, Diva Max, you don't wait in line for nobody.

Max loves to go to bars that have lines. He loves line Vegas. Yeah, the story—

the going, going to bars in line sucks. Yeah, it's brutal. You should have skipped the line. She said, you know who I am? I'm Max Valente.

They're out for 4 There actually were— there were fans, there were AWLs inside. And when I was in the line, he was like, skip the line, skip the line. I'm like, I'm not skipping this line.

You can't be a line skipper.

And then I went inside and he was like, I asked the bouncer if you could skip. He said no. I was like, I wasn't trying.

Not on my behalf. Not on my behalf.

All right. That guy.

All right. Oh, shout out, by the way, the two AWLs who I went to the National Sports Card Convention on Thursday. First of all, what a scene. Like, insane. Kyle and Nick put it perfectly. It's the only place in the world where the urinals— there's no line for the urinals because the stalls are always full. Just everyone's got massive diarrhea. That place, just exploders is what they call them. Just, it's a convention of exploders.

We went to the other one.

Which one?

What's it called? Not SummerSlam. WrestleMania.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Also. But I'm— but that one was at least people using the urinals. I'm saying I went to the bathroom. Every urinal was— was open. All the stalls were full. Just dudes just shitting all day because they just stay in the convention center and trade cards and eat tacos.

That's a bar. That's a barstool office.

That's true. But it was crazy and it was, it was very cool. And I appreciate everyone who like— it was a cool scene, but it was chaotic. But there's two— I bought a huge Stone Cold Steve Austin piece and I had like a few things and I was, I was doing that thing walking to my car where I'd walk like 10 feet and have to reset it. And then two AEW was like, dude, do you need some help? And I was like, yes, please.

Thank you.

So they— maybe a cuck move, but one of them helped me carry some stuff. So shout out those guys.

Very nice of them.

Yes. OK. All right. Numbers.

23. 4.

76.

7.

86.

16.

91.

69.

10.

9.

8.

76. 2.

Someone's going to get it today.

Yeah, I have a feeling.

Me and PFT are the only ones who have not gotten it.

Nobody's gonna get it today.

We're gonna get into a fight in the line.

It's not working. Oh, there we go.

What'd you do, memes?

I picked number 4. What'd you do?

76. Oh, 30! 30, anyone?

Nope.

One more, one more, one more. 30, anybody?

Nope.

No one got 30.

Going once, going twice.

Oh, Cole, what'd you, what'd you pick?

69.

69 for Cole.

Let's get 69. I would like a BFT battle.

Oh, oh, and another one for me!

Me!

You need help with this? Because I've done it again. How many times have I gotten this? 3? The number's 2, by the way.

How you doing on your burger count, buddy?

Uh, I already came out in the trust tree, buddy. We were in the trust tree earlier when I was saying I'm worried about my burger count. Oh, you're focused on that. You're not gonna do it. Number 2. I got it. Uh, is that my 3rd time? I will happily teach. Uh, Colt, would you like me to teach you? I can help you. I got you. How many have I got?

This—

oh, it's only my second.

Okay, in this ball, in this machine.

Hey, listen, so maybe I got to get a third time, but I got it. It doesn't even matter to get it at this point for guys like us who've gotten it before. Do you guys agree?

I agree.

I'm getting it this week.

I have no problem.

Hank, you agree?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like— Zach, you agree?

It was right. I was right that said somebody was going to get it today.

Yeah, Zach, you agree, right?

I think anytime you can hit, it feels good.

I forgot when you got it, you almost died. That just doesn't get—

that was tough.

Yeah, we shouldn't talk about that.

You almost died.

That was, that was a rough, that was a rough time in this booth.

Memes. See that?

Number 2.

It was the second poll. Yeah, I think it would be much more accomplishing setting a goal, let's say, in the beginning of summer and then completing it by which I will. Are you doubting? Should I put you on the list? Yeah, I'm doubting. Robert Sala receipts. You're not going to do it. Yeah.

All right.

OK. You're on the, you're on the list. You just made the list, buddy.

You're not doing it.

Happy birthday to Jay Cutler, the bodybuilder. Happy birthday to Con Knipple. Happy birthday, Young Wae Koo. Happy birthday to Todd Gurley, Martha Stewart, and Tom Brady. Also, happy birthday to Ryan Lochte and Jake Bobo.

Jerry Garcia.

Bobo.

Bobo. And happy birthday to John Riggins and Roger Clemens. A lot of birthdays today.

I fucking love Bobo.

Happy birthday to Lori Lightfoot and Bobo and Bobo and mostly Bobo. Also, happy early birthday Wednesday. Just getting ahead of it. Blutman and Rosillo, the big two.

Getting better at this birthday thing.

Love you guys.

What happens when you lock 18 coworkers in an office for one week to compete for a quarter million dollars of cash? This is Surviving Barstool Season 5, presented by Red Bull.

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