Transcript of Nico’s Gone, Iconic Bad Trades, Baseball’s Comeback, Lane Kiffin, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the Power of Boredom With Chuck Klosterman

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find a new episode of the Rewatchables that went up Monday night. We did snake Eyes, which is a really, really, really fun 1998 movie. Yet another awesome 1998 movie directed by Brian De Palma, starring nick cage. As Sean Fentany said on the podcast, it was a safety off performance by nick cage. He is just going for it the entire time. Really fun movie. So you can check that out wherever you get your rewatchables podcast. Hey, I wanted to bring something back for 2026 for this podcast. Obviously, I did this when I wrote. I did this for the first couple of years of when we had this podcast on The Ringer. Now, I'm going to try to get it going again, maybe on Tuesdays, but I wanted to bring the mailbag back. I wanted to lean on the listeners for some fun questions. You can email us questions at bspodcast33@gmail. Com. Bspodcast33@gmail. Com. Send them in. I'm going to have somebody go through them. Send me the best possibles, and then I'll go through and try to make it a running thing either on Tuesdays or Thursdays, maybe near the holidays, but also really thinking for 2026, especially when this podcast ends on Netflix, probably, I think in mid-January.

So I want to have some extra gimmick. I miss doing the mailbags. It's just pure laziness while we haven't been doing them. I haven't had time to really go through all the emails, but I'm going to get some help and I'm going to bring it back. So the mailbag is coming back. It's not a big announcement, but it's an announcement. It's not as big of an announcement as the Mavericks firing Nico Harrison in less than 10 months after he made the Luca Donchis Trade. We're going to talk about that and a whole bunch of other things with BS podcast, Hall of Fame, or Chuck Colstroman, who hasn't been on in a while. We have a lot of topics. I have some sense of where this might go, but then, as always with Chuck, you just never know. And it's next. We're going to take a break then bring in Pearl J. This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like needing the protection of an offensive guard on the football field, but getting an elementary school crossing guard. Sure, they're both guards, but you can only trust one to keep your quarterback It's safe when the game is on the line.

So don't settle for just any insurance. When you can have State Farm, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. All right, the BS Pod Hall of Fame, where Chuck Klosterman is here. We are going to talk about a bunch of stuff. One thing we did not have on the docket was Dallas Mavericks GM, Nico Harrison, got fired about 2 hours before we started taping here at 10: 00 Pacific Time. And we never talked about this trade and all this stuff on the pod. So he's getting fired not even 10 months after he made this trade, which When the trade happened, everybody automatically was like, wow, this is one of the worst trades of all time. This is inexplicable. Why didn't he shop it? Why would he trade Luca? Why did he underestimate the fan base? And then somehow it worked out even worse than it seemed like in the At the moment, Davis has played nine games out of a possible 44, and the Mavs are terrible. The fans are enraged, and they finally had to dump this guy before we even got to Thanksgiving. Can you remember another sports situation like this since we've been alive?

Well, I don't know. I have to think about that. It's interesting that the GM is under so much fire. The awareness of the GM of the Mavericks is higher than the vast majority of their roster, which is right. I'll tell you what, though. Okay, obviously, the trade didn't work. I'm not going to sit here and be like, Well, I'm the opposite, actually. But I do think he was treated somewhat unfairly, and it was to some degree his fault for not explaining this better, because there is a way to explain this trade that does not seem as insane as it does now.

Yeah. All right. What's that way then?

Well, okay, so they go to the finals in 2024, and Luka plays great. He has 28, 9, and 8, I think, during that playoff run. But they barely beat OKC, and then they got run by the Celtics and clearly couldn't compete with them. So if you're him, and the My idea is, the real goal is to win a championship, not to be good, not to be competitive, not to be interesting, not to make money, to win a championship. I can understand the thinking being like, we need to go in a completely defensive direction.

Which he said.

Anthony Davis is... Obviously, Luca, on a scale of 1-10, he's a 10 on offense, maybe a 5 or 6 on defense. When he's healthy, Anthony Davis is like 7, 8 on offense and 8, 9, 10 on defense. So I think that he looked at this and was like, We got to just completely reconstruct the scene because we did the best that we could with what we had, with our best player playing awesome, and we could not do it. So we got to recreate this. They say, Why didn't they throw Austin Reeves in there? I think at the time, he was like, That's not... He's part of the system that's not going to work. It's like either all shooting or all defense. As it turned out, it was a mistake. This did not work. And Everybody who said it was going to be terrible proved right. But okay, so no one talks about him letting Jalen Brunson leave that much because everyone seemed to think you're supposed to let Brunson leave at the time. Now, if they hadn't done that, the team is completely different. There's a lot of things, I feel like, that could have made this a completely different situation.

But he made that mistake that a lot of GMs do, which is when you make a trade, you're almost supposed to behave like, I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to let everything play out and I'll be proven right, he should have been more on the offensive and said, This is doing this because we're not going to win a championship with the trajectory we're on. We got to change things. And I think that would have seemed more reasonable. It allowed people to think all these crazy things that he was trying to actually just move the team to Vegas and all this stuff. I mean, yes, obviously, I'm not trying to say it was a good trade now. It didn't work. But it wasn't as insane as people responded at the time.

Right. Well, he did leak out the defense stuff, and he was saying the defense wins the champion thing. He probably didn't come hard enough on it.

There's nothing else you could have said, right? That had to be the reason, but he wasn't very definitive in his It's just a defense of this decision.

Yeah, because he's too cool for school. I mean, there are so many things wrong with the trade, and we talked about all them when it happened, basically, that they didn't shop it. This was the only shooter, that it was the only shooter because if word leaked out, that they might trade Luca, the fan base would have revolted. So he's trying to sneak it by the fan base, basically. Can I get this deal done without this leaking? Because if it leaks out, I won't be able to do the deal because the fan base will revolt, which probably should have been a red flag for him in retrospect. Yeah, you're doing a trade that the fan base is going to revolt. That might not be a great idea. But the bigger thing for me, he didn't get enough in the trade, which everybody said at the time. Whether you like Reeves or not, he has to be in it because at least he's an asset. But he was banking on Davis, who, as we've seen, and he's had some bad luck. He got poked in the eye, right? Now he has to wear goggles. He's had some wear and tear over the years.

But he's banking on this guy who is a big guy Heading into... He's already in his early 30s, heading toward his mid-30s. When we see the history of the league, these 6'11 and up guys as they hit 32, 33, 34, they can get really gamey in a whole bunch of different ways. Versus Luca was in his mid 20s with a whole bunch of scenarios where he could have actually gone up a level. And that was the part I didn't understand. You're buying almost past performance and giving up future performance with this age piece of it that was stupid, along with all the other stuff.

Everybody who said the trade was idiotic was right. Okay? Time has proven it was a bad move. But I think this is tricky because the way trades are considered while they're happening trading is very different than the way they're considered retrospectively. And this is what I mean by that. Okay, so when the Thunder traded James Harden, who won that trade?

The Rockets.

Okay, but at the time, the trade was made. The idea for both teams was we're doing this to win a title. That is our motive for making this move. And it didn't happen. Now, ultimately, the Thunder down the road, you wouldn't. So if we If you look at this of all being dominoes that line up and moving in this capricious, arbitrary ways, but ending in the present, the Rockets didn't win that trade. The Rockets did not win a championship by getting hard.

They came damn close.

It seems like that they won the trade because obviously, he had this amazing career. And what was given in return did not really amount too much. But if the goal was When they win a title, the goal failed. So if the initial idea about the trade is to win a championship, that needs to be the same criteria you use when considering it in retrospect.

Yeah, that's fair. Well, so Kyrie blew out his ACL right after the trade and AD got hurt. Yes.

So if you're Nico- That was a good acquisition he made that everyone thought was crazy. True. Many people question the idea of him getting Kyrie, and that proved to be a smart move.

I really respect your Nico Harrison tag. I didn't think it was possible. I You're zagging in a way that it's new territory. It's like watching somebody climb some mountain that's never been climbed.

What I'm just saying is that it was that go to trade was a mistake, and time has proven that it was. I do think to to a degree, he was treated unfairly. And I think that the idea of the fan base turning on the guy being the motive for firing him, well, if for whatever reason they start the season 6 and two or whatever, everything is different. The fan base will then all of a sudden decide, Oh, this was brilliant. He got us Cooper Flag for this backdoor in seeing Nostradamus thing. It is strange to take the side of someone who just got fired for obviously making a terrible decision. But that's what I'm doing. I do see the reason behind it. And I just think the pile on against this guy was cheap. What do you think about him as a person? What is he like as a guy? Not that that should matter in terms of how we gage this decision, but what was he like?

Very well respected in the NBA community. I mean, I had a whole shoe background, and when they hired him, I think people thought he was like- His shoe background, his big thing is that he blew it with Steph Curry. Yeah, but I mean, everybody's got one of those, probably. I think he was respected as a relationships guy. He had relationships with agents, players, people on other teams, and he was somebody that could rejuvenate them. When I look back now that it's Almost 10 months later and you look back, this was really, we don't think Luca can be the face of our team trade and what's the best we can do. Almost like we might be getting one over on the Lakers if we get this trade for him now because they don't realize what they're buying. But the part they missed, which I said at the time was like, you're lighting a fire under somebody who the one thing that you could ding him on was, well, he's not in great shape yet. He's a little bit of a diva. All things that by trading him, you're just lighting this massive fire under him to be like, oh, I'm going to fucking show you.

So it was like the greatest thing that ever could have happened to him, which people said, including me at the time. And that was the part he didn't factor into the trade. What is the potential of what I'm giving up? What happens if this guy goes up a level, which is what's happening.

I would say two things to that. One, here again, in retrospect, you are right. So I can't say that was a crazy thing to think, but I think it is difficult to make a move or not make a move based on the intangible abstraction of whether or not this guy will care more if this happens. If this guy will take this in some personal way and he'll lose a bunch of weight and care more. I mean, that's what happens.

But that's part of sports, though. You have to factor in human nature and motivation.

That's a point in your favor. That's the thing he's supposed to think about. The other thing is I do think he probably came fixated on Anthony Davis. That he thought this is the only rim protector who I can feasibly score 33 points as well. I can get the most on both ends of the floor from this guy if he's healthy, and I'm going to gamble on that. Because I think a lot of these guys, it's like, and you, I'm sure, will agree with this. There are so many GMs in all sports whose only goal is putting themselves in a position where they can't do anything that will get them immediately terminated. If they can always create this- By the way, Chuck, that's That's the content industry right now.

That's a bunch of media executives that name a company. They just don't want to have... They'd rather not have a win or a loss. They would just rather cruise along and not actually take a risk on anything.

And is that good or bad?

That's bad.

That's bad. And I would say that the idea of a guy thinking, maybe we can win the title in two years if all of these gambles come together, I mean, that gets a guy fired, and it did. But it's like a- But the real problem is he didn't make the best possible trade.

So if he's going to shop Luca, you shop Luca, and maybe Utah comes out of nowhere and says, We'll give you Lory marketing in 10 first-round pics. You just don't know until... It's like selling something to your neighbor over putting it on eBay or something. You're just basically guessing that's what the price is. You don't know.

Here's a comparison to me in this situation. Yes, they should have Reeves in this deal or whatever. They could have got marketing all these different guys. Teams, this happens, I guess, more weren't at the college level in football, but they run the shotgun all the time, right? And then they get down inside the 10 and they're still in the shotgun and you're like, What are you doing? Why are you doing this? And it drives you crazy. Texas Tech used to do this all the time. It would drive me insane. Well, here's the deal, though. If you say, Our philosophy is this, we play in this way. We go shotgun all the time. We go fast all the time. We never eat clock. It's not what we do. You can't say like, Oh, but when we're inside the five, we flip this. You got to stay to the Program.

Now we're a power running team.

So if he looks at this and he's like, Okay, throwing Austin Reeves. Maybe what Austin Reeves offers, which is he's averaging 30 points a game this year. He's a great offensive player, but maybe he was like, This is not the guy that we want for what we're doing going forward. We need a different- But he's still an asset.

It's still somebody you could flip for more stuff. That's the issue with that.

So you could have flipped him for something else. Yes. Here again, it's like I'm like somebody here being like, oh, actually, it was a great idea to go into Vietnam. It made a lot of sense for it. It didn't work out. It didn't happen. So I'm not saying that actually what you think you saw is an illusion. It made the trade. It was a bad trade. It failed. I'm just saying the reasoning behind it was not as insane as people behaved, particularly in that first 48 to 72 hours after the trade happened. People just lost their mind. And I feel like But this idea of winning trades, you don't know until these things play out. We got to talk about it because this is what the job is, talking about this shit. But it's not a good way to do it because the criteria changes from, are we going to win the Championship by making this move to, in retrospect, who got more value out of this move that both want to snuff?

Yeah, but there's another piece to this, which is the sports-fandom connection. It's the same thing that the Red Sox had with Muki Bats, and this is happens over the years. I remember when I was a kid, the Mets traded Tom Sievert to the Reds, and I didn't care about the Mets. But as a little kid, I was like, holy shit, they traded Tom Sievert. He is the Mets. How can you trade the face of your franchise for what you got back, which was basically like Doug Flynn. And I forget who else was in that trade. But I think that's the piece that I think people can over and over again, underestimate. How much fans give a shit, how much get attached to somebody. That's somebody who maybe doesn't make that much money. They bought their kid a Luka Donchetsh Jersey for $200, and then the guy gets traded two months later. Like little things like that, they just missed. It's a lack of connectivity. It's a lack of connectivity to the fan base and to what they actually care about, which is like, I think the fan base actually cared more about just having Luka in their life for 15 years than actually winning the title.

They even gave everybody the choice and they're like, All right, five 20 % chance you win the title, but you keep Luka for 20 years, or 90 % chance you win the title with Davis once. I think all the Mav fans would be like, We'd rather have Luka in the puncher's chance, and that's it.

I think that probably is true. One thing about the Portland Trailblazers is that for many, many years, they never really put themselves in a position where they could realistically win a title, but the fan base liked the team because they were always competitive. And I do think that... I mean, that's When I was... Okay, so I have a ton of friends who are huge, like Minnesota Viking fans, right? Because I'm from. And we sometimes had this discussion. Would they prefer what the Vikings have been over time, which is the most successful franchise not to win a Super Bowl, I would say.

When you say- Oh, yeah. Decade to decade, no question. They're always relevant and in the mix and just can't actually get over the hub.

And then it was like, would you rather have that or all these other possibilities of teams who won a championship, but for the most part have been down? And I think for the most part that they prefer the way things have worked out. They prefer having a good team all the time, over time, It almost feels as though they've had championships in a weird way.

You're talking about consistent relevancy versus that one, like the Florida Marlins 2001 title or whatever, or 2002, whatever year that was, when they the title and then gutted the team.

I mean, the year they went 15 and one and got beat in the NFC Championship by Atlanta, that was obviously a heartbreaking, you would say, a gut punch loss or whatever. And yet there's a memory of that season that is positive in their minds. They remember how awesome that was or whatever. So even though it didn't end with a championship, it's though they feel the franchise is good. And maybe it's the exact same thing here. Maybe, particularly in a place where basketball is by far a secondary concern where high school football matters more in Dallas than the NBA. And it made me be like, well, it's just nice to have a competitive franchise. It's nice to always have a good team or whatever. It's nice to have something fun to look forward to. And that would be that obviously is what they should have done. Here again, looking back, that obviously would have been a better move. I did not expect the response to be what it was, but it would be strange to hire GM. And if he came in, he was like, Well, my number one priority is making sure the fan base is enthusiastic and happy.

It doesn't matter how we finish. I want the fans to feel good about this. Well, that's actually a very reasonable strategy. I don't think you would hire a guy who says that, right? If his number one thing isn't we're going to win a title, that's what a GM is supposed to say. My job is singular. I am here to put together a roster that wins us a championship.

Well, do you think If you were the Mavericks GM and you called me and I was like, your one phone call, Yo, I got to throw this by you. Let me ask you about this. And beyond how dumb the actual trade is, there had to be somebody in his life who would have been like, Dude, they're going to hate you if you do this trade. You have to go to the games. Everyone knows what you look like. You have to sit in the arena. And everybody's going to hate that you traded their favorite player. And if this It doesn't work out and it's not quite as good as you think, or Davis gets hurt, or Luca goes to the Lakers and he's awesome. There's seven different scenarios I can present to you where you become the most hated person in Dallas since 1963, basically. That's how you would be perceived. You won't be able to go anywhere. It won't be fun for you to go to dinner. It won't be fun for you to go to the games. It won't be fun for you to go in a convenience store and buy gum. Name any scenario with you in Dallas, and it's going to suck.

So you're sure you want to do this. You have to be really convicted in the trade. You'll be like, no, you don't understand. If we get Davis, people don't understand how awesome he is, and I'll take the heat if he's not. And I just don't think it was even remotely a slam dunk to risk all that other shit.

Did you happen to watch this Martin Scorsese documentary that was just on?

I still haven't. I'm due.

The same situation could be said about him making the last temptation of Christ. He had this idea that this is what I want to do, and I think this is what I got to I'm sure there were people in his life saying, Don't do this. It's going to change your perception among the people who currently like you the most. He's tied into a world with very traditional views in his audience or people who have artistic reactionaries, whatever the case, however you want to look at it. But he was like, I got to do it. And if you want to be great, you got to do those things. You can be good by listening to advice, but It should be great. You have to ignore it and take the handle.

Except in this case, when you're trading Luka Datches.

I didn't think I'd come on here and support Nico Harrison today, but I guess I- You're supporting the concept of it.

You're not supporting- Or at least to me, I can imagine a scenario where things work out differently, and this is remembered as a brilliant decision.

But that's not going to be what it is, right? That's not how it's going to be.

So I'm not saying- Well, that's what he'll tell people 10 years from now. Be like, Look, Davis got hurt, Kyrie got hurt. I don't think I was wrong. He can move into that mode pretty fast. I don't think I was wrong. I think the team we put together actually would have been really good, and we never saw it, and we'll never know. I was thinking about growing up and then through our childhoods when we cared about sports and we had no Internet, way more time to just think about dumb historical shit. There were always these trades that levitated above all the other trades. Or the Bay Brew thing was more of a sale. But it's a short... I was trying to think of the worst trades in my lifetime. And Herschel Walker always gets mentioned first, right? That Minnesota gave all this stuff to Dallas. And it was really the wrinkle of the trade where if they just waved all these players, they got all these extra pics.

It was really a trick in the...

Yeah, it was...

They hoodwicked them almost. Mike Wendell, the Vikings, did not believe that they would actually cut all those guys. He It was like, they're not going to cut everybody. And it was like, yeah, we're cutting them all. And we get the pick. And that was... I mean, that really was on him.

But fundamentally, when that trade happened, people were like, holy shit, the Vikings got Herschel Walker. They gave up a lot, but Herschel Walker It was awesome. In the moment, it was not crazy.

I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure I'm not. In the first game he played, or maybe it was the second game, I think it was the first game, they put him in to return the kickoff. And his shoe came off, and he still had this huge return. I don't know, I think he scored, but it was a big return with one shoe on. And I remember all the Viking people being like, This is it. We did it. This is the thing that we did.

So it's a defensible bad trade.

Well, it's defensible. If you look back on it, it probably was certainly the most meaningful trade in modern NFL history.

No question.

Yes, there's no question about it.

But when it happened, you can see it. The worst trade in the history of the NBA somehow isn't the Luka trade. I think that's the most indefensible trade. The worst trade ever, it wasn't even the Nets' fault, but the ABA-MBA merger happens. They have to pay this big premium to join the NBA, and they basically don't have money. So their choice is like, We can join the NBA, but we're going to have to sell Dr. J. And they sell him to the 76ers for $3 million to basically... Because they had to because that was the to keep the franchise alive because NBA teams didn't make money back then. But fundamentally, just selling Dr. J as you're entering the NBA when he's in the prime of his career, there's no worse trade than that.

I guess trading Jafar. Okay, so that was for Brian Winter, I think Junior Bridgeman.

Junior Bridgeman, Dave Myers.

And also, Kareem was forcing it.

But defensive because he was going to be a free agent in a year, and they knew they weren't going to get compensation for him, so they had to do it. So the Another one like this. So the Broncos trade for John Elway, who is the best quarterback prospect of the '80s, doesn't want to play for Indianapolis, rightly so. It's pretty smart that he didn't want to go there, and he basically puts his foot down, I don't want to go there. So they I traded him for a quarterback named Mark Herman, Chris Hinton, who was one of the best left tackles in the league, and in 1984 first, and that's it. And they got John Elway for two decades, basically. And I think that's actually a worse trade than Herschel Walker. But the catch is he didn't want to go there, and he wasn't going to go there, and he was going to go play baseball, and they were hamstrung, right? So there's a reason for that.

And now he did not want to go there. But if that trade was discussed two years after it happens, everyone was like, Elway is not going to make it.

Right.

That was like, he seemed at the time like a super athletic guy. Remember, there's footage of him? He lined up behind the guard instead of the center one time, and it was like, there was all these... He was getting pushed into playing and it didn't seem like it was going to work.

And then you gave me a terrible relationship.

Now, obviously, as it turns out, it would have been he won two Super Bowl and he's a Hall of Famer and all of that.

Yeah, all of a sudden, he was in the AFC title game. Sievert, the Reds we mentioned, which had a lot of the same DNA, the Luka trade, where it's like you're just trading somebody that your entire fan base loved, and in Sievert's case, won titles with, right? Won the '69 title with, made the '73 World Series with, Most beloved Met ever. They traded him. The Deshawn-Watzen trade was really bad, and I think we knew it was bad when it happened. Then they guaranteed his contract. They gave up all these pics. That really was the worst NFL trade of all time, not Herschel Walker.

I would say for what you gave up if you add the money into it.

Because then you had the money in the off the field stuff, which had already happened. Yes. And a fan base going, wait a second, we don't even want to root for this guy. You traded all this stuff for him and you gave it. So that's actually the worst NFL trade. Then the Pierre Scarnet trade to the Nets, which I think was way more defensible when it seemed like Prokheroff was just going to spend basically money like the Dodgers are spending now. And they gave up three first. They gave up a pick swap in 2017, but it just seemed like they're going to have the highest payroll in the league every year, so who cares about the picks? They got rid of Jeroen Wallace's. It was semi-defensible in the moment. Then a year later, Prokheroff was like, I don't want to spend money anymore. Now you don't have those picks. Then the only other one is the most famous NBA one for years was that Parrish-McCale trade. It was Joe Barry Carroll. The number 13th pick was Ricky Brown for Parrish-McCale. Parrish wasn't really Robert Parrish at that point. He was the equivalent of, I don't know, a better DeAndre Ayton right now.

Mccale was the third pick. Carroll was the best college player. Was semi-defensible. This Luka one is the first one that, even as it happened, was hard to defend.

Along in that same situation, I think getting Dennis Johnson for Rick Roby, probably.

That was amazing. But There was some cocaine Sun stuff at the time, and DJ was one of the names. So I think they got them on a discount. The point is, you go through all these trades in history, and there's always one yeah, but. And this Luka trade didn't have a yeah, but coming out of the gate. Everybody was like, why did they do this? It was the immediate mass reaction, and then it just somehow got worse. So I really think it has a chance to be remembered. I don't know if it's the worst trade ever, but it'll be mentioned forever. This will be in 50 years from now, if we still have professional sports in a country and a society, and they're like, what were the worst trades ever? This would be mentioned.

It will if the Lakers win a title, for sure. If they don't win a title, I don't know. I don't know what will happen.

I like your little twist on that.

When I say this was... Harrison was treated unfairly, I'm not saying that it was treated unfairly because people didn't realize it was actually a good deal. I feel that people over-amplified the degree to which it was unbalanced. Here, again, it's a weird statement to make when all those people have been proven right. It is strange for me to make this argument now. I realize that. But what I'm saying is at the time, I feel like he or someone else in the media could have made a very justifiable case for why the chances of them winning a title increased with this move.

Here's the problem the increase thing because I went to all those finals games. They lost the first two in Boston. Game three, it felt like they were probably going to win, and Luka fouled out with five minutes left, which if you're going to hang Luka, don't foul out of the fucking game. But then the offense went to Kyrie, and I was in the stands going, Oh, my God. This is like a Shakespeare moment where Kyrie, this guy that all the Celtics fans hated because he didn't want to stay on the team. He promised he was going to be there, didn't. Now this guy is going to cook us in a game three. We're going to lose game four. We might blow the series. I never felt like that series was safe until the second half of game five. The point is, they were pretty close to winning the finals that year, so you can't really use the, Oh, well, we can't win the title with Luka. Wait a second. They were in the vicinity.

They played as well as he could. They got beat 4-1 in the finals and really should have lost to OKC in the semifinals of the West.

Well, yeah, the OKC series was a 50-50. They really should have lost. But we had the perfect team to play him in the finals.

And also wasn't it game three when he followed out? Wasn't that the one where he was sitting on the floor yelling at the bench and then like, Windhurst talked about the game? Well, okay.

How immature he was.

Windhurst knows what he's talking about. He was in a position basically saying, this isn't going to work if this guy is this way? And was there any indication that this guy was going to be different than that way unless he changed locations? I guess it would be hilarious if as we're talking about this, Nico came out of your back room and just patted you on the back and said, Thank you, Chuck.

Like I said, I have to say, I have this feeling now.

Thank you for being my one defender. I know exactly what's going to happen because it always happens when I go... It must be weird being you and having this audience of so many people that, of course, you encapsulate some of the stupidest people on Earth. And you get real smart people, too. Sometimes it's don't be like, oh, this person was in our podcast. And I'm like, that person listens to the podcast? But there's a much larger chunk. It You have a higher tolerance for that than I do. Or maybe you just got used to it. I mean, this is something I got to bring up to you. I promise no guys to bring this up to you. So I was at this Humanities Symposium in North Dakota a couple of weeks ago. The theme was about the culture of the 1980s. And I'm the speaker at this thing, and I'm doing all my bullshit, slow cancelation in the future. I'm talking about the past and all these things. Here's what people want to talk to me about. This is the main thing that they want to ask me about after this symposium. First of all, does Bill Simmons actually believe Rocky 3 is the best movie of the '80s?

That was a question to you?

Yes. Did you say that? Did you make that statement? I was like, that seems like something he might say, but I was- The best movie of the '80s or the best Rocky movie? The best movie of the '80s, they claimed you insisted was Rocky 3. Now, I said maybe he was being sardone.

No, I didn't say that. I might have said, Most entertaining movie of the '80s. For the record, you are... Because I was like, I don't know if I would have made that case.

Do you believe it's the best of the Rocky films?

Well, I think it's the most rewatchable.

Okay.

Yeah. I think Rocky one is probably the best one, but I think Rocky 3 is the most entertaining start to finish.

Okay. So then the conversation morphed into this, and it seemed like the thing you might have real input on. If Rocky Balboa was a real person, and then he died, in his obituary, what part of his career or what part of his personality is the lead? What is considered the most important or memorable aspect of his career if he were a real person and then passed away?

That he ended Paulo Creeg's undefeated heavyweight Championship streak, came out of nowhere. Improbable rags to riches story captured the heart of the nation.

More so than beating the a Russian in Russia and convincing the crowd in an exhibition to say USA, USA in the Soviet Union.

Oh, you think that would be the lead that he ended the Cold War?

I don't know because this was the crux of it. That's the first thing people brought up. Then they were like, But it was an exhibition. I can't remember, would it have been televised in the United States? Is there footage in the movie?

Yeah, they show his kids watching. Okay, so how did that happen? Because he says, When do my kid is staying up late? So Yeah, he says... Shets more.

The Soviet Union allowed... Who covered it?

Listen, there's a lot of holes in Rocky IV. He didn't get paid for it. It's unclear who profited from the pay-per-view, even though probably, I would say tens of millions probably watched where the money go? Did there split? There was no promoter. It was an exhibition. There's a lot of questions. They've never really been answered.

If we use just the scripts, the fights we see- So you're saying we take Take this as Rocky, his whole career was a real career.

You're saying him beating Drago in an exhibition, but maybe turning the Cold War is mentioned above him being a rags to riches story who beat Apollo Creed, ended the streak.

That was the central aspect of the debate over this. Other people, I think, brought up the idea, would it be seen as a very sad story because of the end of his life, the way we look at Sunny Liston or something? That even though in the movies, it is portrayed as positive.

No, because think of Mike Tyson If Mike Tyson dies, what's the first sentence? What's the blink snapshot of his career? It would be like, Mike Tyson, the most feared heavyweight of the 1980s, who won his first, whatever, and was the youngest heavyweight champion of all time, and then his career ended in disgrace.

You have to mention he was in prison.

Comma, his career ended in disgrace after he went to prison and bit Evander Holyfield and lost all his money and a whole bunch of other things.

A little It seems like now his story is a redemptive story, right?

The fact that he's still alive is, I think, redemptive.

Or he's become something very different. Because we were just talking, it's just interesting to me always to talk about fictional things as if they were real and what the response would be. It's like, if they discussed, if Rocky died now as a person, would there be a discussion about the racial overtones of his rivalry with Cree now, which would not have been... Would that be brought up? In the New York Times, the guy who won a Nobel Prize for discovering or being part of the discovery of the DNA. And in the headline, it mentions that later in life, he said some racist or sexist things or whatever. I'm sure he didn't expect that was going to be part of his obituary. So I wonder if that would happen now if Rocky, the real person, die, if that somehow I would say the Clubber Lange part would probably have the stronger racial overtones because Creed was like a beloved...

He was like Ali. He transcended all that stuff. I would say Creed was definitely more... Rocky III tapped into that a lot harder, I think, even though Creed was on Rocky's side.

The strangest thing about Clubber Lange is I remember at one point, he's giving me an interview in the movie, and his thing is, I live alone, I train alone. But he's a boxer, so he never spars. How can a boxer train alone? A boxer, more than anyone, needs someone to train with him. Is he just hit in the heavy bag?

I think he was probably exaggerating a little bit. Let's take a break, and then we got to talk about baseball. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. This NBA season on FanDuel, it's all about the boost. Game days mean your chance to boost your bet, make every play, payoff. That's right. All customers get a 50% profit boost on NBA Parlay and SGP bets. So I'm going to Denver Clippers on Wednesday night. The Clippers are not doing well this season. They really match up nicely with Denver, and I feel like this It's going to be a kitchen sink game for them. So I'd probably do Clippers, Underdog, Money Line with the over, with Harden to do well, with Dick Patum to hit a three or two, something like that. Lock in your bets, boost your odds, make every night count with Fandil, official sports spending partner of the NBA. Head to fando. Com/bs to get started. Must be 21 plus present, select states are 18 plus in present in DC, Kentucky, Wyoming. Opt-in required. Rewards are non-retrialable. Restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration leg requirements and max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.

Fando. Com. Game problem call 1-800. Gamble or visit rg-help. Com. Call 1-888-789-777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Every football season, the same thing happens. The game somehow makes everybody really hungry. Quarterback scramble is clearly a sign for breakfast burritos. Yeah. Turnover, suddenly dessert at 2: 00 PM doesn't sound so crazy. Wing formations, well, those can only mean Buffalo wings as if they're ever not in play. Even the goalposts start looking suspiciously like French fries. It's almost like football sending a message to eat more food. Yeah, the good news Uber Eats makes those cravings easy to satisfy with game day deals all season long, from wings and pizza to chips, drinks, and even last minute grocery runs. Don't sleep on those. You'll find savings on all your favorites over the street to your door. Order now on Uber Eats. Can I say one more thing about Anthony Davis before we move on? Just because it's timely and I'd like to just get on the record on the pod. What's interesting is they trade Luca for him, and he's the centerpiece of the trade, and he's important for Nico, and he's Clearly, when he's helping one of the best 15 players in the league, but now has had even more wear and tear.

He makes a ton of money. They've changed a lot of the trading rules. So a lot of the teams you could think he could get traded to, they can't even do the trade because they can't take his giant salary back. I went through it today. I can only find a couple of teams that would even make sense. On top of the fact that they're not going to send him to a place where he's going to be unhappy because they don't do that in the NBA. If you have a disgruntled superstar, not worth it. So it's really I was thinking, Oh, it'd be really fun is Davis for LaMelo. Just like the Mavs get this young point guard. They play the flag. Charlotte gets a big man. And then you start unpacking. It's like, Well, that It can't happen because they can only take one player back for Davis. Charlotte have to send three to make the sellers work. Davis would be unhappy in Charlotte. They'd have to trade him. Charlotte's not going to do that. They want a tank. So that blows up. Really, the only teams are the Knicks and the Warriors. And then it comes down to desperation.

The only team that would actually be desperate enough because they're near the end of the line is the Warriors, which leads me to Butler, who makes the exact same amount of money as Davis. So you could trade them straight up, I think. If I understand the rules.

Is this going to happen or is it just you're speculating? Is it the idea that Davis is getting traded? Are they planning?

I was getting a bunch of text today from different people going, Well, now the Mavs are going to blow it up. They'll trade AD. And we do this with the NBA, but they've They changed the rules so dramatically, and these guys make so much money. It's like, well, actually cross off eight of the 10 teams you thought AD would go for. Here are the actual teams. And it's basically the Knicks and Golden State. If you're the Knicks, I don't know if you trade towns for him. Towns spreads the floor for you. Davis, all the wear and tear, who knows? But I think Golden State would be the one team near the end of the line that could talk themselves into it because they're not on the level of OKC in Denver. And they could give Butler and some first-round picks. Butler goes to the Mavs playing with Flag. They have the centers. It's just something in my head that I thought would make sense.

If you have Kyrie, Flag, and Davis, don't you at least want to see what happens?

I think that's how this plays out.

I would want to see what happens first.

I'm just telling people this is the blow it up scenarios. There's not a lot of blow it up options. All right, let's talk baseball. The pitch clock saved the sport. True or false?

Singularly or did they contribute to it?

I wouldn't say- So you're saying it was the biggest factor or you would say singularly?

It's the biggest factor, I think. But I wouldn't say it's the only factor. Agree. Okay. Also, the sport is saved now. We've made the decision, baseball is saved. We've had seven podcast conversations where we talked about baseball being dead. Are we now the position that it's saved?

The viewership that World Series was bonkers. It was crazy.

But this is what I think.

And anecdotally, September and October, there was more baseball talk going on than in any time in my life since the early 2000s.

I'll tell you what, it's the most I enjoyed watching baseball since the 1991 series between the Twins and the Braves.

That was- Can you think about that? Yeah. Or like '03, '04 was the last time I felt like baseball took over the country with the narrative. It's like '03, the Bartman game and the Yankees, Red Sox. We just haven't had anything like this in 20 years.

What is likely going to happen is a lot of the people who watch this World Series and have suddenly changed their opinion about baseball, are they going to start watching it again next April? And they'll be like, This is not what I remember. Because playoff baseball now seems more different than the regular season now than any other sport. It used to be that way in the NBA and in hockey. Now it's in baseball. What I think could happen, my new theory on this, is that Major League Base is going to overtake the role the NCAA basketball tournament had about 15 years ago, which is that people don't really follow the regular season, but then they become obsessed with the tournament.

So you get their pools, they watch, they do the weekends, they go to sports bars.

And they convince themselves during the NCA tournament that they actually still know about college basketball. There's enough ways that you can shoot with the internet to actually seem as though you know what's going on in college basketball without watching it. And then you get to the tournament and you're like, Oh, this guy and that guy. And then you can also fall back into all the classic pageantry stuff. I think that's going to happen maybe with baseball, that people will not care that much outside of regionally during the regular season, but they'll be like, Okay, baseball playouts, this is great. Because that was really... It's going to be hard for another World Series to match this.

But the playouts before, the rounds before were great, too. I've been thinking about it a lot because something clearly shifted. And I do think the pitch clock helped. But I also think having the Dodgers, what they did, they spent all this money and they ended up, they make the bets trade. They finally get Ohtani into a playoff situation. They get Yamamoto, who's incredible. They get Freddie Freeman from the Braves, and they have Will Smith, homegrown catcher. That's their five. But they also have enough money to spend on these different expensive starters. They just have enough money to spend. They're basically making this giant blockbuster movie, and they have enough money to spend on like, Oh, this is a small part for the attorney general. We'll get Laura Linny. It doesn't matter. But they've won two in a row. They won in 2020, and they're like a legitimate dynasty now, which I think people like. I really do. And I'm not the first person to say this, and I've talked about this on Pods before. I think I've talked about this with basketball forever, with how desperate they are to have more parody and make it have teams not dominate.

I personally like domination. I like having the bar for all the other teams to try to beat. This is what we grew up with. This was Celtics-Lakers in the '80s. This was Cowboys Stealers in the '70s, and this was the Bulls in the '90s. And I just personally like it more. I like having the bar you have to climb to beat. This is what college basketball used to be like. This is what we've had in college football the last 20 years. And I think baseball has figured out the best because nobody He's going to beat the Dodgers because they've actually figured out how to spend, how to grab this Far East connection where they're always getting the best, who is the next guy from Japan? They're probably getting them. And now this is the team to beat on top of you have Judge in New York. You have Soto You have the Mets. You have Bryce Harper and Schwarber with the Phillies. You have Roman Anthony now with the Red Sox. All the big markets have a guy. And I'm all for it, man. I really feel like we're headed to a good place.

Okay. First of all, you said so they're a dynasty now. Now, weren't you skeptical of people who called the Kansas City Chiefs a dynasty?

Well, they've won three in six years or five?

Well, if you said 2020, that would be three in...

I guess the difference with them and the Chiefs is the Chiefs was always built like the Patriots. We have these little five-year windows in the NFL, and then the cap gets you. With whatever the Dodgers have now, they're always going to be the favorites to win the World Series for the rest of the decade, no matter what happens with the team they have.

I think what people love the most, and to some degree, the NFL is the only league that can really create this scenario, is parity with a dynasty. Or that there's a ton of parity in the league, and there is that one team in that one level above. That's the ideal situation. Say, we always talk about the Lakers and the Celtics in the '80s, that was built for dynasties, but there wasn't a ton of parody. You went down to the Bucks and there was a level with the Rockets.

Bucks, pistons, the Mavericks for a couple of years.

In the NFL right now, the P. Roselle idea of creating parody has worked to such a full extent. I mean, there Where the worst teams in the NFL are still... It's really rare to think of that this team can't compete. So that's maybe the idea of baseball having this situation. It doesn't seem like they have created parity across the league.

No, you need the drags, which is... I wrote a column about this once. To have great teams, you need bad teams. And this is why I hate the NBA lottery so much, because you're constantly rewarding the bad teams for being bad, but you're putting the most talented players in bad situations and then wondering why they've been disappointing. You're putting Guys who have a chance to be awesome, but they're playing on a 18-win team, and very rarely can you flip that around. Even LeBron, when LeBron went to the Cavs, that team was awful for years. But that was why I was so interested in what would happen with Cooper Flag on the Mavs, because with Kyrie and AD, they actually had a chance to be good right away, which is basically what happened to Larry Bird and Magic. Those guys went to teams where they were good right away. Jordan had the opposite. He went to a mess of a team. It took five years to get there. But I think I still like it because I still like when you have... Football has it with the quarterbacks, right? It's Mahomes and Allen. Those teams are always going to be good.

Hopefully, Drake may now with the Patriots, they're always going to be good. The way the Eagles have built their team, they're going to be good for at least the rest of the decade. So maybe you have three or four bars that the rest of the league has to get through. Base might have seven.

Are you one of these people who would be like, let's abolish the draft and let just the guys come out of college, sign where they want to sign, and we enforce a hard cap? And so if somebody like Chet Holmgrum is coming out or whatever, he can take X amount of dollars for teams that are in the cellar, or he can take a little less money if he wants to sign with a a more established team. Do you want the draft to exist?

I want the draft to exist. What I don't want is for teams to be able to be in the lottery for three, four, five straight years with top five picks. That's what the NBA has to change.

What if it's the old way? How about the old way?

I just think if you win the lottery, you shouldn't be able to get a top three pick the next year. I would just put that rule in right now. You shouldn't be rewarded for being bad over and over and over again.

Yeah, If you have a top three pick, maybe you can't pick higher than for the next year.

Little wrinkles so that teams get penalized at least a little bit for being awful. I think what the Nets did, they're the most disgusting of all the teams. They had five first-round pics last year. They blew all of them, and they don't care at all. They're not even the second most important team in New York. The Liberty, I think, are more important. I think that people own the Liberty and the Nets probably care more about the liberty. And they're just like a way station for incompetence at this point, hoping that they'll stumble in this draft that's coming up. There's these three legitimate franchise guys in it. And they're just keeping their fingers crossed to get one of those three guys. And that's their entire strategy. I think that sucks.

I'm done with that. Well, it is. We talked about this years ago, the whole idea of the process as it used to be described.

Which would turn out to be a disaster.

Well, except that it actually It worked exactly as it was how it was supposed to work.

It's just that Ben Simmons ended up being- They never made it past the round, too. They won two playoff series.

Yeah, but the players didn't pan out, but they did the thing that it was intended to do. They had Ben Simmons, they had Embiid. Both of those guys were seen as- They got the false pick.

Yeah.

Here you go. So it did actually do the thing it was supposed to do, which is negligibly increase your luck of getting into somebody great. It's a strange strategy. It's just maybe not strange. It's just slightly increasing the possibility that you will find the guy who changes everything. And they did that. They actually got that.

But here's the thing with the Sixers, though. And this is what we learned retroactively and why I don't think teams will ever do that again. They built a losing culture, but they put these young stars in the losing culture and told them it didn't matter if they won or lost. And I think it had real ramifications for those guys. I think for Simmons and for Embiid, those guys have had really bizarre careers. I think even some of the stuff they value has been... Simmons thought he was a super duper star. The team wasn't winning anything. I still don't know what happened to him when he basically bailed out the team. And then Embiid, I just think has had a really strange career where it really seems like he values the individual stuff over the team stuff. We've seen him, even little stuff, I'll play Jokuj, but only if it's in Philly versus playing in Denver. You can't be like that and be the face of a team and the best guy in a team. And I think you just learn bad lessons when you're in a bad situation.

Yeah, I guess. That's true. And you're saying that if he gets strapped in somewhere else, you think maybe he's a different person? That's always- Well, think about...

Tateum and Brown had two of the best situations you ever could have walked into, where they go into a team that also had just signed Al Horford, that had Isiah Thomas, looked out with him, and the team was pretty good and was in the Easter conference finals. And those guys are rookies getting a taste of it, going against guys. They're in winning situations with good crowds. And I would say that had a great effect on them, a really positive effect. It's also unusual. That's not usually how it goes. But if you're just saying, I'm going to put one guy in this Philly situation and one guy in this Boston situation, which guy will learn better habits and have a better career? You would bet on the Boston situation. Oh, totally.

In the NFL, you see this with young quarterbacks all the time.

Sam Darnold. That's the best example of all of them because he's actually talented.

Very often, as it turns out, the cliché now is that nobody knows anything in the NFL about drafting quarterbacks. Everyone is, which all guests work. We can't predict anything, and it certainly seems that way. And yet When a lot of these guys get into a good situation, they end up becoming pretty close to what the original description was. But whatever the original idea was, I can't remember what year it was, but the We're like, he came out, Lamar Jackson came out, and Josh Allen came out, and Rosen was in that draft, and Baker Mayfield. We did a podcast and we talked about this. It's very interesting how we were in some ways amazingly correct. And then In some ways, amazingly idiotic, most notably me claiming Baker Mayfield should be moved to slot receiver. That was what I said in that podcast.

You said that?

Well, because- That's incredible. Everybody was saying about Lamar Jackson.

He would have been an amazing slot receiver.

They were talking about Lamar Jackson, and it was like, he's such a great athlete, but he'll probably never be a quarterback. Maybe you move him to receiver or something. I was like, I don't think that should be the case at all. He's the best of these guys in my view. It's like maybe Baker Mayfield, maybe. Maybe he could be like an end Goldman type figure coming out of Kent State. We liked Lamar Jackson. We liked Josh Allen. You had seen him in a target or something and talked to him, and you were like, he's a good guy or whatever. And you had a good understanding of him, and that worked out. But Rosen, I remember the guy from UCLA. I think I was like, he actually might be the best. Obviously, that was wrong.

He was out of the league in two years.

What if he goes somewhere different? Who knows? What if he goes to If he didn't went to Baltimore, it'd be hard to imagine what happens.

I feel like we've talked about this a bunch of times, but it is hilarious that in 2025, we've come no closer to figuring out what's going to make a good quarterback. We have decades of data and tape and analysis. I think people are getting better at it. Even somebody like McShea, who is with us at the Ringer, I think he's done a really good job the last few years. He's been pretty on it. There's some stuff That I would look at that is almost like non-football stuff when I would look at these guys because I remember thinking a lot about this stuff with Drake May. And it's stupid stuff that's probably on brand for me, but the fact that he was a little brother, the fact that he stayed at North Carolina for an extra year when he just could have transferred when it seemed like the team was going to suck. There was a good guy, good teammate, leader traits that were there. But it also helps that he's fucking really talented, right? And that's the thing you didn't really know until you saw him in the NFL.

The thing you said before probably is the biggest factor, which is this. It's situational. It really is the situation you're in. When Jared Goff was coming out, do you remember what the criticism of him was?

Small hands. Wasn't it small hands and dumb, right?

Well, he went to Cal. I thought he made dumb decisions.

Or there were some people weren't sure about his decision making.

I just remember it was that he had small hands. And there was like, when it rains, the history, it's like, well, okay, sure. It's like maybe. But he was actually not terrible with the Rams, got him to a Super Bowl, and he's had a very good career.

You know what's funny? So I was randomly watching the NBC pregame show the other day, which I don't usually watch, but I wanted to see the highlights because I was on a plane and I didn't catch everything. And they had Jason Garrett I think it was Jason Garrett, interviewed Sam Darnold. I think that's what it was. Was that what it was? Maybe it was two weeks ago. I can't remember. But it was Jason Garrett reading Sam Darnold, his scouting report of Sam Darnold, and going through the stuff that he had. And Sam Darnold was like, Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, you nailed me there. And a lot of it was stuff like, he's so competitive, he can be his own worst enemy, and things like that. And they were just talking about it. And of course, they did it in that pregame style where the thing just... They zoom through it really fast with a bunch of edits and footage. And I was like, I could have watched this for 20 minutes of somebody going through their scouting report of somebody who's clearly made it as a pro and been like, All right, so what did I get right?

I was like, This is the best segment ever. It was like a minute.

It is interesting. There was one I remember it was going around online. It was the scouting report on Kobe Bryant coming out of high school. And it was eerily accurate. It was amazing. The things they said about them that were good, of course, were plentiful. But even the negative things were all right. It didn't say this, but it was close to be like, could face legal issues in Colorado. It was so weekly specific about what his life ended up being. So something was there dead on. But also a lot of scouting stuff, though, is very aphoristic, though, thing, too. So if you're saying, Oh, this guy, he's so competitive, he might be his own worst enemy. Well, that's technically a criticism, right? So is the idea that he should become slightly less competitive or calibrative?

Slightly less of his own worst enemy?

It's like giving a job interview and saying, What's your weakness? It's like, Oh, I care too much. It's like, Well, thanks for nothing. You know what I'm saying?

One thing I've learned, at least with the NBA, and I think this probably goes for football for a quarterback, too, is if I ran an NBA team, I I would never take the guy with a high pick that I'm really betting on, potentially even betting my job, where I didn't get the feedback that this guy was an incredibly hard worker. I just think that to me, that would be a non-negotiable. Even I've started to do some work on the '26 NBA draft because it's really potentially a generational draft with these guys. It's really nuts. And I'm fascinated by this Kansas kid who really might be the best two guard prospect.

They compared to That's the comparison I've seen.

Yeah. The first one we've had at two guard who can be credibly mentioned with like, what Vince was like coming out of high school and at North Carolina and Kobe, what some of the stuff people are saying about him coming out of high school and then Jordan at UNC. There's some stuff with him. But one of the things that people have been saying is this kid really gives a shit. He really works. This is the Cooper Flag thing. Cooper Flag is like, I'm going I have a weakness. I'm going to work on this until I fix the weakness. And I do think for the MBA, you need to be that way. I don't think you can really succeed at the highest level unless you're wired that way.

You could be right. I mean, for me, I feel saying someone is a really hard worker or a workaholic in a scouting report is less meaningful than the detriment of questionable work ethic. I feel like people will rarely say a questionable work ethic unless they have a pretty clear reason for arguing that. But people will say great work ethic because it's just something you say. It's just talking about guys, level of competition, their need to win, all that stuff. That's true certainly sometimes, and sometimes it is just something people say. But when they say something on the negative side, that usually means something motivated them to do that. People are not really motivated to say positive things, except to occasionally I've really seen the most enthusiastic. That's another thing I've noticed about how the ranking of prospects has changed, that there is now almost a competitive world within that paradigm, where somebody And he's like, well, to be remembered about this, I have to be the most excited about Ace Bailey, or I have to be the most down, unlike whatever. You got to have some real strong, strong, strong, strong take. And that does skew these things because that's how you get into this problem of these guys seem like busts immediately, and they should have never been in the position to be viewed as potentially generational.

Well, we Also, this sounds really basic and dumb, but I swear we don't think about it enough, how much a kid can change from the age of 18 to 23. I say with my own kids, you change, you get older, all of a sudden you have confidence. It's like, what happened there? And to try to project when somebody is... Think about these basketball kids. These kids are 18 and 19. And try to project even just what they're going to be like as human beings at age 23 is a crazy process, but we do it anyway.

The United States is dominated by people from about 9 to 12 universities. Almost everybody in the elite world comes from about these 9 or 12 places, which is essentially saying things are dictated by people who were incredibly impressive 16-year-olds. They were incredibly impressive when they were 16, and then they were able to get into Harvard, and they were able to get into Yale, and Princeton, in these places. And then somehow that education is the validation for the position that they start their life and where they end up. But what we're really talking about is they're not a formed person. Not only is there a huge difference between 18 and 23, think of the difference in you between 20 and 30.

Oh, my God.

The person I was at 30 had no relationship to the person I was at '20 and probably wouldn't I've even liked that person. So to view somehow the early part of my life as a way to understand the middle of my life. I mean, in sports, there's no other way, right? We got to get the kids coming out of college and guys peak early and all that stuff. But yes, totally true. That's exactly right.

Do you think if baseball has another strike, I was thinking about, we always say in real life, history repeats itself. It's like, here we go. We did this already. And baseball, having a lockout or a strike or however this is probably going to play out, which I think is going to happen right as they've captured the zeitgeist for the first time in a real way in 20 years. It just feels like the most baseball thing ever for that to happen.

Yeah, a little bit.

This has been our entire life, right? Every time it felt like baseball was going great, there would be something stupid happening.

Well, I mean, Can you sustain a league in the United States without a salary cap? I don't know. I guess they're doing it. And it certainly seemed to work great in the playoffs, but I will hear... There's so much chance, Bill. I mean, it's like, okay, so if for whatever reason the World Series went five games this year, we're not talking about it. I don't care that much. I don't know. And I'm not every person, but it's like, if that happens, and then you're like, the World Series ratings were down again, and now there might be a strike, we'd be like, it figures. Baseball is dead. But now, because there was this transcended 17 Game series, that game that went to the 18th or whatever. I'm watching this thing and I'm like, They're going to have to start having position players pitch. But O'Tani can just go in. All these things were so interesting. And plus, it's like O'Tani gets shelled and he thanks the umpire, tips his hat to the umpire while he's leaving the field. Yamamoto is like, I'll pitch four games in a row if I have to. It's like, there were some So there were things in that I was like, well, you just don't see this from American athletes anymore.

The Yamamoto thing was the most unbelievable thing in a while.

I think the conventional wisdom among the people I knew, it's like they were rooting for Toronto or whatever. But the Dodgers did to some degree, those two guys, particularly, just win me over.

Yeah, I agree. One more break, and then we got to talk college football. All right. I texted you for pod ideas. You texted me back. One thing you were excited about were all the insanely great coaching job openings in college football and why those jobs actually aren't that great. What did you mean?

It's not that the jobs aren't that great. They're just not as great as they used to be. You look at Florida and LSU and Penn State and Auburn and all these great jobs. But what is weird now is something has been completely removed from college football coaching Coaching, which is charismatic recruiting. That used to be the big thing that a guy could go into someone's kitchen, talk to the kid and his dad and his mom, and it's like he was different. I don't know if you read Barry Switzer's Autobiography, Bootlegger Boy?

Oh, from the '90s? Yes.

One of the things he talks about in that book, which I just will always remember, is that whenever he was recruiting a kid, he had this thing he did. He would first walk through the back alley their house to see what beer was in the garbage, what bottles were in there. And that way, when he went into the house, if the dad said, Do you want a beer? He'd be like, Only if you drink old Milwaukee. He'd always only want exactly what the guy drank. Now, that's in some ways manipulative, but that really is someone like, I understand how to relate to people on their level. Now, that's not how it is. Now, in the same situation, When he comes in, drinks a old Milwaukee, convinces the dad he's a great guy, gets the kid jacked about going to Oklahoma, and then the kid says, well, what's the offer, though? Because Georgia Tech offered $340,000. That's all it is now. So now it is completely switched away from being the personality that can convince a kid to go to your program to talent evaluation. Can you see a guy who's a backup for Ole Miss at tight-end, who then you can grab in the portal by just writing a bigger check?

It really is a professional- That was what North Carolina was when Lombardi was saying how they wanted to be the 33rd NFL team.

And it's like, they're basically We're not a college program. We're like a professional portal program, which I think is what they've created just in general with the sport, right?

To some extent, sure. It's definitely way different now. The SEC is not as dominant dominant as it used to be. And there's a lot of people being like, oh, see, now that everybody can play players, they don't have the advantage anymore. But I don't think that's what it is. It's just that the SEC used to have so much depth at every position, and now that's just impossible. Now, to be a great special teams player for Georgia means that you can start maybe an outside linebacker for Indiana. And then you can make these moves. So to have the the Penn State job now or the Florida job, these marquee jobs, is like, you get there, that's the whole deal. I don't know how much of an advantage you have. I don't think that whoever takes the Penn State job is going to have an advantage over Indiana. I don't think that will be the case unless that they can just do something very simple, which is raise more money. Just have more money to give these guys. And that really changed. So that also means that while these jobs aren't as as good as they used to be, a lot of random jobs could be great.

If you get a job at Liberty, and Liberty says, We're going to do what it takes to get these guys, you might as well be in Florida. You see this with BIO's basketball program. Bio took a kid from Duke. They just said, We gave him a bigger number. So I am very interested.

They went further than that. They moved the kid from Brockton, our own Ajay DeBança from Massachusetts, and they moved them in there before before he was even done with high school, moved him to a place in Utah.

What is interesting about these college jobs is obviously the guy everyone wants is Lane Kiffin.

Which is hilarious.

Well, why is it hilarious?

Because it's just been a roller coaster ride for Lane over the years. At one point, it seemed like his career was over. Now he's the guy who's in the most of the end.

The last super likable coach that still exists, right? In college football, at least. But I don't know if Florida and LSU will wait for him because they're going to go to the playoffs. They're probably going to win a payoff game. I don't know if LSU in Florida or Penn State, even if they would be in the running for that, are willing to wait that long. I do think it's possible that he could end up at Auburn if he leaves. But also, I hope he doesn't leave because he has really rehabilitated his reputation as a guy who now loves living in Oxford, Mississippi. It would change everything everything back if he leaves, especially if he left in the middle of the year or the day after they lost. It'll be like, oh, God damn it, again.

Do you think we're ever going to see what we grew up with with Bear Bryant and Paterno and these coaches that are just at the same place forever unless they break the rules and they have to get shoved out? That's gone.

The sport is different now. They've made college football a professional sport. It's just not the same. And those examples, particularly, like It's going to be hard to see someone in that position at an elite program that way because you can never be down. But you can't have... Someone could coach that long at like, Missouri or Utah or one of these places. If you're just good every year, occasionally make the playoffs. But if the expectation, like at LSU, I mean, what was Kelly's record at LSU? 34 and 14 or something like that? It wasn't that he was terrible. He had a Heisman Trophy winner. Every year, they came in with the potential to possibly They go to the national championship or at least make the playoffs. I mean, if that is the annual expectation, you can have one down year. Two down years, you mean you're in trouble. Third year, you get fired. So the idea of their... Even like a Saban-like coach, I don't think that will happen again. Lane Kiffin, if he were to make a commitment to Ole Miss, could have that career. He could be there the rest of his life because the expectation is slightly lower than the other SEC schools, and he will have success.

It's both now and in the future.

Do you care about buyout stuff and shit like that? When they're like, Brian Kelly, they're negotiating this buyout. He wants the full... It's funny that this is just a category of sports reporting.

Do you see what they're doing now with the Brian Kelly situation? Now they're claiming. What is he? Lsu, at least that's what I saw yesterday, LSU is claiming, We haven't officially fired him yet, so therefore, we can now fire him now for cause. In which case, that gets changes to buy-out situation. I mean, he's obviously hard-lying it. It's like $54 million, and he's like, Pay me. I'll sit around and do nothing for two years. And they don't want to do that. I think that they assumed that he would be the guy who'd be like, I'm going to talk to Penn State right now, but he's not doing that.

Right. So give us your grade for the state of college football right now. Are you happy with it? On the field? This is your favorite sport. Just everything, the whole experience. Are you pro? Is this good? Is this what's happened this decade been a good thing?

On the field, I would say it's still an A or A minus almost every week. I mean, in terms of the health of the system, C minus and getting worse. I mean, in short term, it is fun that Vandy is good. It's neat to see that. And Indiana. Yeah, exactly. These games are great. I mean, there was like a... The Last Saturday, there was a whole bunch of surprisingly, it didn't look like the world's greatest slate when I looked at ESPN, but there were a ton of good games.

The Indiana game was incredible. That was one of the best sporting events of the year.

It was probably the catch of the year. And then the Iowa-O Oregon game was real interesting because Iowa was just at their utmost Iowa. This last drive, they got to go 93 yards, and they can't throw the ball, but of course, they completed deep one. All these things They made it a really fun day. So I still... I mean, in terms of being a consumer, I would watch that over anything, but I know what's going to happen. In the short term, professionalizing a college sport does spike its popularity because pro-sports appeal to the casual fan more than college sports do. But that erodes over time, particularly if the professionalized college version just becomes a less good version of the NFL. And that is what's going to... I mean, my fear of what's going to happen in five years is that all these teams are going to play the same. And the idea of someone like... Shoxy.

Rock 'n' Running the option. Throw the ball all the time.

Running the option, an option team playing an air raid team or something is just going to be over. It's all going to be in the same way that, for the most part, the NFL is. That the teams are different, but they're much much more similar than different by a factor of 10. And in college, there's still real diversity, and there's a regional quality to it. And the conferences play differently. And I think that's all going to be gone. And of course, that's going to be disappointing, but I mean, I don't know. I'm sure I'll still watch it.

I'm sure I'll never- Have you heard about this five-year eligibility rule that's getting bat around? What is this? That people think might happen? Basically, instead of a red shirt thing and whatever happens with that, it's just like when you go to college, you have five years to play sports. Who wants to? You could start all five years. You can go to Duke and play basketball for five straight years. Is this because people thought the extra year for the COVID stuff was good for the kids or what would- Yeah, I think. And especially in the D3 level, you play four years, you go to grad school, you could just play for one more year after that. I think people I like that.

Well, I think I've said this before, but I very much believe this. So I think that we are now less than five years from the SEC and the Big Ten, at least for football, breaking off from the NCAA, and they're going to start their own thing. And when that happens, I don't think the players will need to go to those schools. I think the quarterback for Alabama can represent Alabama. He can certainly go to school if he wants.

But not actually go to class if he doesn't have to.

There will no obligation that he be an enrolled student. So I think that's almost certainly going to happen. That's terrible. And everybody will know, here's what's going to happen. Everyone like me is going to be moan this. But there's also going to be a lot of people being like, this is Progress. Why should he have to pretend to go to school? He deserves to make money because he's making the university so much money. And it's going to be seen as naive and reactionary to not support this. That's going to happen. And then a lot of people be like, that's crazy. How can it be that I'm watching the University of South Carolina and only 40 % of the roster is enrolled in school? And people will be like, you don't get it. You don't get it.

That's the thing. The quarterback works full-time as a bartender at the local sports bar.

He'll just do that. He'll just live on campus. You don't have a great life.

Who's your team of the year so far in college football? Because you float around. You're like a nomad. You'll just root for anybody. Who's Who's been your team? Who captured your fancy?

I don't root for anybody.

Who captured your fancy?

Well, I really like Notre Dame's team this year, but I like them every year. I like their run game. I am very interested in Oldness, now with Save and Gone.

It feels like you're becoming a kiffing guy. That's the feeling I'm getting.

Absolutely am. And especially now with Save and Gone, that's who I'm rooting for in the South. In the Big Ten, the coach from Indiana is truly a jerk, but it makes for an interesting situation. And I'm not going to root for Ohio State. So it's like, UNC?

Any really interesting UNC?

Absolutely. I really wanted that to work. I was really in. I watched that first game.

It's coming on. It's getting better.

That first drive of that game. I was like,. But I think that this is what I think has happened. So what is one of the vortex central ideas of the coaching personality? The coaching personality is that I love to coach, and it doesn't matter who I'm coaching. I would coach a Peewee football team, and I would care as much as I would coach in the high school team, and I'd care about a high school team as much as I would I would care about a college team, and I would care about that as much as the NFL. Coaching is teaching. I'm an educator. That's what matters to me. All I care about is what I'm doing in the moment. And I think Billa Chet got to North Carolina, and he was like, I guess I used to be that way. This doesn't seem the way I remember it. I can't tell these kids what to do, and they don't seem to know anything. I got to teach them everything.

All that might transfer if they're unhappy.

Because when he took the job, say, with the Browns, I think Billa Chet was still the person who would have been like, I like coaching the Browns. I would just assume Coach Maslin high school.

It's a Belichick impersonation. I didn't realize I was on the docket today.

I'm not Chris Ryan. I can't do this shit. Okay, so I just got a failure. But I can't do him. My British accent is terrible. But I think that when Belichick was with the Browns, at that point in his life, whatever age he would have been, that would have been what? How many years ago now? 30 years ago. I think he would have been the person who no matter where you would have put him, if you'd have put him in a powderpuff football league, it would have been, I care about this more than anything else. But he's an older man now. He's went through a lot. He's had the experience of being the most talked about person in all of sports for moments. And now he's in this situation where it's like, Well, can I win the ACC? I think that it's hard for him to get motivated to be himself. And I don't think... I think in a way, it's probably a bummer to realize that. It would be like if... Okay, so I start writing because I just love writing. I'm a writer before I ever get anything published. I used to just sit in my bedroom and write stuff.

And then now it works out. I'm a journalist, write a bunch of books. In my mind, I'm still like the person in high school who just writes because he loves to write. But now, all of a sudden I couldn't sell books, my mentality would say, go in your office and write. You just love writing. But maybe it wouldn't seem the same to me. Maybe this idea of writing for nothing except myself all of a sudden wouldn't seem the way it used to be When I actually became someone who could do it or whatever. You have to just love it to be good at it. But once you get rewarded for that, maybe it changes. I worry about this. I worry if I actually have the same drive that I had 30 years ago or 40 years ago. I don't know.

So you think Belichick being on a four and five UNC team just wakes up one morning and he's like, I don't know. I don't know if I'm enjoying this anymore. I've done everything I could do in coaching, and maybe this is it.

Here's what I think is more like it. I think there was a time when he would have woke up in the morning and he'd have been We're four and five. What can I do to make us better? Now maybe he wakes up and he's like, I want some toast. Is the coffee ready? It's not that he doesn't... It's not like he's consciously being like, I don't care. It's just that it's not consuming him. When you're consumed by something, whether it's a job or a person or whatever, everybody has had this in their life where there's maybe a time in your life when the first thing you thought of when Then you woke up with this person you were dating. And when you went to bed, you were thinking about this person. And it was just a-I'm like that with coffee. Okay, yeah.

When I fall asleep, I'm like, I can't wait to have coffee tomorrow morning. Then when I wake up, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to get to make coffee.

And that would be a totally great mentality if you were trying to become a major coffee entrepreneur. You would be like, That's who I need to be. That's the person I need to be. I need to be the someone who thinks about coffee when I wake up. If If you want to be good at something, it can't be that you think about it a lot. You need to think about it all the time, even when you don't want to. And that is the key. And that's a hard thing to sustain when you're someone who's lived and had that many experiences. He said he's had so many experiences in football. I'm sure sometimes this seems like this isn't the same. It's just not fun to do this in the way it used to be fun.

I cut out a piece. We did the rewatchables, me and Van and Sean last week. We cut out a piece we ran last week on this podcast about filmmaking and creativity. We were arguing about it, and we're obviously all good friends about... I was saying I worry sometimes that there's too many distractions, that it's going to ultimately hurt creativity because I think of the way I grew up where a lot of times I read a book or wrote something just because I didn't have anything else to do. I would be like, I got two hours here. Maybe I'll try to write a column. But now if you put, I don't know, 18-year-old, 19-year-old me in this situation now, I'd be like, I'll go on Instagram and go check that out, or I'll go on Twitter, or I'll go on some message board, or I'll go on the Celtics Reddit to see what they're saying. Now I've just killed two hours, but I didn't do anything that actually I have something to show for it. I do worry about that with the 125 generation. That sounds like the old guy, but I think sometimes the best ideas I ever had, The best things I ever wrote, just in general, came out of...

My brain was just going because I was at a stoplight. I wasn't on my phone. I was just staring at a tree and all of a sudden thinking about blank and got an idea. I'm like, Oh, that would actually be a good idea. And now I wonder if people have that in the same way because they're always moving on to something that captures their attention when they're bored. Does that make sense?

I would say the greatest detriment to American culture right now, I mean, in terms of what we're talking about, arts, entertainment, and stuff like that, is the systematic elimination of daydreaming. The people used to daydream all the time. That used to be you had to. It wasn't like if you had to go to the bank and you had to wait in line and there was nothing to do while you were waiting, so you just had to think about things. And I This is going to make me sound weird or weirder than I am, but I force myself to do this. I have chunks of the day where I just lay there and don't do anything just so I can- Just to use your brain. Well, to just let my brain just go. Just let it think about anything without something providing stimulation back. I mean, that's also like this thing you're talking about People have talked about this since the beginning of the advent of the printing press. That basically it's like people will be less creative now because they can just read the Bible or whatever. And then it was like, oh, well, radio and then television, all these things.

It was like, these things are going to stop us. But here is what's different. Reading is like a responsive thing. You read something and you got to imagine in your mind. It's an active experience. It's okay. But then all these other things we move through are passive, and we have really accelerated that part of it, where people are looking on their phones or whatever. Phones are always the easy thing to use, but that's what everyone uses. And there is a passivity to it because you don't have to imagine what you're consuming. It's a visual image, or you don't even have to read what you're reading about because they find ways to repackage it and tell it to you faster in a simpler format.

Or you listen to it over reading it. You listen to an audiobook, whatever.

And I think that the idea of just spacing out and just letting your mind go, I think that's really nice, but just totally gone. My kids can't handle it. My kids cannot handle boredom. I often think we've really become a A real secular society. But I think one of the benefits to when it was a more religious society was it forced people to be bored. I would go to Mass, I would sit there, and you would just have to sit there for an hour or whatever. And I think that was really good. It's really good to force people to be bored. And we've removed that from- You know where we have it removed it?

If you take a flight and the WiFi your eyes down and you thought, I'm going to go on the WiFi, I'll watch a show or I'll do... But now you're just stuck on this flight for four hours. You didn't bring a book and you're like, oh, shit. And guess what? Sometimes that could be okay, especially if you're a creative person.

Well, this is a thing, right? Raw dogging flights. Obviously, it's a weird... Strange they picked the term raw dogging for this. So there's this idea that you go on a flight, you don't watch TV, you don't listen to anything, and you don't read. And why would this happen? Why would people do this by choice?

And it's because- They force themselves to do work. Yeah.

No, I think that there's something in subconscious about us that raves this. That people are confused. I flew four hours and I didn't read anything. I didn't watch anything. I didn't listen to anything. Why do I feel good? They don't even know why. It makes no sense. They expect to come off the flight and say, That sucked. The TV didn't work, and I didn't bring a book, and I just had to sit there, and yet that's not what's happening. They're proud that they did it, and they feel good about it. So I mean, this is- It's an achievement.

I'm not to be bored.

So far in this podcast, I've supported Nico Harrison, and I was like, People should do nothing. It's good for them. So I guess- Be bored. What's going to be third?

I talked about this on Sunday on the pod. I took the train from Boston to Stanford with with my daughter. Okay. And we both had an iPad on and we watched this Peacock show at the same time. And that's all we did for the entire thing. We watched this show and we talked about it. I was thinking when I was a kid, going back and forth between Connecticut and Boston because my parents were divorced. I'd be on the Am track and I'd bring a book and a notepad. I'd read the book for some of the time or I'd have a newspaper. I'd write parts of short stories or fake sports columns, just whatever to kill the time for three hours. Those were the only options. But it also made my brain work in these ways. I remember in college, I didn't have a computer until my senior year in college. When I had it, I wrote a sports column every week and I'd write it longhand. I would go to a Dunk of Donuts and I would get a giant ice coffee and I would write out ideas for the column and then I would start writing it in fucking cursive.

I would write out the entire thing, go back into the newspaper and then type in the column. And that seems like that happened in the 1890s. It seems like I was a cast member on what was the Yellowstone spinoff, 1893, whatever, 1888. I know. Yeah. That seems like a million years ago, but that was whatever my weird process was.

You will often make jokes about your fingers not working. Do you miswrite it all? I got to say, I'm always surprised. So you put that basketball book out. It's like 800-page book about a sport. I don't know how many weeks it was on the top of the best seller list. You were in a position where you could have written whatever you wanted for the rest of your life. You could have said, I want to do a book of poetry. It would have cost me $400,000 for that. So how did you not keep doing that? You could have written a book about anything you wanted, and then you just stop. Now, I understand some people are listening to this, and they're like, well, because he moved into podcasting, and that's actually much more relevant to what was happening in the world, and he'd rather dominate this space than that. But do you ever regret that you didn't continue writing?

I don't regret it, but I really miss it. The reason I haven't wanted to do it the last seven, eight years is because I just don't feel like I could do it at a level that I'd ever be happy doing it. I always say it's like golf. It's like these people that have to play golf a few times a week to be good at golf. And if they're just playing every once in a while, they're so unhappy because because they know what they should be doing, but their body can't remember what to do. I feel like with the writing, you just have to do it every day. It's the only way I could be successful at it. It's the repetition of being in the habit of doing it day after day after day. That I think for me, some people aren't like that. For me, that was what it was. And all these different career choices you make, I don't have the ability to do that anymore. So I would have to give up something pretty major to be able to do it. With that said, I have been thinking about writing a book.

Oh, really? Okay. This is a difficult question. But like you said, I totally understand you saying, I don't feel like I could do it at the level to which I would be comfortable with or which I would find acceptable. What specifically do you mean by that? What do you think that your writing now would last that would stop you from being comfortable publishing it? Because I'm always uncomfortable when I publish things. So it's like...

I think it's more the process because I remember the happy The obvious I was ever with writing was when I was doing my basketball book, which was like a suicide mission, basically, trying to do the book the way I did it with doing all the other stuff I was doing. But I was in the habit of really writing for three and a half, four hours a day. Every day, I didn't have another It was their choice. I remember I got to the point where I felt like I could flick a switch and just write whatever I wanted for three, four hours and be like, All right, I'm going to go to this place. I'm going to do it. I know it's going to at the level I want it to be. And I never really got back to that spot. I had moments. I remember the first year at Grantland, I felt like I got back there for a year with the process. I remember I came back from Boston after LeBron killed the Celtics in that game. And I wrote a column on the plane that I think it was probably one of the best things I've written.

And I wrote it on the plane. I had four hours to write it. I was frankly typing when I had to send it when I landed, and I just knew I could it because I had had enough reps. That's the stuff. It would be so hard for me to do it now. I don't know how to do it.

But look what you just said. That you hadn't done it in a while. You did it one time in a four-hour window.

No, I'm saying when I did that, that was because I was writing all the time. So what would happen if you did that now?

What would happen if you tried that now? Do you think- I'd probably...

I'd stare at an empty... I've tried a couple of times. I'd stare at the empty document for two hours, even remembering the process of putting your brain into your fingers.

What book are you considering writing? This is like, I'm breaking news.

I feel like I'm- No, you're not because I'll never do it. No, I had an idea. I had two different ideas for a book. I'm not going to mention them.

Okay.

I'll tell you offline.

Oh, okay. I'm curious. I don't mind you not telling me here, but I'm a little surprised that you said that. I thought that was you were like, I'm done with that world.

No, I had a book after the basketball book that I really wanted to write, and I just got too busy and I didn't do it. But I had it all sketched out and I didn't do it. I'll tell you about it after. But I had it. I had literally... John Walsh still mentions it to me almost any time I talk to him because he's the... I think the one person I told about the book. So it's a sports book? He was excited. It wasn't really a sports book.

Okay.

Yeah. I'll tell you after. But I think the biggest issue, the mistake I made with the basketball book was it was just too long and too hard to do. It was three years of my life and it It would have been two books. I should have spread it out. Why?

I disagree entirely.

So you wrote that.

It actually became the book you imagined, and it sold incredibly well.

I know, but I wish I had done part one and part two of it and then spent more time on it versus just trying to rush to meet a deadline. I still have so many things I would change about it at this point.

It's tough to do a book like that, particularly when you were talking about some players who are still active, because there's no way you can write about things in the present tense without the book in all likelihood becoming dated, even if you're right, even if everything you say about those guys is correct, things just change. So that is hard. It would be hard for you to read a book like that and not say to yourself, I would change this or I would change that. It's really interesting.

But there's a scary moment when you're doing a book like that, and I'm sure this has happened to you with at least one of the things you wrote, where at some point you're completely lost in whatever you had in your head the book should be, and you've done a lot of the work already, but you're now in an abyss. You can't get out of it. You can't see the finish line, but you've already done all this work, and there's nobody who can help you. It's like you're the only person. In a weird way, that's probably what I miss the most about writing It's like when you're the only person who can solve the problem, and it has to be you or else the thing's not going to get solved, right? But at the same time, it's so scared. It's all you think about. To do it correctly, it has to be like, the only thing you're thinking about. You're thinking about it when you're in the shower, when you're in the car, when you're making a tuna fish sandwich, whatever it is. It's just like, fuck, I got to figure this out.

That's what it is. When you do rewatchables now, it's almost like, to use a musical analogy, it's almost like you guys are making a rumors, right? You're people, you're throwing ideas off each other.

You're using your- Which I love. It's really fun to do.

You're using your relationships to create stuff. There's a producer outside, there are all these things. Writing is like being Prince. You write the songs, you You play the songs, you produce the songs. It's just you.

Billy Corgan making Simey's Dream. You're like, I'm just going to redo all the guitar and drum and bass and everything. Billy Corrigan.

If you were smashing Pumpkins and Rewatchables, that would be like, you would go back and you would do voiceovers for things that he says. I'm going to do a different voice for Sean.

I don't like how he said this. I'm going to get an actor. Yeah, so there's stuff I do miss about it. Now that my kids are older, there might be more time, but I'd have to give up something. I don't think I could do it at the I'd want to do it. I admire the way that you've stuck with... You have two books that came out in how many... What's the span of time between the two books?

Well, next year, I have a book in January and a book in the fall. And then, this is talking about weirdness, they're rereleasing Burger Rock City in the summer for the 25th anniversary. Wow. It's strange because I haven't looked at that book since I wrote it. It's weird to think about it, but that's Jesus.

Yeah, and you probably you finish, too. Now you're thinking about what the next one is.

Yes.

I'm really interested. The book I'd want to read from you, or maybe it's just a piece, is are bands just dead? Why did bands have a shelf life in music and rock? How did we have... When I was a kid and we had that whole Beatles era of rock bands, but then we had all this other, the bands that became classic rock, and then all these other bands like Fleetwood Mac and the Egos. We just had bands and the unity of a band and people getting together and just how you made music. Why does that seem like it's not gone, but how did that era just end?

Okay, it's like Tame Impala right now, I could say, is a band or the war on drugs or a lot of these bands, it's like they're still coming up with new ideas and people are really into Geese right now.

Geese is a big one.

What you're saying still happens, but it's no longer the center of the culture. That's mainly what we're talking about, is that it's receded from that. Part of it has to do with the formal limitations of rock music. Rock music, for whatever reason, made this decision that a band is going to be one or two guitars, a bass player, a drummer, possibly someone on keyboards, possibly someone doing another instrument that will change the texture, and then vocals. The songs are all going to be between three minutes to five minutes unless you want to go further and you become prog rock or you can become extra short and you become like a novelty like Stormtroopers of Death or whatever. There's all these formal limitations to a high degree. I think we used them all up. I know that seems insane to say, but there were so many bands from 1964 to 2004, whatever it was just used, that the sheer number of music that was produced during that period consumed a lot of the potential ideas you can create for a three or four minute song. Then there was the fact that all this music was also accessible, initially physically, but then through the internet, digitally.

And therefore, everything has become to some degree retro. Everything that comes out now, to some level, is informed by music that had existed in the past in a pretty direct way. And not the music that had just come before it and not just the classic records that everybody steals from. The idea that it's almost impossible to imagine that the most interesting thing that happens in popular music would come from a band playing rock music at this point. It just doesn't seem like that's still available. The interest in rock culture changed and disappeared. That was a big part of it. Going to a rock show had a lot before and after the band played. That was a meaningful time, and that's gone.

Nathan Hubbard has a theory that all the chord, combos, and beat, combos have basically been done in all these different rock songs that everything becomes derivative of something that already exists, which is part of the issue now. Basically, what you said about all these different convos have already happened with the four people in a band that would be in a band.

I think a lot of people said that happened in the 1980s.

Right.

I mean, seriously, because it was like, so much of what is considered rock music is still completely traceable back to 1955 to 1967. I mean, there is so much of what we view as what is supposed to be in rock and what makes something heavy, what makes something psychedelic or whatever. That's all been established. So I think it's not that it just happened now. It's just that these things occur and They're lagging indicators. Really, rock music achieved full self-awareness of itself in the early '90s. That was really the end of the idea of formal invention in an ideological way for rock music. But nobody realized that for 15 more years. We went through a long iteration of all the New York bands, the Strokes and stuff and the White Stripes, and all these things. Radiohead is in this. It did not in any way feel like it felt like it was a vibrant rock form. It felt like it was still something that was formerly inventive and extremely interesting. And yet in a lot of ways, soon as the rock artist, particularly the grunge era artist, became self-aware about what they were doing, what meant to be a rock star, and what this said about your fan base and all this stuff.

I mean, all art ends when it reaches self-awareness. And that's what happened to that.

I think '02 to '06 or '07 was a really great time. And I felt that way as it was happening. I think there are people who did this a great time. And that was the last really exciting time for music.

I think there are many people who, I think, very justifiably argue that a lot of the music that's being produced in rock right now and in metal right now- It's like it's back. Is excellent. It's just that it has... It's now being like a connoisseur of these things. It's like being like, I know the most about jazz in 1985 or whatever. And people are like, Well, what do you mean? It's like, Well, there's still jazz artists happening, and they're still doing it. It's So especially when you and I talk about these things, we always talk about them in a macro way. Everything we talk about is in the widest possible lens. What does it mean to the world in general? But of course, if we would really drill down to the specifics of this in the same way that you do with the NBA, when you low talk and stuff like that, the things you're talking about aren't really applicable to most people who follow basketball. I mean, even when you talk about getting a league pass or whatever, I think for most people, the idea of getting league pass, even though it's not that expensive, is insane since 90% of the time when I want to watch an NBA game, the guys aren't playing anyways.

The number of times that I watch a basketball game I want to see, and both teams are operating in full strength, happens so rarely. It's almost like I got a text eight people. That's like, oh, I'm watching the Warriors and the Nuggets and everyone's playing.

It needs to be an automatic text. No, they need to tell you like, hey, three days from now, the Nuggets will be playing all their guys. Get ready on Wednesday night.

I'm in a fantasy league with 15 guys on the roster. Ten of them are technically on the injured list. To some degree. It's just...

It's been ruined. I was talking to my son. My son really likes the Smashing Pumpkins. My son is really on the cutting edge of all the modern music. He knows everybody has all the hip hop, basically all that world. That's his music. But there are some older bands that he likes, and he really likes Smashing Pumpkins, mainly because I was probably playing them in the car. But But I was thinking, I'm in high school and there's a certain music I like, but there's only between 10 to 15 years of it to go back and get. When we're buying CDs and compact disk, calling up CDs in 1985. It'd be like, got to get more music. I'll get the best of sticks. There just weren't a lot of albums. There's only maybe 12 years total of all the music I like or 13, whatever it is. Now I look at him in 2025, and there's 60 years of music for him to go through, not to mention he also likes jazz and different things. I almost wonder if we even need new music the way we did. There's so much old music. You could live on that.

It's almost like having leftovers in your fridge forever. You just go back in any decade and find awesome stuff.

I would guess. I mean, every person is different. But in general, the idea of the time something is released matters much less, I get the sense, to younger consumers. Something being released now, something being released eight years ago, something being released 38 years ago, they're all accessing it in the exact same way. Because there's no physical music culture as much now. It's not like you were, say, you would have been into the cure or whatever. It's like you would have hung out with goth people and there would have been this whole world.

That's I like the cure. I did not hang out with goth people.

But I'm just using that as an example. I mean, you were into sticks, I guess. You'd be hanging out with a lot of people who loved AOR music or whatever. And you'd talk about Foreigner, and you'd talk about Boston. You'd have this world. Now, that's not really how it is. It's like all music is equally accessible. And what you were describing, there wasn't that many albums. I remember the opposite experience where there was a limited amount of money. So it's like, I've said this a million times, but it's true. For a very long time, I had four cassettes, and then I got a fifth cassette. This is like eighth, ninth grade. And it was absolutely impossible for me as a kid who was completely into metal to be like, I'm going to go back and buy the old Aerosmith records. I couldn't have done that. There was no way or particularly, I'm going to buy some unpopular Alice Cooper records just to understand. That didn't happen, right?

That's good. By the way, I was in the same boat. I probably only had 30 CDs. But it was a question of like...

That was a normal...

There weren't that many choices.

It wasn't strange to be somebody with 30 CDs. It was strange to be somebody with hundreds.

Well, remember how important the Greatest Hits albums were? Yes. Because you were like, Oh, I get the most possible versions or most possible songs from this person I like. I remember the Bad Company, Greatest Hits. This is great. Yeah, well, the people- So glad they put all that. I never had a Bad Company I used to buy a lot of live albums because the live album encapsulate the last three or four records.

You just mentioned Bad Company now. So bad company is going in the Rock Hall. Are you aware of this?

Yeah, I saw that. I was surprised they weren't in there already.

Okay, so well, I guess I have another... This might be another strange take. Okay, so I think I probably, I'm guessing, like Bad Company more than most people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, I've owned some Bad Company records. Okay. Yeah. You know, like Pat Benatar, I think, is in the Rock Hall now. And Foreigner.

Pretty good four-year run. Foreigner. Pat Benatar.

I definitely probably like Foreigner more than the average person in 2025. Ozzy Osborne got in as a solo artist. And Stevie Nicks got in as a solo artist. So I'm not criticizing these bands, but I'll say this. The Rock Hall never actually described what bands are included or what's the reason a band gets in. But I did feel like there was an unspoken understanding of what bands are not going to get in. To me, it seems like it's artists like that, people who are commercially successful, relatively formalist, straightforward bands, bands that got a lot of attention in the world It makes sense. People bought their records, people went to their shows, but it doesn't seem like that's a Hall of Fame career to me. I mean, if you're going to have a Hall of Fame about rock music or pop music, however you want to see it, it seems like you should be able to say something about the artist more than it was like, Oh, there was good records. A lot of people liked them. It doesn't seem foreigner. I just don't understand. What is the reason foreigner is in Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Here again, I say this as someone who likes foreigner. I like those- By the way, this happened in the Basketball Hall of Fame, same thing.

The bar of who is a Hall of Famer because I think, and I think it's the same reason for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They want to induct like six, seven, eight people a year, right? And at some point, they don't have the six, seven, or eight anymore. So all of a sudden... And listen, Michael Cooper killed the Celtics in 1987 in Game 4. He was the best defender at that position of the '80s. I never thought he was a Hall of Famer, but now he's getting in. People like that are getting in versus the concept of the Hall of Fame is like, Tim Duncan is a Hall of Famer. Allen Ivers person is a Hall of Famer. The best 50, 60, 70 people in a sport are Hall of Famers. Then we could argue about everybody else.

To me, a Hall of Fame is more meaningful if there are years when no one gets in. Totally. But it's just It's odd to me. And now with the Rock Hall, anybody who gets in gets to vote, right? So all the guys in Def Leppard are voting now and all the guys and all these. And that's definitely going to expand this to bands that in the past we would not have perceived as being canonical groups. I guess that's what I like. I feel like if you're in the Rock Hall, you should either be a canonical act Or you should be an act who did something that mainstreamed or invented an idea that went everywhere. Or that during the time you existed, you were the most important act that was happening. It doesn't seem like that's how it is now. Now, the Rock Hall, like the Basketball Hall of Fame, has become a situation we're not getting in is more meaningful than getting in. If you're a band who who's not in the Rock Hall, like Motley Crue or whatever is not in the Rock Hall, and they'd be like, Why are we not in if Def Leppard is in?

Or what separates this? Or why the replacement?

So basically, if you've had success for seven, eight years, you're now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Well, but yes and no. I mean, Boston's not in the Hall of Fame. If you're going to pick one of these faceless eight-year-old fans- Boston's not in the Hall of Fame? I'm 99% sure they're not. Wow.

And to me, they're probably- So Bad Company got in before Boston?

What?

Bad Company got in before Boston?

Yes. It's shocking. I think that there are some people who say, Boston really has one and a half records. But I mean, there's more hits.

I'd say three.

Plus, the thing with Boston is, that record was a bedroom album. It was produced by one guy by himself in his house. He did it himself. It is the best sounding home-recorded record in the history of music. Even now. That, to me, put in a Hall of Fame or a museum. The achievement of the creative process of making that first Boston record would justify its induction. Obviously, I like Ozzy Osborne. I like Stevie Nicks. I love Black Sabbath. I love Fleetwood Mac. They get in in Black Sabbath and Fleetwood Mac. I don't really understand why they're being or why they were inducted as soul artists. Can you really look at their solo career and say, This is It's important that these records happened.

Well, Stevie Nicks, I think... I mean, she did have a couple of albums and a couple of hits, but the Fleetwood Mac piece of her career, she already got in for the Fleetwood Mac.

He had a good solo career. Ozzie had a great solo career. Crazy Train, Flying High Again. There's a bunch of the songs that are great. But to put it in a Hall of Fame now seems like it's just...

Well, I have the answer for this one. It's literally Probably because they want to have the seven, eight new members every year so they can have the ceremony and the telecast. And they're never going to be like, Hey, we've run out. Hopefully, we'll have some more down the road. They're just going to put in seven more.

They want to have the ceremony in the bar play center. So we have to induct Rush, and we have to induct Kiss or whatever because they'll fill the place. But I mean, Rush definitely should be in the Rock Hall. But I don't know. But that's just bad. You're mentioning bad company made me think about it. Again, now, so now I I'm pro Nico Harrison, pro boredom, anti bad company, I guess. This is the aggregate of this conversation.

And pro, you think Bonds and Clemens should be in the baseball Hall of Fame? Yes. I've been on the record for 20 years saying, I don't know what we're doing. But there's some veterans committee now where they might be able to get in. And I don't even think people care anymore because it's been so long.

Although in a sense, I mean, over time, it helped Pete Rose not to get in the Hall of Fame. It helped because it's like every year, the Hall of Fame induction happened. People talked about Pete Rose every single year. If he would have just got in, people have been like, Oh, questionable decision with this gambling situation. And that would have been, he's just be a guy in there. So sometimes not getting in is to your benefit.

Well, we never got to talk about The Chair Company and Pluribus, two shows that you love. So if you want to do 60 seconds on that, then we go.

I just wanted to say a brief thing about The Chair Company and Pluribus, which I felt television has been real down for the last six or so months, and these two shows are great. And the reason they are is because they're doing something that had been lost for a while. The Chair Company is the rare example of a show outside of the Nathan Fielder stuff, where I literally have no idea what's going to happen in these episodes. It is really surprising to me when I watch a television show and I don't see where they're going or what's going to happen or even Even if I don't know the twist, I see a twist on the horizon. This show is not like that. I do not know, scene to scene, what's going to happen. The thing about Pluribus, and I've only seen two episodes of this, but they're great. What is interesting about this show is that it seems like it clearly must be about something, and yet that is a debatable concept. It seems like it's about AI, but maybe not. I mean, there's some people, I think, who see it as a statement against wokeism.

I think there's some people who think actually it's a pro-socialist message. This show, because Vince Gilligan does things in an apolitical way, people assume there must be a secret political meeting in there, and they can just inject anything, and he's done a brilliant job of making that possible. Plus, US, he's one of the last guys who at least cares what the TV show looks like on your screen. He's not just like, I'm going to show... What would be an interesting way to show a woman driving, as opposed to, I'm just going to have a shot of a car for two seconds so we know she got from point A to point B. It's like, he's trying. He's trying ideas.

Two good ones. They're both on my list, as is the Scorsese doc, as I will really like that. I haven't seen the Netflix, the Garfield assassination show yet, but I've heard they stealth released it. The Game of Thrones guys are EPs on it, and Tom from Succession is in it. There's some really good actors in it. Supposedly, it's great.

It's about Proust and Garfield?

It's a four-episode drama, I think it's a little bit funny, too, about the assassination of James Garfield.

I didn't even know this was happening.

Yeah, they did the weirdest thing. They didn't publicize it at all. And I think they wanted to be word of mouth. But I already have a couple of people in my life who are like, this is fucking incredible. And I wonder, could this lead to some Ryan Murphy type situation, but on a high-end caliber of taking historical things and just four episode, whatever? Because I'm all in. If that's how we can learn about American history, I would be excited about it.

Like a real tabloid version version of Squeaky Fram trying to kill four.

But this is high-end, well done.

Yeah, that could be really good.

Right. So we'll see if that goes. Chuck Losterman, plug some pre-orders for your books. Oh, yeah. Or please, one of them.

My football book is coming out in January. It's very difficult to sell books now, so I appreciate you having me on here and allowing me to say this. And I will. I'll come back. I'll actually come to LA in January. We can talk about the book more. You have the book?

I have the book.

Okay, good.

Good cover. Haven't read it. It's on my holiday list. I will read it before we do the podcast. Take your time. I just went through the freaking gauntlet of NFL and NBA starting at the same time. Well, yeah. So I was trying to just survive October.

It's hard to find the time to do... It's like what Jim Crocey says. It's like you don't understand the things you want to do until there's no time to do them.

Jim Crocey. One of my first favorite musical artists, by the way.

Jim Crocey songs, Walking in the Rain, Walking the Dog the Other Day, Listening to this Music. It's like those songs at times are too emotional to be available to me in the day. I don't want to think about some of these things. They're real memorable and everything's a visual picture. Some of them, like Rapid Roy or whatever, are just fun. But there's a lot of songs that are like, this resonates deeply with too much. Too much emotion.

Chuck Closterman, a pleasure as always. I'll see you in January.

You got it.

Thank you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to Gehow and Eduardo. As always, I'm going to be back on this feed on Thursday. And don't forget about the new rewatchables that went up snake eyes. Don't forget about the mailbag, bspodcast33@gmail. Com, if you want to send a question for a future mailbag segment. I will see you on Thursday. Go, Patriots. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for a Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 1-800 Gambler. Visit rg-help. Com. Call 888-79-7777 or visit rg-help. Com. Callhelp. Org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema. Org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8 Hope, N-Y or text Hope, N-Y in New.