Fox Sports Sunday: Steve Hartman & Rich Ohrnberger Talk UCLA Legend Bill Walton, Lakers Defeat Nuggets, MLB Spring Training, and So Much More!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio Radio, living the dream
once again here on a fully loaded Sports Sunday. This
is Fox Sports Sunday, and we are broadcasting live from
the ti Raq dot com studios tire rack dot com.
We're gonna help get you there and on Matt's selection
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thousand recommended installers tire rack dot com the way tire

(00:23):
buying should be well. If you're regular listeners of our
Sunday show over the many years the Rich and I
have been doing this, you know that we expand our
show to four hours during the football season as we
morph into Red Zone Radio. It's very busy, and of course,
you know, the football season flies by, and then once
we get back into the post football season, we narrow

(00:44):
the show down to a three hour run. And apparently
Rich has not figured this out yet, even though we
did it last week. You know, I'm looking at here
and Rich's texting me we're getting a little few things
ready before the show. He goes, Hey, tell Chris, you
know I'm gonna get online here, and he's looking at
me already, and then all of a sudden, it came
to you so you do understand what time we start

(01:05):
the show now, Rich, because I want you to take advantage.
You got the two little boys. If you could sneak
in a few more minutes of sleep on a Sunday morning,
you gotta go for it.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
No, you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
But two o'clock eastern, all right, at eleven o'clock West
Coast time, that's when we get underway. And then for
three hours it is just sensational radio broadcast as always.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
But yeah, it takes me. I'm a creature of habit.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah, admittedly it takes me probably a month, I would say,
to get myself back into off season mode after the
hurried pace of the red zone radio sprint that we
go through for the twenty twenty something odd weeks of
the football season. I'll tell you what I have noticed

(01:55):
one thing about my life after the football season has ended.
I'm curious if anybody else feels this way too. I
haven't yet like settled into my normal sports like off
season schedule where I start paying closer attentions.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
College basketball it's starting.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
It's starting, obviously, Like I'm invested, but only half heartedly. So,
like you know, the tournament is going to definitely get
those juices following and then it feels more normal. But
right now I'm still in like the Super Bowl hangover.
I guess you could call it all right.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Well, you know it could have been solved last week.
So last Sunday we were previewing whatever this thing was
going to be as far as the NBA all start
getting right, and I was trying to explain how this
old dynamic work where you have instead of East versus West,
now you have three teams and then you need a
four team. So they call the future stars, or as

(02:50):
I like to call them, the never will be Stars
thrown into the so called All Star mix. We knew
it was a potential train wreck, and then it turned
out to be way worse than that. So you know,
if the NBA knew how to market themselves as they
should properly during their All Star Week, then you know
he's sort of kicking in the gear right now. Okay, now,

(03:12):
let's go down the stretch of the NBA season. As
you mentioned, March madness right around the corner. Next thing
you know, we got the baseball season starting, got masters
get into April, which is a great sports month. We
would be there, but the NBA dropped the ball, and
you know this, this is so frustrating for me. I
know you're an NBA fan. You know I'm a diehard

(03:34):
NBA fan, and I've been following the Lakers literally since
Wilt Chamberlain was acquired from the Philadelphia seventy six ers
many many many years ago. To see this league, with
a lot of great players floundering to find a way
to sort of grab hold, this is what really got

(03:54):
to me. So You're hearing players and the league itself
blaming the media for all the negativity toward the NBA,
including their TNT guys, And I'm thinking, wait a second here,
who are these TNT guys. They are either Hall of
Fame players right from back in the day, or they

(04:16):
are people that have been around the NBA for decades,
so they have seen the evolution of the NBA and
they're not happy about it. And they are being paid
for their honest opinions. So the idea that they're working
against the league is ridiculous. And I'm blaming Adam Silver.

(04:37):
I used to be a fan of Adam Silver, but
the more that I because I was I left here
Sunday rich and I actually was on the road. So
I was listening to the radio broadcast and they did
a interview with Adam Silver about this whole new format
that came up with, and he I knew we were
in trouble when he said, yeah, we sort of sat
down with the players and say what do you want

(04:58):
to do and they came up with this idea, Like
he was already passing the blame before the disaster actually happened.
That's not the way to win a league. You got
to do what's best for the league, and you got
to get the players on board. And I don't know
if that ship is sale and they'd never get it back,
but it's it's frustrating because the players are great, but

(05:19):
the product right now has got such negativity associated with it.
I don't know how they recover.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I can't help but agree with you.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
I think we have a situation in the NBA of
entitlement and player power, and when I think PK. Suban
actually did a great job of describing this in a
rant that he had during the Four Nations showdown leading
up to US and Canada's finale, where he said, when

(05:53):
you have a bunch of blue collar fans supporting fifty
million dollars per year athletes, and their argument is, hey,
we work too hard.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
That does not resonate.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
That does not resonate when you're making you know, something
between you know, forty or fifty or sixty or seventy
thousand dollars a year and you are just scraping by
because the cost of living in your neighborhood makes it
so that if you don't take any family vacations and
you're really tight on your budget, you can you can

(06:28):
live paycheck to paycheck, and any emergencies will put you
under water. So you try to avoid those as best
you can, but life happens, and just every once in
a while you have enough money or you have a
short windfall of cash that comes your way, where you go, ah,
you know what, I'm gonna take the kids a couple hours.
We're gonna drive to the arena and we're gonna go
see the stars play. And then you show up with

(06:50):
your family and you've spent about one thousand dollars, because
let's be honest, a family of four, that's about the
going rate to bring them to just about any arena
in this country. You go to see your son's favorite
basketball player, your daughter's favorite basketball player, and that guy's
on the bench because he's taken one of his load
management days. Like, you got a problem, NBA. You got

(07:11):
a big problem, and you're.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Not fixing it.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
And it's insidious, and it's getting to the point where
these players are so disattached from what the rest of
the world is experiencing in their reality because they are
so far removed from it that you have a guy
like Kevin Durant, who's one of the faces of your league,
complaining that it's like the fans and the media's fault
for not understanding what a golden era of basketball we're in.

(07:37):
You know what, Spare me, Spare me about how great
basketball is right now, because guess what the ratings, the viewership,
the ticket sales, that tells the story that these players
are ignoring.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Well, a lot of people are appointing to this four
Nations tournament with such a spectacular windfall for the NHL, right,
it was a great contrast to what wasn't happening in
the NBA. So in the aftermath, people will saying that
there's the format, right, but the International NBA Stars versus
the American NBA Stars, and you look at the names
and you're like, Okay, that would be a pretty good matchup.

(08:12):
The problem with that is that doesn't change the amount
of effort that's going to be put out on either team.
I mean, you could say, on paper, wow, this looks intriguing. Yeah, well,
the International Stars going against the US Stars and they'll
be motivated like the NHL Stars were with you know,
the eventual showdown between Canada and US. No, they won't.

(08:33):
It doesn't matter what format you try to put out there,
it's not going to increase the effort of the players. Now,
I don't know how again, Adam Silver, and let's go
back to the very beginning, because I did know David Stern.
Did many interviews with David Stern, and he was the
complete opposite. He was a hard ass dictator, my way

(08:54):
or the highway. That's the way he ran the NBA
and much to the chagrin of the players back in
the time. I remember when he introduced the dress code.
He got upset begainst Alan Ivers and showed up at
some postgame press conference, you know, in his sweats or
whatever said no, no, no, no, no, no, you get dressed.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
And I had him on.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
The radio show right after that, and I asked him,
I go, commissioner, are you drunk with power? That was
exactly how I phrased it. And I knew I could
say that because I knew how his ree is. He goes,
if you're asking me, am I going to do what's
best for the league, the answer is yes. So when
Adam Silver took over his commission of the NBA, the

(09:33):
first dilemma they had was the Donald Sterling situation with
the Clippers. Yeah, and so there was you know, Lebron
James and some of the big names in the league
were threatening to sit it out unless Sterling sold the
Clippers because of his overtly racist comments that he was
caught saying, and Adam Silver immediately got something done about that.

(09:54):
Sterling didn't cry because he ended up getting four times
the face value for the Clippers from Steve Bamer and
all worked out great for him. But this really set
the tone that yes, I will be commissional league. Technically
I'm employed by the owners, but I'm going to do
good with the players. And it seemed like a great
idea for it now, but now it's come to the

(10:15):
point where the players have just rejected the idea. I mean,
I Okay, on the other side, I want to get
to what happened in Denver last night. Okay, because once
again I'll talk yesterday with Monci. I was, you know,
just rattling off all the reasons this is not working
right now with Luka Doncic and the Lakers, and then

(10:35):
you know, I say, one thing in the opposite happens
the next night. But what we saw last night wasn't
just the coming out party for Luca. There was something
a little more sinister to it. We'll explain. This is
Fox Sports Sunday.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Steve Harman, Rich Armberger. Here Fox Sports Sunday. We are
live from the Tyraq dot com studios. Still adjusting ourselves
to post football. By the way, we had a lot
of football to talk about today because the combine begins
on Thursday, so we'll get to that, plus all the
news about Matthew Stafford and when the quarterback situations so

(11:29):
as ole as the NFL is in the news. Three
hundred and sixty five days a year. But we're talking
a little NBA and yesterday I was on with the
Monsei and we were talking about the Lakers, who of
course had that embarrassing loss at home to Charlotte where
not only did they lose a game to one of
the worst teams in the league at home, but Luka
Doncic bore no resemblance to the guy that we have

(11:51):
seen in his NBA career. I mean, it was as
bad as I've ever seen that guy play. It wasn't
just that his shot was off. He had six turnover
He looked totally disoriented on the court, and I'm thinking
to myself, Wow, this is gonna be a process. Then
he sits out the next game, so he's not even healthy.
You know, Lebron amazing, you know, forty points at age

(12:13):
forty and they get a road win against you know, Portland.
So now they're going against a Denver team last night
that had nine straight wins they have owned the Lakers.
Lakers have not won a game in Denver in almost
three years, so I'm thinking, wow, I mean, this is
this is gonna be a rough knight for the Lakers.

(12:33):
Turn Out, it was a really rough knight for the Nuggets,
blowout for the Lakers one three to one hundred. And
you look at the numbers for the Lakers and it
was genius. I mean, Luca plus twenty plus minus thirty
two points, ten rebounds, seven isss, four steals. There's the Luca.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
We all know.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Lebron had a great game. Hatchamura and Reads both had
over twenty points. I mean, I'm looking at this box
scorer like it. Well, if we see this kind of
box score, yeah, I mean, the Lakers are contenders. But Rich,
it wasn't the Lakers that caught my eye. It was
this Denver Nuggets team. Then we say, after Anthony Davis,
there's no interior defense for the Lakers, right, they're small team.

(13:13):
And you're thinking, I mean, Jokis is gonna have a
field day. In thirty five minutes, he took seven shots
and made two. How's that even possible? I mean, you
talk about again what we talk about mailing games in.
If you watch that game last night, that's exactly what
the Nuggets did. They mailed it in.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
And when you have a marquee matchup like this, this
is a big time matchup, right, Lakers Nuggets, you got
jokicch you got Lebron, you got Dantic I mean, you
want to see a good game and Denver doesn't show up.
That is what really frustrates me about the current state
of the NBA.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
I completely agree with you.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
I think that teams will throw it in neutral when
they realize they're out of it. I mean, shoot, we
may have that going on where at the half with
Boston hosting the Knicks, and Boston's got a hefty lead
today right sixty four forty three. It wouldn't shock anybody.
It would be to the shock of no one if

(14:20):
this turned into a massive blowout.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Because when you play eighty.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
Two games and you have ten teams who get into
the postseason.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
Per conference, when you have almost two or excuse me,
exactly two thirds of the NBA making it to the postseason,
you don't have any urgency in the regular season.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
And so what you just said is absolutely true. Steve.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, it's fun to think that Luka Doncic is that good,
right coming off of injury after a couple of wobbly
starts and even had to rest a game set out,
you know, nursing.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
That calf or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
And he comes out and he has this incredible game
against Denver. I mean part of it. Yes, Obviously, Luca
is a great player, and he's capable of doing that
on any night against any competition in the league, and
even competition that's the best competition.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
I mean, he could do it again, so case on their.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
Best night, because that's how good of a player Luka.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Doncic is offensively, and we know that.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
However, this gives me if you're a Luca fan, this
win over Denver and his performance against the Nuggets should
should give you no, no thoughts of like, oh, well,
this is the Luca we're going to see for the
rest of the season, because you can't base it off
of one moment because Denver, like you said, I think

(15:44):
in the second half especially, they held it in.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
It was unreal. It was funny because I was a
TV last night and one of our producers is a
die hard, lifelong Denver Nuggets fan, and I looked at
him like, wow, that's embarrassing. I mean it's zero half,
zero effort, just absolutely going through the motions. So unfortunately,
we get plenty of this around the NBA. I mean,

(16:08):
think about so the biggest disaster team by far this
year in the NBA, he has got to be the
Philadelphia seventy six ers, right, they sign on Paul George
to that huge, four year, two hundred eleven million dollar contract,
putting in those numbers in perspective, Paul George making forty
nine million this year, fifty two million next year, fifty
four million, and then he has a player option. I

(16:29):
guess he's gonna pick it up for fifty six and
a half million dollars one season. And this guy is terrible.
I mean, there was a time when Paul George is
one of those players that you thought maybe he's a
little underrated. He's the most overrated player in the league.
And that doesn't do him any favors when during the
All Star break he goes on a vacation with his

(16:49):
wife and then post provocative pictures of the two of
them having fun. And you're a Philadelphia seventy six or
what are they, twenty and thirty six and they've had
some injury and Paul George is like, yeah, I'm not
one hundred percent healthy. And of course Joel Embiid, who's
making even more money, he's been hurt constantly. But again
it's it's public perception that you really don't care. I mean,

(17:13):
you can bitch and moan about my game. I am
living the high life right now and I will apologize
to no one. And as long as the fans, I guess,
are willing to put up with this, it's going to
continue this way. But if somehow the fans say enough's enough,
then maybe we can actually start moving this in the
right direction for the NBA. This is not questioning the ability.

(17:36):
I'm not even going to question the style play, which
I don't find particularly pleasing. It's not about that. It's
about effort and it's about motivation. And I don't know, Rich.
Do you think you would have been as motivated a
player if you were making fifty million dollars a year
than when you were making rookie minimum. Do you think
that that money is a reason to blame the general

(18:00):
malaise of these players pre playoffs? I mean, how do
you account for games like we saw last night with
the Denver Nuggets mailing in. How much of a fact
do you believe the money has become.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
I think it's a part of it.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
I think it's more of the culture though, because let's
face it, in the NFL, there are some well compensated
players and we see much less of this type of
issue in the NFL.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Well, what's the reason why.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Well, it's because ultimately it's the ultimate team sport. You
need every single player playing their best or at very
least doing their job on every single play. Otherwise a
play doesn't work, you know. I mean, you could get
away with it sometimes, but it's rare. If somebody gets
blown up or they're putting in a half hearted effort

(18:48):
on offense or defense, you're going to get found out
so quick.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
And so there's so much reliance on everybody to do
their job.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Now you can't have a guy really just go out
there and tank it and still have success. So there's
a culture of accountability in the NFL that's different from
the NBA. The other thing about it is that culture
of accountability is a season long accountability. So if you're

(19:16):
injured or you're not a durable player, you can't help
your football team.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
And nobody really wants your round.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
And as harsh as that sounds like, that's the reality
of the situation. You're either on the train helping us.
We're moving in all the same directions we're on the
rails together, or you're off the train and we'll pick
you up at the next stop. There's no in between,
you know, so like on again off again stuff. It
doesn't happen in the NFL because there's only seventeen games,

(19:43):
and most of those games are so crucial to your
postseason life that there needs to be that season.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Long accountability too.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
So you have accountability at more of the granular level
on a game by game or play by play basis,
and then you have this season long accountability long two
throughout the season where players always have to show up
for each other and for themselves. That even if you
paid me fifty million dollars, even if the bare minimum

(20:12):
or i should say the vet minimum in the NFL
was much higher, say it was ten million dollars per player,
you would still see players fighting and vying and trying
a lot harder than in the NBA because the culture
demands that you try hard. In the NBA, there isn't
a try hard culture. There just isn't.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
You can take nights off if you offer.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Somebody the same amount of pay at any job and
you say you could either work at maximum effort and
just kill yourself on a daily basis trying so hard
for this company, or you could throw it into neutral
for a third of the year and we don't care.
We're still going to give you the check. And guess what,
it's not going to affect your employment. You could work

(20:57):
here for a long time. In fact, you could choose
when you were tire, and we're going to give you
a pretty good contract on your way out because well,
you've been here for a long time and we value that.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Holy smoke, so are you kidding me?

Speaker 3 (21:09):
People will take Option B the majority of the time,
and so you can't blame the players entirely, but it
is an insidious culture and they have to do something
to fix it if they want the NBA to return
to a level of popularity they once enjoyed.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Well, the one thing is not going to change is
the money, because they got these guaranteed television contracts that
go up and up and up. So the near future
is not going to look a lot different around the NBA,
that is for sure. All right, Let's find out what
is trending right now. And so yesterday I was talking
to Manci. I said, what does your Saturday night look like?

(21:45):
And you said, we have like a party, right for
a friend? Is that what was going on right now?

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yes? Little party?

Speaker 6 (21:54):
Yesh, bachelorette party, a bachelorette I've been to a many
bachelor parties over the years.

Speaker 1 (22:03):
I know how that can be. I don't remember getting
up and doing a radio shafter bachelor.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
No, I you know.

Speaker 6 (22:09):
I respect the game, unlike the NBA players. So I'm
still here.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
I know who you are.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Still here, I'm still here.

Speaker 6 (22:16):
And I was distracted by this women's college basketball game
that has been quite exciting between number one Notre Dame
and number thirteen NC.

Speaker 7 (22:26):
State high scoring game, high scoring game, second overtime, and
the wolf Pack is up right now one hundred to
ninety two against the number one ranked team.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Why you is a Notre Dame. I don't get this.
So UCLA loses the US that's their only loss. Yeah,
and they dropped a third behind a two loss Notre
Dame team.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (22:46):
I didn't understand that either.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I was surprised.

Speaker 8 (22:48):
I thought they were going to stay at number one.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
I don't know. Maybe I don't know. I don't know
the reasoning.

Speaker 8 (22:53):
I agree, I agree, but Notre Dame again down to
the last minute and I think their.

Speaker 6 (22:58):
Best player, Hidalgo just bowled out this game.

Speaker 7 (23:02):
Is it's fayeah, Yeah, I think, oh, but it was
quite exciting.

Speaker 6 (23:06):
So that's what I was My attention was on that game.
Let's check in on men's college hoops because number ten
Saint John's has officially beat Yukon eighty nine to seventy
five at the half. Number thirteen per Due on top
of Indiana thirty seven to twenty five, and with about
eight minutes to go in the first half, Florida Atlantic
is on top of number twenty two Memphis twenty to eighteen.

(23:26):
In the NBA, Jason Tatum putting on a show in
Boston twenty points, eight rebound, six assists, and the Celtics
are beating the Knicks seventy seven to fifty three halfway
through the third quarter. Knicks are expected to get their
center back Mitchell Robinson this week.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
According to ESPN, he's closing in on his season.

Speaker 8 (23:43):
Debut and his goal is to be back at.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Some point this week.

Speaker 6 (23:46):
And on the ice, alex Ovechkin did score goal number
eight hundred and eighty, so fifteen away from breaking wayn
Gretzky's record, fourteen away from tying and the Capitals are
beating the Oilers three to one now late in the
second period.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
Back to you guys, Yeah, amazing name Gretzky's all time goals.
He was a facilitator first and foremost. Yes, No, his
points are ridiculous. I mean the assists that he has
are way off the charge. I think he has over
twenty eight hundred points.

Speaker 6 (24:17):
It's something like that.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
It's really weird in hockey. Why is a goal and
an assist considered the same exact thing? One yeah, pointed
the same, yet it rated the same.

Speaker 6 (24:27):
He is really two and fifty seven career points, the
assist is one thousand, nine hundred and sixty three.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
It is unrare.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
I mean, so when we talk about he is crazy.
It is an all time goal scorer. That wasn't his gate, right,
It was more of a facilitator than he was a
goal scored.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Well, and also you got to remember late in his career,
Gretzky he was drawing so much attention with the puck
in his stick that.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
I mean there was always somebody open.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
I guess at the point I'm trying to make so
like the defense shifted toward him on the ice and
he could find somebody and who was a skillful passer,
and so the all.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Timer, I mean he again he saw things. Well, we
talked about this in basketball, right when you talk about
the magic Johnson's, when you talk about a Luka, Doncic
or Lebron, they know where the other nine players on
the court are at all times, at all times, and
so they can make passes. And this is how the
genius of Gretzky, I mean was unreal. The best with

(25:27):
Gretzky is when he would set up behind the net
and he could it was just unreal. I mean, this
guy could see things literally that no one has ever
seen in the history. But for Rovetchkin be obviously a
great record once he does get that record from most
career goals in the NHL. All right, Mantzi, we'll talk
to you a little bit later on once again Fox
Sports Sunday. We are alive from the tire rack dot

(25:51):
Com studios. All right, Richie, I want to switch gears
for a moment here about a story that I think
has been misinterpreted by some people in the NFL, and
that is this Matthew Stafford story. So even last night
and again I'm doing television Los Angeles. My producers are
writing it up. Are the Rams actively trying to get

(26:14):
rid of Matthew Stafford? And I said, okay, let's take
a step back on this.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Here's what's happening with Matthew Stafford. So he's thirty seven
years old and he has two years remaining on his deal,
but only four million is guaranteed. So obviously his agent
comes in saying, you know, we'd like to lock some
guaranteed money. Understandable. And by the way, right now, Stafford,
remember when Stafford was like the highest paid quarterback, he's

(26:41):
like fifteenth. Now, that's how the money has grown at
the quarterback position. So he walks in with less Need
and says, all right, here's what we're looking for. And
Sneed's like, that's not happening, eh, and so but Sneve goes,
I'll tell you what, why don't you market go out
and sort of get a feel for the market. Right now,

(27:02):
We'll let you. You know, you want to talk to
other teams about what kind of money they would be offering,
and then once you do that, come back to us. Okay,
So you think like we're low balling you, we don't
think so we're offering what we believe is the market value.
But if you can find a better deal, you know.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Go for it.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
That kind of thing. That's really what this is about.
This isn't about, oh well, they are not going to
bring back Matthew Stafford. My guess is they are. I mean,
let me ask you this question, who would you rather
have as the quarterback of the Rams in twenty twenty five,
Matthew Stafford or Aaron Rodgers.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
I mean Matthew Stafford for sure.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Right right. I mean he's in the system. He and
Sean McVay have built it over four years, by the way,
after winning the Super Bowl the first year and then
you know, obviously injuries the second year, back to back
playoff runs. I mean, they were more competitive, let's face it,
against the Eagles than the other two teams after them.
So they're in a pretty good place right now. They've
drafted well, you know, Jared Versus was defensive Rookie of

(28:02):
the Year. I mean, they've got a lot of pieces
in place. But you understand how this is. But everyone's like,
are they getting rid of them? This is this is
some smart marketing from the Rams standpoint in terms of look,
let's let's do what's best for everyone. But you're you're
overinflating your quarterback's value, especially considering his age at thirty seven.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, I think that Matthew Stafford still has a lot
of good football left.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
I think that two to three years, I would say
that's fair. Aaron Rodgers, I.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Think we are witnessing the decline and whether or not
there is a blip in the right direction, meaning like
say next season, whatever team he plays for, he all
of a sudden has a resurgence, I think it'll be
much more short lived in terms of success rate over

(28:58):
time than what we'll see down the stretch of Matthew
Stafford's career. I think that I think that that comparison,
although maybe unfair because we're talking about a younger player
in Stafford, I think that's the reality here.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
So I don't know. I mean, maybe the Rams got
a bigger plan than we're seeing right now.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Maybe they have belief in their quarterback room that was
in place last year.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Maybe there's maybe there's.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
No I mean, could you see Garoppolo taking over as
a season long starter? Could you see a situation where
he's a bridge quarterback and they like somebody in the
draft right now.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, get this team was coming off a five and
twelve season. I'd say, Okay, yeah, you're not. You've been
in the playoffs the last two years. In fact, both
those years they played their better football in the second
half of the season. You have a quarterback that obviously
Sean McVay is very comfortable with in Stafford. You're getting
rid of Cooper cop Fine, you're gonna cut him off
the but this is not this is This is a

(30:00):
team right now, in my opinion, is the best team
in that division. Is Matthew Stafford a better quarterback than
Brock Purty, Yes he is. I think the Rams are
in a prime position to take over the NFC. Well,
they just won the division, so I mean, I don't
see any let up in twenty twenty five. Again, I'm
not looking five years down the road, but I am

(30:22):
looking over the next couple of years, and I think
the Rams are very competitive on the NFC side. So
it makes no sense. Let me give you got the
quarterback position at this point.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Let me give you a reason why it makes sense,
and see if you can wrap your head around this,
because look, I'm guessing on the fly here because we'll
never know. We will never know. But thinking about it
for a second, if Matthew Stafford at his age is
a cap hit that you're no longer willing to absorb

(30:56):
because you look around the division and you say, like,
like you just pointed out that it's a downtime in
the division. The Cardinals are still still figuring it out.
I don't think the Seahawks are in a great spot there.
They just cut their teeth with the new head coach.
Gino Smith is still a question mark as a veteran starter.
I mean, he had a nice season, but it wasn't

(31:17):
a great season. Brock Purdy, I think, is a very
similar situation to Gino Smith, although he's really at the
start of his career.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Geno Smith is.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
You know's got a lot more yesterday's log than than
tomorrow's in this league. But they're unsure of how how
much commitment they want to make with Brock, they'll figure
that out. So when you when you dial it back
to the Rams, they're thinking to themselves like, if we're
going to rebuild, now's the time because we can still
be competitive in this division through a rebuild because nobody

(31:51):
has emerged as like a great team and and potentially
even who knows.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
I mean, things work out funny ways.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Sometimes if it's a down yere for the division, maybe
they still find a way to battle into the first
spot and get another postseason berth, even though they've moved
on from their quarterback with no immediate successor plan in place.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
All right, but I love I like where you're going.
I love playing the game, right yeah, Okay, So they're
talking about the New York Giants. Okay, okay, okay, let's
say the New York Giants, because remember, you're going to
have to trade for him and you have to pay him. Okay, okay,
So the idea is you have to you know, make
a deal for Stafford and then you have to trade
him so or pay him. So I'm looking at the

(32:32):
Giants and all of a sudden, the agent for Matthew
Stafford comes back and saying, yeah, we like to go
to the Giants, so less needs. Like great, right, let's
call the Giants right now. Yeah, we want your first
round pick. Hold on it. We're not going to give
up a potential top ten pick in the draft for
a thirty seven year old quarterback. Really, I guess no deal.

(32:55):
I guess you could try to push it a little bit.
And where exactly does that take the Giant? Did you
add Matthew Stafford all of a sudden you're in the
playoffs in that division?

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Where the Cowboys now are a third distant third behind
the Commanders in the Eagles. That doesn't make any sense.
You know, It's so funny. We were talking about Aaron Rodgers,
right and saying, well, does it make any sense for
Aaron Rodgers to go to a team that really has
no chance of contending, like let's say the Raiders. Why
would he do that unless he's just looking for a payday?

(33:26):
And now you would take all those teams and insert
Stafford because Stafford is younger and right now better quarterback.
None of it makes any sense. And if you're the Rams,
look we're not just going to give you Matthew Stafford.
I mean, would you give up Matthew Stafford for a
second round pick at this point of his career? Does that?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
I mean?

Speaker 9 (33:46):
What?

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Where? And leaving yourself literally with no quarterback with what
are your options signing Russell Wilson or Aaron Rodgers.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Well, here's the problem. Here's the problem.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
A quarterback or any asset you own, whether we're talking
about a quarterback or a or it doesn't matter any
asset a car. It's only worth what somebody will pay
for it. So, if you look around the league right now,
and there's a lot of teams that are looking to
get younger at the quarterback position or get less expensive
depending on what teams are shopping quarterbacks, maybe onboarding a

(34:18):
player like Matthew Stafford is not the move for a
lot of these teams, and so maybe the best you
can get for Stafford in a market like this is
a second rounder. And so then you have to ask yourself, Okay,
is this about what we're paying Stafford? Or is this
about our future? Is this about whether we like Stafford?
Or is this about our future? Is this about next season,

(34:40):
the twenty twenty five regular season, or is this about
what's down the line for us? You have to come
up with those decisions before you even address how much
you'll let him go for, because the front, to be
perfectly honest with you, if you let him go for
a second rounder and then he goes somewhere else and
has a rebirth for a couple of years, it may
still justify the move. Years later, when you've moved on

(35:04):
to another talented, successful quarterback and you've entered a new era,
you just have to make sure you get it right
with whichever the next quarterback is who you bring through
the doors. Otherwise the fans are going to be pissed
that you moved on from Stafford.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
NFL combine gets started on Thursday. Does it still have
the same impact it had in years past. We'll tell
you why. The answer is yes. This is Fox Sports Sunday.

Speaker 4 (35:29):
Please don't listening to Fox Sports Radio Radio.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Steve Harvey, rich Tonberger, Fox Sports Sunday. We are live
from the tai Iraq dot Com studios. Programming note Next
Sunday around this time, Lucky Lishue, Lucky Lishoe. Next Sunday
is Oscars Sunday. I know that it has zero to
do about sports and probably has zero interest for the

(35:54):
majority of our listeners. However, one thing I do know
about our listeners is can you give me a little
inside that maybe can put some money in my pocket?
And that's what we provide with Lucky Leshoe on an
annual basis. He is our Oscars insider. His batting averages
off the charts. We will literally do a segment one

(36:15):
quick segment run down all I believe twenty four categories,
rapid fire. He gives us the winner from documentary short
all the way to Best Picture. And then if you're
smart and it's the day of the Oscars, let's gonna
be earlier in the day, so you got plenty of time. Yeah,
put a little wager down. You'll find out how smart

(36:36):
you are. You're like, Wow, that lucky the shoe guy
really knew it. I know every year of social media
people are like.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Is he coming on? Is he coming on? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (36:43):
The answer is yes, We're always coming on. So that'll
be next Sunday. And by the way, two weeks after
that Selection Sunday, Selection Sunday. Yeah, I get ready for
a little march madness. Rich, the NFL combine is starting on.
I was talking to our buddy Adam Kaplan yesterday and

(37:05):
I asked him, because he's been covering it for years,
I go, does this have the same impact? He goes, oh, yeah, yeah,
because and for the things we've talked about, Rich, it's
not about the made for TV you know, standing broad jump,
I don't. I don't know how many times in an
actual game did you do a standing broad jump?

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Never? Not once? Not once?

Speaker 3 (37:24):
I don't mean I guess, I guess I would say
on the run, I've tried to leap over a pile, yeah,
many times, or or how high you.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
Can jump, you know, the kind of stuff that's made
for TV stuff. But he said, the one thing that
is still vital are those physicals.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
The physicals in the interview, right, are undoubtedly the most
valuable part of the NFL combine. So when you interview
a player, you get inside their head. You get ten minutes,
fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, whatever you're allotted with each of
these players, and that amount of time you can make
a couple of pretty good determinations. I mean, let's let's

(38:05):
face it. Well, you're out. You know, you're having a
night out with your buddies. You're single, whether you know
you're out with your buddies and you're a guy or
a gal. Right, you know you're a single lady or
single guy. You know you're you're maybe searching for some something.
You find, you find somebody look at you from across
the bark. Maybe you only have a ten minute conversation, right,

(38:26):
and you're making a determination, right, there, I'm gonna give
my number to this person, or I'm gonna take this
this uh, this lady or this guy's number. We're gonna
we're gonna start something here because this felt special. There
was a connection, and sometimes those instances where you only
had ten minutes, it can result in a happy marriage,
you know, a lifelong commitment together, you know, family, all

(38:49):
those things.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Ten minutes.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
You can learn a lot about somebody in ten minutes.
So that interview process steve at the combine. If you're
a good interviewer, if your team's good judge of character, commitment,
resolve all those things. That's the reason why they still
show up for the combines.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Absolutely, and again when we talk about these physicals, when
you consider the financial investment, you need to know everything
possible about the physical condition of these players. So once
again we'll get into the combines and looking forward to that,
I just you know, just to keep the NFL motor running,

(39:28):
which is well, I mean it runs three hundred and
sixty five days. Yere again the most watched Super Bowl
of all time. Rich By the way, the metrics they
use now to gauge the audience changed this year, which
in some respects really helped the Super Bowl, you know,
you were like, really there were more people watching a
game that was over at halftime. Unfortunately, the same metrics

(39:51):
did not help the NBA All Star Game, where the
ratings were down even the system is set up for
more viewers less, meaning, Wow, that really was a disaster.
I don't know, is there anything the NBA can take
away from the NFL to try to fix this?

Speaker 3 (40:09):
Yeah, there's some things we could get into that. There
are definitely some things the NBA could learn from the NFL.
There's there's some things about the NFL that a lot
of sports could benefit from if they make a couple
of pretty.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
All right, we got some more coming up here on
Fox Sports Sunday. Rolling along here on another busy sports Sunday,
Fox Sports Sunday. We're broadcasting live from the ti iraq
dot com studios tire rack dot com. We're gonna help
get you there and I'm mad selection fast reshipping free
road has a protection over ten thousand recommended installers ti
iraq dot com. The Way Tire Buying should be coming

(40:43):
up in about twenty minutes. We'll be joined by our
dear friend, the Great John Paul MOROSEI. JP will be
joining us every Sunday here, not just talking some MLB.
He's also like a hockey insider, anxious to get his
take on what happened with that Four Nations tournament. That
was a winner, big winner for the NHL. So JP's

(41:03):
going to be joining us here in about twenty minutes, Richie.
Today at poly Pavilion, UCLA will be taken on Ohio State.
I'm still like hurting after UCLA lost that game the
other day to Minnesota at home.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Oh that was brutal.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
I mean, how about missing eight straight free throws at
the end of the game. You do that in the tournament?
Bye bye? Anyway, But the big story isn't so much
the game, it's what's happening before the game, as they're
going to be honoring the late great Bill Walton. It's
still hard for me to understand Bill having passed away.

(41:39):
I mean, you know, it's sort of an overused cliche. Oh,
he's one of a kind. You know, we hear that
a lot, right, Oh, one of it. We're all one
of a kind. Okay, let me make that clear. But
there are certain individuals that are so unique in their
personality and just the way they live their life, and
Bill Walton was definitely one of those. You know, I

(42:01):
was fortunate to get to no Bill a little bit
over the years. I hated him when he was at UCLA,
you know, because I was a US. He diehard as
a kid because my dad went to USC And you
know this is at the height when they won eighty
eight straight games. I mean, he was such a dominant player.
But over the years getting to know this guy and
he in fact, he started his radio career at Rich

(42:22):
really on our station, the new six ninety station, the
first West Coast sports station, many many years ago, and
I would do a show with him. He had a
bad stuttering problem, and so he was going working with
this sort of like the speech person to sort of
slow things down and help him with his speech. And
he would come on the radio show. We would host

(42:43):
a show together and he would work on things to
try it. And then he got hired by the Clippers,
the first team to hire him as an analyst. And
of course after that, as people used to kid about Bill.
First of all, he couldn't get two words out of
his mouth. Then he couldn't shut the guy up. I mean,
once he got rolling there was. So he was the
kind of guy that you would bring him on for
an interview and you would ask him a question. It

(43:05):
didn't even matter what the question was. He was going
to go off on his own tangent right. Absolutely loved
him and I miss him already. But it's gonna be
a nice ceremony today, apparently before the game, as they're
going to honor. Obviously, I think most people would agree
that the two most dominant college basketball players of all
time were Kareem known as Luel Sindor during his UCLA days,

(43:29):
and Bill Walton. These were the two most dominant players
in the history of college basketball.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
There's no doubt.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
There's no doubt when you were talking about him being
one of a kind, I do understand your point, But
there was and will never ever be anyone like Bill Walton. Again,
you meet certain people and you're like, oh, I've seen
this type before. You know, you're walking around a party
of social gathering and maybe they work in finance, and

(43:59):
you know that it's kind of you know, their whole
personality or yeah, and I'm not even attacking that realm, right,
you know, but like there are certain people who just
sort of, you know, they're they're They're just who they are,
and you've met them a thousand times before, and it
doesn't make them boring necessarily, it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Make them ordinary.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
It just it just makes them a common experience for you,
for you, like you know, because you've had that conversation before.
But if you ever got an opportunity to talk to Bill,
and I know you have many times, I did, you
know a few times throughout my my time here in
San Diego. Man, I'll tell you he was the type

(44:41):
of person who talking to him. Starting a conversation with
him was an odyssey. You have no idea where you
were going, and you just you just knew you were coming.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Back to port eventually. It was incredible.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
He truly was an incredible player, and he turned into
a legendary broadcast I think broadcaster.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
I mean his broadcasting. I mean, you've been doing this
for quite a while now as an analyst for San
Diego State and other places as well, and when you
hear him, I mean, look, he wasn't everybody's cup of tea.
I get that. I mean there were a lot of
people that were turned off, but I mean he was,
like I've said, over the over the many years that
I've been watching television sports. I mean maybe a handful

(45:24):
of analysts where you actually watch an event specifically to
hear what they had to say. John Madden was that
person way back in the day. Howard Cosell in the
early days of Monday night football. I think Charles Barklay
now more of an analyst, you know, in the studio
analyst and a game analyst, is one of those people
I want to hear what he has to say. But

(45:44):
I mean that was Bill Walton. I mean he just
you did not know where he was going to go.
I mean, he'd be broadcasting a game and he's taking
you off to I don't know, seventeenth century literature.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
I mean, it could go anywhere, anywhere.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Anywhere, and you know, pe would say, he just looks
like he's having a good time, and that was the thing.
You know, he had a lot of physical problems. It's
obviously shortened his basketball career unfortunately. I mean when you
think about he had just started clicking with Portland. If
you never saw Bill Walton play YouTube it, I mean,
if you watch the nineteen seventy seven NBA Finals with

(46:23):
the Portland Trailblazers, they lost the first two games to
Doctor Jay's Philadelphia seventy six ers, and then rattled off
four straight. But if you want to understand what made
Bill Walton that great, watch this man play. I mean
it was unreal. I mean, again we talk about basketball IQs.
Bill Walton was a three time scholar at All American
at UCLA on top of everything else, but his vision

(46:47):
on the court as a big man was crazy. I
mean just absolutely there was there was a purpose to
everything he did. I mean, we talked about Jokis, right,
Nicola Jokich like last night, but normally Jokis is one
of the those guys it just seems to understand how
to play the game. And that was Bill Walton. And
he was mobile, I mean, rebounding, passing the ball. I

(47:10):
mean he could have scored. I mean the one NCAA
Championship game where he scored forty four points on twenty
one of twenty two shooting. By the way, there was
no dunking in those days. Dunking was not legal at
the collegiate level back in those days, So twenty one
out of twenty two shooting without any dunks as a
big man, it was just unfortunate. About these injuries, and

(47:33):
yet despite a lot of physical pains that he went through,
it never demean never got him down. I mean, he
had such a positive outlook on everything it came across
as a broadcaster, and that's exactly who he was.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, rest in peace.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
A career well lived, both on the court and aside
the court broadcasting.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
There's no question about it.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
And you know what's interesting about talking about Bill Walton,
you know, projecting forward to the time we're in because
we mentioned it last week. We were talking about it
a little bit, Steve, and when we were discussing Bill,
I kept thinking about the way basketball was played then
compared to now. And now, obviously we're talking about decades apart.

(48:21):
We're talking about what feels like one hundred years ago
talking about basketball when you know, lou al Cinder and
Bill Walton were in college, but we are miles and
miles away from that time. That time was all about defense.
It was all about scoring or getting the ball as
close to the basket as possible for high percentage shots.

(48:42):
And we have moved on to this analytical age with
the advent of the three point shot and the impact
it's had on especially the professional level, to where volume
shooting from the perimeter has become a viable way to
win basketball games. To Bill a roster, and we're into

(49:03):
that era of basketball now where you know, it shifts
back and forth a little bit, but it really does
feel like the game is going to be played further
and further away from the hoop, and I'm not sure
that's great for the game either.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
You want to hear a stat. He is one of
my favorite Bill Walton's stats. Starting in grade school until
his senior year, when UCLA's eighty eight game winning streak
actually was ended, he won one hundred and twenty eight
straight games. One hundred and twenty eight straight games. Wow,
I think I just think about that for a second.

(49:38):
A hundred and from grade school until his senior at college,
one hundred and twenty eight straight wins.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Jeez, I mean it was just I mean, it was
it doesn't even seem real.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
It doesn't seem real, right, Yeah, And but that I
just again, he had this enthusiasm accord. He was always
umping up and down. He's, you know, with one of
those live wires. And then he was a deadhead, you know,
he was you know, absolutely he made no bones about
It was so funny because when he was at UCLA,
John Wooden had very strict rules about facial hair and

(50:14):
hair length and everything else. Uh, and then as soon
as he got to the NBA, he grew the full beard.
I'm like, it was like the mountain man, right, your
long hair, the ponytail, everything else, everything you wanted to
be did not diminish what he did on the court,
but one healthy and unfortunately it was a very short
time that he was at that level in the NBA.

(50:35):
There was nothing better. I mean, he just he just
knew how to play the game and uh and brought
and he was one of those guys. Part of being
a great player is raising the game of your teammates, right,
we talk about that all the time. You know, like
a like a Tom Brady, a quarterback suddenly can make
a Julian Edelman or a Wes Welker into an All Pro.

(50:56):
That's that's the power of truly being a great place.
That was Bill Walton. I mean, he just everybody's game
was raised with him on the court.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
Well, you know what, I think that you can make
the argument we've seen players like that on the court
in the modern era I think that sure.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Steph Curry is one of those players. He's a glue guy.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
He's an ultimate leader because he's willing to take a
back seat for the betterment of the team. He knows
his role and he plays it perfectly. Lebron James, for
as much as much hate as he receives it as
polarizing as he is, he's a chameleon man. He can
make a way for it to work with Dwayne Wade
and Chris Bosh, and he can make away from it

(51:37):
to work with Kyrie and Kevin Love. And he can
make a way to make it work with a d
in La you know. I mean, now we're onto the
Luca phase. We'll see how it goes. But I mean
Lebron James is another one of those players like the
greats Jordan, you can go through the list, Kobe, you know,
with Pow and with Shaq, Like they're guys who doesn't

(51:58):
matter who you surround them with. They're gonna find a
way to win because they have the killer instinct themselves,
but also they understand the sacrifices that they may need
to make individually in order to make the whole thing go.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
And Bill Walton, he was like that.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
A Kareem, especially late in his career when he made
way for magic, was like that, you know. And the
and the guys who I mentioned in the modern era,
like Lebron, like Steph, the champions of this modern era, Kobe,
they they truly knew how to do that too.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
All right, Coming up on the other side, a dear
friend of ours, we will be joining us every single Sunday.
They're great, John Palmer ROSSI will talk a little spring training,
we get into the well, the Four Nations, a very
successful NHL event. He will join us right here on
Fox Sports Sunday, Steve Harvey, Rich Oberger. Here Fox Sports Sunday.

(52:50):
We are live from the tire rack dot Com studio.
So Richie, we have a number of people that we
have shared time with over these many years we have
broadcast together, but there are few, if any, the match,
the talent, the impact, the love that we have for him.
Then the great John Palmerrosi, JP, how are you today.

Speaker 9 (53:12):
Steven rich I am doing great. What a wonderful time
of year. By the way, we've got as we know
as daa tournament time is starting to get near. We've
got this amazing four Nations face off to talk about
with the NHL, and then spring trading ball is underway.
So I am thrilled in every which way.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
All Right, I'm gonna get this out of way because
we're gonna talk plenty about spring training, but I want
to talk about this four nations tournament we just had
in the NHL. Wildly successful. Wildly successful. I mean, now
all of a sudden people are saying, well, the NBA
should do an international versus America. It doesn't work. It's

(53:49):
different than the NHL, but give it. Give us a
little because you're knee deep obviously into the hockey scene.
Why did this work so well?

Speaker 9 (53:59):
Great question. I think there's a few reasons why. Number One,
the overall talent in the game right now is at
such a high level, and so you've got this high
level of talent. When you put on the national team sweater,
you get the best version of these players because they're
playing for something bigger than theirselves. And then I think
the other piece of it is is how long it

(54:20):
had been since we had it true best on best competition.
It was since the twenty sixteen World Cup, and in
a lot of ways that team had team Europe and
Team North America.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
So the last.

Speaker 9 (54:32):
True best on best like this. Of course it was
a bigger tournament, but that was the Olympics from Sochi, Russia,
back in twenty fourteen. So it's been so long since
we had an event like this, and we wanted to
see these generational talents like McDavid and Matthews play for
the country. So I think that was piece of it.
But I'll make this big picture point, and I know
it's been discussed a little bit. Hockey has such a

(54:56):
buy in, I think, especially for the European player, but
now it's increasingly true for the US and the Canadian
players that playing for your country is more important in
a lot of ways than even winning the Stanley Cup.
It is that big because it encapsulates the full country.
And yes, I think there's a lot of national pride

(55:16):
stake all the way around during this particular tournament, but
it really does much more so like soccer, where winning
the World Cup is the apex of your sport, more
so than perhaps winning the league championship in England or
in Germany or even in North America. The World Cup
is predominant in soccer. The same thing is true in hockey,

(55:38):
and I think that this last tournament was a huge
reminder about why that's part of the culture of the
sport and why I think a lot of us who
love the game just cannot wait for next year's Olympic
Games in Milano Cortina, Italy.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
I love it so much, JPA. I was fully invested.
It was a blast. That finale was awesome. The US
and Canada really set the tone in that game where
they started the first period just dropping gloves and hammering
it out.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
I love That's.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Such a unique and interesting part about hockey, where amongst
all the team sports we enjoy in this country and
frankly in Canada as well, that's only one where they
actually allow you to duke it out a little bit.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
And it's a part of the game, it's a part
of the culture.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
And then on the other side of that, there's a
tremendous amount of respect for the athleticism and the grace
and the beauty of the game. You know, I'm gonna
I'm just going to compare it because they were right
next to each other, and the comparison has been made
many times over the last two weeks. But I'm curious
your thoughts. The NBA, they're struggling with their All Star weekend.

(56:43):
Viewership ratings have continued to plummet. Players are getting upset
with the constant narrative that these overpaid players aren't showing
up for the fans. Can can hockey or should say,
can basketball steal what special hockey to make their All
Star weekend better?

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Or do you think it's unique to the game on ice?

Speaker 9 (57:05):
You know, it's a great question. I've long said that
if that in Major League Baseball, and maybe maybe the
success of four Nations would perhaps bring this conversation to
the forefront. What if we had a four team mini
tournament like this at the All Star break from Major
League Baseball and you had, let's just say team USA,

(57:27):
Dominican Republic, Japan, Puerto Rico, or mix in Venezuela, Mexico,
however you wanted to do it, but the same idea
that you have an elongated All Star break and you
play what amounted to the Metal Round of the WBC
in the span of a week in July, and I
think that would do phenomenally well. I think part of it, too,

(57:49):
I think rich, is that as a sports world, we
are now to the point where we want to find
meaning in the competition. And this was up to the
hockey players themselves to say, listen, we're all going to
be here. Nobody's opting out unless they're tremendously hurt, which
is the case for Quinn Hughes and s Theodore got injured,

(58:12):
Charlie macivoy got injured. These guys were laying their bodies
on the line again for something bigger than yourself, which
is playing for your country. That is part of the
culture that's ingrained in the National Hockey League and for
hockey players now in fairness, the NBA, they have that
when we see it at the Olympics, where where especially
you go back to the the Lebron and Kobe era

(58:35):
from after the four Olympic loss when they started coming
back in for Beijing, and to me it's a really
interesting dynamic of the way that these different competitions go.
You need to have a why, You need to have
a reason, and so for the NBA, if you're able
to find a turn on whether it is the US

(58:57):
against the world, there needs to be a reason and
to compel thing that you're competing for to I think
create that competitive dynamic, and it really it gets down
to the buying of the players. The All Star Game
can be as great as the players want it to be,
but it's incumbent on them to really sell the show.
And I think for the NBA, it's been a struggle.
For the NHL. When they dropped the gloves three times

(59:17):
in nine seconds, that did all you needed to know,
I think, to set the tone for this tournament in
that game in Montreal a couple saturdays ago.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
All right, let's turn to baseball for a moment here.
So one of the things that we are seeing very
early on in these spring training games is the ability
to challenge balls and strikes. And this is something we've
been talking about. Look, I've had an extreme stance on
this for years, I mean for years. Rich knows this.

(59:49):
I've talked for the banishment of umpires forever, because unlike
football where penalties are called, unlike basketball where fouls are called,
in baseball it's ball, strike, safe, out, fair, foul. All
of that can be done electronically. So I'm watching yesterday
a Padre's game where a pitch and was a borderline
pitch low in the strike zone, catcher turns around, challenges it,

(01:00:13):
and all of a sudden on the screen you're seeing
a strike zone I assume the perfect strike zone and
the pitch. Actually it's like intennis, right. They show the
replay and you see the ball barely touches the line,
meaning it's a strike, and they changed the call. Now,
this is not going to be implemented in the regular
season yet, but how close are we to? All Right,

(01:00:37):
so maybe you have umpires in the field, but the
idea that balls and strikes are done electronically instead of
an umpire trying to figure it out standing behind the catcher.

Speaker 9 (01:00:49):
I don't think Steve, that we're ever going to get
to a point where it is completely done in an
automated method all the time. And honestly, that is I'm
in agreement with that notion that we would not ever
get to the full automated strike zone. The interesting thing
that you're talking about here is I think it going

(01:01:13):
to be a fascinating thing honestly for people like for
our network at MLB network or Fox or TNT, ESPN
and the local channels. For sure, we're going to have
to do a good job of explaining for the viewer
what the strike zone is and in fact, in my opinion,

(01:01:34):
if we've got this happening where you can challenge, it's
actually better and hear me out on this is maybe
a bit of a controversial take, but I think it's
the right way if we no longer have the strike
zone depicted on the screen any longer. And here's why,
because you as a network are not going to be

(01:01:54):
able to dynamically present to the viewer the accurate strike
zon zone for every player because it is going to
change based on their heights, right, and so you'd be
giving the viewer at home, in my opinion, false information
about how it clips that middle part of the zone
because it's going to be contingent on Aaron Judge having

(01:02:17):
a different strike zone than Hoseel Tuo Bay. And do
you really want your graphics department to have to all
of a sudden throw up a different box every time
and then hope that everybody who's doing these games is
going to have the right box up there when there's
a pinch hitter. It's just it's asking too much, I
think of the TV networks. So I almost think this,
if we're going to make this happen, we've got to

(01:02:39):
go back to the future with how we show the games,
take the strike zone off of the screen, and then
if there's a challenge, we will all find out together.
When when the challenge is made, we'll take probably ten seconds,
they'll put it up on the screen. They'll all find
out together, fall strike, whatever it is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
And that's how we do it.

Speaker 9 (01:02:57):
But I think I like the challenge system. I don't
think that we should remove the human element of the
umpire from the conversation. And that's what we should do.
Have your couple challenges the game, and no longer should
we be able to see exactly what the scannerd strike
zone is because it's not going to be the correct
strike zone for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
JP.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
What do you say to the a dejected baseball fan
who looks at what the Dodgers have done with their
salary cap and offsetting payments to star players and just
the amount of money they've shelled out over a very
short amount of time and the recent championship, who's thinking

(01:03:36):
to themselves like, I root for a team in a
market that can't support those types of player salaries, or
I root for a team with an owner who's on
the stingier side of baseball and with profit sharing, he
never really has to worry about investing the way they
have in LA. What do you say to that fan, Well.

Speaker 9 (01:03:56):
A couple things. Number One, the system is not perfect,
and we are seeing now how the Dodgers are and
let's to some extent the Mets as well. And it's
not as though the Yankees are all of a sudden
going into the Tampa Bay Rays mode here as well.
So you still have a few big spenders at the
very top of the market. That's all real, and they

(01:04:18):
do have an advantage. There is no salary cap, there's
no salary floor, and that is unfortunately a reality of
the way the game works right now. It may so
the positive side to the small market fan, I guess
is twofold number one that may change in the next
CBA because there is genuine concern about how the system
of the game is getting played out. That's number one.

(01:04:39):
Number two is check how many times the biggest spending
team has won a championship since since basically the Yankees
in OH nine, and I believe it's once, maybe twice.
It is rare, and the Dodgers, for as inevitable as
they may seem right now, as you both know well,

(01:05:00):
they were one game away from getting bounced out in
the first round in four games, so it's not as
though they were this unbeatable force.

Speaker 10 (01:05:07):
They may seem that way now, but rare is the
season in which either the biggest spender or the team
that is declared to have won the offseason goes ahead
and wins the World Series.

Speaker 9 (01:05:18):
So there is still so much randomness, and it's so
funny to me, guys, and I love it because this
is part of sports. How much we are judging the
virtue of the current system based on the result of
the last World Series, because it wasn't that long ago
that I kept hearing the criticism from people that, oh
my gosh, the baseball playoffs are too random and too

(01:05:41):
many of the top seeds are losing too early in
the playoffs, and it's now become this free for all,
like that's almost like the NCAA tournament of the Standy Cup
playoffs with all the randomness. Because we just had a
Rangers Diamondbacks World Series in twenty twenty three. So let's yes,
I want to lean into the people that are concerned
about the and the Dodgers and Yankees, but let's not

(01:06:02):
forget fifty percent of the time in the last two years. Okay,
we got a Wildcard versus Wildcard World Series and the
Rangers and d Backs and everybody wanted to change the
whole system, and then we got Dodgers, Yankees and Sunningly.
It's a different criticism right now, so I think we
have to keep.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
That in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
All right, folks, there we go, just wedding your appetite
for the weeks ahead with the Great John Palmer ROSSI JP.
As we had a few games under our belt and
some of the bigger stars start actually taking the field
in the spring training games, we'll get much more into
the baseball scene all the way to Opening Day and beyond.
JP are the best. We appreciate the time. We'll check
in with you next week.

Speaker 9 (01:06:43):
I love it, Steven Ritchie And one last note. If
your favorite baseball team happens to be zero to two
right now in the Caxus are great Foot League, despair not.
It's a long year.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
Don't worry about The Dodgers are zero and three worst
team in baseball right now.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
I think they're gonna be the worst team in.

Speaker 1 (01:07:00):
Baseball, all right, j P, thanks so much, The Great
John Paul Morosi. All right, let's find out what is
trending right now.

Speaker 6 (01:07:12):
Yes, you know, Brandon was asking how my night went,
So I had a tong.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
I understand that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
I understand that you were in rare form today, So.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
I would love to get details how she built up
the night. I can't. I just simply can't. But can
I can? I deem that it was what you expected,
or more so less.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
What it was.

Speaker 8 (01:07:39):
It was what I expected.

Speaker 6 (01:07:41):
It was what I expected and what my friend expected of.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
How busy it was going to get by the end
of the night.

Speaker 6 (01:07:47):
It was very crowded, and but you know, you did
some dancing, and you know, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Just I love this richie. So she was giving me
two options on how she would handle the night. One
is she would just fully engage in whatever I can
tivities are going on, or she would be the one
that would sort of pull back a little bit. Yes,
And I'm like, yeah, I'm tired.

Speaker 6 (01:08:07):
I'm not, you know, feeling crappy because I drank too much.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
That's not what happened. I'm just tired because it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:13):
Was a long night.

Speaker 6 (01:08:14):
And then I was telling Brandon, like I got home
not super late, but like maybe around one am, and
then you know the fear of oversleeping, Like I was like,
I'm going to miss my alarm today, like I so
I had like and then I don't sleep because I
was like.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Oh my gosh, where's my phone?

Speaker 6 (01:08:27):
At like six am, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Like, I overslept. It's ten am.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
And so that was my night, you guys. But it
was good. It was good. I'm just I just died.
And yet she's still been there. She still delivered every
Taco belbrone.

Speaker 6 (01:08:42):
Oh well, you know again, I definitely needed the Taco
Bell burrito when I got up this morning.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
All right, guys.

Speaker 6 (01:08:48):
The Celtics, who you know, sometimes I really don't get
the Celtics in their game. They had a really good
game against the Knicks. They dominated the whole time. The
score is deceiving it. Final score was one eighteen to
one five, but really like it never felt like the
Knicks were in it. They did cut it to seven
going into the fourth quarter, but the Celtics really dominated
from beginning to end. Jason Tatum twenty five points, ten rebounds,

(01:09:11):
nine assists all the Celtics, and double digits all their starters.
Karl Anthony Towns twenty four points and eighteen rebounds. Something
to keep an eye on. Halfway through the fourth quarter,
he went in for a dunk and he missed it,
and then he started limping, went to the locker room,
came back in the game, but to me, he didn't
look right like even when he was back in the game.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
So something just to keep it eye on.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
With Karl Anthony Towns, the.

Speaker 6 (01:09:34):
Knicks might get Mitchell Robinson back sooner than we expect.
ESPN is reporting that his goal is to be back
at some point this week. On the ice, Alexovechkin has
not scored once or twice. He has scored three times.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
In today's game.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
I had trick, had trick exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:09:50):
So he's up to eight hundred and eighty two goals,
thirteen away from breaking Wayne Gretzky's all time goals record.
And the Capitals just crushed the Oilers. Seven to three
was the final score. We'll check in on men's college
hoops late in the second half. Number thirteen per Due
losing still to Indiana sixty nine to fifty five.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
There's about two minutes to go.

Speaker 6 (01:10:11):
With about twelve minutes to go. Number twenty two, Memphis
is extending their lead over Florida State fifty nine to
forty three, and number ten Saint John's already defeated Yukon
eighty nine two seventy five.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Back to you guys, all right, Monsie, you can go
back and tell Brandon Moore about you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
No, there's nothing more to tell.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
There's nothing more to tell.

Speaker 8 (01:10:29):
He was just like, because I went yesterday.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
I was like, my goal is to be home by midnight.

Speaker 6 (01:10:33):
And then he's like, did you make it home by midnight?

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
I was like, no, me today out so and then
you stare at the clock the rest of them. Then
they stared at the clock the rest of the time.
I know exactly where you're coming from. All right, once again,
we are Fox Sports Sunday Live from the tire rag
dot Com studio is. By the way, check out the
Fox Sports Radio YouTube channel. Now there's all kinds of

(01:10:55):
great videos from many of our Fox Sports Radio shows.
Just searched Fox Sports Radio on YouTube and you'll see
a whole bunch of video highlights from our shows. And
be sure to subscribe so you always have instant access
to our Fox Sports Radio videos on YouTube. You're a
guy that likes to post a lot of stuff on
social media.

Speaker 3 (01:11:14):
Rich, Yeah, it's it's a big part of what we
do now because you know, like like everybody else, our
opinions sometimes are heard live live on air, and sometimes
you know, people have other things going on and they
want to catch up later on. So you can follow
me at rich Ornberger on Instagram or at Ornberger on

(01:11:37):
Twitter for all that stuff. And then Steve, you also
are very active on social media.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
I mean, what is social media?

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
I was kidd I was gonna say, you buy social media.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Actually it's everything that has been posted of me on
social media. I mean, you know, if you click Steve Harbin,
You're you're gonna see plenty of things. It's just that
I had nothing to do with them.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
That's great, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
I'm like sort of like, oh, I didn't realize that
that's there. Yeah, yeah, I mean there are things on there.
I'm like, wow, I forgot that, which is rare. But anyway,
all right, I want to get back to a little
NFL talk. In fact, on the other side, we're going
to get into, uh, some of the things that happen

(01:12:25):
at this time of the year, as you get ready
for the combine, as you get ready for free agency,
as you actually get ready for the NFL Draft, including
a decision made. Why one of the very potentially high
picks in the NFL draft who did what we call
an absolute no no. We'll explain. This is Fox Sports Sunday,

(01:12:50):
Steve Harry, Rich Hornberger, Fox Sports Sunday. We are live
from the tairaq dot com studios. One of the things
about knowing history is learning from history. That's the relevance,
right If you don't learn from history, good and bad,
then you're missing an opportunity. Such apparently was the case

(01:13:15):
with cam Ward, who apparently has never heard of Josh Rosen.
Let's go back to that twenty eighteen NFL draft when
Josh Rosen was the tenth overall pick in the draft,
fourth quarterback taken by the Arizona Cardinals, and he said
there were nine mistakes made. In other words, the nine

(01:13:36):
teams that passed on him made a mistake and they
will regret it. Let me remind you of the three
quarterbacks that were taken ahead of him in that draft.
One was Baker Mayfield, two was Sam Darnold, three was
Josh Allen. And by the way, the quarterback that was
taken after him, Lamar Jackson. You know what those four

(01:13:57):
quarterbacks have in common. They all made the Pro Bowl
this year. In twenty twenty four, they all made the
Pro Bowl this year.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
Yeah, but so did Drake May.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
So did Drake May. No, I'm talking about legitimately, not
as an alternate. All four of those guys were legitimate
Pro Bowlers this year. And Josh Rosen hasn't seen action
in the NFL since twenty twenty one. I'm not sure
what happened here with cam Ward. I've talked to everybody
that is in the No. It'es a week year for quarterbacks.

(01:14:28):
He is a notch above shardor Sanders, the only two
quarterbacks expected to go in the first round. But the
idea of telling everyone in advance, if you don't take me,
I will remember, you will regret it. That is not
the way to come into the I mean, I don't
remember Peyton Manning saying if you don't take me number one,
like if you take that Ryan Leaf guy, you're gonna

(01:14:50):
regret it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
They did regret the Chargers, but they didn't take him
ahead of Peyton Manning. Don't you just want to sort
of ease into the NFL before you've actually taken the field. Well,
isn't that a smarter path to hopefully, in your case,
success down the road in the NFL?

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:07):
I think that a part of leadership is humility. I
think that the best leaders always are the type of
leaders who think about it, think about things from the
perspective of what would it be like to follow me?
And what do my troops need if we're talking about
from a military capacity, what do my constituents need if

(01:15:29):
we're talking about from a political capacity, what do my
teammates need if we're talking about it from a quarterback
situation or their standpoint or perspective. And I think when
you have confidence, that's contagious. When you have cockiness, that
can be misconstrued as arrogance and sometimes be an enormous

(01:15:51):
turnoff to people, including coaches, members of the front office,
or even your teammates. So it's a careful line that
yeah have to walk. And if you're overly confident and
your skills or abilities or your talent doesn't back off
or excuse me, back up the statements that you've made
or the confidence that you exude, you know, then there

(01:16:14):
becomes an issue.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
And with Josh Rosen.

Speaker 3 (01:16:18):
Obviously we had an issue, and the Cardinals, to their credit,
rectified it immediately because the very next year they went
back to the first round and they drafted Kyler Murray
and traded Rosen for like a fourth rounder with the Dolphins.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
They got him off the roster.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
They they got a second round, or didn't they Maybe
it was a crazy all right, here's the exact cam
Ward quote, I mean, the cam mistake what he said here,
he said, Okay, you're either going to draft me or
you're not. If you don't draft me, that's your fault.
You got to remember you're the same team that's got
to play me for the rest of my career, and
I'll remember that. Well, here's the thing. When you put

(01:16:55):
it out like that, guess who's also going to remember them.
You're making your self automatically a target. Look when you
when you come into the NFL as a rookie, no
matter what the hype is, you are going to be tested. Yes,
you are going to be tested.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):
You're already a target.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
I mean I even remember back in the Raider days
where Al Davis would actually tell veteran players to test
the fight in a rookie. Yeah, late hits and you
know it's, you know, training camp type of thing. Let's
see what this guy's made of, and a cheap shot
just to see his reaction, that kind of thing. This

(01:17:35):
is commonplace. You're going to be tested as a rookie,
but when you come out with that kind of boast,
not only are you tested by your own team, you're
going to be tested by the entire league.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
And this is what happened to Josh Rosen, among other things.
How that worked for him did not work well. So
this is a guy again, cam Ward, who rose from
the ranks of where he started it incarnate word, a
couple of years of Washington State and then feasting on
acc defenses to put up a glorious season at the
University of Miami. Great for the you, and everyone tells

(01:18:08):
me he has the best talent of any quarterback in
the draft, but it's not a great quarterback draft. I
would expect he'll go number one overall. But I just
I don't know who got in his head about this.
I mean, why was there? First of all, everyone agrees
that he's the first quarterback taken, so why is he
what's the difference If he's first overall, third overall, he'll

(01:18:29):
get paid, He'll have a great opportunity in this league.
I just I, like you said, this could be a
warning though to some of the teams at the top,
like is this the guy we want?

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
You could be overreacting to it, or or any team
who takes the position you just took could be overreacting
to it. Sure, or it could be a valid concern.
The problem is we don't know until we know, because
there are so many can't miss college projections that missed
at the end level. And then there's also stories like

(01:19:02):
Brock Perdy, who you can argue he is a franchise
quarterback or he's not. But one thing he can't argue
is he's had success in this league. And that is
and it's success that it's rare to find in the
bottom of the seventh round. So the fact that a
guy like Brock Purdy can take his team deep into
the playoffs a couple of times in a very short

(01:19:23):
amount of time in this league as a last overall pick,
and then there are first round first pick busts tells
you that this is an inexact science and it's really
difficult to predict and sometimes super confident, cocky, arrogant athletes.
They pay off on every single one of their promises,
like Dion Sanders, you know, and sometimes you have a

(01:19:45):
guy who's boastful and full of himself and they flame
out and you just don't know. So how much stock
can you really put into what cam Ward said? I
really don't know, Steve.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Yeah, I again. You want to ease in, You just
want to ease in. You want to be the Tacoli. Wow,
this guy's better than we thought he was gonna be.
And you put a target on your back. That can
really not work for you. NIL has changed a lot
as far as the finances and collegiate sports, but it

(01:20:18):
has a major effect also in the future of at
least one college basketball superstar. We got that and much
more coming up on Fox Sports Sunday, having fun as
we do every Sunday. Here on Fox Sports Sunday, we're
broadcasting live from the ti i raq dot com studios,
tier rack dot com. We're gonna get you there. And
on matt Selection, fast free shipping, free road acid protection,

(01:20:41):
over ten thousand recommended installers, tire i raq dot com
the way tire buying should be. Well, we are three
weeks away from selection Sunday. So we're coming down the
stretch of the regular season and the college basketball season
than ever conference tournaments and then the NCAA Tournament and
can't wait. I mean, it's a phenomenon. What's one of

(01:21:03):
the interesting things about the NCAA Basketball Tournament. We've talked
about this in the past, Rich, is it doesn't matter
that you don't know the names of the players. I mean,
we've had so many years. I mean literally, if you
look over the last decade or so, let's go back
to when Anthony Davis in his one and done year
at Kentucky won the National Championship. If you look at

(01:21:24):
the MOP Most Outstanding Player of the Final four. Since then,
it's literally a who's who of who's that? Like, these
are anonymous names that none of these guys have done
anything at the NBA level. And this has been the
frustration for college basketball fans is that you know, you
got a great player and then he's gone, you know,

(01:21:46):
one and done. I mean, that's that's the nature of
the game. He used to be when you ever saw guys,
I mean, Lebron never played college basketball, cub, he never
played Kevin Gardner have never played. I mean, you have
some of the greatest players in NBA history that never
actually played one game of college basketball. But that is changing.
And I bring this up right now because Cooper Flag,

(01:22:10):
the freshman superstar at Duke, who is expected, obviously after
a great freshman year at Duke, to be the number
one overall pick in the NBA draft. But he's saying,
you know, I want to stay.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
Now, Cooper Flag, by all accounts, is making in excess
of about five million dollars this year with his nil deals.
Now consider that the way the money is progressing in
the NBA after his rookie deal is done, and when
you when you're a top pick in the draft, you're

(01:22:47):
going to get that next big contract. People are saying
that in a short amount of time he will be
in a position to be making upwards of eighty million
a year. So another whereas the quicker you get started,
the quicker you get that second deal, that supermax deal,
that could be at that time, with inflation everything else,

(01:23:09):
about eighty million dollars a year, which is a lot
more than five million.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
Dollars, no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:23:17):
So he's hinting about this obviously, he's enjoying his time
at Duke. I mean, this is the mecha of college basketball.
You know, I'm sure he wants an opportunity now. If
they win the national championship this year makes his decision easy.
But if they fall short, he comes back. We've seen
it in college football now, Rich, I mean, we're seeing

(01:23:37):
players play five six years now. They're staying because they
can still collect some money. Not necessarily the guys that
are projected to be number one overall picks, but nonetheless,
we're seeing guys extend their college career. You know, me,
I'm a college sports fan. It's nothing that I have
against the pro game. I recognize the pros are the

(01:23:58):
best of the best, but of the college game. So
the idea of keeping guys an extra year or two
at the collegiate level works for me. But what advice
do you give to someone like Cooper flag pros and
cons of Let's saying stay another year at do collect
another five to ten million? Who knows as far as

(01:24:20):
nil money is concerned, Or let's start the clock on
your NBA career, because believe me, the amount of money
you're making now is nothing compared to what you'll get
sooner rather than later if you were to enter the
NBA draft after this season.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (01:24:39):
Such a tricky situation because it really is case by
case yep, and because you never know how you're going
to project at the next level. It's very difficult not
to have the thought process A bird in the hand
is worth.

Speaker 2 (01:24:51):
Two in the bush.

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):
Like I know, I'm going to be owed some part
of millions and millions of dollars next year in colleg
college basketball through these many endorsement deals that I have,
or I could test it at the next level where
all of a sudden, I'm a small fish in a
big pond. There's other superstars who are household names, whereas

(01:25:14):
I'm not not yet, and I'm going to have to
prove myself again, not only to those players to that league,
to the fans of the team that I play for,
and then fans of the NBA and then sports fans
after that, to convince them I'm worth being endorseable at
this level or highly paid at this level.

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
I could just stay at the college level and keep
cashing checks.

Speaker 3 (01:25:38):
I would have a hard time advising any player to
make the leap that was making the type of money
he's enjoying right now. It's tough, Steve, and I think
it's actually having the opposite effect on college basketball that
many people thought. A lot of people thought like, oh

(01:25:58):
my gosh, this is going to ruin college basketball. It's
going to make it less interesting because there's gonna be
so much player movement. And maybe to a certain extent
that's true, and for certain people that's extremely true. But
for me, I agree with you, Steve. I think this
is going to reinforce to these players how important a
the foundation of their game is and playing with other,

(01:26:20):
you know, more grown players in a more competitive atmosphere
at the elite Division one level in college basketball before
making the transition to the pros. So we may see
a higher caliber of rookies start to leave college basketball
as a result of that. And then also in the interim,
we're going to be able to follow these careers easier
as opposed to having all of these one and done's,

(01:26:42):
like you know, like like Ad, you know, like so many,
like Zion, you know, like Kyrie, Like yeah, I mean,
it's good for the league, but it isn't good for
college basketball. So I think that overall, as a sports fan,
I like that I like that, there's more of an
incentive to stay.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
Now, all right, let me give you an example of
what could be in the future for Cooper Flag. So
let's take Anthony Edwards, Okay, number one overall pick Minnesota Timberwolves,
and his first four years of his rookie deal, he
made ten million, little more than ten million, about eleven
million and thirteen and a half million, that's what he
made the four years. Then he signs his new deal

(01:27:24):
starting this year forty two million, forty six million, forty
nine million, fifty three million, and the final year of
this current deal fifty six million dollars. Yep, Matt's Now,
so now we project over the future with inflation everything else,
increased television revenue around the NBA. Yeah, we're looking at

(01:27:47):
as much as eighty million a year potentially for Cooper Flag.
But again, this is this is the whole idea of
money versus just having a good time. You know, Tim
Duncan played four years at wake Forest. He could have
come out. It wasn't like he was like some you know, wow,

(01:28:07):
this guy came out of nowhere. He was an All
American from his sophomore year on. He made the decision
to stay in school. Hey, it was his decision. By
the way, then went on to play twenty years in
the NBA at the highest level, and by the way,
he was ready to go day one. So I mean,
is it is It's hard because the money is an
obvious enticement. It would be for any of us. If

(01:28:29):
the money is out there, You're like, well, come on,
I mean, this is a no brainer.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
Yeah, it's nice that I'm getting paid now, but I mean,
come on, compare the money. But if you haven't a
good time, you know. Peyton Manning passed on his on
the NFL draft to play his senior at Tennessee. Yep,
he wanted to play. He wanted to finish the job.
Win a national championship. Didn't happen, couldn't beat Florida, can
never be Florida, and just Florida had his number, and

(01:28:55):
he ended up losing the Heisman on top of that.
I don't think he's ever regretted it. Certainly went on
to a legendary NFL career. So, but but it is
a game changer. Now with this nil there's no question
because now at least you're getting something, and I guarantee
you this if Cooper Flagg comes back to Duke double
his nil at least, yeah, I mean, he'll be making

(01:29:16):
insane especially if they have a good run in the
tournament and his profile goes to that next level, which
obviously March madness can do for any player. He'll be
making insane money by coming back to Duke. So I
as a college basketball fan, I'd love the guy to
play another year. Yeah, I mean, I'd love it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:34):
I think we landed on the same on the same
spot on the Bingo card, and maybe for slightly different reasons,
but I really truly feel like players have been the
scapegoat of greed for a long time. You know, I
think that in college basketball or football, profit generating sports

(01:29:56):
for universities, you know, you've, you've not you, but like
the public has been sort of duped into thinking if
there's any players out there who are asking for more
than just their tuition to be paid for, they should
be shut down immediately, because what an honor it is
to get such a great education in this country for

(01:30:18):
free while you're playing a game that you know millions
of people would love to trade places with you. And
maybe that's true, but then when you start peeling back
the layers of the onion, and you see how much
money this business is generating, and how poorly certain college
athletes were treated post career with injuries that led to
a life of pain or detriment to their ability to

(01:30:42):
earn later in life, or you know, rendered them physically
handicapped with no extended healthcare provided for them and no
way to go back, and you know, seek any sort
of reparations for damages done like that that ship had sailed,
so so those for all those players in the past

(01:31:02):
who struggled and suffered, I think that we're entering a
space that's a lot more fair.

Speaker 2 (01:31:08):
If you don't like.

Speaker 3 (01:31:09):
It, I'm sorry, because there was a lifetime of players
being taken advantage of cruelly in certain cases before this
lifetime and this generation of nil and transfer portal access.
I think this is all going to be rained in
a little bit in the coming years. I think there's

(01:31:29):
probably going to be a few guardrails put up, But
in the interim, I think it makes college basketball more
competitive and more interesting. And I think that players getting
their due for the first time makes me feel better
about the whole process of the sport. So I find
myself more interested.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Coming up on the other side, we'll get back to
the NBA the potential end of an era, not just
any era, one of the most amazing eras in NBA history.
Who does it involve? You'll find out. This is Fox
Sports Sunday, Steve Hartmin and Rich Oberger Here Fox Sports Sunday.
We are live from the tai Iraq dot Com studios.

(01:32:09):
I'm going to give you a little stat here that's
going to make you feel.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
Old. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:32:16):
So one of the things about Cooper Flag we were
talking about the Duke Star, is that he turned eighteen
in December, so he's only he's eighteen years and two
months old.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:32:30):
He was born December twenty first, two thousand and six.
This is during your third year at Penn State. That's right,
that's when he was born born. Okay, I just I
just tried to give you a little perspective.

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
Well, so you know what's.

Speaker 1 (01:32:49):
December twenty first, two thousand and six.

Speaker 2 (01:32:52):
That's when he was born. It does make me feel
a little bit old, but.

Speaker 1 (01:32:56):
I mean he's almost six years younger than my youngest
six yearser than me. He is six years, six years
younger than me.

Speaker 2 (01:33:03):
That Shay.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
You hear that six years younger than Shake Cooper Flag
two thousand, December two thousand and six.

Speaker 2 (01:33:09):
Check it out.

Speaker 3 (01:33:10):
So it's only odd to us in this country that
a seventeen year old could be making five million dollars
per season playing a popular sport in this country, because
it's just not the norm. But if you go overseas
and you see how early players are tapped into to

(01:33:33):
go start playing in the you know basically what would amount.

Speaker 2 (01:33:37):
To a as the G League of.

Speaker 3 (01:33:39):
Soccer, you know what I mean, Like they they start
playing club at young levels and because each club wants
to basically have the best farm league, what they'll do
is they'll they'll play, they'll pay players enormous amounts of
money as teenagers. So you'll have millionaire teenagers, sixteen year old's,

(01:34:00):
fifteen year olds who project to be the next brightest
star in England or you know, Italy or even some
places in South America. And it's just commonplace. It's just commonplace.
It's not abnormal, it's not unusual, like it's just because
we've tied our minor leagues to amateur athletics and have

(01:34:25):
made this this I don't know this thing where you know,
it's tied to your education. Overseas, you know, kids go
to university, that's what they call. They go to university
and they play in their club team. They're divorced from
one another. You know, there's no university teams. So it's
just a different way of looking at it. And I

(01:34:46):
think for Cooper Flag or for any other player who's
young and making a tremendous amount of money, this has
been going on for years and years in generations overseas.
It's just coming to America for the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
Well, on the other end of the age is Greg Popovich.
Greg Popovich is seventy six years old. And to put
that number in perspective, not only is he the oldest
coach in NBA history, he's the oldest coach in NBA
history by five years. Only one other coach had ever

(01:35:19):
coached in his seventies, Hube Brown, who, by the way,
what he just celebrates ninetieth I mean, Hubee, still, I
think you finally stepped back from his broadcasting career in
his nineties. Amazing Hube Brown. Wow, love him, But he
was seventy one when he coached his last NBA game.
Pop of it's seventy six now. If you remember, back

(01:35:39):
in early November, right before a game, he suffered what
they termed a mild stroke. And he's been on the
sidelines ever since. And it's now been announced, and I'm
sure that Wimby's departure and by the way, that's that's
you know, that's a little bit of a scary situation
with that blood clot. Remember Chris Bosch's career ended because

(01:36:00):
he had multiple blood clots. His NBA career came to
a screeching halt because of that. It doesn't appear that serious.
As far as Wemby and the Spurs are doing the
right thing, You're not going to take any chances, that's
for sure. Yeah. But I mean, as far as Greg
Popovich is concerned, who's already in the Basketball Hall of
Fame when he is coaching the history of the NBA.
Oldest coach in the NBA. You know who hired Greg

(01:36:23):
Popovich as the head coach of the Spurs?

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
No, I don't know offhand.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
That would be Greg Popovich. So the story goes this,
Greg Popovich's career really took off through a friendship with
Larry Brown when he was a coach at Kansas, and
then when Larry Brown became the coach of the Spurs,
he brought Popovich on as an assistant. And then the
ownership fired everybody, so Popovich left and then new ownership

(01:36:49):
came in and sort of out of the blue hired Popovich.
I guess the guy was impressed to be the general
manager of the team. They had a coach named Bob Hill,
and then Bob Hill got off to a start and
Popovich fired him and hired himself. So there are many
coaches that actually were hired by themselves, but Popovich made

(01:37:09):
a very by the way, that was very astute decision
by general manager Greg Popovich to hire himself to be
the coach. Of course, five NBA championships, but as far
as staying too long at the party, obviously a lot
of intrigue in the future with the Spurs with Wimby,

(01:37:29):
and you know obviously how that goes. He has certainly
lived up to the hype. This kid is going to
be one of the superstars of this league, hopefully if
everything is good physically with him for many many years
to come. But at some point for Greg Popovich, I mean,
he's he's unfireable. I mean, you know he will make

(01:37:51):
that he hired himself. He would have to fire himself
apparently in the Spurs organization. But when you have a
young superstar, a life wimby, is it wise to have
that seventy six year old coach, even if he is
arguably one of the greatest coaches in the history of
the NBA. Or do you want him to sort of

(01:38:12):
be nurtured in his career with a younger coach. How
would you deal with this if you were ownership of
the San Antonio Spurs.

Speaker 3 (01:38:21):
So if I were the San Antonio Spurs ownership, I
would want things to end as amicably as possible with
inarguably one of the most important people to the franchise's history.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
Yeah, you prepare. What you do for a lot of players,
a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:38:41):
Of coaches over the course of a great career is
a little bit of an off ram. So you give
some heads up. You start talking about this is the
direction we're thinking about heading. Maybe you don't make it public.
You keep the circle extremely close, say things to Greg
on a personal level about how much he means to

(01:39:03):
the program that you would be further indebted to him
if he could be a part of the process of
selecting his heir or somebody who he believes could help
usher in a new era of Spurs basketball that he
sees fit because obviously he's been such an integral part
of the operation for so many years. You know, you

(01:39:25):
almost sort of glorify the graduation.

Speaker 2 (01:39:29):
You know, you try.

Speaker 3 (01:39:32):
And don't get me wrong, he's a competitive guy. I'm
sure he doesn't want to be done. But if there's
a way to do it gracefully, I would do that.
I would make every effort to do that. Now, not
everybody is owed that level of distinction or that level
of respect, but Popovich, I think you need to bend
over backwards to make sure that this guy feels good

(01:39:52):
about his departure from the team.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
I agree. I mean, it's tough sometimes for someone to
exit gracefully when when, again, you you've been in total
control of the situation. And I'm sure in his head,
Greg is like, you know, I can still do this obviously,
Plus you're motivated by having a young player by Yama

(01:40:17):
where he's like, Okay, we can build around this guy. Uh,
and maybe this is going to be another run like
I had all those years with Tim Duncan and Monogenobili
and Tony Parker and then eventually that's right Kawhi Leonard.
How he dealt with that, I don't know. It's it's
a tough one. I know that the NBA would miss
uh a guy like Papovitch because he was old school,

(01:40:39):
right his you know, member the great Craig Sager, you know,
the the late great Saga and his sideline interviews with
Popovich back in the day there were classics. Oh yeah,
you know, oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:40:51):
I think that pop has been more for basketball than
a lot of people realize. And I think, you know,
as a RETROSSI he'll get more and more esteem after
his career ends, like post career, especially if the Spurs
end up having you know, somewhat of a revival with
Wem and Yama and their next head coach, whoever that

(01:41:12):
may be, and if this continues to be a successful franchise,
you know, his name will come up a lot and
then people will realize, oh wow. It's almost like the
Belichick effect. I think that a lot of people look
at Tom Brady as the reason why the Patriots have
had so much success over the years, and there's no doubt,

(01:41:32):
but at some point.

Speaker 2 (01:41:34):
People are going to wrap their heads.

Speaker 3 (01:41:35):
Around how unbelievably difficult it is to keep your job
for twenty years with one franchise in the NFL, There's
been like a handful of guys at the most in
the history of the game who have been able to
do that, and he's one of them and has been
the winningest coach in terms of Super Bowl at the

(01:41:56):
at the helm of any of those teams.

Speaker 2 (01:41:58):
So Pop Bellie, you.

Speaker 3 (01:42:00):
Know, even Tomlin to a greater less extent, you know,
in the NFL as well, Like these are the types
of coaches potentially Steve Kerr depending on how long he
stays with Golden State and if he can usher in
a new era after you know, Steph retires. They've already
moved on from Clay. We'll see what happens next. These
these are names of coaches who, may you know, enter

(01:42:23):
enter the the thought process as some of the greatest,
and they should be respected as some of the greatest
who've ever done it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:31):
Do you think it would help Popovich if he had
a girlfriend like Jordan Hudson Belichick's twenty four year old girlfriend.
I mean, I guess, I guess that's way for Bill
to say, look, you know, I still got it right. Well,
did you see some of the pictures that they had
together at the NFL Honors.

Speaker 2 (01:42:48):
I did see many of those pictures.

Speaker 1 (01:42:50):
Yes, yes, yes, did did they they? She's twenty four,
he's seventy two.

Speaker 2 (01:42:55):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:42:56):
And I love the fact that she she was talking
about what's love? I mean what really she goes what
constitute who should be loved?

Speaker 2 (01:43:03):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:43:04):
Right? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:43:04):
Yeah? Yeah, well, I mean she she does make a
fair point.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
I mean, you know, especially, I mean I mean when
you look, I mean, this is your old coach. I mean,
if you would have said, you know, when you were
when you were drafted, Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,
you know back in two thousand and nine, your first
meeting with coach Belichick and they said, all right, we're
going to flash forward fifteen years and this is the

(01:43:29):
girl that your coach is going to be dating. Yeah,
you would have thought what.

Speaker 2 (01:43:35):
I would have thought.

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
I would have I would have thought, he strike you
as a guy that would have that in his future.

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):
This is what I would have thought. I would have thought.

Speaker 3 (01:43:46):
There's a lot more that I don't know than I do,
but that's what I would have thought immediately, like there
is a whole mile of iceberg underneath the surface level
of this.

Speaker 1 (01:43:57):
One, and this one hits home because again, my is
going to be twenty four on April fourth, Okay, okay,
And so if she were to come home with her boyfriend, keep.

Speaker 2 (01:44:08):
Her out of Chapel Hill buddy who is.

Speaker 1 (01:44:11):
I mean way older, who was older than me? How
would I feel about that? Well, you're not sure. Here's
here's what I'll say.

Speaker 3 (01:44:21):
There is a Netflix show that's onto it's eight season.

Speaker 1 (01:44:25):
Called Love Is Blind. Yes, I know, yes, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:44:28):
The participants they all sit in what are called pods
and they're separated by.

Speaker 1 (01:44:32):
I've watched the show.

Speaker 2 (01:44:34):
Yeah, well, I mean not everybody has.

Speaker 1 (01:44:36):
Nicholas Shay and his wife, Yes, they've.

Speaker 3 (01:44:38):
Been and these two couple or I shouldn't even say couples.
These participants are learning about each other and never get
an opportunity to see each other, right, and then all
of a sudden, upon the revealed, they're supposed to get
engaged and get married.

Speaker 2 (01:44:54):
Yeah, and you.

Speaker 1 (01:44:55):
Know doesn't work out that way much on that show, though,
Well I would.

Speaker 3 (01:44:59):
I went back and I looked and I and I
found out that about ten percent of the couples over
the history of the show, Like I said, eight eight seasons,
so I don't know how many engagements there were. About
one hundred I think is the number it hovered around.
So about ten couples are still happily married. Yeah, and
it just goes to prove to a greater or lesser
extensive Love is blinde.

Speaker 1 (01:45:21):
Well, let's let's find out from a different person right now.
Let's find out what is a trending right now. So
in your opinion, Moncy is love blonde? Love is blind?
I think it can be. But so when you see
Belicheck seventy two with his twenty four year old girlfriend,

(01:45:45):
you're like, yeah, I mean if she's blinded by money?

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
No, you know what I mean.

Speaker 7 (01:45:50):
I mean like to.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
Say that physical facts absolutely Monzy, that that was the
farthest thing from my mind. I can't run that exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:46:00):
Anyone who says it is Anyone who says physical attraction
doesn't matter is a liar.

Speaker 3 (01:46:05):
Okay, But okay, hang on a second. I mean, who's
to say she is in physically attracted at Bill Belichick.

Speaker 1 (01:46:13):
I'm sure she is because of money. Well, if you've
ever heard Rich talk about his wife Anne. For her,
it was all about physical attraction. Absolutely got the.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
First time she laid eyes on me. I was wearing
ass less chaps and that was it. And that was it.

Speaker 3 (01:46:32):
I mean, and now you know, for everybody at home,
obviously all chaps are assless.

Speaker 1 (01:46:37):
Yes, but there was no undergarment.

Speaker 2 (01:46:40):
Yeah, that's right. And and so I mean she was
like posed.

Speaker 1 (01:46:43):
Ass cheeks is what we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:46:45):
That's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
And it was love first sight.

Speaker 6 (01:46:50):
With the show Love is Blind that you're talking about,
literally when they get engaged and they see each other
for the first time, how many people's faces are like
oh god, yeah, oh that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:47:00):
Look like so there are times where you can tell
right out right away as they're running down or they
open up these these two sides of this long runway
between them.

Speaker 2 (01:47:10):
Yes, you can tell one.

Speaker 3 (01:47:12):
Or both of them were like whoa, well the awdo
thing is like one is like yeah and the others
like not.

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):
So much, not so much.

Speaker 6 (01:47:21):
Yeah it so, yes, like it can be blind.

Speaker 3 (01:47:25):
Blind, but also love grows, love does grow, yes, and
like like, okay, I agree with that. Mushrooms you know,
they grow in the dark on top of manilar. So
I mean we're talking about like any life finds away monster.

Speaker 8 (01:47:39):
Life does find a way, it really does. I yes, guys,
let's move on here and check in on the NBA
Golden State Warriors. Just extending their lead over the Mavericks
at home fifty six thirty six, two minutes to go
in the first half.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
Jimmy Butler eleven points.

Speaker 2 (01:47:59):
I think this is his debut.

Speaker 6 (01:48:01):
At home for the Warriors. He's got eleven points. Steph
Cray's got twelve points. Klay Thompson a zero of three
for zero points for the Mavericks, So no bueno. Kyrie
irving two of ten for five points. So that's why
the score is that way. The Celtics of one five
in a row, though after defeating the next one eighteen
to one oh five. Jason Tatum just shy have a

(01:48:21):
triple double twenty five points, ten rebounds and nine assists.
In men's college hoops, the ring teams are done for
the day. Number ten Saint John's. They've won thirteen out
of their last fourteen, beating Yukon eighty nine to seventy five.
Indiana had a seventy three to fifty eight upset over
number thirteen per Due and number twenty two. Memphis crushed
Florida Atlantic eighty four.

Speaker 1 (01:48:40):
To sixty five.

Speaker 6 (01:48:41):
On the ice, the Capitol's crushed the oiler seven three
Alex Ovechkin with the hat trick, now thirteen goals away
from breaking Wayne Gretzky's all time goals record in NASCAR.

Speaker 1 (01:48:52):
Out of the.

Speaker 6 (01:48:52):
Atlanta Motor Speedway, there is a caution, but after one
hundred and six laps, Joey Legano is currently in the lead.
And lastly, here the NFL network is reporting that Shadoor
Sanders is not gonna throw at the NFL Combine. He's
going to focus on his interviews and we'll throw at
Colorado's Pro Day.

Speaker 1 (01:49:14):
Wow, well I am. I'm glad you mentioned that story
because that what's where I's gonna go next. There you go,
Thank you very much. Uh oh, by the way, don't
forget after the show. Our podcasts going up, So if
you miss any of today's show, check out the podcast.
Just search Fox Sports Radio wherever you get your podcasts,
then follow rate and review the podcast. Again. Just search
Fox Sports Radio wherever we get your podcasts, and you'll

(01:49:35):
see today's show posted right after we get off the air. Well,
that last story that Mantcy just shared about Shador Sanders saying, yeah, yeah,
you want to see me throw. We have my pro
day out there. This is but you know this, this
is a smart play by his agent. First of all, again,
you have plenty of film to look at Shadoor Sanders, right,

(01:49:57):
It's not like I always love this like you know,
we I want to see him in person. Okay, well,
you've got endless film of this guy throwing in actual
game situation from his college years. So it's not like
you've never seen the guy throw. But oh yeah, I
get you want to see him throw in person. But
when you look at Shador Sanders' situation this upcoming draft,
whether he's worthy of being a top ten pick, it's

(01:50:20):
like right place at right time, And cam Ward is
the consensus number one quarterback in this draft and Shardor
Sanders is the number two quarterback in this draft. I
can guarantee you right now, Chador Sanders will not fall
below the Raiders in this draft. I cannot imagine because

(01:50:42):
again it's not just what you get with Shador Sanders.
He's Dion's son. I mean, we were projecting like it
was going to be a package deal. Apparently that's not
going to happen, obviously because all the NFL vacancies have
been filled. But he's still part of the scene when
you talk about Shador Sanders. And so if you're the

(01:51:02):
Raiders right now and you don't have a lot to
be excited about, you have Tom Brady, you know, you
got brock Bowers, you got Max Crosby, at least for now,
I think. And so my point is is that the
idea of him not throwing I don't think has any
impact at all as far as his drap position is concerned.

Speaker 2 (01:51:23):
I would tend to agree with you.

Speaker 3 (01:51:25):
Look, if there's one thing that I think the throwing
portion of the combine proves, you know, or whether you
do it at the combine or the.

Speaker 2 (01:51:36):
Pro day, is your health.

Speaker 3 (01:51:38):
It's just one more metric that you can look at
and say, Okay, well, since we last saw him, his
shoulder seems to be okay. You know, his elbow seems
to be okay. He he's gripping the football, well, he's
throwing the football.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:51:53):
It's a very small box to check, but you've seen
him make all the throws that you need to see
him if you're willing to draft him in the first round.
You know what I mean, because you're not rating him
off of whether or not in an empty gym, whether
it be at the combine under the lights of Lucas
Soil Field, or you know, at the University of Buffalo

(01:52:15):
indoor bubble or indoor training facility on campus and Boulder.

Speaker 2 (01:52:20):
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:52:22):
You've already seen all the throws you need to make him,
you need to see from him. You're just seeing if
he's healthy. So I don't think it. I don't think
it's that big of a deal.

Speaker 1 (01:52:31):
By the way, you know, one of the things that
comes out of the combine is the measurement of quarterbacks hands.
Remember they made a big deal about this with Kenny Pickett.

Speaker 2 (01:52:39):
Right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:52:40):
Do you know which current starting quarterback in the NFL
has the smallest hands.

Speaker 2 (01:52:46):
The smallest Sam Donald?

Speaker 1 (01:52:49):
No, it would be Joe Burrow.

Speaker 2 (01:52:51):
Joe Burrow.

Speaker 1 (01:52:51):
Interesting, Yeah, and you know who's second on that list.

Speaker 2 (01:52:55):
I don't know why Donald's.

Speaker 1 (01:52:56):
Starting court I'm talking about starting Donald is a starter. Yeah,
well he is. But I mean, if I.

Speaker 3 (01:53:03):
If I would have to guess based off of I
mean This would be a blind guess. I'm gonna say Jalen.

Speaker 1 (01:53:11):
Hurts, that would be incorrect. The answer is Patrick Mahomes.

Speaker 2 (01:53:16):
Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:53:18):
So apparently if he's second or third or somewhere in
that neighborhood, apparently borrow the current starring Quarwicks has the
smallest hands, but Mahomes isn't far behind, so that that's
another overplayed. It's not the size of your hands, it's
it's it's what's between the ears, you know, the ability

(01:53:38):
to understand defenses. I mean, we've seen so many quarterbacks
over the years. They don't have necessarily the strongest arms.
By the way, Tom Brady doesn't have huge hands either.

Speaker 2 (01:53:49):
Yeah, if you know that, it's just a medic.

Speaker 1 (01:53:52):
It doesn't come up with these ideas of how to
gauge how about watching film? Does this guy make quick decisions?
Does he throw the ball accurately? Those are the two
things I need to know in a quarterback.

Speaker 2 (01:54:04):
It's just a metric that they use to.

Speaker 3 (01:54:08):
Okay, let me let me give you an example that
that is more common amongst people you know, than than
selecting a quarterback to play for your team for the
next five or ten years.

Speaker 2 (01:54:19):
You're you're picking a house.

Speaker 3 (01:54:20):
Right, you put in a couple of offers because there's
there's a couple of different houses that are for sale that.

Speaker 2 (01:54:29):
You're really interested in.

Speaker 3 (01:54:30):
But it's a buyer's market or a seller's market. There's
a lot of buyers out there, there's limited inventory, so
you're just trying to spread, you know, spread a couple
offers around and and get into a place because you're
you need a home, you need more space.

Speaker 2 (01:54:44):
Okay, so you put in a couple offers. All of
a sudden, your top two choices come back in.

Speaker 3 (01:54:51):
Well, all right, it's not all that easy to pick
between your top two choices.

Speaker 2 (01:54:56):
So you start looking at school district.

Speaker 3 (01:54:58):
You start looking at dis from some of your favorite
places to eat. You know, is there a coffee shop nearby?
You know, is this one close to a main road?
Is the backyard gonna be noisy? How are the neighbors
in this neighborhood? You know, you know what what's the
situation at night? Like is this a busy neighborhood at night?
Or you know, is there any way to check and

(01:55:19):
see about safety? Like all of a sudden, you start
parsing out the smallest details because you have the benefit
of doing so. That's the reason why these NFL teams
go to hand size for quarterbacks, because they know they're
picking between two great choices.

Speaker 1 (01:55:34):
Well, and the point is it's a built in excuse. Well,
I mean, everyone agreed his hands were too small, Joe
Burrow too small. You know, he's first pick in the
draft and he should have been and has proven why
he was all right coming up on the other side,
what we are looking forward to in the upcoming sports week.
This is Fox Sports Sunday, Steve Harvey, ch Scharnberger, Fox

(01:55:55):
Sports Sunday Live from the tire rac dot Com studios.
I want to thank our you today. Montsey battling today.
She always does. She's always there to answer the bell.

Speaker 6 (01:56:05):
Yeah, I'm not like NBA players.

Speaker 1 (01:56:07):
I'm here exactly. No load management for you, management for
me for any of us, any of us. No days off,
no days off. Chris another guy working constantly. Yesterday you
know he switched on the board to updates. That's right,
you know, filling the shoes.

Speaker 2 (01:56:24):
You know, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:56:24):
Always I'm always around here. I don't even go home.
I just kind of fit in the boards of the
crawl space up upstairs. Exactly wait for the next next one.
That's what we love Chris and the Churus. Shaye now
is running the show. How's it going so far?

Speaker 2 (01:56:38):
Sha?

Speaker 1 (01:56:39):
How's this new show you're running here? You guys make
it easy, That's all I'm gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:56:43):
I don't wanna. I don't wanna.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
I still want my job, but you guys think it.
He's got the staples button. Okay, So Shay, you've seen
how this show operates, right, and so understand the genius
of this show is Rich because Rich literally has no
idea of what I'm doing the entire show, and he

(01:57:05):
never has, you know, you know, my idea is, I mean,
we have a general idea. We're going to talk about
whatever most people are talking about obviously, but you know,
I've always had this feeling you want to keep it fresh,
you know, because sometimes you could you know, all right,
let's talk and then you talk it through before the
show begins. By the way, Mansey has to do this

(01:57:26):
on Saturdays as well. But as we sit here, I mean,
I'll tease a segment, but I don't give any details,
and so he has to be guessing on the other
side what it is we're actually going to be talking about,
and you can see there's never avery any hesitation. Yeah,
I mean, it doesn't matter what I say. He has

(01:57:48):
plenty to side. I'm a good talker, he's a great talker,
and we can just talk about it. So I would
imagine Rich all these years, you have to look at
it as like a mental challenge, right to do a
show with me. You're literally you would talk about love
is blind. Well, this show is blind us. That's really

(01:58:08):
what it is. And so whether you like what I'm
talking about or don't like, you still got to come
up with something.

Speaker 3 (01:58:15):
Oh dude, there's no question. And uh, I know I
appreciate that very much.

Speaker 2 (01:58:20):
I really do. I really really does keep it fresh.
There's oh, there's there.

Speaker 1 (01:58:24):
You're on the edge of your sea line.

Speaker 2 (01:58:26):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:58:28):
There are sometimes people go like, how hard is it
to uh to.

Speaker 2 (01:58:32):
Talk for for three hours?

Speaker 3 (01:58:34):
You know, I mean, because there's there's limited commercial breaks.

Speaker 2 (01:58:37):
I'm like, well, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:58:38):
When you when you are completely surprised about what you're
talking about every fifteen minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:58:43):
Because what's happening is you are formulating the thoughts of like, Okay,
where am I going to go with this as you're
actually talking that is correct. Yeah, So I'm like, okay, okay,
I didn't see that coming. But here we all talk and.

Speaker 2 (01:58:56):
Then yeah, yeah, all over.

Speaker 1 (01:58:58):
But I mean, on a this is the way most people.
If people don't understand this, when people are like scriptus oid,
I go, I don't know, do you script out your
normal conversation during the course.

Speaker 2 (01:59:08):
Of a day.

Speaker 1 (01:59:08):
No? No, I mean everything is in the moment. And
the great thing about sports and what makes it so
different I think than any other news that's happening in
the world is that you can pretty much manipulate it
any way you want, you know. I mean, go back
to a story we're talking about earlier, like the Matthew

(01:59:30):
Stafford story, was trying to get rid of Matthew Stafford,
and I'm like, well, if you want to make it
that you could, you know, you can sort of twist
that story in that way. But more likely than not,
they're just looking for an idea of how much they're
going to pay this guy to come back as the
quarterback next season. All right, So coming up this week
Rich obviously NFL Combine coming up on Thursday, which is huge,

(01:59:55):
and something we talked about at the very top was
the Luka Doncic and I thought you were one hundred
percent on the mark, saying, all right, he looked unreal
last night against Denver, but that may not actually be
where we're going next in the Luca Doncich story with
the Lakers.

Speaker 2 (02:00:13):
Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 3 (02:00:14):
It's a big we'll see on Luca the Lakers, how
Lebron and him get going together. But we've had some
ups and downs already.

Speaker 1 (02:00:22):
All right, Well, if you want more surprises, I guarantee
you there are plenty more to come right here on
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