The Fellas with Jason Fitz & Buck Reising talk Post NBA Draft Storylines, NFL Collusion Drama, Aaron Rodgers Retirement Comments & MORE!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Where is the line on player empowerment and what do
we really want for our favorite sports? Because it seems
like every time somebody challenges the draft system, there's a
group of fans and analysts that scream about how great
that is. But every time I watch a draft, I'm
reminded that things are really good just the way they are,

(00:26):
And I'm not sure that we've really thought through what
it would mean if massive change was made. It's a
fellaist on Fox Sports Saturday, but it's sort of Bucking Rising,
but we don't know what it is. Look, we're always transparent,
We're always real with you guys on Saturday mornings, Anthony
Gargano's out. Buck Rising is going to be in for
Anthony this morning, but we're having some technical difficulties. So

(00:47):
right now, while I can see Buck Rising's beautiful face
on FaceTime, I can't actually hear his beautiful voice. Shit,
we're working on it. We're challenging pre in Mighty Mark
early this morning with more work than anybody should ever
have to do it this hour, but we will get
it figured out in the meantime. I'm Jason fitz we're
hanging at you, hanging out with you live from the
Fox Sports Radio studios. Always appreciate you giving us some

(01:07):
time this early on a Saturday. If your Saturday is
just starting, let's carpet the heck out of this DM.
If you're on the West Coast and you're still out, congratulations,
good for you. But in the meantime, Ace Bailey is
all over the news. And Ace Bailey, if you miss
this is the player that was drafted out of Rutgers
this week in the NBA draft that made it clear,
according to some, that he did not want to play

(01:31):
for certain teams, including the one that drafted him, the
Utah Jazz. Now, Utah didn't bring him in for a workout,
Utah didn't talk to him one on one, but Utah
drafted him, which happens sometimes in the NBA, and it
raised all these questions. Well, he made it clear he
didn't want to be there, and why are we doing
this to players like players should be able to pick
where they want to go. Somebody needs to challenge the
draft system. And it makes me laugh. It makes me

(01:54):
laugh constantly because everybody's out here telling me that the
draft system should be check and said, the draft in
general doesn't work, and I'm saying why. Look, I get
it from a real life standpoint. If you wake up
one day and suddenly you walk into work and you
sit down at your desk, and you unpack your things

(02:14):
and you get everything out and you organize your desk,
You sit down, you wiggle a little bit in your seat,
and you're ready to start your day, whether it's making
widgets or spreadsheets or talking on radio, and all of
a sudden, somebody comes up to you and says, sorry, man,
you don't work here anymore. You got traded, all right,
or sorry, You just graduated from college and you're ready
to get into the workforce and you want to do

(02:35):
this or that. You want to you want to be
an engineer, And instead of getting to choose the company
and going through the process and interviewing everywhere, you just
get a little note that says this is where you work,
and that's the way your career is going to start. Well,
that sucks. That's very true. I can't imagine from a
real life standpoint how bad that feels. Honest, with all
of that, but that doesn't mean that the way it

(02:57):
works in sports are broken. You know, If you listen
to the show a lot, you know, we talk a
lot of football here, and so I'm gonna immediately relate
this to football, because we're going to start hearing about
this NonStop. We did with Caleb. Is Caleb Williams gonna
force the Bears to not draft him? And then we
find out afterwards that they did look at some options. Well,
now it's gonna be is arch Manning going to force

(03:19):
teams not to draft him so he can go to
let's just say the Saints, right? Is arch Manning going
to force his way into certain cities. These are the
things that we're gonna do. And there are gonna be
plenty of people that tell you that's the right thing
to do. I just don't get it. At some point
you look at it and you say, okay. So, first
and foremost, if you want to legally challenge the draft,

(03:40):
that's gonna take years to do, years to do, so
somebody's gonna have to decide they simply don't want to
play in the league, because by the time that gets
figured out, they're gonna be years into their career. That's
step number one. Step number two. When you are drafted,
you are joining a collectively bargained association. You are joining
a union, right and that union fights for the rights

(04:01):
of every single person that plays in that league. So
if you decide you don't want to be part of
the draft, then you have to also decide that you're
going to take on the very union that you're about
to join, and that your sacrifice is worth it because
it changes the entire collective bargaining process for every teammate
you're about to have. I think that's a pretty tough
argument to make before you get into a locker room.

(04:23):
But then the other part of it is how much
better does it really make the entire sports world. This
is where I think it gets really dangerous, the concept
of saying, you know what, we're going to free market
at all. I love free market, I do. I do.
I love the concept to go make your money wherever
you want to make your money. I love the concept
that you can't tell me what to get paid or

(04:44):
when to get paid. You could just let me go
out there and earn what I deserve. A couple of things, though, again,
when you're part of a union, you don't really have
that option. I mean, there is not free market in
the union. Simply because they have a salary cap. So there,
if you really want to talk, go earn what you're worth,
especially in the NBA. Well, how many billions is Lebron worth? Like,

(05:06):
at some point, no matter how much Lebron gets paid,
considering the conversation that exists around Lebron, he deserves more, right.
So at some point you have to look around and say, okay, well,
no matter what happens, there is already not free market.
But the other part of it is every cap that
exists exists in part because they're trying to control the owners,

(05:30):
help the owners from themselves. Buck Rising now with us
and Buck, I appreciate you hanging out with me early.
It's super early and Bucks in Nashville for anyone that
doesn't know. So it's like it's four in the morning,
where you are first and foremost. Before we get into
any of it, did you come off a bender? Like
did you rage last night? You know? Did you come
did did lower Broad assist you in getting to the studio?

(05:52):
How do we get here?

Speaker 3 (05:53):
I was tempted several times by people in my life
to go out and you.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
Know, just power through. What's what? What's the harm?

Speaker 3 (06:01):
You can you can dry out in between the time
that you spend at the bar and the time that
you have to do nationally broadcast Fox Sports Radio. But no,
you know what I did, the responsible thing, Fitsie.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
I took my.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Little sleepy time tea, I got into bed about a
thirty Central time. I crawled into bed, and then I
woke up at ten thirty last night, and I.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
Have been up since ten thirty. Because I don't know
how the hell you do this on a regular basis.
This is not for the this is not for the
faint of heart.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
I know we're not out here digging ditches and we're
talking basketball and stuff like that today, But you guys
are are tougher than me to regularly wake up on
this schedule.

Speaker 4 (06:36):
How are we doing, buddy?

Speaker 2 (06:37):
I feel bad sometimes for bre and Mighty Mark, who
behind the scenes do all the work here because a
couple of times that had been out, I'll.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Put them to work already this morning, giving them all
kind of difficulties connecting.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
I'm so sorry, guys.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Violation, that's a violation out of the cakes. You know,
we're trying to bring bucket fits to the early morning
people in there, you know, and all of a sudden
you create work for pre and Mighty Mark. But every
time I've been in studio, it's been after a marathon
day in LA where I'm just over there and I'm coming,
you know me, Like the more tired I get, the
more I become an energizer bunny. That's just annoys the
hell out of everybody that's around me. So I feel

(07:10):
like the number of times I walk in at two
am l a time and I'm just like I'm bouncing
off the walls and they're looking at me like, you know,
what mountain of coke did this guy do? And it's
just energy drinks. It's just energy drinks.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
But but you know he's good wonder. So here's firing minds.
Wiring minds, that's all.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
You know. Connecticut isn't the party scene that the Lower
Broad is? My friend Ace Bailey is where I started,
and Ace Bailey deciding that, you know, making it clear.
According to some reports, although there's been some conflicting reports
that he doesn't want to play for Utah. And here's
what I'm getting to. I think the scary part of
every conversation that says, well, we don't we shouldn't have

(07:53):
a draft. Somebody needs to kill the draft, syste, I
don't care what sport we're talking about, because we're gonna
do this with Arch in a few months, where you know,
as we do every couple of years in the NFL
with some prospect. The danger of that is I think
what we forget is that most of the guardrails that
exist in professional sports from the owner's side is to
protect owners from themselves. Like salary caps exist because if

(08:15):
they didn't exist, the Jerry Jones would just go out
and spend billions of dollars one year to try and
win a Super Bowl. He wants to win one. He
can afford it, right, Like salary caps exist, not to
try just to try and hold down labor costs. I mean,
that's part of it, but it also they can't just
sit in a room and say, guys, let's hold down
labor costs. They have to collectively bargain it. One so

(08:35):
it's not collusion, and two importantly, so that they can
control the one guy in the room that they know
can't control themselves. If we get rid of the draft
in any sport, you will truly find out what they
have and have not. Lifestyle of different owners are across
the spectrum of all sports and that man, I don't
think people really understand that the Pandora's box that that opens,

(08:57):
and I don't think they really want.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
That's what we've just spent a week talking about, FITZI.
I don't know how much of the dialogue this NFL
collusion case has come across your desk or in your
Yahoo broadcasts or what you've been doing here this week
for Fox. But this is exactly what Jimmy Haslam did

(09:18):
to the NFL ownership and handing out a guaranteed contract
to Deshaun Watson. And two weeks later, everybody's in Palm
Beach at the owners meetings and Roger Goodell is reportedly,
according to this independent arbitrator, nudging ownership in a direction
of like, all right, guys, that was cute the one time.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Let's never ever do that again.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
And of course that has taken us down a whole
different rabbit hole. But to your point about the guardrails,
it's more about how the athletes are going to navigate
this in the modern era as it is, because the
owners are going to do their thing. They've done this
for one hundred years, they'll continue to do it until
the end of the time, these institutions are in place,

(10:00):
one to put owners in that position or to help
owners avoid the pitfalls that they might otherwise fall into.
And in specifically the NBA, this is a situation where
I think it's more about people's confusion or.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
Just general distaste for player.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
Empowerment as it's known and what it's kind of evolved
into with the NIL situation, with the transfer portal situation.
Now Ace Bailey has an unconventional representation situation that's being
much discussed and how he's navigated the pre draft process. Rather,
by the way, is he even in Utah yet? Last
I saw he had yet to report to the Utah

(10:42):
Jazz facility.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
They're saying now he's flying today, a press conference tomorrow,
weles Monday, Like this is not getting off. Look, if
this were not Utah, I mean, let's be honest, how
much of jazz fans get to yell and scream in
a way that really makes people give a damn? If
this were like the Knicks or the Lakers, you know,
if this was one of those those teams, then if

(11:06):
Cooper flag was turning around saying, you know what after
they did what they did to Luca, I don't really
want to play for the mass. That would be more
of a conversation like it's Utah, it's the jazz people
will forget like three days.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Well they're they're howling about it on the internet right now.
And also you know, going at Ace Bailey and his
agent and all these different things that are that are
bothering them at this point in time, and it's you know,
it's compounded by the fact that he didn't want to
be there in the first place, right Like, this is
one of those situations where a team called the player's
bluff on all right, I'm not interested.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
In taking a pre draft visit.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
You guys are not a part of my preferred destinations,
which is them trying to take the situation into their
own hands. And the team is welcome to call their
bluff because Ace Bailey is a talented enough player to
wear you will spend the number five overall draft pick
on him and tough kid, we'll figure it out together.
That's how this thing works.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
Now. I know that's you know, maybe two cut and
for some people, and.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Maybe that's not how the modern day athlete wants to
go about doing their business. But until such time, as
there is legitimate change to the way that we go
about entering or on boarding new talent into these professional leagues.
This is just the situation that they're going to have
to figure out, and if they figure out ways to

(12:22):
do it unconventionally that benefits them more than generations past,
than good on them. But if not, you know, Ace
Bailey and his representation are probably going to be the
ones who end up with the most amount of egg
on their face.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
He's buck rising him for Anthony Gargano. I'm Jason Fitz.
I'm always pro player empowerment, and this time I'm not.
I'll explain why we're going to keep it rolling. It's
the Fellas hanging out with you brighton early on a
Fox Sports Saturday on Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 5 (12:49):
Hi, this is Jay. I'm the producer of the Paul
an Toni Fusco Show. Usually in these promos they ask
you to listen to the show. I'm here to ask
you please don't listen to the show. The hosts are
two absolute morons who have the dumbest takes on sportsmagicable.
Don't listen to the show so it can get camps.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
The get him. Ignore that fool.

Speaker 6 (13:12):
Listen to the Tony Fosco Show on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
He's still moving.

Speaker 7 (13:19):
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 2 (13:31):
I feel like I've spent much of my radio career
being as pro player as you can be. I love
everybody get in the bag. But the way I look
at it, owners are already rich. So I want players
to get rich too, and the more money they can
get in the league, the better. I don't care if
the owner of my favorite team, Mark Davis, in this instance,

(13:52):
has a dime left to his name. I just want
him to spend everything he has on making my favorite
team great. So I am always pro player empowerment, and
I'm not the minute you start telling me that we
need to get rid of the draft in any sport.
So fellas on Fox Sports Radio, he's Buck Rising in
for Anthony Gargatto. I'm Jason Fitz hanging out with there
early this morning, and hear me out Buck like I

(14:13):
get it. I love player and power. I want guys
to get and girls to get more of the cap.
Like the WNBA, which will to actually talk a little
bit about later on today, has a big collective bargaining
moment coming up in October. It's gonna be huge for
the league. Let's see what it means moving forward. I
go out, get sixty percent, get seventy, But I don't care.
Get all the damn money. I don't care. Once you're
in the league, get every time you can, for the

(14:33):
time you're there, in every single sport. I'm all all
in on that. When you start messing with the draft, though,
the hardest part for me is that you're really messing
with the structure that continues to give people the one
thing that money can't buy, which is hope. Right like
the draft, you spend months you're in Nashville, you cover
the Titans. Titans had the first overall pick. If the

(14:54):
Titans did not have the first overall pick, they would
they would lack the one thing fan base want.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
They would like me that way. I couldn't deal with them.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
They've been miserable for so long anyway, these people would
be out of their minds.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
If you start messing with the very thing that gives
fans of bad teams hope. Now, there's never a point
of being a fan of a bad team. And if
you truly, the draft, especially in the NFL, is built
so brilliantly to make everybody feel like suddenly they have
a chance going into every season. You start messing with

(15:28):
things like that, I think you're What you don't realize
is you're messing with the entire process of giving hope
to teams to suck.

Speaker 4 (15:37):
Can I give you a very unpopular opinion.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
It's early, but I demand it.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
I am so not for player and power man, just not.
I just straight up.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
And I'm somebody who covers professional athletes. I'm in a
locker room four days a week during the regular season,
training camp, preseason, all of it. But and I speak,
I should, I should speak from two different perspectives.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
The team beat.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Reporter slash radio journalist in me is in favor of
seeing these guys and gals, depending on what sport we're
talking about, succeed in just the ways that you've described.
But the sports fan in me didn't care about that.
I don't care about that at all. If you're talking
to me, if I was a pro sports fan, like

(16:29):
if I had a pro sports team that I really
really cared about. We'll take the Pacers because the Pacers
were just in the NBA Finals, and that's the closest
thing to pro sports allegiance that I have in my life.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
If you ask me as a fan, if I.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Am super invested in seeing Tyrese Halliburton or Nim Hard
or Nie Smith or any of these other guys Miles
turner on on their next contract negotiation getting as much
more is humanly possible, I'm gonna look around at you
and be like, I don't know, man, I'm just trying
to see the best possible version of my basketball team

(17:06):
I am as a sports fan, As a pro sports fan,
I am not for player empowerment because that generally causes
more disruption to the team dynamic than I would otherwise
have to deal with. Now, that's the most basic version
of the argument, and I understand why people would shout
me down and why you know, jeff Simmons already took
a run at me once.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
I can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
What Jeffrey would think of me saying, yeah, I don't
really care about these guys getting their bag as a
sports fan, but I think that I could do a
left brain, right brain thing. My professional aspect of this,
I would look at it and say, yeah, I understand
what they're trying to accomplish. But the sports fan part
of me, I mean, hell, let's just take my favorite
team fits he is Indiana Basketball. Indiana college basketball, all right,

(17:49):
And I saw name, image of likeness and the money
associated with it, with Indiana having money to spend, get
me a roster worth about thirteen million dollars, and then
you do jack absolutely nothing. They overpaid for a roster
that was had no team chemistry. They threw a bunch
of money at a bunch of different pieces and parts.

(18:10):
The kids, to their credit, maximize their leverage and their
representation coming in, whether they be transfers or recruits, and
it produced a product that was at times unwatchable and
more than anything, that hurt me. It just wasn't a
group of guys that was playing for my university.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
I had no investment. They just pissed me off. I
want in.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Mike Woodson fired, and I didn't get that because they
let him shuffle off into the sunset instead of getting
rid of his dusty ass the way that they should
have a couple of years ago, and instead I watched
I watched a basketball team that had no investment in me,
So I had no investment in them.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (18:51):
Yeah, So it's funny when I say I'm always player
in proment. I think I've learned through the process of
what you're talking about right there, that I'm ever the
capitalist for most peace, I want. I want people to
to just go get rich.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
I'm like that, But to your pilling money, I'm a big.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Fand I had a spirited debate. And I don't think
I'm violating any trust here, but I had a spirited
debate with my buddy Michael Junior. We're still like brothers
and we have a group text, and I asked everybody,
I'm like, hey, why do we care about this collusion thing? Like,
I'm so tired for anyone that didn't see the NFL
news this week came out Mike Florio and Pablo Uh

(19:31):
Thanking Pablo, Sorry, buddy, I just drew a blankets early. Okay.
They both did investigative reporting that led to the findings
of an arbitration decision about whether or not the owners
were colluding against players on guaranteed contracts. It's this complicated
thing that Florio has spent all week just lecturing the

(19:52):
hell out of me about the fact that nobody's covering it,
and I just keep looking at it and saying, who cares.
I mean, honestly, if there's collusion in the NFL, at
the end of the day, how's it going to change
my Sunday football? Was my argument that I've made repeatedly
and for most fans watching, if it doesn't actually change
the outcome of the game. One of my first radio

(20:12):
shows I ever did it serious exam at the time,
A Mad Dog Sports Radio was filling it. I was
working with the former NFL player and I told him
in a heated debate that we were having that I
honestly believe a player could die on the field and
it would take three or four days before the fan
base in general would be saying, well, who's our next
linebacker going to be? And that was in twenty sixteen.
Probably he just bit my head off about it. I'm

(20:35):
totally out of touch. Well, I was on air at
ESPN when Hamlin went down, and it took two days
before the bosses sat us down and said, hey, you
got to find a way to talk about something other
that we can't do death radio for like, We've got
to find a way to move on. Took two days.
So I think sometimes as much as athletes feel like

(20:56):
the fans are out of touch with what they need,
I think sometimes the sports world and the way we
cover sports forgets just general fandom, and general fandom says
I don't really care what happens as long as I
got Like, if I'm a football fan, I need my
team to have a great quarterback, pay whatever it takes
to get that quarterback, and everybody else is just basically

(21:16):
somebody that's bringing this thing along, right, So I to
your point, I don't think most fans are sitting here
just in general giving a damn about player empowerment one
way or the other. I want everybody to get rich.
I don't want the draft system to change. I think
drafts and gen and this is something we do. Like
I listened to Greene sit there on ESPN over and

(21:37):
over and over again and tell me that the NFL
should implement the NBA's lottery system for the draft, which
is the stupidest damn thing I think Greeney has said
in years. Because I'm sitting around saying, my god, look
at the viewership for the NFL draft. Look at the
coverage for the NFL Draft, and then look at the
viewership and coverage for every other draft. Like viewership for

(21:57):
the first round of the NBA Draft. With Cooper Flag
as the first overall pick, a guy that is generational
in the way that we talk about him, was down
like forty percent from last year. People didn't give it
him because they only know Cooper Flag's name. They didn't
care about any of the rest of it. So, like
to me, the draft is a beautiful thing when you
do it the right way. The NFL does it the
right way. And this is the one spot where I

(22:19):
say screwplayer empowerment, because you have to have hope. You
have to give you have to give fan bases that
have been kicked in the no no polics year in
and year out by their team have to have something
that gives them some monogram of like this is going
to change, and that's what the draft provides everybody.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Oh, just think about the situation you mentioned that I'm
here in Nashville and I covered the Tennessee Titans for
a living, and if cam Ward had ended up on
the New York Giants because of a lottery system as
opposed to a straight up draft the way that the
NFL does it, people would have lost their minds. They
would have said that the system is rigged against small
market franchises and the NFL just wants to see cam

(22:55):
Ward play in New York.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
And that's all probably true, by the way.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
But the NFL draft is specifically designed to avoid those
kind of things, and and and to.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Your point, and by the way, real quick on that book. Yeah,
think about this as a Raiders fan, I'm wildly excited
that we drafted Ashtroon Genty, right I say we. I
don't give it na what anyone, So I say we
drafted Ashtroon Genty if we were supposed to have the
first overall pick and because of a lottery system, we
got stuck with the sixth overall pick, and then drafted
Ashtroon Genty. The rementment I would feel towards a player

(23:28):
that right now, I'm very excited about. I just think
we have to You've taken, you've taken in tremendous positive
and you've turned it into hot garbage by doing those
sorts of like trickery things that mean nothing towards what
should actually happen in a draft.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Go ahead, No, it's it's just I think it's speaking
to the larger point in I use my I use
the guys that work on my local show here in
Nashville as kind of a barometer for what the what
the audience actually cares about. Because I can't see the audience,
but I can see them. So when I may I
say the word arbitration, and I see the entire collective

(24:03):
back room their eyes plays over and then put their
heads down in their phones. I realize, Oh, they don't
really care about this, because to your point, it does
not impact how the football is played on Sundays. Again,
for the players, it is a complete It is the
biggest story in the NFL for the players. It is
the biggest story in sports for the players. But the

(24:25):
players are not the vast majority of people consuming this stuff.
And while it is incoming upon the players to take
matters into their own hands to set as much right
as they can with the NFLPA, who is also as
big a part of this. That's the thing. That's the
only place that I would try to relate it to
the audience here in any of this stuff is if
you worked at a corporation or even a locally owned business,

(24:48):
and you felt that that corporation or that locally owned business,
the powers that be, the heads of state that run
your company, were actively conspiring to hold your money down.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
In whatever you.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Do for a living, be you a plumber, a sports
talk radio host, a journalist, you know, a firefighter, whatever
the case.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
May be, you would lose your absolute, ever loving mind.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
That's where NFL players are at, which is why I
think the NFL players are responding to that kind of
to that story the way that they are. And Mike Florio,
who deals with players and deals with agents and this
is very much a part of his world, Pablo Torri
the same. They're both well respected journalists who do an
excellent job, and they think this story demands more coverage,

(25:33):
and it probably does from the major media networks. But
the audience audience doesn't give a damn. Audience didn't give
a damn, So why should the networks capitulate for the
audiences who don't give a damn? Other than the It's
an easy accusation to make, and largely a fair one.
You know, the networks are in bed with their sports
rights partners to keep this story that would be unflattering

(25:55):
for the leagues out of the news cycle and let's
just keep it all moving, huh.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
I Mean. The funny part about that is that I Man,
I worked at the mothership for what six years and
now Yahoo and Fox Sports Radio. I never once, ever,
in my entire time, as hard as this is for
people to believe, I never once had anybody, any executive,
any person of power in any way come into ESPN

(26:22):
and tell me what I could or could not talk about. Ever.
The only time that it came up, and this is
a specific example I've used several times. When the Denver
Nuggets were about to go on a championship run and
I was doing daily radio at the time on ESPN
Monday through Friday. In the middle of the day, we
went to our bosses, our producers and our bosses at
radio and we said, hey, man, the Nuggets look really good.

(26:44):
Should we start getting Nuggets guests on? And they laughed us,
it at us, and they said, the audience doesn't care
about the Nuggets. So yeah, Does ESPN sit there and
ask what does the broadest set of the audience care about? Yes,
most media companies do that. There's a reason why at Yahoo.
It took two seconds from us to realize that we
needed to start including as much Schador as Sanders and
as much Dion from Colorado as possible when that Colorado

(27:08):
football team started to blow up an attention like metrics
are studied, yes, but I never once, ever, even when
we were sitting there talking about things like Tamar Hamlin,
no one for me ESPN never came in and said, guys,
we really need to be sensitive about this with our
partnership with the NFL. Like it just doesn't fans believe
that everybody sits behind this like evil maniacal laugh and

(27:29):
like life is way simpler than most people want to
make it. And to that point, I mean, your comparison
is a great one of you know how frustrated any
person would be if they felt their their boss was
colluding against them. But also how different is every person's
life If the minute you walk into your company, you
know what every person to your left, in your right makes,

(27:50):
like just just at its core, if you walked in
today to work at Google or to work at you know,
an autobody store, and you know what the guy next
to you and everybody talks about it, and it's covered
in every single way like that changes so much of
the world. So and look, by the way, not for nothing,
I support that. I think everybody should know what everybody makes.

(28:11):
If we're gonna sit here and tchied employee or athletes
constantly for how much money they want. I literally it
would be awesome if when I walked up to a
cash register at the local grocery store on their vest
and just said what they make per hour, like all right, cool,
get on it, let's go. Let's go, like put your

(28:32):
your annual earnings from last year on literally on every person.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
There's not a single solitary.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
How we treat every athlete.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Every athlete I completely understand, But I mean, how much
good does that do them where people are constantly using
that as a tool against them if they don't produce,
and that's the part they are in the production business, right,
But I think that that's that that's a very fine
line that that athletes, that people in the that people
in the public sector have to deal with, whether they

(29:00):
whether they be movie stars or professional athletes or things
like that, where just the sheer amount of money that
they're making is so much that you almost have to
disclose it. In this setting, and it's and it's an
easy thing for us to sit back here and play
armchair GM in our favorite sport and understand the kind
of things that we have access to because we've never
had more access to the information. But getting back to

(29:21):
the draft thing that you brought up FITSI and the
way that it the way that its structured. I guess
for athletes, the primary complaint on that would be, well,
what if you and I got drafted to, you know,
cover the Jacksonville Jaguars or something like that, or the

(29:42):
Utah Jazz just sent into sports mediocrity in a place
that we didn't want to work, and we could do
the job, and we would do the job well enough,
and we would perform, and if we performed well enough,
then maybe we'd get called up to a better market
or a more a team with more notoriety that would
alter benefit our careers. Which is kind of the situation,

(30:03):
which is the situation that professional athletes are in. But
to your point, I just don't know what is the
solution if not the draft. If people are going to
talk about dismantling the draft process or bringing the lottery
to the NFL or all these other things, are they
just saying that stuff out loud to try and manifest
something different, because they're currently not satisfied with an imperfect system,

(30:26):
but a system that functions at a high enough level
that allows us to accomplish all of these things at
a relatively efficient pace.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
I mean, at the end of the day, I think
what people are doing is they're talking about things that
sound fun without any concept to what it would actually
take to execute that same plan. A million times I
die on this hill. When you are drafted, you are
joining a union, a collectively bargained union, and that's like, Look,

(30:54):
I've been part of them. I've been part of sag Aftra,
I've been part of the American Federation Musicians. I understand unions.
Right when you are drafted, you are part you are
becoming part of a union. So you're not just challenging
the draft system from an ownership standpoint. You're challenging the
draft system from a union standpoint. Before you've ever stepped

(31:16):
foot on the court or on a field, you are
basically telling the people that are about to be your
union brothers and sisters that their deal negotiated doesn't apply
to you. That's a very difficult sales pitch to go down,
and frankly, I think the amount of time it would take,
the amount of career loss it would take. Yes, there
are going to be the occasional Eli Mannings that are

(31:37):
going to come in and say I'm simply not going
to play there, and that will occasionally affect things, But
there's a massive difference between that and simply getting rid
of the draft system all together. There's there's every every
generation has one. There was a John l. Way, there
was an Eli Manning. I think Eli Manning was made
a little easier by the fact that there was a
Philip Rivers, like they could negotiate a trade with I.

(32:00):
I just think we do this all the time and say, well,
who's going to be the person that challenges it without
really sitting down and saying what will it cost, what
will it take, how many years of their career will
it take out of them, what will it mean for
when they actually finally get into the league, what version
of a pain in the ass is any of that worth?
Like those are all real conversations that when you put
a pen to paper you realize that's a little like saying,

(32:22):
you know what, buckold, my friend, you should live in
a four million dollar house on Lower broad There we go.
I've said it, and therefore it should just happen for you.
Good sir, like that. There's no concept of execution to it.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
Yeah, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
I mean the execution is the execution may not be
as difficult as you think. We can manifest this thing
into existence, FITZI, I would like a four million dollar
help four million although I don't know I got I
got in it. Every time I think about buying a
new house after I bought mine a couple of years ago,
I just look at interest rates, which is all anybody
wants to hear on Fox Sports Radio this morning, and

(32:56):
I just recoil it what it might actually cost to
buy a new house at this point in my life.

Speaker 4 (33:01):
That's why.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
That's that's it's It's a beautiful world that we live in.
That's all I have to say about that. All right?
Is it speaking? Give me your thoughts on that I need?
Is it too early to drink? I don't know. Okay,
Look here's what I know. I know that Cooper Flag
was the big story of the NBA Draft and the
big story of the week. The question is what difference

(33:23):
does it actually make we'll figure it out next. He's
Buck Rising in for Anthony Gargano. I'm Jason Fitz with
a fellas hanging out with you on a Fox Sports
Saturday on Fox Sports Radio. Is the entire NBA Draft fixed?
Is it all just for nothing? Cooper Flag is a
Dallas Dallas maverick and the world is screaming it's unfair
and it's all rigged, and it just sort of makes

(33:44):
me laugh. He's Buck Rising. I'm Jason fitzbucks in for
Anthony Gargano. It's a Fellas. It's kind of a you know,
bucking fits takeover of the Fellaws on Fox Sports Radio.
Be sure to check out the Fox Sports Radio YouTube
channel a ton of great videos from a ton of
our shows. Just search Fox Sports Radio on YouTube. You'll
see whole bunch of video highlights from all the shows,
and be sure to subscribe to you always have instant
access to our Fox Sports Radio videos on YouTube. Buck. Okay,

(34:08):
so you know, Buck and I have been friends for
what ten years? At this point? You know me very well, dude,
I really really I think conspiracy theories are one of
the funniest things in our society because you can convince
a conspiracy theorist of another conspiracy theory incredibly easy. All

(34:33):
you have to do is say it, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
But you could come in with books of facts. You
cannot convince conspiracy theorists of a single fact, but you
give them another full blown conspiracy theory. So like now,
the theory is well. The League wanted Luca to go
to the Lakers, so they told the MAVs as long
as they traded him to the Lakers, that the MAVs

(34:55):
would be guaranteed the first overall pick and the lottery,
which would get them Cooper Flag and they would basically
get their next superstar. Are you buying any of that?

Speaker 3 (35:05):
No, No, not.

Speaker 4 (35:09):
Even a little bit.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Although I am delighted by the idea of just trying
to convince a conspiracy theorist of just any single fact,
no matter how minuscule that fact is, and them recoiling
at the idea of it, while you know, going down
what sixteen different rabbit holes on Helen Keller or the
NBA Draft lottery or any other things that are out

(35:31):
there with conspiracy theories floating around them. At this point
in time, the only thing that I am willing to
entertain is the NBA draft lottery conspiracy about the MAVs
ending up with the number one overall pick, because I
think that's nonsense. I don't for if for no other reason,
FITSI that franchise. I don't like to fire people unnecessarily

(35:54):
Nico Harrison getting to the podium after they drafted Cooper
Flag and saying fortune favors Bold. I know Brie has
some audio back there at some point that we could
get to, but like I have never felt the need
to go on a an on air tirade against a
professional sports executive more in my life.

Speaker 4 (36:14):
Because you don't deserve that number one pick.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
You don't deserve to be chesty about a situation that
you up and down botched. You look thoroughly incompetent, and
even if you are just the fall guy for your
incompetent ownership, Please please get up there at a post
draft press conference and act.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
Like you are the one who did something right here. Please,
I'm begging you so that.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
That conspiracy theory, the idea that the NBA said, all right,
the MAVs have botched this royally up and down, let's
see what we can salvage. As far as that market
and as far as that fan base by giving them
Cooper flag and the number one overall pick. Where you know,
what's the seventy six ers GM's.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
Name, Darryl Morey.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Daryl Morey is dropping his head into his hands on
the lottery night because the Sixers ended up blanding third,
because nobody thinks the MAVs should have ended up with
the number one overall pick, which is again why the
draft lottery stuff in any sport is flawed.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
But that's why, Like I live by the phrase it's
better to be lucky than good, Like why can't the
MAVs just be lucky? Like are we really gonna believe.

Speaker 4 (37:16):
This is the time so to serve to fixed?

Speaker 3 (37:19):
He bleeped that, no, I'm not interested in that. It's
better to be lucky than good. If the people getting
lucky are thoroughly incompetent, well.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Usually they are, Like I mean, it's usually the look
the person driving like a maniac on the road gets
lucky more often than the person that it Like, that's
just the way life goes. It doesn't favor the bowld,
it favors the stupid more often than not. Like why
this one? Why so we want to believe in this
situation that Wemby, Like, no, the league didn't fix it

(37:50):
for Wemby, that's fine, Like they were happy with them
going to San Antonio. The league didn't fix it for Zion.
They were good with Zion going to the Pelicans, Like,
but no, Cooper flag is than all of those because
they wanted to get Luca to the Lakers that badly
the same league, I know, different commissioner at the time,
but the same league that didn't allow the Chris Paul
trade to go over to the Lakers at the time. Like, look,

(38:12):
there's just no they don't need to do it, they
don't have to do it, Like we just watched Oklahoma
City in Indiana play for an NBA championship, Like there's
just no if you are in the NBA, between the
profit sharing that goes on, between the way that the
league makes money, between the media deals, like there's no
reason to fix any of it. There's no reason to

(38:35):
take the risk. And then we only do this every
once in a while, Like Patrick, Union couldn't have just
been you know, the Knicks couldn't have just won. The
lottery had to be rigged, Like it's stupid that we
pick and choose these battles.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
No, that's the fun of fandom though fitsy, And I'm
not saying that I believe it.

Speaker 4 (38:49):
I'm just saying that's.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
The one that I'm willing to entertain because just because
I'm so thoroughly disgusted by the entire Nico Harrison experience,
like that, that person does not deserve a job in
professional basketball based on the way that he's handled this situation,
and to see somebody like that rewarded, I'm willing to
believe anything other than, Oh, that guy got lucky, and

(39:10):
he's terrible at his job, and he's probably gonna get
fired by the end of the season anyway, So what
does any of this matter. It's that kind of thing
that irks me about the NBA, and I think one
of the things that works to the league's detriment. You
shouldn't be able to get lucky like that. It should
be sports is the ultimate meritocracy, is it not, Or

(39:32):
at least that's what we're led to believe in a
lot of these situations. So we're not going to hold
the executives and the franchises to the same standard.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
That we hold the athletes. I think that's complete and total.

Speaker 5 (39:42):
Bowl.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
We're also moving the goalposts because when Luca was traded,
it was well, the new ownership group of the MAVs
wants to move the team to a different city. That
was the conspiracy theory around why they would do it.
So now you're telling me that they needed to get
rid of the start to suck so much that they
could justify moving out of Dallas. But they were just
given a star by the NBA for that same move. Like,

(40:04):
the great thing about conspiracy theorist is that they could
just replace one with another and they're never held accountable
to the bad takes along the way. It's it's a
wild part of the process, but the most important part
of this, for everything, for all of this conversation, for
all of the love that we are giving the Dallas
Mavericks and Cooper Flag, I don't really think it's gonna
matter in the end. I'll tell you why. Next. He's

(40:25):
Buck Rising. I'm Jason fitz We're in on Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio Radio.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
If you believe that the NBA fixed their entire draft
to make sure that Cooper Flagg ended up with Dallas
Maverick you forgot one important thing. None of it really matters.
He's buck Rising. I'm Jason fitz Bucket fits taking over
the fellas. Anthony Gargano's got the weekend off much deserved,
and I'm just a beacon of light in the dark,

(40:53):
dark world? Is that tell you? Early on Saturday morning?

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Why do you do this to people? No matter what
the conversation is? Oh, next, fans they saw enjoy hosting
home playoff games at Matterson Square guard.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
But let me tell you why it doesn't matter. Next.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
It's just I mean you, you find a way to
urinate on the joy. You are the happiest, most pessimistic
human being I know when it comes to working in
this business.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
No, no, not like so, I'm not pessimistic at all.
I'm the eternal realist, which is what pessimistic people say.
I get that, like, No, hear me out, Like I think.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
At my core, if you're having to explain it away
this much, there's probably.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
More truth to it than you want to acknowledge.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
Okay, So I shout out to my buddy Mikey. All right,
my buddy Mikey was in a National Guy. Mikey was
in a bar one night and everything that happened he
was just sort of complaining about and somebody looked at
him and was like, are you ever happy? And he's like,
you know what. At my core, I'm a complainer. That's
what I do. I complain with those things. It's just
part of William and I love the self awareness of it.

(41:56):
I have always been my entire life a yeah but guy,
like I'll buy that, But have you thought of this? Like,
no matter how somebody builds a castle, I'm the person
that's like, it's fine. It's just like if somebody is
particularly negative, I'm the person that comes in and says, yeah,
but things could be worse. If somebody's particularly positive, I'm like, yeah,

(42:16):
but you gotta look out for this. Like I'm a
yeah buck. That's who I am, and and all of them.
And by the way, I think when we were working together,
and you are the aforementioned Nicks, I think my comment
to you was, last time I checked, they don't raise
banners for second round wins. Turns out, guess what, I
don't think they're raising a banner at the garden for that.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
So I'm just saying, buddy, that a coach.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Can't fight a banner they can't fight a coach after
they fired tips, which I'm sure we're gonna get to
at some point today.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
And well, if we get to it, it'll be faster
than anybody else gets to figure out who their coach
is gonna be. But hear me out, all right, So
look at the list I've got in front of me.
I'm just I'm gonna give you some first overall picks
that were, you know, relatively big names in the process
of what was expected of them coming into the draft,
and you just tell me how much of a championship

(43:06):
difference it made. All right, let's go all the way
back to, all right, Anthony Davis in twenty twelve, so
that's a long time ago. I'd say Anthony Davis made
a substantial difference. Kyrie Irving made a substantial difference. Those
are good examples. But the flip side of that is
like Anthony Bennett, Andrew Wiggins, Karl Anthony Towns, like his
Kat you know, at this point widely regarded as somebody
that brings championships to wherever he goes. Ben Simmons, Markel Foltz,

(43:29):
DeAndre Aiden, Zion Williamson. So I was at the shoe
explosion game in Cameron and everybody saying, oh, zion Z
He's gonna win so much. Anthony Edwards. Sure, it's resulted
in a massive turnaround. Caid Cunningham, Paulo, but Carol, Victor
Wembin Yama.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Now why you're sleeping on those the second and third
to last players that you name there, because Caid Cunningham
in Detroit is going to end up being a difference
making type of player. I know that they're just on
the come up, but didn't they fincy. They went from
like fourteen wins last year to forty four this year?
Caid comedy. Caid Cunningham is legit.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
I believe he's a legit player, and I believe Paulo's
is going to be a legit player.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Now you made a face like you smelled something bad
because you couldn't say no.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yeah, look, look, I believe they're going to be good players.
Are they going to result in championships for the city
that they were drafted in? See that that's the like
the the NBA is what the NBA is. At some
point I'm looking up and down the list. This isn't
the NFL where you have the first overall pick at
a quarterback and you feel like suddenly you have hope.

(44:38):
By the way, I would argue that many of the
quarterbacks that we discuss every single day in the NFL
same thing. We're like, oh my god, you gotta have
the first overall pick to get cam Ward. Well, I mean,
Patrick Mahomes wasn't the first overall pick. Josh Allen wasn't
the first overall pick. Justin Herbert wasn't the first overall pick.
Lamar Jackson wasn't the first overall pick. Jalen Hurst wasn't
the first overall pick. Like this goes, this is what

(44:59):
we do up. Whoever the first overall pick in the
draft is as being a franchise saver. And I'm just asking,
over the course of the last twenty five years, what
maybe three guys have actually been franchise savers for the
franchise that they were drafted by.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Maybe well, and that's the key point five.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
The franchise that drafted them is the key point, right,
because these guys are capable. I mean, we're just to
you know, make an NFL comparison. We're looking at quarterback
rehabilitation almost on an annual basis at this point where
guys can go elsewhere after they struggle, because usually they're
going as as is the case, and I know the
draft lottery in the NHL and the NBA can can

(45:37):
mitigate some of this, but more often than not, you're
going to one of the stinkier teams in that respective sport.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
You're gonna have a lot of work to do.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Stinkier. Stinkier is just such a good word from you.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Go ahead there is you know, it's pretty stinky.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
There's a listen as somebody who covers a stinky team
for a living, like a lot of stitch coming out
of Nashville.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
Tennessee these last couple of years there, Bud.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
But I think that when you talk about basketball specifically,
it's an easier conversation to happen.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
Now.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
That list of names that you just ran through is
a good reminder of it's still not as seamless as
we want to make it in our heads, but it
is still more effective, I would argue, than the number
one overall pick in the NFL draft, because I mean,
let me just put this within the purview of the
division that I work in the AFC South, where it's

(46:27):
the Titans, it's the Colts, it's the Texans, and it's
the Jags. If I gave you cam Ward C. J. Stroud,
and Trevor Lawrence, they're all coming out of college at
the same time.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
They're all in the same draft class.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Which one of those quarterbacks as prospects would you make
the number one overall pick?

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Trevor Lawrence not even close?

Speaker 4 (46:44):
Full stop, and he is.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
They're still trying to figure out if they can hit
on Trevor Lawrence to the point.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Where he's been through two coaches now.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
He's having to be banking a lot on Liam Cohen
being able to get the most out of him.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
And he's already on a second contract. Yeah and done.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Trevor Lawrence is the most underperforming player relative to expectation
in the NFL right now. Those guys don't make a
difference that way. Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback I've
ever seen. Not the greatest winner for those of you
who want to argue rings versus ability in all those
different things. That's still Tom Brady. But the greatest quarterback,

(47:21):
the best quarterback I've ever seen is Patrick Mahomes. And
he got swamped in the Super Bowl because he wasn't
on the best team. The team building strategy here is
so much more important. We as a society, as a
sports consuming society, FITSI. We overvalue the first round of
any of these drafts so much because they're the easiest
players to talk about, they're the most famous names, when

(47:45):
the reality of the situation is your roster is mostly
built through the belly of the draft the vet. You
could argue that Day two and Day three in the
NFL draft are more important than Day one. Even if
you're getting the more or more impactful, more famous, most
important player at the most important position in that first round,

(48:06):
it doesn't mean anything if you don't get him proper
wide receiver help, if he doesn't have interior offensive line
play that can keep him up right against you know,
the Jeffrey Simmons and the Dexter Lawrences of the world,
and things like that, Chris Jones out there trying to
chew on his spine like the bearon The Revenant, and
Leo DiCaprio, these kind of things like this is this
is something that is so quick for or so easy

(48:27):
for sports fans to ignore until they realize, oh, I've got.

Speaker 4 (48:31):
One good player, but the rest of my roster sucks.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
There is this moment for me where I'll go back
to Luca being drafted and I you know, I was
hosting sports on on Snapchat that year, we had just
launched it, and when I first started the we did
rips every night on Luca in Europe. And look, I'll
be honest, I knew nothing about him when I started,
and all the basketball heads on that show said, no, no, no,

(48:56):
this guy's this kid's going to be the top pick
in the draft. Absolutely, we're gonna put rips in for
him all the time. So by the time we got
to the NBA Draft, I actually knew more about Luca
than probably any other prospect. And I got into debates
at the time with my co host city ESPN about
you know, Lucas should be number one, Lucas should be
number one. Well he wasn't. He was number two, right,

(49:17):
He went number two for what, Like for all of
this conversation, the second overall pick in the draft is
now going to do whatever he does for the rest
of his career for the Lakers. Like we talk about
how broken the NFL is when it's convenient to talk
about how broken the NFL is, but the fact of
the matter is the NFL, by virtue of your contract

(49:38):
as a first round pick, holds your right for least
the first five years, plus if they want to franchise
you an extra year after that. So six years, which
is six years in the NFL, to me, is like
twelve years in the NBA. They hold your rights for
so long that if you are worth the damn you
are actually going to play the majority of your meaningful

(49:58):
snaps for the team that you and that's just not
the case in the NBA. You can't bank on that.
So what you end up with is these real conversations.
And look, sometimes it's it's guys like Zion that just
never click to the way that people think that Zion
should click. Sometimes it's John Morant where things get really
complicated for reasons other than basketball. All over the place.

(50:21):
For a number two overall pick, there are there are
mitigating factors that change the success of the failure. But
the fact is, if I'm just looking up and down
this list and I'm saying, okay, of the like, who
was the guy that everybody said, yeah, that's gonna like,
are we really going to sit here with revisionist history
and pretend that in twenty twenty, everybody knew that Anthony
Edwards was about to become Anthony Edwards, because I don't

(50:43):
remember the conversation being that way about Anthony Edwards. In fact,
the conversation about Anthony Edwards was nowhere near what it
was about Zion the year before that, Like the number
of times that we've actually been obsessed with a first
overall pick and then been right about that first overall
pick and then what that first overall pick win championships
at the place that he was drafted, Like at this point,

(51:05):
you put all those bricks together, it's where to build
a wall?

Speaker 4 (51:09):
Who just won the NBA Championship?

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Uh? I you tell me, I don't want to bring
this up for you? Are you okay? Like do we
need a hug?

Speaker 4 (51:15):
No? I'm not well.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
In fact, I think you're very kind to check in
on me either at the course of that, because I could,
Oh my god, I have anty I haven't. You just
brought up so many feelings. That was not the path
that I was going down here. But I am once
again made miserable by the idea of watching my basketball
team flounder in Game seven the way that they did.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
But the Oklahoma City Thunder did win.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
The NBA Champion Championship, and they are you know, for
as bitter as I am about it, and for as
miserable as I am about that Tyrese Haliburton injury and
Rick Carlisle's decision to let him play through that injury
even knowing what the history of that injury and trying
to work through that injury is. Like, Oklahoma City is
a worthy champion, But what makes them a worthy champion?

(51:57):
Why were they the best team in the regular season,
not just in the postseason this year? They're the best
roster construction. You have Sam Presty, who is as unherald
I mean, Sam Presty's been doing this for a long
enough period of time that people know that he's excellent, right,
but this is his first championship. But the way that
that roster is constructed, where you're getting I mean, you're
getting guys like Jalen Williams who are coming in here

(52:20):
and making a huge impact and you know, potentially have
their star turn maybe did have their star turn in
the playoffs. Beyond his lack of experience in drinking alcohol,
which I thought was a funny story to chronicle after
the fact, but the Oklahoma City has them everywhere. What
was the biggest difference between the Pacers and the Thunder
in that final game?

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Seven?

Speaker 3 (52:40):
TJ McConnell, White Lightning is out there trying to will
the Pacers to a win from basically eight and a
half minutes in the third quarter for the rest of
the game because nobody else can get a shot.

Speaker 4 (52:52):
Nobody else is able to.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
Step up in that spot because Tyree's Halliburton the club.
You can debate the level of star power that Halliburton
brings versus other NBA stars.

Speaker 4 (53:00):
In the league. I'm not here to do that conversation,
though we can if you want to.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Halliburton is the closest thing that they have to a
true blue NBA star nowhere to be found. So nim
Hard and Nie Smith and Miles Turner and all these
other role players are struggling to produce when Oklahoma City
can run, you know what, seven eight off the bench
at that point and feel like you can find legitimate

(53:25):
contributors at every level of that roster. And I'm not
saying that that's the easiest thing to do. And it's
why Sam Presty is excellent at what he does. But
to your point, so long have we talked ourselves into
the idea of the NBA being the league or the
sport that you can have one player make the most
amount of difference. But I just don't feel like it's
been that way in quite some time.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Yeah, and by the way, Halliburton not the first overall pick. SGA,
the MVP of the league, was traded on draft night
by Charlotte, the same team that traded Kobe on Draft night.
But SGA traded to the Clippers and then traded again
the eleventh overall pick. Last time I checked, Jokic not
the first overall pick, Jannisnta Takumpo not the first overall pick,

(54:06):
like the list goes on, and even Jason Tatum third overall,
like he was at least high. But the list goes
on and on, and it's the reason that we are
overblowing this. That being said, maybe maybe everybody else needs
to take one particular note from the NFL about drafts,
because there was something last night that blew my mind
and is absolutely wrong with the sport. We'll tell you

(54:28):
about it next. He's Buck Rising. I'm Jason Fitzwor hanging
out with you. On the Fellas on Fox Sports Radio. Hi,
this is Jay.

Speaker 5 (54:34):
I'm the producer of the Paula and Tony Fusco Show.
Usually in these promos they asked you to listen to
the show. I'm here to ask you please don't listen
to the show. The hosts are two absolute morons who
have the dumbest takes on sports, imagicable. Don't listen to
the show so it can get camp get him.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Ignore that fool.

Speaker 6 (54:56):
Listen to the Tony Fusco Show on the iHeart Radio
app or wherever you get your.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
He's still moving.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
listen live.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
So Fellas hanging out on a Fox Sports Saturday on
Fox Sports Radio, Anthony Gargano getting a much deserved Saturday off.
Fuck rising in for him. I'm Jason Fitz, so it's
a bucking Fitz takeover of the Fellas. I'm sitting at
a bar. Last night, I went to a minor league
baseball game up here in Hartford. Shout out to the Yardgoats. Yardgoats,
one of the top attendances in all of minor league baseball.

(55:36):
Baseball is in Connecticut, massively popular. Yard Gooats do a
great job. Duncan Duncan Park is incredible. It's just a
great place to go hang out. So beautiful night in Hartford.
Went to a minor league baseball game, and afterwards I
met up with a couple of buddies at a little
Irish pub right down the road from him that has
my non alcoholic guinness. Because, humble brag, I'm still not drinking,

(55:58):
so I walked into the bar so billy up to
get my na guinness, which tastes spectacular.

Speaker 4 (56:03):
By the way, Wall just just stop, okay, what what?

Speaker 2 (56:06):
Why?

Speaker 3 (56:09):
I am fully supportive of your non alcoholic journey. We
could all take a lesson from Jason Fitz's health journey,
as as Bree just pointed out to me in the
commercial break.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
For as much money as I'm.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
Spend spending on health and wellness, I should have a
six pack, but I don't.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
And you know I could probably stay.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
You have a social life. You have a social life.
I don't.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Well that's because I'm downing a gallon of tequila soda
to balance out the health and wellness journey that I'm
trying to stay on. I can't imagine of all the
options for you to select if you are drinking non
alcoholic beverages Guinness, Why do you want a non alcoholic
beer that you have to cut with a fork.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
And a knife because it's so thick.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
That's discussing because it's very like I don't think there's
any discernible taste difference between a regular Guinness and a
non alcoholic Guinness. So I walked into an Irish bar
they have the non alcoholic Guinness tastes the same as
a Guinness. It's like it's like a trigger in.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Your mind for like people, I don't want the one
with the alcohol in it either unless they're unless they're
a partner, and then I'm I'll drink all the Guinness
you need me to drink.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Well, that is, we are very similar in that sense.
I'll drink like. Look, I'll come right off the wagon.
If we want to be sponsored by a tequila company. Here,
let's go. Uh. I don't have standards people like, there's
no no question about that. But no, I like, I
like a Guinness. I so uh. There used to be
a place on Second avenue in Nashville years ago called Piranhas,
and Piranhas was at the time we got to understand

(57:39):
it was a different version of Lower Broad. It was
the only place that was open until like three in
the morning, So everybody that worked on Lower Broad would
just pounded to Piranhas, and I used to at the time.
I was living like five minutes from there, So it
was a blast to go into Piranhas at like two
in the morning because they'd have karaoke and everybody was
getting hammered. And I was my parents at the time.
We're in town. We went over to Piranhas before a
Titans game. My buddy get me tickets to giving me

(58:02):
tickets for like a Christmas eve gin. I walk in
and the bartender immediately pours to twenty ounce guinness and
puts them right down on the corner of the bar.
The minute I walk in and I sit down, and
my mom says to the bartender, does he come in
here a lot? And she says, oh, yeah, I've never
seen anybody drink it's the way he does. He drinks
it like water. And like at that time, I take

(58:23):
down like ten or twelve of those guinness a night, like,
just yeah, it's a way to go.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
Ten or twelve beers.

Speaker 8 (58:28):
Anyway, I.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Don't drink I did see only beer I ever liked.
I never liked any other gear other than beer, other
than Guinness. I've always I'm a Guinness guy.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
I like. I don't drink beer anyway, just because it
makes me.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
It makes me sleepy, Like I don't want to, you know,
if I'm going out, I don't want to be I
don't want to be bloated and tired the way that
beer makes me, which is why you know.

Speaker 4 (58:50):
Instead I run on jet fuel like tequila. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Well, as I've gotten older, certainly. I mean for many
years I always any drink with an umbrella and it
does me right. But then it became a sugar free
Red Bull with whatever alcohol I'm putting in it. And
then you realize at the end of the night, You're like, yeah,
I had a case of sugar free Red Bull tonight.
So I'm not sure that's good for my heart either.
So I don't know what I'm doing.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
Tell tell your bar story that I so rudely interrupted choices.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
So I belly up to my Irish pub and I
get my non alcoholic beer and I look up at
the TV and the NHL Draft is going on, and
I literally look at the bartender and I'm like, is
that live? And the guy sitting next to me that
I did not know, is like, I don't think that's live.
I'm thinking, well, it says ESPN's logo on it, so
it's got to be live. And then we're all watching

(59:40):
the awkwardness of the NHL Draft, like without the audio,
and it looked really weird that a player was drafted,
then taking down this weird lit up tunnel into a
room where it looked like they were zooming with people,
and it just all of it was weird. But what
really hit me Buck is like, we spend months just
talking about the NFL Draft, and part of that's because

(01:00:02):
college football is the second most popular sport in America,
so people have more name recognition. I'm sitting in a
hockey town, Hartford loves hockey still, and nobody even knew
that the draft is going on. As it was going on,
nobody knew who any of these players were. And this
is the second time of the week because we dealt
with the same thing again. I will remind people that
viewership for the NBA draft was down forty percent year

(01:00:25):
over year, Like less than four million people watched the
NBA Draft this year. So for every time that you
hear some idiot tell you that we needed a draft
lottery and all these things, you can bind the lottery
broadcast with the NBA draft broadcast, and it still reached
a fraction of what the third day of the NFL
Draft reaches. Right, Like, nobody cares about these drafts, and

(01:00:46):
I can't figure out why. I can't figure out how
to change that. I can't figure out what the NFL
has bottled up. But it really brings down the differences
of the haves and the have nots, because drafts feel
meaningless for every sport other than the NFL.

Speaker 4 (01:00:59):
And I don't know, No, I think it's pretty explainable.

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
I mean, FITZI, you just you touched on it in
a part of your explanation or in the wind up there.
You're dealing with a lot of international players, and in football,
the percentage of those is non existent. Like a lot
of these guys that end up in the NFL with
this international roster exemption or things like that, if they're
a part of the NFL's I can't think of the

(01:01:24):
name of the program specifically, but where they foster international
football growth and development, and a couple of guys every
year feels like they end up on a roster, but
you've never heard of them because they're playing in they're
playing in Holland, or they're playing in Germany, or they're
playing in London or something like that. Very rarely do
international players on an NFL level register, and when they do,

(01:01:46):
there's so many other guys that play for Clemson and Alabama,
Notre Dame in Ohio State that you can just gloss
over those guys and then you'll learn their names once
they're on your favorite NFL team's roster.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
It's, you know, not to just boil it down simply.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
To the idea of basketball has never felt more international
than it does right now. There's no longer a stigma
around international players coming into the NBA.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Right the way.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
I mean, even as recently as Dirk, like Dirk was
thought of as this kind of finesse, soft euro guy
coming in to the NBA at the time, when in reality,
that's not who Dirk Nowitzki was at all. And you
see the level of play that these guys experience internationally
and how it kind of battle tests them for the
NBA when they're finally able to get that opportunity at

(01:02:33):
the highest level of the sport. But basketball has never
felt more like an international game. And in hockey, I mean,
FITZI a lot of these guys, English is like maybe
their second, maybe their third language, depending on which country
you're talking about, with names that are difficult to pronounce,
with countries that you don't think about, and a sport
where there's so many different leagues and I know people

(01:02:55):
watch you know, I mentioned Notre Dame for football. Notre
Dame is also a very proud hockey program Boston College.
Like I'm sure there are parts of the country that
do know these college hockey players coming up, but again
domestically as opposed to internationally.

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
You combine that with the.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Fact that you know, frankly, to me, the draft coverage,
it's not the reason it was down almost forty percent
in the NBA, but the Steven A. Smith fatigue. And
I know you've had a little bit of an aggregation
situation in the last couple of weeks with you, boy,
but like the fatigue just seeing turning on the draft
coverage and being greeted by Steven A was exhausting to

(01:03:33):
me because I was already sick of him on the
NBA coverage. And I probably felt that way because I'm
a Pacers fan, and I didn't like the way that
my team, like the basketball, was not being discussed as
opposed to a good portion of the pregame show being
spent on things like the Kevin Durant trade.

Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
But that was a factor for me why I.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Just ended up turning it off and I'll just I'll
catch it on Twitter, like I'll find out where these
guys go. Okay, Colin Cowhard got drafted by the Grizzlies.
That's awkward what happened there? And you figure it out
after the fact. I'm sure you saw that Malika Andrews,
who's just a consummate professional, and made one mistake that
everybody's latching on too. But you get my point. And
then in the NHL this they went with what they

(01:04:11):
called a quote unquote decentralized draft this year fifty. It
looked like something out of COVID, this draft house situation
that they were having people interact with on zoom where
they had the NHL draft at the Peacock theater there
in La Gary Bentman was there, who was summarily booed.
You had ESPN's draft team and a handful of prospects,

(01:04:34):
but when a player was in the building was drafted,
he'd go onto the stage and do a zoom interview
with members of his new team's front office.

Speaker 4 (01:04:41):
It was weird.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Just the construct of the television broadcast itself made it
look like something that didn't belong there, made it look
like to you, and the people in that Irish pub
questioned the idea of if this was even a live event.
You know, the only reason I knew the NHL Draft
was on last night. As somebody who works in an
NHL market, I know the pres are just dog water

(01:05:03):
right now, so maybe I shouldn't be paying attention to
them anyway. In their lottery, they ended up with the
fifth pick, which is terrible. They had the damn mascot
was walking the halls of my local radio station here
yesterday trying to get people on the sports station that
I worked for to take pictures with them.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
And I don't do stuff like that, so I was
I offered.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
I offered, well, I offered Nash to go for a
cigarette break with me, and he was not interested in that.
I said, well that I'm not interested in taking a
picture with you, so we moved on with our day.
I Uh, I just I think there are a couple
of different things that are working against those two leagues.

Speaker 4 (01:05:38):
Specifically, and I just don't know that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
They're correctable, because you're never going to get people to
have that level of international interest before these guys end
up playing domestically for their favorite teams.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
I I love your international point. By the way, the
NFL International Player pathway was what you were thinking of,
and for anyone, no, that's an exempt on the roster.
So if you bring somebody in that came up through
the NFL IPP you get to carry extra people on
your roster up. It is an interesting point about the

(01:06:12):
international portion of it. I think what I find myself
stunned by. You know, one of our Yahoo shows, not
one of mom but one of our other shows about football,
when a deep dive into the draft. I think it
was during October, and the funny thing is one of
the bosses came back and said, guys, we don't need
to be talking about the draft. It's October. What do

(01:06:32):
we doing? We got football to talk about until they
saw the numbers, and the numbers went through the roof,
and it was a reminder that you can literally talk
about the NFL draft any day of the week and
people will tune into it. And we've created the NFL
has cultivated a culture that allows for full hour long
podcasts about offensive linemen that nobody's ever heard of and

(01:06:53):
that nobody knows a damn thing about and can't tell
you a single thing about how they play. But my god,
we're just desperate for the understanding, so we flocked to it.
In part, college football, in part, NFL fandom is so different.
The one thing that I could drill down to that
I do think makes the tangible difference. Though, and you
mentioned being in a hockey market. We both know this
from covering hockey over the years. A guy drafted by

(01:07:17):
their organization may not see the ice for their actual
team for years, you know. And it's very simple, similar
to the Major League Baseball draft in that sense, Like
creat you drafted somebody in the first round, All right,
are they going back to college? In that situation? Are
they gonna go to the miners?

Speaker 7 (01:07:35):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
How many years are you hold their rights? How long
will they be in the miners, like it gets so complicated.
The thing that is really amazing to me is that
the NFL has figured out how to take very complicated
principles and make them seem simple, so you feel like
the NFL Draft is simple, Like the lottery does not
simplify anything for any any league's draft. The NFL has

(01:07:57):
found a way to take very complicated concepts with the
draft and the draft order and compensatory picks and all
these things, and they've simplified it in such a way
that people find themselves feeling like they're experts in it.
Like you'll actually see fans debating releasing a player after
a certain date or signing a player after a certain
date because what it means for the following year's compensatory

(01:08:18):
draft picks. Like we've gotten that deep with the NFL draft.
With the NBA draft, I don't know, like everybody knows
Cooper Flag that's it. Like we come into this draft
it's such a different league than the college game in general.
We watch Chase Richardson single handedly trying will Michigan State
to a Final four National championship type season. Like Chase

(01:08:39):
Richardson had a great year for which he was like
the thirtieth pick to Orlando, like he was a late
first round pick to Orlando, and no idea what that
Actually he's gonna play in the G League. We'll see
if he actually makes a roster. It's just such a
weird system where we don't see the immediate return of
investment the way we do in the NFL, and I
think that makes it harder to give a damn about
the draft imprints.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
Oh no, it's completely fair.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
I mean because in those other two sports, these feeder leagues,
you would have to you have to actively go out
of your way.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
To find stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
And there will be people that do, right, They'll they'll
go watch the AHL games if they're that much invested
in learning.

Speaker 4 (01:09:18):
About these hockey prospects or the next.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Goaltender that you may have coming down the pipe. I
know people who bet on the G League, like there
are Sikos out there among us. But what is college
football if not the NFL's feeder system. And the NFL's
feeder system just happens to be America's second most popular sport.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
So this is it?

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
Is it?

Speaker 3 (01:09:38):
It's as simplistic a situation as you could find without
a simple solution for the other two to try and
gain You're not going to gain ground, right, and you're
fighting a losing battle when you try to compare yourself
to the NFL or college football for that matter. If
I'm the NHL and the NBA right now, I think

(01:09:58):
that there would need to be some self scouts outing
on all right, what am I doing relative to the
third most popular sport? What am I doing that's helping
to generate interest or hurting the ability to generate interest
versus what the NBA is doing, or versus what the
NHL is doing, Like comparing themselves amongst each other as
opposed to what Adam Silver does each and every year,

(01:10:21):
and particularly egregious this year getting up in multiple national
television spots trying to sell the NBA Finals to anybody
that would listen to him, comparing it to the NFL,
but then saying ludicrous things like Indiana, Oklahoma City is
like seeing Green Bay and Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. Brother,

(01:10:42):
what are you talking about? Stay as far away from
those comparisons as humanly possible, one, because that's completely off
base you're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:10:51):
I mean, yes, green Bay.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
Is technically the smallest NFL market fitsy. How many more
Green Bay Packers fans are there in the rest of
the country than there are in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 (01:11:02):
It's not even remotely the same thing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
So I think the self scouting that these leagues that
are not the NFL are constantly chasing the NFL, when
in reality they've already lost that race. What they are
now trying to compete against each other for, or compete
for the eyeballs, is against each other in trying to
drive up the interest in their respective leagues versus the
NHL and the NBA as opposed to getting anywhere close

(01:11:28):
to football because they can't.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
You mentioned the race, and it really opens my mind
to what these other leagues are. These other leagues are
all people that think they're faster than they are. They've
lost self awareness. Like we all have that friend that
is convinced that if you gave them three months, they
could be an Olympian in some sport. And that friend
is It's me curling, of course, of course curly. Okay, yeah,

(01:11:54):
look see out on the ice. Try a one time
one hundred when the next time you come to Nashville.
I'll take it a tea line.

Speaker 3 (01:12:02):
We can we can test out that Mark Bolger, the
former NFL quarterback. He's got a tea a curling bar
here in the uh here in downtown Nashville.

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):
Well we'll take you out for a spend some time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
And you like every other you know, Oh, you're not
middle aged yet, so you know.

Speaker 4 (01:12:20):
Bleep off, I'm thirty one. Wait middle aged.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Man, I've seen the way you live that sixty two.
That feels about right. Ye see, you're hitting halftime like
you know, you're you're hitting half time at this.

Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
Point one week. Relax, Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Sure, sure, sure, I'm just saying, like more more often
than not, people have decided that they are at a
different athletic level than they actually are, and they need
to be humbled. It's the whole reason that, you know
what the pros Versus Shoe's show existed years ago, where
everybody sits there and suddenly you're you're getting tackled by
an NFL player to see how you can handle it.

(01:12:54):
I think that in some ways, Garry Bettman, I mean
you just look across the board. Major League bas guilty
of the same thing. Major League Baseball vastly overrated what
their their rights package was going to be worth and
now put themselves in a situation where they're scrambling to
figure out how to get their games watched. You know,
the NBA is sitting here telling you, hey, our ratings
may be down, but we're better than everything else that's

(01:13:15):
being broadcast right now. And that's just like everybody's trying
to polish a pig. And I don't really think most
people have the perspective to look at it and say, hey,
are we actually like, take ego out of it, take
what we think of our own sport out of it,
and ask ourselves, are we serving fans in a way
that takes casuals and make some super fans, makes super
fans into fanatics, makes people that don't care into basic fans,

(01:13:38):
Like are we elevating the fandom of everybody? And the
Draft last night was living, breathing proof that that's absolutely
not what's happening. Okay, speaking a fandom, we mentioned it earlier,
I want to get into it. NFL collusion became a
massive conversation should you care? And why we're gonna break
it down? He's Buck Rising on Jason Fitzburgh hanging out
It's a fellas on Fox Sports Radio. Sefellas on Fox Sports.

(01:14:00):
Buck Rising in for Anthony Gargano. I'm Jason fitz hanging
out with you. Yes, I do every Saturday morning from
five to nine am. I said this one we started.
But if you're just waking up on the East Coast,
let's go carpe this team. Make it a great one.
If you're still up on the West coast, congratulations, like
you're living like Buck Rising.

Speaker 4 (01:14:17):
If you're still go to bed.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
If you're still up on the West Coast, got a
bed unless you're on wonderful people back in the Los
Angeles studios who are grinding to make sure that Fitzie
and I, these two dopes can stay on the air
for a couple of hours, but the rest of you
go to sleep.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
I mean, right now, West Coast, it's three forty five.
You're telling me, Buck Rising, that you haven't seen three
forty five in the morning lately in.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
Nashville Thursday night. But I'm not on locally till ten,
so I can live that way.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Yeah. But you know the question is, because you do
get up early to go to the gym on a
day like that, do you skip the gym or do
you go to the gym you know, tequila tequila your
pre workout at that point.

Speaker 3 (01:14:59):
At that point, yes, and then the sauna is the
way that we detox and then we I have time
to take a nap after that before I come into
my show, so I can I have the ability to
nobody's got a better than me, Fitzing. I'm Jim Harball
around here. Nobody's got a better than me.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Bri back in the studio doing God's work, by the way,
putting us together, Bri. It's it is three forty nine
where you are right now?

Speaker 8 (01:15:23):
Accurate?

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
Yeah, thank you? You know I can't tell time, and
who I could do a basic math when you're not working?
Do you usually see three forty nine in the morning?
Like that? Is that a usual?

Speaker 9 (01:15:34):
My alarm is actually set to four am always because
I have another job, so I get up and work
remote and I've been going to the office so I
have to drive to Newport Beach. So yeah, I'm usually
up around four, so I have like ten minutes before
I'm up up.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):
I don't know how LA does it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:51):
I just don't like it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
I don't know how y'all do it. Like I get
like I get that traffic is bad in Nashville. I
get traffic back by the way, it's gonna leave me
to a hot take. By the way, Buck, you didn't
know I was gonna go here, but I'm just gonna
hot take you. We need robot drivers, like fully automated cars,
absolutely everywhere, and people tell like he's making a face.

Speaker 4 (01:16:12):
Shut up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I have now lived
literally all over the country in my life. There is
not a part of the country I have not lived in,
and everybody says, well, traffic is bad here. Now. The
fact is, we as a country do not know how
to drive at all. So if we had robot drivers,
I would no longer have to worry about the fact
that y'all can't merge and you wait until the very
last second, which then causes like a ten mile backup.

(01:16:35):
I don't have to worry about the jerk that's driving
through traffic at one hundred and twenty miles an hour
when they shouldn't be. I don't have to worry about
the person that clearly can't make it through the intersection,
but it's going to turn left anyway to block everybody
because they've decided it's their turn, which means We're all
gonna miss the next light until the person in front
of me does the same thing to the next side. Like,
we as a country cannot drive, so give me robots.

(01:16:57):
They cannot be worse than the actual people.

Speaker 8 (01:17:00):
Kill half of us, that's why.

Speaker 3 (01:17:01):
Then, well that's the other thing. That's the other thing, bree.
He's taking out the audience. How many of the audience,
How many of you out there are hanging out because
we're keeping you company as you drive for Uber or
maybe you're still operating in a taxi business.

Speaker 4 (01:17:15):
Maybe you're a truck driver, not man of the people.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
Jason Fitz, I'm supposed to be the pretentious high and
mighty one around here with my where's my my, my piano,
my piano chime in the background to represent the one
percent lifestyle that I live, not me today. But Jason
Fitz also roundabouts would require robot drivers. They are the
bane of my existence. You people are terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Look so last time I was in LA I was
waiting for an Uber to go somewhere and somebody said, oh,
just carll a weimo instead, I'd never driven away movie
or I'd never been there.

Speaker 4 (01:17:50):
Who what's a weymo A weymom.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
That's a They don't go on the highway yet in LA,
but they are all around LA. They're fully automated. It's
like an uber So you call it with the so
by the way, it will know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:01):
I've seen them the scouting or like scoping Nashville with
the giant like cameras on top of the cars, like
they're they're mapping the city for these things.

Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
Okay, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):
So, like Uber wanted twenty four bucks, Weimo wanted eight
dollars for the same ride, so a third of the cost. Right,
I called it. It pulled up to the front of
my hotel. I walked up to the door and the
app automatically opened the door. It would only open one door.
I sat in and there's like adjacent do you have
a guest? And I said yeah, So I opened it
so my guy working on the show with me could
also get in the car. We got in the car

(01:18:32):
and it was like, Jason, how do you like the temperature?
I pressed the button made it cooler, and then he
gave me playlist options. It's like what would you like
to listen to? And it securely got me to my destination.
In no time. There was nobody in the car. Didn't
have to worry about whether or not somebody was just like,
because let me tell you, I've taken some ubers in
LA where like I and this is saying a lot
could get high just sitting in the uber like and

(01:18:53):
it's not like I'm somebody that's never you know. I mean,
if it's getting me high, then it's getting everybody high, right,
So you know, I didn't have to worry about any
of that. The car got me there safely, It got
me there easily. Like. Look, I know that there are
people out there, you know, scratching and clawing to get bught.
We're all going to be replaced by robots and AI anyway,
so this is just going to be the inevitable next

(01:19:13):
piece of it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
I have in my hand a business card because I'm
a dinosaur, not my business card, but this is a
business card for my guy Donald, who drives me around
because I don't want to take ubers.

Speaker 4 (01:19:26):
And once I find a driver that I'm good with.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
In every city that I do road games in because
I travel across the country doing games, I have one
of these in every NFL city. Fitsie, I'm not leaving
my livelihood or my well being up to an eight
dollar robot ride. I will gladly pay whatever it costs
to have somebody that I know drive me around the
city that I can have a conversation with it. I

(01:19:51):
can tell them how I like the temperature and what
music I like to listen to. But that's me. I'm
one hundred years old when it comes to that stuff.
I know, I know, I'm the outlier there.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
The wild elitist. By the way, when Uber first launched,
it was like a limos service for normal people. Like
it was always a black car with the water and
like people were dressed nice and it was like just
it was awesome. It was this great experience. Now you
get in, you're like, wow, this car only has three wheels,
but it's gonna get me there. Like whatever. The demise
of those places are is brought on in part by
that collusion in the NFL. I promise we'll get to it.

(01:20:22):
Should you care, We'll answer that question, Buck Rising Jason
fitz on Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
The fellas you're listening to Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Sometimes there are issues that everybody thinks are huge, but
the real question is are they If they don't actually
impact what we watch. It's the ultimate sports version of
if a tree falls in the forest, nobody's there to
hear it. Does it actually make a sound? If NFL
owners and the NFL Players Association all together agree on
something that looks like collusion, feels like collusion, sounds like collusion,

(01:20:54):
could be collusion, who cares? He's Buck Rising on Jason
Fitz Fox Sports Saturday. We're up with you early. By
the way, shout out to Jody hit me up on
Instagram said she's listening from the West Coast insomnia. So
it's a reminder that, you know, some people are just
up late, Buck, because they're just out having a good time.
Some people are up late because they can't sleep. Some
people just need some lavender tea. Apparently, I don't know,

(01:21:17):
Brie is trying to convince you that lavender belongs in drinks.
This is what's happening now midway through the Saturday morning
that now all of a sudden, we're talking about flowers
and drinks in insomnia.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
Well, no, we were talking about basically alcoholic weapon of choice,
of which you abstained from the conversation because you're living
a clean and a chober.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Lavender could be in tea also, well, you could put it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:39):
In a mocktail, I suppose.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
But we were talking about, you know, drunken debauchery, not
lavender tea at this point in time. And Brie had
asked me if I'd ever had a cocktail with lavender
in it, and I said I had had a latte
at some point in my life. And then you started
to dismiss both of those things by saying you don't
want to drink flowers.

Speaker 9 (01:21:56):
And no spicy margarita is either, which I just can't
get over.

Speaker 3 (01:22:00):
Roast him, roast him, breathing, he hit me for you,
I like I said, I said it during the commercial break.

Speaker 4 (01:22:06):
I'll say it to you now.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):
You've never been more Caucasian in your life than you
are at this very moment, taking a stand against spicy Marguerite's.

Speaker 4 (01:22:14):
I bet you don't like taheen on your rim either.

Speaker 9 (01:22:17):
Oh my god, moment of truth to Hean's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
I could take her leave to.

Speaker 4 (01:22:23):
Take a lap. Why don't you take a lap?

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
Look, I don't Here's the thing, I don't want to
when I eat something spicy. You know what I need
immediately a drink to help get rid of the spice, right, salt?

Speaker 4 (01:22:34):
Does that salt?

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
Well, that's I mean at the end of the day, Look,
it's never it's it's not my stomach and it's not
my butt like I can handle spicy food, it's my mouth.
My mouth just doesn't like spicy. And you know what, Buck,
this could happen to you. One day I was I
was sitting in a in a chair, this is probably
twenty years ago in Nashville, sitting in a chair eating
what at the time where my favorite candies, hot Tomalies,

(01:22:55):
And I was just hammering a box of hot Tomali's
like the child I am. And all of a sudden
I looked at I was like, man, this must be
like super spicy hot Somalies or something all of us.
Overnight I went from I love anything with heat on
it to all of a sudden, overnight I went to
anything with that much spice on it, I can't handle
it all. I don't. And so yeah, no, I don't
want spicy margaritas because then I'm gonna have to have

(01:23:16):
water to cool down my mouth after the heat from
the spicy Mark, Why do I need that? I just
I'd much rather just have the tequila with a little
bit of lime juice in it.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
Bam go, Your food and beverage preferences are akin to
the level of interest in this NFL owner's collusion case.
It's bland, it's uninteresting. It would largely draw a yawn
from the vast majority of people who would be who
it would be presented to. That's about as good a

(01:23:44):
comparison as I could come up with for this story.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
So let me give you this, Like, what if I
told you in a world where collusion exists and arbitration
tried to hide the documentation. What if players look around
they realize what happened to them Now, they realize they
have this little window where all of a sudden, they're
seen differently, right, Like, if they can't find it fully

(01:24:08):
guaranteed contracts, then they can accuse everybody involved with collusion.
What if this changes contracts in the NFL right now
where players try and fight for more fully guaranteed deals
like Deshaun Watson got. What if collusion creates that system
you cover an NFL team every day. I think we
can all acknowledge that if they got to a point

(01:24:28):
where they fully guaranteed contracts, that would be one of
the wildest changes we've ever seen in NFL history.

Speaker 4 (01:24:34):
It won't happen in that league. It won't happen.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
You can't FITZI the thing, and I hate this for
the players. And this you know I mentioned at the
at the very top of the show that as a
as a.

Speaker 4 (01:24:47):
I hate football players.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Is that what you said? You don't like player empowerment,
you must like you must hate all you hate athletes
making money.

Speaker 4 (01:24:53):
That's what you mentioned that at the beginning Number One
Hater Dave Chappelle show.

Speaker 3 (01:24:58):
I'll come in. I'll go haters, haters ball or whatever. Well,
we'll make it happen. I'll come in. I'll come in
my pimpsuit. We'll rocket. I, as a sports fan, am
not interested in player empowerment.

Speaker 4 (01:25:12):
Because that does not benefit me as a sports fan.

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
Largely, it works against my interests as a sports fan.
As a working media professional who works in locker rooms
and who deals with athletes, and who deals with agents
and coaches and executives on a daily basis in some
form or fashion, I am completely sympathetic to anybody in

(01:25:35):
those positions who would try to maximize their labor. But
don't talk to me about it as a sports fan
about my favorite teams, because I'm not going to hear
you that way.

Speaker 4 (01:25:44):
In the NFL, Fitsie. I am sympathetic to.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
The idea of them trying to maximize their leverage because
that league, more than any other, is dealing in monopoly money.
That league is the most profitable by a mile. That
league has the greediest owners, so much so that the
owners have kind of gotten over their sceries. Half of
them can't afford the franchises that they currently run, which
is why private equity is being welcomed into the situation

(01:26:08):
to help bring down the cost. Because Walmart owns two teams,
But how many of you actually have Walmart money out
there in the world to buy and operate one of
these franchises, much less have the money in escro to
pay some of these guaranteed contracts that you're talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:26:23):
I work in a market where Amy Adam.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
Strunk is the owner of the controlling owner of the
Tennessee Titans. It's not like she's you know, it's not
like she's out here begging on street corners or anything
like that. But among NFL ownership groups, she is one
of the more cash poor. Doesn't she's you know, she's
she's the she's one of the lesser NFL owners as

(01:26:46):
far as her financial standing. Doesn't mean that she's hit
hard times or that she should feel sympathy for Mark
Davis or Amy Adams drunk or any of these NFL
owners in that category. But FITZI they've got I'll just
use the Titans because that's the team that I cover
on a daily basis as an example. They've got probably
thirty thirty five million dollars in cap space to spend.
They've got a number one overall pick a quarterback. Their

(01:27:08):
roster could use some fortification. She's also spending. She had
to liquid eight seven hundred million dollars worth of assets
to start to build.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):
Her new stadium.

Speaker 3 (01:27:15):
She is in a situation where her last GM that
she fired, spent two hundred and twenty eight million dollars
around Will Levis last year just to be the worst
worst team in football. Plus the guaranteed money associated with
a bunch of those long term deals for Lagarious Need
and Calvin Ridley and Lloyd Cushenberry and a bunch of
other players who would not command that kind of money

(01:27:36):
anywhere else except for a team that had to pay
the we suck luxury tax. Now she's in a situation
where she's got cap space, but she probably doesn't have
that cash on hand to spend that. Coupled with the
idea that there is a one hundred percent rate of
injury in the NFL, the owners will never guarantee that money.
The players are never going to be able to get

(01:27:56):
to that guaranteed money because the sport churns these bodies
at a higher rate than any other professional sport. You
cannot guarantee fully guarantee the money in the NFL because
those are some costs.

Speaker 4 (01:28:08):
Almost immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
You'd have to do shorter contracts, Everything would have to
constantly renew, they'd have to change the percentages of salary
cap like all of these things.

Speaker 4 (01:28:18):
I'm with you, how's that going for college football right now?

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
One hundred percent? That's actually a great comp Go back
to the private equity group. So, because I do think
that this is one of the minutia things that could matter,
the NFL changed the rule, and before private equity firms
couldn't own more than three percent of NFL teams. I
think it is now they can own up to ten percent.
Right we are going to live in a society over

(01:28:40):
the course of the next twenty years where more and
more of these teams are owned by essentially companies. That
has to change some of the way they do business.
Like you mentioned Amy Adams Strunk, I obviously know Mark Davis.
I've met Mark a few times, but also just being
a Raiders fan, I've watched the Mark Davis chronicles up

(01:29:01):
close and personal. Mark Davis does so much of what
he does as an owner of an NFL team from
his heart, right like he is a fan and he's
doing things from the heart that he thinks will make
the team better. These private equity groups are going to
look at everything as a number. Everything is a part
of an analytics, everything is part of a business. So
now all of a sudden, every one of these people
that are on the roster are no different than any

(01:29:23):
other employee. They're going to be check marks on a spreadsheet,
and that I wonder if that is part of the
change that makes some of this at least look different.
I'm with you, I don't think it, and I loudly
I would yell to Florio and Pro Football Talk like
stop telling me what we should care about. I just
I don't think most people give a damn about collusion.

(01:29:43):
The people that should care about collusion are the players,
because the one part of this that is significant to
me is that the players' Association was aware of and
didn't seem to do anything to push back on any
of this collusion. And that means the very union that's
supposed to be looking out for these players nothing to
protect him. If I'm a player today, I'm livid at.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):
My Nobody looks worse than JC Trader, Nobody looks worse
than JC Tredder in.

Speaker 2 (01:30:07):
This and so that's a valid that's a valid pushback.
But I mean, you mentioned that new stadium, not a
single person. I have a buddy that years ago was
the drummer for a very popular country music band. Right
they were at the top of the charts. They were
the biggest thing in the world. And I remember we
were sitting on tour bus one day and he said, Hey,

(01:30:28):
I'm going to demand a raise, I'm going to Amanda raise,
and I'm going to demand healthcare. Most guys playing in
the band for bands don't actually get any of those things.
And I told him, I said, here's the question you
got to ask yourself how many people will walk into
the Amphitheater at your next show, see a different drummer
and then say I want a refund. How many people
will see a different drummer behind this band that's not

(01:30:48):
known for their drummer and suddenly say I'm not buying
a ticket out of the twenty five thousand people. Right.
So if that is your actual that's your actual difference.
You have to know that coming into these sort of conversations.
I think sometimes what players don't realize is, even though
they're right, they are the reason that so many people
watch these games. I believe that what they don't always

(01:31:10):
realize is that a player can come and go as
long as the stadium is full. Like the Titans are
not going to sell less PSLs to their new stadium
because of collusion. That's just not going to happen. So
their lack of willingness to give out a fully guaranteed
contract is not going to actually cost Amy Adams Trunk
any money. And if that's the case, what's the point,

(01:31:31):
like to make it oversimplified, what's the.

Speaker 4 (01:31:33):
Point it's compounded by?

Speaker 3 (01:31:36):
And Florio you know he tends to do this and listen,
I have a lot of respect for my Florio. I
think the outlet that he runs at Pro Football Talk
is very helpful in just helping everybody keep a grasp
of everything on all manner of different levels what's going
on in the NFL. He does, he provides a very

(01:31:57):
useful service that way. So when he gets on soapboxes
like this and he's saying why like this Tom Brady,
Sean Payton, Miami Dolphins, which, by the way, the Dolphins
were guilty of that tampering situation that cost them a
first round draft pick. It was one of the most
ridiculous stories you've ever heard of, and because it didn't
come to fruition, most people kind of shrugged their shoulders

(01:32:18):
and said, yeah, but that's not as interesting as the
conspiracy I came up with in my head. Even though
that's as close to an NFL conspiracy we've had in
quite some time. This is an actual conspiracy, right, and
people largely shrug their shoulders and say, yeah, but whatever.
It's hard for people one to care about a story
that does not directly impact them, and the vast majority

(01:32:41):
of the football consuming public is not directly impacted by
this story. The agents are because they're negotiating on behalf
of their clients. The players are because they are trying
to benefit themselves and their families in generational wealth terms.
The NFL owners and NFL clubs and NFL and people
that run the actual league are all affected. But that

(01:33:01):
is such a small portion of the football consuming public,
So you're fighting uphill against that. And then when you
continue to hammer it and listen, my Florio is entitled
to do with his platform whatever he wants to do.
But sitting out there yelling at people, why don't you
care more about this? This is the biggest story because
I told you so. That typically doesn't work. It's not

(01:33:21):
an effective strategy to get people to listen to your messaging.
People already have a hard enough time, you know, coming
to terms or coming to agreements on what they think
is right versus what's fact and what's fiction and alternative
facts and all the other terms that we traffic in nowadays.
But the incessant I don't feel it feels wrong to

(01:33:41):
call it whining, but just yammering about, Hey, pay attention
to this because I told you to. It's important, because
I'm telling you it's important, It is important, But you're
not going to win anybody over that way. You're not
going to get any additional traction that way. And the
people who were ignoring you before, or weren't ignoring you,
maybe not ignoring you, but just weren't that invested. They're

(01:34:02):
gonna actively ignore you. They're going to tune you out
at that point in time. It's it's just it's not
a winning position.

Speaker 2 (01:34:10):
We don't care. And that's a message that I think,
not just the NFL needs to be reminded of. I
think it's a message that's going to hit one other
massive sport in a huge way. I'll tell you about
it next. He's Buck Rising on Jason fitzber hanging out
the Fellows on Fox Sports Radio. Hi, this is Jay.

Speaker 5 (01:34:27):
I'm the producer of the Paul an Toni Fusco Show.
Usually in these promos they ask you to listen to
have the dumbest takes on sports imaginable. Don't listen to
the show so it can get camp.

Speaker 2 (01:34:43):
Get fool.

Speaker 6 (01:34:48):
Listen to the Tony Fusco Show on the iHeart Radio
app or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
He's still moving.

Speaker 7 (01:34:55):
the nation. Catch all all of our shows at foxsports
Radio dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR
to listen live. He's Buck Rising. I'm Jason fitz the
fellows on Fox Sports Radio. Buck making a sneer here.
Buck not a country music guy, shout out to Chris Young.
I'm it's my buddy. See why let's go.

Speaker 4 (01:35:18):
I'm sure he's a lovely guy.

Speaker 3 (01:35:22):
Oh man, I know I sound like I should like
country music, and I'm and you know, Buck would come
out country.

Speaker 4 (01:35:28):
Music and that's not like I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:35:31):
Like live country music. I could still, I could still
get down for but I don't know that.

Speaker 4 (01:35:37):
I nothing.

Speaker 3 (01:35:39):
You guys back there in La it's it's it's just now,
like barely the crack of not even it's just barely
the crack of dawn here in the Central time zone
at fourth four to twenty three am West Coast. Do
you can pick whatever music you want? But yeah, I
made a face like I smelled something that every time.

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):
I By the way, there's we've got smart, classy individuals
that work on the show. Of course, you, mighty Mark
happened to both be you know, country music fans. So
you can take your holier than thou opinion on country
music and roll it up and shove it up your
my friend, that's shove it straight up your rising I'm Jason.

Speaker 3 (01:36:19):
See the more polite version of that would have been
sit on it and spin.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
No. No, who needs to be polite. I mean, there's
no no need to be polite. We're being plumped this morning,
and it's at six thirty.

Speaker 4 (01:36:30):
In the morning. I don't know you.

Speaker 3 (01:36:31):
You pick your own battles, but I'm out here fighting
against the country music thing.

Speaker 4 (01:36:35):
You you you do whatever you.

Speaker 2 (01:36:36):
Want well Nashville, fighting against the country music.

Speaker 4 (01:36:38):
I can't understanding against it in Nashville.

Speaker 3 (01:36:41):
I just you know, I understand that people come here
for country music. And I am not one of those
people who came here for country music. It's just not
my vibe.

Speaker 2 (01:36:48):
That's I respect it. I respect it well, I don't
really respect it, but I understand it. It's it's fine,
it's fine, it's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:36:54):
I don't think you do either of those things. I
think you neither respect it nor understand it. And that's
open is that?

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
And you know what, I often feel the same when
I am stuck in situations where we have to be
honest about players and what they want. Hear me out
on this, like, So, I've told this story before, but
I will tell it again for the audience. Years ago,
many many years ago, when Nielsen ratings, which are the

(01:37:21):
way we know what people listen to and watch, were done,
they were sent out as a survey, right, and so
everybody filled out a survey and told the world what
they watched. So this is you know, back in the eighties.
Back then the public radio MPR as it were, was
very highly rated because everybody liked to tell the world
that they listened to NPR because it made you feel smart.

(01:37:42):
But then the first year that they came out with
these little devices that you wore that suddenly tracked your ratings,
that it was able to listen to the station and
tell you like you know, and tell the Nielsen people
what people are listening to in cars. What they found
was that the first thing that just got hammered was MPR.
And it turned out that we live in a society
that likes to tell people they read the news, likes

(01:38:03):
to tell people they read books, but really it's kind
of like book you know, a book club that's really
a wine club. That's what the whole world was doing
with NPR. Everybody wanted to sound smart, but when you
actually had to wear the device, it's like, turns out
you don't actually listen to that at all. You just
listen to vapid pop music, but you want it to
sound deeper than that, right, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:38:21):
It turns out you watch Love Island.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
For me shamelessly. Like I'm in on trash TV. I'm
the first to admit that I can't tell you how
to get to any news station on my YouTube TV.
I don't even know where they are. Okay, So I'm
going to admit my own stupidity and vapidness. That's fine.
I think that we need that wake up call when
it comes to the way we talk about athletes, because
it's really easy to sit here and say, you know what,

(01:38:46):
like empowerment. If somebody doesn't want to be drafted, they
shouldn't have to be drafted. If if somebody wants fully
guaranteed contracts, they should get fully guaranteed contracts. But we're
going to see the living, eating, breathing example of this
in October because right now, no matter the reason, whatever
we want to say, the reason is Caitlin or more.
The WNBA is more popular than it has ever been.

(01:39:08):
And you know they are using uh, they're using their
platform right now to remind everybody that they are up
in October, the collective bargaining agreement is up, and the
players want their fair share. In fact, Sophie Cunningham before
the National Game last week, when she was interviewed on
the on the court that she took that time to say, hey,
we want our fair share. Like I feel like it's

(01:39:28):
Eddie Murphy raw half, Eddie, I want Eddie, I want half.
That's it. They're just coming out. They're screaming they want
their fair share. And I think what sometimes athletes forget
is that it's really cute for all of us to
say as fans that we care about players getting our half,
but what we really care about is watching our favorite
sports without an interruption. Like I I will constantly die

(01:39:50):
on the hill that if every NFL player decided tomorrow
that they were going to hold out, they were simply
not going to play. If all the NFL teams went
to scap players, in the modern society, we would watch
and as long as my replacement Raiders are better than
somebody else's replacement Broncos, that's all I'm gonna care about.
Like that is all. At some point, we as a
society care most about just being able to watch what

(01:40:12):
we want to watch without interruption, So we say we
care about, oh, make sure players have empowerment. But the living, eating,
breathing example, Like, I genuinely believe that any sort of
a holdout, lockout contentious situation would be the worst thing
that could possibly happen for the WNBA.

Speaker 3 (01:40:29):
It would kill the momentum that they've worked so hard
over so many years to try and find to try
and make this league into something that's profitable. And it's
still super lopsided in terms of how much. I mean,
what was the percentage It's like twenty five percent or
twenty six percent of the league's total revenue that Caitlin
Clark alone accounts for. Madness, right, That is something that

(01:40:56):
I think.

Speaker 4 (01:40:59):
Self awareness is. Self awareness is.

Speaker 3 (01:41:01):
Key when it comes to athletes positions in these negotiations,
because there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of your leverage,
but you have to make sure that the leverage is
there to be found in the first place.

Speaker 4 (01:41:11):
FITZI.

Speaker 3 (01:41:11):
We talked about this months ago with the national story
that was the Tennessee quarterback situation. Niko Iamaliava leveraging, trying
to leverage his situation because he plays the most valuable position.
He was making a sum of about two point three
I think it's not reported because you can't quantifiably know
what these kids are making. But ballpark two point three

(01:41:33):
million dollars a year from the University of Tennessee, he
wanted to make closer to four. He decided he was
going to skip his team's first day of practice. Tennessee
called his bluff and said, you know what, We're good here.
We don't need you. We'll figure it out. We're not
going to pay you for somebody who just got waxed
in the college football playoff and the golf between us

(01:41:54):
in Ohio State was big with you, much less without you.
Will figure it out elsewhere and we'll see if we
can't make our money work in a couple of different ways.
And Nico Iamaliava is now playing for UCLA, where he
will make ballpark nine hundred thousand dollars, down from two
point three million, because he's going from Knoxville, Tennessee and
the state income taxes that don't exist in the state

(01:42:15):
of Tennessee to Los Angeles, where he will make considerably
less and pay considerably more in his tax situation. His
football playing career will probably not amount to much playing
for UCLA as opposed to the profile and the kind
of games that he will play in the SEC or
would play in the SEC and Tennessee. Will you know,

(01:42:36):
try and figure it out with Joey Aguilar this year
and maybe they won't have a great season, but they'll
figure it out in the long term.

Speaker 4 (01:42:42):
Nico overplayed his hand.

Speaker 3 (01:42:44):
Even though there was leverage there to be had he
went too far. The WNBA players are going to have
to tow this fine line between there is leverage here,
we need to make more money. Caitlin Clark's rookie contract,
and I know she's making you know, millions from state
farm commercials and things like that, so she's not hurting necessarily,
But the fact that her base salary is like right

(01:43:07):
around the average median household income in the United States
of America is criminal for the amount of attention and
skill that she deserves to be paid for. But she
is a very there's Caitlin Clark and there's the rest
of the WNBA, and the rest of the WNBA has
not yet caught up to that fact, which is why

(01:43:27):
there's resentment between the other players and Caitlyn Clark.

Speaker 4 (01:43:30):
You see that play out on the court.

Speaker 3 (01:43:31):
Sophie Cunningham has been a big part of this in
the way that she's.

Speaker 4 (01:43:35):
Had to protect Caitlin Clark. The league is not going to.

Speaker 3 (01:43:37):
Go out of their way to protect that player, although
they will make sure that they do as many things
to make sure that she is as available as humanly possible,
because they understand that the ratings take a dive when
she's not playing. She's out with the groin injury right now,
she's already missed some time with injury this season. The
amount of the amount that the ratings drop off when
she's not out there just due to injury is insane.

(01:43:59):
So how they toe that line this October when they're
renegotiating their rights and trying to find a more equitable solution. Again,
as we talked about, they need to take advantage of
any leverage that exists. But there's a reality in what
you're saying about fans are going fans are going to
be on your side to a point until it starts

(01:44:20):
to affect them, and once you start to impact their
ability to watch games or watch their favorite players, they're
going to very quickly switch from.

Speaker 4 (01:44:28):
The side of labor to the side of management.

Speaker 3 (01:44:30):
Because for some reason, even though most fans are labor,
they're going to take management side almost ten times out
of ten.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
For the best pregame show every weekend, be sure to
tune into Fox Sports Radio's Countdown presented by bet MGM
every Saturday Sunday morning, nine am to noon Eastern that's
six to nine am Pacific. If you're bad at math,
we counted down to all the biggest games. Tune into Countdown,
presented by bet MGM every Saturday and Sunday morning right
here on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeart app. It
is amazing to me what you just said. In general,

(01:45:00):
most people going to work today are sitting here saying
get yours to every other employee, and whatever you have
to do. You know, it doesn't matter. Nobody's sitting here
saying if you work for Apple. Nobody is sitting here saying, well,
you know what, the more we all get paid, the
more they're going to charge for that iPhone, like nobody's
sitting there. The thing nobody's sitting here saying, and this

(01:45:20):
is a much deeper economics conversation than anybody wants to
have this early in the morning. But nobody seemed to
want to sit back and say, if we raise the
minimum wage for employees at McDonald's, McDonald's is simply going
to raise the prices. And then we're all shell shocked
a few years later, like nobody's sitting here saying, okay,
like where what are the companies doing? But sports fans,

(01:45:41):
that's where that's where it changes. And part of this
is because all sports fans comes back to what you
said at the beginning of the show. All fans want
is just to watch their favorite team win. Notice you
mentioned Nico and Tennessee. If you listen to the talking
heads around college football, the sky is falling and this
is the worst it's ever been because of nil and

(01:46:02):
because of pay to play, and now they've got these
salary cap systems and blah blah blah blah blah. You
know who's not complaining about this at all? The Georgia fans,
the Alabama fans, the Ohio state fans and Michigan fans,
the fans that can afford it, they don't give it, damn.
The only people complaining about it are the people that
are worried that they're going to be left as the
have nots. So if you talk to people that are

(01:46:24):
fans of, you know, a group of five team, or
if you talk to people that are fans of an
ACC team, that might be forgotten. If you're talking to
fans of whatever program just is on that cusp of
trying to figure out how to compete in the modern
economic cycle. Those are the fans that are complaining about it.
But the reality of it is most fans simply say
I want the athlete to get paid. I want the

(01:46:44):
athlete to get paid. But what they really mean is
I want everybody to get as much as they can
as long as my favorite team continues to win and
my consumption of the sport isn't interrupted. Like Sophie Hunningham
is a great example of somebody who, after she defended
Caitlin Clark on the court, came out she blew up
on social media. Her price per post of social media

(01:47:05):
has changed, like her overall platform has changed just by
being around Caitlin right, Like that's real, real economic difference
to her every single day. But there is a narrative
around the WNBA, particularly where people will turn around and
immediately talk about the profitability of the NBA versus profitability
of the W without realizing the nuances in the percentages,

(01:47:26):
Like what percentage of the overall income of a team
goes to the players? That's what really they're negotiating. Nobody
cares about that as long as they can continue to
see the players play. The minute the players, particularly for
the W, decide that they're going to fight for whatever
they deserve to fight for. I genuinely believe there will
be a massive blowback from every casual that sort of

(01:47:49):
cares and from every person that loudly doesn't care about
the W. It will force a narrative that these women
are out there trying to get more than their fair
share and like they don't understand where their league really is.
Like some of those are uneducated narratives, and they are
going to be absolutely hammered home and they will become
the truth like it or not. If WNBA players don't
understand exactly where the line is between pushing and pushing too.

Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
Hard, yeah, it's I mean, it's unfortunate the way that
that works though, right, But like to what you're saying,
it will become the reality whether or not it is
fact based, if that's the if that's the path that
they choose to take, especially if they're combative with it,
and they have a right to be. They have fought

(01:48:33):
and strived to avoid having to do. And you know,
not to relitigate the entire Britney Grinder situation, but like
the entire reason that Britney Grinder is playing basketball in
Russia is because the WNBA players don't make enough, right, Like,
these players are playing basketball year round because they're having
a supplement their income.

Speaker 4 (01:48:50):
And I know most people would think.

Speaker 3 (01:48:52):
I think there's a perception versus reality situation that is
unique to women's basketball fit Sie where people will assume
boom that professional athletes make X amount of money, when
in reality, your average WNBA basketball player is probably making
about what you're making on a regular basis. As far
as your average income, that is not that is not sustainable,

(01:49:15):
especially when the game checks go away and you get
into the offseason and you're having to find different things. Now,
social media and advertisement deals can help you with this,
But how many WNBA players are really getting the kind
of advertising deals that would supplement their basketball playing income.

Speaker 4 (01:49:32):
Not that many.

Speaker 3 (01:49:34):
So you have a couple of different factors that you're
working uphill against. If you're the WNBA players who are
trying to renegotiate their position and who will renegotiate the
position that they have to be they just have to
be cognizant of They have to be aware that these
land mines exist. One, the fans think you make more
money than you do, right, That's that's not the reality,

(01:49:54):
but that is the perception. The fans are going to
assume that a pro athlete, regardless of sport, is making
a sign amount of money. So they're already going to
default into what is the common fan refrain, which is
fine in some situations. You're a millionaire, What do I
care about your complaints? Well, they're actually not right when
they're making seventy five or sixty five thousand dollars a

(01:50:15):
year to play highly competitive sports. So you're fighting first
and foremost against that. Secondarily, and it's an awkward conversation
for two white guys in their thirties and forties to have.
But when because you see this play out politically too,
and you don't have to get into the political spectrum.

Speaker 4 (01:50:37):
To understand this.

Speaker 3 (01:50:38):
But when men are more demanding or more aggressive in
their position, they are not going to be received the
same as a woman who takes the same tact, fairly
or unfairly. Right, there are always going to be stigmas
associated with the woman who has a strong voice, who
takes a strong position, who tries to leverage their situation.

(01:51:00):
I don't think that you can ignore those factors in
the middle of this as it relates to public perception. Now,
maybe they're not interested in public perception. It just comes
down to the negotiation between the players union and the league.
But there is going to be some of this dialogue
out there around this whenever it comes time in October
for them to start to really ramp this thing up.

Speaker 4 (01:51:21):
There already is about it.

Speaker 2 (01:51:23):
Now, there is a moment here. Actual numbers. According to Forbes,
Mark Davis, the owner of the Raiders, bought the Las
Vegas Aces in twenty twenty one for two million dollars.
In twenty twenty one, he's invested money over forty million
dollars in a practice facility. So on and so forth.

(01:51:43):
As of right now, the valuation of the Las Vegas
aces is three hundred and ten million dollars. That is
a fifteen thousand, four hundred percent increase from twenty twenty
one to twenty twenty five. Those are the sort of
real numbers that the players are trying to fight for.
The problem is, we don't live in a nuanced, fact

(01:52:05):
based society. We live in a scream at yell at
and keep it general to society. So when people here,
well WNBA players aren't happy with the amount they get paid,
immediately becomes well, they shouldn't make as much as the NBA. Again,
I don't think this is about that. I think this
is about the fact that if you look at the NFL,

(01:52:25):
the collective Bargaining Agreement of the NFL says that forty
nine point whatever percent of the total revenue earned is
where the salary cap comes from. That's not an arbitrary
number that's just thrown into the sand. A lot of
people may not realize that, but essentially, if an NFL
team makes a billion dollars this year, then next year
the salary cap is set at five hundred million. That's

(01:52:47):
the way it goes, right, So very simple math. I
think what we miss sometimes not we, but a lot
of people miss sometimes in the WNBA conversation, the players
are not asking to make the same that the NBA
is making. The players are asking to make the same
percentage of the overall generated income for their team year
in and year out as the NBA is making. In theirs,
it's a much different. It's kind of like talking about

(01:53:09):
crime rates, which just came up city to city if
you are into politics, like it was a loud conversation about, well,
this state has more crime than that state. Okay, how
many crimes versus crime rate? Very different conversation, right, like So,
but the problem for the W is always going to
be that the haters are very loud, and it's super
easy to simply give a generic piece of information and

(01:53:30):
have that fuel and entire percent Like, there is confirmation
bias here. So if you think that the W, if
you're somebody that doesn't like the W, and you believe
that they're already overpaid and the quality of place sucks
and that they shouldn't be asking for what they ask for,
all you need to hear is they want more, and
you've just immediately decided that they're absolutely ignorant. There are
people on the other side of it too. The truth

(01:53:52):
is someone in their middle. But I think the most
important part of it to me is that there's an
entire generation of fans that will be turned off of
the process and completely if this gets ugly, and that's
a loss for the league. It's a loss for the players,
it's a loss for everybody involved in It's just it's
a loss. Okay, we'll keep breaking it down. Also, as

(01:54:12):
we continue to talk to WNBA. I know it's crazy,
there is one franchise in the WNBA that is actually
changing the entire path for the sport. We'll tell you
about it and why it matters to everybody, no matter
what's your fan of. Next these Buck Rising. I'm Jason
fitz We're hanging out with the on a Fox Sports Saturday.
All right, this is where I'm supposed to tell you
that WNBA expansion I'm hearing is coming Monday. Big announcement

(01:54:35):
I'm hearing coming Monday, which is significant for one reason. Valuation.
The Valkyries. By the way, the most recent WNBA franchise
is currently the most valuable WNBA franchise, So look at
MLS for a minute and understand how MLS crew. It's
almost like a Ponzi scheme. You just continue to take
money from expansion teams as part of the way that

(01:54:56):
everybody splits that money. And then that way, even before
your teams are made money, you get revenue from the
team for their entrance fees and all of these things.
So expansion coming Monday gonna be significant for the WNBA.
We'll see what city gets at expansion tea. But I'm
mind blown here because I'm working with Buck Rising. I'm
Jason Fitz We're hanging out with you on the Fellows
on Fox Sports Radio as we are. You can stream

(01:55:18):
this show and all of our Fox Sports Radio shows
live twenty four to seven and the new and improved
iHeartRadio app. Just search Fox Sports Radio in the app
just stream us live. One of the newest features in
the app is that you can make Fox Sports Radio
a preset, just like presets on a radio dial. So
be sure to preset Fox Sports Radio in the iHeartRadio
app and it'll always pop up at the top of
your screen. It's early in the morning for Buck Rising,

(01:55:40):
He's not usually up this early. Anthony Gargana with a
much deserved weekend off. He's not usually up this early
on a Saturday. I'll say it that way, Saturday morning,
It's not true.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
Typically my workout is in ten minutes from now, even
on Saturdays.

Speaker 4 (01:55:54):
Hell yeah, that's here.

Speaker 2 (01:55:57):
You're over here, like I need coffee, coffee. And suddenly,
so I just thought maybe you were just being a
whiny you know what, because you're not used to being
up this surly, but you're whining about eating coffee. And
then I find out that you're considering, like literally getting
coffee delivered to the studio so that you can have
nice collee. Like one of our great debates is that

(01:56:17):
Buck Rising is the most elitist person I think. I know.
Now all of a sudden, I'm hearing that you are
considering paying the feet which will make your cup of coffee.
What fifteen bucks you can spend fifty? Like, do you
do something for my bitch?

Speaker 4 (01:56:31):
Clo eighteen after tags, I just looked.

Speaker 2 (01:56:34):
Oh my god, you just looked. You're gonna get it
delivered for eighteen dollars. It hot coffee or cold coffee.

Speaker 3 (01:56:39):
It is an iced, okay spiced, dirty Indian Chai with
an extra shot of espresso.

Speaker 4 (01:56:49):
And whole milk.

Speaker 2 (01:56:50):
Okay, actually that does sound to listen like a dirty
DELIGHTA A dirty chi is a great, great, great drink
by a lot of calories. Though it's a lot of
calories we feed back off.

Speaker 3 (01:57:00):
I'm going to work out later already, bray Fat shaming
me about the amount of money I'm spending on my
health club in my gym to not have a six
pack where you go, you're gonna pile on here too.

Speaker 2 (01:57:10):
Well, I'm just a little curious, Like, I mean, I
get the balance live. I just live, lived this elite life.
But you spend all this money on a gym, and
you spend all this money on like having a cryo
chamber at your fingertips whenever you want only to undo
all the good like they always say, abservated in the kitchen,
right eighty five percent of the time, like abservated in
the kitchen. So like, is the dirty chi really the

(01:57:31):
right approach for buck rising this early.

Speaker 4 (01:57:33):
In the Like?

Speaker 3 (01:57:33):
Yes, I get my work, effeine, but I work out
so I can eat the bad things that I like
to eat. That's the only reason that I'm interested in
working out at this.

Speaker 4 (01:57:41):
Point in my life. I actually that's not true. I
genuinely enjoy it. Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:57:45):
But you know, listen, I there is nothing wrong with
in a situation if it is not detrimental, like hugely
detrimental to your bank account. There's nothing wrong with if
you have been you don't get hungover anymore because you
no longer drank, so you're better than the rest of us,
and that's fine.

Speaker 4 (01:58:03):
But if you are experiencing a situation, I count for something.

Speaker 2 (01:58:06):
I mean I a mile.

Speaker 3 (01:58:07):
So all right, Petter, If you've popped a gummy and
you have a craving for whatever it is that you've
got a craving for, but it's just one item.

Speaker 4 (01:58:15):
You don't want a whole meal.

Speaker 3 (01:58:17):
Maybe you just want a soda as opposed to the
entire fast food meal that you're thinking about ordering after
you've popped your ten milligram gummy. If you are telling me,
Jason Fitz that you have never once contemplated the idea
of ordering a twelve dollars coke just to satisfy that itch,
then I just I simply won't believe you.

Speaker 2 (01:58:36):
I mean, I've contemplated it. But you also know, inherently
to my core, I'm cheap, right, Like it is not.
This is a There was a recent night that I was,
you know, maybe fifty milligrams in and I opened up
door dash and I just I filled the whole cart
with everything that I was going to go get. I
wanted from seven to eleven and everything. I was like,
I've got this mapped out. I'm good. And then I

(01:58:57):
looked at the total and I was like, Nope, not.

Speaker 4 (01:59:00):
Doing that restraint. See likes that's just good restraint.

Speaker 3 (01:59:04):
Well but but it's it's like you were you were
asking me, uh, I can't remember what the context, Oh
about my my lack of ubers and the fact that
I will take cards from the uber black cars that
I will take and uh make course, well, you know,
I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't wanna. I
don't want to a car on three wheel wheels that
smells like somebody's bio.

Speaker 4 (01:59:24):
I would like to enjoy my ride and have be.

Speaker 3 (01:59:28):
Able to select the setting that makes uh, that lets
them know that I don't want to talk to them.

Speaker 2 (01:59:35):
That's all right.

Speaker 3 (01:59:37):
As a part of that elitism, you asked me how
does it feel to be rich?

Speaker 4 (01:59:41):
And I said, great, that's it. That's all it is. Baby.

Speaker 3 (01:59:43):
If I if I want to order my eighteen dollar coffee,
then I'm going to order my eighteen dollar coffee if
it is within my means. Jason Fitz, It unbothered me
at all.

Speaker 2 (01:59:53):
Uh, bree can you agree? Is this Brie's first time
getting to deal with the two of us together early
in the morning? Total elitists?

Speaker 4 (01:59:59):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:00:00):
I mean, Breech just back me up here.

Speaker 8 (02:00:01):
But you know I have to agree with him because
I've done that before too. Yes, And I hate to
admit it.

Speaker 9 (02:00:07):
Because i feel kind of bougie myself, but I'm so
sorry if it's I hate to let you down, but I've.

Speaker 3 (02:00:13):
No, you don't apologize. It's us against the world.

Speaker 2 (02:00:17):
Bring you and me haves and the have nots. Mighty
Mark is going to be on my side. That's the
one thing I'm going to be sure of. I'm also
sure there's one conversation in the NFL that's not going
to go away no matter what we tried to do.
We'll tell you about it next on the Fellas on
Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 1 (02:00:34):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio.

Speaker 2 (02:00:37):
Happy Sports Saturday, Buck Rising, Jason Fitz hanging out with
you on Fox Sports Radio. We've been kind of all
over the place this morning on Ace Bailey deciding he
doesn't want to play for Utah or maybe he does,
what the future of sports looks like, and collective bargaining
the future of the college football landscape. We've been everywhere,

(02:00:58):
but the one place we haven't been to, yeah, is
the NFL, which is rare for this show. But let's
be honest for a minute. There's one conversation in the
NFL this year that's never going to go away, no
matter how much we hate it, and it's Aaron Rodgers,
Buck Rising, Jason Fitz hanging out with you on Fox
Sports Saturday. We'll get to Aaron Rodgers in a second.
You just heard one of the craziest things in an
update that I've heard in a long time when it

(02:01:20):
comes to a final score, I don't know, major League
baseball blowout. So let's before we get at any football talk,
let's get to the Tyrack play of the day. Oh one,
that's I'll ball out to deep right field? Does it
have enup on it? It does?

Speaker 10 (02:01:35):
Into the seats, A two run homer for Gunner Henderson,
his ninth of the season. Hey, the Orioles now have
a ten spot over the Rays eighteen to eight.

Speaker 2 (02:01:47):
Yeah, that score made it eighteen to eight and on
the way to a twenty two to eight win ORIOL
Radio Network on the call there, great work by them
as always in a wild, wild, wild outcome. To see
that that many runs scored is absolutely incredible. Obviously, we
talk about that a long time. For over forty years,
ti Iraq has been helping customers find the right tires

(02:02:09):
for how, what and where they drive. Ship Fast and
Free backed by free Road, has a protection with convenient
installation options like mobile tire installation tirac dot com the
way tire brin should be with the ti Raq play
of the day, Buck, do you know, like I'm gonna
give you a surprising fact about me particularly good at
changing tires. I'm not a man's man, you know, I'm
not a man's man. But if you got if you've

(02:02:31):
got a blown tire on the side of the road
and you need somebody to come jack that thing up
and get the tire off, getting another like, I'm basically
straight out of a NASCAR pit crew, I am. I
am efficient and I would say almost expert level at
changing a tire.

Speaker 3 (02:02:45):
Good sir, that's admirable. I suppose I can respect that.
I'm never going to do it in my life, but
I love for I love that for you. I'm happy
for you.

Speaker 2 (02:02:56):
I blow.

Speaker 4 (02:02:57):
I blow a tire on the highway A couple of
years ago.

Speaker 3 (02:02:59):
I was actually lay on my way to catch a
flight to Vegas for a bachelor party. And I'm coming back,
coming back towards Nashville, downtown Nashville to go out east
towards the airport, and I blew a tire on a highway.
And I've got Triple A. And I called Triple A
and said, hey, I blew out a tire. Can you
can you come fix me up? And he said, do

(02:03:19):
you have a spare tire? And I said, where would
that be located?

Speaker 4 (02:03:26):
Buddy?

Speaker 3 (02:03:27):
I couldn't find the battery in my card. Somebody asked
me for a jump. You want to talk about not
being able to do man's man type of stuff or
just really even baseline functionality when it comes to operating
and owning an automobile. I'm calling Triple A if my
gaslight comes on.

Speaker 2 (02:03:45):
I respect look.

Speaker 4 (02:03:47):
The respect it. I don't think you do. I don't
think you do.

Speaker 2 (02:03:50):
Like No, I mean, look, I know nothing about cars.
I just know that, like I'm the person that pulls
in and says, yeah, there's a like a weird noise
happening over here. That's as close as I can come
to knowing anything about But I can change a tire,
so I feel good about that. I also feel good
about the podcast. By the way, shortly after the show,
our podcast goes up. If you missed any of the show,
check it out. Just search Fox Sports Radio wherever you

(02:04:10):
get your pods, and be sure to follow and review
the podcast. Rate at five stars. Even if you don't
like it, just rate it five stars.

Speaker 4 (02:04:15):
Damn it again.

Speaker 2 (02:04:16):
Just search Fox Sports Radio wherever you eat your podcast.
You'll see today's show posted right after we get off
the air. I feel, like, you know, belligerently badgering people
is always a great way to get a five star review.

Speaker 3 (02:04:27):
Earnestly, it's like Florio, thank you, why don't you care about?

Speaker 2 (02:04:32):
Why do I care about Aaron Rodgers? And I don't,
but like I don't know. I saw the news last
week where he says, you know, this is probably gonna
be my last year, and I just thought out loud,
thank God, just because I'm so tired. I'm just tired
of the whole thing. I'm tired of the amount of
weight we put into it. I'm tired of the amount

(02:04:52):
of focus that goes into it. I just I don't
think it goes anywhere. And the funny thing is this year,
I squarely on record with you, I believe I said
earlier this year that I don't believe there's wins above
replacement for Aaron Rodgers, above Mason Rudolph. That's how little
I trust Aaron Rodgers to be able to get anything
done for Pittsburgh. The problem is that still makes it

(02:05:13):
a conversation. Like the weirdest part about Aaron Rodgers is
that if it's great, we talk about it. If it sucks,
we talk about it. If it's just mid We're still
going to talk about it because Aaron Rodgers is always
part of the conversation. So like this is the unescapable.
It's like having the weird aunt at Thanksgiving that you
know is going to say something that makes the whole

(02:05:33):
table uncomfortable and you're just gonna have to deal with it.
That's how I feel about Aaron Rodgers coming into this
entire season. There's nothing we can do to ignore it.

Speaker 3 (02:05:40):
It's by his design, though he is the most irritating
thing about him, and there are many, which is unfortunate
because I so enjoy him, and I know it's been
a long long time. This is the difficulty with the
Rogers conversation. I can separate art from artist totally. You know,

(02:06:01):
some people have issues with Lebron James and some of
the stances that he's taken in his life, or the
way that he conducts his business, or whatever the case
may be. However you feel about Lebron James, you can
probably still respect Lebron James the basketball player, whether he's forty,
whether he's thirty, whatever the case may be. He is exceptional.
Aaron Rodgers was exceptional. The difficulty now with Rogers, It's

(02:06:24):
been a long long time since Aaron Rodgers has been
that guy, since he's felt like Super Bowl Champion, first
ballot Hall of Famer, one of the best, most talented
throwers of the football you've ever seen in your lifetime,
Aaron Rodgers, He's been a shell of that for quite
some time. On top of all of the whether you

(02:06:46):
consider the behavior to be problematic or just obtuse, however
you view him at this point, his public persona is
not backed up or is no lawnger backed up by
his play anymore, which is the particular frustration for me.

Speaker 4 (02:07:04):
And I'm not.

Speaker 3 (02:07:05):
Here to do the shut up and dribble thing, right,
That's not my game by any stretch of the imagination.
With him, though he counted, he just contradicts himself so
often that he creates controversy where it need not be
him talking about him going on McAfee recently and lashing

(02:07:27):
out a little bit about people who are inquiring or
asking questions about his recent marriage, when he himself volunteered
that information to the public, to the media and by extension,
the public in his first appearance as a Pittsburgh Steeler,
in his media availability.

Speaker 4 (02:07:44):
He is a public figure. He knows this.

Speaker 3 (02:07:46):
Then he has this whole thing about, well, when I retire,
you're not going to hear from me.

Speaker 4 (02:07:50):
You're not going to see me.

Speaker 3 (02:07:51):
Dude, You tried to host Jeopardy in the middle of
your playing career. What are you talking about. You have
a weekly appearance, a paid weekly appearing, and on arguably
the biggest sports talk show going right now with Pat McAfee.
What do you mean we're not going to hear from you.
You have created an ecosystem where all we can do

(02:08:11):
is hear from you and about you at any given point,
even when your play has fallen off to a point
of damn near irrelevancy where you had less wins as
a starting quarterback for the Jets than damn Zach Wilson
did in his most recent year with the New York Jets.
He I honestly want the Pittsburgh thing to work, like I.

Speaker 4 (02:08:31):
Want him to have the one last ride.

Speaker 3 (02:08:34):
I want him to get the Ray Lewis situation where
you know, maybe Ray, maybe Ray went all the way
to the Super Bowl, won the Super Bowl in twenty
twelve with that Flacco team.

Speaker 4 (02:08:44):
Maybe it doesn't have to be to that.

Speaker 3 (02:08:46):
Extreme, but I would love to see Aaron Rodgers be
excellent at football again for no other reason than I
genuinely enjoy Aaron Rodgers the football Aaron Rodgers the football player.
I don't have to vibe with him as a person.
I don't have to put a lot of interest or
investment in the things that he says.

Speaker 4 (02:09:02):
I just want to watch him play.

Speaker 3 (02:09:05):
And we've gotten so far removed from the point where
we can just watch and enjoy Aaron Rodgers, the football
player that I don't know if there's if there's putting
Pandora back in the box at this point, because I
think he's already out. He's already loose, and he's going
to tell you about his ayahuasca trips and tell you
about his marriage, then chastise you for asking about his

(02:09:25):
marriage and.

Speaker 4 (02:09:25):
All these other things.

Speaker 3 (02:09:26):
He's just it's just a bizarre situation constantly with him.

Speaker 2 (02:09:30):
I remember so many years ago being on a flight
with the band. We were headed to La right, and
three Perrys of the band Perry were all in first
class and before the rest of us were back in
coach before we landed, like an hour before we landed
from wherever we were coming from. It had been a
very long flight. They went into the bathroom in the

(02:09:53):
airplane and they got full because they brought their makeup person.
They got full hair and makeup done right. And then
we got off the flight in la And for anyone
that's ever flown into Lax, there's usually paparazzi around things
like that. We get off the flight and the three
of them are parading in full show clothes with full
hair and makeup done, and one of them made a
comment as we were walking through the airport and said, man,

(02:10:15):
it's just the worst. You can't even get off a
plane without being photographed here. And I literally laughed as
I was in a hoodie and sweats and a hat.
Pulled that and I'm like hey, And I said to him,
I was like, you can if you just act normal.
I think about that all the time with Aaron Rodgers,
because you sit down and you say, oh, I can't

(02:10:35):
even live my normal life. I have to answer all
of these questions. You go on a wildly popular weekly
daily show every single week for a paid appearance. They
literally tell for anyone that doesn't know they the entire
network is like, hey, Eron is coming on whatever Tuesday
at this time. A note goes out to every show

(02:10:56):
at ESPN, and then after his appearance, every portion it
gets clipped by Pat McAfee's people and sent to each
of the shows for anything that can be reacted to
that happens every single week that he's on. So if
he really wants the paparazzi not to stop him when
he gets off the plane in La, don't get glammed,
Like if you really want people to stop talking about you.

(02:11:17):
Just stop making paid appearances where you talk about life
like that's you know, the conversation it's creating. You can't
play the victim and then also create the situation all
at the same time. You just can't do it well.

Speaker 3 (02:11:30):
And it's it's kind of like so recently Anthony Richardson,
the cults embattled quarterback, put out a rap video, right,
And it's a very easy thing to dismiss Anthony Richardson,
who has yet to produce as a football player, by saying,
how could you possibly have any outside interests beyond focusing
on what is your most important the thing, the reason

(02:11:52):
that anybody would give you the opportunity or that you
would have the financial wherewithal to put together a music video.

Speaker 4 (02:11:57):
You need to be better at football.

Speaker 3 (02:11:59):
Also, it doesn't help that he's talking about when he's
on the field he's a saintan because he throws like
Drew Brees. Come on, there could not be a more
a more disparate comparison than Anthony Richardson and Drew Brees.
But like I struggle with this sometimes, Fitzy, because I
don't want to begrudge them when they have extra curriculars
or outside interests, or they have other thoughts that are
not purely football thoughts.

Speaker 4 (02:12:21):
But he my thing with Aaron Rodge.

Speaker 3 (02:12:23):
Did you ever watch that Netflix thing on him?

Speaker 2 (02:12:26):
No? I intentionally did not.

Speaker 3 (02:12:28):
And I think that's how a lot of people chose
to go about it.

Speaker 4 (02:12:33):
I will you want to.

Speaker 3 (02:12:34):
Talk about elitist one percent stuff that my my sauna.
You sit in the sauna by yourself, it as a Netflix,
it as a monitor, so you can watch Netflix in
the sawa. So I will spend forty five minutes watching
whatever I might find on Netflix.

Speaker 2 (02:12:46):
And I took.

Speaker 3 (02:12:47):
I took the first couple of episodes the last couple
of times I've been to the health club to watch
the Aaron Rodgers thing, and honest to God, fits I
came away feeling bad for him because he just seems
so deeply unhappy for somebody who has accomplished so much,
like what are you chasing?

Speaker 4 (02:13:03):
So I don't.

Speaker 3 (02:13:03):
He may not have the answer to answers to these questions,
he's clearly comfortable publicly pondering them at any given platform
or or when he provides himself a platform or makes
a platform for himself, but at some point for Aaron Rodgers,
it's stopped being about just the work and it's become
something much larger. And maybe you know that threat is

(02:13:25):
way easier to lose than people on our scale versus
the scale of an internationally relevant and I know American
football is not internationally relevant, but like Aaron Rodgers is
as close to an internationally known athlete as you could
probably find in the modern day NFL. He's chasing something

(02:13:45):
that I don't even think he knows what he's looking for,
and the fact that he's just he keeps putting himself
in all of these different places and making it a misery.
He makes himself more unhappy by doing of all of
these things. And I just don't know how there's not
somebody in his life who can't help him acknowledge that
fact or help him find that fact. Like, I don't
think I'm drawing any grand conclusions here. I don't think

(02:14:06):
I'm having any kind of you know, epiphany that would
be that would be any super thought provoking. I'm just like, dude,
you seem miserable. Focus on the things that make you
happy as opposed to the stuff that is going to
continue to cause you these these level of problems and
then for you to lash out publicly and make it
so combative at every turn.

Speaker 4 (02:14:23):
I maybe maybe I'm oversimplifying.

Speaker 3 (02:14:25):
I don't know, but every time I look at him,
I'm just made to feel sorry for him a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:14:30):
It's magnified by the fact that he's not the player
he once was. Well, you are the best of the best,
will accept anything, but right now if you're a shell
of what you used to be, which Aaron Rodgers is
at this point, he's Axl Rose running around on stage
today in leather pants is not the same as Axel
Rose running around the stage and leather pants in the ages.

Speaker 4 (02:14:50):
Looks like a thumb wearing leather.

Speaker 2 (02:14:53):
Nobody wants fat Axel? All right, speaking of quarterbacks you
mentioned and professional.

Speaker 4 (02:15:00):
The next segment, after nobody wants Fat Axel.

Speaker 2 (02:15:03):
You know what Fat Axel and Anthony richardson, We'll break
it all down, he's motor Rising. On Jason Fitzefellas on
Fox Sports Radio. Hi, this is Jay.

Speaker 5 (02:15:11):
I'm the producer of the Paula and Tony Fusco Show.
Usually in these promos they ask you to listen to
have the dumbest takes on sports imagicable. Don't listen to
the show so it can get camp the.

Speaker 2 (02:15:27):
Get him. Ignore that fool.

Speaker 6 (02:15:32):
Listen to the Tony Fusco Show on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (02:15:37):
He's still moving.

Speaker 7 (02:15:39):
listen live.

Speaker 2 (02:15:54):
So fellas on Fox Sports Radio. Buck rising in for
Anthony Gargano. I'm Jason Fitz hanging out with you, coming
at you live from the Fox Sports Radio Studios. Got
to give a shout out to Bree Mighty Mark working
behind the scenes. They do great work every single weekend,
but most importantly, they just put up with us. It's
it's it's incredible. I realize like every time we go

(02:16:15):
to break, because you know, Buck is in Nashville, I'm
in Connecticut. Every time we go to break, we're sitting
on FaceTime so we can see each other's pretty faces,
and I feel like we just spend the whole time
talking about the stupidest things and uh and credit to
you guys. Really, bri I how you You've kept a
beautiful attitude with a very weird episode of the Fellows
this morning. So I appreciate you. I appreciate you being

(02:16:35):
awesome as always.

Speaker 8 (02:16:36):
Of course it's super fun.

Speaker 2 (02:16:38):
You guys are great extra entertainment. Mighty Mark, go ahead, Buck.

Speaker 4 (02:16:43):
Are you too stuck with him? Every Saturday morning?

Speaker 8 (02:16:46):
Every Saturday morning?

Speaker 2 (02:16:48):
Stuck with good Side?

Speaker 3 (02:16:49):
I got stuck with you today. What do you mean
you think I wanted to wake up at four I
am to talk to you?

Speaker 4 (02:16:54):
Wow? Wow?

Speaker 2 (02:16:56):
Why Mark?

Speaker 4 (02:16:57):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (02:16:57):
Mark?

Speaker 3 (02:16:58):
Look there there are there are hours that I can
call you that are not four am in the morning
Central time.

Speaker 2 (02:17:04):
Bud, My question for you is did you get that
eighteen dollars coffee delivered to the shirt?

Speaker 3 (02:17:10):
I'm excited, not you. It will be will be here
by the end of the segment. I will sip it
loudly in front of the microphone for our final segment together,
a dirty.

Speaker 2 (02:17:20):
Chi with an extra shot, A bunch of calories you
don't need for.

Speaker 3 (02:17:23):
I also have here the most elitest possible water that
I could be drinking water.

Speaker 4 (02:17:28):
It's boxed water.

Speaker 3 (02:17:30):
With electrolyte hydration, naturally alkaline, pure taste, low mineral content.
How about the mineral spring water with a low mineral content.

Speaker 4 (02:17:38):
How about that that's a bit of an oxymoron.

Speaker 2 (02:17:41):
I just, I mean, you do realize that things like,
you know, just regular water. I'm over here, man of
the people, with my dollar energy drink that's cut with
soda water so that I try and make it last
the whole show, not eighteen Yeah, rain It rain is
the energy drink of choice this morning, the rainbow Sherbert rain.

(02:18:02):
You know, there we go as opposed to you with
their boxed water and eighteen dollars dirty chi with an
extra You know, you could have just gotten coffee. You know.
I don't know if you know this, but coffee by
itself would have been much healthier for you.

Speaker 4 (02:18:13):
Uh yeah, but that tastes better. Live a little old man.
You're gonna be You're gonna be all right.

Speaker 2 (02:18:19):
You're not wrong, You're not wrong. The dirt a dirty
chi does sound to life. I kind of want to
go starbies and get one on the way to the
gym after this. Okay, Anthony Richardson is gonna have plenty
of time to drink whatever kind of water he wants,
because I think he's pretty much done in Indianapolis. Look,
I mean there is Daniel Jones is there to battle
him for the job. And this is one thing that

(02:18:41):
I think we need context on because, look, Anthony Richardson
is sort of stuck at this point. I don't I'm
not sure he's gonna be able to do enough to
change any of the perception around him. But the one
thing that needed to happen when he got drafted was
he needed reps. He did time on task. That's why
I believe his injury his rookie year was so unbelievably
substantial to his development because the Colts were supposed to

(02:19:03):
suck that year while Anthony Richardson got a whole season
of just reps, and instead he didn't get those reps
and the Colts were pretty good, and all of a sudden,
then it changed the way we perceived the organization. It
changed the way we perceived what was going to be
expected of Anthony Richardson. So he goes into last year
with these heightened expectations, still needing a bunch of time

(02:19:24):
on task and looks just unprepared to handle it. I
feel for Anthony Richardson because I feel like he's just
he's stuck at this point and now he's gonna need
a second chance somewhere else, and I just don't I
don't know, I don't know how you fix everything that
he's gonna need fix to be the type of starter
that his potential would have allowed him to be should

(02:19:44):
he have ever met it.

Speaker 4 (02:19:45):
I don't feel bad for him at all.

Speaker 2 (02:19:47):
Because he's richer, because.

Speaker 4 (02:19:49):
He's lazy, well fitzy.

Speaker 3 (02:19:51):
He took himself out of a game on third down
because he was tired, never in my life, and I
under stand that he you know, he utilizes mobility as
as a part of his game, and so maybe there
is a level of exhaustion that he has versus a
you know, I don't know how many standard drop back
quarterback pocket quarterbacks were.

Speaker 4 (02:20:12):
Still running out there in the modern day NFL.

Speaker 3 (02:20:15):
But it's it's a lack of preparedness which also feeds
into that which makes me think that it's not he's
just not of the mental makeup or the the kind
of the kind of intangible makeup required to one be
worthy of a top five draft pick two to make

(02:20:37):
it as a top five draft pick in the NFL fitsy.
How many games of Colts win last year?

Speaker 2 (02:20:43):
Not an eight?

Speaker 4 (02:20:44):
Eight?

Speaker 3 (02:20:45):
They won eight. That's what I'm saying. They're not a
bad football team. Shane Steichen manufactured out of smoke and
Joe Flacco magic.

Speaker 4 (02:20:55):
Eight wins between that terrible.

Speaker 3 (02:20:57):
Quarterback situation that they had last year on a football team,
that's not bad. Anthony Richardson's problem, to me is either
a lack of competitive toughness or a lack of interest
in the thing that is supposed to be the main thing.
We brought up the wrap the rap video or earlier.
Have you heard it. We can't play it on on
FCCS fair because he there's a couple of profanities in

(02:21:22):
there that would not that would not last.

Speaker 4 (02:21:24):
But you've heard the you've heard the snippet that made
the rounds.

Speaker 3 (02:21:28):
Yeah, it's terrible. It's garbage. It is reflective of who
he is as a football player.

Speaker 4 (02:21:33):
It is half assed.

Speaker 3 (02:21:37):
Done under the lighting of a gas station in a marathon,
which is more popular for you know, as I continue
to age, as I get into my thirties, and I
look at people doing TikTok trends under the lighting of
a gas station when they don't have a ring light
to do it at home. I understand these things, but
like he to me, embodies the worst case scenario when
you draft a player.

Speaker 4 (02:21:58):
He's got all the talent in the world. He's got,
he's the he's literally the most athletic quarterback in the
history of combine testing. But he is not made of
the right stuff that is going to make him last
in the NFL. He he I would argue.

Speaker 3 (02:22:14):
Just because I cover Will lev I have covered Will
Levis here, and Will Levis was a flaming disaster in
twenty twenty four. Anthony Richardson is worse because at least
I know Will Levis works hard at least whatever his
implosions in games, and they are implosions in games. You
will never see a quarterback melt down as bad as

(02:22:36):
Will Levis Is does on a regular basis at the
worst possible times. But everybody that you talk to in
that organization doesn't doubt the work ethic. He looks fine
at practice, he knows the concepts and can operate and
can communicate in the meeting rooms. He just gets into
the games and he melts down. Anthony Richardson has neither

(02:22:56):
the experience nor it seems the fortitude to try and
push himself at the highest level of professional football. So
it's already Daniel Jones's job as far as I'm concerned,
and I'm pretty sure the Colts would feel that way too.

Speaker 2 (02:23:12):
It's interesting the way a lot of that comes across,
because I can constantly say covering the draft, listen less
to people that cover the NFL when it's time to
talk about the draft, and listen to other people that
cover college football, and absolutely, I just think if you
skew your logic to less to someone that's watching the

(02:23:33):
highlights and trying to figure it out, and more to
somebody that's actually covering college football every single week, you
get a better picture. A lot of the problems that
we've seen with Anthony Richardson I think were somewhat predictable.
That's why I thought it was a reach early in
the first round. More often than not, if you just
focus your attention to the guy being drafted to the
opinion of college football minds around him, I think you

(02:23:54):
actually get a much better sense of what to expect
from a player. The hard part about it, and I
will say with your rap video it made me think
is something I just googled it. The career earnings for
so far for Anthony Richardson are just shy of twenty
five million dollars. When you listen to that video, or
listen to that song and watch that video, ask yourself

(02:24:16):
if it looks like it was done by somebody that
had twenty five million dollars in the bank, Because, frankly,
all I ask you know, it's that whole adage of
how you do anything is how you do everything, like
that football ism that rap video. While look, I think
I think the song itself sucks. For my personal opinion,
I don't think it's good. But music is very subjective.

(02:24:36):
What isn't subjective subjective is the overall quality of the
product that's put out. The video was not put out
in a way that made you feel like, you know,
it was done by a group of people that understand
how to make a great video. The track isn't produced
in a way that makes you feel like it was
tracked by world class producers. He can afford those things.
So to me, it just shows you yet again that

(02:24:57):
you're just like, hey, I'm good at this. I'm gonna
have a little fun I'm going to do this. I
just I don't know that any of that takes the
platform seriously enough. And it's that how you do anything
is how you do everything. Like when's the last time
we watched Anthony Richardson and thought, not, oh my god,
what an athletic play, but thought, what a prepared moment
in a football game. Like that's just a much different,
much different beast.

Speaker 3 (02:25:18):
Your point about paying attention to people in the draft
process who cover college football daily or you know, on
a granular level, being way a way better predictive metric
of what these players are going to do, because we
brought up two players to play in the SEC, Will
Levison and Anthony Richardson, and anybody who covered college football,
particularly the best college football conference would have looked around

(02:25:40):
and said, yeah, shocking to know one that Will Levis
and Anthony Richardson aren't good NFL football players. They weren't
very good college football players. Shocking to know one that
the things that held them back as college football players
would also plague them at the highest level of the sport,
even though both of them can throw in a country
mile and Anthony Richardson is hyper athletic and Will le
looks the part so much so that Hellman's Mayonnaise did

(02:26:04):
a full national television commercial campaign around a guy that
went viral for a TikTok thing before he'd done a
damn bit of anything in the NFL. It is it's
something that I think you're going to see more of
where the nil stuff comes into play. You'll also see
more financially prepared athletes as a as a Devil's advocate argument,

(02:26:24):
I think there's gonna be good stories and there's gonna
be bad stories on both sides of things. But I
just if you are an NFL scouting operation, an NFL
front office and you struggle this much with the idea
of production or potential, the first round fits me.

Speaker 4 (02:26:45):
To me, it seems potential is always going to win.

Speaker 3 (02:26:48):
Out in some form of fashion because there is so
much in NFL coaching. Oh, I can fix that guy. No,
I know how to get the most out of that guy.
Billy Napier. Yeah, that guy in Florida, Well whatever, he's
you know, he's struggling in in game situations.

Speaker 4 (02:27:02):
He's struggling.

Speaker 3 (02:27:03):
He's not been bad at recruiting actually, but like I
can do a better job than Billy Napier did with
him at Florida.

Speaker 4 (02:27:09):
What does Billy Napier know?

Speaker 3 (02:27:11):
Just speaking as a general NFL holier than thou perspective,
And so often NFL teams get in over their skis
and they churn and burn these kids. NFL organizations are
failing these players as much as the players are failing
these organizations. Anthony Richardson has some responsibility here, of course
he does, absolutely he does. But the NFL organization that

(02:27:32):
thought him worthy of the number four overall draft pick
and ignored clear and obvious signs that this was a
player that was going to have at least some struggles
at the next level that would take some time for
him to rectify that probably weren't going to be benefited
by playing him right away, even though the thing that's
the biggest thing about Anthony Richardson.

Speaker 4 (02:27:51):
Is he just hasn't played very much football.

Speaker 3 (02:27:54):
NFL teams do this to themselves, So I have no
sympathy for Anthony Richardson, but I have less sympathy for
the The Colts.

Speaker 4 (02:28:01):
Made their bed. This is the situation that they've created.

Speaker 3 (02:28:04):
Unto themselves, and now the savior is Daniel Jones.

Speaker 4 (02:28:07):
Good luck.

Speaker 2 (02:28:07):
I mean, your hope is that Daniel Jones turns into
a Baker Mayfield, a reclamation project. But to your point,
I will go back to two different people going into
the draft that I covered that year with Anthony Richardson,
two different people that cover college football at the highest
level and report on it, said the same thing, athletic
as can be, but just can't do the easy things.
Doesn't do the easy things. Well, that's gonna be hard

(02:28:29):
to fix. The two different people told me before that draft,
Will Levice gets in his own head and when he
makes a mistake, he can't get out of it, and
he's and I love you, man, like you just have
to tell him, hey, I love you, and we're going
to see another down and you have to walk him
out of his own crisis created for mistakes. That's two
different people that told me. And what have we seen
throughout the course of his career that one hundred percent echoed,

(02:28:52):
had three or four different people tell me that the
knock on Bryce Young coming out of college was that
he isn't great at figuring out where the blitz pressures
coming from and communicating offensive line assignments to the guys
in front of him. It's just really going to.

Speaker 4 (02:29:04):
Have to work on that.

Speaker 2 (02:29:05):
Well. First year in Carolina, young offensive line in front
of him absolutely gets murdered. Second year, they pick up
some experience in the offensive line to help him with that,
and what do you know, we start to see better
from It's alarming to me that I, as just a
guy covering the draft for years at this point for
ESPN and now Yahoo, can get this information by just
working the phones. Spend a week working the phones. The

(02:29:27):
hell are football teams like NFL teams spend the same
time working the phones. I don't understand why NFL teams
are so inaccurate at times at the quarterback position, when
all you have to do is talk to people around
the game at the college level, at the highest level,
and you get a really good breakdown of a lot
of these players.

Speaker 3 (02:29:46):
Yeah, but FITZI, you do You say that you don't,
but you do. You know the answer to this question
at Hubris. Yeah, there is no more ego soaked league
than the.

Speaker 4 (02:29:56):
National Football League.

Speaker 3 (02:29:57):
And I say that as somebody who has better than
part of the National Football League in some former fashion.

Speaker 4 (02:30:01):
For the past decade.

Speaker 3 (02:30:02):
All Right, this is as as pompous and as entitled
and as full of themselves as any league in professional sports,
collegiate sports, or otherwise. The NFL like I don't even
Mark Cuban got ahead of himself a couple of years
ago where he said the NFL was going to cave
in on itself because pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

(02:30:25):
It was a foolish thing for Mark Cuban to say,
understanding that football is still the most popular sport in America.
But what he was speaking on is the people running
that league. Now it's almost too big to fail the NFL.
Though NFL franchises fail all the time, and while the
business of football is good, the quality of football has
suffered significantly league wide because these organizations. And I thought

(02:30:49):
Kevin O'Connell, the head coach of the Vikings, was spot
on last year. I think it was an appearance on
Rich Eisen if I'm not mistaken, one of these national
shows where he was discussing, hey, we unders stand why
it is that these quarterbacks are failing because we are
failing them. We are putting them in impossible positions, we
are putting too much on them right out of the gate.

Speaker 4 (02:31:09):
There is burden from ownership because the owner wants the.

Speaker 3 (02:31:12):
First round quarterback or the first round player to play
right away. It's not just quarterbacks, it's players in general.
Compounded with the pressure that already exists in pro sports
with social media, and how much more that brings to
the table than ever before in any other era of
professional athletics. It's a pressure cooker so that these teams

(02:31:33):
can't get out of their own way. I you know,
I let them fail. Let organizations like the Colts fail.
Let organizations like the Titans, who spend two hundred and
twenty eight million dollars around Will Levis fail and be
the worst team in football and then trip and fall
back asswords into the number one overall, picking cam Ward.

(02:31:54):
Like your point earlier in the show about it's better
to be lucky than good. No league encompasses that more
than the NFL, because players will make organizations and coaches
look way smarter than they deserve to be.

Speaker 2 (02:32:07):
And in the process, the bad teams, the bad coaches
think the players are the problem. The bad players think
the coaches are the problem, The bad gms think everybody
around them is a problem. All through it. The problem
is many times, it's the ego of all of them involved.
And the very thing that so often seeps into culture

(02:32:27):
and locker rooms of like we're going to be a team,
we're gonna live and die, is one group. We all
need each other. You talk to actual people in actual
locker rooms, and you find out quickly that that's the
biggest coach speak. Like, just the fact is most of
these guys don't think they need each other. Most of
these guys think that people around them are hindering their
greatness of anything. And it's alarming to see how many

(02:32:47):
guys in locker rooms right now across the league are
just like, yeah, it's this idiot's fault. And it's never
this idiot looking in the mirror. It's this idiot the
person that's sitting across the locker room from them.

Speaker 4 (02:32:57):
I mean, you look at the Shamar Sewart situation.

Speaker 3 (02:32:59):
We've talked talked about that before, where players or players
are actively telling him, no, man, you're good, you're doing
the right thing. Look at this organiz this dopey organization.
They tried to do this to us too. And and
to your point, it's there is equal parts on players
as well. There's this It's going to be a fascinating
trickle up effect from college football, specifically college football to

(02:33:19):
the NFL. And I think you can make this argument
where we're talking about Cooper flag potentially being there's a
SPA Track projection out there, spa track dot Com, the
Salary Cap website, one of them where they have Cooper
Flagg as the first billionaire North American athlete just based
on contract earnings alone, and that's not even to do
with his collegiate earnings, where I think there was figures

(02:33:40):
out there somewhere a ballpark thirteen million dollars last year
at Duke that was floated out there. There are going
to be success stories, there are going to be way
more stories of failure for people or people athletes, people
around these athletes that just didn't know how to handle
the situation and didn't properly equip the players to do
the exact same.

Speaker 2 (02:33:57):
Maybe properly equipped. If they listed the best pregame show
Every weekend, I'm be sure to tune into Fox Sports
Radio's Countime, presented by bet MGM every Saturday and Sunday morning,
nine am to noon Eastern six to nine Pacific, counching
down from all the biggest games. Tune into Countime, presented
by bet MGM every Saturday and Sunday morning right here
on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app. Buck Rising
is gonna go get his coffee and when we come back,

(02:34:18):
would you rather makes its debut on The Fellas. That's
coming down to Fox Sports Radio combination of traditions here
on the Fellas, Buck looking at me confusingly by way, No,
my way is how we end every show. We play
my way. Oh God, Sinatra, come on. It's like, hey,

(02:34:38):
I did it my way like this? Have you ever
listened to the lyrics of this on you.

Speaker 4 (02:34:42):
Yell know, I know the lyrics. It just feels like
a funeral procession.

Speaker 2 (02:34:45):
No, it's not a funeral procession. It's a celebration of
everything that you've accomplished and done it your way across
the Pride, which is not dead yet. No, but for
the last four hours you've been killing me. That's all
I'm saying, Like.

Speaker 3 (02:34:57):
Boom, do you have a boot drop back there? But
can I terrible?

Speaker 2 (02:35:03):
We just can we just mute you? Okay, So we're
gonna take We're gonna bring that tradition in with a
bucking fit tradition. We like to play the best game
show in the world. We like to start it seeing
if we can actually say this in sync, and it
never works because there's a delay. But we'll try this book.
Are you ready? Are you ready to try this? Are
you ready?

Speaker 4 (02:35:20):
Are you ready ready?

Speaker 2 (02:35:22):
Let's try to play.

Speaker 4 (02:35:24):
Wood you.

Speaker 7 (02:35:30):
It's easy, guys, don't think I'm not Would you rather
buckets or fix it?

Speaker 8 (02:35:41):
Just get a pretty good guy? It's pretty good. He
did pretty good.

Speaker 2 (02:35:46):
She's got a whole list for anyone that hasn't heard
that shaded, a whole list. She's gonna give us some
would you rather questions? We're going to figure it out
along the way. What he got for us?

Speaker 4 (02:35:53):
First?

Speaker 8 (02:35:53):
Alrighty, the first one?

Speaker 9 (02:35:54):
Would you rather miss a wide open layup on National TV?
Or trip and fall during the coin toss of the
Super Bowl?

Speaker 3 (02:36:02):
Oh god, did you see the College World Series where
that ump that was getting ready to or was in
the process of ejecting the Coastal Carolina coach just completely
tripped up over himself and like, did this awkward? Like
it tried to correct it, like he didn't fall down
in front of everybody. I I think I would rather

(02:36:23):
trip and fall during the coin toss of the Super Bowl.
Missing a layup is so embarrassing, like just generally, like especially.

Speaker 4 (02:36:29):
Being from Indiana, Like you got to make the.

Speaker 3 (02:36:31):
Layup on a national broadcast, there would be no greater shame.

Speaker 2 (02:36:36):
I don't know, dude, but you know you're a white guy,
not particularly like you don't walk into the room and
people just say athlete. You know, like you miss a
white open.

Speaker 3 (02:36:45):
Are some Egyptian people definitely do not associate that with
the athletic crowis shout out Masala.

Speaker 4 (02:36:52):
That's about it.

Speaker 2 (02:36:52):
I mean, look, there's a level for me. If you
trip and fall during the coin toss of the Super Bowl,
that will be replayed every year for the rest of
your life. So I want the wide open layup miss
because there's enough missus, miss dunks, miss other things. It'll
be it'll be overshadowed at times like you trip and fall.
That's making the blooper reel on the NFL. I don't
want to be on the blooper reel.

Speaker 8 (02:37:14):
Ah realy, So would you rather got force next? Okay,
the next one? Would you rather fight one.

Speaker 9 (02:37:18):
Horse sized hamster or one hundred hamster sized horses?

Speaker 3 (02:37:26):
One hundred hamster sized horses? Because rodents freaked me out.
I would immediately lose just paste out of shirt, sheer
panic and fear.

Speaker 4 (02:37:35):
I know that they're you know there, it's a hamster.

Speaker 3 (02:37:37):
It's not a rat, right, but it's the closest thing
to a rat that you might find out there. And
I feel, you know, I would hate to do that
to the horses. Horses are lovely, majestic creatures, but you know,
if they're small, maybe you just step on them and
you don't think about it like an ant.

Speaker 4 (02:37:52):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:37:52):
Tiny horses, though, are going to be biting at me
like they like. And I don't want you.

Speaker 3 (02:37:56):
I don't think the giant horse sized hamster it would
bite your head off.

Speaker 4 (02:37:59):
It would cappitate you. What a terrible argument.

Speaker 2 (02:38:02):
Okay, so the tiny horse, they're gonna be champing at
the bit. By the way, that is the appropriate. It's
not chomping, it's champing. But here's here's what I'm gonna
do with the with the hamster that's horse sized, I'm
gonna last so it like the true cowboy I am,
and then in one move be able to ride it.
And then I'm riding a hamster around and I'm screaming yeeha.
The entire time. Nobody believes I can pull that off,

(02:38:24):
myself concluded, but I would try and that. So I'll
take the horse size hamster just so I can try
and ride it.

Speaker 3 (02:38:31):
I picture you like a Nashville bachelorette with a pink
cowboy hat and white cowboy boots on riding a hamster
around town.

Speaker 2 (02:38:39):
And you know what if we could have Pink Pony
Club playing in the background. I'm not mad at it,
all right, Bree, what's the next what's the next one?

Speaker 4 (02:38:45):
I'm don't laugh at that joke. Bring a terrible joke.
Don't laugh at that joke.

Speaker 9 (02:38:50):
I'm gonna change this one a little bit just for
my liking. Would you rather have to play an entire
baseball MLB game in high heels or kick a game
winning field goal wearing crocs?

Speaker 2 (02:39:06):
I mean, the game winning field goal is only one
kick getting around a hole, like playing an entire game
in heels. Man My fee can't handle that, Like, there's
no way. I'll take the crocks, the game winning field
goal and crocs only because there's no way that these
monster feet of my my you know, substantial nine and
a half sized shoe is going to handle being in

(02:39:26):
being in heels for an entire MLB game. Plus I'm
just imagining how having to run anything out in heels.
It just feels. I feel like I look like it's
a raf.

Speaker 3 (02:39:35):
I don't think I've worn a nine and a half
since fourth grade. Now I'm with him, though, I think
you I think you got to kick the I think
you got to kick.

Speaker 4 (02:39:42):
The field goal in the crocs.

Speaker 3 (02:39:43):
Like, even if you stub a toe, the pain from
the stub toe it is one of the greatest pains
out there in the world. But like, I don't know
how y'all do it in the heels.

Speaker 2 (02:39:51):
You're Griffin.

Speaker 3 (02:39:52):
Yeah, nothing seems more painful than just having to maneuver
around in heels, much less on a soccer pitch. I'm
assuming Brady that the heel is sinking into the turf,
Like you're not seamlessly running around the soccer pitch.

Speaker 8 (02:40:06):
No, absolutely not.

Speaker 9 (02:40:07):
But with crocs, I mean, are you really gonna have
any velocity to kick it up? So you're just gonna
look like a dork trying to kick something, But like,
how do you know you're actually gonna kick it up?

Speaker 4 (02:40:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:40:16):
Yeah, there's no velocity on this thing anyway, This is
you know, it's we're we're We're just trying to get
it off the ground.

Speaker 2 (02:40:23):
Okay.

Speaker 9 (02:40:23):
Last one. Would you rather have a pet that talks
it only insults you, or a pet that doesn't talk
but judges you silently.

Speaker 4 (02:40:30):
Oh, I already have one.

Speaker 2 (02:40:31):
I already got Yeah, it doesn't talk like Yeah, I
want one that talks to me like give, be me,
like belittle me the whole time. That's what I want.

Speaker 3 (02:40:39):
Again, the cat would probably bully me as well the
entire time, so it's a lose lose proposition either work.

Speaker 2 (02:40:46):
I do love the idea of your cat trash talking
when it wants it's poop scooted. Thanks so much for
hanging out with U. Keep with Fox Sports Ready all day.
We've been the Fellows on Fox Sports Radio.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Fox Sports Radio News

Host

Jonas Knox

Popular Podcasts

Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Fellas with Jason Fitz & Buck Reising talk Post NBA Draft Storylines, NFL Collusion Drama, Aaron Rodgers Retirement Comments & MORE!