Colin is joined by Nick Wright, host of “First Things First” on FS1 for part 2!
They start with some sports history, when college hoops and boxing used to be huge (5:00) and Colin tells the story of the first time he saw “the greatest prospect in NFL history” in person (12:45).
Then, they switch gears and Colin explains his theory for online discourse which is “Avoid Needy, Mute Crazy” (25:00). They debate why conspiracy theories have gained so much traction with the public (30:30) and why America faces a huge dilemma in not being able to agree on basic facts (34:00).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 1 (01:54):
So my first job in Las Vegas was for a
NBC affiliate and Mike Tyson was coming into his prime.
And so I got Hagler and Hearns and Sugar, Ray
Leonard and Roberto Durant and Mike Tyson. And I've said
this before, most people's first jobs out of college are
Midland Texas double A baseball, a minority hockey team, and
(02:17):
you're covering high school sports. I got Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray, Leonard, Hagler.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And Hern I'm so jealous. It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I mean, I tell people this all the time, is
that you know, I'm very grateful for my life that
I got a job as a salesperson in Vegas and
that became, you know, one ending of play by play,
and then I talked my way into doing weekend sports.
I had no experience and I had a lot of
energy and that was about it. But I I covered.
(02:45):
I can remember there were New York writers, USA today
was becoming a big thing. I can remember being at
fights and all the sporting events I've been to. Mike fights, Sugar, Ray, Leonard, Haguler,
Hearns were bigger than the Super Bowl. Now, not in ratings,
(03:07):
not in revenue, but when you were at those fights,
It's the only time I've gone to a sporting event,
and I was nervous. I was nervous for the fight.
I'm never nervous for my homes of the Niners. I'm
going to watch the game. It's I've told young people this.
There's two or three things that I wish twenty five
year old sports fans knew how fricking great boxing was
(03:30):
in the eighties. How good Al Michaels was on baseball.
Oh wow, al Michaels, I think is the best.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
So I don't know that one.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So the yeah, al Michaels to me, and it's Scully Costas,
Joe Buck Michaels. I think al Michaels is the best
baseball announcer ever.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
He was.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
It was just hard to explain. He had the voice
with the gambling, that everything that the chemistry and those
are the two things. Oh and also, I say this
it's hard to explain to people, but college basketball on
many weekends felt as the NBA.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
So that I am just old enough to remember the
tail end of like I remember so my dad. I'll
use a lot of people, a lot of people in
our business kind of fell in love with sports through
their father. I think you and I I don't want
to speak for you, but our kind of exceptions to that.
(04:26):
I don't know that your first love with sports was
through your dad. I'm not sure if I'm not again,
I'm gonna try to speak for you, but with me,
and to my dad's credit, my dad took me to
all the Chiefs games. And it's not like he wasn't
a sports fan, but my dad was such a Kansas
City Union Boss firefighter that hour. Like, that's what when
(04:49):
I think of my father, I think of being a
little kid, not him and I playing catch, not that
we didn't, but him and I literally going to picket
lines and standing and you know, doing those things, me
being going staying at the firehouse with him and literally
you know, like in the movies, like sliding down the firepool.
Those are those things. So I developed my love of
(05:10):
sports not directly because of my dad, because he was
what I would consider a casual sports fan. Knew of
the teams, liked him, but a casual sports fan on
Sundays would turn on the news well before the football
pregame show.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
It's who he was.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
And I remember being I must have been ten years
old at a restaurant like a sports bar, but you know,
like the place where kids can go and the whole
bar my dad included being captivated by Alan Iverson's Georgetown
(05:45):
basketball team. It was like this is this is what's
like the game of the weekend is John Thompson and
this kid freshman at Georgetown, Allen Iverson, and so like
that was to me. After that you had like Duncan
at Wake Forest and that was kind of the end
(06:07):
of college basket, not the end of college basketball, but
the end of college basketball being the ZEITGETX where you
know what I mean the But so I'm not old
enough to remember UNLV, like I don't think I watched,
but so you I mean you might have been in
Vegas during it, or maybe you had moved from Vegas
at that point. But UNLV and the rise of Duke
(06:27):
and obviously you know five Slama Jama as you mentioned
you wing with Georgetown, those teams. I'm you know, I
was either not born or didn't remember, but I caught
the back end of it.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Here's how good college basketball was. A team that started
Mark Jackson, Chris Mullen, Bill Wennington, a player named Walter
Berry who is the best junior college player in the country,
could not win the title. A team with a team
Clyde Drexler, Larry Mushu could not win the title. Most
(06:59):
teams were. You can YouTube five Slamma Jamin after our
podcast YouTube it. It's pro basketball people. People have no idea.
It's I mean, UNLV had Greg Anthony Stacy, Onngman and
Larry Johnson in the year of college and they got
beat by Duke. Yeah, three NBA guys and the other
(07:22):
guys played in like Europe or Asia and Moses Gurian
and David Butler and George I.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Mean, hell, the Fab five. The Fab five didn't win.
They won there before they got there, Weber, Juwan Howard,
Jalen Rose, Jimmy Jackson, they didn't win. Like, what do you? Yeah?
I mean, so that is I do? So I remember.
I'm trying to think of Mike because I the first
Super Bowl I ever watched live was what was the
(07:54):
first so I didn't Yeah, so it was Bill's Washington
because I remember I or the Art Monk Right, that
was a Super Bowl?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Right?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Do I have that wrong? No? I have that right.
Because the Bills lost to the Giants on the Norwood
field goal. I didn't see that. The next year they
lost to Washington. Then they lost to the Cowboys twice
in a row. So the first Super Bowl I ever
watched was Bill's Washington, which would have been nineteen ninety one.
The first NBA Finals I ever watched was Lakers Bulls,
(08:27):
so again the same nineteen ninety one. And I remember
I remember vividly Chris Weber's time out as a little
kid and being like, oh, this guy's gotta feel terrible, like, oh,
he really screwed that up, like I the and so
those are like everything that happened in sports before that
(08:51):
I had to learn about or watch on YouTube or
whatever it was. But that's where and I just have
these random you know, it's funny the things.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Remember.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I remember watching the Chiefs play and going upstairs to
my dad, who had the game on but wasn't really
paying attention, I guess, and saying, Dad, there's a guy
on the Chiefs who has seven sacks, Derek, and he
was Derek Thomas and he was like, no, he doesn't,
(09:22):
and I was like, yes he does. I know he does,
but I'm an eight year old kid or whatever. And literally,
no one in the history of the league had ever
had seven sacks in a game. And I remember being like,
Nick Son, you misheard. That's impossible. It's never happened, And
I was like, God, start it. I know I was
watching the game he had seven sacks. And then I
still every time whenever someone like Khalil Mack the last
(09:44):
year came close to whatever, it reminds me of that
very like I think I was like, was that the
first time I ever proved my dad wrong? Like when
I've told him this guy had seven sacks and he
didn't remember, he didn't.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I remember a very semi early memory of going to
a Seahawks game and they had the Raiders and division
at that time, and they had the Broncos in division
and they were really played the Raiders the great Raider
Team's tough. Not as much with Denver. And I remember
I was in the second row of the third deck
of the Kingdom, you know, we couldn't afford great seats
(10:17):
and watching John Elway with it we had binoculars. John
Elway with a half shirt on at the fifty yard
line inside the giant Seahawk turf for that horrible Kingdome
astro turf that was about that thick. It's an amazing player
to survivee and I was I thought I was going
to be a quarterback, so I loved I had, you know,
(10:39):
number twelve and watching John Elway at the fifty yard
line in warmups two hours before the game, flick the
ball and on a pretty consistent level, hit the orange flag.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
In the corner.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
They go a lot. I mean, I mean, boom boom.
It was like a great golf for hitting the stick.
And he would be like with a foot with the
yard hit it. And I can remember being like, oh
my god. And at the time Elway was this prodigy
because he was going to play for the Yankees. People
he is the greatest. He is the Cantus prospect, not
(11:14):
Andrew luck, not Trevor Lawrence. He is the greatest prospect
in the history of the lad John Elway. There's nothing
like it. He was smart, he was he ran. If
you go look at his highlights, it just people just
didn't play like that. He had the biggest arm. He moved,
he went to Stanford, but I remember that always sticks
with me, and there was almost an epiphany. It was
(11:36):
always like, that's the first pro athlete I watched and went, oh, oh,
that's what it's like. That's that's a pro I mean,
I've seen other Seahawks, but you know, they were against
other pro athletes. I've gone to Sonic games, I'd gone
to Husky games. That was the first time I went, oh,
that's different. That's what a pro athlete is. And so
(11:58):
it's funny the things. Remember that's one of my first memories. Again,
I went to sports long before that. That was one
of the first ones that I was like kind of
in awe of somebody.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
That's and that's the that was back when. So the
Seahawks at that point in time, it was, were in
the same division as the Chiefs. They were in the AFC,
you know what I mean. That was before the realignment.
They were in the AFC West, So we you know
what I mean that that was. That's another and then
we can get back on topic. Another massive one of
(12:31):
the biggest what ifs in NFL history that no one
thinks about is what if a year into Brady being
the starter in New England, the NFL didn't do realignment
because the Colts and the Patriots were in the same division, right,
and getting Brady Manning twice a year every year would
(12:53):
have been great, but it also would have put a
hard ceiling on one of them, you know what I mean,
Like they one of them would be guaranteed to be
on the road in the playoffs the whole time. Every
like that would have been. But the NFL not because
of them, because we didn't know what Brady was going
to be at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It was.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
You know, they they went from the East West and
Central to the East West, North and South, and they
went from five and sixteen divisions or five team divisions
to four team divisions. And so we still got Brady
Manning every year because they both won their division every year,
but we would have had a home at home every
year Brady Manning in the AFC East, Which is also
(13:35):
one of my favorite like fun facts, which is the
Colts have won the AFC East more recently than the Jets,
and the Colts haven't been in the division.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Years. So much of life is circumstantial. I said this today.
There have been eight dynasties in the NFL, six absolutes
and then two kind of The two kind of are
Joe gibbson Washington and Elway and Shanahan.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Shanahan.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Those are close. I kind of count the other six
are you know Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, Bellichick, Andy Reid,
and Mahomes. And I think I'm missing one here, but
I said every single coach Jimmy Johnson basically created the trade.
(14:25):
Bill Walsh the West Coast offense. Andy Reid is the
great play designer of his generation. Belichick the greatest coach,
the Shanahan's Own run game. Joe Gibbs is really one
of the structurally one of the greatest coaches that didn't
win with superstar quarterbacks. But of those eight three Super Bowls,
three different quarterbacks. Of those eight dynasties, not all of
(14:45):
them have great quarterbacks, all of them have great coaches.
And I said, Brady won his six Super Bowls in
New England by an average of four and a half points.
Bellichick gets credit. I said, think about Mahomes. He's been
blown out in one Super Bowl one two by three,
and in the three point wins he hasn't necessarily played great.
And there's been a moment in each of them that
you're like, how is sky Moore wide open in the
(15:08):
red zone? That's it? We read like.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
So And the one he didn't win by three, he
was down ten with six minutes left, and then they
just ripped off three touchdowns in six minutes and they
went but they yeah, they were all in the balance.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yes, in the fourth And I said, we love we
give these quarterbacks, you know, this great resounding acceptance and
ascension in our lives. And I said, just just take
Brady and Mahomes, who have dominated football for twenty five years.
Tom won several Super Bowls. He's only been in one
shootout and he lost that one. Basically the defense wrapped
(15:47):
up to some degree the offense in every game he played.
And I said, all I know is when I watch
Andy Reid and Mahomes and Super Bowls, there becomes a
moment in every Super Bowl in the red zone where
a number four received is wide open.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
Wide open.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah that's right.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
But so here's so here, here is something. This is
really part of my Lebron Jordan argument, but it has
metastasized into something more, which is I'm trying to I'm
gonna I've never talked to I've never done this on
(16:24):
the air, So I'll just kind of talk it through
with you because it's really like me trying to set
a trap for you know, like like I've told you
the Lebron Jordan argument is like the peppermin spice latte.
A couple times a year, it hits the spot.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
You don't want to overdo it.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
If you ask somebody, hey, who's the greatest I don't know,
college basketball player of all time? Any everyone's going to
say the right answer, and they're gonna say, well, Lou
Elson or Kareem abdul Jabbar. And if it's not him,
Bill waltonly, okay, cool, who's a great football player of
all time?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well it's Tom Brady, Okay, got it. Cool.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Who's the greatest basketball player of all time?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well it's Michael Jordan. Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So you're on the record all those things.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Totally unrelated question because one of the odds, you know,
the greatest of the greatest would always.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Find each other.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
Who's the greatest college basketball coach ever?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
You have Bill Walton?
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Okay, who's the greatest football coach ever?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh? You have Bill Belichick?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Who's the greatest NBA coach ever? Oh you have Phil Jackson.
Wasn't that fucking unbelievable? Does the two goats happen to
walk into each other's lives?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Just like?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
So wait, a second year, or is it possible that maybe,
just maybe there was a coach better than one of
those three but doesn't have the ring count, or a
player better than one of those three. Is maybe while
you're trying to be really analytical and hyper, no, I
get it, you're really just being like, right, you're really
(17:54):
just saying, well, this guy won the most so he's
the best player. And his coach who was along for
the ride, or vice versa, so he's the best coach. Like,
can we pause for a moment and say, is it
on the board that Bill Parcells is the greatest football coach?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Ever?
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think it's on the board. I think you could,
you know what I mean, It's certainly you can make
an argument for it. Certainly you can make an argument
for Joe Gibbs. You can make an argument for other people,
just like if you're being honest, you can make an
argument for whether it's one day gonna be Patrick Mahomes
even if he doesn't have seven Super Bowls or already
(18:32):
is Lebron James. Like there there there is a level
of sports discourse that has never been smarter, which is
like our ability to really analyze data and see things
and then there's a level of sports discourse that has
really gotten to its dumbest possible point, which is quite
(18:58):
I don't know, man, the who has the most championships
has to definitively clearly be the best ever in a
team sport, and I'm like, guys, we golf is an
individual sport, and most people think that Tiger was better
than Jack because it's like, oh, I don't know, I
watched it, I saw it. I don't care literally individual.
(19:18):
It's one guy, and we're like, we're not even counting
the rings there, but we're doing it with everything else.
And it's just the amazing happenstance of the greatest player
met the greatest coach in every sport we argue got
about and it's probably true in baseball too, But I
don't even know who was managing the Yankees when Babe
Ruth was there, because I don't care about baseball undred
years ago. But it's probably Casey Stingle or something, and
(19:40):
everybody loves him.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Sports fans, I think I kind of think the same
way about politics. It's never been smart or if you
pay attention to the right people. I think sports fans
have never been smarter. If you pay attention to the
right people. Sports media has never been more analytical and
thoughtful if you pay attention to the right people. Now
(20:14):
a lot of what's happened is this sort of mush
that bloggers have become media. They're kind of fans, and
so I'm not really comfortable with that space. I kind
of poke people with USC football, but I don't live
and die with it. But there is kind of a
discomfort for me, like media is.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Yeah, me too, I'd never want to openly root for a.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Team, but I'm okay with from a different generation. But
I kind of think that what we have in America
right now, there's never been better food if you go
to the right places, better discourse if you find the
right people, smarter media, more intellectual thought. But you just
have so much available because it used to be you
(21:00):
see in a.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Case, there used to be real gatekeepers.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Well there were also barriers to entry, That's what I mean.
Now it's just anybody says anything. I can talk to
the President, my neighbor could talk to Jay z or
Michael Jordan. And so we've opened up, which I think
is part of what America is. We have opened up.
(21:23):
Everybody gets a voice. But let's be honest, most people's
voice isn't that intriguing. I kind of think the discourse
of fans and media is better than ever if you
just find the right people. That's why I always say
avoid needy, mute crazy, is that people haven't earned the right.
(21:44):
You have to earn the right for me to pay
attention to you.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
You have a.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Right to have an opinion. But I'm going to avoid
needy people, and I'm going to mute crazy people. And
if you do that on any platform or any part
of your life, it could be anything from you know,
bad doctors, the bad pundits politically, to bad actors on
social I think there's never been more brilliant people and
(22:08):
more bad actors, and so it's individually edit them in
and out of your life.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
So I think that there is you can, with the
right you know, culling process, find more unique, true expert
opinion on almost any topic than any time in world history.
(22:36):
The downside to that is in the any time three fifteen,
twenty years ago, you didn't have to really worry. Is
what I'm reading actually the opposite of true. That's right,
(22:57):
you know what I mean? Like, there is people and
so I do there was a point like at the
early stages of the Internet, the internet was an almost
perfect source of information, like they're the only like random
people couldn't put things on it. Now, it didn't have
all the information, but everything on there was accurate, you
(23:19):
know what I mean. It was like it was like
one big encyclopedia Britannica and so. And I just dated
myself with that reference.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
But my responsibility is I feel the responsibility is need
to find it or block it, not for the patrons
to deliver it, because it's unrealistic to ask people who
have jobs to put in the time. We're all tribal,
we've all.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Loved one hundred percent, agree one hundred percent. But I
also think that there is a there. I do think
that something that is an important part of now it
should be you know, education in America is media literacy
(24:04):
is understanding like that there are the ways to check
and verify if what you're seeing is accurate and true
and if there are real credentials behind it. Now, again,
I want to be very clear on this. I am
(24:25):
not I am not into censoring basically anything, and I
am not talking about oh that opinion is out.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Of the what do you call that?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
The area of like accepted debate, I forget, you know,
but there's like a fancy word for it that I
was gonna use. But instead of thinking of a fancy
word now I can't even think of It doesn't matter regardless,
I'm not saying anything should be forbidden. What I do
feel about strongly is unless we are going to have
(25:04):
labels like mandated, which we're not going to on like
the differen between actual fact and opinion, then we need
to help people who are not trained in the media
to be able to differentiate what is fact and opinion.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
I think that's idealistic. I think people knowingly, stubbornly are
just going to believe what they want to believe. And
I think we have those people in our family. I
don't think some people are not coachable, some people don't
want to learn, you know, conspiracy theories. Psychologists have found
what conspiracy theories are. People want more predictability in life.
(25:44):
People are more comfortable with predictability, and as life changes,
and it's really changing in our lives over the last
twenty years, with is much more fluid and changing. People
are seeking dependable and comfort and conspiracy theories rationalize and
give them a foundation that they're comfortable with even at
(26:05):
they're complete bs. So psychologists who have studied conspiracy theories,
these are often people that are dealing with some anxiety,
some life changes, they don't love, and they want to
find things that stabilize their life. That's why make America
great again. Basically, he's saying, you're uncomfortable, Let's go back
(26:26):
to when you were comfortable. And I think that's a
lot of what conspiracy theories are. Some have proven to
be true, but they're people trying to find comfort and predictability.
So I'm going to make a story up that makes
me less anxious.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yes, and no, that's I mean, you're right, but I
still I still wish that. And I am hopeful that
as the world changes and the media changes and what
we have access to change, that people become better at
(27:06):
naturally differentiating obvious bullshit from fact. And maybe I'm like.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I I'm not hopeful for that.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
You think so, well, then I I don't know then
that that to me is worth Like I again that
I've said this to you years ago, but I'll say it.
I'll say it again because you now, I try not
to be a jealous person. I think it's important to
not have like it's listen, I'm incredibly lucky and whatever.
(27:39):
But there are a few things that I'm jealous of,
and one of them is that you have been on
Bill Maher's show. Because for a long time, that specific
show is like a bucket list thing. Uh and this,
so I say this with that prefacing it. But when
(28:00):
I loved that show the most, it would be a
debate about.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
What to do.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
We all agreed about what happened or what is going on,
and then you would have Ann Coulter and James Carville
yelling at each other about the solutions. And I found
that incredibly captivating and I liked that it didn't I
mean Mars obviously at least an end name, you know, progressive,
(28:28):
but he brought on everybody. I loved it. I find
a lot of those shows now very difficult to enjoy
because the debate about what to do has a hard
time getting off the ground because everyone's fucking arguing about
what happened? People are you know what I mean? The
(28:49):
and it is that part to me is not sustainable.
It is it. And so you I told you this
five years ago that you know, I always thought I
will do sports for as long as it takes because
I love it, until I am a big enough name
and have enough financial security to go do something. In politics,
(29:14):
as I mentioned before, from a union family, I have real,
you know, strong beliefs on certain things, and I have
lost some of the passion for that. And in part
it is because the arguments don't seem to anymore be
about what needs to be done, and instead they are
(29:36):
about what actually happened, I mean, and that is problematic,
like the if I just to finish my thought, I'm
sorry if in sports, if on today's TV show when
we were talking about if the Cowboys are screwing up
by not having signed CD Micah or Dak someone on
(29:58):
the desk was like, how can you you say they
screwed up when they won the Super Bowl? And I'm like, huh.
They're like, no, they won the Super Bowl. I'm like, no,
they didn't. The Chiefs did. It's like, no, the Cowboys
won the Super Bowl. That's an awful debate. It's like
it's like and that's what so much of politics has
become is we're just like, we can't agree on a
(30:19):
set of facts to then discuss what the best move is.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah. I mean there's a big chunk of Americans that
believe the insurrection on January sixth was just a County
Fair fireworks show that went a little sideways. Yeah, yeah,
that's not That's not what happened when I turned it on.
That's not what happened your tribal. You have a president
you like now a former president. Yeah. But Keanu Reeves
(30:46):
said something recently. I just I'm not again, I avoid needy,
I'm mute, crazy, I just stay out of it.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
The Reeves thing where he said if someone says one
plus one equals five, I say, good for you.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Oh yeah, I'm the same one. It's like, you haven't
earned my time, and so you argue amongst yourselves. But
I'm an to point in my life, I don't need
that opinion. It's not warranted. It hasn't earned my time,
and so I don't get frustrated by it. And so
I have enough people in my life that I just don't.
I'm going to have a great life. I'm not going
to argue with people who think January sixth, you know,
(31:21):
it was a couple of sparklers that caught fire to
a newspaper.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
So yeah, so and that, but that one is, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It's crazy.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
That one is a scary one for me in this
regard because it was not long ago and the whole
country watched it on TV. You don't like that. So
that one, that's one of those things where I'm like, man,
it's like.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
You know when this happened the first time Bobby Knight
grabs a player and they find film with it, buy
the neck at practice And I worked with a guy
who was a Bobby Knight fan and said, big deal.
And I said, and he got mad at me. I
said on the air, what if it was your son?
Can I go grab your son like that? No? Oh,
I said, And it really hit me. People were foreign
(32:08):
against Bobby Knight. It was polarizing. There was video of
him grabbing a player's at Patrick Reid or something.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
I think, is I forget the yeah, I remember, of course, yeah,
And people defended Bobby Knight, and it was the first
time I thought, we've got video, we have video of
an inappropriate act.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
And so I think it's always existed, but the people
on the wrong side of things have more amplification for
their opinions. But there was always a crazy town side.
There's always been a crazy part of town. So there's
parts of town in every city it's a little crazy,
and those people just have a microphone.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
I think there are a lot of things that are
better than they used to be, and I think there's
too much doom and gloom. I agree with that general sentiment.
One place where I do feel like we are not
trending positively is I'm actually okay with sports fans blindly
(33:06):
loyally being like that's my team. I support them, Like
you know what I mean? You fired the coach. You
must have been an idiot. You didn't go for it
on fourth down. Like I'm a fan of Auburn football,
and damn it, what they do is right. That's part
of kind of the charm of sports fandom. It's not
(33:26):
how I operate as a sports fan, but I get it.
But supporting either politicians or political parties like they're your
sports team is dangerous. And not being able to say
I disagree with my team on this one is walks
(33:50):
us down a crummy pat Listen, I am. I am
about as liberal as a guy as you're gonna meet.
And Maine the mainstream and there are things either because
they are not liberal enough or too liberal for my
liking that the Democratic Party does that I'm like, disagree
with it. But I think that has become very difficult
(34:13):
for people because there has become so much sometimes deserved
animosity for the other side that it's less about do
I agree with my side and more about I want
the other side to be miserable. Like I think there
are a lot of people who are planning to vote
for Trump that find him objectionable but hate what they
(34:37):
think Liberals are so much that they're like, I want
them in pain, and so I'm going to deal with it.
And I think that is a dangerous road to walk.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, and I one of the things Bill marsh says,
and I believe it if you've listened to me for
thirty years on the air, I don't believe I've ever changed.
I think I'm socially left, fiscally moderate conservative. I don't
think I've ever changed. I'd vote for either side. I
tend to vote more Democrat than conservative. And some of
that is the conservative candidates over twenty years have gotten
(35:07):
weaker and weaker. And that is not to say all
the Democratic candidates have been, you know, great I think.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
I think the best I think that we are in
the listen, I am more pro Biden than most. I
also think it is there are very very very few
jobs in America. And I understand you're not supposed to
say this, but it's just true that there are very
(35:34):
few high level jobs that you'd say my top choice
of a field of ten thousand is likely to be
someone who was born in the forties. I think that's unlikely.
It just just is. But in my opinion, I don't
think that the Democratic Party, while the candidates have not
(35:58):
always been excellent, I don't think it's general tenants have
shifted much in my lifetime. I think that they have
gone a little bit to the left, but not dramatically.
While right now, the two Republican presidents of my childhood,
Ronald Reagan and George Bush's father, would be run out
(36:22):
of this Republican Party on a rail ques Ronald Reagan
talking about We're a country for all people and all
these things, the thing George H. W. Bush with the
things he believed in, and again I don't think those
were great presidents at all, but the idea that they
could get on a stage with Stefanic the lady from
(36:44):
Long Island and Donald Trump and that the clown from
Texas that is always repping for him, not even Ted Cruz,
the other one. Those guys would be like, you, pansy,
what are you a dare Rhino? They and so I
just I think it's gotten. I think we've And that
was in short order because Mitt Romney was not that Mitt,
I mean was Mitt Romney was just he just wanted
(37:06):
to be Ronald Reagan. Everything he did he wanted to
be Ronald Reagan. He was like Ronald Reagan. Everybody loves him.
He kind of looked like me, can I be Ronald Reagan?
America was like, no, you can't. Sorry, But that was
not that long ago. And now, in my opinion, we've
lost the plot entirely. Sorry to be super objectively political,
but it's it's you know, we're six months from an election,
(37:27):
and I don't know how this thing's gonna go.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Perhaps not well, ordering one, perhaps not well, buddy, perhaps
not well.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
And I don't own seven houses throughout the world. I'm
just here. I still gotta I gotta, I gotta figure
it out. Perhaps not well, We'll see. I don't know, man,
God bless, Sorry you by the way, feel free to
addit this out.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Or leave it in, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
I like our political stuff today more than sports. I'm
good with it.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Okay, whatever you want. Good to see it.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
God Volume. Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed
the podcast, take a moment rate and review
The volume. All right, we are getting closer to crowning
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Speaker 1 (01:54):
So my first job in Las Vegas was for a
NBC affiliate and Mike Tyson was coming into his prime.
And so I got Hagler and Hearns and Sugar, Ray
Leonard and Roberto Durant and Mike Tyson. And I've said
this before, most people's first jobs out of college are
Midland Texas double A baseball, a minority hockey team, and
(02:17):
you're covering high school sports. I got Mike Tyson, Sugar Ray, Leonard, Hagler.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And Hern I'm so jealous. It was amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
I mean, I tell people this all the time, is
that you know, I'm very grateful for my life that
I got a job as a salesperson in Vegas and
that became, you know, one ending of play by play,
and then I talked my way into doing weekend sports.
I had no experience and I had a lot of
energy and that was about it. But I I covered.
(02:45):
I can remember there were New York writers, USA today
was becoming a big thing. I can remember being at
fights and all the sporting events I've been to. Mike fights, Sugar, Ray, Leonard, Haguler,
Hearns were bigger than the Super Bowl. Now, not in ratings,
(03:07):
not in revenue, but when you were at those fights,
It's the only time I've gone to a sporting event,
and I was nervous. I was nervous for the fight.
I'm never nervous for my homes of the Niners. I'm
going to watch the game. It's I've told young people this.
There's two or three things that I wish twenty five
year old sports fans knew how fricking great boxing was
(03:30):
in the eighties. How good Al Michaels was on baseball.
Oh wow, al Michaels, I think is the best.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
So I don't know that one.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
So the yeah, al Michaels to me, and it's Scully Costas,
Joe Buck Michaels. I think al Michaels is the best
baseball announcer ever.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
He was.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
It was just hard to explain. He had the voice
with the gambling, that everything that the chemistry and those
are the two things. Oh and also, I say this
it's hard to explain to people, but college basketball on
many weekends felt as the NBA.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
So that I am just old enough to remember the
tail end of like I remember so my dad. I'll
use a lot of people, a lot of people in
our business kind of fell in love with sports through
their father. I think you and I I don't want
to speak for you, but our kind of exceptions to that.
(04:26):
I don't know that your first love with sports was
through your dad. I'm not sure if I'm not again,
I'm gonna try to speak for you, but with me,
and to my dad's credit, my dad took me to
all the Chiefs games. And it's not like he wasn't
a sports fan, but my dad was such a Kansas
City Union Boss firefighter that hour. Like, that's what when
(04:49):
I think of my father, I think of being a
little kid, not him and I playing catch, not that
we didn't, but him and I literally going to picket
lines and standing and you know, doing those things, me
being going staying at the firehouse with him and literally
you know, like in the movies, like sliding down the firepool.
Those are those things. So I developed my love of
(05:10):
sports not directly because of my dad, because he was
what I would consider a casual sports fan. Knew of
the teams, liked him, but a casual sports fan on
Sundays would turn on the news well before the football
pregame show.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
It's who he was.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
And I remember being I must have been ten years
old at a restaurant like a sports bar, but you know,
like the place where kids can go and the whole
bar my dad included being captivated by Alan Iverson's Georgetown
(05:45):
basketball team. It was like this is this is what's
like the game of the weekend is John Thompson and
this kid freshman at Georgetown, Allen Iverson, and so like
that was to me. After that you had like Duncan
at Wake Forest and that was kind of the end
(06:07):
of college basket, not the end of college basketball, but
the end of college basketball being the ZEITGETX where you
know what I mean the But so I'm not old
enough to remember UNLV, like I don't think I watched,
but so you I mean you might have been in
Vegas during it, or maybe you had moved from Vegas
at that point. But UNLV and the rise of Duke
(06:27):
and obviously you know five Slama Jama as you mentioned
you wing with Georgetown, those teams. I'm you know, I
was either not born or didn't remember, but I caught
the back end of it.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Here's how good college basketball was. A team that started
Mark Jackson, Chris Mullen, Bill Wennington, a player named Walter
Berry who is the best junior college player in the country,
could not win the title. A team with a team
Clyde Drexler, Larry Mushu could not win the title. Most
(06:59):
teams were. You can YouTube five Slamma Jamin after our
podcast YouTube it. It's pro basketball people. People have no idea.
It's I mean, UNLV had Greg Anthony Stacy, Onngman and
Larry Johnson in the year of college and they got
beat by Duke. Yeah, three NBA guys and the other
(07:22):
guys played in like Europe or Asia and Moses Gurian
and David Butler and George I.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Mean, hell, the Fab five. The Fab five didn't win.
They won there before they got there, Weber, Juwan Howard,
Jalen Rose, Jimmy Jackson, they didn't win. Like, what do you? Yeah?
I mean, so that is I do? So I remember.
I'm trying to think of Mike because I the first
Super Bowl I ever watched live was what was the
(07:54):
first so I didn't Yeah, so it was Bill's Washington
because I remember I or the Art Monk Right, that
was a Super Bowl?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Right?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Do I have that wrong? No? I have that right.
Because the Bills lost to the Giants on the Norwood
field goal. I didn't see that. The next year they
lost to Washington. Then they lost to the Cowboys twice
in a row. So the first Super Bowl I ever
watched was Bill's Washington, which would have been nineteen ninety one.
The first NBA Finals I ever watched was Lakers Bulls,
(08:27):
so again the same nineteen ninety one. And I remember
I remember vividly Chris Weber's time out as a little
kid and being like, oh, this guy's gotta feel terrible, like, oh,
he really screwed that up, like I the and so
those are like everything that happened in sports before that
(08:51):
I had to learn about or watch on YouTube or
whatever it was. But that's where and I just have
these random you know, it's funny the things.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Remember.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I remember watching the Chiefs play and going upstairs to
my dad, who had the game on but wasn't really
paying attention, I guess, and saying, Dad, there's a guy
on the Chiefs who has seven sacks, Derek, and he
was Derek Thomas and he was like, no, he doesn't,
(09:22):
and I was like, yes he does. I know he does,
but I'm an eight year old kid or whatever. And literally,
no one in the history of the league had ever
had seven sacks in a game. And I remember being like,
Nick Son, you misheard. That's impossible. It's never happened, And
I was like, God, start it. I know I was
watching the game he had seven sacks. And then I
still every time whenever someone like Khalil Mack the last
(09:44):
year came close to whatever, it reminds me of that
very like I think I was like, was that the
first time I ever proved my dad wrong? Like when
I've told him this guy had seven sacks and he
didn't remember, he didn't.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
I remember a very semi early memory of going to
a Seahawks game and they had the Raiders and division
at that time, and they had the Broncos in division
and they were really played the Raiders the great Raider
Team's tough. Not as much with Denver. And I remember
I was in the second row of the third deck
of the Kingdom, you know, we couldn't afford great seats
(10:17):
and watching John Elway with it we had binoculars. John
Elway with a half shirt on at the fifty yard
line inside the giant Seahawk turf for that horrible Kingdome
astro turf that was about that thick. It's an amazing player
to survivee and I was I thought I was going
to be a quarterback, so I loved I had, you know,
(10:39):
number twelve and watching John Elway at the fifty yard
line in warmups two hours before the game, flick the
ball and on a pretty consistent level, hit the orange flag.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
In the corner.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
They go a lot. I mean, I mean, boom boom.
It was like a great golf for hitting the stick.
And he would be like with a foot with the
yard hit it. And I can remember being like, oh
my god. And at the time Elway was this prodigy
because he was going to play for the Yankees. People
he is the greatest. He is the Cantus prospect, not
(11:14):
Andrew luck, not Trevor Lawrence. He is the greatest prospect
in the history of the lad John Elway. There's nothing
like it. He was smart, he was he ran. If
you go look at his highlights, it just people just
didn't play like that. He had the biggest arm. He moved,
he went to Stanford, but I remember that always sticks
with me, and there was almost an epiphany. It was
(11:36):
always like, that's the first pro athlete I watched and went, oh, oh,
that's what it's like. That's that's a pro I mean,
I've seen other Seahawks, but you know, they were against
other pro athletes. I've gone to Sonic games, I'd gone
to Husky games. That was the first time I went, oh,
that's different. That's what a pro athlete is. And so
(11:58):
it's funny the things. Remember that's one of my first memories. Again,
I went to sports long before that. That was one
of the first ones that I was like kind of
in awe of somebody.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
That's unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
That's and that's the that was back when. So the
Seahawks at that point in time, it was, were in
the same division as the Chiefs. They were in the AFC,
you know what I mean. That was before the realignment.
They were in the AFC West, So we you know
what I mean that that was. That's another and then
we can get back on topic. Another massive one of
(12:31):
the biggest what ifs in NFL history that no one
thinks about is what if a year into Brady being
the starter in New England, the NFL didn't do realignment
because the Colts and the Patriots were in the same division, right,
and getting Brady Manning twice a year every year would
(12:53):
have been great, but it also would have put a
hard ceiling on one of them, you know what I mean,
Like they one of them would be guaranteed to be
on the road in the playoffs the whole time. Every
like that would have been. But the NFL not because
of them, because we didn't know what Brady was going
to be at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It was.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
You know, they they went from the East West and
Central to the East West, North and South, and they
went from five and sixteen divisions or five team divisions
to four team divisions. And so we still got Brady
Manning every year because they both won their division every year,
but we would have had a home at home every
year Brady Manning in the AFC East, Which is also
(13:35):
one of my favorite like fun facts, which is the
Colts have won the AFC East more recently than the Jets,
and the Colts haven't been in the division.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Years. So much of life is circumstantial. I said this today.
There have been eight dynasties in the NFL, six absolutes
and then two kind of The two kind of are
Joe gibbson Washington and Elway and Shanahan.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Shanahan.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Those are close. I kind of count the other six
are you know Lombardi, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh, Bellichick, Andy Reid,
and Mahomes. And I think I'm missing one here, but
I said every single coach Jimmy Johnson basically created the trade.
(14:25):
Bill Walsh the West Coast offense. Andy Reid is the
great play designer of his generation. Belichick the greatest coach,
the Shanahan's Own run game. Joe Gibbs is really one
of the structurally one of the greatest coaches that didn't
win with superstar quarterbacks. But of those eight three Super Bowls,
three different quarterbacks. Of those eight dynasties, not all of
(14:45):
them have great quarterbacks, all of them have great coaches.
And I said, Brady won his six Super Bowls in
New England by an average of four and a half points.
Bellichick gets credit. I said, think about Mahomes. He's been
blown out in one Super Bowl one two by three,
and in the three point wins he hasn't necessarily played great.
And there's been a moment in each of them that
you're like, how is sky Moore wide open in the
(15:08):
red zone? That's it? We read like.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
So And the one he didn't win by three, he
was down ten with six minutes left, and then they
just ripped off three touchdowns in six minutes and they
went but they yeah, they were all in the balance.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yes, in the fourth And I said, we love we
give these quarterbacks, you know, this great resounding acceptance and
ascension in our lives. And I said, just just take
Brady and Mahomes, who have dominated football for twenty five years.
Tom won several Super Bowls. He's only been in one
shootout and he lost that one. Basically the defense wrapped
(15:47):
up to some degree the offense in every game he played.
And I said, all I know is when I watch
Andy Reid and Mahomes and Super Bowls, there becomes a
moment in every Super Bowl in the red zone where
a number four received is wide open.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
Wide open.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah that's right.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
But so here's so here, here is something. This is
really part of my Lebron Jordan argument, but it has
metastasized into something more, which is I'm trying to I'm
gonna I've never talked to I've never done this on
(16:24):
the air, So I'll just kind of talk it through
with you because it's really like me trying to set
a trap for you know, like like I've told you
the Lebron Jordan argument is like the peppermin spice latte.
A couple times a year, it hits the spot.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
You don't want to overdo it.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
If you ask somebody, hey, who's the greatest I don't know,
college basketball player of all time? Any everyone's going to
say the right answer, and they're gonna say, well, Lou
Elson or Kareem abdul Jabbar. And if it's not him,
Bill waltonly, okay, cool, who's a great football player of
all time?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well it's Tom Brady, Okay, got it. Cool.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Who's the greatest basketball player of all time?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well it's Michael Jordan. Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
So you're on the record all those things.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Totally unrelated question because one of the odds, you know,
the greatest of the greatest would always.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Find each other.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
Who's the greatest college basketball coach ever?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
You have Bill Walton?
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Okay, who's the greatest football coach ever?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh? You have Bill Belichick?
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Who's the greatest NBA coach ever? Oh you have Phil Jackson.
Wasn't that fucking unbelievable? Does the two goats happen to
walk into each other's lives?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Just like?
Speaker 4 (17:32):
So wait, a second year, or is it possible that maybe,
just maybe there was a coach better than one of
those three but doesn't have the ring count, or a
player better than one of those three. Is maybe while
you're trying to be really analytical and hyper, no, I
get it, you're really just being like, right, you're really
(17:54):
just saying, well, this guy won the most so he's
the best player. And his coach who was along for
the ride, or vice versa, so he's the best coach. Like,
can we pause for a moment and say, is it
on the board that Bill Parcells is the greatest football coach?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Ever?
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think it's on the board. I think you could,
you know what I mean, It's certainly you can make
an argument for it. Certainly you can make an argument
for Joe Gibbs. You can make an argument for other people,
just like if you're being honest, you can make an
argument for whether it's one day gonna be Patrick Mahomes
even if he doesn't have seven Super Bowls or already
(18:32):
is Lebron James. Like there there there is a level
of sports discourse that has never been smarter, which is
like our ability to really analyze data and see things
and then there's a level of sports discourse that has
really gotten to its dumbest possible point, which is quite
(18:58):
I don't know, man, the who has the most championships
has to definitively clearly be the best ever in a
team sport, and I'm like, guys, we golf is an
individual sport, and most people think that Tiger was better
than Jack because it's like, oh, I don't know, I
watched it, I saw it. I don't care literally individual.
(19:18):
It's one guy, and we're like, we're not even counting
the rings there, but we're doing it with everything else.
And it's just the amazing happenstance of the greatest player
met the greatest coach in every sport we argue got
about and it's probably true in baseball too, But I
don't even know who was managing the Yankees when Babe
Ruth was there, because I don't care about baseball undred
years ago. But it's probably Casey Stingle or something, and
(19:40):
everybody loves him.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Sports fans, I think I kind of think the same
way about politics. It's never been smart or if you
pay attention to the right people. I think sports fans
have never been smarter. If you pay attention to the
right people. Sports media has never been more analytical and
thoughtful if you pay attention to the right people. Now
(20:14):
a lot of what's happened is this sort of mush
that bloggers have become media. They're kind of fans, and
so I'm not really comfortable with that space. I kind
of poke people with USC football, but I don't live
and die with it. But there is kind of a
discomfort for me, like media is.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Yeah, me too, I'd never want to openly root for a.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Team, but I'm okay with from a different generation. But
I kind of think that what we have in America
right now, there's never been better food if you go
to the right places, better discourse if you find the
right people, smarter media, more intellectual thought. But you just
have so much available because it used to be you
(21:00):
see in a.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Case, there used to be real gatekeepers.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Well there were also barriers to entry, That's what I mean.
Now it's just anybody says anything. I can talk to
the President, my neighbor could talk to Jay z or
Michael Jordan. And so we've opened up, which I think
is part of what America is. We have opened up.
(21:23):
Everybody gets a voice. But let's be honest, most people's
voice isn't that intriguing. I kind of think the discourse
of fans and media is better than ever if you
just find the right people. That's why I always say
avoid needy, mute crazy, is that people haven't earned the right.
(21:44):
You have to earn the right for me to pay
attention to you.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
You have a.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Right to have an opinion. But I'm going to avoid
needy people, and I'm going to mute crazy people. And
if you do that on any platform or any part
of your life, it could be anything from you know,
bad doctors, the bad pundits politically, to bad actors on
social I think there's never been more brilliant people and
(22:08):
more bad actors, and so it's individually edit them in
and out of your life.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
So I think that there is you can, with the
right you know, culling process, find more unique, true expert
opinion on almost any topic than any time in world history.
(22:36):
The downside to that is in the any time three fifteen,
twenty years ago, you didn't have to really worry. Is
what I'm reading actually the opposite of true. That's right,
(22:57):
you know what I mean? Like, there is people and
so I do there was a point like at the
early stages of the Internet, the internet was an almost
perfect source of information, like they're the only like random
people couldn't put things on it. Now, it didn't have
all the information, but everything on there was accurate, you
(23:19):
know what I mean. It was like it was like
one big encyclopedia Britannica and so. And I just dated
myself with that reference.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
But my responsibility is I feel the responsibility is need
to find it or block it, not for the patrons
to deliver it, because it's unrealistic to ask people who
have jobs to put in the time. We're all tribal,
we've all.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Loved one hundred percent, agree one hundred percent. But I
also think that there is a there. I do think
that something that is an important part of now it
should be you know, education in America is media literacy
(24:04):
is understanding like that there are the ways to check
and verify if what you're seeing is accurate and true
and if there are real credentials behind it. Now, again,
I want to be very clear on this. I am
(24:25):
not I am not into censoring basically anything, and I
am not talking about oh that opinion is out.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Of the what do you call that?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
The area of like accepted debate, I forget, you know,
but there's like a fancy word for it that I
was gonna use. But instead of thinking of a fancy
word now I can't even think of It doesn't matter regardless,
I'm not saying anything should be forbidden. What I do
feel about strongly is unless we are going to have
(25:04):
labels like mandated, which we're not going to on like
the differen between actual fact and opinion, then we need
to help people who are not trained in the media
to be able to differentiate what is fact and opinion.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
I think that's idealistic. I think people knowingly, stubbornly are
just going to believe what they want to believe. And
I think we have those people in our family. I
don't think some people are not coachable, some people don't
want to learn, you know, conspiracy theories. Psychologists have found
what conspiracy theories are. People want more predictability in life.
(25:44):
People are more comfortable with predictability, and as life changes,
and it's really changing in our lives over the last
twenty years, with is much more fluid and changing. People
are seeking dependable and comfort and conspiracy theories rationalize and
give them a foundation that they're comfortable with even at
(26:05):
they're complete bs. So psychologists who have studied conspiracy theories,
these are often people that are dealing with some anxiety,
some life changes, they don't love, and they want to
find things that stabilize their life. That's why make America
great again. Basically, he's saying, you're uncomfortable, Let's go back
(26:26):
to when you were comfortable. And I think that's a
lot of what conspiracy theories are. Some have proven to
be true, but they're people trying to find comfort and predictability.
So I'm going to make a story up that makes
me less anxious.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yes, and no, that's I mean, you're right, but I
still I still wish that. And I am hopeful that
as the world changes and the media changes and what
we have access to change, that people become better at
(27:06):
naturally differentiating obvious bullshit from fact. And maybe I'm like.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I I'm not hopeful for that.
Speaker 4 (27:16):
You think so, well, then I I don't know then
that that to me is worth Like I again that
I've said this to you years ago, but I'll say it.
I'll say it again because you now, I try not
to be a jealous person. I think it's important to
not have like it's listen, I'm incredibly lucky and whatever.
(27:39):
But there are a few things that I'm jealous of,
and one of them is that you have been on
Bill Maher's show. Because for a long time, that specific
show is like a bucket list thing. Uh and this,
so I say this with that prefacing it. But when
(28:00):
I loved that show the most, it would be a
debate about.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
What to do.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
We all agreed about what happened or what is going on,
and then you would have Ann Coulter and James Carville
yelling at each other about the solutions. And I found
that incredibly captivating and I liked that it didn't I
mean Mars obviously at least an end name, you know, progressive,
(28:28):
but he brought on everybody. I loved it. I find
a lot of those shows now very difficult to enjoy
because the debate about what to do has a hard
time getting off the ground because everyone's fucking arguing about
what happened? People are you know what I mean? The
(28:49):
and it is that part to me is not sustainable.
It is it. And so you I told you this
five years ago that you know, I always thought I
will do sports for as long as it takes because
I love it, until I am a big enough name
and have enough financial security to go do something. In politics,
(29:14):
as I mentioned before, from a union family, I have real,
you know, strong beliefs on certain things, and I have
lost some of the passion for that. And in part
it is because the arguments don't seem to anymore be
about what needs to be done, and instead they are
(29:36):
about what actually happened, I mean, and that is problematic,
like the if I just to finish my thought, I'm
sorry if in sports, if on today's TV show when
we were talking about if the Cowboys are screwing up
by not having signed CD Micah or Dak someone on
(29:58):
the desk was like, how can you you say they
screwed up when they won the Super Bowl? And I'm like, huh.
They're like, no, they won the Super Bowl. I'm like, no,
they didn't. The Chiefs did. It's like, no, the Cowboys
won the Super Bowl. That's an awful debate. It's like
it's like and that's what so much of politics has
become is we're just like, we can't agree on a
(30:19):
set of facts to then discuss what the best move is.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah. I mean there's a big chunk of Americans that
believe the insurrection on January sixth was just a County
Fair fireworks show that went a little sideways. Yeah, yeah,
that's not That's not what happened when I turned it on.
That's not what happened your tribal. You have a president
you like now a former president. Yeah. But Keanu Reeves
(30:46):
said something recently. I just I'm not again, I avoid needy,
I'm mute, crazy, I just stay out of it.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
The Reeves thing where he said if someone says one
plus one equals five, I say, good for you.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Oh yeah, I'm the same one. It's like, you haven't
earned my time, and so you argue amongst yourselves. But
I'm an to point in my life, I don't need
that opinion. It's not warranted. It hasn't earned my time,
and so I don't get frustrated by it. And so
I have enough people in my life that I just don't.
I'm going to have a great life. I'm not going
to argue with people who think January sixth, you know,
(31:21):
it was a couple of sparklers that caught fire to
a newspaper.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
So yeah, so and that, but that one is, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
It's crazy.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
That one is a scary one for me in this
regard because it was not long ago and the whole
country watched it on TV. You don't like that. So
that one, that's one of those things where I'm like, man,
it's like.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
You know when this happened the first time Bobby Knight
grabs a player and they find film with it, buy
the neck at practice And I worked with a guy
who was a Bobby Knight fan and said, big deal.
And I said, and he got mad at me. I
said on the air, what if it was your son?
Can I go grab your son like that? No? Oh,
I said, And it really hit me. People were foreign
(32:08):
against Bobby Knight. It was polarizing. There was video of
him grabbing a player's at Patrick Reid or something.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
I think, is I forget the yeah, I remember, of course, yeah,
And people defended Bobby Knight, and it was the first
time I thought, we've got video, we have video of
an inappropriate act.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
And so I think it's always existed, but the people
on the wrong side of things have more amplification for
their opinions. But there was always a crazy town side.
There's always been a crazy part of town. So there's
parts of town in every city it's a little crazy,
and those people just have a microphone.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
I think there are a lot of things that are
better than they used to be, and I think there's
too much doom and gloom. I agree with that general sentiment.
One place where I do feel like we are not
trending positively is I'm actually okay with sports fans blindly
(33:06):
loyally being like that's my team. I support them, Like
you know what I mean? You fired the coach. You
must have been an idiot. You didn't go for it
on fourth down. Like I'm a fan of Auburn football,
and damn it, what they do is right. That's part
of kind of the charm of sports fandom. It's not
(33:26):
how I operate as a sports fan, but I get it.
But supporting either politicians or political parties like they're your
sports team is dangerous. And not being able to say
I disagree with my team on this one is walks
(33:50):
us down a crummy pat Listen, I am. I am
about as liberal as a guy as you're gonna meet.
And Maine the mainstream and there are things either because
they are not liberal enough or too liberal for my
liking that the Democratic Party does that I'm like, disagree
with it. But I think that has become very difficult
(34:13):
for people because there has become so much sometimes deserved
animosity for the other side that it's less about do
I agree with my side and more about I want
the other side to be miserable. Like I think there
are a lot of people who are planning to vote
for Trump that find him objectionable but hate what they
(34:37):
think Liberals are so much that they're like, I want
them in pain, and so I'm going to deal with it.
And I think that is a dangerous road to walk.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah, and I one of the things Bill marsh says,
and I believe it if you've listened to me for
thirty years on the air, I don't believe I've ever changed.
I think I'm socially left, fiscally moderate conservative. I don't
think I've ever changed. I'd vote for either side. I
tend to vote more Democrat than conservative. And some of
that is the conservative candidates over twenty years have gotten
(35:07):
weaker and weaker. And that is not to say all
the Democratic candidates have been, you know, great I think.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
I think the best I think that we are in
the listen, I am more pro Biden than most. I
also think it is there are very very very few
jobs in America. And I understand you're not supposed to
say this, but it's just true that there are very
(35:34):
few high level jobs that you'd say my top choice
of a field of ten thousand is likely to be
someone who was born in the forties. I think that's unlikely.
It just just is. But in my opinion, I don't
think that the Democratic Party, while the candidates have not
(35:58):
always been excellent, I don't think it's general tenants have
shifted much in my lifetime. I think that they have
gone a little bit to the left, but not dramatically.
While right now, the two Republican presidents of my childhood,
Ronald Reagan and George Bush's father, would be run out
(36:22):
of this Republican Party on a rail ques Ronald Reagan
talking about We're a country for all people and all
these things, the thing George H. W. Bush with the
things he believed in, and again I don't think those
were great presidents at all, but the idea that they
could get on a stage with Stefanic the lady from
(36:44):
Long Island and Donald Trump and that the clown from
Texas that is always repping for him, not even Ted Cruz,
the other one. Those guys would be like, you, pansy,
what are you a dare Rhino? They and so I
just I think it's gotten. I think we've And that
was in short order because Mitt Romney was not that Mitt,
I mean was Mitt Romney was just he just wanted
(37:06):
to be Ronald Reagan. Everything he did he wanted to
be Ronald Reagan. He was like Ronald Reagan. Everybody loves him.
He kind of looked like me, can I be Ronald Reagan?
America was like, no, you can't. Sorry, But that was
not that long ago. And now, in my opinion, we've
lost the plot entirely. Sorry to be super objectively political,
but it's it's you know, we're six months from an election,
(37:27):
and I don't know how this thing's gonna go.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Perhaps not well, ordering one, perhaps not well, buddy, perhaps
not well.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
And I don't own seven houses throughout the world. I'm
just here. I still gotta I gotta, I gotta figure
it out. Perhaps not well, We'll see. I don't know, man,
God bless, Sorry you by the way, feel free to
addit this out.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Or leave it in, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
I like our political stuff today more than sports. I'm
good with it.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Okay, whatever you want. Good to see it.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
God Volume. Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed
the podcast, take a moment rate and review
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