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January 15, 2020 • 152 mins

Jason Smith and Mike Harmon react to the recent retirement announcements by Luke Kuechly and Antonio Gates today, Ring Leader Alex Cora is out as the head manager for the Boston Red Sox for his involvement in the 2017 World Series. Antonio Brown has yet again posted some distasteful content on social media confirming he really is his own worst enemy. Plus, Chad Johnson is looking to make a return in the XFL as a kicker! Guests Jason La Canfora - CBS Sports NFL Insider and Jon Paul Morosi - FOX Sports & MLB Network Baseball Insider and Mike Pereira NFL Sports Rules Analyst join the guys for all the latest news and insight!

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weeknight
ten pm to two a m Eastern seven to eleven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find your local station
for The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon at Fox
Sports Radio dot com, or stream us live every night
on the I Heart Radio app by searching fs R.

(00:23):
You're listening to Fox Sports Radio. Fox Sports Radio. Welcome inside,
Happy Tuesday. My goodness, do we have stuff today. We
had a lot of stuff yesterday. Yeah. And then we
had Joe Burrow doing Joe Burrow things, and Tabo Sweeney
given proper credit failing to ron E t N in

(00:44):
the second half after making it a three point game,
some officiating fun, a lot of celebration in the buyou
and then you and I went on our merry way
and now made your league. Baseball continues to give us
gifts NFL and we got the Nicks getting absolute buried,
and we you know, listen, we don't need the next tonight.
We don't need to talk about the next tonight. I
only have so much ram in my head for the

(01:07):
biggest controversy involving New York Sports. I'm wondering, Okay, how
long until the Mets have to fire Carlos Beltra strike
to be done with it? Well, because I get why
the Red Socks did. Obviously, something we're getting too big
Coming up in a few minutes, Alex Cora and the
Red Sox have agreed to part ways mutual party ways.
Get the hell out. You can't. Oh yeah, Blake, I

(01:30):
broke up with you. No, I broke up with you. No, no, no.
I called you to meet me at the bar and
so because I was going to break up with the year.
But I said, at first, I think we should see
other people know, But I called you. Alex Cora is
no longer the manager of the Boston Red Sox. This
in the wake of the big cheating scandal that's enveloped
Major League Baseball with the Houston Astros and sign stealing. Obviously,

(01:50):
Carlos Beltran is the last domino to fall because he
was the only other person named in the MLB investigation
besides Alex Cora. And Beltran is still the manager of
the New York Mets. For how long? The one thing
I can say is it would be typical Mets to
go all through the season, keep him and just have
this hang as a cloud over the Mets all year long.

(02:11):
But so far today there hasn't been a Carlos Beltran
was not charged in this, he was not given a penalty.
He's our manager and we look forward to Carlos Beltran
leading us this year. The Mets have not put out
that statement yet, so that's a very big deal that
they are quiet. Yeah, they're gonna wait and put their
fingers on and go which way is a wind blown?
Is a Beltran? Is it? Which is? Okay, we gotta

(02:33):
fire Okay, we gotta fire you, And then they'll bring
in whoever else decides I'm gonna do exactly what Brody
van Wagenen and the Wilpons want. As the segue over
to Steve Cohen begins, So the Mets are just gonna
this doesn't even invite it's the Astros. And who's the
team that's gonna linger over the longest, the Mets, because
they're gonna sit there and go who to do a Beltran?
Everybody else is trying to clean it up. The Astros

(02:54):
don't go find themselves a worthy manager, poachy uh, and
then they'll move on And then you've got the Red Sox.
The machine keeps moving on. They'll find another guy to
run the ship. And then the Mets are the Mets,
so about them, and it's gonna be the cloud is
gonna be over the Mets. But it is because you

(03:15):
had two guys that left the organization that become the
fall guys. They're not there, so let's pin everything on them.
I mean, look, overall, this is an absolute joke, as
we'll talk about over the course of the night, because
from everybody saying, oh, major League Baseball, good for you,
Rob Manford, Rob Manford went soft, and everybody's mad. And

(03:35):
I know that the teams can't comment, but you know what,
I didn't get a memo, So I'll see you in Hell.
Let's get it going so I'll have more on the
Alex Corras situation coming up in about fifteen minutes. We've
got John Paul Morose. He's gonna stop by later on
in the show. A lot to get to with the
big cheating scandal involving the Astros. But two big retirements
in the National Football League today, one earlier today we

(03:56):
all saw one we're kind of stunned by. In the
past hour Antonio Gates of the San Diego slash Los
Angeles Chargers announced his retirement today at the age of
thirty nine, and Luke Keikley of the Panthers star middle
linebacker says he's calling it quits. He is just twenty
eight years old. So let's deal with Antonio Gates first
before we get to Luke Keickley. Gates didn't play last year,

(04:18):
and it was quite obvious, and okay, I think that
if the Chargers had been in contention for a playoff spot,
maybe he might have said, Hey, Henry gets hurt, I'll
come out and play. And that that's the question, right,
Did he want bigger money than they were willing because
Hunter Harry missed first half of the year. He did.
But but the thing is, I think I after he

(04:42):
didn't sign, I knew he was done, But I thought
at the end of the year, he's not somebody who
wants to sign for the beginning of the year, he'd
be somebody that hey week six, weeks seven, I'll get
myself into shape and play the last eight games of
the season. That's no one. No one wants to retire
and come back and play a full sixteen game Slate. No, no,
I want to come back and play the last seven
or eight games and then maybe the playoffs. But by
the time it got to the middle of the the season,

(05:02):
the Charges were struggling. Gates was Gates was done, he
didn't play. I'm still not convinced. At some point he's
gonna come Back's like Keith van Horne. We're gonna hear, oh,
someone's gonna need someone's contract to Keith van horn is,
and we're gonna eventually. Antonio Gates is never gonna retire,
So he's the undertaker, and he's gonna sit up again.
He'll come back. He'll play again. In three years, the
Charges will call him that will sit out. He's forty two.

(05:23):
He'll come back and play again. Four years from now,
be forty six years old, still playing. He'll get to
the end of Bobby Benita's contract with the Mets and
he will still be playing well. As we've talked about
Antonio Gates during our runs doing Fantasy Sports and certainly
NFL analysis low these many years on Fox Sports Radio,
it's he's the best post up receiver you've ever seen.

(05:44):
Those college basketball days were no joke, because you want
to talk about a guy finding lean and leverage and
whatever going to his hundred sixteen career touchdowns. That's what
it's all about. For Antonio Gates. He was the touchdown
maker Philip Rivers security blanket for all those years. Gates,
for me, he is a first ballot Hall of Famer.

(06:04):
I have seen three great tight ends in my life,
and Antonio Gates is one of the top two. Rob Gronkowski,
Antoni Gonzalez. Gonzalez is clearly the best, and talk about athleticism,
but Gates is right there with him, and then Gronk,
who hasn't played very long, and that kind of gets
into the Luke Kickley argument. We're gonna hap in a
couple of minutes. But Gates redefined the tight end position

(06:25):
with athleticism. He played until he was thirty seven years old,
and he was unstoppable. You couldn't stop him one on one.
You had to put two players on him because he
was just that much of a difference maker. And we've
said and talked about the career of Philip Rivers a
lot here on the show, and one thing that's always amazing,
It always amazed me is every time you watch the

(06:46):
Charges play, no matter who their wide receivers are Philip
Rivers is not threatened the football in between a tight
window to a guy in a deep out. His receivers
are always wide open. His receivers are always like, oh
my god, they got five yards and that to be
And these are good defensive backs. Now, Rivers, to his credit,
has found a way. Just we talked about Joe Burrow
last night. Hey, when he gets guys one on one,

(07:06):
he knows where to put the football. He has that
rapport with his wide receivers that he does because Rivers
doesn't have the strongest arm in the world. But that's
what he did because he would find the guys one
on one and they would make plays and they would
find a way. I'm coming back to the football on
this play. It's very difficult to figure that out. When
you're a defense and you're you're stuck with one on
one coverage, you don't have a lot of Darrel revis is,
it's gonna be difficult. But why did the wide receiver

(07:28):
seves so much one on one coverage? Because Antonio Gates
in the middle of the field was absolutely so dominant.
You had to have guys around him, and so you
couldn't double guys on the outside. It was too hard
because if you did that, you had one on one coverage.
And what did Philip Rivers say today? Anytime I saw
Antonio one one, I knew he was getting the football.
So teams couldn't do that. You couldn't just cover them
with a lineback. You couldn't just say, okay, well it's

(07:50):
gonna be him in the safety will pick him up.
You needed to have multiple people on him. You can
only put multiple people on so many receivers. So when
he's that guy in the middle of the field, of course,
that's gonna leave the outside open. And that what Philip
Rivers did for fifteen years, and he's able to say, okay,
guys like Tyrolle Williams or Keenan Allen and Mike Williams,
whoever it was gonna wind up being open. Travis Benjamin
doesn't matter because it's really hard to cover guys one

(08:11):
on one when you have a pretty good quarterback who
knows where to put the football. And that's the genius
and the brilliance of Antonio Gates. Yes, yeah, I always
just enjoyed him, especially the last five or six years
when he had that bad toe, bad foot. He looked
like he was running in mud. Yet he would somehow
find a way to, you know, get it just enough
space right, quick elbow, quick, little shove, forearms shiver, not

(08:33):
enough to extend the arm, but enough to back off
a defensive player, a linebacker or corner or safety that's
trying to cover him, and just enough to to get
it in what I asked of you, And I brought
this up earlier to uh Frostburg as we were getting
ready for the show, and and to you, and I
pose it just as a question for the Hall of

(08:54):
Fame voters to decide. He did serve a four game
suspension for p E d S blaming on supplements and
holistic medicines that he was using to recover from prior injuries. Yeah. Yeah,
but he's got a great Nope, he's got a great reputation.
Everybody loves Antonio Gates. It's gonna be one of those. Yeah, well,
he had it, so we'll push that out other players,

(09:16):
know when that's the thing about having a good reputation.
If you have a good reputation, people will look the
other way a little bit on your transgressions. As long
as they're deemed to be minor. Let's face it, p
DS in the NFL fans don't really care about it.
We care more about in the National Football I don't know.
We we laugh more at the testing policies. Right this
past week, what was it? Russell Wilson found tags for

(09:38):
both P E. D. S Uh and you know in
street drugs. I think we're both if I'm remembering correctly.
I mean, guys just start getting tagged all over and
it's become a joke. But it's always you raise it up,
particularly this week since we're talking about rules and integrity
of the game and all that. When it comes to
the Astros, to the Red Sox Dodgers and what it

(09:59):
mean to their players and everything else. Just raising my
hand just to ask the question Twitter and out about
a frost because that's okay, the chair recognizes Mike Harmon,
It's going to be part of the discussion. Uh, Mike
had swollen down the Jason Smith Show with my best
friend Mike Harmon. Now, when it comes to Luke Keikley,
Keikley retiring very surprisingly tonight made a big statement on

(10:22):
social media. Keikley has had his share of head injuries
over the course of the past few years and a
twenty eight years old. Okay, we've got a big coaching
change coming in. We're gonna reboot. It's going to gonna
be one more year at cam Newton. Maybe it's a
new quarterback and Keikley has decided I'm going to hang
him up now. He leaves one of the most decorated
linebackers in the game. Five time All Pro seven or

(10:45):
eight I think. I think he made the Pro Bowl
in all years he was healthy in the NFL. Seven
out of his eight years, five was Pro First Team.
He also had the I think he has the Panthers
record for interceptions. He was a guy that did it all.
He was a tackling machine. He was able to make
plays in coverage. Got to the quote he did everything.
But is he gonna be a first ballot Hall of Famer?

(11:06):
Probably not because the standard centers at the position are
Ray Lewis and Brian are Lacker. I don't think. I
don't think there's anybody arguing that Ray Lewis played seventeen
years in the NFL, Brian or Lacker played thirteen years
in the NFL. Luke Keickley as good he does he
compares great with these guys. Look all the middle linebackers,
a great middle linebackers. Luke Kicklely compares well with. But

(11:26):
all these big Hall of famers, they all played much longer. Now.
When the NFL led Torell Davison after basically having four
years and winning two Super Bowls, that really, you know,
brought the level down of b as far as how
long you had to play. But his level of dominance
got him in. That could do it for Keikily, But
first ballot, I don't see that for him, just because

(11:46):
eight years is not quite the monster careers in the
monster years that Lewis and er Lacker both had. And
can you say Luke Keickley was as good as these two. No,
he wasn't as good as he was. He wasn't quite
the difference maker of Ray Lewis and Ryan or Lacker.
But was he fantastic? Will he get in? Yeah? But
first ballot the the year with Antonio Gates, I don't
see him getting in. What will be interesting to watch

(12:08):
is because you've got both Patrick Willis and Luke Kickley
whose careers are very similar. Right done, After eight years
with Patrick Willis, only six games played his final season.
We all remember sitting here on a Thursday night watching
the keik Lee injury, tears streaming out of his eyes,
and we're all looking at each other, go, Wow, that's

(12:29):
that's it. I mean that that could have been the
last we see him on the field, and here we
are another early retirement. When you go to the Er
lak Er comparison, you're talking about Laker thirteen years versus
his eight um about two hundred tackles difference between them.
When you talk about that kind of impact overall, uh

(12:49):
thirty one quarterback hits that he's credited with Keikley against. Wow,
you're you're talking twenty four for Lacker. In terms of
stats that they keep in some of those you know
you always wanted because tackles is also on an official stats.
So both the Carolina and Chicago folks did their guys
right at the linebacker, you're around the pile, you get

(13:09):
a half, and you get a half, and you get
a half. But but you mentioned Gates reputation, and that's
where Lee reputation, right, So, I mean that's one of
the things that's certainly gonna help him as we go through.
And it's always the question of the log jam or
when we have the next bulk insertion to the Hall

(13:31):
of Fame. I do appreciate this, uh I laugh. Perhaps
you missed Rob Gronkowski. Congrats Luke Kickley on early retirement.
You were a fearless player out there on the field.
So when you're coming back, twitter out, how about a
fresco Mike and Smollen don the Jason Smith Show with
my best friend Mike Harmen again, Patrick Willis, you talked
about him very similar career to Luke Keickley. But the letter,

(13:54):
for me, the length of a career is a very
big deal. And and when you look at the who's
in at the top of that list, guys playing that long,
guys playing that long, had the all decade guys. That's
that's the thing that jumps in. You couldn't give Gates
his one damn day? How about that? He if he's
retiring on social media, he can let it tomorrow. You
could have done it, tom I'm happy for you. You're

(14:14):
doing what you want to do, but really, you couldn't
just do it tomorrow. Yeah. Well, I mean there's a
lot going on in Major League Baseball. Tried to sneak
in the whole Astros thing tomorrow on National Title Game.
I think that they'd get away with it. Today's Gates Day. Yeah,
well he's hed a definitive first ballot. Hall. I mean
Lacker got in even with hair. But what does the

(14:35):
bust have hair or not have hair? I don't think
it does. Uh. Coming up next, Yes, a big day
as the fallout continues from the Astro sign stealing, now
the Red Sox looking for a new manager. We'll have
the latest coming up next. Keep right here. Fox. Be
sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm

(14:56):
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio
ah app Fox Sports Radio High Happy Thanksgiving everybody. The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen Live from the Geico Studios.
Got Mike Pereira coming up in a few minutes. Have
just a couple of officiating questions for him, A couple
of you coming off the National Title Game the weekend
in the National Football League. Hopefully he is winding up

(15:18):
for us. I gotta get gotta get you moved up
and ready to be ready. Come on, just he's just
chugging Red wines, red Wine, red red Wine and d J.
Does he really have to get looped up though? I think,
well a little early for that, Mike, Yeah, I don't
know that it's early. I mean, he he's this seven o'clock.

(15:39):
He always looks forward to the fact you have alcohol. Wise,
we were going wrestling. There might have been some wrestling
matches to be had with some of the calls and
the arguments that ensued. Tell it if you will, Mike Pereira,
ed Hockey League, February the fourteenth, madisone square garden. He's
got a little micro tunda R I I R s

(16:01):
in them. Uh microtundo from is very good. Come on
now from New York. But the order of the day,
and really the order of the last two days, interrupted
by L s U and Clemson last night, has been
the cheating scandal that as rock Major League Baseball as
the Houston Astros after Rob Manfred's investigation was completed or

(16:24):
found to have been guilty of stealing signs electronically in
the two thousand seventeen season, a very sophisticated form where
they would electronically they would get the signals in the
center field UH stands and relay that to the dugout,
relay that and and relay that to just outside the
dugout where h staffer or someone would sit near a
drum and pound it to let the batter know that

(16:46):
it was either a fastball or an off speed pitched
that was coming. Sometimes it was whistling. And this was
just an absolute bombshell that was dropped on baseball. A. J.
Hinch was suspended, so was Jeff Luno, the of the Astros,
the g M. Then they were both fired by the Astros.
They want to move on. This is a huge controversy
that's going to envelope the league. Alex Cora, who was

(17:08):
a bench coach for the Astros, was named as the
ringleader of the operation. It was his idea. He's the
one that's keeping track of everything and making sure the
signals are relayed from center field to the guy eating
peanutshell sitting outside the dugout banging on the on the
trash can. And as a result, he is now the

(17:30):
ex manager of the Boston Red Sox as he and
the Red Sox have agreed to quote part ways in
the wake of this controversy. And this is why Rob
Manfred Blew it by not taking the World Series away
from the Astros, because none of this is enough. There

(17:50):
is not one person that thinks this is enough punishment
for the Astros. The Astros cheated their way to a
World Series, and you have a need of teams who
were ready to say, WHOA, you did not beat us
fair and square. The Dodgers, you're gonna have two World
Series parades because they lost. They lost to the Astros,
then they lost to the Red Sox, who Alex Cora

(18:12):
was managing in two thousand eighteen when they won. The
Yankees are upset. Everybody that the Astros played the A. L.
West is upset. Teams are extreme. It's like a class
action lawsuit. I'm upset. I want MLBING investigate the Royals
that they were stealing signs in and the Mets get
the World Series. I mean, this is how big it is.
And all that the punishments did for Rob Manfred was

(18:35):
push forefront the argument to let Pete Rose and all
the other cheaters like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens into
the Hall of Fame. Well, if you let these guys
cheat and there's no punishment for them, because there was
no punishment for the players, then how can you keep
Pete Rose and all these guys out. This completely got
out of Rob Manfred's control because he did not want
I'm gonna be the commissioner that took the World Series

(18:55):
away from a team to be the number one line
on his resume and his legacy. That's the only reason
why anybody else that was strong enough as a commissioner
would say, hey, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have this job
for a long time. I'm taking the World Series away
from you, and you're forfeiting that because you were found
to have cheated in that season. And if Rob Manfred
had the guts, he would have done it. But he's
I don't want that to be it. I don't want

(19:17):
Rob Manford, who most famously took the World Series away
from the Houston Astros, he did not want that, and
that's the reason why he thought, I'm coming down hard
enough with these punishments, but not realizing what the reaction
was going to be, not having the foresight to know,
oh boy, this is just gonna piss people off. This
is why we sit where we are right now. Why
you go to I mean, first off, Baseball Hall of Fame,
It's a separate ality. So that's writers and that that's

(19:39):
run independent of Major League Baseball obviously, but but that's that.
The conversation you didn't think it was gonna spark was, oh,
now we gotta let Pete Rose and these guys in
the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose because I went lighter
on the suspension Pete Rose in his own little little box.
And I think this year you're gonna start seeing more
guys get into the Hall, at least from the early
results of the the pulling of the hundreds of guys

(20:02):
that and women that have votes, that the potential is
there that more players get in because I think there's
the expectation and little soul searching of well one, you've
got no positive tests, regardless of what happened to the
size of hats and batting helmets and the ping pong
balls flying out of a Major League ballparks band boxes across.

(20:25):
You got a number of guys that you went after hard,
but you didn't find anything in proof, right, a lot
of allegation, and that's what you have here. You've got
the goods, right, You've got everything on them. You've got
Alex Cora because he was the guy that left the
organization from Mike Fires, and he became the easy guy
to point out and people celebrated saying, look, Rob Manford,

(20:48):
this was a great day for baseball. They know what
strongly worded letter. Five million dollars is nothing. Right. We
saw report yesterday the economic impact of the World Series
victory was over sixty million dollars. Say nothing of player contracts.
People think that no one cares, but no one cares
about the money. But it does. But it's part of

(21:10):
the But it's part of the circumstance because you also
have guys whose legacies are killed forever. I mean, Dave
Roberts spent a year on the hot seat, he had
a World Series title. He gets to sit on his
ask series, just give him the first one. Kershaw's legacy
was altered. But I mean, he's been fantastic in World Series,

(21:31):
the most clutch picture in history of baseball. But we
don't have the lead twice in Game five, But we
wouldn't have gotten to where where it's become right. It's look,
they win, maybe maybe they win, maybe they don't. But
the reality is when you come down with this kind
of thing, it's it's more the five million. You didn't
take anything from their international pool of players. No players

(21:52):
got punished. Need to be punished, The players need to
be punished, need to find the players who needed to
be is. And instead you said, I'm gonna go heavy
on the people in charge. And that's going to that's
going to put this to bed. If I if if
I suspend a GM and a manager for a year,
who are probably gonna fire those guys, that's gonna be

(22:14):
big enough. And he completely misread the room. He misread
what the reaction was going to be. And that's the
thing is that you can get a lot of controversy
surrounding sports and and you will find a way to
have people split on it. And and when something is split,
you can see the controversy go away. But cheating in
sports is still the forefront of many people any part

(22:34):
Middle America, East Coast, West coast, cheating two win, going
over the top to cheat. Nobody likes that. And if
you don't come down hard enough, everybody's gonna hate it.
And that's where that's one. He completely miscalculated the impact
of what his punishment was going to be. Cost of
the World Series was five million dollars and two executives.
You made a lot of money and that doesn't go away.

(22:55):
That's a clown show Twitter at how about a fresca?
Mike gets Swellen, don't let more on this topic coming
up in a few minutes and nine seconds. Mike Pereira
stops by all the big news in the National Football
League and coming off last night's National Championship game. But first,
be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harman weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven

(23:15):
pm Pacific. Joining us now on the hotline, a man
with do walk up music? How about that? I let's see, Mike,
are you oiled and looved up and ready to go?
I am louve man. I got a fresh tank in me.
Little little little Ravioli, Little homemade Ravioli's tonight, little MARINERA.

(23:40):
It is Mike Carrera, Fox NFL Rules Analysts, former VP
of Officiating, And I gotta say your Twitter account is
so tremendously entertaining. But there's this tweet you had from
a day ago. Quote. I'm sitting outside our broadcast booth
and a guy walked by with a son and said
to him, that's Gene Territor sitting there. I guess I

(24:02):
should be flattered. What I mean? I mean, listen, I
like was, and of course there was some of our
crews there and they all started laughing. But I really
I rationalized that he Starritor younger, he's better looking. I
gotta be flattered, don't I? I mean, but they didn't
get that reaction on Twitter. I mean I got bombarded

(24:22):
as usual on Twitter. But no, that's where if I,
if I were you, I would have taken advantage that
had just started threatening the guy and yelling at him,
he would go to security and go. I just got
threatened by Gene Territories trying to do all these things
to me, and suddenly Saratoorias like, why is security here
for me? I didn't I could have dropped a couple
of f bomb directly at his kids. You're right, what
are you looking at me? Yeah? Yeah, I think Sterritory

(24:47):
might have been I wasn't in Green Bay. What do
you what you talking about? That was? Yeah, I missed
a big chance. There he looks cursing my kid. I'm
comp and listen, I was so cold. I shouldn't. I
couldn't think right, Come on, man, that would have been
more controversial than some of what we saw last night, Mike.

(25:09):
I mean, the ejection had the everybody up in arms,
including Joe Klatt, who you're sitting next to on the
Fox broadcast. He never he's never seen a targeting called.
Quite frankly, he likes He just doesn't. He doesn't like
the rule and I get it, and a lot of
people don't like the rule and it's really hard on
the defender. But the fact is that the NFL started

(25:32):
this with the you know, player safety rules with leading
with your helmet and on defenseless players, and then of
course the College is even added to it with targeting.
But the fact is you just can't lower the head
and lead and make forceable contact with your helmet with
the crown of your helmet. And that's exactly what he did.
I mean, that was that was one where you look

(25:53):
at and you you listen to Joel and you think, well,
it's kind of iffy. Well in in terms of target,
mean that is targeting. That's a that's a perfect example
of target. Yeah, he began to bring his arms out
to try to wrap. But the players for the most
part have adjusted and they don't lead with their crown

(26:14):
of the helmet, they get the head turned to the
side and leave with the shoulders. So I love Joel.
I sympathize with him, but he was dead wrong. He
was dead wrong. Listening to you, because you know, we're
watching the broadcast of doing the game last night, I'm like,
Mike Prayers wants must turn around and go, are you serious?
That's the textbook? He he lowered his head, he didn't
see what he was tackling. He led with the crown

(26:35):
of his helmet, and he launched himself at the tackler.
What where? Where is that not? And And look, the
thing is I understand it's it's said, and it sucks
because here's a kid whose career is ending. You're throwing
him out of the National Championship game. And I'm you know, yes,
I get that, and I think that was part of
the storyline. But my response is, don't hit like that
if you want to stay in the game. It's it's
it's pretty simple. And it's not like it's a brand

(26:56):
new rule that we've just put in for the playoffs.
Come on, I mean, this is a rule that's been
in now for a while. But they actually at least
they took a step last year and said, okay, look
at let's reofficiate to play in in replay. Let's let
and so if there's any if a iffy, let's not
let's not call it, let's take it off. Let's keep
him in the game. But this wasn't nippy. But actually

(27:18):
I thought I thought I was pretty good with Joel,
even though I totally disagreed. Had there been Tito's in
that class as opposed to to uh the water, I
think I was ready to lower my head and targets
Joel and see if I could knock him across the
studio for God's because yeah, Mike Pirero with us here.

(27:42):
The Jason said, show now before you get to Green Bay,
the game you were at where you were just a
little cold. I want to put something because it's it's
it's something that I think a lot of people wouldn't
wouldn't put with. What an opinion of a referee in
to form referee would have is that you were a
huge fan of the Minnesota to San Francisco game because
of the lack of penalties that were called and how

(28:04):
expedited any reviews were, and that was the kind of
game you liked. That's exactly what I like, and I
think most people do. Listen, you know, flags, penalty negatives,
those are negatives, and and replays, replays our our disruptions.
There are three minute disruptions in the game. And so
to me, the least you have, the better it is

(28:26):
to watch a game. And I like a game with
whoa look at if you even talk about last night's
college game, bunch of penalties there. I mean LSU got
penalized eleven times or I think a hundred and some
odd yards, and and yet if you look at those
calls were good calls. I mean, it's not like you
want to avoid calling penalty just because you don't like them.

(28:48):
But the fact is, usually when you get to the playoffs, um,
and I'm talking NFL, you get the better teams plane.
And when you get the better team play plane, you
normally get less of the false starts, less of the
delay of games, you get a more disciplined approach because
it's clearly a one and done situation. So I love

(29:10):
games with eight penalties. I love games with no replay stops,
and uh I get no airtime. I don't necessarily like that,
but it's just it's just a better game. And um,
you know, I will say that I thought, and obviously
I'm critical, and I would like to think I know

(29:30):
what I talked to, what I'm talking about. But I thought,
the four games this past weekend, we're certainly four of
the better games I've seen officiated all year long. And
and and I it was not like even Wildcard, where
it was good, but then it ended on an offensive
past interference call that should have been made on Mason

(29:51):
Rudolph that wasn't should have been reviewed and wasn't. So
the the controversy just rolled on. But this week, this
week I thought, actually the officiating was it was good.
And you know, how do I judge it. I mean,
I judge it by what I see and then what
I read on my own Twitter feed. It was really
pretty quiet. Just remember, Mike, your place in the game

(30:12):
is cemented and the direct deposits still get a hit,
no matter how many times you show up on a broadcast.
As I say, and thank god, I'm not paid by
the word there you had a third nine after Seattle
for two minutes left the pass to Jimmy Graham, uh
first downs and the game of inches. As a referee.
How frustrating was that? And what did you think of
how this got officiated and sorted out? Well, I think

(30:35):
the only thing that bothered me. I think the approach
to it was all was all correct. It was close, Um,
it was real close, and and um, you know, obviously
the official doesn't see a yellow line when he's trying
to make the decision. And it's one of the hardest
calls you have to make that you can make and
make it perfectly. I mean, so there's I don't you know,

(30:56):
there's always inches of fluctuation. Um. Well, when you when
you looked at the shots that we were giving, um,
you know, to the replay booth to look at it
for everybody at home, clearly you couldn't tell. And they
made the decision that they weren't going to overturn the
overturn it. And they sent out Cleet Blakeman who said,
you know, the ruling on the field stands, and they went,

(31:19):
wait a minute, let me go back and look at
this one more time. Um, there's been another angle that
we showed them which made it look suspicious because you
saw the helmet down and you could see the yellow
line and it would indicate that he would be short,
but they left it, which they should have because the
yellow line A is unofficial, and the reason it's unofficial

(31:41):
is because it moves. It moves based on the position
of the camera. So if it's be on and the
camera's looking back, it's going to move that line further back.
If it's behind it, it's gonna move it further forward.
You could watch it. You just take a look at
it and say, okay, look at you know that the
line to gain is the thirty five, but look at

(32:03):
there's the yellow line at the thirty four and a
half um So that's why it's not used to judge,
you know, if it's a first down or not, and
there's not a line like a five yard solid line
all the way across the field or the hash marked line,
then it's impossible to move it. And it was a
little messy going back and looking at it a second time,

(32:25):
but you know, they're they're there. Really, there really was
no chance to have that overturn. You can follow them
on Twitter at Mike Pereira. That is at Mike Pereira,
Fox NFL Rules Analysts form VP of Officiating. Loved up
as always with us guy on a Monday night. Mike
is always my friend. Appreciate it. We'll talk to you
next week. You gotta see it. My great stuff there

(32:45):
from Mike Prera or Gene Territory either one. Uh, it's Tuesday, Yes, Tuesday.
We usually joined us. That he usually joined us on Monday. Yeah,
I know. It's easy to get lulled into that. We'll
have more NFL coming up in about twenty minutes. But
coming up next way, Tily here what one MLB star
just said about the astros cheating scandal. Are can go?

(33:09):
We got it for you, coming up next right here. Fox.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific. We were cheated out of the World Series.
This is how I feel about the Royals and too tho.
This is what was said tonight by former Yankee C. C.

(33:31):
Sabathia on Inside the NFL on HBO. Now we'll get
to you Antonio Brown later on. Look. Every hour there's
something big that drops as a result of the astros
cheating scandal. It was yesterday A J. Hinch and Jeff
Luno get fired, and today Alex Cora basically gets fired

(33:54):
as the manager of the Boston Red Sox because he
was named in the investigation that the Astros were found
guilty of cheating to obtain singles um from the other
team in the two thousand seventeen season. But now CC
Sabathia of the New York Yankees till he retired this year,
was on Inside the NFL tonight on Showtime. And while
he talked a lot about games in the NFL, and

(34:15):
he's breaking stuff down with everybody, we're watching a replay
of it right now. He was teaching them how to
talk about gambling. He was part of the segments as well,
because they kept getting it wrong. He's like, no, guys,
come on, this is how Brett Musburger says. This is
what Al Michael says. You know, and there's a big
group of people. But when he was asked about the
Astros cheating scandal in the Yankees, twice of have fallen
short of the World Series and the Astros were in

(34:36):
their way beating them, c C. Sabathias said this quote.
As more information started to come out, I'm like, we
played a seven game series and seven team and we
lost really on kind of like one pitch. The more
facts that we get, it's frustrating to sit here and
know that late in my career, I could have had
a title, maybe seventeen or maybe eight team, but we

(34:58):
got cheated out of a team end of doing something
that's not within the rules of the game. Serious cc Sabathia.
We were cheated out of the World Series. What should
be the punishment quote vacated. I wouldn't be mad at that.
This is more of what tells you that Rob Manfred
has lost control of the storyline and lost control of

(35:19):
anything to do with this because the lack of being
strong enough on his decision to vacate the World Series.
Had he vacated the Astros World Series, he didn't even
do anything else. Guys could have kept their jobs, Guys
could have got fined. It's been nobody would have cared.
But you vacate the World Series and fans would have said, okay, alright,
no World Series champion in seventeen. Dodgers would have had

(35:41):
some fun. They would have had a parade, you know, uh,
Pantone group would would get would get ready and they'd
be rolling with stuff and celebrating. But you vacate the
World Series. And that's about as stiff a penalty as
you can have no World Series champion that year, even
though the Astros players would all say, I was on
the field and I won, and I celebrated, I have
a and you can never take those memories away. No,

(36:02):
that's a big deal because, as history will remind you,
you didn't just win this World Series a day ago.
You won that two years ago. And now that's the
stigma that you gotta carry. Your team cheated. Your entire
team knew about it. There's no way everybody on the
team didn't know about this. If the guy's banging a
trash can behind home plate just outside of the dugout,
everybody knew. You take away the World Series and that's it.

(36:24):
But Rob Manfred, who also doesn't like to do things
except its pace of play, him and Adam Silver of
the oh, I really don't want to upset anybody and
have anything bad on my resume. I get that this
is a bad headline for Major League Baseball, But you
know what, Rob Manfred, you wanted the job, and that's
you know, it's like you get married through sickness and
an health You know, you take this job as commissioner
in Major League Baseball through the good times and the

(36:46):
bad times. And you know what, I'm sorry. You gotta
make a tough decision. I'm sorry. Every day is not
you waking up to you know, a cup of strawberries
and cream and saying, Oh, what wonderful thing are we
gonna talk about today with Major League Baseball. No, you
got the job, so you gotta make those decisions, and
you you bift it because you thought. I don't want
to be associated with such a negative headline. This is
a bad headline for baseball. I don't want a part

(37:08):
of my legacy. I don't want to be synonymous with
this because I'm the commissioner to make this move. But
I'm sorry. You got the job, you wanted the job,
you got it. You gotta do it well. First off,
it's the first thing he's really had to do outside
a pace of play, so it was gonna be a
very stiff learning curve from that. Really tough thing to navigate,
right to go to go to such a large scope. Really,

(37:31):
what did you? What did you do in your ruling?
Two guys lost their jobs. Now a third World Series
is intact. Money's have been transacted legacies hurt fans. I
mean here in Los Angeles they are looking at a
class action. It's uh statute of limitations on fraud is
I think three years in California and four years in Texas.

(37:55):
So go have some fun with that because you're gonna
have a little bit of that to deal with as
you go. And I get it in the record books
like Barry Bonds is your all time home run leader.
Reggie Bush got his heisman stripped, and people always complain
about in college football, it's like, well, the kids that
weren't there pay It's like, no, they're part of the organization. Unfortunately,
timing sucks. And here for the Astros, you didn't pay

(38:17):
nearly significant enough of price for what you obtained. For
what you obtained here five million dollars, a couple of
draft choices, and two guys get fired and you have
to look bad for a minute or two before you
hire the next coach and you move on to the
next thing. It's it's not gonna stop teams looking for
an edge. That's always going to be the case. You

(38:38):
just set the bar and the cost of going to
a World Series very very low, in my opinion, and
that's a bad move by Rob Manford Twitter at how
about a Fresco? Mike gets swollen down The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Carmen. We'll have more on this coming
up next hour on the show. Is Alex Cora is
now the ex manager of the Red Sox. I'm sure
Carlos Beltrain is really nervous, right and swag it out

(39:00):
and beach sweat all the latest in the NFL. Coming
up next with Jason lochinfora Be sure to catch live
editions of The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harman weekdays
at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports
Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Greetings, then, welcome
inside our two of The Jason Smith Show with my

(39:20):
best friend Mike Carmen, live from the Geico Studios. Are
best of podcast gets posted about ten minutes or so
after our show ends here every night on iTunes, Google Play,
Fox Sports Radio dot com, the I Heart Radio app, iTunes,
Google Play, Fox Sports Radio dot Com, the I Heart
Radio App. You can listen to the whole show, parts

(39:41):
of it whatever you want. Rate us, give us five stars,
will love you forever and ever and ever do it.
Way to go shya. So it was really weird, and
it's it's kind of a it's kind of a thing
that we deal with on the show every night, and
it maybe it's something you've noticed and listened to the show,

(40:01):
and in that certain times, big stories that carry the
entire day, by the time they get to us, we
move on to something else, Like yesterday the Astros story
and the NFL playoff story, where the was the big
deals all day long and the different breakdowns and all

(40:22):
of it. But then last night, Hey, Clemson and LSU
were playing in our window, and we turned the page
and that all that great stuff, all that big red
meat sink our teeth into, was all stuff that had
to push by the wayside because we had the game
last night. Now we had a fresh serving a lot
of red meat. I mean, there were a lot of
storylines and a lot of great discussions that we had

(40:43):
about where that L s U team was all time
at Ozeron, what is he no longer the interim head
coach in America's interim head coach. Now he's a champion
of perhaps the best team of all time. Men, those
are big, beaty topics. Brazilian steakhouse type n I just
kept coming. But with last night belonging to college football,
now tonight we dive back into the NFL, continue on

(41:04):
with the astros cheating scandal, of course. Joining us now
on the hotline a man who was just completed fifteen
thousand words on Syracuses upset of Virginia from Saturday CBS
Sports NFL Insider extraordinaire Jason Locking for what's happening? Jay?
What's going on? Guys? I mean, you must be you
must be tired, your hands typing from that. You got
the big lacrosse previews, you had your work. I know

(41:26):
you're a busy I did see though that Uh they
tore down the daily range. Yeah, yeah, they did, they did.
I don't know why. Do you know the backstory of that?
I don't rever really know why. Kind of flashed across
my Twitter feed, But I don't know if the school
bought it. I guess no. I have no idea, But
I think Otto the Orange is going to be in
charge of the daily newspaper now for Syracuse. I think

(41:49):
that he was a hell of a copy of her
back in the day. Hey, so before we get to
the games, let's start saying we have two big retirements
in the NFL, Antonio Gates calls at quitcy he didn't
play last year, and Luke Quickley a surprising announcement at
age eight after eight seasons in the NFL. These guys
are both Hall of famers. I think Gates his first ballot.
Quickly might have to wait. He only played eight years.

(42:11):
You know, where are you on this news from today
with these guys. Yeah, I think they're they're both Hall
of famers, Um, without a doubt. I wonder. I don't
even want to get into the minutia of my you know,
Hall of Fame voting in the NFL and the problems
I have with it. But there's so many guys who
caught so many balls, um that I just I don't

(42:32):
know if there's going to end up being a backlog
of tight ends the way there was a backlog of receivers.
But for me Quickley, um, I mean, look eight years
doing what he did, knocking heads for a living, there's
plenty long enough. And and you know for me, he
was Ashoan on the All Decade team. Um, this is
a guy who affected the run game, affected the past game,

(42:53):
was an incredible leader, got others around him. Too um
sort of rise above and buy into something bigger than themselves.
I mean, he was beloved by the guys he played
with and beloved by the guys he played against, and
had immense respect around the league. So obviously, you know,

(43:18):
his concussion issues are well documented, and he knows his
body and his mind better than anybody else. And if
he just got through the rigors of a season and
felt like he may have dodged a bullet or two,
and you know what I mean, and whatever, you know,
a lot of life to live, hopefully for a guy
who's eight. And this isn't you know, I don't know

(43:40):
that we should be calling these early retirements are saying,
you know what, it's a surprise anymore, because we know
the risk of playing football. If and if, at any
point the mental calculus for any individual is I don't
want to do that anymore, you know, because of future
health and safety, because of how I feel right now,

(44:01):
because of the risks involved, then you know, I think
you have to respect it. And this is not, you know,
a fluke or an anomaly. A lot of young men
are coming to these decisions and and I don't know
that we should we should you know, we as outsiders
should be saying, well, that guy retired too soon, or

(44:21):
that guy retired quote unquote early. No, he retired when
he was ready to retire. All right, Jason, Now we
we've had the coaching carousel has now stopped. We can
move on the last one to join the fray. Kevin
Stefanski saying all the right things. Guy's the limit for
Baker Mayfield? Is he the guy to change the culture
in Cleveland? I don't know, man, You know it's it's

(44:42):
it's not just the coach himself, it's who's you working
for problem? Who are you working with potentially a problem?
You know, what is this staff gonna look like? Who's
helping him pick the staff? How much? Say, are the
analytics guys having him picking a staff? And I'm completely
progressive when it comes two numbers and advanced data and metrics,

(45:07):
But I think we start talking about position coaches and
offensive coordinators. Uh that maybe a little out of Paul
deep indest his debt. I don't know, um, but whatever
they've touched there hasn't worked. And and and I think
Kevin's the fans. He has a lot going for him.
He's been on my radar for a while. A lot
of people I know and respect who know him very well,
speak very highly of him. But he's coming into a

(45:28):
very charged situation where they've been running over um and
experienced head coaches for multiple decades, going back to Mike Patton.
And why this owner in particular keeps hiring the same
archetype by and large. And I know Hugh Jackson had
one year as a head coach in Oakland, but it's
not like Hugh Jackson had real head coaching chops. He
keeps hiring NFL coordinators over and over and over and

(45:52):
right now, there, you know, the fancy's walking into a
cauldron where the quarterback has been over empowered. There's a
lot of big characters and quirky personalities that John Dorsey
brought in there, and that's Dorsey's way. But Dorsey's not
there anymore. And it's Kevin Stefanski's problem now. And I
don't know who his bad cop is, but he better
have a couple of bad cops there who were willing
to lay down the law and sept some guardrails and

(46:14):
what's acceptable and what's not, and people need to know
that there's real consequences. I don't know that Kevin Stefanski
at age thirty eight can walk in there and do
that himself. Um, and picking players has been a problem
there forever as well, So godspeed. UM. I'm rooting for him,
but it's an uphill client. So the fact that Josh
McDaniels took all the interviews didn't get any jobs. He

(46:35):
looked like he was ticketed for the Brown's job, but
it wasn't a real match. Does him not taking a
job and going back to the Patriots, does this have
anything to do with Tom Brady, his dad, That's what
he might decide. No, I mean, you know, timing did
not work out for Josh um. His agents, you know,
didn't get him in front of Carolina before they got
their other client, Matt Role in front of Carolina. And

(46:56):
I think David Tepper was gonna I don't think David
Tepper was gonna hire the first coach he truly fell
in love with and he felt shared his vision and
had he met with Josh McDaniels first, I strongly believe,
based on what I knew, they felt a McDaniels going
into an interview that he would have hired McDaniels twelve
hours later. But you know, he fell in love with Rule,

(47:16):
and Rule had other options, and so you know, money
and and term of the contract was no object for him.
You know, Josh under the paradigm I just spoke about
in Cleveland, where you've got a baseball executive basically running
the organization by proxy from his laptop in Lahala, California.
That wasn't gonna fly for Josh. Like that was never

(47:37):
gonna happen. Um, he took the interview because you got it.
He's not in a position to be saying no, and
you want to hear people out. But I think both
sides knew that unless Jimmy hasn't was willing to go
with a different management model, that Josh wasn't going to
be a fit there. And everybody also knew that the
Podesto wanted to hire Kevin Stefanski last year when the owner,
you know, the three owners and Dorsey picked uh Kitchens instead.

(48:01):
So I think that, you know, and let's kevins Fancy
had a horrible interview, he was probably gonna get that job.
And Kevis the Fancy is too bright and prepared, and
he just went through the process with him last year
to have a horrible interview. Um, keeping Josh McDaniels, Does
that help the New England Patriots make a pitch to
Tom Brady? It does, But um, the Patriots better realized

(48:23):
that they need to rerecruit Tom Brady. Fox Sports Radio
Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen for the Guy goes
Studios on the Hotline with us CBS Sports NFL reporter
Inside or our buddy Jason Locke and FA find him
on Twitter at Jason Locke and for a Jason, you
mentioned Matt Rule a little bit earlier, and I gotta
be honest. The hiring today of a new man to
his staff. I was hoping he'd end up in the

(48:44):
A f C E so there'd still be a Brady
to Torment Smith forever. Joe bradyes to Carolina. What's it
mean for Cam Newton And how's this offense gonna look? Hey, Well,
if Joe Brady keeps doing what he did uh at
l s U, he might end up as the A
s C East to the head coach, So don't rule
that out. Um, the rise for these quarterback guys can

(49:04):
be pretty fast. I'm excited by the move. I think
Matt Rouill going to have a pretty interesting hybrid mix
on his staff of college and pro guys and Brady basically,
um took the best of what Sean Payton does, which
it's easy to steal from the master. It's knowing then
how to apply what you've learned in the heat of
the moment um. It's it's it's utilizing it in game.

(49:26):
And he obviously showed an ability to scheme people open
UH and really take Joe Burrow's game to another level. Um.
You know you said for Cam Newton, I mean I
don't know that is it Cam Newton? I mean could
it be Teddy Bridgewater who Brady worked with, and and
you know Orleans. If they decide that, you know what, Um,
you know, maybe we could move on from Cam and
get a guy who's a little younger. Um, you know,

(49:49):
with with Uh, I guess you look at it both ways.
I mean, he's young to begin with six and play
in terms of his body because of how much time
he missed and you know how long he's been a backup.
He he's probably from a body standpoint, and coming back
from that horrific knee injury's probably more like a twenty
three year old, so you know, will that resonate with them?

(50:10):
And and the other thing about this staff is Matt
Rule having a you know, a bunch of college guys
on the staff. They're gonna know the kids in these
next couple of drafts inside out. They would have recruited
a lot of them that would have been in their
parents house. They'll know him as individuals. Um, they'll know
their makeup, they'll talk to their high school coaches. It
won't be um, you know, sort of the surface level
that most NFL coaches would know college prospects. So there

(50:33):
might be some diamonds in the rough with the quarterback
position who they're really high on, you know, from their
experience at Baylor. So, Jay, speaking of quarterbacks, are you
happy for Joe Burrow? He's gonna go number one overall?
Are you concerned that he's going to be a banker? Well,
I mean, we have the a f C package at CBS,
and it would be really cool. We know if we had.
We've got all these emerging young quarterbacks. You know, You've

(50:55):
you've got Lamar and you've got my Homes and you
know Sam Darnolph and we the week looks like he
might make the step up, Ken Baker Mayfield get it
going in in year three. Mean, that's an interesting division.
You've got Lamar Baker, Mayfield, um, and then Joe Burrow
and I mean it's look, they've got Joe Mixon. I
know the Bengals were erect this year, but the left

(51:18):
tackle at Alabama will be back, and you know that
that's a pretty good starting point. One of the offensive
lineman they've drafted the last few years has to be
half decent. Um. They might be crazy enough to franchise
a j Green because they have Burrow. You know, could
Ross ever stay healthy? I don't know, but boys are
pretty good receiver. If they invest in the offensive line,

(51:38):
I think they can make major games quickly offensively. You know, defensively,
it's probably gonna take some time, and they've gotten long
in the tooth and some key spots there. Um, But
I mean, look, could could Joe Burrow take them from
one win to five or six next year? I don't
think that would be the craziest thing in the world,
based on what else they do in the off season. Yes,

(52:00):
you're there on the ground in Baltimore. I mean, how
what are you doing in the community to help people
get past this past weekend and uh, what's sort of
around the plastic bags collecting tears. You can solve a
lot of water issues with that after that. But the
local consensus of Lamar are they wavering? What what? What's
the field there? No, I don't really Locally, there's a

(52:22):
lot of heat on Greg Roman UM, and I think
educated fans who watched that game um justifiably. So. I
mean on a day where um, look, guys are dropping
balls left and right, and Lamar in the first half
was sort of two amped up again, so those mechanics
were wavering, throwing some fluttery balls. But I mean the

(52:42):
first drive ends on the interception on the ball that
Mark Andrews caught about twenty five times this year, and
he's banged up and he doesn't quite high pointed. Lamar
needed some help, and Greg Roman decided down one score
to start going five wide empty set on a team
that has no wide receivers and they are any two
plays offense. The fullback um only played seven snaps. I

(53:04):
mean they're worried about Ingram's injury. Gus Edwards comes out
of the shoot looks like a house of fire. He
didn't even play of the staffs. They got a completely
away from the mesh point RPO game. They just abandoned
their identity and we're chucking in all over the place.
Lamar dropped back seventy times. I mean, come on, it's
it's it was. It was kind of seismic. And I

(53:27):
wrote a column today. You know, I looked back at that.
You look back at the Bills with Brian Dable, another
guy who was up for a head coaching job. And
sometimes these coordinators get too cute when when when the
world's watching and their prospective new owners watching. I mean,
Buffalo ran thirty five plays for net yards after getting
a sixteen nothing lead. They're running for six yards to
carry and they throw twice as much as they run.

(53:48):
Um Josh McDaniels the week before, you know, that same
weekend with New England, I mean they had three hundred
total yards. They had no plays over twenty nine yards. Now,
I know they were limited all year, but that have
been Tom Brady's last game, you know, with with the Patriots,
and then Gregg Roman crapt out and Kevin Stefanski. I mean, dude,

(54:11):
head coach, you're Cleveland, that's the job. I mean, so
I just I do think that's real human nature. I mean,
you can try to block that stuff out, but you've
got fat friends and family. You're getting the job, and
you know the owners are watching, and the whole week's watching,
and you're the only game being played. And I do
think it got to Greg Romans. All right, Hey, Jay,
real quick ten seconds. When we talked to you next week,

(54:32):
we're talking about what two teams in the Super Bowl
in San France. Here we go. I like that pick.
I like that pick. Jason Lock and four. You can
follow him on Twitter at Jason Lock and FA and
for a history of Otto the Orange as well. He's
got that coming up. Jay is always my friend. Appreciated buddy.
We'll talk to you next week. You got I got
a busy offseason, apparently, go get anybody. Always great stuff

(54:56):
from Jake, Jason Lock and Fura. We have more NFL
on the way, but coming up next we dive deeper
into the developing drama and saga in Major League Baseball.
That is the astros cheating scandal. More managers losing their
job today, what's next? Keep it right here, Jason Smith,
Mike Harmon Fox Sports Radio. Be sure to catch live

(55:16):
editions of The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays
at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific. Happy Thanksgiving Everybody,
Fox Sports Radio The Jason Smith Show with my best
friend Mike Harmon. Oh do you own a rent your home?
Sure you do. Fortunately, Geico makes it easy to bundle
your home and auto insurance. It's a good thing too,
because having a home is hard work. Go to Geico

(55:36):
dot com, get a quote and see how much you
could save. Geico dot com easy. You know when when
uh wife and I bought our house, I was remember
going through the processing, Okay, we're gonna do this, this, this,
and then we're gonna be done. And then you saw
j j Abrams next door, and that's like, we're gonna
do this. This is dead. We're done with the house.
And I remember telling my mom that goes. She was,
what are gonna as well, we have to do this.

(55:58):
We would finish the garage now then we're done, and
you laughed. I go what she goes, You're never going
to be done with your house. She said, you're insane.
I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't usually says Jason,
You're never gonna be done. There's always going to be
something with the house. And I said, oh, I mean
I'm not gonna get to sit around and do nothing
all day and just sit in the house like I
do in the apartment. She goes, no, there's always gonna

(56:19):
be something, and I said, okay, yes, And it depends
how much you need it to change. Right, Whether you
like the set up in the kitchen you don't like that,
there's an opportunity. You don't like the cabinets, you go
to the cabinets. You don't like the downstairs. Maybe it's
not a finished basement. You gotta finish the basement, you
gotta dry it out, you gotta do all that. Maybe
you want to add to your attic. And there's a

(56:41):
lot of things you can do. But you can also
just sit on your ass and do nothing if you're
so inclined. Yeah, you've got a lot of garbage at
your house. What are you talking about? The Mets? The
Mets stuff, Mets and jet stuff is certainly there, you know,
speaking the thing I actually meant like trash sitting there?
They did, I'm sitting there thing because we have our
christ this tree out finally for them to take. We

(57:04):
were we were that family that still still had our tree.
We gotta get rid of the tree. And the tree
is done now. But speaking of the Mets, they're gonna
be the team left holding the bag. After the latest
round of scandal involving the Houston Astros suspensions firings, now
Alex Cora quote firing as a result of the sign

(57:27):
stealing scandal that rock baseball a day ago. Today, Alex
Cora and the Red Sox agreed to quote part ways,
which is where they called Alex core in for me
and to go. We were thinking that I would go, yes, okay, mutual,
I want to be able to get a job someplace else. Well,
of course you are, someone's gonna hire you as a
bench coach. Dude, you had this incredible, incredibly sophisticated technological

(57:52):
mouse trap type way to relay signals of what the
picture is throwing from the center field stands all the
way to the batter. I mean it was some you
had a camera and it would relay and then they'd
bang a garbage can't dude, someone else is gonna hire
you for that? You gonna want that, okay? And what
kind of player the Jets gonna run here? All looks
like a run play. They're banging down now, Alex Cora.

(58:13):
They're banging the drum on the sideline, running play, running play. Oh,
I don't hear anything. The Jets are gonna pass. Oh,
running play. Here comes leavi on Bell and he is
stacked up at the line. I really think the Jets
just when they hold up their play cards, they kind
of screwed up, and there's Jesus on them. It's all

(58:33):
the same thing, you know. Look, that's the equivalent to
to be to be fair. That's the equivalent of when
when when fans say, well, what kind of advantage is
knowing what kind of pitch is coming? Because you still
have to hit it, I'm like, okay, I get that
part of it. You still got to hit a fastball
where you gotta hit a hillacious curve. But when you

(58:55):
know it's a fastball, you gear up for it. When
you know it's an off speed pitch which is either
a curve or a slider or a split finger or
anything that's not a fastball, you know you can wait
on it, you can get close to the whatever you
need to do. It's a huge advantage. It's the football
equivalent of knowing if a team is gonna run or
pass the football, and granted on a lot of plays,

(59:15):
you know, while this team is in a passing situation.
But when you know specifically this is a running play,
everybody gets up to the line of scrimmage or it's
a passing play, you know, linebackers can drop a little
bit further in coverage, you have to worry about anything,
take a step up into the hole and then move back.
It's a huge advantage. And the astros knowing what pitch
is coming is a huge advantage. I can't I can't

(59:36):
state that enough. Is that this is a team that
went to the World Series winning a lot of games
because they knew what pitch was coming, and all these
guys have had great years and all these guys able
to do it shows you how hard major League Baseball.
It's because it's not like these guys all hit three
seventy one through weight in the batting order. But it
shows you how big of an advantage this was. This
goes all the way through and they win the World Series,

(59:58):
and then they go back again and they're beating teams
and stopping teams from getting to the World Series. I mean,
this is the biggest cheating scandal baseball scene since the
Mitchell Report. And part of when I say Rob Manfred
doesn't want to put his finger on it by vacating
the World Series for the Astros is because this is
the cheating version of the Mitchell Report. This is not

(01:00:19):
everybody on steroids. This is now okay because you know,
it goes a lot further than the Astros. They caught
the Astros, and now Alex Cora gets caught up in
the net and he gets fired. Carlos Beltran, manager of
the Mets, is caught up in the net because he
was one of the two players named in the investigation
that Rob Manford completed. So and this is gonna just
continue to keep going. I mean I saw former MLB

(01:00:39):
players on on Twitter and on social media time, but
how they would steal signs when they played. It's sometimes
involved nefarious ways, not just oh I can I can
the pictures not blocking the plate so I can see
the sign here, the you know the catcher's not taking
enough care. No, it's more sophisticated ways that are really
just out now cheating. You've opened up a really big
scan and this is just how it's been done. And

(01:01:03):
this is the Mitchell Report of of stealing. Signs of
cheating in Major League Baseball doesn't involve needles, but it
involves achieving on the field. But in this case, right
as we're talking talking to get through, it's like, did
you do enough to dissuade anybody to stop, you know,
and and convince them to stop, I should say, dissuade
them from doing it? No? No, If a couple of

(01:01:23):
executives can can get some run, get their team towards
a deep end, and manager, et cetera, and win a
World Series, it's gonna be one of those. All right,
there's an asterisk to it. But how much was talent? Whatever?
Right they were doing it in plain sight that a
lot of the evidence was here's a nothing game against
the White Sox with thirty seven people in attendance in

(01:01:44):
early September, and you can hear it. At the time,
you think it's just all right, these guys are born,
they're just being jackasses, and then you find out it's
you know, much more elaborate plan as you roll through.
So the way they came down on it and players
are gonna go through how many teams it affects everybody's
looking for an edge. Just a question of where where

(01:02:05):
they're drawing that invisible yellow line like we were talking
about with Mike Barrera a little bit earlier, and did
they come further or short of it? But here was
the statement from the Dodgers. We read it last night,
it's appropriate here to read it again. All clubs have
been asked by Major League Baseball not to comment on
today's punishment of the Houston Astros, as it's inappropriate to
comment on discipline imposed on another club. The Dodgers have

(01:02:26):
also not been asked not to comment on any wrongdoing
during the World Series. And we'll have no further comment
at this time. So it's all right, here's what we
ruled on. Please shut up. So maybe they got the
goods on some other teams whatever else, but we're let's
not exacerbated by having front office people start to go
at the commissioner's office, because the commissioner is the great

(01:02:49):
and powerful laws. Well, you know what, the curtain got
pulled back and you were caught with your pants now,
because this is a really a pathetic effort to try
to put this away. This is nobody really paid a price.
It's just going to keep going because now the Red
Sox two thousand eighteen season in World Series is going
to be under a lot of scrutiny, and Alex Core
is still under investigation for a different way. The Red

(01:03:10):
Sox were stealing signs then using an Apple Watch, and
and this story is just going to continue to get bigger.
I mean, when when you first heard about stories in
Major League Baseball, the lid wasn't put on that. It
just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And you realize
the big scope of everybody in falls. It's the same
thing with this. This scope is just getting larger and
larger and larger. And now it's gonna be the Red

(01:03:32):
Sox and then it's gonna be the Mets and Carlos Beltran,
and then it's gonna be let's look back at teams
that won at all and that came out of nowhere,
because I use my college football college basketball comparison is that, hey,
when you have teams in college football and college basketball
that's completely come out of nowhere and play great for
a long time, Okay, what do they figured out how

(01:03:53):
to do that? They never figured out how to do before,
And your people are gonna look at major League Baseball
that way. How did team at completely come out of
nowhere to win the World Series when they had not
done that before? You know, whether it's the Royals, and
I'm not I'm not saying the Royal Stull signs, but
people are gonna go back at all these teams. They'll
go back to the Red Sox in two thousand three,
two thousand four where they sealing signs beating the Yankees

(01:04:13):
and when they came back from three down. All these
teams are gonna get all kinds of scrutiny, especially the
more names that come out. Will so and so played
on this team? And was it the first time they
heard about it with the Astros or was the Astros
just a way that they really got it sophisticated to
the point where they had a whole cheating system going on.
We got more on this coming up in ninety seconds.

(01:04:34):
Keep it right here. Weally here what former Yankee pitchers
CC Sabathia had to say tonight about being cheated out
of the seventeen World Series. That's coming up in ninety
But first, be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm
Eastern seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the
I Heart Radio app So as we continue to break

(01:04:57):
down the latest and the the sign sealings handle involving
the Astros. Today, the Red Sox and manager Alex core
agreed to part ways. Cora was the mastermind according to
Rob Manfred's investigation into how the Astros were stealing signs
electronically and illegally transmitting them to his teammates. But C. C.
Sabbathi of the Yankees who lost the Astros in went

(01:05:21):
on inside the NFL on Showtime tonight and in the
midst of Talking Football, he was asked about the his
opinion on the Yankees losing the Astros going on to
win the World Series amidst the fact that they were
stealing signs all along the way. And here's CC, it's
getting frustrating, man to sit here and know that, you know,

(01:05:41):
late in my career, I probably could have had a title,
you know, maybe seventeen or maybe eighteen, um. But you know,
we we got cheated, you know, out of out of
you know, a team kind of doing something that that's
not within the rules of the game. Is your personal
feelings should the world series title be vacated. Yeah, that's
something like you know we said we talked about earlier.
I mean, I had never thought about that, but maybe yeah,
you know what I mean, why not when people were

(01:06:02):
talking about, you know, them giving up the title. You
know you can't give it to the Dodgers and obviously
you can't give it to us in seventeen, but um vacated.
You know, I'm I'm you know, I wouldn't be mad
at that. Now why not? Why not? Why not give
it to everybody that the Astros beat along the way
to everybody give us a title? Gives a title? Heres
title here. This is evidence of how Rob Manford has

(01:06:24):
lost control of this. This storyline is that this is
just going to continue to happen. Players are really pissed,
and he didn't he didn't get that this was going
to be part of the reaction. Well, the Astros stole signs. Now,
are the players gonna be that upset? Lots of the
players steal signs. They can't be that upset, especially if
I'm gonna suspend the GM and the manager and they're

(01:06:45):
probably gonna get fired and I'm gonna dock them the
first and second round draft picks for a couple of
years and find them. That's a big enough penalty, completely
mismanaging what the reaction was gonna be around Major League
Baseball players are gonna weigh in on this and make
headlines for weeks up until spring training, and then when
they get the spring training, it's gonna start all over again.

(01:07:08):
Tonight at c C. Sabathia. Tomorrow it's gonna be somebody else.
The next thing is gonna be somebody else. How do
you not vacate the World Series? How did you not
do this? Had he just done it, it would have
been a story. It would have been a bad headline,
but then we would have been able to get by it.
But now it's gonna continue to linger, especially if the
Mets keep Carlos Beltran. That's why I can't see the Mets.
In all the Mets things that the Mets have done,

(01:07:29):
I can't see them keeping Carlos Beltran because he was named.
He was one of the two players aside, one of
the two people besides Alex Cora named in the report,
and he's gonna keep his job. He lied to the
media when he when he got the job with the Mets,
saying what his role was with the sign stealing situation.
Hasn't managed a game yet for the Mets, and the
Mets still saying, Oh, Carlos Beltran's our guy that's gonna
hang over. This is just gonna keep getting bigger and bigger.

(01:07:53):
It's like what we heard about spy Gate. When spy
Gate first came out, we got the story and Roger
Goodell had a really crappy response to it. Right, I'm
gonna dock the page of draft pick and I've destroyed
the tapes. Well, what do you mean you destroy the tapes?
I destroyed the tapes? How long do we talk about
spy Gate years? Because we didn't get a solution that
was applicable to the situation. I mean, the Patriots cheated

(01:08:15):
for years getting video of other teams illegally and it
helped them win Super Bowls, and he went light on them,
and what happened we talked about He still talk about
spy Gates twelve years later. We still talk about Spygate.
The same thing is gonna be with the Houston Astros.
We're gonna talk about this for ten years. Ah and
then and he wouldn't take the World Series away and
that's gonna continue to upset people and piss them off.

(01:08:37):
And that that's why when you're a commissioner, I get
that some decisions you want you have to make aren't
the most popular ones for you and your legacy. But
it's your job. You're the guy that's gonna make up. Yeah,
I mean, certainly if the Astros remained good and in
contention like the Patriots, then it's revisited every year. Right,
we we get to September and we're having those same

(01:08:58):
discussions when we look at the way this was was
pieced out and we got the c C. Sabathia on record.
Now there's gonna be a bunch of guys coming up.
How many guys come forth after talking to their agents,
Like you know, you signed that deal. You were compared
to player x y Z of the Astros or player
x y Z who had a big year in Boston,

(01:09:20):
and you were put behind them, right, so you you
didn't get the money even though they got helped along
the way. So I mean, you're you're talking you affected
guy's wallets, you affected other teams wallets. You're talking about
hosting home games, getting another game, uh, deeper into a
world series, getting your player bonuses, all of those things,
the legacies. I mean, there's an awful lot that goes

(01:09:41):
into this that I don't know that Rob Manford took
fully into account. A strongly worded letter to people, and
the punishment that got put out. I mean this, this
is the onion. You've got, the first couple of layers
peeled back. It's just gonna get bigger and bigger as
you go. And a lot of tears, a lot of anger,
a lot of salty this coming out of this, because

(01:10:01):
it's really an ugly spot for the sport. If you vacated,
you can at least saying we we addressed it harshly,
and you now know where the line is. The line
that he drew was one you can easily erase in
the sand with your feet, Like you don't. There's no
real penalty twitter at how about a fresca, Mike, it's
swollen dumb When when you go light on penalties, no

(01:10:22):
one ever forgets it. Like I said, it's spy gate,
and now it's sign stealing gate or trash can gate,
whatever you it's gonna wind up being called in Major
League Baseball. Mike, it's swollen dumb Twitter at how about
a fresca? Jason Smith Mike Carmon Live from the Geico Studios.
We'll have more on this story coming up in about
fifteen minutes, but straight ahead. Sometimes we do really fun

(01:10:43):
stories and the story ends. Sometimes you do really fun
stories and then a few days later we get a
great ending to it. This is the case of a
big story we brought you at the end of last
week and how it turned out today. Keep it right here.
That's coming up next Fox Sports. You be sure to
catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show with Mike

(01:11:04):
Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app Fox
Sports Radio, The Chase the Smith Show with my best
friend Mike Harmen live from the Geico Studios. And lots
of times there are really funny stories that will do
on the show, and sometimes they end. Sometimes those stories

(01:11:28):
wind up having a solution a week later. Sometimes we
get to them, sometimes we don't. It depends on the
news value and stories we're covering that night. But I
am glad to be able to say that there is
now a solution to the nixt story we brought you
last week. Remember on Friday night, there were two big
stories that that landed in our lap. The Packers offering

(01:11:51):
twelve dollars an hour to Packers fans to come shovel
snow at lambeau Field late Saturday in the Sunday morning,
which went viral for us over the weekends. Thank you
for the hatred. And now your band from Greenbank never
go to green Band. I like going to Wisconsin. Well,
I mean people can sneaky cheese across the border. And
then there was a story of the Knicks fan who

(01:12:12):
was plucked out of the crowd to shoot a half
court shot. Just a week before Lakers had a fan
come out shoot a half court shot one hundred thousand dollars.
The Knicks fan comes out, shoots a half court shot,
makes it, does not win a hundred thousand dollars and
not win fifty grand, does not win twenty grand, does
not win a new car. He wins a thousand dollars

(01:12:35):
in scratch off lottery tickets. Did the Knicks thought that
was a good promotion. Hey, New York State Lottery is
working with us. We'll give this half course. This is
what you give a guy to see, Hey can you
dribble a ball from one end line to the other
and back in twenty five seconds. Whatever is not but
a guy makes a half court shot and you're gonna
get a thousand dollars in scratch. Now, I think a

(01:12:56):
hundred grand is too much, right. I think there's gotta
be some because I know people are just chucking ball
all all the time nowadays. Okay, but you staying away
a grand man, that's man good good. Like the packers business.
I'll argue the same thing. You can get suckers to
run out there and they're excited to be part of
it for next to nothing. Have had it. I said

(01:13:17):
at the time, the guy should sell these tickets on
eBay because of the big self subculture out there of
people who like scratch offs. He'd get at least a
thousand dollars for him. Probably probably would get hundred four
because people would think, okay, maybe I can win more
than a thousand dollars. He would have made that amount
of money. I was wondering, now, what are we going

(01:13:37):
to find out what this guy want? Well, worldwide one
who we see on Twitter all the time, He's got
a thousand followers, Big NBA insider uh, sorry, he's got
a million followers, big NBA insider, and he said he
tracked down the guy who won the scratch offs from
the Knicks. Guy said that they were all five dollar

(01:14:01):
lottery scratch off. Two hundred those he's scratched off. How
much do you think the guy won two hundred five
dollar scratch offs? Guy says he won five dollars hundred dollars,
five hundred bucks. Anthony Peterson, the man in question. You

(01:14:24):
gotta give him his his love as we go. But yeah,
five hundred bucks, right, like five seventy dollars when it
was all said and done. That's brutal. Five hundred bucks.
And next get paid millions of dollars their players to
not make shots. This guy's made a half court shot.
He's getting five hundred bucks. Mix, yo, I mean, like
you got you got a team that's worth five billion dollars.

(01:14:46):
Your owner's worth two billion dollars. And here's look, this
promotion would have worked for something else less than this, Like, oh,
he's a thousand dollars. That's pretty cool for somebody who
can you spin a ball on your finger for five
seconds and you make a free throw and then a
three pointer, something like the layup free throw three pointer
thing something like that. But you make that half court shot,

(01:15:08):
that's the gold standard. That's all the kids are. What
was it? It It became the gold standard when the kid
made the half court shot, uh midnight Madness a few
years ago, and and and he won free college for
a year. That that's become the gold standard. You win
something big. You don't win a thousand dollars in the scribe. Yeah,
but you had a chance. You had a lot of stuff,

(01:15:31):
and everyone every one of those two tickets, he said,
he started having problems with his wrists and he had
that card dust all over his hands in his house.
But and then here was a great one. Have the
Knicks offered you the ten day yet? Nahed out though, no, no, no,
clearly I'm kidding, but yeah, tell James, don't want to

(01:15:52):
call me. But you know it was a chance at greatness,
and he was excited to do it. You want to
do this brought to you out the New York State
Lottery and at it, I would like to say that
this is the last time the Nicks will do something
like this, and then makes him figure that now you know,
they're just gonna keep ladies and gentlemen here to shoot

(01:16:12):
the half court shot. Carlos BELTRAI, let's tie them together. Hey,
that became a thing people talked about it. Let's not
But you know what a thousand dollars and scratch offs
is too. Mu'm only gonna have away five dollars. You
would steal the ball and go home. I mean an
official league ball. Caume the guy could have sold the
stuff on eBay and he would have made probably bucks.

(01:16:33):
That's that's how he goes. I told him, of course might.
And we're gonna stink forever. We're gonna They're never going
to be good moment here for a long, long while
here on Fox Sports Trading. I tell you the next
decade is gonna be fun. Twitter At how about a
Fresco might get swollen down the Jason Smith Show with
my best friend Mike Harmon. So the Red Sox are

(01:16:55):
looking for a new manager. Who could it be? The
Mets might be looking for a new manager. Who could
it be? As the cheating scandal has enveloped all of
Major League baseball, what we saw and what coming up next?
We get from our biggest baseball insider, John Paul Morossi,
who joins us next here. This is Fox Sports Radio.

(01:17:15):
It is our three of the program, The Jason Smith
Show with my best friend Mike Carmen to three and
a huge day in Major League Baseball. Another bombshell dropped
as the Red Sox we'll be looking for a new
manager as Alex Cora is out. The two sides agree
to Cora leaving the team as Cora was named the

(01:17:37):
mastermind of the Houston Astros operation to steal signals and
other team signs back in two thousand and seventeen when
the Astros won the World Series. This a day after
the Astros had their manager and general manager suspended for
the season and then fired. Is A. J. Hinch and
Jeff Lenora looking for new jobs. Carlos Beltran of the Mets,
the other player named in the report, still as the

(01:18:00):
manager of the Mets for now, joining us on the hotline.
No one better to talk to Fox Sports MLB Network
Baseball insider John Paul Morossi, JPA. Not what I thought
we'd be calling to talk about at this point in time,
but this is what the new cycle brings us. So
happy to hear both of you, nonetheless, and uh, it

(01:18:20):
really is a remarkable statement to say that now the
teams that have accounted for the last three American League
pennants are now all looking for a new manager, both
both those teams of Red Sox and Astros. Here a
month before spring training just really speaks to the unprecedented

(01:18:41):
nature of this situation the baseball has in really all
the way around. So if let me just start here,
if the beginning of this story was yesterday when the
penalties were announced, and and now we are today with
Alex Cora, if zero percent was where we started, and
a dent is where we're going to end when we

(01:19:01):
finally put the ASTERROI cheating scanal to bed. What percentage
of the story if we heard so far? An excellent question.
And if we're going to use the parallel to the
p D era, which I think is apt in many ways. Um,
here we are all these years later, and we're still
talking about it right in one way or another. Uh,

(01:19:22):
the steroid era through the Hall of Fame, UM is
certainly part of the conversation. This week has the chance
to affect the game for years to come and and
maybe even more than a decade. Not necessarily on an
everyday basis, but the legacies of the players involved will

(01:19:43):
keep coming back up to your mind, and you'll you'll
wonder what percentage of it was quote unquote real, what
percentage of it was UM artificial in the in the
sense of UM numbers that were achieved based on information
that they possessed that was not fair. And we don't know,
certainly in a global context, how many other teams, how

(01:20:07):
many other players were guilty of similar misdeeds of of
stealing signs using technology. And again, much like the stereod era,
we're probably never going to have all that information. UM.
We just have to I think as a sport UM
and I think the MLB has taking a very good
step this week showing just how seriously the Commissioner's office

(01:20:32):
regards UH these violations. And and I think there's obviously
a tremendous um disincentive for others to try it moving forward.
But if you were to ask, what are the odds
of another team being mentioned in the next year with
evidence brought forth, we have to say that that remembering back,

(01:20:55):
reportedly the Astros made the point at the initial outside
of of the UH, the individual that they had stationed
next to the dugout in the playoffs. The purpose of
that person being there was to try to catch other
teams who were cheating, and at the time, I believe
a half dozen or so, uh what was the number

(01:21:16):
that was cited in meteor reports at the time of
being with the Astros suspected other teams were doing at
that point in time that many other clubs. So, guys,
it is it's a difficult, uh story for Baseball to
wade through because to your point, Jason, what we simply
do not know where the other bank of this river

(01:21:37):
truly is. It is very foggy and uh, it is
not yet clear c JP as we we do the math,
and I mean, you got a couple of guys that
lose a job. I get it for an ownership, five
million bucks, couple of draft picks. You get to keep
your international pool. I said, they went off pretty light. Nobody, nobody,
no player faces any kind of retribution for this. All

(01:21:58):
it is is hints and whist first you move on, Well,
I I would disagree there. I guess first and foremost,
the five million dollar fine is the most that is
allowable on her Baseball rules to sanction any particular team
he made. Then go if they wanted to find him

(01:22:19):
five million and one dollar. They couldn't have done it. Okay,
they got to the very maximum level that they could go,
first and foremost, I think on the conversation, I know
it's a popular one in Los Angeles right now, should
they have to vacate a championship? I simply I don't
think that that is something you could do, because, uh,

(01:22:42):
then you have to start to reverse engineer the entire
steroid era. Who might have won a certain championship in
a given year. Was anybody else on the other side
of any of these championships over the last three decades
in which uh there may have been p the involvement
with anybody on the opposite team, uh involved at all
m p d s. It's just it's a it's a

(01:23:05):
very untenable position to put someone in to ask the
commissioner to do that, and I think regarding players, there
there are two different um reasons for this. Number one
is the commissioner came out and said in I am
holding the field manager and general manager responsible for adhering

(01:23:25):
to the rules that are set forth. That fall regarding
the Apple watch that came out with the Boston Red Sox,
he put that on the management. Okay, that's first and foremost.
The second part is, as a practical matter, Uh, if
you suspended players that many, all of those that were
potentially involved in guilty here, first of all, the union

(01:23:47):
would grieve it, and second of all, how many astros
are then left? Okay to play this season? To head?
I mean, it really is a remarkably prevalent scenario based
on what was known and who knew it was going
on apart from actually participating in it, who knew about it.
One had to assume a very substantial percentage of the team.

(01:24:11):
So it is a it's a tremendously difficult penalty to legislate.
I think the commissioner did quite a good job of
doing it under very difficult circumstances. All right, so let's
take you this the next part. Now, the Astros part
ways with a J. Hinch, the Red Sox part ways
with Alex Cora. Who are we going to see take
those jobs? Well? Again, another key question, and the question

(01:24:35):
is as well, which teams would even permit their field
staff members to interview for these positions this close to
the start of the season. You've already had meetings about
spring training UM. I do think though that given the
nature of of UH what has transpired here, MLB should

(01:24:58):
encourage their member club that if of a bench coach,
or a third base coach, or a heading coach, pitching
coaches being requested to interview, I think it's important to
let those people do it. So one name to mention
right here, Matt Cortrouro, who did a very good job
with the UH Tampa Bay Raise on their on their
coaches half at the major league level, and also interviewed

(01:25:21):
at least one other job during the course of the
winner and interviewed very well. He would be a good
candidate in Boston because of the familiarity there between him
and him Bloom, the new chief Baseball officers there in Boston,
of course, has come from Tampa Bay. Watched that name.
But in terms of the two names that we know
well in this game that I think, in the back

(01:25:42):
of my mind maybe this would be a good fit
for them, just given their experience. Bruce Bocci, Dusty Baker,
and I think they both have a great reputation as
being players managers who do a good job of lowering
the temperature in the room when things get hot. When
there's a lot of pressure on. They do a very
good of helping people feel comfortable with themselves, and I

(01:26:03):
think both of these teams need a lot of that
right now. They're both still very good teams, especially in
the case of the astros Um, and I think it's
simply a matter of bringing in someone unless you feel
like you can really provoke from within, bringing in somebody
who you trust to just steer the ship during what's
the difficult you're maybe it is just a one year assignment,

(01:26:25):
but I think for Dusty Baker and Bruce Bocci, there
would be appeal given these two organizations, these two rosters,
to bring in two veteran managers. Bocci is going to
the Hall of Fame, who could potentially navigate the very
choppy waters of the season for these two franchises. Right now,
the other managerial domino yet to fall, because you know

(01:26:46):
the Mets are gonna find their way into it. Carlos Beltran,
who was named in the report, one of only two
people named in besides he and Alex Cora. Mets have
not said anything. Does Carlos Beltran manage the match this year?
Or do the Mets say, listen, we have to move
on from you. This is too big a scandal. I
think Beltron manages the Mets. I do because again, part

(01:27:07):
of it is he is not going to be disciplined
at all through the MLB process based on what we
saw the Mets and and perhaps if they have any
issues with it, uh that they with the situation, they
would say was Beltron fully accountable and forthright in what
they told him? Um during the interview process. We don't

(01:27:30):
know that information, to be honest with you, We're not
sure um where all the information was at the time
and what he was sharing with the Mets at that point.
But I think he is going to be safe. I
really do. Uh. There may be some pressure on the
Mets to do otherwise, but under MLB law, he is
now treated as the player, which meant he's not going

(01:27:52):
to be penalized for it. And I really have a
hard time seeing the Mets moving on from him in
that particular setting. Of course, of course, it is worth
pointing out Brody van Wagen and who hired Beltron very
close with a J. NH. So, so Brody and a
J know each other very well. UM, I'm sure in
that in the process of just vetting out the information

(01:28:16):
that there would have been a conversation between Brody and
a J about Carlos and and obviously the report back
from a J to Rody was strong enough of the recommendation,
strong enough that the higher was made. So um, it
really is a multi layered question. But I do believe
that Carlos Beltron will be the manager of the Mets

(01:28:36):
on opening Day. There you go, you made Jason happy.
His punishment is manager of the Mets. Uh yeah, wait wait,
Baseball just brought in JP. Wait you might want to
write some words on this. Baseball is just punished Carlos Beltran.
They have extended his contract with the Mets for four
more years. So that that bad. I really don't think
it's going to be that bad of an experience to

(01:28:58):
manage a team that has Jacob Deground, that has no Syndergard,
that has Marcus Stroman, that has Peter Wanzo coming up
the rookie home run record. It's gonna be a great
year in Flushing. I can assure you that, well when
he's playing with house money, because he got to skate
on any disciplined off of this, so I mean he
gets to just manage off the seat of his pants.
Who cares? Just Jnaldson four year deal with Minnesota after

(01:29:21):
the redemptive year in Atlanta and that strong lineup, they
hit a lot of home runs. They added another guy.
What do they add here? Well, they were trying for
a lot of the winter guys to to find a
way to upgrade the rotation. Could not do that really
in a big meaningful way. Uh. They wanted to whether
they wanted bum Garner, couldn't get either one. Uh. They're

(01:29:42):
just gonna try to outslood teams. We're gonna see some
ten eight games and some twelve ten games in that
beautiful ballpark there in one of the greatest cities in
our country. They're in Minneapolish here in twenties twenty. But
I've got some questions about their their rotation and their
bullpen too. And you look at the White Sox getting
better and better. Um and oh, by the way, At

(01:30:03):
the same time, the Donaldson signing means that we could
now see some clarity on the trade market for Nolan
Arronado and also for Chris Bryant. I do think Arronado
gets moved, I really do. Uh. The Cardinals have been
mentioned very heavily, as have the Rangers. The White Sox
maybe on the periphery there as well. But I do

(01:30:25):
think that even if the Braves do not step up,
and they should, by the way, to make a move
for Ronado or Brian, still a decent chance that that
that one or both of them is moved to a
club like potentially the White Sox, the Cardinals, or the Rangers.
You can fall on Twitter at John Morrossi. That's at
John Morrossy JP is always my friend. Appreciate your time

(01:30:48):
with us. And when when the Mets fire, Beltran will
play back, well, I hope it doesn't happen, and I
hope there's a better day add for the game that
we can visit on. But yes, all love talking with
you both, no matter what the circumstances. And I did,
uh you know, I tell you what. Michigan basketball great
Southerner under Juan. I am still a believer they're gonna
make the tournament of a really good second after Hey,

(01:31:10):
you're a basketball school now, so you're okay whatever. My
friends here exactly right, take it easy, Je. People talk
to some great stuff there from John Paul Morossi. And look,
let's be quite honest. The Mets legally could stand by, Hey,
Carlos Beltran's not punished, so he can be the manager.
But it's still gonna hang over the team. The fact

(01:31:31):
they haven't said anything tells me they're still waiting to
see just where this goes. Because if they really were
going to keep them, they would they would come out
right away and say, Carlos Beltran is gonna be our manager.
He was, he's not charged by Major League Baseball. He
is innocent in the eyes of MLB, and that's where
we're going. But they have not done it, so there's
still waiting to see which way things go. Yeah, it's

(01:31:51):
it's still got some leakage possibilities, right, I mean, there's
there's a lot of information that is past the desk
of the Commissioner's office and the underlings. Eventually, maybe we
start getting a little more in the devil of the
details of how this all was perpetrated. Auto Zone has
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(01:32:33):
we just way farewell the two future first ballot Hall
of Famers in the NFL Today? Plus way do we
tell you what Kawai Leonards doing so far in the
first quarter. In the fourth quarter is just underway against
the Cavaliers. All that more coming up next right here
on Fox. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harman weekdays at ten pm Eastern,
seven pm Pacific, Very Sexual, Strong, Twitter Game, Fox Sports

(01:32:58):
Radio The Jason Smith Show with best friend Mike Harmen
live from the Geico Studios. Well, we have two big
retirements in the National Football League to get to. But first,
with eight minutes ago in the fourth quarter, they have
not needed him, so he hasn't played since. Kawhi Leonard
forty three points for the Clips in just twenty nine minutes.

(01:33:23):
He's fourteen out of twenty two from the floor. The
Clippers are all over the Cavaliers one eleven to eighty three,
and he has a plus thirty nine for the game.
Don't know that we'll see Kawhi Leonard again in this game,
but still if he played, you know, he could might
have been able to get close to sixty again. Hasn't
played since finishing the third quarter forty three points in
twenty nine minutes. So John Bline, after his controversial comments

(01:33:46):
of a week ago, gave him the weekend off in
l A. Is that right in the start of the week. Really,
just come hang out, listen. Just just just don't say
you want me fired, Okay. I mean I left Michigan.
I was there for a long time. I could have
kept that job for a long time. But I took
this job knowing full I was gonna be fired. I
just didn't think it was gonna be now. I thought

(01:34:06):
it would be a couple of years. Yeah, I mean,
here's your tour package hanging down. We're gonna go down
to uh Grammin's and you're gonna see Captain Picard write
his name in the mud so you can see that.
Here's where Tristan Thompson and she does on Chloe for
the You can do a whole TMZ to that Kim
probably yeah, I mean, probably get one of those double

(01:34:29):
backer busses and just going all right here, Tristan's out.
Here's that vape lounge right there, here's the oxygen bar
over here. You saw Kim Kay last night at the
game with Kanye wearing coats like they were watching the game,
a big yeah, they were so cold. Thompson went to
the line, she stood up and boot him. It was
great looking. Good publicity for Kim and Kanye. You know,

(01:34:53):
that's that's not easy to come back. And then they
went out the West Tunnel. Yeah, time for another video,
you know, I you know, what what can I do
to jump start my my fame again? You're not gonna
like it? Well you got idea, yeah, but you're not
gonna like it. Here's what I'm envisioning. Just call it
big fake booty. Um. So again we have Kawhi Leonard

(01:35:16):
with forty three not playing in the fourth quarter, and
and honestly, you know, I look at the story and
one thing over the whole John Beelin controversy the past
the past few days is that I still find myself
saying he really left Michigan to go be the head
coach of the Cavaliers, a team that was gonna stink
and it's just gonna wind up getting him fired in

(01:35:37):
a couple of years. You left Michigan for that. I mean, really,
you're a basketball school. You turn Michigan into a basketball school.
You left Michigan to go be the head coach of
the Cavaliers. It's not even a lateral move. You went
from I can coach here forever to I'm gonna get
fired in a couple of years. You shot your shot.
I mean, you got a young team. I guess you
were thinking, maybe how much different can it be because

(01:35:58):
most of those guys of first or second year plan.
I mean, you've got a lot of young guys on
that roster, so maybe the relatability was there, right whatever
you did to make it work at Michigan. But then
you realize, hey, it's a different world. Maybe you thought
Lebron was still on the team. You think that, oh,
oh oh, we left. Wait a minute, I've been on

(01:36:19):
the recruiting trail too long. It's gone flying blind. I mean,
he is out of touch. It could be man. Oh
he placed for the place for the Lakers. Now that's
where I should have gone. Let me call the Lakers.
Maybe he goes to the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame a bunch. Maybe it's just a big fan. I
don't I don't know. May and Colin Sexton sitting at
eighteen point six a game. Kevin Love has a nice

(01:36:41):
seat on the bench, watching the festivities, looking to get traded.
You've got Clarkson at fourteen point six. I Love. He's
just openly tough. Yeah, I could get traded. I hope
to get trade. If I get traded, that's fine. Kevin
Love is just so open about Yeah, you could trade me,
like and you see how many ripples it's caused in
the NBA. Nobody cares. Although although he could show up

(01:37:02):
here in Los Angeles and all of a sudden it
becomes a big deal. You see, LA can use them
good twitter at how about a Fresco? Mike hat Swollen
on The Jason Smith Show with my best friend Mike Harmon.
Two big retirements in the NFL today, Antonio Gates hanging
up finally really retiring, like not gonna play anymore. Chargers

(01:37:23):
aren't gonna sign me for another year, not gonna retire.
I am now done. And also we had Luke Keickley
surprisingly retire after just eight years in the league. Let's
talk about and get into the situation involving Antonio Gates.
First look, Antonio Gates. It wasn't unexpected. He didn't play
last year. You thought the Charges would call him up

(01:37:43):
again when Hunter Henry got hurt beginning of this season,
it didn't happen. Maybe he's gonna come back middle of
the season to the end of the season didn't happen,
so you knew he was done. But Antonio Gates will
be a first ballot Hall of Famer class. He is
one of the two best tight ends I've seen in
my life. He and Tony Gonzalez. Gronk has been great,

(01:38:06):
but you know, look, Gronk only played, you know, a
handful of years. You were retired when he was thirty.
Antonio Gates played until he was thirty eight years old.
He changed the way that team's viewed tight ends. He
was athletic coming out of college as a basketball player. Well,
maybe Antonio Gates could be something. And he and Tony
Gonzalez revolutionized the way we look at tight ends. They
went from every once in a while you had a

(01:38:28):
tight en could catch passes and that was a huge
benefit to now you can make a tight end the
focal point of the offense. The great years he had
over a hundred catches, ninety catches. Look, he played long enough.
But the main takeaway from Antonio Gates and how he
was so good in his impact on the San Diego
and l A Chargers is that, Look, you've heard us
talk on the show before about Philip Rivers and how

(01:38:48):
the Chargers, no matter who's playing wide receiver, guys are
wide open. Right. How are these receivers five yards off
of their dbs? And these are great dbs, very good
dbs across the NFL. Whether it's Tyrrell Williams or Mike
Williams or Keenan Allen, whoever, Travis Benjamin, Malcolm Floyd, whoever
is playing wide receiver for the Chargers, they always find

(01:39:09):
themselves open. And Philip Rivers does a lot of what
we watched Joe Burrow do all season long, and that
is find the right one on one matchup and exploit it.
Philip Rivers had a great chemistry with his wide receivers,
and when you put a wide receiver one on one
with a dB, if the quarterback can put the football
in the spot where only the wide receiver can get it.

(01:39:29):
Then that's going to be something that they're going to
succeed on along many many periods throughout the NFL, no
matter who's there many errors over over ten, twelve, fifteen years,
and that's what Philip Rivers is able to do. I'm
gonna put the football here to be a back shoulder
faithe this is gonna be here. And you watched charges
wide that's why are they so wide open. Antonio Gates

(01:39:50):
could not be covered one on one and he could
not be covered in the middle of the field. In fact,
Rivers even said today, anytime we saw Antonio was one
on one, he was getting the football. Teams had to
have a safety him over the top and and take
on Antonio. You couldn't just single cover with the linebacker.
Couldn't single because because they weren't fast enough. Couldn't single
cover him with a with a safety because they weren't

(01:40:10):
big enough. So you had to you had to account
from in the middle of the field with a couple
of players. You can only double so many guys in
the NFL, So if you were doubling a tight in
the middle of the field, that leaves your corners on
an island. And as long as Rivers is good enough
to find the right one on one battle, okay, this
guy is gonna get separation. He was able to go
there with the football what Gates is able to do

(01:40:31):
for the offense. Because he could do that in the
middle of the field. That's why Philip Rivers is going
to the Hall of Fame. And that's why the charges
were so good for so long, because even when Gauge
didn't get the ball, if you had one guy on him,
you were giving up a catch. If you had two
guys on him, it was going someplace else. Yeah. I
mean you look at the way he played right the
basketball history and and everything that flows out of it.
I mean, he's the legend of the undrafted. Is he

(01:40:54):
gonna be a basketball player and try to hang on?
Does he go to Europe and play basketball or does
he take a shot with the NFL. NFL came calling
because of the athleticism six four, but battling against six seven,
six eight guys, learning how to use his body in
in space, certainly over there. How many times was it
just to sit down, kinda get himself a little forearm shiver,

(01:41:17):
Whether it be in the middle of the field to
pick up a first down or certainly red zone efficiency.
There was nobody better. The two guys that that I
think of the best box out receivers that I've watched
live were him and an Kwon Bolden. Nobody knew how
to use their bodies better in the red zone and
other guys wouldn't just outleap you and whatever. I'm just
talking about fighting for space, us creating a little window

(01:41:41):
for your quarterback to put the ball. Brandon Marshall was
great at that too. He could he could just suddenly
just hurt. You could not get past him. But that
was that was something where Brandon Marshall was. That was
that was not where physically he had the body do it.
Antonio Gates is able to do it and turn around
and just hey, this is second nage absolutely built for
because all of a sudden you got that mismatch, specially
safety is coming over that a six ft tall try

(01:42:03):
to go at him, you go high point. You're not
going high point with him. And if you try to
body him, he's just gonna shrug you off. And so
a hundred sixteen touchdowns later, a little bit with the
the p e d s go into the legacy. But
as we know in the National Football League, generally folks
shrug at that, say it was an opportunity for learning
and advancement. Twitter at how about a fresco Mike, It's

(01:42:24):
swelling dome. So there's Antonio Gates going straight from the
NFL to the Hall of Fame first ballot. What about
Luke Keickley and his surprise retirement, We got that coming
up in ninety But first be sure to catch live
editions of The Jason Smith Show with Mike harmon weekdays
at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports
Radio and the I Heart Radio app. So a shocker

(01:42:45):
today in the NFL, Luke Keikley retires at the age
of twenty eight after eight years in the league. The
Panthers middle linebacker calling a quit. See it had numerous
amounts and numbers of head injuries the past few years years.
And look, as we talked to Jason lack and for
earlier in the show, you can't really say that guys
are retiring early after they have injuries like this anymore.

(01:43:08):
We've seen guys do it enough where you can't say
he's retiring early. He's retiring at the right time for him.
Keith Lee has had every plot it come his way
in the National Football League, and here's a little bit
of him talking today about his decision to hang it up.
I've been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play
this game since I was in fourth grade, and I've
been with the Panthers now for eight years, and it's

(01:43:30):
never the right time to step away. But now is
the right time for me. And it's a tough decision.
I've thought about it a lot, and I think now
is the right chance for me to move on. And
it makes me sad because I love playing this game.
I've played it since I was a little kid, and
it's my favorite thing in the world to do. And
the memories I have from this place, in this organization,

(01:43:52):
and playing on the field with these guys they'll never
go away, and sitting right now in the linebacker room,
and the amount of memories I've had from this room
own could fill a book in And these are the
best times of playing. Obviously, on the field is awesome,
but some of the best times of playing this game
are behind the scenes, in the locker rooms, in these
meeting rooms, on the buses traveling the games. You can't

(01:44:16):
replicate that anywhere else. And that's why this is so
hard to do. All right, So there's someone Luke Keickley
and and he is a guy that enjoys a phenomenal
reputation throughout the game. You've seen so many plaudits and
and players say great things about him today. And look,
that always helps when you have controversy or if you're
looking for Hall of Fame votes, when you have a

(01:44:38):
great reputation. Keith Lee leaves seven out of eight years.
He's in the Pro Bowl, five time All Pro, A
do it all middle linebacker. He could get to the quarterback.
He's a tackle machine. He had a lot of interceptions.
I think he holds a Panther's all time record for
interceptions by a linebacker. He's one of those guys that
did everything. When it comes to the Hall of Fame,

(01:44:59):
Willie get in? Yeah? Will he get in first ballot?
I don't think so because in the end, playing eight years,
is still playing eight years and the players that he's
going to be compared to the most when you talk
about the top elite level of middle linebackers in the
history of the NFL, The two most recent players are
Ray Lewis and Brian or Lacker. Ray Lewis played seventeen

(01:45:24):
years in the NFL. Brian or Lacker played thirteen years
in the NFL, and there is something to be said
for longevity when it comes to playing and Starring out
of position doesn't mean Luke Kickley is not going to
get in. Chickley will get in, But first ballot, I
don't know. As good as he was and was he
a dynamic as ray Lewis, did he single handedly lead

(01:45:45):
the Panthers to a Super Bowl win? He didn't, and
ray Lewis did that. And Brian or Lacker was he
a dynamic and as big of a star around the
league as art Lacker was? No, he wasn't. But the
longevity thing is a thing for me. I know. The
NFL made that less of an issue when they let
Terrell Davison. And as good as Terrell Davis was, like,

(01:46:06):
come on, guy had four great years. I mean had
four years and he won two Super Bowls and now
was great, but it's still four years. And once they
led Terrell Davis, it's like, okay, now you let everybody in,
no matter how long they play. But I think in
the in the pantheon of when you're comparing the greats
of all time, here's Luke Kickley, Here's ray Lewis, Here's
Brian or Lacker. Okay, he may have to wait a
year or two before he gets in the national football

(01:46:27):
in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Yeah, it's always
curious just to see what gets valued, you know, most
as you go forward as part of it's gonna be
the rest of the class, right is wrong? Part of
the class right, same number of years. But you look
at the impact he had on the game. And we
talked about the change at the tight end position with

(01:46:47):
Antonio Gates. Rob Gronkowski a beneficiary of that and the
guy who was the best at his position for several years, right,
So he would be up if he doesn't come back
from broadcasting and stays out, and you'll have obviously Gates.
So you had two tight ends and I don't know
that that's happened before other than these large a bunch

(01:47:07):
of guys kind of classes. And then you see what
else happens. Right, it's a it's a long off season, uh,
and guys are just getting out of there. There two
week vacations and deciding what they want to do, or
some who will get retired by the game itself. We
know that happens as well. But for Luke Kickley, I
mean you actually had one more All Pro selection than
her Lacker did is thirteen years. Tackles, they match up favorably.

(01:47:31):
You look at the number of interceptions for Kickley and
and just go on down the line. I mean, there's
a lot of measurables that work in a shorter period
of time. Just Chicago versus Carolina is also one of
those things. Better hair too, mikel Well, now yeah, no, now,
r Lackers hair man. You can't drive two miles on
a Chicago freeway without a picture of I was there

(01:47:54):
for his bobble head. Yeah, you got me nothing. Oh
you're a Bears fan. I had the first you a
picture of Kemiskey Park? Did I appreciate you could have
gotten harm in some of Brian or Lacker's hair. People
were fist fighting over those he had hair on them.
On the secondary market, they're going like all of those

(01:48:15):
are going like a hundred bucks apiece. They basically did
one from each decade. Sam Donald's draft out in one
of those. You were if this pr person didn't come
back for it. I was gonna have Sam Donald's raft.
That would have been fantastic. But if you would have
haying that for for that forever with Frostburg, that would
have changed everything. You'd be buying him soup every night.
I probably would have got mono. Maybe, you know, the

(01:48:36):
germs can stay dormant. It's also the you know, convert
conveyance of a hat. So if he'd given you that hat,
if he'd given you the hat, I mean, it really
would have fallen in my old move. Would I take
six weeks of mono? If I got the hat Sam
Donald war on Draft night for the Jets, Damn right,
you would. He would have gotten twice. It's yeah, I'm

(01:49:01):
so happy Twitter and out about a Frisco. Mike gets
swollen dome the Jason Smith throughout the Mic Carmen speaking
of the NFL. Do we have a development on what
is easily the most insane story of the day from
the league A day ago? That's next right here Fox
Fox Sports Radio, The Jason Smith Show with my bass
friend Mike Harmon live from the Geico Studios and lost

(01:49:23):
in the excitement A day ago of the National championship
game in college football, the Astros sign stealing scandal. The
first day after the big games in the NFL this
past weekend was the video of Antonio Brown that's made
its way across your computer viral e in which he

(01:49:45):
live streamed and encounter with police who came to his
house because Antonio Brown says his estranged wife tried to
steal his Bentley. Antonio Brown has three children with her,
and he's a strange girlfriend and he has three children
with her, and she came to his house to try

(01:50:05):
to take their kids to school, and he says she
tried to take the bentley, which is not hers. The
police come and he live streams this entire account as
there's three police cars outside his house in Hollywood, Florida,
and he's talking bad about his ex in front of
his kids. He's cursing, he's throwing bags of gummy prophylactic

(01:50:28):
candies at the police officers and generally losing his mind. Today,
the Hollywood, Florida Police Department announced that it's Athletic League
has severed ties with him and return to donation that
Brown gave because of his outburst against the Hollywood, Florida
police department, who says at the end of his streaming video,
he says, forget the NFL, this is real life. I'm

(01:50:51):
gonna have charges against the Hollywood Police Department that are
not doing things right by me. Just all in all,
another big day of another big social medium meltdown from
Antonio Brown. And there's two takeaways for me from this.
And the first one is a little bit big picture
that we can narrow it a bit, is that you
wonder what happens to players like Antonio Brown when they

(01:51:13):
don't have football? This is what it is? And how
is this guy going to deal with retirement even if
he never plays again? I mean his addiction to social
media and newsmaking and and and and behaving erratically and
and using it as a badge of this is me
and this is who I am. He's only not played
in the NFL for like three and a half months.

(01:51:34):
I mean, what's it gonna be when when he stops
playing in the league. How how is he gonna how
is he gonna cope with that? How's he gonna cope
with not being a star player in the NFL anymore?
He still thinks he's a player and he's wearing on
a badge on his sleeve of hey, they're keeping me out.
Oh my goodness. Because the second part of this a
dovetails right into it, is that you see why no
one signing Antonio Brown. Dan you wonder why he's not

(01:51:56):
in the NFL. I mean to think about what he's
gonna do without football, and then go and you wonder
why he's without football. In the end, you see this,
our team is gonna go, Oh, let's go get Antonio Brown.
You've got that wide chasm that comes down as you
watch this video, right Abhorrant is the word that just
goes over the top of all of it. But then
you have a faction of folks and and look, we're

(01:52:17):
friends and and communicate with a lot of guys that
played in the league. A number of our our colleagues
here in Fox Sports Radio come on with comments and
you say, well, you can't teach an idiot how to
not be an idiot. Right there, Just that's just the
way it is. They're not gonna change. The other side
is the man is in trouble and needs someone to
intervene and some health help along the way. Somewhere along

(01:52:38):
the way, we've got We've got to figure out where
that bridge is, because right now you just got a
guy who's unhinged in this. This is domestic assault of
a verbal variety. You got those poor kids as dad's
I I when I became a dad, I start thinking
more about the kids in the situation. You're seeing the kids,

(01:52:59):
they're playing on the police card. He's yelling curse words
about their mom and everything, and I'm like, oh my god,
come on, dude, really, he's his he's his own worst enemy.
He can't I couldn't get past the first minute of it,
really before it even got to the going directly at
the police, you know. And that's the thing is I
look at police officers, and that's I know. I could

(01:53:20):
never be a police officer because the way, the how
outland is she's behaving, and how insulting he is towards
police officers. I would just want to walk away and
I would just say, Okay, you know what I'm done.
And I just couldn't be not not because I do
something crazy, is because I would just go, you know
what I'm done. I'm walking. I'm not gonna sit here
and have you brate me. I don't have time for that.
And I'd be they go where the police officer a go?
He just left? Why he he wasn't in the mood. Okay,

(01:53:42):
what a great police officer and that guy is, he
wasn't in the mood. But to see him to have
to deal with with that kind of behavior, and it's
look you forget about. If social media wasn't around, would
Antonio Brown be in the league? No, because he would
find a way to piss off whatever team he was
playing for. They would, they would let him go and
then we'd get the stories to what happened at practice.

(01:54:03):
But social media doesn't help. His addiction to fame doesn't help.
And he's all he's got to do is for every
five days that go by with no Antonio Brown stories,
well one story like this, that's okay, Yeah, anybody thinking
assigning him? Why why would we bring this on? This
is an idle Monday for Antonio Brown. If he was
on your team, this is what you would have to

(01:54:24):
deal with on on a Monday, or a various Tuesday,
or an idle Thursday. So no one's going to bring
in the house. Third domestic incident that the Hollywood Police
had to respond to that to that house in the
last three months, and you see the way they interact,
and it was just a matter of how quickly could
you get the kids in the car to get them

(01:54:44):
out of there because the police weren't going to pursue
it any further. Right, I'd be curious what the meetings
are behind the scenes of how you have to address
these kind of things going forward. But at least for
the moment, the kids and his ex girlfriend are are
safe physically mentally, whole other issue, Twitter At how about

(01:55:04):
a fresco Mike gets swollen done? The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Carmen. A b is just gonna say they're
keeping me out of the league, and all someone have
to do is say, dude, just look at what you're doing. Man, Really,
he is his own worst enemy. Coming up next, the
latest development on sign stealing Gait, What happened today and
what could happen next? On Fox? Take off your uniform?

(01:55:25):
Take off your over baby Hour. Yeah, we're taking everything off. Yes,
I get it. I understands that works. You said it.
You were trying to set the mood. H It is
The Jason Smith Show with my best friend Mike Carmen.
About an hour or so from now, our Best of
podcast goes up on iTunes, Google Play, Twitter, Fox Sports

(01:55:46):
Radio dot com. You can listen the whole show, parts
of it. Whatever you want, rate us, give us five stars,
will love you for the rest of our days. Tonight,
a new twist in the Astro sign stealing. That's part
of a story that simply is never going to end.

(01:56:07):
It's it's funny. Look I say this not really tongue
in cheek, but you look how long we talked about
Spygate in the National Football League and how many years
of material that gave us that we're still getting some now,
how many years of material the Mitchell Report gave us
a Major League Baseball and this is the new one

(01:56:28):
of those scandals. This is the cheating Mitchell Report of
Major the new cheating Mitchell Report of Major League Baseball,
except the involves cheating on the field, with the Astros
losing their GM and their manager because of the commissioners
investigation into the fact they were stealing signs using very
sophisticated electronic UH relay system in the year they won

(01:56:50):
the World Series in yesterday was spent with a lot
of attention on the Astros and you know, their first
their manager a J. Hench and their e M. We're suspended.
Then they were fired, and now today we have Alex Cora,
manager of the Red Sox, who no longer as manager
of the Red Sox because the Red Sox wanted to
move on, and that was a great move because that

(01:57:11):
was gonna hang over everything of they wanted to try
to accomplish this season. Because Cora was named as the
ring leader of this movement in as the bench coach.
That's the ring leader who left. Alex is gone right,
all right, it's him. I'm the ring leader. That's really

(01:57:32):
how it for all we know, that's really how it
all came to pass. Who's not here either, say it's
Beltran to Those are the two guys named, neither of
whom are still with the squad in any capacity. Everybody
else's that was still there. Oh you know, I was him, No,
I was in charge. It's it's the seed out of
eight men out. No, he was the ring leader. He

(01:57:53):
was the guy that set it all up. He had
and it becomes a running joke, and I think, you know,
and jump paum ROSSI was on with this last hour.
I think he and I are gonna have to have
we agree to disagree as to what this means for
Major League Baseball. I'm I'm not a fan that the
punishment was anywhere near persuasive to say that you're not

(01:58:16):
going to keep trying, No strongly worded letter, no warnings,
because if it just means a couple of exects lose
their jobs and you lose a handful of dollars, because
that's really what it is, because they worked a great
contract to where the maximum is a five million dollar fine,
No international slots loss, no nothing, nothing of that. A
couple of draft picks. Please, It's pretty simple. Because as

(01:58:41):
this story continues to unfald, this is why I say
we're gonna have this story going on for weeks, months, years.
Every day there's going to be a new angle to
this story. There's gonna be a new player who says
something shocking, a player who wants the World Series vacated. Uh.
There's gonna be teams who are gonna be upset. There's
gonna be investigative report. You're gonna get even more details

(01:59:01):
on what the Astros did to try to steal signs
instead of just the report we got of them electronically
getting the signs from center field relaying them to the dugout,
or a guy would bang on a trash can. It's
gonna continue to grow. Why Because we're not satisfied with
the punishment, right, That's that's the first part of it.
Why did Spygate have such long legs? Because we weren't

(01:59:23):
satisfied with the punishment. Because the commissioner said, I'm gonna
docu with draft picks and I'm going to destroy the
tapes and that's it. And it was met with a
collective wait, what are you talking about? Really, are you
kidding me? You're not gonna that's what you're doing. And
so because of that, the story continued to gain legs
and gain traction because the commissioner backed away from going

(01:59:47):
really strong at the Patriots, and it was a very
big It was probably the beginning of the anti Roger
Goodell movement from players because up until that point, Roger
Goodell was really tough on the players who ran a
foul of the law, and then National Football League banning
guys Tank Johnson, the late Chris Henry pac Man Jones,
and that was when anybody could do anything in the

(02:00:08):
NFL and still play on Sunday and he was the
commissioner of Iron Fist. I met him on the cover
of Sports Illustrated on the Game of Thrones Throne, and
that's who he was. But then he goes light on
the Patriots and it was okay, so he Kis has
no problem, you know, kicking players out of the league.
But here's a cheating scandal involving a team at the
highest level of cheating that involved them winning Super Bowls

(02:00:31):
because of it, and it's a draft pick and a
fine and he destroys the tapes. So you could trace
the lack of trust between the players and Roger Goodell
back to that moment. And that was where the story
got out of control, and Roger Goodell lost control of
the story because he went light on the punishment. Same
thing in Major League Baseball with Bud Sealing, he went

(02:00:51):
light on on steroids and p e d s. Then
the Mitcha report comes out and he lost control over
the narrative. And that's what's happening right now with Rob
Man for it instead of vacating the World Series, which
he could have done and everybody would have been happy.
There would have been no backlash on it from people.
Players would have lauded Rob Manfred for having a spine
and standing up strong and saying cheating is not gonna

(02:01:13):
be tolerated. But instead he says, well, I'm gonna get
rid of the GM and the manager for a year,
and I'm gonna dock a couple of draft picks and
here's a five million dollar fine, and that's really not enough.
And what happened after that, As soon as that decision
came out, he lost control of the narrative because the
first story that came up following that was, Hey, let's
let Pete Rose and all the cheating players into the

(02:01:34):
Hall of Fame now, which is completely unrelated because the
Hall of Fame is different from Major League Baseball. But
that just shows you where people went to. You're not
gonna punish the players were all cheating on this. The
entire Astros team was in on it. And still there's
no No other players were named besides bench coach Alex
Cora and Beltrand when he was a player back in.
No players got any any punishment or anything. He lost

(02:01:57):
control of the narrative. So this is where we're at now,
where every day for a long time, we're gonna get
different players teams, people saying things about how upset they
are about what went on the cheating scandal with the Astros.
I was joking last night when I said there's gonna
be a class action lawsuit from teams. But teams are pissed.
They're pissed they lost to the Astros because they cheated.
Look here's c. C. Sabathia, former Yankee picture from inside

(02:02:20):
the NFL tonight. Was a guest. The show was taped
to New York and he did talk NFL with all
the guys on the show, but was asked about his
opinion following the Astros revelation yesterday, and he said, we
were cheated out of the seventeen World Series. It's getting frustrating,
man to sit here and know that. You know, late
in my career, I probably could have had a title,
you know, maybe seventeen or maybe eighteen, um. But you know,

(02:02:42):
we we got cheated, you know, out of out of
you know, a team kind of doing something that that's
not within the rules of the game. It's your personal feelings.
Should the World Series title be vacated? Yeah, that's something
like you know we said we talked about earlier. I mean,
I had never thought about that, but maybe, yeah, you
know what I mean, why not when people were talking about,
you know, them giving up the I don't you know
you can't give it to the Dodgers, and obviously you
can't give it to us in seventeen but um vacated,

(02:03:05):
you know, I'm I'm you know, I wouldn't be mad
at that al right. First of all, I like how
he blows off the fact that they lost the Astros
in the Alcs and what I had to still win
the World Series. We could have won again and we
would have beat the Dodgers. But this is today at
cc Sabathia. Tomorrow is gonna be somebody else. The next
day it's gonna be somebody else. Then we're gonna get
a big investigatory story on this. It's gonna blow the

(02:03:27):
lid off of this again. We're gonna find out more
players are involved. We're gonna find out other teams we're
using methods of cheating because other players who were no
longer in the game. We're gonna say it wasn't just
the Astros, it was Team X. It was the Royals
stealing signs in the World Series. That's the only reason
why they beat the Mets. All right, maybe not that,
but I just threw that out there. But but that's
why he when when you go light on suspension and

(02:03:50):
light on a big decision, something that's fabric of the game,
that is cheating, you have lost. You lend yourself to
losing control of the narrative and losing control of power.
We watched with Goodell, we saw with Bud Cilly, and
now you're seeing it right now with Rob Manfred. Yeah,
I mean you mentioned with with Roger Goodell, because that's
the other thing is that we get into the ped
side of things, right and and try to discuss, Okay,

(02:04:11):
well we know from the Mitchell Report, we know this
and information that's come out subsequently. Do we have to
go back and retroactively do this that the other I
say no, I say, you have a new commissioner and
is this is on his watch? And he does with
the information he has for this, it's not a matter
of going back in the history books and opening up
and seeing what kind of investigatory powers that he possesses. Likewise,

(02:04:35):
Roger Goodell versus Tagliabu, he didn't go back and say
you know what you you and you for what you
did four years ago, were suspending. You know he picked
it up when he took over the league and said
we need to change this. Did he botch it? Yeah,
because there's no two cases were the same. And that's
where the the hard part of being commissioner in the
NFL as once they got down to adjudicating all the

(02:04:59):
off field trans grasses, that's where they got ugly. It's like,
how how much similar? Just because it's under the umbrella
of a domestic issue, one is not the same as
the other. And this right now, if they had to
rule on Antonio Brown after what we talked about a
few minutes ago, now you add that to it, where
does that fall in the continuum? Right? Because it's verbal
and not physical. But for for Rob Manford, I don't

(02:05:23):
know that he did anything that's gonna dissuade a team
from looking at their competitive advantages, their angles that obviously
have to be better about it, not get caught, not
be banging a trash can. But tell me you can't
find something a little more innovative in the process that
we get it. I'm not. I'm not lasted that long
because it's pretty easy to go. Okay, why is the

(02:05:45):
trash can being banged here. All right, let's let and
you look at it for five minutes. He would go, oh, well,
they're given signals to the Well there's that too. I
mean they had the game against the White Sox in
September where like there's no crowd noise because there's nobody there.
But you're you can dismiss it in the moment of
just laughing at it because like, all right, those guys

(02:06:06):
are bored and they're just goofing around, right because you're
not putting any sequence to it. So like, okay, if
you're one of those watching at home like I would
have been, or watching in in the studio, like you're
not paying attention to patterns, it's just an isolated Wow,
that's kind of weird, but whatever, and that becomes one
of the lynch pins of all right, here they are,
even against an opponent that's done for the year, still

(02:06:28):
doing this metric. You add that in and that becomes
part of the evidence against them. I just don't know
that you've you've done enough with the penalties incurred other
than you just really get everybody else upset Twitter at
how about a Fresco Mike hat swollen on The Jason
Smith Show with Mike Harmen live from the Geico Studios.

(02:06:49):
Let's just say this, let's say, instead of punishing the Astros,
let's just say, instead of punishing let's just say, instead
of punishing Luno, instead of firing anything cans, WHOA, I
tell you what this is? What's going on? We talked
what I was doing my New York people trash cans

(02:07:14):
from Detroit. Yeah, so that you're adopted hometown now, but
in Detroit they talk now, not not five minutes ago.
You told me it was that. That's kind of Detroit
little Philly. No, no, phil No, Philadelphia is this. It's
a little more nasal. It's like that. That's that's Philadelphia.
That's not Detroit, is not it's that Midwestern accent that
you get what I'm eating pistachios over here. That that's

(02:07:36):
kind of what. It's almost Chicago. It's very close to
Chicago getting there. Just get seventy. You go right from Detroit,
You're up to Chicago. By the way, that was the
best NHL ninety four matchup was Detroit, and no question
about the best. But let's just say, let's just say this,
say instead of Rob Manfred giving this ridiculous punishment that
was all over the place. Instead of that, he just says,

(02:07:57):
here's my punishment. The Astros vacate the World Series and
that's it. That's it. The managers manage GMS, GM players play,
we're vacating the World Series. Nobody would say that is
no good because the Astros would be happy that everybody

(02:08:20):
gets to still play. World Series is two years ago.
A J. Hine still gets to manage, Jeff Luno still
gets to be a GM players all still get to play.
Alex Cora still gets to manage the Red Sox. Carlos
beltran I will get to him. But all of those
things you're continuing on. Your quality of life is not affected.
Your life is not affected. But you lose the World Series.

(02:08:42):
The players would say okay. They would have no choice
because m L B p A not only represents the
Astraal they remember, they represent all the other players, the
other twenty nine teams as well. Who would say that
is an apropo punishment. Fans and the media would say, wow,
he just took away the World Series. That is that
is is is a red letter day that we are
not going to have a World Series champion. All right,

(02:09:03):
we see it in in the n c a A
all the time, not all the time. We've seen before.
Oh you gotta vacate this final four appearance. People go,
that's fantastic, all right, just great, But you vacate a
world series title in baseball, that's a really big deal
and that would send shock waves. But players would meet
with it and say, now, you can't cheat like that anymore.

(02:09:26):
Now there's no ends to the means of all right,
we can cheat win a World Series. I have to
worry about getting it vacated. And those players have to
walk around with the stigma of cheating to win the
World Series. They don't get it. But there's nobody who says, ah,
the commissioners not hitting the right note on this. This
is fabric of the game type stuff, and it's that

(02:09:47):
kind of cheating. When it's that kind of cheating, it
needs a big punishment. And Bud Sealing whift on it
the first time with with P. E. D. S and
Rob Manford whift on at this time. I'm hoping that
as time goes on, Rob Manford is overwhelmed with boy,
I really blew this. So maybe when I announced the
discipline for the Red Sox and Alex Cora, and I
just say, you know what, Now I'm vacating the World

(02:10:08):
Series as well. But the further you get away without
new evidence, it's it's it gets harder and harder to do.
The players skate away on the thin ice of the
new day. Oh I like that, the players skate away
on the thin ice of the new day. Did you
steal that beef? Wow? Trash can before? He said? And

(02:10:30):
if I do this, it means Harmon stole his one
liner from somebody. I gave it full credit. I'm not
coming for a month when we host the parade. So
why did Alex Cora have to go from Boston? And
why will there be no World Series vacating? We'll tell
you exactly the reasons why, coming up next. Keep it
right here, Jason Smith, Mike Carmen, Fox Sports Radio. Be

(02:10:52):
sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm
Pacific Sports Radio. The Jason Smith Show with my best
friend Mike Harmon. I've had sex with him like fifty
sixty times on camera, on cameras always a very big deal.
On cameras document otherwise. I mean, you can't check the

(02:11:13):
game tape. I know you cheated on me, Hi, I
can't prove it it was on camera. Oh, if it's
a movie, it doesn't count. If I got paid and
being a movie doesn't matter. Well, it's a home movie,
can get If it's a home movie, is the date
and time on it? Yes? Well then yeah, yeah, because

(02:11:35):
I paid two for it, so yeah, but it probably
was blinking twelve. Ken set the day and yeah, you
see that in America's home videos once in a while,
and it's like a date of January changed. I just
turned the camera on to see what's happening. Uh, it
is the Jason smithcer with Mike Carmen. I'm Jason, he
is Mike Hi. And who knew that Major League Baseball

(02:11:59):
is gonna take so much of the storyline the last
couple of days, and with Alex Cora being fired, well sorry,
with Alex Cora and the Red Sox being of the
one mind that he should not continue on as Red
Sox manager after his implication in the Astros sign stealing saga.

(02:12:19):
I gotta be honest, this was something yesterday we talked
about it very very briefly because we had the National
Championship game and I didn't think the Red Sox will
be able to go on even through the rest of
this investigation with Alex Cora as the manager. Because the
reason Alex Cora has not been charged or given any

(02:12:39):
discipline in the Astros sign stealing saga yet is because, yes,
while he was the bench coach in seventeen manager of
the Red Sox team, MLB is also investigating the Red
Sox from two thousand and eighteen and the whole Apple
Watch dealing signs from the dugouts, so likely he was
going to get a big penalty from MLB as well.

(02:13:00):
And and I give the Red Sox a lot of
credit because they said, you know what, who knows how
long this is gonna play out for There's no way
this is gonna play out in our favor. And I'm
sure they got win from Major League Baseball. Hey, so
when it comes down, is he gonna get Oh yeah,
he's guilty. Well all right, then, hey, Alex, why don't
we move on now and the Red Sox can move
on to find the new manager. I don't know how

(02:13:21):
he survives it, and he didn't. I don't know how
Carlos Beltran survives with the Mets too, even if he's
not going to be charged because Rob Manford decided not
to charge any players who are the ones at the
heart of this scheme, the guys pulling it off, the
guys that are relaying the messages. The only other person
named in the report besides Alex Cora is Carlos Beltran,

(02:13:43):
and Carlos Beltran manager of the Mets. The Mets have
not said anything about it yet. I don't say I mean,
I can completely see how the Mets keep him because
it's the Mets, and so Mets it's gonna but I
don't see how because now this storyline is gonna weave
its way away from the Astros and now it's at
of Red Sox. Then they'll get to the Mets. It's
gonna be really the Mets. You're keeping that guy. You're

(02:14:03):
keeping that guy, and it's gonna be a mess. And
I just don't see how the Mets have this loyalty
to Carlos Beltrand, who hasn't managed a game for him yet,
and you know, lied to reporters when he was asked,
what was your role in this? And he didn't tell
and the truth. So you have those couple of things.
The one thing I can tell you from my from
from my perspective, what I always look at is that

(02:14:24):
if they were going to keep them, they would have
said something by now, there would be something from the
Mets that would be, Hey, Beltran was cleared in the investigation.
He's not going to be charged. And that's all we're
gonna say on it, and and that's it. Just here's
the status update of Carlos Beltran and let people be upset,
not upset, and things belowver we get and we get

(02:14:45):
to spring training, but they haven't yet, which makes me
wonder if they're looking and seeing because the Mets do
nothing in that scene with the way the wind blows,
and that if we're gonna see more teams, upset players,
upset media fans, and it gets so untenable they would
have to make a move. And I think they're gonna
let it sit and twist in the wind flaw it

(02:15:05):
because right now it's the middle of January, they're getting
set for pictures and catchers that's still three weeks away.
More than that, they can let this go for a
few days and then maybe by the end of this
week beginning and next week they make their decision. Let
me tell you how the Mets have responded to all
this on social media at Mets Alright, So, first Academy
Award nominations came out yesterday. Another story that, given our

(02:15:28):
love of pop culture, would fly in Well cut four
mocked up one of those. Congratulations to the Best Picture
nominees Best Picture, Harper's Grand Slam in d C, Tim
Anderson's bat flip, White Sox first Pitch Gone Wrong, Nationals
win the World Series? Or shirtless Pete Alonzo, They wrote
back with you had us at shirtless. And then there's

(02:15:51):
some former Mets gathering together, cool catching up across generation
ha ha, a bunch of former catchers. And then it
was National Dress Up your Pet Day and they've had
fun posting pictures of dogs in match jerseys and hats.
That's the amount of um information you've gotten from the
New York Mets brass. Oh yeah, no, no, we're all

(02:16:14):
about the fun right now. I'm surprised I didn't put
cat videos up there on their official A time. Here's
the cat dressed up Alonzo and not the big cat.
So yeah, the Mets, I think as you say, get

(02:16:36):
out in front of it, or you're hoping by opening
day it's blown over. Right, He's one of the guys named.
And that's the thing. Alex Cora may just feel the
weight of it all. Oh well, the fact that he
was a coach and he was named as the ringleader
of it all, and they were that he was still
being investigated. He wasn't getting He's the fall guy. He takes.

(02:16:59):
He takes all the heat the players got off like,
which is an absolute joke. And you can stagger suspensions.
You can do a lot of things and get awesome.
Would that be if you suspended all the players for
a year and that you you know, just guys coming
up from Triple A and this is your this is
the team you're fielding this year, and this is what
I'm talking about. Right, But if by choice, not because

(02:17:21):
they're forced to by, but if you want to talk
punitive and really get to the heart of this, stripping
the World Series and one thing you're always gonna have
the while they still played the games, they still want
blah blah blah. We don't know how much of an advantage. Fine,
but if you then have to play the next season
a lot of that money that you got from your
advertisers and everything else that got boosted by the winds,

(02:17:43):
you know what, it's got crashing back to earth. There's
gonna have to be a lot of make goods and
a lot of issues with your fans and your sweeth
holders and whatever else that you're gonna have to massage.
And not that you won't have to do a little
of that in the fallout of this, because I would.
In fact, there's a number of Houston fans that are
also pretty salty that this all came out. But in

(02:18:05):
the end, they got their World Series that's not being
taken away, and they'll still get to go to the
ballpark eighty one times and see jose L TV and
all these guys come to work time and again with nothing.
Now the home and the road splits won't be as
stark because they won't have that home field advantage working
for him. But the reality is that you're gonna see

(02:18:28):
your stars, the guys that you quote pay, you know,
pay your harder money to see. Not that you're not
cheering laundry as I talk about all the time, But
the players face no reprisal. Just a couple of quite
uncomfortable questions, and they're the ones that were at the
heart of it. It's it sounds backwards, and I get
I get the firing of Luno, and I get the

(02:18:48):
fire of a J. Hinch because here's a J. Hinson.
Oh I disagree with it and tried to stop it twice.
You're the manager. If you really wanted to stop it,
you would have stopped it. Luno, you knew what was
going on. I'm sorry, but that falls under the category
of Oh, I I it be the general manager, and
then oh, I'm just the GM and I had no idea.
But these guys that had the fewest amount of interaction
with actually doing it gained the biggest penalty. And the

(02:19:11):
guys who actually perpetrated it get the get the get nothing,
and they get and they get to keep going on
a pluge called what it is. It's Jessup going to jail,
Dawson and Downy. We're supposed to be looking out for Willie.
In this case, Willie is the game of Major League Baseball,
and they shirked their responsibility. Well, Boom, they did get
dishonorably discharged. Springer to the Dodge boiler now, but that

(02:19:34):
would have been awesome. If the vast majority of players
get suspended and Sully it's a triple A roster all
year long for Houston, that would have been some kind
of penalty to you want you want to learn a lesson?
There you go. I mean, if you're not gonna take
away games or or you want not gonna take away
salary and do whatever, here here's your opportunity. You gotta
hit people in the wallets, and you gotta gotta really

(02:19:56):
make some substantive change. Manford just massaged it. So why
is there no talk of vacating the World Series? Look
c c side the NFL. He was a guest on
the football program on Showtime and was asked by James Brown, Hey,
would you want to see the World Series Vacuecati says,
why not? I mean, you can't give it to us,
can't give it to the Dodgers, so you can't. Why
not vacated? Oh you gotta give it to the dog.

(02:20:17):
You're gonna get the seventeen and one. When it finds
out that the Red Sox were cheating them back to back,
belly to belly Rock, You're gonna have to rent out
a whole city block for these back to back parades,
I'm taking a month off, but because of traffic, l
A might try to have it both the same day,

(02:20:37):
like like instead of a day night doubleheader, it's a
day night parade, seventeen parade early parade later, we're doing
one of those. Gotta change out the players, right because
some players, Yeah, because some players seventeen. We're playing in
twenty eighteen. So I'm here for the seventeen parade. Then
some guys leave the float and the other guys get
on home back. Well, he was looking for someone to

(02:21:01):
create a you garbage jersey for him. Just I mean,
he's he's having some fun. All the legacies that would
change Dave Roberts right, two time World Series winning manager,
Clayton Kershaw's playoff reputation, and you Darvish. He completely he
wouldn't be the scourge of Los Angeles with dude. But

(02:21:23):
Darvish was tipping his own pitches that the World Series. Wow,
I'm sorry I was so critical. Now he said, we
just said that was all on you. Now, But why
has there been no talk of vacating the World Series?
And it's pretty simple. This is a really bad headline
from and I disagree with because I've said vacating the

(02:21:45):
World Series would be all you need to do on
the topic. But this is why it's a very negative
headline for baseball. Doesn't get more negative than this. A
team cheated to win the World Series, and they won
as a direct result of being able to know what
pitches were coming when they were stealing signs illegally. Rob
Manford's commissioner of Major League Baseball, and he is saying

(02:22:05):
to everybody, I'm not gonna wear this. This was not
really on my this was happening before I took over,
and now I'm inheriting this problem. I'm not gonna wear
it because I didn't do it. I'm not gonna do
this because I'm not gonna have Rob Manfred MLB commissioner,
and the first line B he's the guy that was
commissioner when the Astros cheated and he had to vacate

(02:22:27):
the World Series. I'm not gonna be synonymous with a
really bad headline. I'm not gonna wear it. So that's
why it's everything else but that because he doesn't want
that to be his legacy. And this is why I
get really upset at commissioners like Adam Silver and Rob
Manford because they only want to do things when it's
fun or here's initiative, that is something that's not controversial.

(02:22:51):
But sometimes you have bad days as commissioner. Sometimes you
need to be strong because you wanted the job. Right.
One of the big lines in West Wing when Martin
Sheen is complaining about certain things that have to happen
he's got to do as president, and he says, you know,
why do we have to do this? And his chief
of staff says to him, there's one simple reason, Mr President.
He says, why, says, because you won, And that's meant

(02:23:14):
to make him realize you won the election. Now you
gotta do things you want. Rob Manford, you wanted to
be commissioner in Major League Baseball, right, and and you
wanted to be commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver. And
when things get tough, when there gets controversies, let me
find a way to shrink into the shadows. And that's
what's happening right now. Rob Many, we've not really heard
from Rob Manfred's not going on a big copsy tour

(02:23:37):
and and talked about this and this is why this
has happened. This is why no, no, no, I want
this to go out there and then I want to
go on vacation and I want to go to Barbados
for a week, and the people not talking about it.
I'm sorry, but you won, Rob Manfred. You won Adam Silver.
So you gotta be commissioner on the bad days and
make unpopular decisions and not worry about how it affects
your legacy, because that's the only reason why Rob Manford

(02:24:00):
didn't take the World Series away. Well, and you go
back to the NBA. Right, For all this time, Adam
Silver has been walked on by the players. Finally, when
the China situation happened as we got things going in
the preseason, that was the first time he stood up
right and he talked about Lebron James. Look, I didn't
get in your face about when you were criticizing the

(02:24:21):
president and everything else. So you know, you need to
to work and we need to understand each other here.
So finally had that moment, Rob Manford. The only thing
we've had is the discussion of you know, the next
generation of players, improving speed of game, and that's about it, right,
It's been pretty quiet. Otherwise, here's a big thing that
drops in your lap, and this defines your tenure as commissioner,

(02:24:46):
and folks will say all they want you know, oh
he went and he hit them with the maximum, with
that five million dollars. Okay, so they negotiated a good deal.
Good for them, like you really did. A couple of
guys lost their jobs, players go on unscathed. The World
Series will be looked at as tainted forever. And you
have a game that has had its crisis moments, and

(02:25:09):
here you are another one. Because now you've got to
really wonder how much is in those reports because you
put a gag order on all the teams. That's the
other part. As soon as that came out, the Dodgers
put out that little Twitter notice of we've been told
we need to shut up. That means there's other things
in that report and specificity in that report that they

(02:25:29):
know is damning to the game on a whole other scale.
And by just finding five million dollars, a couple of
draft picks and a couple of suspensions and firings from Houston,
hey we're gonna suspend him a year, you better fire.
It's laughable. At the end, you're absolutely right for you
can't even get the Dodgers on TV. You expect him
to do something right here, fair points. The guy's the

(02:25:52):
absolute worst Twitter right, how about a Fresco might it's
swollen dumb. My best friend Mike Harmon got the Dodgers
on TV coming up next. Hey, you're not gonna believe
what former NFL star is back in the news, very
very excited. No no, no, no, no no, yeah, I'm

(02:26:15):
so excited. You're not gonna believe who's back in the news.
John's Nams, not John S. We're gonna have the story
next on Fox. Is it John Stamos? Not John Stamos,
Not Lori Laughlin? It's John Stamos, It's not Dave Coolier?
Is it Lori law from from jail. Be sure to

(02:26:37):
catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Oh
j it was Limp and dangly I had to pull
it out Fox Sports Radio. The Jason Smith Show with
my best friend Mike Harmon so aptly described the punishment

(02:26:59):
handed down by raw Manfred Limp and sure, I'd like
to spake your bald head and no, that's just describing
as junk, all right, not not not where I thought
that was gonna go. Oh but okay, left her. All right,

(02:27:19):
We're there The Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen live
from the Get Go Studios. Hey, our best of podcast
goes up in about fifteen minutes. iTunes, Google Play, Fox
Sports Radio dot com. You can use the I Heart
Radio app iTunes, Google Play, Fox Sports Radio dot com
i Heart Radio app. You can listen to the whole show, sections,
parts of it. Whatever you want. Rate us, give us

(02:27:39):
five stars, and we will love you forever and ever
and ever. Guess who is back in the news. Not
Sean stand Let me just look real quick, hang on,
is John Stamos actually in the in the news for anything?
John Stamos? The latest news for John Stamos? Uh oh.
He put a picture of his new son on social

(02:28:03):
media and they say he's gotten so big, so big?
All right, that was seven hours and you think he
was Dayton Tyshert's mom for all you know, he might be.
Wow that escalated? Is that why you bring him up
so frequently? Maybe call him dad at this point. Hi,
I'm Alex Stamos or soon to be Alex Stamos now,

(02:28:24):
because you know, it's tough because the X and the S.
When you have that, you kind of blend in. People
would say, Alex Stamos, what if I just changed my
name iss Xander Xandrew Stamos. But what did he just
sort him together? A bad guy in a Bond movie.
Sander Stamos has the nuclear weapon that's going to obliterate society,
and he's got it in a plate of keenwa. He's

(02:28:46):
now the boss of Will Farrell in Zoolander three. Okay,
Sandrew Stamos, Sandrew Stamos, Andrew Stamos, Andrew Stamos, Sandrew Stamos
back in the news and maybe back on a football
all field near you very soon. Chad Johnson, who also
known as Chad Ocho Cinco Ocho Cinco, who last played

(02:29:10):
in the NFL in catching one pass and the Patriots
Super Bowl loss. It's really been that long. It's been
a long time. For a long time. Millennials have no idea.
He love mcond you know. Chad Ocho Sinko was so
much fun and he hit it at the very beginning
of social media and where blogged the blog of sphere

(02:29:33):
in in sports was such a big destination where only
a few blogs and any time he did something he
was news. Like I remember you know shows in the
early two thousands and two thousand three, two thousand five,
two thousand seven, where any time he did something was
news and because it was, it was a byproduct of
he was a big personality. But there weren't that many websites,

(02:29:55):
and there weren't that many colorful personalities, and there weren't
that you know, Twitter was still hadn't been invented yet,
was still trying to figure out popularity online and on blogs.
And Chad Johnson was the guy played for the bleep
in Bengals and he was that popular. Yeah, I know
he was. He was a guy that every time I'd
go do training camp tour, he would always come over

(02:30:16):
because you didn't, like, you want to talk to Carson, like, yeah,
Carson's fun, but he's a quarterback. He was, he was.
He was big. I mean because he's also a guy
from you know, he's an Oregon State Beaver. Yeah that
and there was friends stir too. He was big. Question
he's looking to come back as a kicker in the XFL. Okay,

(02:30:40):
now not for the Bears, but for the XFL. Now
that he awesome. He came back for the Bears. Well,
he could try out for the Patriots. The Bears, Bears,
bens is gonna happen. It's gonna happen. But he put
up put out a video a couple of weeks ago
that allegedly showed him making a sixty yard field goal.
He's been a big soccer fan. We've seen him, uh

(02:31:01):
you know, playing soccer before he thinks he can kick,
and he's excited, he says, to be able to try
to get back on a completely different position even if
I don't make it. What a great story it's going
to be. This is a guy who really is having trouble.
What am I gonna do now I don't play football anymore. Hey,
I'll try to come back as a kicker in the XFL.
And boy, even if I don't make it, I got

(02:31:22):
social media eat around me. Yeah. I mean he challenges
a lot of people to video game contests. I know,
like that's in my timeline much. Yeah, but I think
that can not only go so far competition and only
go so far as saying okay, yeah, this guy is
gonna play a bunch of fifteen year old trying to
figure out what that next step is. Yeah, it is difficult,

(02:31:45):
and I would expect that this will happen because it's
the XFL, and of course the team is gonna take him,
and of course he's gonna wind up kicking, and of
course it'll be a novelty for a little bit, and
it'll be a story we do for two or three
minutes once in a while, and then we're gonna be
done well. And he could be part of the XFL
on Fox. Well, yeah, he'll be part he'll be part

(02:32:06):
of But in the end, I mean, it's is it
really good? He's not gonna get to the NFL. No
one's gonna say. And if we don't talk about kickers
in the NFL talking about an XFL, let's just call
it what it is. What kicking? You? What you want
to talk about Cody Parking? No, I want to talk
about Chad Johnson, Sanko, what do we call it doesn't matter,

(02:32:27):
belly to belly, soup plex on, somebody trying to get
himself into SmackDown. I mean, there's your career path, Twitter,
And how about a Fresco, Mike and Swollen on The
Jason Smith Show with my best friend Mike Harmon, Ben
Maller coming up next. This Is Fox
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