September 3, 2026 • 36 mins
Jason Smith and Mike Harmon had some glorious takes on the biggest story in sports. Jason explained that just like the Pro Bowl, 'Hard Knocks' has seen its day and is no longer relevant. Take 3 Super Bowls away from Bill Belichick? And a debate on if the Clippers' punishment fits the crime!
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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,
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Speaker 2 (00:06):
To 2 a.m.
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Eastern, 7 to 11 p.m. Pacific on Fox Sports Radio.
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Now let's get this party started. You're listening to Fox
Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Greetings, welcome inside Hour 3, The Jason Smith Show, with
my best friend, Mike Harmon.
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That is not John Cena.
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(01:01):
Rip the knob off and then send it in as proof.
Before we get to this NFL, again, big NFL story
that I say, but is it really a big story?
You know what I would love to see from the Clippers?
What's that? They lose everything today, right? They lost their owner.
Steve Ballmer suspended for a year as the NBA has
come down with punishment for the Kawhi Leonard tree planting,
circumventing the salary cap story. They lose their front office
(01:23):
for the next six months. They're docked first round picks
for the next five years. Right. This is as bad
as it gets in the NBA. So you ask what
what should you get? Right. I think they can give
everybody a free Grady Dick jersey. Sure. Yeah. I can
see a lot of people walking around L.A. wearing that.
(01:45):
I mean, it's a very subtle statement back to the
commissioner's office. I mean, not to USC games. It's too hot,
but I can see them.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
People.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I don't know. I mean, cause they're tank tops. Oh,
that is true. But the, the, the, the material is
that anyway, it's not breathable. What I'd love to see, right.
What I'd love to see. We talked about Steve Ballmer,
and we talked with Rick Buecher. Steve Ballmer's worth approximately
$ 150 billion, okay? As far as the owner's worth, tons
of money. Steve Cohen, Major League Baseball, right? Now Stan Kroenke.
(02:15):
These guys are each worth about $ 25 billion. They can
spend whatever they want to. What I would love to
see now, with all this going on, because what do
you do if you're the Clippers? I want to see
Steve Ballmer make a statement and say, when I come back,
there is no price. I will go deep into the
second apron. I'll go to the third apron. I'll go
(02:36):
to the fourth apron. I'll go to the 50th apron
if I have to, to get star players to come
in here and play so we have a present that
is as soon as I get back. Because he's got
the money to do it, right? Why not do it?
You're talking about a guy worth $ 150 billion spending in
the millions. You can get into the hundreds of millions
and do that. You've got to find a way now to...
(02:58):
to have your team think that there's a future to
have players think that there's a future. Hey, okay. I'll
go to the Clippers if they outbid, you know, for
my services by $ 20 million a year. Like that's what
you have to do if you're the Clippers. And if
you were a team where your owner didn't have that
kind of money, I would get it. And I would say, well,
you can't clearly can't own the team. You should sell it.
But Ballmer can do that. I'd love to see Ballmer say, yeah,
(03:20):
blank you second apron.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
What?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I don't care. When I get back in one year, one,
the X right here, one year from now, whatever year
it's going, whatever day it's going to be, We're going
to go out. We're going to get these guys. We're
going to go out and get superstars to come in
and play. And I don't care what kind of penalty
we have to play once we go passing into that.
I don't care because we're going to be good. I'd
love to see the Clippers do that. I dig that
because I immediately in my head, Steve Ballmer, now he's
(03:44):
challenging the findings. And I think mostly he wants to
be around the team. uh and be in the arena
and all of that uh as well as he wants
i want my draft picks back like he's kevin costner
screaming uh in uh draft day but i i kind
of pictured him as uh heath ledger in the dark
night with that mountain of money that he just sets
(04:06):
on fire to make a point um Same kind of idea.
It's like, yeah, this doesn't matter to me. And I
have to wonder, in all of it, the $ 30 million,
is it just because he's worth so much money? It's like, yeah,
just throw out a random number. Yeah, go ahead. Because
it's really appropriate of nothing. It's just out of thin air.
(04:26):
Here's $ 30 million. But to do the luxury tax, what
are our implications? It doesn't matter. Again, wheelbarrow of money
shows up. There you go. We've paid our tax. Be gone.
I like the cut of your jib. I think this
would be a great idea. I've signed everybody to two-year deals,
and we're going to pay whatever it costs. Well, I mean,
(04:47):
that's what you really, if you're the club, you really
need to do that because there's no way to say, well,
we're going to take a smart fiscal approach. No, you're done.
We've changed our team name to the Los Angeles Rogues.
They'll kick you out of the league. You'll be relegated.
All these things. Like, you've got to come out and say, okay.
I can't believe the NBA did this to us. There's
not many. We'll go $ 221 million second. What do I
(05:09):
care about $ 220 million? What do you think his budget
is going to be for whatever fight he's trying to
do here legally? Because by the CBA, by all the
NBA rules, they've got no recourse.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But as we know, as we've seen in college football
and everywhere else, I can file a lawsuit.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You think I'll get the picks back? No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
But we're going to fight.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Can I get one pick back? No, probably not. All right, fine. Well,
because you got Pablo Torre over here taking his victory lap,
and rightfully so, right? He's got Pulitzer and everything. He goes, oh,
I got more. I got more over here. He's like,
what else you got? What else you got? What's season
two of this data? But for Steve Ballmer and company
that are claiming that they're going to fight this tooth
and nail, I can't wait to see what that becomes.
(05:53):
Does he start outing every other owner and potentially shady
deals that he's aware of? Dude, that's Clippers Hardware. That's
Clippers plaque. That should be Balmer with Pablo Torre and
Kawhi Leonard all holding it up at once, looking like
Brunson and Cat with the net over them and holding
up the Larry O'Brien trophy and the confetti, all of that. Sure.
(06:14):
By the way, you know, I made the Wile E.
Coyote reference last hour. I come back to it. Kawhi Leonard,
super genius. Mm-hmm. So we'll have more on this story
coming up. Again, I don't think they will, but if
any team can do it, he's got the money. That
would be fun. Blank that, man. What would they find
him after he did that? It's like, you're not just
(06:35):
paying a tax. Now you're trying to make us look bad.
Instead of F them picks, it's going to be F
that Pulitzer. Journalism. Oh, man. Come on now. Now, I
don't know if you know this or not. What's that? Right?
And this is why I say, when is a big
NFL story, but is it really a big story? Hard
Knocks has ended.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
No.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Hard Knocks is, well, I mean, for the season, it's done. Oh,
I thought you said they announced they were done with it.
Last night was the last episode.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It's over. And I got to be honest, I didn't
know it was the last episode. I didn't know it
was over. I didn't watch a minute of Hard Knocks.
I used one clip on a Sunday morning Fox Sports
Sunday show that I did of Sam Darnold commenting on
the LeBron James signing with the Sixers. That's it. Otherwise,
I've not been apprised of anything because nothing's cut through.
(07:27):
I mean, did I miss anything? No. Seemingly not. No,
because Hard Knocks used to be a great show of record.
It used to be something where you had two or
three fun stories a week out of, and now it's
like the Pro Bowl. Hard Knocks had its day. Well,
we always had that story of the guy, the I
think I can, I think I can't, and then he
ends up getting cut in the final episode. We like
(07:49):
that guy. Because Hard Knocks comes out, and it's an
inside look at training camp, and it's awesome. We had
never seen anything like it. taking you through the summer
when you don't get a lot of football. It was new.
And for a while, it didn't matter what you put
out there. The Bengals one was interesting. My goodness, man,
the Bengals. Because of all the different storylines. You had
the stars. You had the position battles. You had the
(08:12):
fun stuff. You had Jared Goff learning geography. Yeah, I mean,
you always had one unhinged assistant coach and something else circling.
Every week, Hard Knocks was a thing you talked about.
It was an event in the NFL. But again, just
like anything else, yeah, its day has come and gone.
Like the Pro Bowl, yeah, the day for the Pro
(08:33):
Bowl was around a long time. Its day has come
and gone. And whether it's the fact that now you're
not getting anything that cuts through because teams are much
more careful about what they say, you know, that you
don't get the reporter interviewing Antonio Cromartie to name the
names of all his kids like that's not happening anymore.
You're getting a very vanilla view of preseason. You're not
(08:54):
getting a lot of stuff that is said, especially when
you go back to the offseason one with the. with
the giants and the, and the Saquon Barkley situation of
a year ago, that was probably the death cry of
hard knocks. That was like the, Hey, the tiger winning
the last masters, you know, 12 years after he won
his most recent major. Like that was like, Hey, that
was the last gasp. That was the last death cry
(09:15):
for the hard knocks series, which was the off season one,
where the story became about the giants and losing Saquon
Barkley and watching the Eagles go and win the championship.
We've seen it. We've seen Hard Knocks' act. We have
seen all the position battles that we don't really care
about because now it's so much easier to find out
every day who is surviving, who is not. You get
(09:38):
much more because of social media and the advent of it.
You get everything right away. Who is playing well? Who isn't?
You're looking at your own team and you're seeing how
things are going in real time. Hey, they just finished
seven on sevens. Here's your final stats. Here's who stood out.
Hard Knocks was great, but now it doesn't really give
you anything to watch. And it's all it's a combination
of all the things that i just said And barring
(10:01):
a change in format, barring a big change which is
going to bring you storylines, this is just going to
peter out. It's going to be more difficult to get
teams to say yes. And what's going to happen is
the NFL will make teams say yes that can't say
no because it's not breaking in a new coach or
coming off that. You're going to wind up getting it
(10:21):
where the next couple of years and it's just going
to be uninteresting and uninteresting and eventually HBO is going
to say yes. It's not worth it anymore. And this
is going to die a very slow death, just like
the Pro Bowl, where for five or six years, boy,
the Pro Bowl's bad. We're going to try to reinvent it.
But outside of something really new and that's going to
jumpstart what Hard Knocks is, we're going to get a
(10:43):
couple more seasons of it, and then it's going to
be HBO's going to say, you know, we're not doing
it anymore. And they'll take a break. Maybe they'll bring
it back in five years. But that's going to be
how Hard Knocks ends. Because, again, just because it was
good for a long time doesn't mean it's always going
to be there. And really, I don't know anybody outside
of Seahawks fans who watched any of it. I don't
know anything big that came out. I don't know anything
interesting that came out of it. We didn't talk one
(11:05):
time about Hard Knocks this year. Not one time. Just
that first week. Just that it existed. Hey, by the way,
this premiered because I saw a couple of billboards that
driving around town before my daughters left for school and
running them to errands. Like, hey, I'm in a part
of town I'm normally not. How about that? Hard knocks.
It must be back. But you had the Giants thing
(11:26):
with Shane and Barkley. The Bears, remember they had a
bunch of rules because they were forced to do it, right?
They were one of the teams that hadn't because of
the family, the Halas-McCaskey family. They're like, well, we don't
want any cursing. And then you had two things, I guess,
that were wrong. I guess the best, most interesting. Eberflus,
there was a whole episode about his damn hair and
(11:48):
getting a haircut as he was starting to talk about
the year. Okay, great. And his wife's talking about how
much she liked his hair and his beard. Okay. And
then DJ Moore took his family. It was cute. And
they went to an ice cream museum. That's great. Those
were the only two things that happened that entire season.
And the other thing you have across the league now,
much like the death of every day or two-a-days where
(12:11):
they're all open out to the public, that you've gone
inside the bubble. Well, you've also had it to where
team after team has expanded their own social media imprint
of what messages, competitive nature that they want out, right?
What stories, what new players that they would like to
be in your public eye. So you don't need HBO
(12:35):
to come over the top for that. They've hired a
bunch of people in-house. Hell, one of the most viral
videos of the day today was an intern saying, with
the Colts getting a slip of paper from Tyler Warren
as he walked out to the practice field saying congratulations
on your new job because she'd been promoted to full-time.
I mean, that's about as good as it gets. Yeah,
I mean, if... If you find a way to make changes, right?
(12:58):
And again, I don't know what those changes are, but
if you find a way to reinvent it, to get
people talking about it, whether you want to deal, whether
like you had the Seahawks this year, whether you want
to talk to Sam Darnold and talk about the Vikings
letting you go or to get stuff that actually is interesting. Yeah.
I don't know what else you're going to get, man,
because you can't keep giving me here the position unless
(13:21):
you really want to get in depth with the lives
of these players. You want to focus on one battle
for a position between these two guys. But there's got
to be some sort of change where you make, okay,
I want to see it now. Because I don't know
anybody that's going to say, yeah, I can't wait for
next year. I can't wait for Hard Knocks next year.
Who's doing that? I'm out. Nobody. I'm out. You might
as well put a bunch of former players in a house.
(13:44):
Unless it's your team. That's Big Brother. And we already
have that. And I don't know how many people still
watch that. No, it still does well. It does it really? Oh, yeah. Really?
Was it season, like, 75 now or something? Yeah, no, actually,
the new season just started. Okay, all right. And it
still does well?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Or it's cheap. Well, it's well enough. It's cheap. Or
it's cheap to be done and just throw it on
the air. Look, it's the old game show. Yeah, okay, okay.
Cheap production. That's why the... Get them on, get them over,
get them in. That's why the Simpsons are in season 78.
Look at.
Well, that actually still has some cost to it. But
when you get to game shows, I mean, you know,
for those that don't know how the sausage is made,
(14:19):
I mean, your price is right. Christmas episode got taped
last week. Hey, we're Christmas stuff this week. Okay, cool. Well,
I mean, look, there's Ted Lasso, right? They're just coming
up to saying, hey, we have one more game before
the Christmas break. Before the holiday break, yeah. Oh, Christmas
break is coming up. Oh, okay. It's August. It's a
Christmas break. Okay, that's Christmas break is coming. Exit out
(14:42):
about a fresca. Exit swollen. It's just going to circle
the drain until it's mercifully canceled sometime the next couple
of years. It had a good run. Now, from something
that I can't believe we didn't talk about it all summer,
without a doubt, the most interesting NFL story of the
last couple of weeks is coming up next right here.
Jason and Mike, Fox Sports Radio. Hey, it's Covino and
(15:08):
Rich from Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Now, in addition to hearing us live weekdays from 5
to 7 p.m. Eastern, 2 to 4 Pacific on Fox
Sports Radio, we're excited to announce a brand new YouTube
channel for the show.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yup, that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You can now watch Covino and Rich live on YouTube
every day. All you gotta do, search Covino and Rich
FSR on YouTube. Again, Go to YouTube, search Covino and
Rich FSR. Check us out on YouTube, subscribe, hit that
thumbs up icon, and comment away.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Be sure to catch live editions of the Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m.
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Fox Sports Radio, the Jason Smith Show with my best friend,
Mike Harmon. I didn't have this on my bingo card today,
but wow, was this story really interesting. So a former
Patriots employee, I would just say, let's just say that.
(16:09):
Is it the deflator? No, it's not the deflator. He's
an analytics staffer. His name is Ryan Pagnetti. And he
did a podcast in which he broke news today that
it was stunning that And there were so many fun
things to talk about after it. So again, this is
a guy, Anna Lickstaffer, Bill Belichick with the Patriots. And
(16:31):
to illustrate his point, he used one of the most
famous missed field goals in NFL history. This was where
in 2012, all Billy Cundiff has to do is make
an easy field goal. And Hey, maybe the Ravens are
going to the Superbowl. It was an easy make, but
instead this was what happened.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Here comes Billy Cundiff.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
It's a tie of this game. in an all likelihood,
send it to overtime. The last two years, 16 of
16 in the fourth quarter on field goals, 32 yards
to tie. And the kick, look out, look out, it's.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
No good, it's no good.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I got gymnastics yelling, look out, like the ball is
coming towards us. Oh my God, look out, look out.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So Cundiff's Miss, part of Patriot's lore. It's also part
of Raven's lore. His surname is a four-letter word in Baltimore. Sure, sure.
You got Cundiff. To go back to Hard Knocks, I
still remember how they revealed Billy Cundiff won the kicking
job with the Cowboys and how... They took him to
where an apartment complex that Cowboys players lived, like his
(17:41):
head was swimming, and the woman's telling him, hey, welcome
to the team. It's very exciting. A lot of players
live here. Here's what happens. It's furnished. It's all this.
I still remember that, him making the team on Hard Knocks.
But That's one of the biggest... And we talk about
Patriots lore because part of this podcast, Ryan Paganetti said
that Bill Belichick used a diabolical scheme to help confuse kickers,
(18:04):
where at Gillette... He went back and went back like
15 years under the last 15 years of Bill Belichick,
what he would do at home when field goal kickers
were kicking towards the scoreboard that is right behind the uprights.
The other scoreboard in Gillette is not quite centered, but
(18:24):
one is centered right behind the uprights. Every time that the...
opposing team was kicking a field goal going that way,
they would put up the broadcast of the field goal,
like what you were seeing on TV. Now, remember, when
you see it on TV, you are generally seeing the
field goal from.
If you were sitting in the stands, right? That's generally what,
(18:46):
sometimes you see it from behind the kicker, but generally
you see it. That's usually the replay, yeah. Right, but generally,
because you want to be able to see if it's good,
you see that angle of it. So that's the angle
that's put up right behind the uprights. So the kicker
is when he's getting ready to go and seeing the uprights,
he's seeing the uprights in front of him, but he's
(19:07):
also seeing the other two uprights that are right behind him,
and he's seeing the flags blowing in the opposite direction.
So this is up there, and it's only up there
when the opponents are kicking. According to Paganetti, he said,
I did it. Every time the Patriots kicked towards that,
it was not up there. What do you have, like
52 instant series? He went to a lot of situations.
(19:28):
And not say like, oh, he did this a couple
of times. Like he went to the wall to say,
this is what he's done. And now, how many times
did it work? Did it work 50% of the time?
Did it confuse kickers 90% of the time? No, probably not.
And did it confuse Billy Cundiff? I don't know. Maybe
it did. But the point is that this is what
(19:49):
Belichick would go to to try to gain an advantage
in in during a game where maybe I can get
the kicker thinking he's seeing something maybe out of the
corner of his eye when he's kicking he thinks the
upright is here he's trying to adjust for the wind
he thinks the wind is blowing this way but maybe
he sees the wind blowing another way because he sees
what's on the scoreboard instead of what's in front of
(20:10):
him and maybe he misses a kick So even if
that's worked a handful of times, right, this is Belichick
and the deviousness he has used to try to gain
an advantage in the NFL. Devious. Devious and diabolical. Boy,
you're using some pretty loaded words there, Smith. But I'm
not saying anything is illegal. Like, this is devious. It's diabolical. But, boy,
(20:33):
this is getting an edge. Here's Belichick getting an edge, right?
And it's not illegal. And I've seen the same thing
all throughout social media today, but people are kind of
missing the point. It's like, well, what's wrong? It's not illegal. Yeah,
it's really weird. But boy, that's really something that's admirable. Okay.
Now I get this. And this is something that you
can do. Now, if you are the opposing team and
(20:54):
you notice this, you could easily say, hey, that's distracting
to my kicker. They don't do it when they kick.
Let's take that down. And I don't know if maybe
now that team just go, oh, I didn't know that's
what happened. Why didn't anybody say anything? Why didn't my
kicker come off and go? Confusing why they have the
replay up there, but during the game, the coach is
going to go, what do you mean? Just make the
field goal, right? But now you're hearing this and people
(21:16):
are going, and I'm sure there's a lot of kickers going, oh, wow,
I can't believe they did that. Now, maybe some did,
but they didn't notice it. But I think if you
wanted to, you could have said, hey, I don't like
when they do this. They don't do it to their
own kicker. It confuses my kicker. I want that done.
And maybe something would have been done, right? But the
main point of this is that If you don't think
that there is a laundry list of things Bill Belichick
(21:39):
did during his run with the Patriots that was both
run up to the line of legal and over the line, well,
then you haven't been paying attention to what his career
has been like. This was legal. Nothing wrong with it, right?
But it's also dotted with Spygate and Deflategate and all
the stuff he would do with the play clock that
a lot of special teams coaches going, what Belichick used
(22:00):
to do with the play clock was illegal, but he
found a loophole around it. The stuff that he did
to gain an advantage, we only know, like it's the
tip of the iceberg. We only know what we see
over the water. Like this is something that went on
for 15 years and we just found out now because
the former Patriot staffer, for whatever reason, was okay doing it, right?
(22:23):
If you look back now at his history, I don't
know without the gates and the non-legal things that Belichick
did that we know of and stuff we don't know
of without that stuff. Patriots probably have three Super Bowls, right?
Nobody wins six Super Bowls now, no matter how talented
(22:45):
you are. Patrick Holmes will get four if he's lucky.
He may be done winning and he's won three. Nobody
wins six, right? How do you win six? Well, Spygate
clearly helped a lot because Bill Belichick's not getting a
video of the other team if it's not helping you
win the Super Bowl, right? It's not helping you all
the way through. So the stuff that he did... Still,
(23:06):
the Patriots were incredibly talented. He's a great head coach.
He had the best quarterback any of us have ever seen.
So without the deviousness, without stuff like this, without the
illegal stuff... Probably three Super Bowls. Six, that's a lot.
But over the course of the time going, how many
can you subscribe to Spygate? How many to Deflategate? How
(23:29):
many to other things? How many of this? Maybe Billy
Cundiff's going to come out tomorrow and say, I would
have made it if I didn't see that replay behind me.
So I would say, yeah, because nobody wins six. Nobody
does this. So if you take away that stuff that
Belichick did, and again, I'm talking about the stuff that's
right up to the line and the stuff that's over
the line, you take that away, it's three Super Bowls.
(23:49):
It's probably three. Brady wins three. Still one of the
best quarterbacks of all time because, you know, look, you
saw what happened after Brady left. Oh, man, this really
didn't work out for me. So I would say without
this stuff, Belichick, they probably win three at some point,
and they're more like the Chiefs now than they are, hey,
this is the best dynasty we've seen since the Cowboys
(24:11):
or the 49ers in the 90s. Well, the old rule
of thumb of the show, I can't fault a good strategy.
One of the other truisms in life, better to ask
forgiveness than permission. And we had that dog-eared rule book
for all those years. And if you can find where
it's not explicit and we can talk about fuzzy rules.
(24:32):
Remember the formations he was running that all of a
sudden everybody cried foul. It's like, okay, they changed the rule.
They decided they didn't like the rule as it was written.
It's kind of like going and taking a driver's test
and it's horribly written. I'll take the state of California,
for instance. And you go up to the person and go, well,
this is how I interpreted this. Look at how this
is written. And after two of those, maybe five of those,
(24:54):
they finally just say, okay, you clearly know what you're doing.
We don't have time for this. You pass. Move on.
New England, 9.4% difference between their field goal attempts and
the opponent's field goal attempts from the years 2001 to 2019.
That is far and away the best. Second best, Indianapolis. 85%
(25:15):
versus 81%. That's 3.8% difference. So certainly there is something
in the water, something to the math in all of it.
We had how many reports through the years of noise
being pumped in to dome stadiums? I think Atlanta got
a slap on the wrist for that. Outside of that,
(25:36):
do you ever hear anybody complaining? Is there any further investigation?
When it comes to what gets taken off the board
in terms of legacy plays, I don't know, you still
had Tom Brady to make another play. That's what I mean.
You probably would have won three Super Bowls. Like what
Mahomes did. Mahomes is the most talented quarterback we've seen,
and he's got three. Maybe he gets another one. Because, look,
(25:59):
he's in the game manager part of his career. He's
not getting great weapons at the end. Like, oh, hey,
Brady's got Wes Welker and Randy Moss. No, he's not
getting that anymore. And he's got three. But those guys
weren't exactly highly heralded. Wes Welker was a specialty guy
and a kick returner. For the Miami Dolphins, and they
decided they didn't like him anymore. So he goes to
(26:20):
New England, and he fit the suit perfectly as a
guy who was willing to give himself up over the middle. Gronkowski,
when he got drafted, everybody thought it was a wasted
pick because he was going to have a bad back
that wasn't going to allow him to play. Instead, he
becomes one of the greatest players and... forces that we've
seen on and off the field for the last 20 years.
(26:41):
Even Spygate though, like there's the letter and spirit of
the law. You are allowed to tape back then, just
not from there.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And not during games and not the other side, not
what you did and not hand signals. Like again, they
were a really talented team. They had Belichick's a great
head coach. Brady's the best quarterback we have seen. That's a,
that's a three super bowl over a 15 year. You
go to five, you win three. That's the kind of
run that you're at. And that's, again, it's more like
(27:09):
what the Chiefs have done over the past few years
than just, yeah, every time we go, we win. Boy,
how'd you know that play was coming? I don't know.
All you gotta do is go back to the Rams
Super Bowl in 2001 where the Rams are like, how
did the Patriots know the play we ran for a
two-point conversion? We practiced it once during our walkthrough on Friday.
We were saving it, and somehow they knew it was
(27:29):
coming because, ostensibly, they taped the walkthrough practice. Or maybe
they had a rat. Yeah. We're going to run this
play for a conversion in the fourth quarter if we
get there. Remember, you didn't hear it from me. All right, bye. Well,
in this day and age of gambling or whatever, isn't
that one of the conclusions we would jump to?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Who's the rat?
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Who's the rat? Who sold them out? Like you standing
up like Pacino, a man stands alone at a plate.
In the field, team, team, team, team. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A bat-a-bat. Time for what? A time for individual achievement. Team, team, team, team. Like,
is that how you're figuring it out? A little bit
of De Niro, yeah. Get after it. And he swings
(28:10):
the bat. Yeah. But no, I... There's a million things
like football is one of those sports go all the
way back to when Hallis and those guys were around.
It's all about figuring out where's the the blurred lines
in terms of the rulebook. Yeah, but there's lines and
there's lines you go. I'm just walking past the line.
I'm just stepping over the line. I can't adjudicate from 25,
(28:32):
30 years ago at this point. I mean, today we're
talking about a video board. If it was that big
a deal over 20 years, you would think someone would
have seen it. You'd think. You'd think. Someone would have
said something. But nobody did. Nobody saw it on the broadcast.
Except for this wizard all these years later. I can't
believe that when all the spy stuff came up that
(28:52):
we didn't get this from any kickers. That any kickers didn't. Oh, yeah.
How come Pablo Torre didn't find this out? Pablo Torre.
He was busy. I think in 2012. I don't know.
How old is Pablo Torre? No, no, no. I mean,
this bit. Oh, this bit? Oh, no, he was still
trailing Uncle Dennis. He was like, you know, wearing a
trench coat and a hat, hiding in a corner of
a bar going, where's Uncle Dennis? When does Uncle Dennis
(29:14):
come in? Okay, there's Uncle Dennis. I got to follow him.
By the way, Uncle Dennis got what he needed out
of the equation. Oh, sure he did. He got Ballmer
saying all the, hey, I got nothing. I didn't do this.
Leave me alone. It's malicious prosecution. And then you got
Kawhi going, yeah, you know, my family. I mean, what
are you going to do? I'm just picturing like Pablo
Torre following him around like into the leaky cauldron where
(29:36):
he's just sitting in the back. Well, the other wizards
that are hiding like, yeah, OK. Well, you saw the
casting news for the new show, right?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
New trailer came out today. But you see, yeah, come
season four. Yeah. Bob Hope. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Be sure to catch live editions of the Jason Smith
show with Mike Harmon weekdays at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m.
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app. I
hate that song.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Fox Sports Radio. The Sam Winchester Show with my best
friend Dean. OJ Dean. I'd rather be Dean because that's
Jensen Ackles. And he's a really good looking dude. So
I'm going to be Dean. Can I be Steve? Steve.
I want to be Steve. Steve.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
No, you know what? You can be Misha Barton's character.
You can be Castiel. What? Yeah, you can be Castiel.
Does she have long hair? No, no. I'm out. He
wears a trench coat a lot, though. Knows a lot
of stuff. I'm out. Can travel between dimensions. You lost
me a trench coat. Oh, okay. Well, sorry about that.
That's next hour. You could be Jared Padalecki, and we
(30:49):
got a whole team there. We got a whole team.
We're good. I'll have to research my character. Monty could
be fake Ruby. It'll work out great. What about real Ruby? Well,
fake Ruby is more of a thing. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
16 seasons of Supernatural I watched. Fake Ruby is more
of a thing. Yeah. I've seen, unless I woke up
to it after watching the end of an NBA doubleheader
(31:10):
in postgame, if that was on instead of Charmed, I
might have seen something. Otherwise, I've never seen it. Yeah, no,
because now during the day, Supernatural has replaced Charmed as
that show that's on like, tbs and tnt all the
way through like yeah you either get friends okay or
supernatural now yeah i don't know i don't know yeah
100 she's gonna walk around the house going sam sam
because jensen ackles said i thought you were gonna start
(31:32):
once every episode again sam sam every episode sam sam
uh the penalty for the clippers came down to it
we talked about a lot throughout the biggest sports story
of the day The Kawhi Leonard penalty for circumventing the
salary cap, which is a story that was first unearthed
by Pablo Torre. Pablo Torre finds out. Yes, he finds out.
(31:56):
The Clippers are docked. Five first-round picks. Steve Ballmer is
suspended for a year. Most of the front office is
suspended for six months. And it's also a $ 30 million fine.
When this story broke today, I actually gasped when I said, wow,
(32:19):
because I thought, and I still think this is really
excessive for what we saw. Not that there didn't need
to be a penalty because, you know, circumventing the salary
cap's a thing, right? Five first-round picks. You have kneecapped
a franchise for a long time. Yeah, see, I thought
instead of picks, maybe you would have maybe chopped them
to where they can't work to the normal salary cap.
(32:42):
That they lose a percentage of their monies. And you
would have done something to Kawhi Leonard, who clearly was
on board with all of this. $ 700K, baby. I mean, look,
the money doesn't matter because the money that Steve Ballmer
is worth, the money that Kawhi Leonard is worth... You
hear the money, well, $ 30 million lot to Steve Ball. Okay,
Ballmer's worth $ 150 billion. It's still $ 30 million. You can
(33:03):
plant a lot of trees with $ 30 million. But for
the next year, you're rudderless. However, you're running a team
without your owner, without your front office for the next
six months. And you don't have draft picks, first-round picks
for five years. The Knicks don't have it, but they
got Mikkel Bridges, won a championship, so it worked out okay.
You don't have the assets. You have made... the Clippers
(33:27):
an unsafe place for free agents to go, for players
to say, that's a destination. That's what the NBA decided
to do to the Clippers. Not that they didn't need
a penalty, because they did. If you want us to
suspend Ballmer for six months and dock them a first
round pick or a couple of second rounds, okay. And
fine them $ 15, $ 20 million, okay. That's an acceptable penalty
(33:51):
for this, right? To show you we can't. But you
have absolutely just taken a team, and I don't know
if they can survive this the next 10 years. It's
the number two team in Los Angeles to begin with. Now,
free agents have no idea that... if they're going to
be able to put teams together, if it's a safe
place for us to go sign, for me to go play,
because they couldn't win. It was a tough enough place
(34:13):
before this happened. Now, who knows? They have no assets.
They have no draft picks to trade. Why am I
going to go play there? I don't know how they're
going to even be run for the next year. This
next year is going to set them back at least
two years. Because now you're talking about being suspended now,
going through free agency. Next year. So now you're set
(34:33):
back for two years for that, and then your draft
picks start coming in. You don't have one for five years.
Not that you're going to draft a guy that's going
to be great, but you don't have an asset to
trade to bring somebody in who's going to be very good.
This may have screwed the Clippers for the better part
of the next decade, and quite honestly... It's a little
except this is not fabric of the game. We're caught
(34:55):
cheating our way to win a title like the Astros.
This stuff like this should be reserved for that fabric
of the game kind of stuff. Well, I mean, if
you want to say that, then nothing should have happened.
They should have been given every key to the city
and everybody should have laughed. I mean, Carlos Beltran still
walked into the Hall of Fame. He did. They still
have a hunk of metal, and everything remains the same.
(35:16):
Trent Redden will serve in Lawrence Frank's. Trent Reznor is
going to serve?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Wow. Well, the music will be really good. It's going
to have a hell of a soundtrack. It's going to
be very dark. Yeah. It's kind of twisted. It's going
to be really dark and twisted. Yeah. It's now industrial
night every night in Clippertown. Yeah, Trent Redden serves. But yeah,
it's not the fabric of the game. Look, you get
best the draft picks because those are rolls of the
(35:44):
dice anyway. And in theory, you're drafting towards the upper half. Fortunately,
you are allowed to keep your full salary cap. money's
at your disposal so you can at least work that
way but in terms of finding and packaging the chips
as we usually talk about when it comes to moving
(36:04):
draft picks yeah that does hamper them to it to
a bit yeah good luck You had enough tough time
being a destination with this. Forget it now. Forget it, man. Clippers, Joe.
Coming up next, a guy who deserves a lot of
credit is someone I never give credit to. That's next. Fox.
You too, Tyshirt.
Thanks for listening to the Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weeknight,
10 p.m.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
To 2 a.m.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Eastern, 7 to 11 p.m. Pacific on Fox Sports Radio.
Find your local station for the Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon at foxsportsradio.com or stream us live every night
on the iHeartRadio app by searching FSR.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Now let's get this party started. You're listening to Fox
Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Greetings, welcome inside Hour 3, The Jason Smith Show, with
my best friend, Mike Harmon.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
That is not John Cena.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Stream us live wherever you happen to be in the
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(01:01):
Rip the knob off and then send it in as proof.
Before we get to this NFL, again, big NFL story
that I say, but is it really a big story?
You know what I would love to see from the Clippers?
What's that? They lose everything today, right? They lost their owner.
Steve Ballmer suspended for a year as the NBA has
come down with punishment for the Kawhi Leonard tree planting,
circumventing the salary cap story. They lose their front office
(01:23):
for the next six months. They're docked first round picks
for the next five years. Right. This is as bad
as it gets in the NBA. So you ask what
what should you get? Right. I think they can give
everybody a free Grady Dick jersey. Sure. Yeah. I can
see a lot of people walking around L.A. wearing that.
(01:45):
I mean, it's a very subtle statement back to the
commissioner's office. I mean, not to USC games. It's too hot,
but I can see them.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
People.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I don't know. I mean, cause they're tank tops. Oh,
that is true. But the, the, the, the material is
that anyway, it's not breathable. What I'd love to see, right.
What I'd love to see. We talked about Steve Ballmer,
and we talked with Rick Buecher. Steve Ballmer's worth approximately
$ 150 billion, okay? As far as the owner's worth, tons
of money. Steve Cohen, Major League Baseball, right? Now Stan Kroenke.
(02:15):
These guys are each worth about $ 25 billion. They can
spend whatever they want to. What I would love to
see now, with all this going on, because what do
you do if you're the Clippers? I want to see
Steve Ballmer make a statement and say, when I come back,
there is no price. I will go deep into the
second apron. I'll go to the third apron. I'll go
(02:36):
to the fourth apron. I'll go to the 50th apron
if I have to, to get star players to come
in here and play so we have a present that
is as soon as I get back. Because he's got
the money to do it, right? Why not do it?
You're talking about a guy worth $ 150 billion spending in
the millions. You can get into the hundreds of millions
and do that. You've got to find a way now to...
(02:58):
to have your team think that there's a future to
have players think that there's a future. Hey, okay. I'll
go to the Clippers if they outbid, you know, for
my services by $ 20 million a year. Like that's what
you have to do if you're the Clippers. And if
you were a team where your owner didn't have that
kind of money, I would get it. And I would say, well,
you can't clearly can't own the team. You should sell it.
But Ballmer can do that. I'd love to see Ballmer say, yeah,
(03:20):
blank you second apron.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
What?
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I don't care. When I get back in one year, one,
the X right here, one year from now, whatever year
it's going, whatever day it's going to be, We're going
to go out. We're going to get these guys. We're
going to go out and get superstars to come in
and play. And I don't care what kind of penalty
we have to play once we go passing into that.
I don't care because we're going to be good. I'd
love to see the Clippers do that. I dig that
because I immediately in my head, Steve Ballmer, now he's
(03:44):
challenging the findings. And I think mostly he wants to
be around the team. uh and be in the arena
and all of that uh as well as he wants
i want my draft picks back like he's kevin costner
screaming uh in uh draft day but i i kind
of pictured him as uh heath ledger in the dark
night with that mountain of money that he just sets
(04:06):
on fire to make a point um Same kind of idea.
It's like, yeah, this doesn't matter to me. And I
have to wonder, in all of it, the $ 30 million,
is it just because he's worth so much money? It's like, yeah,
just throw out a random number. Yeah, go ahead. Because
it's really appropriate of nothing. It's just out of thin air.
(04:26):
Here's $ 30 million. But to do the luxury tax, what
are our implications? It doesn't matter. Again, wheelbarrow of money
shows up. There you go. We've paid our tax. Be gone.
I like the cut of your jib. I think this
would be a great idea. I've signed everybody to two-year deals,
and we're going to pay whatever it costs. Well, I mean,
(04:47):
that's what you really, if you're the club, you really
need to do that because there's no way to say, well,
we're going to take a smart fiscal approach. No, you're done.
We've changed our team name to the Los Angeles Rogues.
They'll kick you out of the league. You'll be relegated.
All these things. Like, you've got to come out and say, okay.
I can't believe the NBA did this to us. There's
not many. We'll go $ 221 million second. What do I
(05:09):
care about $ 220 million? What do you think his budget
is going to be for whatever fight he's trying to
do here legally? Because by the CBA, by all the
NBA rules, they've got no recourse.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
But as we know, as we've seen in college football
and everywhere else, I can file a lawsuit.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
You think I'll get the picks back? No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
But we're going to fight.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Can I get one pick back? No, probably not. All right, fine. Well,
because you got Pablo Torre over here taking his victory lap,
and rightfully so, right? He's got Pulitzer and everything. He goes, oh,
I got more. I got more over here. He's like,
what else you got? What else you got? What's season
two of this data? But for Steve Ballmer and company
that are claiming that they're going to fight this tooth
and nail, I can't wait to see what that becomes.
(05:53):
Does he start outing every other owner and potentially shady
deals that he's aware of? Dude, that's Clippers Hardware. That's
Clippers plaque. That should be Balmer with Pablo Torre and
Kawhi Leonard all holding it up at once, looking like
Brunson and Cat with the net over them and holding
up the Larry O'Brien trophy and the confetti, all of that. Sure.
(06:14):
By the way, you know, I made the Wile E.
Coyote reference last hour. I come back to it. Kawhi Leonard,
super genius. Mm-hmm. So we'll have more on this story
coming up. Again, I don't think they will, but if
any team can do it, he's got the money. That
would be fun. Blank that, man. What would they find
him after he did that? It's like, you're not just
(06:35):
paying a tax. Now you're trying to make us look bad.
Instead of F them picks, it's going to be F
that Pulitzer. Journalism. Oh, man. Come on now. Now, I
don't know if you know this or not. What's that? Right?
And this is why I say, when is a big
NFL story, but is it really a big story? Hard
Knocks has ended.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
No.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Hard Knocks is, well, I mean, for the season, it's done. Oh,
I thought you said they announced they were done with it.
Last night was the last episode.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
It's over. And I got to be honest, I didn't
know it was the last episode. I didn't know it
was over. I didn't watch a minute of Hard Knocks.
I used one clip on a Sunday morning Fox Sports
Sunday show that I did of Sam Darnold commenting on
the LeBron James signing with the Sixers. That's it. Otherwise,
I've not been apprised of anything because nothing's cut through.
(07:27):
I mean, did I miss anything? No. Seemingly not. No,
because Hard Knocks used to be a great show of record.
It used to be something where you had two or
three fun stories a week out of, and now it's
like the Pro Bowl. Hard Knocks had its day. Well,
we always had that story of the guy, the I
think I can, I think I can't, and then he
ends up getting cut in the final episode. We like
(07:49):
that guy. Because Hard Knocks comes out, and it's an
inside look at training camp, and it's awesome. We had
never seen anything like it. taking you through the summer
when you don't get a lot of football. It was new.
And for a while, it didn't matter what you put
out there. The Bengals one was interesting. My goodness, man,
the Bengals. Because of all the different storylines. You had
the stars. You had the position battles. You had the
(08:12):
fun stuff. You had Jared Goff learning geography. Yeah, I mean,
you always had one unhinged assistant coach and something else circling.
Every week, Hard Knocks was a thing you talked about.
It was an event in the NFL. But again, just
like anything else, yeah, its day has come and gone.
Like the Pro Bowl, yeah, the day for the Pro
(08:33):
Bowl was around a long time. Its day has come
and gone. And whether it's the fact that now you're
not getting anything that cuts through because teams are much
more careful about what they say, you know, that you
don't get the reporter interviewing Antonio Cromartie to name the
names of all his kids like that's not happening anymore.
You're getting a very vanilla view of preseason. You're not
(08:54):
getting a lot of stuff that is said, especially when
you go back to the offseason one with the. with
the giants and the, and the Saquon Barkley situation of
a year ago, that was probably the death cry of
hard knocks. That was like the, Hey, the tiger winning
the last masters, you know, 12 years after he won
his most recent major. Like that was like, Hey, that
was the last gasp. That was the last death cry
(09:15):
for the hard knocks series, which was the off season one,
where the story became about the giants and losing Saquon
Barkley and watching the Eagles go and win the championship.
We've seen it. We've seen Hard Knocks' act. We have
seen all the position battles that we don't really care
about because now it's so much easier to find out
every day who is surviving, who is not. You get
(09:38):
much more because of social media and the advent of it.
You get everything right away. Who is playing well? Who isn't?
You're looking at your own team and you're seeing how
things are going in real time. Hey, they just finished
seven on sevens. Here's your final stats. Here's who stood out.
Hard Knocks was great, but now it doesn't really give
you anything to watch. And it's all it's a combination
of all the things that i just said And barring
(10:01):
a change in format, barring a big change which is
going to bring you storylines, this is just going to
peter out. It's going to be more difficult to get
teams to say yes. And what's going to happen is
the NFL will make teams say yes that can't say
no because it's not breaking in a new coach or
coming off that. You're going to wind up getting it
(10:21):
where the next couple of years and it's just going
to be uninteresting and uninteresting and eventually HBO is going
to say yes. It's not worth it anymore. And this
is going to die a very slow death, just like
the Pro Bowl, where for five or six years, boy,
the Pro Bowl's bad. We're going to try to reinvent it.
But outside of something really new and that's going to
jumpstart what Hard Knocks is, we're going to get a
(10:43):
couple more seasons of it, and then it's going to
be HBO's going to say, you know, we're not doing
it anymore. And they'll take a break. Maybe they'll bring
it back in five years. But that's going to be
how Hard Knocks ends. Because, again, just because it was
good for a long time doesn't mean it's always going
to be there. And really, I don't know anybody outside
of Seahawks fans who watched any of it. I don't
know anything big that came out. I don't know anything
interesting that came out of it. We didn't talk one
(11:05):
time about Hard Knocks this year. Not one time. Just
that first week. Just that it existed. Hey, by the way,
this premiered because I saw a couple of billboards that
driving around town before my daughters left for school and
running them to errands. Like, hey, I'm in a part
of town I'm normally not. How about that? Hard knocks.
It must be back. But you had the Giants thing
(11:26):
with Shane and Barkley. The Bears, remember they had a
bunch of rules because they were forced to do it, right?
They were one of the teams that hadn't because of
the family, the Halas-McCaskey family. They're like, well, we don't
want any cursing. And then you had two things, I guess,
that were wrong. I guess the best, most interesting. Eberflus,
there was a whole episode about his damn hair and
(11:48):
getting a haircut as he was starting to talk about
the year. Okay, great. And his wife's talking about how
much she liked his hair and his beard. Okay. And
then DJ Moore took his family. It was cute. And
they went to an ice cream museum. That's great. Those
were the only two things that happened that entire season.
And the other thing you have across the league now,
much like the death of every day or two-a-days where
(12:11):
they're all open out to the public, that you've gone
inside the bubble. Well, you've also had it to where
team after team has expanded their own social media imprint
of what messages, competitive nature that they want out, right?
What stories, what new players that they would like to
be in your public eye. So you don't need HBO
(12:35):
to come over the top for that. They've hired a
bunch of people in-house. Hell, one of the most viral
videos of the day today was an intern saying, with
the Colts getting a slip of paper from Tyler Warren
as he walked out to the practice field saying congratulations
on your new job because she'd been promoted to full-time.
I mean, that's about as good as it gets. Yeah,
I mean, if... If you find a way to make changes, right?
(12:58):
And again, I don't know what those changes are, but
if you find a way to reinvent it, to get
people talking about it, whether you want to deal, whether
like you had the Seahawks this year, whether you want
to talk to Sam Darnold and talk about the Vikings
letting you go or to get stuff that actually is interesting. Yeah.
I don't know what else you're going to get, man,
because you can't keep giving me here the position unless
(13:21):
you really want to get in depth with the lives
of these players. You want to focus on one battle
for a position between these two guys. But there's got
to be some sort of change where you make, okay,
I want to see it now. Because I don't know
anybody that's going to say, yeah, I can't wait for
next year. I can't wait for Hard Knocks next year.
Who's doing that? I'm out. Nobody. I'm out. You might
as well put a bunch of former players in a house.
(13:44):
Unless it's your team. That's Big Brother. And we already
have that. And I don't know how many people still
watch that. No, it still does well. It does it really? Oh, yeah. Really?
Was it season, like, 75 now or something? Yeah, no, actually,
the new season just started. Okay, all right. And it
still does well?
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Or it's cheap. Well, it's well enough. It's cheap. Or
it's cheap to be done and just throw it on
the air. Look, it's the old game show. Yeah, okay, okay.
Cheap production. That's why the... Get them on, get them over,
get them in. That's why the Simpsons are in season 78.
Look at.
Well, that actually still has some cost to it. But
when you get to game shows, I mean, you know,
for those that don't know how the sausage is made,
(14:19):
I mean, your price is right. Christmas episode got taped
last week. Hey, we're Christmas stuff this week. Okay, cool. Well,
I mean, look, there's Ted Lasso, right? They're just coming
up to saying, hey, we have one more game before
the Christmas break. Before the holiday break, yeah. Oh, Christmas
break is coming up. Oh, okay. It's August. It's a
Christmas break. Okay, that's Christmas break is coming. Exit out
(14:42):
about a fresca. Exit swollen. It's just going to circle
the drain until it's mercifully canceled sometime the next couple
of years. It had a good run. Now, from something
that I can't believe we didn't talk about it all summer,
without a doubt, the most interesting NFL story of the
last couple of weeks is coming up next right here.
Jason and Mike, Fox Sports Radio. Hey, it's Covino and
(15:08):
Rich from Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Now, in addition to hearing us live weekdays from 5
to 7 p.m. Eastern, 2 to 4 Pacific on Fox
Sports Radio, we're excited to announce a brand new YouTube
channel for the show.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yup, that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You can now watch Covino and Rich live on YouTube
every day. All you gotta do, search Covino and Rich
FSR on YouTube. Again, Go to YouTube, search Covino and
Rich FSR. Check us out on YouTube, subscribe, hit that
thumbs up icon, and comment away.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Be sure to catch live editions of the Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m.
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Fox Sports Radio, the Jason Smith Show with my best friend,
Mike Harmon. I didn't have this on my bingo card today,
but wow, was this story really interesting. So a former
Patriots employee, I would just say, let's just say that.
(16:09):
Is it the deflator? No, it's not the deflator. He's
an analytics staffer. His name is Ryan Pagnetti. And he
did a podcast in which he broke news today that
it was stunning that And there were so many fun
things to talk about after it. So again, this is
a guy, Anna Lickstaffer, Bill Belichick with the Patriots. And
(16:31):
to illustrate his point, he used one of the most
famous missed field goals in NFL history. This was where
in 2012, all Billy Cundiff has to do is make
an easy field goal. And Hey, maybe the Ravens are
going to the Superbowl. It was an easy make, but
instead this was what happened.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Here comes Billy Cundiff.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
It's a tie of this game. in an all likelihood,
send it to overtime. The last two years, 16 of
16 in the fourth quarter on field goals, 32 yards
to tie. And the kick, look out, look out, it's.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
No good, it's no good.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
I got gymnastics yelling, look out, like the ball is
coming towards us. Oh my God, look out, look out.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
So Cundiff's Miss, part of Patriot's lore. It's also part
of Raven's lore. His surname is a four-letter word in Baltimore. Sure, sure.
You got Cundiff. To go back to Hard Knocks, I
still remember how they revealed Billy Cundiff won the kicking
job with the Cowboys and how... They took him to
where an apartment complex that Cowboys players lived, like his
(17:41):
head was swimming, and the woman's telling him, hey, welcome
to the team. It's very exciting. A lot of players
live here. Here's what happens. It's furnished. It's all this.
I still remember that, him making the team on Hard Knocks.
But That's one of the biggest... And we talk about
Patriots lore because part of this podcast, Ryan Paganetti said
that Bill Belichick used a diabolical scheme to help confuse kickers,
(18:04):
where at Gillette... He went back and went back like
15 years under the last 15 years of Bill Belichick,
what he would do at home when field goal kickers
were kicking towards the scoreboard that is right behind the uprights.
The other scoreboard in Gillette is not quite centered, but
(18:24):
one is centered right behind the uprights. Every time that the...
opposing team was kicking a field goal going that way,
they would put up the broadcast of the field goal,
like what you were seeing on TV. Now, remember, when
you see it on TV, you are generally seeing the
field goal from.
If you were sitting in the stands, right? That's generally what,
(18:46):
sometimes you see it from behind the kicker, but generally
you see it. That's usually the replay, yeah. Right, but generally,
because you want to be able to see if it's good,
you see that angle of it. So that's the angle
that's put up right behind the uprights. So the kicker
is when he's getting ready to go and seeing the uprights,
he's seeing the uprights in front of him, but he's
(19:07):
also seeing the other two uprights that are right behind him,
and he's seeing the flags blowing in the opposite direction.
So this is up there, and it's only up there
when the opponents are kicking. According to Paganetti, he said,
I did it. Every time the Patriots kicked towards that,
it was not up there. What do you have, like
52 instant series? He went to a lot of situations.
(19:28):
And not say like, oh, he did this a couple
of times. Like he went to the wall to say,
this is what he's done. And now, how many times
did it work? Did it work 50% of the time?
Did it confuse kickers 90% of the time? No, probably not.
And did it confuse Billy Cundiff? I don't know. Maybe
it did. But the point is that this is what
(19:49):
Belichick would go to to try to gain an advantage
in in during a game where maybe I can get
the kicker thinking he's seeing something maybe out of the
corner of his eye when he's kicking he thinks the
upright is here he's trying to adjust for the wind
he thinks the wind is blowing this way but maybe
he sees the wind blowing another way because he sees
what's on the scoreboard instead of what's in front of
(20:10):
him and maybe he misses a kick So even if
that's worked a handful of times, right, this is Belichick
and the deviousness he has used to try to gain
an advantage in the NFL. Devious. Devious and diabolical. Boy,
you're using some pretty loaded words there, Smith. But I'm
not saying anything is illegal. Like, this is devious. It's diabolical. But, boy,
(20:33):
this is getting an edge. Here's Belichick getting an edge, right?
And it's not illegal. And I've seen the same thing
all throughout social media today, but people are kind of
missing the point. It's like, well, what's wrong? It's not illegal. Yeah,
it's really weird. But boy, that's really something that's admirable. Okay.
Now I get this. And this is something that you
can do. Now, if you are the opposing team and
(20:54):
you notice this, you could easily say, hey, that's distracting
to my kicker. They don't do it when they kick.
Let's take that down. And I don't know if maybe
now that team just go, oh, I didn't know that's
what happened. Why didn't anybody say anything? Why didn't my
kicker come off and go? Confusing why they have the
replay up there, but during the game, the coach is
going to go, what do you mean? Just make the
field goal, right? But now you're hearing this and people
(21:16):
are going, and I'm sure there's a lot of kickers going, oh, wow,
I can't believe they did that. Now, maybe some did,
but they didn't notice it. But I think if you
wanted to, you could have said, hey, I don't like
when they do this. They don't do it to their
own kicker. It confuses my kicker. I want that done.
And maybe something would have been done, right? But the
main point of this is that If you don't think
that there is a laundry list of things Bill Belichick
(21:39):
did during his run with the Patriots that was both
run up to the line of legal and over the line, well,
then you haven't been paying attention to what his career
has been like. This was legal. Nothing wrong with it, right?
But it's also dotted with Spygate and Deflategate and all
the stuff he would do with the play clock that
a lot of special teams coaches going, what Belichick used
(22:00):
to do with the play clock was illegal, but he
found a loophole around it. The stuff that he did
to gain an advantage, we only know, like it's the
tip of the iceberg. We only know what we see
over the water. Like this is something that went on
for 15 years and we just found out now because
the former Patriot staffer, for whatever reason, was okay doing it, right?
(22:23):
If you look back now at his history, I don't
know without the gates and the non-legal things that Belichick
did that we know of and stuff we don't know
of without that stuff. Patriots probably have three Super Bowls, right?
Nobody wins six Super Bowls now, no matter how talented
(22:45):
you are. Patrick Holmes will get four if he's lucky.
He may be done winning and he's won three. Nobody
wins six, right? How do you win six? Well, Spygate
clearly helped a lot because Bill Belichick's not getting a
video of the other team if it's not helping you
win the Super Bowl, right? It's not helping you all
the way through. So the stuff that he did... Still,
(23:06):
the Patriots were incredibly talented. He's a great head coach.
He had the best quarterback any of us have ever seen.
So without the deviousness, without stuff like this, without the
illegal stuff... Probably three Super Bowls. Six, that's a lot.
But over the course of the time going, how many
can you subscribe to Spygate? How many to Deflategate? How
(23:29):
many to other things? How many of this? Maybe Billy
Cundiff's going to come out tomorrow and say, I would
have made it if I didn't see that replay behind me.
So I would say, yeah, because nobody wins six. Nobody
does this. So if you take away that stuff that
Belichick did, and again, I'm talking about the stuff that's
right up to the line and the stuff that's over
the line, you take that away, it's three Super Bowls.
(23:49):
It's probably three. Brady wins three. Still one of the
best quarterbacks of all time because, you know, look, you
saw what happened after Brady left. Oh, man, this really
didn't work out for me. So I would say without
this stuff, Belichick, they probably win three at some point,
and they're more like the Chiefs now than they are, hey,
this is the best dynasty we've seen since the Cowboys
(24:11):
or the 49ers in the 90s. Well, the old rule
of thumb of the show, I can't fault a good strategy.
One of the other truisms in life, better to ask
forgiveness than permission. And we had that dog-eared rule book
for all those years. And if you can find where
it's not explicit and we can talk about fuzzy rules.
(24:32):
Remember the formations he was running that all of a
sudden everybody cried foul. It's like, okay, they changed the rule.
They decided they didn't like the rule as it was written.
It's kind of like going and taking a driver's test
and it's horribly written. I'll take the state of California,
for instance. And you go up to the person and go, well,
this is how I interpreted this. Look at how this
is written. And after two of those, maybe five of those,
(24:54):
they finally just say, okay, you clearly know what you're doing.
We don't have time for this. You pass. Move on.
New England, 9.4% difference between their field goal attempts and
the opponent's field goal attempts from the years 2001 to 2019.
That is far and away the best. Second best, Indianapolis. 85%
(25:15):
versus 81%. That's 3.8% difference. So certainly there is something
in the water, something to the math in all of it.
We had how many reports through the years of noise
being pumped in to dome stadiums? I think Atlanta got
a slap on the wrist for that. Outside of that,
(25:36):
do you ever hear anybody complaining? Is there any further investigation?
When it comes to what gets taken off the board
in terms of legacy plays, I don't know, you still
had Tom Brady to make another play. That's what I mean.
You probably would have won three Super Bowls. Like what
Mahomes did. Mahomes is the most talented quarterback we've seen,
and he's got three. Maybe he gets another one. Because, look,
(25:59):
he's in the game manager part of his career. He's
not getting great weapons at the end. Like, oh, hey,
Brady's got Wes Welker and Randy Moss. No, he's not
getting that anymore. And he's got three. But those guys
weren't exactly highly heralded. Wes Welker was a specialty guy
and a kick returner. For the Miami Dolphins, and they
decided they didn't like him anymore. So he goes to
(26:20):
New England, and he fit the suit perfectly as a
guy who was willing to give himself up over the middle. Gronkowski,
when he got drafted, everybody thought it was a wasted
pick because he was going to have a bad back
that wasn't going to allow him to play. Instead, he
becomes one of the greatest players and... forces that we've
seen on and off the field for the last 20 years.
(26:41):
Even Spygate though, like there's the letter and spirit of
the law. You are allowed to tape back then, just
not from there.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And not during games and not the other side, not
what you did and not hand signals. Like again, they
were a really talented team. They had Belichick's a great
head coach. Brady's the best quarterback we have seen. That's a,
that's a three super bowl over a 15 year. You
go to five, you win three. That's the kind of
run that you're at. And that's, again, it's more like
(27:09):
what the Chiefs have done over the past few years
than just, yeah, every time we go, we win. Boy,
how'd you know that play was coming? I don't know.
All you gotta do is go back to the Rams
Super Bowl in 2001 where the Rams are like, how
did the Patriots know the play we ran for a
two-point conversion? We practiced it once during our walkthrough on Friday.
We were saving it, and somehow they knew it was
(27:29):
coming because, ostensibly, they taped the walkthrough practice. Or maybe
they had a rat. Yeah. We're going to run this
play for a conversion in the fourth quarter if we
get there. Remember, you didn't hear it from me. All right, bye. Well,
in this day and age of gambling or whatever, isn't
that one of the conclusions we would jump to?
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Who's the rat?
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Who's the rat? Who sold them out? Like you standing
up like Pacino, a man stands alone at a plate.
In the field, team, team, team, team. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A bat-a-bat. Time for what? A time for individual achievement. Team, team, team, team. Like,
is that how you're figuring it out? A little bit
of De Niro, yeah. Get after it. And he swings
(28:10):
the bat. Yeah. But no, I... There's a million things
like football is one of those sports go all the
way back to when Hallis and those guys were around.
It's all about figuring out where's the the blurred lines
in terms of the rulebook. Yeah, but there's lines and
there's lines you go. I'm just walking past the line.
I'm just stepping over the line. I can't adjudicate from 25,
(28:32):
30 years ago at this point. I mean, today we're
talking about a video board. If it was that big
a deal over 20 years, you would think someone would
have seen it. You'd think. You'd think. Someone would have
said something. But nobody did. Nobody saw it on the broadcast.
Except for this wizard all these years later. I can't
believe that when all the spy stuff came up that
(28:52):
we didn't get this from any kickers. That any kickers didn't. Oh, yeah.
How come Pablo Torre didn't find this out? Pablo Torre.
He was busy. I think in 2012. I don't know.
How old is Pablo Torre? No, no, no. I mean,
this bit. Oh, this bit? Oh, no, he was still
trailing Uncle Dennis. He was like, you know, wearing a
trench coat and a hat, hiding in a corner of
a bar going, where's Uncle Dennis? When does Uncle Dennis
(29:14):
come in? Okay, there's Uncle Dennis. I got to follow him.
By the way, Uncle Dennis got what he needed out
of the equation. Oh, sure he did. He got Ballmer
saying all the, hey, I got nothing. I didn't do this.
Leave me alone. It's malicious prosecution. And then you got
Kawhi going, yeah, you know, my family. I mean, what
are you going to do? I'm just picturing like Pablo
Torre following him around like into the leaky cauldron where
(29:36):
he's just sitting in the back. Well, the other wizards
that are hiding like, yeah, OK. Well, you saw the
casting news for the new show, right?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
New trailer came out today. But you see, yeah, come
season four. Yeah. Bob Hope. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Be sure to catch live editions of the Jason Smith
show with Mike Harmon weekdays at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m.
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app. I
hate that song.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Fox Sports Radio. The Sam Winchester Show with my best
friend Dean. OJ Dean. I'd rather be Dean because that's
Jensen Ackles. And he's a really good looking dude. So
I'm going to be Dean. Can I be Steve? Steve.
I want to be Steve. Steve.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
No, you know what? You can be Misha Barton's character.
You can be Castiel. What? Yeah, you can be Castiel.
Does she have long hair? No, no. I'm out. He
wears a trench coat a lot, though. Knows a lot
of stuff. I'm out. Can travel between dimensions. You lost
me a trench coat. Oh, okay. Well, sorry about that.
That's next hour. You could be Jared Padalecki, and we
(30:49):
got a whole team there. We got a whole team.
We're good. I'll have to research my character. Monty could
be fake Ruby. It'll work out great. What about real Ruby? Well,
fake Ruby is more of a thing. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
16 seasons of Supernatural I watched. Fake Ruby is more
of a thing. Yeah. I've seen, unless I woke up
to it after watching the end of an NBA doubleheader
(31:10):
in postgame, if that was on instead of Charmed, I
might have seen something. Otherwise, I've never seen it. Yeah, no,
because now during the day, Supernatural has replaced Charmed as
that show that's on like, tbs and tnt all the
way through like yeah you either get friends okay or
supernatural now yeah i don't know i don't know yeah
100 she's gonna walk around the house going sam sam
because jensen ackles said i thought you were gonna start
(31:32):
once every episode again sam sam every episode sam sam
uh the penalty for the clippers came down to it
we talked about a lot throughout the biggest sports story
of the day The Kawhi Leonard penalty for circumventing the
salary cap, which is a story that was first unearthed
by Pablo Torre. Pablo Torre finds out. Yes, he finds out.
(31:56):
The Clippers are docked. Five first-round picks. Steve Ballmer is
suspended for a year. Most of the front office is
suspended for six months. And it's also a $ 30 million fine.
When this story broke today, I actually gasped when I said, wow,
(32:19):
because I thought, and I still think this is really
excessive for what we saw. Not that there didn't need
to be a penalty because, you know, circumventing the salary
cap's a thing, right? Five first-round picks. You have kneecapped
a franchise for a long time. Yeah, see, I thought
instead of picks, maybe you would have maybe chopped them
to where they can't work to the normal salary cap.
(32:42):
That they lose a percentage of their monies. And you
would have done something to Kawhi Leonard, who clearly was
on board with all of this. $ 700K, baby. I mean, look,
the money doesn't matter because the money that Steve Ballmer
is worth, the money that Kawhi Leonard is worth... You
hear the money, well, $ 30 million lot to Steve Ball. Okay,
Ballmer's worth $ 150 billion. It's still $ 30 million. You can
(33:03):
plant a lot of trees with $ 30 million. But for
the next year, you're rudderless. However, you're running a team
without your owner, without your front office for the next
six months. And you don't have draft picks, first-round picks
for five years. The Knicks don't have it, but they
got Mikkel Bridges, won a championship, so it worked out okay.
You don't have the assets. You have made... the Clippers
(33:27):
an unsafe place for free agents to go, for players
to say, that's a destination. That's what the NBA decided
to do to the Clippers. Not that they didn't need
a penalty, because they did. If you want us to
suspend Ballmer for six months and dock them a first
round pick or a couple of second rounds, okay. And
fine them $ 15, $ 20 million, okay. That's an acceptable penalty
(33:51):
for this, right? To show you we can't. But you
have absolutely just taken a team, and I don't know
if they can survive this the next 10 years. It's
the number two team in Los Angeles to begin with. Now,
free agents have no idea that... if they're going to
be able to put teams together, if it's a safe
place for us to go sign, for me to go play,
because they couldn't win. It was a tough enough place
(34:13):
before this happened. Now, who knows? They have no assets.
They have no draft picks to trade. Why am I
going to go play there? I don't know how they're
going to even be run for the next year. This
next year is going to set them back at least
two years. Because now you're talking about being suspended now,
going through free agency. Next year. So now you're set
(34:33):
back for two years for that, and then your draft
picks start coming in. You don't have one for five years.
Not that you're going to draft a guy that's going
to be great, but you don't have an asset to
trade to bring somebody in who's going to be very good.
This may have screwed the Clippers for the better part
of the next decade, and quite honestly... It's a little
except this is not fabric of the game. We're caught
(34:55):
cheating our way to win a title like the Astros.
This stuff like this should be reserved for that fabric
of the game kind of stuff. Well, I mean, if
you want to say that, then nothing should have happened.
They should have been given every key to the city
and everybody should have laughed. I mean, Carlos Beltran still
walked into the Hall of Fame. He did. They still
have a hunk of metal, and everything remains the same.
(35:16):
Trent Redden will serve in Lawrence Frank's. Trent Reznor is
going to serve?
Speaker 3 (35:21):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Wow. Well, the music will be really good. It's going
to have a hell of a soundtrack. It's going to
be very dark. Yeah. It's kind of twisted. It's going
to be really dark and twisted. Yeah. It's now industrial
night every night in Clippertown. Yeah, Trent Redden serves. But yeah,
it's not the fabric of the game. Look, you get
best the draft picks because those are rolls of the
(35:44):
dice anyway. And in theory, you're drafting towards the upper half. Fortunately,
you are allowed to keep your full salary cap. money's
at your disposal so you can at least work that
way but in terms of finding and packaging the chips
as we usually talk about when it comes to moving
(36:04):
draft picks yeah that does hamper them to it to
a bit yeah good luck You had enough tough time
being a destination with this. Forget it now. Forget it, man. Clippers, Joe.
Coming up next, a guy who deserves a lot of
credit is someone I never give credit to. That's next. Fox.
You too, Tyshirt.
Hosts And Creators
Jason Smith
Mike Harmon
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