Recruiting & Parity with Ari Wasserman of The Athletic

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Solid Verbal. Holl that for me. I'm
a man, I'm for I've heard so many players say, well,
I want to be happy. You want to be happy
for a day? Edith Steak is that woof woof? And
Dan and Tye welcome back to the Solid Verbal boys
and girls.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
My name's ty Hildebrand, joining me as always over there
in the Chicago burbs, Dan Rubinstein, sir, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm good? Just one burb, just one burb. I'm pretty good.
I'm down on sleep because that's how things operate when
you are a parent of a four week old. But
come on, I can't. Everybody does this that has a kid.
It's you get a lot of love time in. It's great,
a lot of cuddles and snuggles. Tie oh yeah, Solid
Verbal dot com your snuggle and coddle.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
HQ is our email address for ballers. Dot com is
where you can go to find all the goods on
the page. Don't forget to follow along using your podcasting
app of choice, using your social media platform of choice.
Dan and I are all over the place, two episodes
a week through this year off season. Probably as we

(01:13):
get closer into what July, Dan somewhere in that range.
That's when we'll flip it back over and go three
times a week to start to build excitement for the
twenty twenty one season.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
As for now, though, happy Spring.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I believe our first episode of the new spring season
here in twenty twenty one, Dan, you do anything exciting?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
On the first day of spring, No, but solid. Toddler
went to the quote unquote beach which people call Lake
sand Here. They caught at the beach and had a
fantastic time. Apparently I was I was here doing I
was here in the podcast minds TI. Yeah, but no,
I haven't. It's been pretty nice. It's been spending time

(01:54):
at some parks out the site. Does the little man
like sand loves Yeah, absolutely, adoors you shake out his
shoes after coming home and it's robust, the amount of
sand that's in there. Loves the beach, loves sandboxes. There's
a bunch of trucks at a park near us in
the sandbox toy trucks and can't get enough.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I feel like it goes either way with kids. I
don't speak with any authority on this, but feels like the.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Either love it or hate it. No, he's the soil king.
He likes all that stuff. Yeah, muck and mud and
sand and dirt and shovels and buckets, all of it
count them in.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
All right, Well, look, it's a pleasure to have everyone
back here listening to the show. We've got a great
and fun interview, fun interview just for you, Dan.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
With our good friend Ari Wasserman.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
We had him on during our National Championship live broadcast,
but we invited him back in. Ari covers a national
recruiting beat for the athletics, so we're going to talk
a little bit about that, but I think we're going
to zoom out and talk some big picture stuff as well.
I know he also wants to talk to you in
excruciating detail about.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
The pizza, agonizing detail about pizza. Here's the thing. If
you listen to the show, you understand us at a
certain point, and you know when things start to veer
away from college football, you're either like kind of in
and want to hear what we have to say, or
you're like, Okay, that was enough college football. That was enough. Tie,
That was enough Dan. I can't imagine there's ever enough tie,

(03:26):
but I understand there being enough, Dan, and you just
go about your merry way, thank you for the download,
thank you for following, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah,
he's also recently engaged. Yeah we have. He's long been
a digital food friend of mine. So very excited for
the show. What I want to do is I want
to talk recruiting, but not like, hey, who's got a
promising twenty twenty four quarterback? I mean, that's fine, that's

(03:47):
all good, but more like what I know, you're fascinated
with this Alabama class, and like what Alabama and the Juggernauts,
like Josie and the Pussycats, Alabama and the U or notts.
We spend a lot of time, we spill a lot
of audio inc during the season talking about like the
playoff and is it good? Is it bad? Is it good?

(04:07):
To have no parody? Like That's what I want to
get into from a recruiting perspective, if that makes sense,
Because he's it's national college football and recruiting. So I
feel like that that would be right in that center
of that Ari Wasserman ven diagram. Why don't we do
that again?

Speaker 2 (04:23):
You can find him at Ari Wasserman out on Twitter.
We'll bring him on the show. Here momentarily. We've again
got an episode coming up on Thursday, and as per usual,
please go out to forbowlers dot com check out all
the fun stuff that we are yes doing dan NCAA tournament.

(04:44):
We're recording this on a Monday, is well underway, going
through the final few games of the second round. Your
Oregon Ducks advancing though only playing one.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Game, advancing two rounds, playing one game tough to pull off, Ducks,
did it Ducks.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
One handily earlier today against your Iowahawk guys. Okay, my
iowah Hawk guys. Sure without further Ado joining us now.
We had him on I believe during the National Championship right.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Correct, Yes, the live stream, the extended live stream we did.
We had him on Ari Wasserman, senior writer for The Athletic.
He covers college football and recruiting the National Recruiting b
Welcome back, Gary, How you doing?

Speaker 3 (05:28):
You know this is actually the dream come true? Because
I told you guys before the National title live stream
that it was my dream to be on the solid
verbal and that doesn't count because this is the podcast podcast.
So this is the dream come true?

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Right? Wow? This is why is that if you don't
mind me asking. I'm not fishing for compliments here because
I don't know what a soliverbal compliment looks like other
than tie is very handsome. But like, why is this
a dream?

Speaker 3 (05:51):
You have such unique personalities, and like even like the
way we were interacting before I came on the show,
it's like, I wish you were recording yourself naming off
all the quarterback names, because.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
That's like Kayden, Jaden Tanner Caate. Yeah, it's a heavy
pioneer woman first name class of twenty twenty two quarterback class.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
And I think that everybody who listens to the podcast
that I do with the Athletic is simultaneously amused but
also frustrated with me. And I feel like if I
were on this show all the time, I would feel
more at home with people who think a little bit
more like me. So, like, I think you guys have
done a great job. I know firsthand how hard it
is to create a podcast and get people to spend

(06:33):
time listening to what you think, because like you, I
don't I don't know. I don't think that anything I
think really matters. It's just I'm happen to be paid
to do it.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
But Oh, we're same page. We know nothing we say matters.
That's why we do things like how to tell your
kids about an undefeated Iowa because we just like to
make each other giggle. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
Yeah, Well it's funny essentially, and I enjoy the voicemails.
I text you guys periodically. I think it's I think
it's a great show. And if we're going to I'm
sure this is going to go off the rails here
in a minute. So once we start getting into my brain,
if we start talking about pizza and engagements and all
the sorts of things that we might get into, then
I'll start feeling at home because I know less about
engagement than I do about football. But I know more

(07:14):
about pizza than I do about football, I think, but
nobody knows more about pizza than you do.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
So let's get writing. I'm ready to go. This is true.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
So I did want to harken back to that last
time we had you on you were in Mexico.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
I don't know if I don't know.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
If we ever made that abundantly clear to the captive
audience that we had. Yeah, but you were committed to
the cause and piped in from Mexico during the National Championship.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Well, like, the thing about it was that when I
first started in my new national position at the athletic
coincided directly with the shutdown of football and sports because
of Corona. So during that time, we had this vacation
plan for a long time, and nobody was traveling to
any of the games, so I thought this would be
a good time for me to go. And then it

(08:00):
turned out my girlfriend now fiance, has had booked a
flight for the day after the National title game when
I when I told her not to do that because
I was hoping to be home by then. But at
that point there was one game I wasn't going to
be traveling to it anyway, and I was watching it
with Spanish commentary, so you know, I wanted to be
a part of the discussion and the discourse. So the

(08:22):
idea of coming onto the show and talking about football
after spending five days in a foreign country where college
football doesn't really matter, it was just such a breath
of fresh air. So it wasn't intentional. I don't think
we're going to be going on any vacations during the
National Title game in the near future, but you know,
in a weird year.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
It just kind of worked out that way. Was tough
Barland any faster in Spanish? No? Okay, no, that's the
same word in English. I don't know. No, but a
suquest though, No, it wasn't. You know.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
I go back and I've thought about some of the
stuff that we were discussing before that game and then
and how it played out. And I must have looked
like a major idiot because I didn't see that coming.
But now that it happened, I should have seen it coming.
So I didn't see tough Borland covering the best player
maybe in college football in the past five years, one
on one, straight up. But I think that was more

(09:14):
of a Alabama design than it was the Ohio state's intention.
So if you want to talk about recruiting, we can
talk about how Alabama keeps doing this. I'd be more
than happy to do that. But wow, what a game
that was. I was hoping for a better experience, but
by halftime I was already checked out.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
So okay, let's get into recruiting.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Then.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
I'm glad you gave me a perfect segue.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Alabama, by all accounts, just signed the best class ever.
It does for anyone wondering when is this train going
to slow down? It does not appear as if that
is set to occur. I don't know when that happens.
We asked that question from time to time. When might
that happen? We still have no answer for it. Like
are we at a point now with college football recruiting

(09:55):
where other programs, to some extent are demoralized by the
fact that Bama is so damn good at it?

Speaker 1 (10:01):
You know, Alabama is its own monster.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
But I'm happy that we're on right now because I
was working on my mail bag right before you called,
and one of the questions was what is the solution
to college football's parody problem? And the answer to the
question is in the math. And I went and did
the math. Guess how many players in the top one
hundred nationally, So the most elite high school football prospects

(10:24):
went to one of six schools out.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Of the top one hundred.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
And I think you can guess what the six schools are,
but I'll tell you after.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I mean, if I had to guess the sixth schools,
it's Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, what A and M
and Oregon.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
I don't remember what Oklahoma and LSA Final two A
and M and Oregon also did really well, but they
had a lot of players in between one hundred and
one fifty, which is great, gotcha, but the most elite
elite players do you want to guess the answer seventy
I was gonna say sixty six players. Okay, it's fifty
eight fifty nine, so that's a little bit lower than

(11:01):
what you thought. But sixty percent of the most elite
players in the country going to six schools is directly
the problem. And I think thirteen or fourteen of them
went Tobama and twelve went to Ohio State. Those numbers
are made up because seventy six percent of stats are
made up offhand. But like it's like in that general area.
And the point of that is is that I don't

(11:23):
know if demoralize is the right word, because I just
think you can accept it. I think what's happening is
that you accept the fact that Alabama can come into
your territories and take your guys and like that acceptance,
I think is the hardest thing, because the biggest issue
with the parody in college football is the disbursement of talent,
and when it should be regional, it has now been
national and I think Alabama is single handedly ruining the

(11:47):
Big twelve and the Florida schools all at once. Like
if you go look and see like what Alabama's done
in Texas and what they've done in Florida, it's like
the years of the Florida State, Florida Miami dynasties that
where we all have grown up loving and watching are
dead because the top players in the state of Florida
are going to Alabama, and then of course the few
of them are going to Clemson and a few of

(12:07):
them are going to Ohio State. And as this continues,
you have certain territories that are usual breeding grounds or feeding.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Grounds not breeding I don't know what I'm saying, but okay,
you get it.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
And it's like the entire state of California is propped
up to produce the entire PAC twelve. So when you
want to talk about why is the PAC twelve not
as good as it used to be, it's because twelve
of the top twenty five players in California are going
to Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia, Texas, and Oklahoma or wherever
they're going, and they're not going to the schools that
they used to go to. So you know, Alabama has

(12:41):
done it the best, but there are a few other
teams too that are like right behind them, like Ohio
State's class is very similar to Alabama's. And Georgia has
won the recruiting crown two out of the last four
or five years after Alabama one of eight years in
a row. So, you know, I think that I don't
know what the thing that has to happen to break
that trend, Like what if pennsyl State like a mission

(13:02):
a world where Penn State kept all the best players
in Pennsylvania Washington the Seattle area had three top ten
players nationally in Seattle, only ones going to Washington.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
USC did what the.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
You know, there's just like an Arizona State kept the
best players in Phoenix, and not only would the mega
classes that are forming be weaker, but the classes that
would prevent those from happening would be better. And then
what would you have? More fun and more mystery when
it came to who makes the college football playoffs. So
in this weird world of recruiting, the biggest problem, the

(13:35):
most interesting thing is that these kids go to the
same camps during normal years. They go to the opening,
they go to the under armoured camps, they text, they're
own group threads, and like even this past year, you
would think conventional wisdom was, with this pandemic, kids might
want to stay home, but what actually happened was they
can't go anywhere, so geography didn't matter because it was
all over zoom, and then they just ended up going

(13:56):
to the places that produced the most NFL picks. So
all the stuff is just so hard to break down.
I don't even know where to begin, Like, how do
you solve the parity problem? You could just say keep
it's interesting, but like, what's what's step one? So okay,
So the parity problem quote unquote problem is it almost
feels like it's reshuffling what college football has always been.

(14:17):
It's always been a sport dominated by a select few.
The few change over the years, but it's it's never
been a sport where in any given year there are
seventeen legit national title threats. There's never been seventeen teams
built to beat anybody. And so I think what we
have now is, as the sports become more nationalized, as

(14:38):
the Internet has become such a force, social media and
YouTube and everything like that, kids can set kids can
watch Alabama's offense that live where I think where's Najie
Harris is from, Like the Central Valley of California. Kids
you know in Washington can watch Ohio State's offense every week.
And so schools are getting richer monetarily. But now it's

(15:00):
almost what we see in the NBA too, right with
the school the teams on the coasts amassing all of
the talent because you have a certain degree of freedom
of decision making that you didn't necessarily have in years past.
So it's a problem in that you would like things
to be more balanced, but has that ever been the case?

(15:20):
And like USC is this dominant force in the early
two thousands, and then the SEC jumps up because they're
spending money, they have all these great coaches. I just
I wonder what college football with parody looks like and
does it make it better that programs don't become recognizably elite,
blue chip et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I don't know. I don't think it's a solvable thing.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Well, the problem is that the playoff is supposed to
encourage parody, and so when people think playoff, they think
small NCAA tournament, which is known for what's going on
right now. So when the same four teams are playing
in the playoff every year, it diminishes the bulls and
it takes things like the Rose Bowl and makes it
less beautiful.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
And I think what's.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Happening now is that you have a playoff system for
five to eight programs and then everybody else is like,
I'm gonna go play in my meaningless bowl game.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
That doesn't matter like it used to.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
And you know right now too, My biggest thing is
if you were the head coach, the top rising head coach,
and you get hired at UCLA or you get hired
at Arizona State or one of these places that's in
a fertile territory that has a lot of players, has
a great campus, awesome atmosphere, cool stadium, cool uniforms, all

(16:33):
the things that used to matter the most. Like let's
just use UCLA as an example. And I know Chip
Kelly recruits his own players the way he wants to
recruit them, you know, but UCLA is located centrally to
a lot of really good football players. Building a team
to go from a top twenty program to a top

(16:53):
five program into that cool club of those program, What
is step one? The answer is always been keep your
players home. But as we all know, as much as
we'd like to look back at college fondly and hope
that the players that are going to our schools love
our universities and want to bleed the colors of our
team the way that we do, they want to go

(17:13):
to the league. So what you have is a self
fulfilling prophecy. You have teams that are getting the best
players out of high school, and then these teams are
putting out more players into the NFL because these players
are better to begin with, and then those players in
the future think that they're going to should go there because.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
They're going to the NFL more frequently.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
So in a world where everybody has access to everyone
and all that information is out there in a simple
Google search, all you see right now are the NFL
draft numbers from the past ten years. That's the only
thing you have to google, and they correlate directly with
the recruiting rankings. And how do you break through that?
And like, building a program in college football has got

(17:55):
to be the most frustrating, most impossible thing to do
in the world. And like you said, it's always been
the sport's always been dominated by a select few teams,
but that those teams have always cycled through, Like it's
been five six years here for this team, five or
six years for that team. You know, Notre Dame had
its time, Texas had its time, Oklahoma had its time.
But it's like Alabama is doing this in the most

(18:17):
cutthroat time for recruiting, and it's just like, is the
answer just wait for Nick Saban to no longer coach?
Or is there something that can proactively be done from
a new coach at a place that isn't a traditional
NFL factory to make that team a national title contender?

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Ty, what's your UCLA answer? My UCLA answer to what?

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah. So if you're a UCLA and you're like, Okay,
how I hire who is the upcoming as coach? If
Chip Kelly moves on like Matt Campbell, somebody that like
genuinely is like this guy is a young up and
comer that's very promising, that has won big with lesser talent,
to imagine what he could do with more talent? What
is I mean? UCLA is unique because it's in Los

(18:57):
Angeles in the second biggest city in the country, Like,
what does any team that is not a traditional power
due to build enough cachet, enough juice to say, Oh,
all of our local guys want to hang around here
and we're going to pull in top kids from Arizona, Colorado,
Texas whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Let me give you a perhaps crazy answer, because there are.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Very few examples of that, like that kind of success
at that kind of place.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
This is actually going to be my question to Ari, Yeah,
what if the answer is to develop a crazy ass
marketing department? And I say that because we've got nil
on the horizon, we've got a new transfer rule on
the horizon. When I interviewed Andy Staples a few weeks back,

(19:46):
no one's really sure what the effect of that's gonna be.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
But it is an outside.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Variable that we haven't really had to account for much,
you know, if at all, thus far.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
But do you do you think selling proby on Instagram
is enough to make up for Probably not an NFL
first round contract now, probably not, but it is it is.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
An external factor that we should at least consider. If
you've got a program. I think the example end to
use was LSU that is very proactive about trying to
go out and build a marketing department for not only
itself but for its players to help make them more
marketable to people who might want to spend some sponsorship
dollars on them. That's an interesting proposition to make your program,

(20:30):
you know, at least a little bit more appealing when
you have to go up against a team like even
a USC in the case of UCLA, some of the
more traditional powers. I don't know how else you compete
outside of some of these things that you know, we
didn't see coming and no one could really account for.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
There's two ways of looking at nil, and I don't
think we'll really know exactly what that's going to be
until it happens, but I think once there's one way
to look at it, which is, once the door gets
cracked open a little bit, you're going to bust through
it and it's going to get out of hand pretty crazily.
The other way to look at it, which is the
way I know Andy looks at it, is people are
going to make money. They might make fifty grand, they
might make one hundred grand, which is a lot of money.

(21:08):
You know, the most marketable players might make one hundred
thousand dollars through online sponsorships and Instagram posts and sponsored
autograph sessions and all the things that they might be
able to do now. But the thing that I think
people are going to be privy to is that you
can do that anywhere, and every college campus is passionate
about the players that are on their team.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
And two, the number one goal.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
For these people, these recruits, no matter where they're from
or what they're rated, is to gain generational.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Wealth through being a professional.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
And if players who are legitimately NFL prospects, and you
know those players, you can see them in their high
school tapes, you know the top one hundred players, you
know you are pretty good bets. It's a very shortsighted
business decision to pick a school based on how many
Instagram followers you can accumulate, because even if you take

(22:01):
your eye off the ball for a minute and focus
on your marketability as a student athlete, your real money
is going to be in your draft stock and your
second contract in your NFL and being developed into it.
So you know, I've had fantasies of is Rutgers going
to turn into a power now because they can hang
a banner of their best player in Manhattan is like

(22:23):
Northwestern all of a sudden going to be marketable because
they're in Chicago. Is UCLA being in Hollywood or being
near Hollywood and the vicinity of Hollywood or usc going
to be different because they're in Los Angeles. This is
where everybody would want to live if they had the
money to do it. Maybe not La but you know,
Manhattan Beach, Laguna Beach. Sure, Hollywood's kind of dump.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
But the answer to the question is if I had
had a prospect who for a son that was being recruited,
I would always continually emphasize the chance to to get
a great education, which matters believe it or not to
some people, and to put yourself a position to wait
three more years to get the generational wealth. And it's like,

(23:05):
you might have marketability at Northwestern, maybe you might be
more visibly nationally because of the city that they're in.
But if you're a five star quarterback in Alabama's recruiting you,
Tuscaloosa and Chicago are very different places. But where are
you going to go? Are you going to go to
the place that might be able to get you a
few fifty thousand dollars checks more? And again that's a
lot of money. I would take fifty thousand, but when

(23:27):
compared to the potential of the long term view of
your income possibilities, it's a dropping the bucket. So you know,
how you break through this. I think it's possible they
might be more dispersed. Maybe it'll be forty or fifty
instead of fifty nine or sixty. But I still don't
see a world where Nick Saban and Dabo Sweeney and

(23:49):
the big dogs of producing NFL talent all of a
sudden lose the ability to get players, because all of
a sudden, Instagram can become a monetary thing for these guys.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, and I think best case scenario for the side
of parody would obviously be a couple kids a year
pick maybe the short term hit, the short term check
over the longer term marketability, profitability, draft stock, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
And you also can make the argument too that if
you're really good and you go anywhere, then it doesn't matter, right, right,
And that's the point I made about the self fulfilling prophecies,
So like, I want to make sure I'm consistent on that.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, if Trevor Lawrence went to Indiana, he would be
a top five pack. Yeah, it would be clear his day. Yeah, No,
you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
He went to Indiana, maybe he wouldn't be maybe he'd
be a first rounder, but maybe Justin Fields would be
the number one player in the draft right now because
they're playing in the playoff and winning Heisman's and doing
those things. Like if Trevor Lawrence went to Indiana and
got his head beat in for four years, I'm not
saying he wouldn't be a generational talent, but optics is
such a huge part of this whole thing too, guys,
and like looking and looking good on January first in

(24:55):
a playoff game is really part of the deal as well.
Especially at a quarterback position, we're leadership and wins and
accountability and all those things come into play. So, you know,
it's such a tough question. I get it asked all
the time. What is nil going to do to college football?
It's like, in a world are there going to be?
Because I did an anonymous coaching survey where or assistant
recruiting assistant survey in December around signing Day, where I

(25:17):
called twenty or twenty five recruiting coordinators and just talk
to them on the phone. And asked them a bunch
of questions, And I asked, do you see cheating in
college football? And all of them said yes, some said
very little stuff like too many calls or the bumpins
and all that stuff. And I've heard people say that
kids have been offered two hundred and fifty grand to go,
And it's like, are we going to be living in

(25:38):
a world where every player in the top thirty five
of the two four to seven composite rankings can make
a quarter of a million dollars to go to school somewhere?
And like, are the donors going to be able to
do that? Like Les Wexner, who's the donor at Ohio State,
who's like worth billions of dollars, is going to start
backing up the Branks truck every time Ohio State's recruiting
a kid, Or are businessmen going to continue to be
smart and rich by not wasting their money like that?

(26:00):
So it's like, we don't really know the extent of
where it's going to be, but if we land on
the rational part of that, which is it's probably going
to be pretty self contained. Some kids might make more
than others, but for the most part, they're just going
to be making normal livable wages for adults, and the
players who are less marketable might be making five thousand

(26:21):
and at that point, I don't know that it changes
everything at all. But if we start talking about two
hundred and fifty grand, then all of a sudden, I
think that changes a little bit. So it'll be very
interesting to see, like Oklahoma State and all that tea
boon money, Like, is Oklahoma State going to be like
one of the top five programs in America now because
they have oil money to throw around? Like, but all
these schools are all wet rich, like Texas A and

(26:44):
M Texas. I mean, how do you decipher? I mean,
Vanderbilt has a boatload of money. It's just a matter
of how it's going to be employed. And I don't
think we really know how it's going to be until
it actually happens.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
The other element of all of this, and this is
sort of in line with your self fulfilling prophecy, is
there's a likelectricity to the major programs. If you go
to a game in Tuscaloosa, if you go to a
game in State College, if you go to a game
in Columbus, if you go to a game in Baton Rouge,
if you go game in Gainesville, whatever these major schools
there is there are tens of thousands of people tailgating

(27:15):
eleven hours before kickoff. That's not the case in Pasadena.
That's not the case in a lot of Pac twelve schools,
a lot of Big ten school Like, there's a certain
amount of electricity where your UCLA question is basically like,
it's electricity. That's what Pete Carroll was able to generate.
Now that's lightning in a bottle. Pete Carroll's a star
NFL coach who happened to coach in college for a while,

(27:35):
and he has a charming personality, and there were celebrities there.
UCLA has to or any school like this you mentioned
ASU but Texas Tech. There has to be the next
random Khalil Tait accident there. There has to be something
that draws attention and draws butts into the stands, because
any random UCLA game at the rose Ball is not
going to draw that. And so I would also look

(27:58):
scatter or search college football to see who are the
assistants that are underappreciated in terms of churning out NFL talent.
Who is like The next was that Craig Kuligowski was
at Missou with an Alabama Miami like then just kept
developing NFL defensive lineman. Who is that guy that is?
That is a way to think where it's like, Okay,
how am I going to turn these three and four

(28:18):
stars into top three round picks? And what does that beget?
UCLA is a tough It's just a tough. It's an
academic school. It's in a pro sports town. Like You're
just not going to be able to change certain elements
of college towns. You're not gonna be able to make
Minneapolis any warmer and closer to what the weather of
Tuscaloosa or Austin. So I think a lot of it
is luck. I think a lot of it is strategy.

(28:38):
And when you do strike lightning in a bottle, whatever
that is, you have to immediately build on it. You
have to immediately say you can be the next like
UCLA needs to find Michael Vick, right, Like Blacksburg wasn't
a hot spot, but what Michael Vick was able to
do was turn Virginia Tech into a major program. And

(28:59):
it was just it was good coaching and good program
building that that that everything in Blacksburg came together after
they made a national championship game to sustain that success.
Short of that, I mean, Virginia Tech was never a sexy, elite,
blue chip school, but they built on that success. And
anything short of that, I don't know what you can do.
You can't change geography, you can't change the culture in

(29:21):
your region. You can't change much.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
I think that who do you think is the most
exciting college football player in the last ten years to watch?

Speaker 1 (29:30):
That's ten years, so post Cam Newton, so something some
Heisman winning quarterback. I guess Johnny Manziel, Kyler Baker. I'm
trying to think.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
I think that it's a very clear answer in my opinion,
and I don't think exactly what. Yeah, but I think
it's Lamar Jackson, sure, and Louisville is what it is.
And it's just like the thing that's so interesting to
me is that the haves and have nots of this
sport are so intimately related to the geography. It's like

(30:06):
Oregon State is one of the worst programs in college
football because they are located in the middle of nowhere
and can't recruit the way they need to recruit to
get there now. There are certain transcendent schools that, like
Oregon conquered the Nike uniforms, cool offense thing and they
did what they need. It's electricity, Yeah, electricity. It's a
really great way to put it. But it's funny when

(30:26):
you look at the six schools that got all those players,
none of them are really in a place like La
or a place. The only one is Georgia, which is
close to Atlanta for high school talent. But Tuscaloosa, I mean,
Alabama's got their players, but it's nothing like Texas or Florida.
You look at Clemson South Carolina, I mean, is that Clemson.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Or is that Dabo?

Speaker 3 (30:47):
It's probably dabboh Columbus, Ohio is a nice city. I
lived there for ten years, but it's not a hotbed
of elite level talent. There are great players that come
in and out of Ohio every year, but a lot
of the blue blood programs that are in this position
right now aren't like sitting on top of five or
seven top one hundred players every single year.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
And a lot of these schools have.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Unique recruiting advantages, like Ohio State and LSU are the
only Power five schools in a very talent rich state,
and those kids that grow up in those states want
to play at those schools. So you know, there are
certain recruiting advantages for these programs. But the hardest thing
to do is to go from, like I said, the
fifteenth best team or the top twenty team into a

(31:29):
top five situation. I think you can go from fifty
to fifteen easier than you can go from.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Seven to four.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
And I don't know what the answer is, and it's
just you do You just hope you find the light
I would just argue that you could find the lightning
in the bottle coach like as Dabo, I think Dabo
is a genius. Like there's nobody who's been able to
take a solid program and turn it into one of
the perennial powerhouses the way that he has, right, and

(31:55):
there's certain levels of genius like Pat Fitzgerald I think
is a coaching genius for what he's been able to
do at Northwestern. But like even those lightning and a
bottle type players like Michael Vick and Lamar Jackson and
some of the guys who won the Heisman these schools,
after they have the excitement and the really good years
that result of having these talents kind of dip back
into what they were before as time goes on. So

(32:17):
how do you make UCLA in the marketing department? When
I covered Ohio State for ten years, so at the
end of the ten or at the end of the
seventh year, and before I left the Cleveland Plain Dealer
to go to the Athletic, I wrote a story about
the expansion of their recruiting department. And I'm sure you
guys are aware of this, but they've got a ten
person recruiting staff that they're paying over a million dollars
a year to have. That's marketing, that's talent evaluation, that's

(32:39):
film breakdown, that's communication, that's visits. That is insane. And like,
some schools have different budgets for recruiting, so I think
you have to up the recruiting budget at some of
these places. But if you're not near talent, then you're
not near talent. And if you don't have the tradition,
you can't build the tradition. So how do you make
a Clemson into a Clemson? Like only one person has
been able to do that in the entire sport. How

(33:02):
many hot shot young coaches have there been over the years.
Tom Herman was one. Now he doesn't have a job.
Like it's over and over and over again. You see
these guys come and fail, and it's just like what
is in the sauce because Dabo and Nick Saban is
an alien of his own regard. But urban Meyer before
he left, there's only like five or six of these

(33:22):
guys that.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Can actually do it.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
And the thing that I think too, and forgive me
if I'm rambling, but being all college football coach is
two jobs. It's being a good coach roster development and
putting players in a position to do the best that
they can from a coaching standpoint, and then there's recruiting.
And the problem is is that you don't have a
lot of coaches who are very elite at both, and
that's another challenge. But I just don't know exactly where

(33:48):
to begin. And sometimes I feel bad because the sport
would be more fun if you went into a year
where it's like, there's twenty seven teams that could win
a national title this year.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
But the answer to that question is actually five. Ryan Day.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Ryan Day takes over for urban Meyer the early part
of his tenure as a head coach has been incredible.
He's had justin fields, but now Ohio State moves on
beyond fields as he goes pro One of the things
that Dan and I have talked about from time to
time in the past is taking over for a legend
very difficult spot to be in. Ryan Day thus far

(34:23):
has done really well. It doesn't seem as if there
are any signs of that slowing down.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
But it is Ryan Day.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Does he belong in that same elite class of coaches
or is it too soon to say at this point.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Everything I learned about recruiting and all the things that
I spew off from you on the show and on
our shows, I learned from Urban Meyer. I mean, I
sat in that guy's press conferences and was around him
every day for seven years, and to me, despite his faults,
I think he's the most brilliant program builder that there is.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
And I think even.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Towards the last three or four years of his tenure
at Ohio State, you can make the argument that he
wasn't as good of an AWE on the field, game
game coach or developmental coach, because I think Ohio State
and the same time, you could say is the most
underachieving program in college football for what they have on
their roster. So when you say what do you do
with Ryan Day, at a certain point, it has to

(35:14):
become Ryan Day's program. And so far he's lost two games,
He's been to the playoff twice, he beat Clemson once,
he went to the national championship game.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
But I think he would.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
You know, when you say it's really hard to take
over for a coach that's a legend, sometimes it's super
advantageous because urban Meyer handed the man the playbook that
he built. And it's like, would Ryan Day's results be
what they are right now if he took over for
tressel No, And like, that's the truth. He took over

(35:44):
for a guy that made Ohio State cool and then
he's been really great at maintaining its coolness. And if
you talk to Ryan face to face, he's a great guy.
I could see why kids would want to play for him.
But he's already driving the Ferrari that somebody else built.
So would I put him in that category? Absolutely. I
think he's an elite coach and he's done a really
good job of putting his teams in a position to

(36:06):
win a national championship and their recruiting, believe it or not,
has actually been better during his tenure than they were
when Urban left. But I think that part of the
brilliance of being a college coach is the build and
I think that's what urban Meyer liked doing the most,
which is why he had short tenures at the places
that he did well part of the reason. And if
you don't build it, then I think there is a

(36:28):
certain element that's missing for me, which is the same
reason why as much as I love Lincoln Riley and
watching his offense is beautiful, he didn't build it. Maybe
he built it a little bit more than what it was,
but Dabo built that. I mean, he built that with
his hands, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
And to me, when you.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Start talking about the most elite coaches in college football,
I start with who built something and maintained it, and
then the second tier is who's done a really good
job of driving somebody else's car.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Now. If Ohio State is.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Still really really good in eight years, and I don't
see that they wouldn't be with the way that they're
recruiting right now, then that's a different discussion.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
But I don't know.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
I think you need more than two years before you
start really trying to put Ryan Day in that same
breath as Dabbo, a coach that he just beat.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
But I think it just takes time. Are there any
promising young mechanics or contractors anything like that to you
in terms of how construction has begun in earnest and
you know, two, three, four, our years whatever into their tie.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah, And I think that's that's how I would begin
with a coaching higher. You know, I would look and
I would put it in those terms. And I hate
to be cliche, I really do, but I think Matt
Campbell is the answer to that question. And I don't
know if people are like, well, crap, why is he
like the golden child of the sport. It's like, guys,

(37:48):
I think that the two four seven composite talent rankings
are basically my bible.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
And I look at them and I compare them. Yeah,
Iowa State.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Was like in the sixties last year and they almost
won the Big Twelve, And like, to me, when you
build a program, Iowa State is a solid program. They
haven't won their conference and they can't beat well, they
can be, but they haven't beaten Oklahoma or Texas when
it comes to winning the conference. They've beaten both of
those teams on the field, but they haven't won.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
The conference yet.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
But at a certain point, the hardest thing with being
a college coach, I think is identifying a plan, executing
that plan, and then proving that that plan works. And
I think that Iowa State has done that and I
don't know that it can be duplicated. And no other
coaching staff in America has evaluated talent at the high

(38:41):
school level better than Iowa State has. And they take
these under the radar players and they turn them into
really good football players. They found Brock Purty. You know,
they've got these guys on this roster that can make
them competitive with Oklahoma, and like that's not supposed to happen.
And you know Pat Fitzgerald has done that too, But
Pat Fitzgerald issically born on northwesterns football field, So to me,

(39:04):
I would go get a guy who took a place
that doesn't have advantageous geography. Has proven that he can
evaluate talent at an elite level and then develop that
talent into a team that has a lot of chemistry.
And that's how you build a program. And then when
you go and take it to where Iowa State is
now you recruit incrementally better, and as you recruit incrementally better,
you still have that evaluation skill and then you build something.

(39:25):
But the problem with architects or mechanics wherever we put
it is that once they get to a place like
at Iowa State, where they they do what they're doing,
they usually get plucked by Michigan or Oklahoma or one
of these teams, and then those teams have outrageous expectations
and don't have the patience to let them build the
car and then fire them before the car is done,

(39:46):
and then the next mechanic comes in and builds a
different car.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
So I think that's part of the problem.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
At like Tennessee, for instance, you might find the perfect coach,
but they don't give them time because they think they
should be Alabama and year three and that's.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Not the way it works.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
And like Dabbo, how many years of debo did he
have seven before he started winning like at a high level.
And it's like in the modern day of college football,
they just don't get the opportunity to do that. And
it's about incremental change, incremental improvement over time, and it's
not something that can happen in three years and until
college football programs have the patience to endure what can
sometimes be painful for five, six, seven years to watch

(40:19):
that process play out. You keep changing the cook in
the kitchen, and then it keeps starting over from day one.
And that's why you see these laws that last ten,
fifteen to twenty years.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
This has been a very logical approach to building a program,
Dan right, If you want any kind of continuity, have
some patience. Leave the guy in there who is doing
a good enough job for the time being, and see
what he can do.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
If you want to.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Get better players, up your recruiting budget, I mean a
lot of it's straightforward, right, but it's.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Then don't spend all that buyout money. Instead of buying
out a coach that's not very good for thirty million
dollars in paying him not to coach, use that investment
to bolster your recruiting staff and bolster your facilities and
do things for your program in order to put itself
in a position to do that. And over time, if
you see improvements, you might take a step back, or
you might lose more games than you want to, but

(41:13):
you can see which teams are building something, and I
don't know if Iowa State will ever be a team
that can win the Big Twelve or win a national championship.
But if you take him, Iowa State could have been
one of the worst jobs in the Big Twelve. And
it's not because of what Matt Campbell's done. And if
you've shown an illustrated that you have an ability to
build a program, that's the number one bullet point on
anybody's resume. It's not even about wins and losses and

(41:34):
how much can you achieve with what you have as
resource and then extrapolating it based on what more resources
you'll get at your next stop, and in giving that
person time to.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Revel in it, you know, it's Pat Fitzgerald to a t.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
It's all it is.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
If you go look at all the schools that are
they have nots that have out punched their weight class
a lot of the I think probably eight out of
ten times, you'll find a coach that you know has
been there for a long time, has a solid pl
and has continued to follow.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Through on that plan.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
I mean, if people think that you can like Nick
Saban is a robot genius sent from college football heaven
to rule the sport. There aren't a lot of those
guys out there, so you need to be patient and
if the goal a lot of I mean because too,
it's like every Power five conference, maybe outside of the
Pac twelve right now, has an unbeatable giant at the
end of the road. So it's like, if you're in

(42:25):
the Big Ten and you want to win the Big Ten,
you got to beat Ohio State. If you're in the ACC,
you got to beat Clemson. And it's like, look at
Mac Brown, for instance, this guy has kept North Carolina
kids home immediately, and it's like, I know he's getting
up there in age, but North Carolina still has a
Clemson ceiling, So like, no matter what he does, he's
still going to have to beat Clemson. And in the SEC,

(42:46):
you've got Georgia and Alabama and you got LSU. I mean,
there's three or four of them. So a lot of
the times we're using these architects or these mechanics for
building programs, but they keep running into the giant. And
I don't think it's rational to expect them to beat
the giant. I think it's rational to expect that they
illustrated they're able to build something so that when they
become a coach at one of those giants, they can

(43:06):
continue that success.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
I mean it's also the factor of I mean you've
mentioned basically all these things. What was the kill bill,
like five point pressure, assassin whatever thing at the end
of like, you need everything to click right. You need
the right coach, you need the right support, you need
the right money, you need the right geography, and you
need luck. You need your starting left tackle not to
break his tibbi right. You need to build depth, you

(43:31):
need buy in from boosters, you need the patient. Like
the thing that I'll never be able to sort of
overstate to me is every year Nick Saban's replacing his
entire staff. Every year. Nick Saban has Alabama Boosters in
a line. When he says jump, they say how high?
Because he is in charge rather than vice versa, which

(43:53):
we see at all sorts of powers across the sport.
And so to make these I mean, you talk about Dabbo,
but that doesn't come from a tradition power. He built
that in the modern way. But you go to a
place like Texas, it just seems impossible, It just seems
impossible to get that five what is it called. It's
called the pressure point. That's what is the five point

(44:13):
pressure point? Thing like the degree and the barrier to
entry into the playoff right now requires so many things
firing at once that I almost almost feel like we
should be reframing the appeal of the sport. I mean,
I've been pushing that on the show for a long time,
that the appeal of the sport isn't the top of
the sport. It's the totality, and it's the experience, and

(44:34):
it's the entertainment of the sport. But that's hard to
say because people watch the sport to see their team
win games. So it's easy for me to say because
I host a national show. But unless the mainstream sort
of broad fans become interested in Iowa, Wisconsin, become interested
in Florida, Tennessee, become interested in Texas A and m LSU,

(44:58):
even if there's no national championship on the line, it's
I think it's going to be easier and easier for
people to just kind of check out and opt out
of college football unless we can reframe it in some
sort of like you know, the NFL is fantasy and gambling,
and the NBA has free agency and the draft, like
there's all these appeals to other sports that college football

(45:18):
is just never going to have. If you want to
get into recruiting, you have to be on message boards,
like if you want that experience, you have to be deeply,
deeply into it and listen to the solid verbal and
listen to Ari Wasserman's podcast and read his call like
there's a barrier to entry that's legitimately pretty high to
me as a fan.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Right, And then when you also think about how much,
like I know, it's like hard to think, but good
teams lose the bad ones all the time. You're constantly
walking a tight rope. So even when you build it
the right way, I mean, you're one call or one
play away sometimes from the entire season being blown. Because
the beauty of college football is that you can lose
and it can ruin.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Everything, generally to Kansas State, Yeah, exactly, that's how it works,
or Purdue, you know, And it happens all the time.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
And I don't really know because it's such a physical sport.
I don't sometimes when you see some of these upsets
of thirty point underdogs, I still don't know how it's
even physically possible.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
But it happens all the time, and it is. And
the wild card is getting nineteen year olds to care cohesively.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Yeah yeah, and noting too that, like recruiting and trends,
is the popularity of all that I think is increasing,
you know, And I don't know, And there certainly is
gambling in college football too, and recruiting is a huge
resource and how to view these games, but I don't know.

(46:40):
It takes a lot of energy to follow a class
because unlike NFL free agency, which is the span of
a few weeks, the entire talent accumulation phase of college
football is two four, seven, three, six, five. And now
you're adding the transfer portal into it, and you're adding
you know, potential eligibility waiver in lawsuits for immediate eligibia.

(47:01):
There's all sorts of crazy stuff on, like how do
you get a player in college football? Can happen in
like ten different ways, juco transfers right out of high school,
grad transfers instant. I mean, it's insane.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Australia, Yeah, yeah, Australia exactly. See, this is why I
like you.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
You're funny and like watching. By the time you get
to eighty five, it is a world win of three
hundred and sixty five days of craziness to get to
that eighty five. And then even when you get to
that eighty five, players leave and transfer and it's just insane.
But the thing that I love about college football is
that despite the fact that there are only a few
teams that can win a national championship, the passion across

(47:38):
the board for people and their teams ever is relentless.
It's unwavery it's wonderful. And if you go look at
a one of the teams that we think is one
of the worst fifteen jobs in the Power five, that
message board is popping. There's one in every place. And
the problem is is I just don't know. I just
sometimes wonder too. And I went to Arizona and I

(47:59):
don't I don't care about Arizona football at all, and
cover up. Yeah, I covered it when I was working
at the student newspaper. But sometimes I thought to myself,
what's the point of being an Arizona football fan?

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Like, what is the point? Is the point to win the.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Las Vegas bul Like is that what we're spending all
this time and money, energy, thought process, message board payments,
all the things that you need to be a passionate
Arizona football fan for what reason to win seven games?
It's like that to me is awful, like why would
I want to do that? But at the same time,
pride in the school and pride in the ability to
potentially improve what you are and hope for improvement over

(48:37):
time is what keeps people going. And the only way
to improve over time isn't whether or not you win
games on the field. It's whether or not you can
win recruiting battles. And to me, the most intriguing and
most interesting things that happen in the sport don't happen.
I mean, obviously, Saturdays are amazing and that's the reason
I wake.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Up in the morning.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
But there are battles happening between Washington USC in Michigan
right now and you can follow them, and those are
the things that are determining whether or not your team
has a chance. And to me, I think that's kind
of fun. Because during the NFL offseason, you have free agency, you've.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Got the NFL Draft. But people are insane about the
NFL draft.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Why Because the players on the team impact whether or
not your team has a chance to win the Super Bowl.
It's the same thing with It's the same thing with recruiting,
except it's going on constantly. It's like I would say,
crypto recruiting is the cryptocurrency of the stock market. It
doesn't stock.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Game stop is okay to answer your question because I've
been to a game? Why be an Arizona football fan?
If you're a college kid at Arizona, you can go
to a gathering with a ton of attractive humans entering
alcohol and then meet other attractive humans, and occasionally you'll
beat a ranked UCLA and rush the field, or a

(49:51):
ranked organ and rush the field. And even though it's
known as a basketball school, there's also not a ton
to do in Tucson. Yeah, football games are fun. That's
we lost that, and we talked about that this past year,
Like I think Iowa State, Oklahoma had like a healthy
amount of crowd in Jack Trice Stadium, and it felt

(50:12):
very strange, even though it was the first season we
haven't had that, Like a game in the desert. Even
if Arizona's seven to five, eight and four, there's you
could have lost the last game by twenty points. And
so like, wow, look Willie Twatama's hitting. We've got Gronk,
like there's always that that hope element, which is the
selling point of college football and college football recruiting and
Next Year and Phil Steel's magazine whatever. But as long

(50:35):
as we talk about the sport not exclusively through the
lens of the playoff, I think there's always going to
be appeal.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yeah, And I don't know if like the expansion of
the playoff is the answer to that question or if
it's going to make it worse, because if you expand
the playoff and.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Then you still never get in, that makes it worse. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
But like I was talking about, just being a fan
that wants to listen to this podcast and and really
consume the sports so that you can view it through
an Arizona lens.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
So listen.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
I've been to Arizona football games in the Zona Zoo section,
some of the best nights of my life. But if
you look on the other side of the stadium, there's
a bunch of older people who don't go to school there,
who invest their money in their time and their thoughts
and their message boards and go easy cats and all
the things that used to be popular into like what
is fueling your love and hunger to consume things when

(51:25):
Arizona's class might have been the first Power five class
in the history of recruiting rankings to not sign at
least one Power five class, didn't sign one top one
thousand player, and it's like when that doesn't happen, then
like what are we doing?

Speaker 1 (51:37):
You know?

Speaker 3 (51:38):
So you know, I guess the thing is, well, fire
a coach and try again, and then you hope the
next coach is the right guy. And the one thing
that's for certain about college football is there was a
never ending supply of hope.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
You know, and that's that's what's fun.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
But at a certain time too, it's like when you're
an Arizona fan and I was there during the Willie
Tuweetama lived in my hall my freshman year, and it's
like I remember a lot of things about that, but
when when they were kicking people's butts and he was
throwing the ball over the field like people were excited,
it was fun. But even in a year like that,

(52:11):
they still, especially if that year were to happen this year,
zero percent chance of winning a national championship. And it's like,
I think that takes it. I think that takes a
little bit away, And it's like as fun as it
was to watch BYU last year in Coastal Carolina and
Cincinnati zero percent chance of winning a national championship and
until that changes, there's going to be a problem. And
I don't know, maybe it's just the beauty of the sport,

(52:33):
but that's where we're.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
At right now with it.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, and you know, I wonder about the playoff expansion
as well, because I think I've been a fan of
that since they announced that there was going to be
a four team playoff. Why don't we go to eight?
Why don't we go to sixteen? And like, there's definitely
something to be gained if you are We'll use Iowa
State as an example to say that, hey, we went

(52:57):
to the playoff, come and play here. Maybe you can
play at a playoff or in a playoff game too.
I get that I can't see any scenario in which
the same like three or four teams aren't still the
ones left in the end.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
So it's a recruiting point. And fewer people watching the
semis and championship game after Alabama just destroys Michigan by
thirty one points in the quarterfinal, right, So what's the point.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
There's definitely something to be said for it as a
selling point with recruiting, but at the end of the day,
it's like, what matters. Is it winning that championship? Is
it establishing yourself as a playoff team that you can
take out on the road and then sell to some
of these recruits who maybe you couldn't get in the
door with before. I don't know the answer to that,
but I'm definitely like, I'm still in favor of expanding

(53:45):
the playoff. I just don't think it gets anywhere close
to solving the parody problem other than making some teams
feel good.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Yeah, Well, I look at college football as a very
unique sport. Now maybe the NFL is like this too.
But if you're an NBA fan, are you watching Utah
Jazz play Sacramento on a Tuesday? Probably not. I mean,
they're not a lot of casual fans. If you're a
Major League Baseball fan, are you watching the Pirates in
Red's three game series because it's baseball?

Speaker 1 (54:16):
No, you're not.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Now, NFL, everybody's involved in gambling and fantasy everybody likes
watching all the NFL games, But in college football, we
all want to watch all of them. And I think
that's really a unique thing. And what does the what
does the college football playoff expansion do?

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Well?

Speaker 3 (54:34):
I think we all know what would have happened if
Alabama played Coastal Carolina last year, but we all sure
as hell would want to watch that, you know, And
I think the idea or the hope of getting to
see these matchups and then maybe certain things happening like
it does nance WAA tournament changes the dynamic of the sport.
I mean, getting on the same field like Coastal Carolina

(54:54):
couldn't have done anything in the world to get on
the same field as Alabama last year, right, And that
sucks Cincinnati probably even more so than the smaller schools.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
I mean, they're in the sixth Power five conference.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
I mean, the AAC is really good, and they've got
really good football teams. I think you could make the
argument that Cincinnati was the third or second best team
in the Big Ten last year and the fact that
they weren't able to be included and potentially competing against
those other teams sucks. It frankly sucks.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
Now. We all probably know what would have happened, but
I'd rather see it. I would rather see it. I mean,
we did see Ohio State Cincinnati two years ago.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
But we also saw out Ohio State and the second
most town the team in college football off their doors
blown off. So like, I mean, if blowouts are the problem,
then you used to find a different sport because they
happened when the best teams are playing each other too,
So like, I don't know if the final score of
Alabama Coastal Carolina would have been sixty six to ten,
And I guess you get to a certain point where
that just sucks. But the idea of the hope of

(55:50):
seeing something special I think would change. But I don't
know if that would be the answer to how these
teams can recruit better, Like recruiting better is the hardest
thing to do in all of sports. I don't even
know what the answer to these questions are. And people
are like, well, what can my favorite team do to
be better? Like I have male bag questions every week,
and you have an Oregon State person say, what can Oregon.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
State do to be a team that competes in the
Pac twelve?

Speaker 3 (56:14):
And even though they've done that in the recent past,
the answer is I don't know, and that frankly sucks
Like every other team and every other sport. You have
a clear If you're a Buffalo Bills fan in two
thousand and seven, what do you need to do? You
need to analyze and draft the best quarterback with your
draft positioning, you get these free agents at these positions
of weakness, and you might be able to compete in

(56:35):
college football. Sometimes the answer is you are what you are,
and I think that sucks also, TJ.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Huschmann Zada, Yes, that is the other as now. I
think essentially what we're we're all dancing around the same
thing is like, you just have to learn to love
something that's imperfect. I think that's the key. My wife
learned to do it. Tie's wife learn to do it.
And I'm not going to call you imperfect. But you
now have a fiance Segue, Tyegg. That was very nice,

(57:01):
better that we planned. It was better than we planned.
You recently got engaged. I did you are in your
early thirties? Yes, thirty three. I don't know if that's
early early to already you've already passed my dad's mandate
that he handed down to me when I was like
ten years old, to not get married before you're thirty,
which I think we all are going to accomplish and

(57:21):
you got and you live in what you live in
the Dallas Fort Worth metro area in Dallas. Yep, you
live in Dallas just recently. How how is the engagement?
How long have you been together? Did it all go smoothly?
What went into everything? The people want to know?

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Okay, Well, I lived the best twenties that anybody can live.
And I know that that sounds like I'm not trying
to be a frat bro. But like, I traveled, I partied,
I met girls, I gambled on sports, I went to Vegas.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
Like all the things that.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Everybody wants to do in their twenties, I did. But
as that was happening, and as I got into my
upper twenties, all of my friends started following the natural
progression of girlfriend engagement, move in together, buy a home, baby, wedding,
all that stuff in that order, not that order, but
wedding than baby at the end.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Right.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
So for me, I met my fiance her name is Brittany,
three years ago, and I met her through a mutual friend.
But we had long distance relationship because we really liked you.
I don't know how I convince her to like me,
but we really liked each other. And because I'm a
college football writer and she is in the commercial real
estate industry, she's traveling a ton. I'm traveling a ton.

(58:34):
We made it work and we saw each other. A
ton and a psychopath.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
He will drive anywhere at any point, no matter how
long the way it is. But then I'm moved. I
like Ari Wasserman, I just like I drove.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
I one time drove from Columbus, Ohio to Fort Lauderdale,
Florida for one night.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Like was it for a woman? This was for Britt. Yeah,
she was down in Okay and making sure. Yeah, good answer.
Yeah that was a really far drive. I didn't know
if you just were playing Hyla, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
No, No, I've driven five I've driven three hours for
lunch and seven for casinos.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
Like we all done that.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
But I will do that and I made that work.
But so I moved to Texas for her.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
You know, I used.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
My situation at the athletic and I said, hey, I
want to be a national writer.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
I want to do these things.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
I think it'll work. Texas is a wonderful place for
a football writer to live because of all the talent,
and it's centrally located, they allowed.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Me to move.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
So then I moved in July, right in the heart
of the pandemic, with a person I had only been
seeing long distance in their house. So that was like
an adjustment because I'm a dude and I've never lived
with a girl. So like doing the dishes and unloading
the dishwasher, I'm taking out the trash and doing all
the things proactively that I wouldn't do at home, you know,
was a challenge. But then now we have an engagement,

(59:49):
we're trying to buy a house, we're probably going to
be trying to have a baby soon. All the things
that are happening for people in a progression have all
happened to me within one calendar year where I'm not
allowed to go and put wow.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
So it's been great.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
I'm excited, but it's also been like, holy crap, I
can't believe what my life was thirteen months ago and
what it is now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
So I'm really excited, and I surprised her.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
I invited all of her friends from all over the
country to come and go into a private room at
a restaurant.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
I proposed to her haphazardly, like in the kitchen.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
She's like are you really doing this right now? Because
she had her hand in like baking powder, and I
just said I had to do it because I've never
been able to keep a secret for her for more
than five minutes. And I kept this whole thing for
a month. And if I said let's go to dinner here,
or let's go on a walk here, or she would
have immediately known. And then we walked into this room
and my parents and her mom and all of her
friends and everybody was in this room and she had

(01:00:41):
no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
So it was great.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
It's been a weiral, real crazy weekend. My parents just
left and I guess I'm an adult now.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Congratulation. Well, she said yes, she said yes, She said yes.
Did you Nicole Auerback told me you traveled to another
state for the ring? Is that true? Yes? I did
you know? Did you did you know her style? Did
you know her size? Because that was something I knew beforehand?
I think ty Unit did. Yeah. Yeah, No, I knew
all those things.

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
It seems import Yeah, I mean she threw it wasn't direct,
but through months of accumulated ideas, I think I got
the idea, but I didn't draw. I didn't go to
Florida to buy the ring because it was a special ring.
I bought that thing two miles away from my house.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
I found that there was.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):
A tax situation where I send if you send the
ring to Florida and pick it up in Florida, then
you don't have to pay state tax or state sales
tax in Florida or Texas. So my best friend's father
lives in Boca Ratone, I I sent it to him.
I told Britt I was going on a business trip,
and I went to the Hollywood Casino for a night

(01:01:46):
and enjoyed myself out in Florida, took the tarp off
by the beach, picked up this ring and brought it home.
Nine percent is a lot of money when you're buying
an engagement ring. So like in with Corona, the flights
were one hundred and three dollars round trip. I have
Marriott points. It was axpense, and I won a few
thousand bucks at the casino, which offset, so I saved
money on taxes. And then I won money at the
casino and you pay alone, and I paid, and I

(01:02:09):
and that and that's how I got the ring.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
What's here? What do you play? What's your game?

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
I like poker because it's the one game that I
feel like I have control over.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Huh, I can't. I love blackjack and craps and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
All the games that everybody likes playing, but Poker I
can use some sort of ability and or maybe limited ability.
But I feel like I know how to play really well,
and I grew up during the party poker era and
now everybody's good. But I really enjoy that game because,
like I have the patience to sit there and fold
until I feel like I have a hand. I want
to play, and I know my spots, and for the

(01:02:42):
most part, I think I do pretty good at it.
If you play blackjack, you can't control if the five ranch.
I mean, it just you play by the book and
you lose. It's just it's not as fun to me,
at least when I'm alone.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
What's you were down a ton of weight? By the way,
when we did the show, how's that going? How's that?
I'm still not there? Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
I think I've lost probably twenty five or twenty more
since January. Total grand total is like one hundred and
three or something. So that's so great. But like here's
the thing too. I wanted to say, like I don't
think I'm I'm like, I think I'm marginally attractive, And
every single person I was just saying, yeah, I know,
and every single person on Twitter because I made the

(01:03:20):
mistake of tweeting our picture and there's some pretty vulgar
responses and really mean spirited responses. But everybody said, bro,
you have kicked your coverage right, And I thought to myself, like,
that's nice, Like are we complimenting brit or are we
insulting me in that?

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Like?

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
How many of those do you get before you are
quite expensive? It's like, because I didn't know how to
feel about it, I was like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Can I tell you my reaction when I saw the picture?
You posted the picture, and my reaction was and I
think it's now your profile testure. My reaction to the
two of you are like, first, what a great looking couple.
And two someday and Ty, if you want to bring
up the picture and take a look, I don't know
if you have it in front of you. Someday they
are going to have almost like a Bob Diaco level

(01:04:03):
kid hair wise, two incredible heads of hair.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
Yeah, she has an incredible head of hair. Everybody who
says best hair couple ever, and that's the one thing
God gave me, you know, I it's everybody. Everybody gets something,
and I got a good head of hair. But you know,
it was a wonderful weekend. And aside from some of
the terrible things people say on Twitter, which I've learned
to no longer pay attention to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
I've got no complaints in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
So now we've got a plan a wedding, and we
are currently in a position of potentially putting an offering
on a house, like as we speak. There's a lot
of stuff happening all at once right now. But I
got to say, I'm truly blessed. And you know, one
of the things that made this week such a blessing
is I got to come on the show.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
You know, let's not forget that you any you will
give birth ari to a hair hero.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
You see the picture. I've seen it now, I hadn't
seen it before. Congratulations. Yeah, you will give straight out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Of the womb. That child will have a luscious news
head of hair.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
Yeah, and her mother is a hairdresser and like does
a really good job of come on, you know, Volumizing,
I think is the word that the women like to use,
and I get the volumizing and I use volumizing hair
despite having the thickest hair on earth, just because I
don't ever want my one trait that I don't have
to like genetically battle to go away. So you know,
I'm going to the gym every day. Proposal picture was

(01:05:21):
great for what it was, but still not happy with
the final result. But when we finally get to the wedding,
I hope that by then people are going to be like,
oh my god, you totally.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Kicked off your coverage perfectly. This is this is a
wedding podcast masquerading as a college football. Yeah, that's what.
As the date gets closer, we will have you back
on to just itemize and just have you know, do
we need that few number of high top tables maybe
mark table.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Chavari chairs, we do an ice skull.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Yeah, time to stay wedding with your pizza. I would
love to. I could do late night. I don't have
a pizza oven. I just have a standard oven. But
there are options in Dallas for me to do a
pop up. Maybe we'll see.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
I mean, I don't know, and I'm sure you're probably
trying to wrap this thing up and I have a
hard time.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
That's hie. If you have any pizza questions, I'm here too,
And if you have any questions about I mean, if
one of the next steps is having kids. Ty has
a webinar on that processend me a link. It's so
detailed Number one, how to do it, and then we'll
probably more vulgar than you're expecting from Ty. Yeah, like
he could have toned it down in certain spots. The
chapter four is a doozy. Yeah, well, I need some help, guys.

(01:06:32):
I'm about as far away. Listen, man, I talk about
college football for a living. Yeah, it's like, how juvenile
can that be? Just out of the gate.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
And then I was living in Ohio in a bachelor
pad and you know, just kind of doing my own thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
And now we've got a blind.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
Dog who I've heard you you probably heard barking intermittently
throughout the and you know, potentially having a child here
in the near future and all the things that come
along with adulthood. And you know, I couldn't be happier.
But the one thing, there's no buddy that has been
a bigger fan than me about this pizza, Like I
tweeted you, Yeah, I feel like I got to stop
because I'm like, this guy is getting sicky.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
By all means, it's it's very rewarding and complimentary, have
a very specific pizza taste. There are a few places
that I think really hit. I think, for the most part,
where did you grow up? I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona.
You grew up in Phoenix, which is a pretty good
pizza tow. It is a great pizza town.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
It's a great food town because everybody is from somewhere
else and they bring their food with them. Yes, And
it's the only place where you can get a great
New York slice, a great Chicago slice. And you know,
I know that like Saint Louis and Detroit have their
own styles now and I saw you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Did a Detroit one. Yeah, don't worry about Saint Louis.
They use garbage. I really like it. I have him
into emos. I've just I've had Provel cheese and I
was not a fan. But I know that that's very controversial.
But the thing that I know, much like a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Of businesses, the pizza industry is dominated by mediocrity. It
really is. And there are so many pizza places and
a lot of them are just fine and bad pizza
is still pizza. So we eat it, and we eat
it because it's card filled. But there really isn't for
as much pizza as I've eaten in order to get

(01:08:16):
to the fattest I've ever been. It's quite staggering, and
I can't tell you. I'd probably say maybe five percent
of the time I sat down and said, Wow, this
is really delicious.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
And you have which pizzaia is stand out to you?
So you've traveled.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
If we're talking about Phoenix, there's a place in Spinatos
are called Spinatos in Phoenix who that I think is unbelievable,
and it's high quality toppings. They've got great sausage, great pepperoni,
and they have sweet sauce. And I don't know why,
but I've always been partial to sweet sauce. But God,
but I also have come to find out too that

(01:08:49):
the eye test is probably more telling for pizza than
any other food category. And when I look at yours,
it looks like perfect. It's really perfect, And I know
for a fact that it's delicious because the elements that
what make pizza delicious are all in place in your pie.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
And I don't know what needs to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
But if that was the pizza that you were spitting
out all day, every day to customers, I think you
would have a very successful business because I think people
are willing to pay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
For good pizza. Everybody buys CRS. People are willing to
pay for good pizza. So the problem with pizza, though,
the problem pizza has is people associated with like, oh,
drunk order a pizza. Oh it's Friday night, I don't
want to cook. Let just grab you know, pizza from
the local place. It's a very casual food that can
be done really well, but there's just a certain social
element of like, okay, pizza, is this stand in for

(01:09:40):
cooking yourself or for you know, you're having a game,
just get a bunch of pizzas it's a volume thing
for a lot of people. I think a lot of
pizza places cut corners in terms of their ingredients and
their process whatever. It's same day though, instead of letting
it ferment for a day or two. It's you know,
the cheaper cheese that burns too easily, or it's the
cheapest pepperonis that don't cup or whatever. So I get it.
If you're selling a bunch of pizzas. Why change anything?

(01:10:02):
But I think especially now that I live in the
Burbs and there's pretty decent pizza where I am. But
you know, I was in New York, I was in
Brooklyn for eight years. I eat a lot of mediocre
pizza in the supposed pizza capital of America. So I
your point is well taken. I think I need to
cook for you, is what I'm saying. Yeah, because I'm

(01:10:23):
on at least three pizza message boards in which people
are sharing tips about like protein percentage and flour and hydrated.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
You're tweeting about these things. It's so far over my head.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
But you know what. I don't mean to interrupt you,
but there is.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
Something that used to happen in Las Vegas that I
don't know if it happens anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Especially have you been to Tony G's. That's the big
guy there right in Vegas. I don't know that I've
ever eaten there. Tony Gess.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Yeah, but Vegas has a pizza convention, and I heard
that it's like fifty bucks to get in in all
the major vendors and pizza places all over the country
comes up and you can eat everybody's pizza and like,
I want to go there with you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
I have been invited by a couple of different people
to go to the Pizza expell. They do one in
Atlantic City and they do one in Vegas. I know
a couple of people that are in the pizza industry
and they've they've both invited me that I could get
a pass. So as soon as I can and as
soon as my wife allows me to leave our two
young children to go to a pizza convention in the desert. Well,

(01:11:25):
we'll meet there and we'll eat. We'll drive them from
the time. I mean, I would love to drive there too.
There's a certain fantasy you have about sitting in a
car alone once you have a two year old New.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Bars Austin college football podcast like this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think they'd leave.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
I would leave journalism. I think if I had a
business plan that I think you could, like, I mean,
and I'm not even joking.

Speaker 1 (01:11:46):
Like like, no, I'm not joking.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
Any thought that having a real pizza place, a place
that spits out really good pie over and over again,
and even if it's twenty bucks a pizza, which is
a lot of money to some people. I arp spinados.
If you're ever in Phoenix. You got to try this place,
and it's cutting.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
I've been to Bianco. I actually use the the Bianco
DiNapoli tomatoes in my post on Bianco I Love. I
haven't been to Pizzeria Bianco in quite some time, in
probably eight years since I last went to. It was
either a National Championship or a super Bowl there. But
I thought it was delicious. I thought it was fantastic.
That's that's a style that I really really like. I

(01:12:24):
know he's also making New York style pies occasionally, like
eighteen inch big pies there. I thought it was phenomenal.
I also shot a video with it, right with like
lettuce or I mean root uh. I think he has
Neapolitan like some of the more like esoteric type pies,
but you can get a fantastic just like soaprasada pie
or like shaved garlic and sausage if you like. He

(01:12:47):
does a lot of really straightforward excellence. Yeah, so he's
one of my favorite pies. I have places in New
York I love. I have places in the Chicago Chicagoland area.
I love LA. I have plays like you can get
real you can get excellent pizza wherever. It's just more
difficult to search them out some places. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
So yeah, yeah, and it just when you when you
know it's good, you know, like immediately when when this.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
Is top notch stuff here we're talking about, you know, and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
I know people get kind of passionate about the triangles
and the shape and the density and the house and
I like thin maybe not cracker, but like thin square
cut pizza that's high quality with nice sausage, nice pepperoni,
and sweet sauce.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
And it's just like a hard thing to find, it
really is. Yeah, I mean there's I'm sure there are
really good places in Dallas. Unfortunately, right now I'm on
a on a short Oh well you're yr yeah yeah, okay,
so you're you're losing poundage. But at some point when
you have some sort of cheat meal, I'm sure there
are options. Yeah, I am. Yeah. I this is my
recommendation for everything. And this is the way Tie is

(01:13:52):
specifically with podcasting, and everybody should be with something like
you should be deeply nerdy about something that has nothing
to do with your work, like that has nothing to
do with your day job. And for me, it's pizza
just because you know, you're literally getting your hands dirty
and you're experimenting and it's delicious even when you kind
of screw up. And so I people pay me for
my pies. Now friends and family refuse to accept them

(01:14:15):
because they're at a high enough level I think. I
don't think they're doing it just because they like me,
And so I don't know what the next step is,
but I am making things sort of behind the scenes
right before.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Because I'm happy before you let me go. Last question, Yeah,
and ty, I love you, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
I'm sorry. I just got tigest pizza thoughts. Okay, I
don't mean to like box y. Yeah, no, you're please
get we invited you on please?

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Yeah, I just is the plan one day to open
a spot? Like would that be a dream?

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
Hobby? Is this? Is this a goal?

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):
Where are we at with this? We are this?

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
We're using this for our pizza startup podcast to be
named and to be slotted.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
So solid verbal pizza, it's a option. I mean, I
still like my Valley Circle pizza name. It's easy to spell.
It's the But the problem is, I know how difficult
and taxing working and starting a restaurant. I mean, pizza
is okay, just because it's year round, and the ingredients
aren't terribly expensive. You know, flowers not expensive, Tomatoes and
cheese aren't terribly expensive. I know prices fluctuate, but maybe

(01:15:17):
I think, do you know who Joe Bidia is? I do?
Does that name? Okay? So his place in Philly where
his older place. He made forty pis a night and
that was it because he wanted full control over everything,
and people seem to really like it. And he did
his thing and he got recognition. He made some cash.
That to me is interesting. But I'm I'm really trying
to take this incrementally. I don't want to just rent

(01:15:38):
a shop next week, Like I really need to get
my formula down. I really want to sort of make
initially sort of content out of it. Because I get
I get a ton of messages like what's your dough recipe?
Can you give me your step by step process? And
like and don't be difficult to do on that's litter No, okay,
I mean not for free? Not for free?

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Yeah, like I mean, yeah, this is something that I
mean you don't give away or see I mean, right,
I wonder, honestly, if you think about every pizza restaurant
that's ever been built or opened. How many people spend
time like figuring out the levels of how much whatever
protein or whatever it is?

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
Well, like, even if you knew Spinado's recipe, are you
making it at home? Are you are you buying a
pizza oven, are you mixing the flour? Are you experimenting
with fermentation times? Exactly? You tracking down the Spinado's cheese
and tomato vendor to people like.

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
Own restaurants worry about those things, like do they come
up with the perfect recipe, the perfect pie and go,
this is my gift to the world, or is it
just what We'll throw some pizzas together and hope that
people buy them.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Because No, I just don't think people care about giving
out the recipe just because it's such a labor intensive,
specific thing that they know that. Yeah, sure, maybe a competitor,
but like if you are the originator and you have
the reputation for your pies, I don't think it's a
huge deal to give out. Maybe you charge, maybe you
write a cookbook, maybe you do a video thing. I
just don't think that people on the owe.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
A lot of these restaurants put as much effort into
perfecting the recipe the way that you have, which means
that pizza would be h quality and worth paying top
dollar for.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
Yeah, we'll see. I mean I have this specific vision.
I tweeted it out a while ago. Or just like
I just want a couple of arcade machines and the
red coat cups, like I don't want to like. I
think places get bogged out when they're like, oh, we
do wings, we do chicken parm sandwiches, we do sALS
like no.

Speaker 3 (01:17:15):
My father young age, if pizza restaurant serves other things
that aren't pizza, it's it's trash. And maybe not wings
because wings kind of go with it. But if you
can get a Philly cheese steak at the place that
serves pizza, I never ordered the pizza at that place.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Yeah. The best pizza in Brooklyn is this place. To me,
that's it's called Lukali. They make pizza and they make
col zones, which is just folded pizza. Yeah, and I
don't know what it is.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
But as I get older, I'm starting to gravitate more
to just cheese pizza. I used to I love my pepperoni,
I love my sausage. Everybody does. But as I grow older,
I feel like I just want cheese, which is weird
that the key is and this is the ultimate move,
Like you go to a place with three or four
people and you get three or four pies, and oh
we do in normal times when we go with you know,

(01:17:58):
when Jody and I go with another couple, is you
have a draft. You have a draft at the table.
That way everybody is insured to get what they want.
Like it's not like, should we get a cheese, a
pepperoni and a Vesu're like no, Let's go around the
table and you select which one you want to be
represented at your table. That's key, so you may get
your cheese pie. Feeling is mutual. Oh man, So I

(01:18:20):
really enjoyed this, and I'm it's a personal Uh. I'm
just flattered a personal goal has been achieved. And I
also hope that talking more intently and more more passionately
about your pizza has to be than my engagement has
a representation of who I am as a person.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Are you getting married this year?

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
Next?

Speaker 1 (01:18:40):
Probably next year? And we have a well going on
between them, but you know that's a promise. I'm going
to take you up on it. The Wasserman Wedding two
K two two K two two K two two podcast.
Maybe it's a whole like limited run series. Tie it
could be. Maybe we maybe it's our version of startup.
We know people, we can make that work. Love awesome, all.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
Right, Ari Wasserman again, he's from the Athletic. Go and
read him today. Follow him on Twitter. Where else are you?

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
Ari? Just Twitter?

Speaker 3 (01:19:10):
Just Twitter, Yeah, and the Athletic. If you want to
go right to it, just just come to the Athletic.
I don't need Twitter followers.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
Go find Ari. Read this stuff. We will have you
on again soon.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Mister Wasserman, thanks so much for your time.

Speaker 3 (01:19:21):
Thanks so much for having me, guys, I really appreciate
it. It was great, all right, Dan, Ari Wasserman the Athletic.
Check him out.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
Big fan of your pizza, huh? I guess. I mean
I hope it tastes is good to people who have
eaten it. Then it looks to some people, I guess,
because people seem to like looking at it. But I
could honestly like, I don't know. I don't have a
pizza friend a pizza. What is azza? I don't know.
I'm still trying to figure out what that is. But

(01:19:50):
I don't have somebody in my life personally that I
could bounce like sixty versus sixty five percent hydration advantages
disadvantages with or topping supply, Like I don't have that
person already loves pizza clearly, but he's not that person
right well, talking.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
About we're talking about the George Costanza mentor protege relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:20:10):
But for PRATSA, Yeah, I don't even know if I
need a protege, if I need a mentor. I just
like you know, when like at your day job where
you're like kidnapping, terrors and all that kind of stuff
that you do, like you have people to bounce ideas
off of. But like I'm sort of a rock. I'm
a man on an island, and I rely on message

(01:20:31):
boards and rely on people and people's experiences. There's, by
the way, there was there's a lady who used to
cook in there was like a market in Amish country.
Do you know what I'm talking about? I sent her
a link. Her name is Norma, and she's an older woman.
She won this like incredible pizza contest a few years ago,

(01:20:51):
like in the New York division with the New York
Style Division, and she posts like she's definitely like an
older lady and she posts these incredible pies and I've
never communicated with her, but I was like, ma'am, it'd
be pretty nice to hang with Norma and just talk shop.
But she's an actual successful pizzaiolo, whereas I only find

(01:21:12):
where this market is. Is that the word pizzai Yeah,
that's the like the Italian Norma pizza uh in Mannheim, PA.
I don't think it's open anymore. It was at the
Roots Country Market, Okay, I know, Manca. Lady Norma apparently
made the best pies in just a random part of PA.

(01:21:32):
That's that's Central PA. That's bordering on extreme Central Pa
right there. But she's on this pizza message board, one
of the It's Pizza making dot com where I go
and people are like, well, here's my copycat recipe of
this very specific place in New York. And I could
see that he was milling his own flower. But I'm
not sure that you know if it was hard spring
wheat or it's really intense.

Speaker 2 (01:21:53):
Wow. Okay, yeah, well, great conversation with r. E. I
have nothing to contribute on the pizza front. Eye know
that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:22:01):
I still say you have to find you. I told you.
I was like, Ty, you got to find your thing.
You got to find like something to obsess over, either
building or cooking or something. And your initial response to
me was grilled cheese. Do you still feel that way?
Uh No, it was just an idea. Okay, I think
you gotta find it. Maybe I just stick with the omelets. Yeah,

(01:22:23):
but you've you've made maybe new kinds of omelets. Maybe
I tried the French variety runny, little, little too runny. Okay,
we'll figure it out. You need to find your whale,
all right.

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
Well, Sliver at gmail dot com right in let us
know your thoughts. Check us out for ballers dot com.
That's Patreon. Don't forget to follow along on social media
and through your podcasting app of choice, Dan, why don't
we let to find people?

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
Go go stop listening to my piece of nonsense.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
For that guy there, my good friend Dan Rubinstein, for myself,
Tie Hildebrand, thank you so much for hanging with us.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
We'll talk to you again on Thursday, and I meantimes,
stay solid, Hace

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