Mark Belling Podcast #76: The FBI is back: huge multi-agency drug bust takes down kingpins in Racine/Milwaukee while big names are charged in NBA betting scandal. Also: Trump Derangement Syndrome now spreads to the new White House ballroom. Plus, our weekly football preview and picks (Mark is 6-2).

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
The FBI.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
M production.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Sorry from the Simplest Junior.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
The FBI is back.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
The FBI wreck and ruined during the Biden era and
turned into a partisan hack agency bringing phony criminal charges
and so on. What a couple of days for the FBI.
By the way, if you're wondering, that was the intro
to there's this TV series called the FBI that's on
now that obviously I've never seen. That was a TV

(00:57):
show from the sixties, and as you heard, it's from
Zimbalist Junior. It was on on Sunday night at like
I spear, everybody's dad watched that show. That was the
era in which it is actually still the j Edgar
Hoover FBI when it started, But that was the era
in which the FBI was just universally accepted and the
goal of Cash Betel and the Trump administration is to

(01:19):
bring it back. And there are two separate stories in
which the FBI is a major player that don't want
to lead today's podcast with and we'll get to them
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Speaker 3 (02:01):
Dot com.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
Let's start with the drug bus. We heard about drug
bus all the time. I from what I've been able
to pick up, which is a fair amount. This is
in terms of not necessarily quantity of drugs that were confiscated.
That was not the goal of this. Sometimes these raids

(02:24):
are you get into a warehouse and grab, you know,
millions of dollars of the drugs. That was not the
purpose this. The purpose of this one was to nail
several drug crankpins and confiscate drugs in the process. This
was an investigation that involved more than a dozen law
enforcement agencies in Illinois and Wisconsin. The federal government had

(02:48):
numerous agencies that were involved because the arrest itself that
the rest occurred were seeing in Milwaukee, but the major
operation was outside of the city of Racine in Mount
Pleasant and the Mount Pleasant Police Department sort of as
the titular head. But the FBI was the one that
did all of the announcing of all of this. But
there were fourteen SWAT teams. They had a black Hawk helicopter.

(03:14):
In other words, the force that was shown here was
massive because they were prepared for the potential given what
was at stake here of.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Armed resistance.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
It didn't occur, and the takedown is apparently quite big.
Whenever the FBI has like a title for the thing,
that means it's a big deal. Sadly, the last few
years those titles were all things that turned out to
be disgraced.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Hopefully this is not one of those things. Operation chalk Line.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
We all know that the drug problem in the United
States is as bad now as maybe it's ever been,
simply because the drugs are so powerful. It was only
a few years ago that we started and hearing about
feninol being abused. Fenanol is heroin on steroids. The meth

(04:06):
problem has gotten terrible, and just going through what it
is that they confiscated, you could tell that these are
major drug operations because they're wholesaling out lots of drugs
or akilas of cocaine, two hundred and sixty grams of fenool,
one and a half pounds of meth, six pounds of marijuana,
twenty three firearms.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Three vehicles. The names of the individuals are going to
be released.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
I don't know that I would know who any of
them are, because the thing with high end drug dealers
is that they tend in terms of their name to
be an honymous because they try to keep their own
hands clean and the people who get their hands thirty
to the people that are below them. Now how high
level they are, will this be an attempt to get
people to flip bring down more indictments. Don't know, but

(04:52):
certainly one of the priorities and it's hard to say
priorities in the Trump administration because they're doing so many things,
has been to a this terrible drug problem that's affecting
particularly younger Americans. And as I've been saying, one of
the reasons the problem is so bad is that there
are so many of these drugs right now that they're
not all that expensive, and by shutting off the supply,

(05:16):
which is what's occurring with these attacks in the Caribbean
and isolation of Latin American countries, and now going after
the individuals, some of whom I suspect, some of whom.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
May be.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Illegal immigrants. I'm just suspecting that that some of the
people that are running the drug operation. We don't know,
but it's just logical to me that when you don't
enforce the border, drug kingpins who were overseas would simply
come and locate themselves in the United States to have
total control.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Of their operation.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
So this was a major twenty two arrests so far,
but I suspect that now the real process begins.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
In which.

Speaker 4 (05:53):
As a way of trying to tell them that you
won't get a twenty five year prison sentence, start cooperating.
There may be any number of other people that come
out of this, but it was a major operation and
the amount of equipment and manpower that came in required
incredible coordination. And the other part that I want to mention,
unlike the and again the FBI was simply one of

(06:13):
the agencies involved, but they're the ones that made the announcement.
Homeland Security was involved, the dea of a whole list
of a bunch of them, many local law enforcement agencies
and so on. Nothing leaked out on this, and there
were obviously hundreds of people.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Who knew that the thing was coming down.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
The other FBI story, the Department of Justice announced today
an FBI led investigation that's been ongoing for some time
into illegal gambling centered in the National Basketball Association. There
have been there's been speculation for some time that some

(06:57):
NBA players were involved in illegal gambling. Terry Rogier, who
was first with Charlotte and then with Miami, he was
actually named and taken on of games for a few
games last year before being reinstated because they were investigating
unusual activity in his games and so on. Cash Puttel,
the FBI director, says, in this instance he used the

(07:19):
term LaCOSA nostro, which we otherwise might call the mafia,
as being involved in the gambling operation and involved betting
on sports, betting on basketball, and also betting on poker.
The fear with regard to people involved in sports getting
involved in betting on some of these other things when

(07:40):
they're gambling is done illegally and they get into debt.
That's when they're getting on. You know, the bookmakers and
so on have their hooks into them in which they're
borrowing money. There was a case a few years ago
of an NBA referee who was involved in sharing information
with gamblers. He was a gambler himself, got into hooks

(08:02):
with the mob. He was in debt to the mob
and started sharing information. The biggest name to come down
here as an actual NBA head coach, that's a stunning development.
Chauncey Billips, who was a star for many years with
the Detroit Pistons, coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, is
one of the people that's named in the investigation. Terry Rogier,

(08:25):
who I just mentioned of the heat, who's been speculated
as to having been a target of a federal investigation
for better than a year, was named as well. The
indictment doesn't go into great detail as to how much
of this is betting on games. Was there any fixing
of games involved? Just because you're betting on games doesn't
mean the games are being fixed, but the door is

(08:47):
always open to that. Poker was mentioned as well, a
lot of extremely high stakes poker games.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
And again the fear.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
With regard to athletes is if they sustain massive losses
and there in debt to people that will kill you
if you don't pay up, that they'll do things like
fixed games in an attempt to pay off their debts.
Let me quote from the report. In fact, they've got
a couple of stories here. One is from the Athletic,

(09:15):
which is a very good sports website actually owned by
the New York Times. I'm going to read a few
paragraphs here. Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncy P Billips and Miami
Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested Thursday as part of
a federal investigation in the illegal betting activities, Federal law
enforcement officials said doing a news conference in New York.
Rogier was taken into custody at Orlando, where the Heat
played on Wednesday night. He was accused of telling members

(09:35):
of a betting ring that he would leave a game early. Now,
let me explain a little bit about something called proposition betting.
You know, forever a effort after if you wanted to
bet on sports, you could bet on two things, the
points spread and the over under. Now there's propositions on

(09:56):
every game, and they're for multiple players. How many rebounds
will this guy have over or under this? How many points?
How many assists will another one have?

Speaker 3 (10:03):
And so on?

Speaker 4 (10:04):
And for some of these players that aren't big name players,
the number may be low.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
You know, a guy like Terry Roger.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
Maybe I'm just making this up here, Maybe the over
run in his points is eight well or nine.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
It's real easy to disguise that.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
If a guy normally scores nine and he only scores seven,
who would.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Be the wiser. Rogier is accused.

Speaker 4 (10:27):
Of telling the gambling ring I'm gonna say I'm hurt,
for example, and leave a game early. Well, then they
would know to bet the unders. So he doesn't even
have to like miss shots or anything like that. He
simply takes himself out of the game.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
So he can't go over, etc. Back to the piece.

Speaker 4 (10:44):
Rosier's agent, Aaron Turner, confirmed Rogier was arrested in relation
to the probe, but said the player planned to fight
the charges, having been previously cleared by the NBA. Billips
forty nine, a Hall of Flame player before he became
a coach and ex Cleveland Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones
were also arrested. Now David Jones is with the Lakers.
Now what the allegation is whose activities occurred prior to

(11:07):
going to work for them? That it might have been
in the period in which was the Cleveland prosecutors said
at least two cases were pending separately but with some
overlap and connections. One is related to sports betting. The
other is related to poker games that prosecutors say were rigged.
In response to the federal indictment of Portland Tales Bazers

(11:28):
coach Chauncey Billups in Miami heat guard Terry Rozer, the
NBA issued its first public statement. You could write this
statement and by the way, I just think they knew
this was coming. I don't know that they knew necessarily
it was coming. With regard to Chauncey Billups. My guess
is the FBI was working with NBA security on this.
I don't think Portland knew, because if they did, you know,
Portland did have a great season last year. Had been

(11:49):
very easy just to fire Chauncey Billups and make it
appears because they weren't doing well enough on the Court.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Here's the statement.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
We are in the process of reviewing the federal indictments
announced today. Terry Rozier so Chauncy Billips are being placed
on immediately from their teams, and we will continue to
cooperate with the relevant authorities. We take these allegations with
the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our games remains
our top priority. Now I've talked forever about given the
fact that we've legalized sports betting almost everywhere in the

(12:18):
United States. It used to be the only place that
was legal was Novata and you could have to do
otherwise you have to do it illegally with a bookie
or offshore and so on. Now that it's been legalized,
and because you can bet online with computers and all
of this stuff, they have all of these prop bets.
It's simply a guaranteed that there's going to be corruption
in anything in which there's betting. There's going to be

(12:40):
some corruption, and it's incumbent upon the sports themselves to
make sure that individuals involved know that if you do it,
it's the death penalty.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
You're finished. The death penalty in terms of your career.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Baseball's always said this fool you bet on baseball your
band for life. Pete Rose's ban didn't end until after
he was dead. He was banned for life. It's I
think a greater concern at the college level, where the
players have less of a career to lose, and there

(13:17):
have been some of those cases that have come down
as well. If you're looking for a positive in this,
it's that it appears as though the FBI is back
to good old crime busting and going after and nailing crooks,
drug dealers, people fixing games, illegal brings, all of this stuff,

(13:38):
as opposed to the crap that the FBI had degenerated
into during the period in which its soil mission in
life seemed to be to make up things that Donald
Trump supposedly had done. I want to turn a story,
turn my attention to a disturbing story in the local
news today. This is one of those that it's about

(13:59):
us bad as it gets. It's involving case of a
four year old boy who died recently in West Alice.
The story on Fox six's site names the child's parents,
but whether or not the father is the parent or
not is unclear to me. The boy's last name is

(14:20):
not the same last name as either the mother or
the father, and there was another man years earlier named
in a paternity action that has the child's last name.
I think it's safe to say that the woman involved
as the mother, but I'm unclear as to whether or
not the man charged is the father. They were living together.
The guy is twenty one, the mother is thirty one.

(14:40):
There are multiple children who live in the home. Quoting
the story on Fox six, the parents of Dante Campbell,
four year old West Alice boy, are now criminally charged
in connection with his death. Milwaukee County prosecutors charged thirty
one year old Charlotte Kurk and twenty one year old
de Verio Cruz with chronic neglect of a child causing death.

(15:02):
They made their initial court appearance this morning. The backstory
again I quote Fox six. West Alice police and fire
department were called to the Dairy Queen at one hundred
eighth and Greenfield on the morning of October eighteenth, That
would have been last Saturday morning. When officials arrived, paramedics
were working on the UNRESPONSEI four year old boy. He
later died at Children's hospital. It is unclear to me

(15:26):
why the child was out the dairy queen. Court filing
said Campbell. That's the boy had bruising on his face, neck,
torso and limbs. A West Alis police sergeant noted in
his fourteen years of experienced this was the most extensive
and severe injuries that I have witnessed on a child cruise.
And Kurik that's the male and the female cruises. The male,

(15:47):
Kurrik is the female, initially told police the boy was
injured falling down a flight of stairs at their apartment,
where police later found three of Kurik's children. Now, Korik's
the mother. The other guy is twenty one. I don't
think he's the father of most of these and maybe
not the father of any of them. But they found
three others of Kork's children. Court filings said Campbell. That's

(16:09):
the boy who's dad. Siblings believe he died sometime the
day before. Again, I'm unclear as to why this is
going out in a dairy queen because the children say
they believe that the boy was dead the day before this.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
These are the brothers and sisters.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
Those older siblings told investigators Cruz that's the twenty one
year old guy here. Would make Campbell and his twin
sister stand on legos and smack the kids in the face,
and that Cork the mother did nothing.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
To stop it.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
The court filings on the individuals. Cruise himself was charged
several years ago with felony sexual assault of a child.
He later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault. This did
not involve this particular family, It was a separate.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Crime.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
As for the mother, Charlotte Cork, she's facing the same
charge as the male, who again i'm unclearest whether or
not he's a father. Both are two counts of chronic
neglect of a child, one with consequences death.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Those charges obviously can be upgraded.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
It is not the least bit surprising that apparently there
are all sorts of drugs that we're found in the home,
which becomes something of an explanation. I think for all
of this, I want to move to a story here
in which we take a look at the attempts by
some legacy media organizations to save themselves. This has been

(17:44):
so overdue. Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post, is
trying to make the paper less liberally biased. CBS News
seems to be trying now that it is under new ownership.
Now that David Ellison's firm has bought the company, it

(18:07):
seems to be trying to rid the company of some
liberal bias. The high rank of Barry Weiss, who is
a moderate and provocative journalist formerly with The Wall Street
Journal and The New York Times, it's her attempt to
deal with that.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal has a commum
column about this.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
Now his take is not entirely my take, but he
makes some interesting points. The point I've made forever is
that getting rid of bias in the media is very,
very hard because everybody in the media is liberal. For
the longest time, most people in the media were liberal,
but they were professional. I believe the majority of the
people that are in the media now, not all, but

(18:51):
the majority are not professional that they're biased. Baker believes
it's less insidious than that, and he is right about
this point.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
I agree with him to a degree. He believes that.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
The problem is is that they all come from the
same worldview and they view things to the exact same lens.
He is right about that, and this has been the
case for about fifty to fifty five years. The news
media tends to hang out with other members of the
news media and with the people that they cover. It's

(19:25):
the problem that I've described with together regard to the
Republican Party being in Madison. They madisonize themselves. Well, the
news media is just this circle and click of elitists
that all see things the same way, and they then
think that they have some sort of duty to act
in the beliefs that they have, which is not the

(19:46):
role of the media at all. They have a duty
to report the news, they don't have a duty to
do anything about anything. Here's Baker's piece for a glimpse
into the sealed world of the establishment media. Nothing tops
Polline kale famous observation about the nineteen seventy two presidential election.
Let me interject, she didn't exactly say this, Baker points

(20:07):
said out. But the way the shorthand is is that
Pauline Klee said that she knew that McGovern was going
to beat Nixon because everybody she knew was voting for McGovern.
Now she didn't exactly say that, Well, that was the point.
In other words, her bubble only consistent of people who
constituted the small minority of Americans who supported George McGovern

(20:27):
back to the piece. It isn't quite true, as Laura
has it, that the New York film critic was so
unaware of her Himalayan elevation above her fellow Americans that
she wondered about how Richard Nixon could possibly have won,
since she didn't know anyone who had voted for him.
In fact, her quote was more guileful than that, and
all the more revealing for it. What she actually said
is I live in a rather special world. I know

(20:50):
only one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are
I don't know they are outside my ken, but sometimes
when I'm in a theater, I can feel them. In
other words, the point that she was making, and it's true,
these better than fifty years later, they don't really know
any of the people and now let's use and take
Nixon away support Trump. They don't anybody like that, but

(21:12):
they do know this, that they're above those kinds of people.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
And when you hear that, you know that's what the
media is.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Back to the peace less, an ingenuous revelation of lofty
self insulation from such voters than more a conscious repining
at their existence, mixed with revulsion at the thought that
she occasionally had to share.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Space with them.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
Isn't that how lefties view mega people, disgust that they
have to share a planet Earth with them? Back to
the piece, the Marie Antoinette level empathy for how other
people live and think has been the biggest problem with
what we might continue to call elite nords organizations in
the past thirty years. You're not aware Baker himself used

(22:02):
to be the editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal.
He's a media established in type himself, and he comes
out of the Murdoch Empire. He's not a conservative, but
he is somebody that has tried to address this problem
a bias in the media because he realizes he's turning
off half his readers and what they're doing essentially killing
journalism as we know it. The journalism was supposed to

(22:24):
be the reporting of news without opinion.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Back to the piece.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
It is the primary reason the trust in their reliability
as providers of a fair accounting of the news has collapsed.
Contrary to the fevered imagination of megapartisans, editors and reporters
and anchors don't sit around concocting progressive talking points, checking
in from time to time with the Democratic National Committee
and handing out the approved line to take on all

(22:49):
the important topics. It's more organic than that. The people
who have held the commanding heights of news, from editors
down to reporters may not be quite cholesque in their
remoteness from their less refined fellow citizens, but their philosophical
outlook reflects a degree of convergence in their shared metropolitan,

(23:10):
expensively educated, narrowly focused minds. The political implications of this
institutional demography have become more pronounced in the age of
Donald Trump. Well, the more open minded of such people
might once have reluctantly acknowledged that George W. Bush or
Mitt Romney had at least a right to be considered

(23:30):
for the office of presidency. In Trump's case, from day one,
his illegitimacy was never in doubt. Often, as I have
dealt with mainstream journalists in the past ten years, I
have asked myself how many of them voted for Trump?
Realizing the answer was scarcely ever more than one, I'd
moved to the more interesting corollary, how many of them

(23:53):
even know someone who voted for Trump. All of this
makes me a little skeptical about the valiant attempt now
underway to unwind decades of mainstream media journalistic bias by
management FIAT. While news organizations are in many ways top
down institutions, newsroom editors, exercise and autocracy quite rare in

(24:15):
other fields, in reality, they are bottom up, their product
shaped by those who wield the digital pens. That American
media is now going through a revolution is not in
doubt for those of us who have spent decades railing
at and occasionally even trying to redress the imbalance. These

(24:38):
should be exhilarating times. The appointment of Barrywise as editor
in chief of CBS News and the network parent company
Pricey acquisition of her Free Press media project is a
welcome change, so to was Jeff Bezos's attempt to reorientation
of the Washington Post editorial page to a.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
More pro American tilt.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
Similar efforts are underway in other news media, but neither
Wise nor any of the people involved in the other
efforts are right wing propagandists. For the most part, they
are thoughtful and honest journalists intent on restoring high standards
and pushing the pendulum back a little toward the plumb line.
But the sheer horizontal and vertical reach of the progressive

(25:19):
mindset in the newsrooms. The entrenched nature of their ideological
skill will militate against the successful resetting of their compass.
I used a lot of words here. I'll translate that
into more understandable. They're so lefty, they're so hoity toity,
that it's almost impossible to.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Move them back to reality.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
Baker continues, And there's another concern. If these charges are
mainly the result of opportunistic business leaders eager to curry
favor with a president unusually active in wanting to direct
media coverage, it won't work. In other words, he's saying,
if all this is being done just becau some of
these media executives on a psych up to Trump, it's
not going to work. It's got to be because they

(26:05):
actually want to bring journalism.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Back and get the hackery out back to the column.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
There is enough cynicism in the news as it is.
If the objections of if the objective of reforming newsrooms
is perceived as simply reshaping them into outlets favorably disposed
to Trump, it will only calcify the mistrust people already have.
It isn't true that trust in the media has simply
collapsed across the board. Instead, it has become partisan. Consumers

(26:31):
trust only what they already believe. Without structural change, a
repopulation of the demographically educationally geographically sealed units, these places
have become real, change is improbable. That change is harder
still in organizations rooted in all forms of pre digital

(26:51):
content delivery, changing form and content at the same time
as Herculean, let me interject, I've talked forever about this
following point.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
The people who scream.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
The most for diversity, diversity, diversity never believe in ideological diversity.
True diversity means that you have people whose thoughts come
from across the spectrum. They have no particular desire to
have lots of conservatives running American universities and lots of
conservatives in new zooms, or for that matter, lots of

(27:22):
conservatives and government.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
They don't want that kind of diversity. So that's the
entire problem.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
They don't want the very thing that Baker is saying
they need to go back.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
To in order to survive.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
He concludes his column, Still, we should wish them luck,
and by we, I don't mean only conservatives. I mean
everyone who has an interest in fair, honest, and objective
news and information as the means by which people are
informed about their government and the way they hold the
powerful accountable. You're listening to the Mark Belling podcast. This

(28:02):
is the Mark Belling Podcast. In the last segment, I
shared a column from The Wall Street Journal by Gerard
Baker in which he talked about the challenges that are
going to face anybody who owns a news media organization
and trying to reorient it back toward actual journalistic fairness.
The following topics related to this. Part of the problem

(28:23):
is that, aside from the fact that they've been biased
to the left forever, Trump has made some people in
this country crazy. They have turned Trump into this caricature
in which the very sight of Trump has made them
lose their marbles. Well, this is clearly what's going on

(28:46):
with the media, but it's not limited to the media.
We have several stories here that are broadly from this
area of Trump derangement syndrome, although a couple of them
don't specifically deal with Trump.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Here's this one.

Speaker 4 (28:58):
Stories from Massas they were in adjacent to one of
the No King's rallies, some Trump supporter dressed himself up
as like one of those inflatables.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
You know what an inflatable is, don't you. It's like
it's like this big bubble thing.

Speaker 4 (29:15):
And he dressed himself up as Trump and he's in
this inflatable and he's got like a mouthpiece that it
came on, and we's saying pro Trump things and he's
doing this next to the No Kegs rally. It's the
kind of thing that lefties have done forever. When you
see conservatives around, some left he goes and beats the
crap on him. He's in an inflatable and he beats
him up, beats him up.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
He of course has been caught. Now.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
One of the things that's been happening is, given the
fact that there's no cameras everywhere, pretty much anything that
anyone does is being caught. And secondly, given know that
there are some conservatives and position of authority, you can't
just automatically assume you're gonna get away with it anymore.
Let me quote from Fox News. A Massachusetts man has
been charged after alleged the assaulting a supporter of President

(30:01):
Trump who was wearing an inflatable costume of the president
at a political protest over the weekend.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Police said this.

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Occurred on King's Beach in the North Shore, Massachusetts town
of Swampscott, just outside Boston. This is probably I don't
know any about the city, but I'm guessing this is
like Shorewood on steroids.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
It's one of those type of places.

Speaker 4 (30:23):
Cell Phone video captured the moment that Michael Curly I
think that that's the correct pronunciation.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
It maybe curl see. Yeah, I think it's cu rll thirty.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
Six ran up behind the man in costume identified as
Jonathan Silvera, and allegedly kicked.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
And tackled him from behind. Silvera's girlfriend.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
So the guy who's in the inflatable he brings his
girlfriend a log. Now some people are gonna say, well,
he was asking for it. Well, I think he was
trying to trigger them and they took the bait. I
don't think he thought they'd have the crap kicked out
of him. Silvera's girlfriend, Angelo Masariegos, was behind the camera

(31:05):
during the alleged assault. Silvera, who held an American flag
well dressed in the inflatable suit, told Boston twenty five
News he simply wanted to go. He wanted to get
Trump out there and show that he has support. I
love Donald Trump. Swamp Scott Police said Curl hooked Silvera's
legs and wrapped his arms around his neck, knocking him

(31:27):
to the pavement, according to a police report of Pained
by Boston twenty five.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's a TV stage, don't it. That's my first story.
Here's another one.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
This one doesn't directly relate to Trump, but it's along
these lines we've talked.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
A little bit.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
There's two states that have governor's races this year. Almost
all states have their governor's elections, like Wisconsin does in
even number years. There's a couple of states that do
it in odd number years. There's an election going on
in New Jersey and there's an election going on in Virginia.
In Virginia, the current incumbent Governor Youngkin, he's term limited out.

(32:06):
Virginia is a Democratic state. Youngkin somehow won. The Republicans
are trying to hold the seat. Youngkin's Lieutenant Governor Winsome
Earl Searles, who is black, is the Republican candidate. She's
trailed in the race, but she's gained. She's very conservative
and she's very eloquent.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
All right.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
James Madison University football game James Addison is a very
good team. If you're not aware that level. Winston, Earl Winston,
Earl Sears was at the game campaigny, you know, shaking
hands to with you.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Know, supporters and so on.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
Some guy starts yelling at it. I remember she's a
black woman, thirty six. She's also originally from Haiti. Take
a guess what he yelled at her. Say a guess,
real simple, No, you go beyond the end word. It's
just the kind of thing that you in the past
they always would accuse of a.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Conservative of doing.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
When a conservative racist conservative was triggered, he said.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Go back to Haiti. He's captured on video doing it.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
The guy has a big time job at Lockheed Martin,
the big defense contractor.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
He's been fired.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
One of the things that's been happening now, and it's
a good thing, is that it isn't only conservatives who
are getting in trouble for this stuff. When it starts
happening to lefties as well as conservatives. You may get
some lefties who will come back and say, what about
Fraisbach and who is really harmed and shod this, We're

(33:46):
ruined your career and so on. But we saw what
happened to a woman who worked for manpower and a
high powered job who said something I think far less
racist somebody call is nowhere near as racist as go
back to Haiti. If the left is now going to

(34:10):
be on the receiving end of the you're ruining your career.
You're ruining your life the way we conservatives have forever.
At least the playing field has leveled him lit cellf Ohonte,
which gets back to this point with regard to the
guy yelling this go back. I mean, most conservatives who
have any kind of position of status in life would
certainly know that you can't yell anything like that to

(34:30):
a person who is black. The LEFTI have probably never
dawn on it because of this sense of a titlement
that they could be as racist and horrible, as monstrous
as they want because they're never held to account for anything.
That's what's changing the next story. You want to find
a story in the news that is triggering the lefties,

(34:50):
I'm telling you they are beside themselves about the Trump ballroom.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
They're just beside it.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
If I had no position in whether or not we
needed to improve the b at the White House, I
would be in favor of it just because it's driving
the left he's crazy.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
First of all, they're.

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Acting as though Trump's gonna take it with him when
he leaves. Trump can only live there for three years
in four more months. Secondly, it has been talked about
forever and ever and ever by both sides that when
the White House hosts Stave ginners, it's almost hardly anybody
can get an invitation because the banquet room or the
ballroom at the White House is tiny. It's been talked

(35:29):
about forever that we can't hold these large things that
you can, for example, have an arts celebration, and you
can't feed a large group of people because the White.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
House is a small ballroom.

Speaker 4 (35:44):
David Marcus is a columnist for Fox News, writes a
piece on this, and the point that his piece is
that the White House has been renovated and had things
added to it forever by presidents, and always the presidents
who were doing it is.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Because it was something that they wanted to do.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
As in the case of Trump, this is something that
will live long beyond him. Paul says, Obama's basketball court,
that's one of them. There's numerous of these in which
presidents have put something in the White House because it
was something that they wanted to do, and there wasn't
a peep of objection.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
From anyone over this. Let me quote his piece.

Speaker 4 (36:21):
By the way, apparently this is not surprising to be
but among the people most appalled by this are the
Battle Axis from the View again, I wouldn't even just
this is just again, whether or not we need to
have the new ballroom or not, the fact that this
is driving those old women crazy that makes me happy
that they're doing it.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
I just the Democrats or socialists or whatever they are.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
These days, are hoping. This is David Marcus. And by
the way, that's the name of someone from here in Milwaukee.
That's not who this is. This is a national commentator
who writes for Fox News. Shouldn't have to point that
out in the common name. But I will our hopping
mat over President Donald Trump's construction of a ballroom in
the East wing of.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
The White House.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
And while it may be the silliest freak out of
the entire Trump era, it is also quite telling. The
ladies on ABC's The View were apoplectic when they saw
images of demolition a fairly ordinary way to begin renovation
at sixteen hundred of the saw this, and you know
they're knockings. Well, how else do you do a renovation
other than knocking down what's already in there. Anybody who's

(37:21):
ever got a new bathroom or a kitchen and their
house realizes they bust up the thing that's already in there. Right,
I'm guessing you get that. Every three years you renovate
something out there in the see you just finish. Say,
That's what I'm saying back to the piece.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
What makes this? Oh?

Speaker 4 (37:38):
They echoed one time Resident Hillary Clinton's complained another person.
You know why Hillary's hacked off about this? She's she
thinks she should be have been in that White House
for eight years. She still can't stand the fact that
she lost. Can you imagine if she got in with
that ball room would look like? Bill wasn't focused on ballrooms.
Bill was focused on Hell it's too easy. It was

(38:00):
a play on words.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
It's two.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
You can figure it out. I'm on a podcast, I'm
not allowed to do anything I want. I still can't
bring myself to do anything I want anyway. What makes
this argument so absurd is that Trump is not building
this ballroom for his personal.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Use or glory. It's not a vanity project.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
It is a long considered addition to the executive home
that lacked the capacity to hold large indoor events. Trump,
as has always been his want, is looking to create grandeur,
and that seems to be something to which leftists reflexively object.
I think that Marcus is on to a point here.
The Trump want says to be beautiful and great and grand,

(38:45):
and lefties hate anything that in America is beautiful, great
and grand.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
I have a post by the way on X it
was picture Paul said me.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
I've been talking for some time about how brutally ugly
the new Milwaukee Public muse which isn't going to be
called the new Public Public Museum is. They're building this
thing just to the north of viceer Form, and it's
so unbelievably terribly ugly, and it's in the process of
going up, so you now see more of the exterior
there and just go take a look at it.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
That's what lefties want.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
They want to spend a fortune to do something that's
so but ugly that you can't stand looking at it,
and then claim that they're on the cutting edge. The
idea of doing something great and beautiful which is you know,
Trump's ballroom is going to be gorgeous. Everything Trump does
is high end. It's the thing that he's put his
name on. He wants the legacy to have created a
beautiful ballroom and left he just can't stand they don't

(39:39):
want a beautiful ballroom, especially as long as Trump is
in the White House. The funny thing about this is
the timeline on this is that it's going to be
fully done about in time for the next president to
come in. I'm guessing if they finish this thing and
AOC gets herself elected, she's not going to close the
ballroom down.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
She'll be basket around in that thing and imagine.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Trump is obviously not the first president to renovate the
White House. President Franklin Dello Roosevelt put in a swimming pool.
His successor, President Harry Truman, practically gutted the place to
add a balcony. President Richard Nixon covered the swimming pool
but added a bowling alley. No, I think that's worse
than Trump's ball room. Nixon put in a bowling alley

(40:25):
and took the swimming pool out in order to do it.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
It doesn't attack I'm just saying I know.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
I'm guessing they bitched about that back then because Nixon
was hated. You know, Nixon was actually hated a little
bit more than Reagan, and Reagan was despised Trump. Trump's
all of that simply because the level of hatred that
left has is greater than anything any venom that they
could have hit.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Pretty Nixon put it. It continues here.

Speaker 4 (40:50):
Finally, President Barack Obama transformed the tennis court into a
basketball court.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Bomb didn't want to play tennis. He wanted to put it.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
And why did Obama put it in a back because he
wanted to play basketball.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Trump isn't doing any.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Of this so he can go do a specific thing.
He believes that the White House, the home of the
government of the United States, should have a grand room
for this. That's his belief and he's never hidden his
beliefs about American greatness and standards and all.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
Of this stuff continuing.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
In fact, I'm not even gonna continue with Marcus's column
because he makes points that I think are fairly obvious.
But the fact that this triggers the Left just shows
how you're rational.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
They've gotten.

Speaker 4 (41:30):
Now, you could raise questions about the funding for this,
but it is privately generated, so it's not like when
the government is shut down, we're spending cas payer money
on this. They just don't like the fact that he's
doing it. Continuing, here's that other story.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Forever and ever and ever, the left has tried to
call those of us on the right Nazis.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
They've kind of changed the word now to call us fascists.
I believe it's because they have gradually moved toward.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Essentially thinking like the Nazis.

Speaker 4 (42:03):
Much of the left hates Jews every bit as much
as the Nazis did. Hitler was a socialist. The name
of the party was something nationalists American Socialist Party. Socialist
was in the party's name, their identification, their demand for
state control, their demand that everyone follow orders and do

(42:25):
things that the way that they want, their loathing of
the Jews. It's all Hitler esque, which brings ourselves to
a candidate who's running for governor of Maine. His name
is Graham Plattner. He's running for the governorship of Maine,
and he's being endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He has on
his arm a Nazi tattoo, and he's had it on

(42:47):
for years now that this story is out there. Bertie
Sanders refuses to repudiate his endorsement. The guy is an
open critic of Israel, as is Bernie Sanders, quoting from
an editorial on this in the Wall Street Journal. And
there was a publication called The Jewish Insider that broke
the story. Platner said, I am not a secret Nazi.

(43:14):
He confirmed that the tattoo, but said he got it
while drunk in Croatia in two thousand and seven and
didn't know what it meant for some two decades. But
on Wednesday he said he finally had it covered up
with a new image. But an acquaintance of Platner told
The Jewish Insider news side that the candidate explained the
tattoo's Nazi connection to him in a cutesy little way

(43:36):
at Capitol Hill bar in twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
So, well, this new thing, I didn't know what it was.
Give me a break. Who does it not?

Speaker 4 (43:42):
Especially lefties who doesn't know what Nazi symbols look like.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
But is this buddy said?

Speaker 4 (43:47):
In twenty twelve, he fessed up and while drinking he
told him what it meant.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
That's thirteen years ago. He said, Oh, this is my totenkoff.
I didn't even know what that word means. But then'
that sound good. All German words sound good, don't they
toutn Koff, problen Koff.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
It just sounds like something that would be a fan
well part because of the whole Nazi thing. All German
words sound offensive because of the German anyway, this is
my totenkoff. That's German for the deathhead symbol of the
SS unit that ran the concentration camps.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
I let didn't know.

Speaker 4 (44:21):
The totenkov is the deathhead symbol which the SS used.
And this guy tells his friend that's my totenkov. He's
bragging that he's got in his arms something that is
a symbol of the Nazi SS. And it was the
SS that ran the concentration camps for the Holocaust occurred.
So this guy's coming out and saying he told me

(44:41):
this thirteen years ago. Also not buying Plattner's excuse is
his former political director. His political director has quit now
that he found out about this, who resigned last week.
Graham has an anti Semitic tattoo on his chest. He's
not an idiot, He's a military history buff.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
She wrote.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
We cannot be this painfully stupid, she said, referring to
her fellow Democrats The Wall Street Journal, Oh yes they can.
On Tuesday, Plattner's key supporter, Senator Bernie Sanders, tried to
duck the question. Here's Bertie said, it's easy to do
a Bernie Sanders imitation. They're all bad because all you
have to do is like lower your voice. She's got
that stupid, pompous they ever gonna eat boys that he has.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
Ron worried about.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
It's fifty thousand American mcde Unnecessarah Lea and are worried
about a tattoo. Suddenly Bernie Sanders says, why are you
looking a big deal about a tattoo? All the Lefteris
have ever cared is about symbolism like this. These are
the people that claim they you know, they claim they
were Nazis.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
And Charlott's swell at all of this. It's the thing
that they've.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
Carried on about forever and ever and ever. I actually
hope this guy stays in the race. I hope he
becomes the main Democratic candidate. Hope Tammy Balden and all
the others of them endorse.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Just so we know.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
Again, this isn't all Trump arrangements syndrome, but broadly speaking,
they've all lost their minds, and I think that the
presence of Trump is fueled this insanity. I want to
cover a story here about a week ago, not sure
exactly the timing. On the podcast, I did a brief

(46:16):
segment on what I think is the crashing of the
subprime loan market. In auto loans, subprime is not credit worthy,
in other words, high interest rates loans that are made
to people who don't have very good credit. Often you
make these loans because you can repossess the car, so

(46:38):
you get something back, and you try not to be
upside out about it, and so on. Several companies, however, recently,
have gone bankrupt. The take that not only I'm not
unique in this, many people have the same take that
the reason they're going bankrupt isn't just because of the
economy slowing, it's because of the deportations. That a huge

(46:58):
segment of these loans being made to illegal immigrants. I
can tell you just from scuttle but that I've heard
that virtually all illegals who buy cars are financing them.
Very few cash buyers easy to figure out why right, Well,
if I am deported, how are they gonna got that
and not gonna keep paying my ky loan. When I

(47:23):
brought that segment up, I said, there's a stock of
the stock market that I felt was extremely overvalued. I
didn't want to mention the name of the company on
the air because I didn't want to suggest that somebody
short the stock. And I said, I think it's a very,
very stupid thing to short a stock that's going up.

(47:44):
You can lose an infinite amount of money, literally an
infinite amount of money. But it's a company that does
a lot of business on the low end. The stock
price is done nothing but explode over the last several years.
Finally the stock hit a crack this past week, fell

(48:08):
thirteen percent in one day, and it was because they
were linked to this whole problem of delinquencies in subprime loans.
I'm not suggesting that anybody short the stock. I would
never do that. It's an extremely risky thing to do.
But I do wonder about the company. It's Carvana. Carvana
is one of the biggest car sellers in the world.

(48:30):
They advertise aggressively and their market base is to go
after kind of the lower the lower middle part of
the market, and if you look at their financials, they'd
carry a lot of paper and very few of their
purchase their sales are to cash buyers and so on. Again,
I'm not suggesting anybody short the stock, and maybe Carvan
is going to be just fine, but there are no

(48:50):
some analysts who are taking the pe on that stock
is eighty one and they're in an area right now
of the economy.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Thanks very and.

Speaker 4 (48:59):
I think you know, the importation thing has a lot
of components to it. They were going to be meant,
if we continue to have a significant number of people
who are illegal deported, there are going to be ramifications
in the parts of the economy where those illegal immigrants
were economically active, and the car market might be one

(49:19):
of them. But certainly a company who's we met one
of the companies that went bankrupt a couple of weeks ago.
I mentioned the company's logo. Company is called Tricolor. The
company's logo was almost exact same thing as the Mexican flag.
They were not hiding who it was that they were
marketing to. Well, as many of these individuals are booted
out of the country, so much for their repayment of

(49:42):
any types of loans. It is an economic story to
keep an eye on. And finally, this the World Series
starts Friday night. I mean, I think the Dodgers are
going to win. But what's the point of saying that,
Because everybody thinks the Dodgers are going to win. Maybe
they will, maybe they want. The one thing they have
going against them is Toronto does home field advantage. There

(50:02):
is a lengthy story in the Wall Street Journal today
about the insane payroll of the Los Angeles Dodgers and
the story Pat Murphy was at the Bucks game and
the season opened it for the Bucks last day. You
gotta you got a larger hand than Chris Middleton got
the second largest head of the night. Yanni's got the
largest head of the night, but number three was Pat

(50:22):
Murphy sitting and the pet vers very popular. Well, there
was a thing in which Pat Murphy was pimping the
Dodgers when they signed Sho Shohai Atani, and it makes
its way out of the Wall Street journalists. They try
to draw attention to the difference between a company like
the Dodgers that spends an insane amount of money on
players at a company like the Brewers. I'm gonna read
the first you progress because it's funny. Two years ago,
the Los Angeles Dodgers spent more than one billion dollars

(50:44):
in the span of a couple of weeks to sign
Shoai Yotani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yamamoto is the Asian marka
pitcher who impact pitched.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
To get well.

Speaker 4 (50:53):
They all shut out the Brewers. Around the same time,
the Milwaukee Brewers responded to the Dodgers largest with am
of their own that received considerable less attention. They signed.
They acquired journeyman catcher Eric Hayes for a million bucks.
One million is what whoor has got cut.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Anyway.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
By the way, do you know how much money Danny
Jansen stands to make next year? The guy that the
Brewers picked up when they cut has twelve million. That's
an option. That option is not going to.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Be picked up.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
This contrast wasn't lost on Pat Murphy, the Brewers newly
hired managers. This was two years ago when Patt had
just been hired, so he fired off a jokey text
message to Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman, Congratulations
to your scouting and player develop making fun of them.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
What great scouts here you found out, Toddy.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
Congratulations to your scouting department and player development group for
turning over.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Every wreck to find these guys.

Speaker 4 (51:55):
Sorry, we had to sign our backup catcher on the
same day to take away your shine. Now, the point
of the story is that the Dodgers have spent an
insane amount of money, and that's why they have Otania,
It's why they have a number of other players. The
caveat to that is there are other teams that spend
almost as much as the Dodgers and have not had
the same.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Successes, say the Brewers.

Speaker 4 (52:18):
The problem with the Dodgers is they not only are
spending more money than everybody else, unlike a lot of
other big money teams, they're spending it wisely, and that,
in my opinion, is why baseball needs a salary cap.
Spending a lot of money is not a guarantee of success,
but if you spend a lot of money wisely, you
are almost guaranteed to be more successful.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Than everyone else.

Speaker 4 (52:43):
So this means people are saying that this means that
everybody should cheer against the Dodgers. The problem is Toronto
is also a top five payroll team. They're also in
an extremely huge market.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
I think the.

Speaker 4 (52:53):
Dodgers were not the best team all year, but the
best team right now. Given the fact that they knocked
out the Brewers, I would mind them seeing them not
go Toronto, But there is that whole issue with regard
to the payroll. This is the Mark Belling Podcast. This
is the Mark Belling Podcast, and it's time for our
weekly football preview and some point spread picks. I'm looking

(53:15):
forward for a change to the point spread picks because
I'm having a really good year. But before we get
to that, we're going to preview some football games this weekend.
I'm joined by Mike burletta of American Sports Analysts in Madison.
Asawins dot com is their website. Mike, good afternoon and
a good day, I guess, and tell us what's going
on this weekend at ASA.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Well, we had just to be upfront.

Speaker 4 (53:38):
We did.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
We had a poor college outing last weekend and okay,
NFL we broke about even last week and we won
a six star in an NFL and lost a six
star in college. Kind of split out in the big games.
Not one hundred percent sure what's going on this week,
and I would just visit our site tomorrow, take a look,
see what we've got. We'll have a weekend package up
in big game packages up to move.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
Okay, let's start talking about college football first, and this
week I pulled out two games that are really similar.
They're both from the SEC. All four teams involved have
a record of six and one on the season, and
in the cases of I don't know two or three
of them, they're not the kinds of teams that you

(54:21):
think of as being national powers, but all four of
them are ranked. The first game I want to talk
about is Mississippi and Oklahoma. Oklahoma has a very good defense. Mississippi,
since Lane Kiffin has gotten there, seems to be one
notch below the very top tier of the SEC, which
is the very top tier of college football. Mississippi has

(54:44):
a very good offense. As usual, this year, they play Oklahoma,
whose defense is very good. Your thoughts on the game.

Speaker 2 (54:52):
Yeah, Oklahoma is a five point favorite in that game
at home, and you kind of hit it on the head.
It's going to come down to old. Missus offense is
really good. They're average thirty seven points per game, but
they haven't played a defense quite like Oklahoma. Yet the
best defense Old Missus played is LSU and they scored
twenty four points in that game. Last week, they did

(55:13):
score thirty five points in a loss against Georgia, but
only had three hundred and fifty total yards. Can they
bounce back the way they lost last week? They were
up nine in the fourth quarter and got out scored
seventeen to zero against Georgia. You mentioned Oklahoma.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
I believe that game was at Georgia, correct, it was.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
And this game's on the road too, so they have
to go from Georgia to Oklahoma, which is that's daunting,
but that's what the SEC is, I guess is the
Badger's going to test. That's also what the Big Ten
is anyway.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
And you mentioned their defense. For people that don't follow
it close, Oklahoma's got the best defense in the country.
They give up two hundred and thirteen yards per game,
they're number one in yards per play allowed, and they
give up nine points per game. Ohio State's the only
better defense when it comes to scoring. In seven games
this Yearklahoma's allowed five offensive touchdowns in seven games. It's

(56:04):
going to be an interesting battle to see, which you know,
Ole miss offense as good as we think, or is
Oklahoma's defense as good as we think? We'll see how
it plays out, but Oklahoma is a five point favorite in.

Speaker 4 (56:15):
This Oklahoma has really transformed its program. They had the
really high powered rocket offense, and then their coach went
off to USC and they hired the defensive coordinator I
believe from Clemson, and the offense at Oklahoma isn't that good,
but he's brought in an extremely good defense. So the
Oklahoma program has pulled off the feet of just completely

(56:37):
reinventing itself and making it work.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
That's not always easy to do, but they seem to be.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
They seem to be back as I say that both
teams are six and one, No, that's all together, that's
not just the conference seems to be evenly matched.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
I wonder if the.

Speaker 4 (56:51):
Game is at Mississippi, if maybe Mississippi would be favored.
Very similar game, although maybe more interest than given the
teams involved. Zuri at Vanderbilt, I'll admit I felt for
years Vanderbilt needed to drop out of the SEC. To me,
they're like Northwestern is in the Big Ten. It's very
hard for a program like that to compete against its

(57:15):
private school high academic school doesn't have as huge an
alumni base because the enrollment isn't as large, and they've
been overmatched in most sports forever and ever and ever,
and in football they were almost always finishing last. Somehow
the current coach has turned that program around. They're very good.

(57:35):
If you would have told me five years ago that
Vanderbilt would be ranked tenth in the country at any point,
I'd say it havef to be forty years down the
line where something would have to be have to be
incredibly different. But they're six and one. They ranked tenth
in the country. They play Missouri, a team that joined
the SEC a few years ago, I think, also a
team that you think would be up against it when

(57:57):
they were in the Big I guess the Big Eight
at the time, they weren't that good, but they're now
a dominant power in the SEC as well.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
Two teams that have sort of emerged.

Speaker 4 (58:08):
And there's still a lot of season left and they
can take losses, but both teams appear to be very,
very good, and I think in both instances you have
to credit coaches who've come in and excelled at programs.
Ritzman hard to excel, especially Vanderbilt where there's just no
history of it at all.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah, I mean zero history. They showed some signs last year.
Mark they had some.

Speaker 4 (58:29):
They did, they did, they were It never happens all
at once, but they showed improvement last year and now
this year they're.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
The top ten.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
Yeah. And to put in perspective their situation. So they
were favored last week against LSU by one and a half,
they won the game by seven. It's the first time
they were favored against LSU since nineteen forty eight, my goodness,
and they won that game. And to put it even
in more perspectives, so they're favored this week again. They're

(58:59):
faired by two and a half against Missouri. Going into
last week, the last time Vanderbilt was favored in an
SEC game was twenty eighteen. They had gone fifty one
straight conference games as an underdog until last week. And
now they're favored and back to back weeks. How do
they handle the expectations now they have the target on
their back. They're favored back to back weeks. ESPN game days.

(59:22):
There there's more distractions. They are in the better situation.
All that being said, here, they had a bye week
entering last week So now they're home. Back to back
after a bye, Missouri played on the road at Auburn
won in double overtime twenty three to seventeen. A week earlier,
another game down to the wire for Missouri against Alabama.
They lost by three. They're on the road again. Now

(59:44):
it's a tough spot for Missouri. But we'll see how
Vandy handles expectations now. They're in a different role now
this weekend, I'll tell a lot about.

Speaker 3 (59:54):
The they are.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
And I'm not sure. I really am not sure who
the better team is. Vanderbilt's favored, but I think that's
because they're at home again.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Just like the other game.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
I think if this game was at Missouri, Missouri would
probably be favored.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
Let's turn our attention to the NFL.

Speaker 4 (01:00:09):
The Packers play the Steelers, and the obvious storyline is
Aaron Rodgers face is Green Bay, but there are other
ones as well. I mean, the Steelers are always pretty good,
but they're coming off of a terrible loss. I mean,
for people who think that the Packers were unconvincing when
they played Cincinnati, Pittsburgh had a very very difficult time

(01:00:32):
and effect.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
Lost to them as well.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
The Steelers' offense both sides of the ball with Pittsburgh
seems to be inconsistent. My problem with the Packers is, well,
they're for to one and one, which is a first place.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
Record in the eye test.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
They still ever since the first two weeks of the season,
since we've gotten past those two games, they haven't looked
to me to be that impressive, even though they keep
winning the games at Pittsburgh, the Packers are favorite on
the road by about three. Tough game to figure out.
What are your thoughts on it?

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
Yeah, you mentioned the Packers just the eye test. I
agree with you. After the first two games Detroit Washington,
you know, most people thought, well, that looks the Packers
look like maybe the best team in the NFL, and
just spread wise, they've been overvalued. They haven't covered since
those first two games. They're zero and four against the
spread their last four games, losing by about six points

(01:01:22):
a game to the spread. Pittsburgh is not as good
as their record right now. They're four and two. They
are ranked twenty fifth or lower in both total offense
and total defense. They're getting out gained by almost eighty
yards per game. They found a way to be four
and two. The one thing couple spread things here, Mark
the one thing about Pittsburgh. They're one of the best

(01:01:45):
home underdog teams period in the NFL, and this has
been for a long time. They're four and one against
the spread since the start of last season as a
home underdog. If you go back to two thousand, they're
twenty five and nine against the spread as a home underdog.
Green Bay as a road favorite since twenty twenty two
is four and ten against the spread, and Jordan loves

(01:02:05):
since he started as a road favorite two and seven
against the spread. It's a better situation for Pittsburgh, right.
They have ten days off after their dad loss to Cincinnati.
Green Bay had the travel problems last week, got to
Arizona late, could have lost that game. Now they're on
the road again. Yeah, I think it's a dangerous game
for the Packers, and I don't think the Pittsburgh is

(01:02:26):
all that good. I think the situation favores Pittsburgh here.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
The other game that I pulled out this week is
I just think it's a really interesting game. It's Dallas
and Denver. The coach I think might have, especially when healthy,
the best offense in the NFL, and the worst defense.
Denver has a very very good defense, and their offense
last week was atrocious the first three quarters, and then

(01:02:53):
on the fourth quarter they scored thirty three points in
one quarter to come from behind, one of the biggest
comebacks in NFL history. So curious team, But clearly I
think you can say that the strength of Denver is
their defense, and the strength of the Cowboys is the offense.
And Dallas's defense is their incredible weakness. Usually, when a
good offense faces a good defense, you have to side

(01:03:15):
with the defense.

Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
What do you think about this game?

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Yeah, I mean, you hit it right on the head
with Dall they ranked number one in total offense and
last in total defense. That's just the number of straight numbers.
They're first into offense, last in defense.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
I have to also think that based on just six
weeks of this, the Packers got the better of the
Parsons trade. Now, admittedly the Packers gave up draft choices,
then you have to valuate over the long haul, but
Dallas clearly needs Parsons, and I think Green Bay would
be lost without him. I mean, it wasn't a straight
up trade of Parsons for Kenny Clark, but at least
in terms of this year on the field. It is

(01:03:51):
the other parts. The draft choices are in the future.
But Dallas's defense having lost Parsons is just they give
up a ton of points. But I'm just I make
their offense they have just they're nothing but all pro
receivers and they're helping Dak Prescott to get into the
MVP talk just because he's got such great receivers out there,

(01:04:13):
and not a bad running game either.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Anyway, Yeah, they're games. This year. Dallas games are averaging
sixty one total points per game, which is highest in
the NFL. They're averaging seven touchdowns combined per game, number
one in the NFL, and they're averaging almost eight hundred
totally yards per game, most in the NFL. Those are
just Dallas games. The Denver game we talked about last week,

(01:04:36):
Denver scored twenty five points in the last five minutes
and twenty seconds of the game last week to win,
come back and win. They only led the game for
a minute the whole game and they ended up winning
thirty three to thirty two. To put that in perspective,
and you may have heard this, this is not my
stat I found this stat over the last sixteen hundred

(01:04:58):
games where team in the NFL led by eighteen or
more with less than sixteen with less than six minutes
to go, those teams were sixteen hundred and zero.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Oh my goodness, that's surprise.

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):
Now in college, I know that's not the case because
there's been lots of wild comebacks in college.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
Yeah, And that he didn't say thirty eight point lead.
I think you said it was an eighteen point.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Lead, eighteen or more with less than six minutes to
go in the game. Those teams have won sixteen hundred.

Speaker 4 (01:05:27):
And the key is it's not seventeen, it's eighteen, meaning
it's a three. It's three scores that you have to
come up with, and three scores and probably three touchdowns
unless you get a two point conversion or something in there.
So eighteen becomes a hard number just in terms of
having the time available. It requires, well, it requires two things.
It requires the other team to play a great game

(01:05:48):
to that point, to be une by as much as
they were, and then a total meltdown. And if any
team was capable of that, it's been the Giants who've
been pulling this for the last two or three years.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Yes, that is true. This is gonna be a great game, Dad,
Like you said, Denver's offense Dallas defense the total open
forty seven and a half and moved up to fifty
and a half, So that might be that might be
telling people are thinking, people that know what they're doing
think it's going to be a high scoring game. And
I don't disagree.

Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
Yeah, and I don't think anybody can stop Dallas, but
I'm not sure that they're going to win the game,
which certainly implies a high scoring game. Okay, time to
get to some pointspread selections. Mike has made a tremendous
recovery after his disgraceful startup zero to five. You've done
everything that you can since then to make that record better,
which is win three games in a row.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
In fact, looking at our.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
Picks last week, my three favorite games pro in college
for combined for the three that were picked on this show.
My own pick obviously was my favorite, Mike's pick was
a second, and Paul's pick, which lost, was my third
favorite pick. Anyway, recapping the picks from all of us,
I took the Bears to beat the Saints by more
than four and a half, and they won by twelve,
twenty six to fourteen, Mike went against Wisconsin, laying twenty

(01:06:58):
five and a half Ohio State. Wisconsin's defense played very
good and their offense again was non existent. Ohio State
won thirty four to nothing, So that was a win.
And Paul took the Bikings one and a half point
underdog over the Eagles, and that was a loser.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
On twenty two to twenty eight.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
So Paul's at two and six, Mics improving up to
three and five, and I'm sail.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
Along at six and two. But all of that is history.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
What have you done for me lately? Well, we're gonna
find out right now, Paul, you get to go first.
Paul says he can't pick his nose. I, as I said,
I kind of liked I did like your pick last week,
but it was mostly I don't know what to think
of Philadelphia right now. I just one week they look terrible,
one week they look good, very inconsistent. The Bikings I

(01:07:40):
just think are an average team with average quarterbacks. But
Philadelphia surprised me and bouncing back in there. Anyway, what
do you want to go with, Paul? You're going to
go to a college game. You were just see that
you're in just desperate straits right now, you're giving up
on the NFL, that you're going to college. He's going
to go to George Case stands around and go to
the opposite All right, what game were you asking about?

(01:08:03):
Wisconsin and Oregon? The game is at Oregon, Wisconsin completing
this brutal schedule streak that they've been in. He wants
the over under in the Wisconsin Oregon game.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Oh and the point spread.

Speaker 4 (01:08:15):
Current point spread is thirty three and a half Oregon,
and the total is forty three and a half. You've
got one of those situations in which a big spread
and a low total, meaning the odds makers think that
the underdog isn't going to score much. And it's not
surprising Wisconsin is not sword in two games in a row.
Those are the lines, though, forty three and a half
and thirty one and a half. Thirty one and a

(01:08:39):
half for the point spread and the total.

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
Let me go check it again. Now you got me
mixed up.

Speaker 4 (01:08:45):
I think it was forty three and a half, but
I want to make sure I'm correct.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Paul says, he knows what I've It is forty three
and a half. Portland. He's saying Portland. You know, so Littois,
you mean Oregon Portland.

Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
First of all, Portland is a city, it's not the
name of Well, there is a university called Portland, but
I think they only play basketball. Secondly, the University of
Oregon is not in Portland. It's it's in kind of
like a suburb. It's in the metro area. I believe
is you're taking Oregon, is that what you're saying, that's
one will be the one that you're probably right there.
So you can't even spit out your pick other than

(01:09:27):
Wisconsin can't score. Is there any insight you want to
bring to us on this? They are ranked sixth in
the country. Their only loss is to another really interesting team, Indiana,
who beat them.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):
Indiana is just.

Speaker 4 (01:09:42):
There's just a lot of I talked about Vanderbilt. Indiana
is the other just shocking team about how good they are.
That was their one loss. You're right, Pauls's the players
look like they may have given up. I actually thought
they'd give up against Ohio State, and they didn't. I
thought they as hard as they could, especially on defense,

(01:10:02):
and it still still didn't do any good. So that's
Paul's pick before we get a reaction from Mike on
that game. It's my game as well, and I have
the exact same pick. I'm taking Oregon. There are four
games that I like this weekend and two that I
like almost equally, and I'm gonna mention when I'm not
taking even though it just there's a problem with the points.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Spread on it.

Speaker 4 (01:10:24):
I really think Atlanta is gonna bomb Miami and this
is going to be the week that McDaniel gets fired
as the coach of the Dolphins. The problem that I
have is that the spread is seven and a half
and not seven. I hate three and a half and
I hate seven and a half. I actually think Atlanta
can win the game buy better than two touchdowns. Miami
is an absolute mess. You talk about a team that's

(01:10:46):
quit their best player. Tyreek Hill is out forever. The
quarterback is banged up and not playing very well, the
players are tired of the weirdo coach. And Atlanta is
one of the best two or three defenses in the league.
They're only three and three, but their defense is really good.
But I'm not taking that. I'm just going to go
back to the Badger game and just use basic logic here.

(01:11:08):
I think you have another week in which Wisconsin, with
no matter who the quarterback is going to be, if
it's going to be the third string of the second stringer,
they've shown no ability to score whatsoever. Oregon's offense is better,
I think than the Ohio State offense that Wisconsin played
last week. Last week, Wisconsin was at least at home
in Madison. Oregon is at home here. Oregon has a

(01:11:30):
bye next week, so they have nothing to leave on
the table here. And I just think that Wisconsin has
gone through this grinder of playing Iowa and Ohio State
to extremely physical teams, and they were crushed by both
of them. I think that the team, even if it
hasn't mentally quit, has physically just beaten down. And I

(01:11:54):
think that they're going to have no answers for Oregon,
and I fear that it's going to be ugly. It's
more points than you did against Ohio State, but the
game is at Oregon and Wisconsin is another week beaten up.
Wisconsin sustained quite a few injuries last week, with players
nicked all over the place. I don't know how they
keep it within that line. I would actually go over

(01:12:15):
the total because I think Oregon's going to score more
than forty four points because the Wisconsin defense has played valiantly,
but they're beaten up and they have to spend the
entire game on the field because the offense can't move
the ball at all. So I'm going to go and
kind of jump where I normally come in and pick,
because I'm reiterating Paul's pick.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
So rather than well, yeah, has it, Paul and I
are on Portland.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
Actually that's a bad team to be on right now,
given the fact that the Portland basketball team's coach has
been charged by the FBI and in a gambling investigation.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Anyway, let's go.

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
Let's get a quick reaction from Mike on that game.
Unless Mike Cook went against Wisconsin himself last week, that's
not going to be your pick this week, is it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
No, it's not. But I don't disagree with you guys.
I mean, they haven't scored the last two weeks. Oregon
as good as their offenses, they have a.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
Top five defense defense actually better, and you know their
coach is a defensive coach, Lanning.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
I think their defense is better than their offense.

Speaker 4 (01:13:14):
There with Ohio States defense, and I think that the
offense is actually I just the one pause I have
is they show showed a chink in the armor and
losing at home to Indiana and their win over Penn
State is no longer as impressive as it seemed to be.
I just think that Wisconsin's whipped that there and it's

(01:13:35):
a spectacularly good spot for Oregon back home with the
buy next.

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
And they're coming off of.

Speaker 4 (01:13:40):
They killed Rutgers last week, and Rutgers for Rutgers is
better than Wisconsin, I think, And they killed them last
week and they killed them at Rutgers a West Coast
team going to the East. So they have everything going
for them in this situation, and wisconstant, is everything going
against it. I just think there's a distract shit with
is the ax gonna come down? And fickle all of that. Anyway,
let's get a.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
Pick, Mike. Where are we going?

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
Okay, two games? I need the spreads for first one,
I need a total on the Mississippi Oklahoma game that
we just talked about. Fifty is the number one. Fifty.

Speaker 4 (01:14:14):
Yeah, that over under on that game is fifty four
and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
And then let's look at this the just the spread
on the Texas and Mississippi State games one seventy five,
one seventy.

Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
Six, seven. Texas is only favored by seven. I think
the most disappointing offense college football is Texas's offense. And
you can't even put it all. I think on Arch Manning,
he's he hasn't looked terrible. I just think that just
surprising from being a member of the Manning family. He
takes forever to make a decision, the kind of the

(01:14:47):
exact opposite of what Peyton Manning at least was known for.
Arch Manning will sit in the pocket and he he's
aversed a guessing, he's been drilled into him, don't commit turnovers.
But he waits too long with the ball. And but
Mississippi sty it's not very good either. So Texas on
the road favored by seven.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
Mike, let's go at the first game. You talked, I'm
going under fifty four and a half and they'll miss
Oklahoma game.

Speaker 4 (01:15:10):
Yeah, And we discussed that it's a great defense against
a very very good offense in Mississippi, and you're leaning
on the side of the defense by saying under the total.

Speaker 3 (01:15:21):
Give me your reasons why.

Speaker 2 (01:15:22):
Yeah, So we talked about a lot of it. A
couple of things I didn't touch on. If you look
at Mississippi's offense, again, they averaged thirty seven points per game,
but their average defensive team they've faced bring seventy third
in total defense. They played three top fifty defenses this
year and scored twenty four against LSU, twenty four against
Washington State, who is like forty ninth in total defense,

(01:15:45):
and again last week they scored thirty five against Georgia,
but only had three hundred and fifty total yards. That
normally quits the low twenties scoring wise, so they got
a little lucky to get to that point. And you
mentioned it. We didn't talk about much about the offense
for Oklahoma, but they've been held to twenty six points
or less and four of their six FBS games, and

(01:16:07):
the two they did they top twenty six was against
Kent who's one hundred and thirty third in total defense.
In Temple was seventy fifth in total defense, so they
don't have a real explosive offense. I think this is
gonna be a more of a grinder game. Last year
they played in the final scores twenty six to fourteen,
and that's when Ole Miss had a phenomenal offense with
Jackson Dark Again, it was twenty six to fourteen in

(01:16:29):
that game. I think this goes well under fifty four
and a half.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
Paul made it error, which I'll point out.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
There's no reason to point it out other than I
enjoy playing O it's Mississippi, not Mississippi State that they're
they're playing anyway. Okay, that's Mike's pick, and it's an
interesting one. He says the under in Oklahoma and Mississippi
under fifty four and a half. Paul and I both
think Oregon beats Wisconsin by thirty two or more. We'll
be back with another football preview at the end of

(01:16:55):
next Thursday's podcast, and that's it for the weekend.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Talk to you on Monday.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
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(01:17:25):
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