December 16, 2024 • 32 mins
This week on Weekend Warriors, Anish and Tom react to Travis Hunter winning the Heisman trophy, recap the Panthers week 15 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, praise Jalen Coker's rookie season and so much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The holiday season is upon us. That means if you
turn on Hallmark or Lifetime, as my wife does every
night this time of year, you are bound to see
DJ from Full House or Lacey Shaver. I think that's
how you say it.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
In pretty much every movie. I think that's a law. Right.
If they're not in a movie that is made for
TV with a Christmas holiday theme, it is not a
made for TV Christmas holiday movie.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I think that's fair. I think that's there is there
a male version of that.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I think they all look the same, flannel shirt, lives
in the.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Country, scruff, scruff, but not a full beard.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Right, like a maintained scruff.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's it's like the dude who pretends he doesn't comb
his hair, but then really tries hard every morning to
make sure it looks that way.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yes, correct, that's exactly right, good call. Perfect.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And then DJ and Lacy are from the city, and
this dude obviously lives in the country on a farm
of course, probably a small family owned business.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Small family previous tragedy in his past that has caused
him to, you know, lose his faith in the holiday season.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I mean, we could, we could produce this right here
on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We could absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Got me thinking. Though there's also some really good holiday movies,
holiday comedies. And again this isn't a hot take because
I think most people appreciate how this is held up
over the years. But Christmas Vacation is timeless. I don't
(01:43):
care how old you are, I don't care what generation,
gen X, gen Z, millennial boomer, you can appreciate the
hilarity and the lasting power of Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, it just goes to show you what writing combined
with performance does for the ages, right, Like those jokes
work now. The cousin Eddie stuff is funny. Now, if
you saw that for the first time now, you would
fall off your chair. And there are very few, you know,
films that that can make that mark on society over
(02:20):
the course of you know, forty some odd years. And
I'm with you, I you know myself embarrass Lee. We
host every Sunday on Serious Exam and we had this
past Sunday. We had this question for our callers, you know,
what's what's the best Christmas movie and why? And unanimously
everybody said, Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
It's not close.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I don't think it's it's not close. I agree with you,
it's not close, which then kind of led into how
few times people said a Christmas story? Which I thought
was interesting? Okay, how how how few times people said
a wonderful life and some of the others.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
So this this will be possible, hairsay, oh boy, I
can't stand can't stand a Christmas story.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Don't like it? I never did as a kid, as
a grown up, as a teenager, just ever the Red
Rifle BB. I just for whatever reason, I never really
liked Ralphie. It would be on all the time, and
I just thought there were so many better movies. To
be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well that's what I was going to ask you. Is
the reason maybe why you didn't like it is because
TNT ruined it for everybody, and TBS ruined it for
everybody by putting it all a loop for twenty four
straight hours for the last forty five years.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Possibly yeah, possibly yeah, And again, I just don't know
the humor in it. I just don't find it funny.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Hot take listen, I enjoy it. I don't think it's
the best Christmas movie out there. I think that there
are bits of it that are funny, like I love
the little brother and how he's all bundled up and
his arms are sticking straight out and he's he's an
absolute mass. I can totally, I can totally feel for
(04:07):
Ralphie because like my parents would have never let me
had a babie gun for the exact reason.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Well, they were right, number one, they were.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Totally they were totally right. And for the exact reason
why he shot himself in the eye a ten year
old a babie gun. So h So I could relate,
I think, in some ways to that one. But let
me let me, let me push this forward, because this
becomes a hot topic too. What is and is not
(04:36):
a Christmas movie? Is Diehard a Christmas movie? So?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I was searching for Christmas movies on Hulu the other day, Okay,
and shout out to the people who catalog their movies
on Hulu. You know what shows up under Holiday.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Fun die Hard one and two.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Die Hard. I don't know if I saw Diehard two
on there, but die Hard was there in between. I
think one of the t Alan Santa Claus movies and
another polar express type of Christmas movie right in the middle,
as you're scrolling through Diehard and I go, they understood
the assignment.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Absolutely, they know they get it. So I'm gonna give
you two fantastic Christmas movies that get glossed over. One's
recent ones a long time ago. Okay, Okay, let's start
with the one in the past, Scrooged with Bill Murray.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Oh that's a good one. That's a great good one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And if you haven't seen that, no, that's peak Bill Murray.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
That's peak Bill Murray. That's a very good movie.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Brilliant. Yes, it is so so well done. So that
one I love. And then the recent one that I
think is one of the funniest movies I have seen
in a long time is Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn
and Reese Witherspoon.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Really, Okay, that one I haven't seen. I was going
to give you Bad Santa, which I think is hilarious.
Thurman Melman with the sandwiches, Absolutely, Can I make you
a sandwich? Kid? What is it with you and the sandwiches?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
What? Yeah? Hey, what is it? It's a wooden pickle?
Why would you give me a wooden pickle?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Bad Santa? Hilarious. The second one not as great. My
seven year old is really into ELF and I could
watch that over and over. Elf is tremendous. Honestly, Home
Alone one and two I can watch over and over.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Oh, I can too. And you know what, I hear
a lot of people say that Home Alone Too they
think is better than Home Alone one. No, come on,
I've heard that multiple times.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I like them both. I like them both, but I
think Home Alone the first one because the concept was
just more original at the time. Now absolutely, okay, it
happens again, right, but it's still well done, same ideas,
same blueprint, same architectural structure in terms of the movie plot.
But the first one, and again you know the fact
they got Joe Peshy, they got Daniel to do that.
(07:08):
Who plays the mom great actress to Catherine O'Hara, I
mean to me, like you get those characters in the movie.
Props to John Hughes.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Totally absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
All right, before we move on to Heisman Portal and Panthers. Uh,
there was one movie we watched, the other night holiday movie,
Christmas movie if you want to call it that. It
was called The Night Before. Have you seen that one.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
With Seth Yes, very good very good.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Sneaky good cameo by Miley Cyrus in there as well.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Have you seen Office Christmas Party?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I have, also very good. That was the one with
Jennifer Aniston.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, Jason Bateman.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Speaking of which, So we've got an office Christmas party tonight.
Those always feel like a lose lose proposition, right, absolutely,
like there's very little upside to office holiday Christmas parties
these days, and stay.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Away from any xerox.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Copy machine in the old ESPN days. And I got
there right when they stop doing the holiday party. And
I had heard a lot of stories as to why.
Oh yeah, but usually when we've had the smaller ones
in Charlotte or whatever, we're usually on assignment this time
of year. You don't normally go and then all you
(08:31):
hear is so and so did this? Can you believe
so and So did that? I just feel like we're
in an age man where that that's a dangerous place
to go.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well, it is, and the problem is if you go there,
you may never return, you may never be seen again.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I'm going for an hour, an hour, going for an hour,
we get done with Panther Talk Monday night, pop in
for an hour and then hopefully leave without any scars.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yes, good beyond your best behavior. By the way, is
is Gremlin's a Christmas movie?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Was great? I've seen that so long ago. I don't
even remember that being set around the holidays. It is,
yeah that I don't remember. All right, off to give
that a try. I don't know. Does Gremlins hold up it?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Does? It holds up pretty good? I mean it's a
good early Spielberg movie.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Okay, Yeah, I forgot that was Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, Spielberg and I think Richard Donner, Ladies and gentlemen.
The weekend.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Close to the episode caught Fite feeling touchdown Carolina Weekend
Warriors Heisman ceremony was on Saturday. I'm just gonna put
this out there for all the Ashton Genty apologists. I
(09:54):
understand Ashton Genty had an incredible year, one of the
best seasons we've seen by a running back, maybe maybe
the best season by a running back since nineteen eighty
eight when Barry Sanders ran all over everybody at Oklahoma State.
And I understand that he is deserving and in many years,
even playing at Boise State against that schedule, he's got
(10:17):
a pretty good shot to win I just don't think
there was a debate this year because what Travis Hunter
did was unprecedented. The guy won the Bednarik, which goes
to the best defensive player. He won the Bulletani Coff,
which goes to the best wide receiver, that he shouldn't
have won. Okay, fine, but he's playing both ways. And
here's the thing. Even if you don't think he deserved
the Bulletani Coff, he was one of the top five
(10:40):
wide receivers in college football.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, I don't know how you question.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I don't know how you don't give him the Heisman.
He kind of had the season that Otani has with
the Dodgers or with the Angels, when he's pitching and
he's hitting, and he's doing both at a high level,
and the guy plays a ridiculous amount of snaps. Ashton Gentsy,
with the numbers that he put up, would also have
had to moonlight at safety or corner or somewhere else
(11:08):
on the field. I think to have had a real
chance to win this. To me, this was one of
the biggest no brainers in Heisman history. And again I
understand all the Ashton gents people out there. Oh, the
season he had the season at right, look at the
season Travis Hunter had.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I did vote for Travis Hunter
to win. I voted to Ashton Dent second. And my
reasoning was quite simply, nobody in the history of the
game has ever done what Travis Hunter did ever, and
I think you need to really peel back the layers
(11:44):
to have an understanding of what it must have taken
every single day to get to a Saturday healthy enough
to perform at that level for one hundred and forty
one hundred and fifty plays a game in all three
phases of the game, and not have mental errors, not
have busts, not be fatigued, not want to come off
(12:09):
the field. I mean, think about the week. Oh hey, Travis,
you got your offensive meetings this time, but maybe you
got to leave ten minutes early because we got to
get you out of the defensive staff meetings, and then
we got to get you out of the kicking game
special teams meetings. Then you got to get the cold
tub in the hot tub, and we got to get
you on ice and stem, and then we've got to
get you in a hyperbolic chamber. We've got to get
(12:30):
you over the massage. Probably everything that would go in
to pulling that off is unprecedented. It's unprecedented.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
That's at the things that you don't see. What we
see was unbelievably impressive. What we didn't see was probably
more impressive.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, how do you get to every Saturday for fifteen
weeks and perform to that level? I just I think
that people disregard that or they don't really truly understand.
You know, they see a game for three and a
half hours on a Saturday, right, they have no concept
of what happens from Sunday to Saturday morning, and I
(13:06):
think that needs to be appreciated. I likened this to
the nineteen ninety four Academy Awards race.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, what an unbelievable year for movies.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
By the way, unbelievable year for movies. So I posted
this on social media on Sunday morning. Ashton Genty is
the Shawshank redemption to Travis Hunters Forrest Gump. In any
other year, Ashton Hunter Ashton Genty runs away with it,
But it just happened to come out in that year
(13:40):
and say what you will. That's kind of the same
way that this whole entire thing played out, and there's
a lot of people that think Shawshank Redemption better than
Forest Gump. Okay, but Forrest Gump won the Academy Award,
and had Shawshank Redemption ben in another year, it probably
would have walked away with it, and Ashton Jenny probably
would have too.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, you know what else came out ninety four.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Pulp fiction?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Pulp fiction, I mean you talk about you talk about
a heavy hitters. Academy Award class was Usual Suspects ninety
four as well.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
The Usual Suspects was ninety four, and then the following
year incredible crazy because the following year, which was really
no competition, was Braveheart in ninety five. Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
See again, everyone's got their own preference. Forrest Gump. Great
movie from a rewatchability standpoint rewatchability, it's Usual Suspects one,
pulp fiction. I got pulp Fiction one B very close
Shaw Shank, and then Forrest Gump. Okay, if you watch
(14:48):
The Usual Suspects over and over, you pick up a
different little clue every time, and then pulp Fiction to me,
the single best dialogue driven movie of all time period.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I would say that that is a very very accurate
and fair statement, and you'd have a hard time finding
people to disagree with you on that.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
We got back into movies. It was bound to happen,
It was bound to how that's a great analogy, though,
Ashton gent Is is Shaw shank In any other year
probably a runaway favorite, except that one year where they
chose Shakespeare in Love that was still okay, you know,
English Patient was another one, like, that's not a rewatchable movie.
(15:30):
I know, I know, you know that. That's when they
were trying to show, hey, we're smarter than you, you
don't appreciate taste, and then watching this going oh, so
we're supposed to like this, and you try really hard
to convince yourself you're a you know, you're a cinophile
and that you can appreciate great cinematography in this, and
then after a few years you get older, you go, no,
(15:52):
that's just kind of a boring movie. With all due
respect anyway. Anyway, you know, we're in a bowl season,
and we talked a lot about college football playoff on
the podcast last week, So if you want to hear
about the playoff games, go back to last week's podcast.
But the one part of this now that is gotten
in the way is the transfer portal, the opt outs,
(16:14):
and people want to make this a black and white issue, right, Oh,
you know, the players shouldn't opt out or they shouldn't
hit the transfer portal. Well, some of these guys are
looking for opportunities. Some of these coaches leave. There's also
the number crunch where rosters shrink to one zero five
next year, and there are coaches actively telling some of
their fringe players, Hey, if you don't go into the portal,
(16:36):
you might not have a spot here. This is for
your own benefit, right, You do a lot of the
things that go with recruiting your ESPN's national director of recruiting.
Is this, more than anything a calendar issue? Do we
need to change the dates? Is there a way to
fix this just by I don't know, shifting the window
(16:57):
when all this movement can happen. Is that even fea it.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Is feasible, it needs to be done. I cannot tell you.
Over the last ten days or so, well, not even that.
Since the portal started, I spent virtually every waking moment
of my day having to deal with portal stuff. And
you know, I think it was a step in the
right direction to move up signing day. Get that over with, right,
(17:21):
So now that's not in the middle of the bowl season,
that's not in the middle of the college football playoffs.
So that's a good step in the right direction. But
let's take what happened at Marshall for example. All right,
and I hate to say this, but what happened at
Marshall is going to be a necessary catalyst for change.
(17:41):
And I feel for those kids that didn't jump in
the portal, that played their hearts out, won the Sun Belt,
and now they can't go play in a bowl game
because twenty eight plus other kids decided to go in
the portal. You got a brand new coach coming in
who's sitting there trying to figure out, all right, where
do I go from here? So you have a team
pull out of both participation that they earned, that they
(18:03):
have the privilege to be there, and that's not how
any of this was supposed to go. We've got Bo Pribula,
who's the backup quarterback at Penn State, who you know
he can play at other places. Well, the problem is
is the portal ends on December twenty eighth, so he's
kind of in a tough position. You got to figure
out where you're going to go, so you can go
(18:24):
take visits and figure out where you're going to sign.
But you've got a college football playoff game coming up
this coming weekend, and that's not what any of us
wanted either. I think what we've got to do with
this deal is number one, if we're going to pay
these guys a niche, you have to fulfill obligations. And
your obligation is to play football. And I think if
(18:47):
we eliminated the portal throughout bowl season and throughout the
college football playoff, all right, and you back it up
a little bit, let everybody have a time in the
late winter early or you don't have anything else that
gets in the way, right, you can make some moves,
just like the NFL does. The NFL has a free
(19:09):
agency period. Does it start in the playoffs? No? Does
it start, you know, with four games to go in
the regular season. No, it's its own compartmentalized area throughout
the calendar. We've got to get to that for college
football because what we're doing right now is not sustainable
and it's not healthy.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
It's not healthy for the game, it's not healthy for
bowl season. You start preparing for these bowl games and
I've got Tulane in Florida. For example, in the Gasprilla Bowl,
Tulane's top three quarterbacks are in the portal. The number
two quarterback, who transferred in from Oregon last year is
(19:46):
in the portal and will start the game as a showcase. Again.
You can only imagine how that plays in the locker room. Right,
you're gonna play, You're gonna showcase yourself for your next opportunity.
What about the guys who are coming back? I would
imagine it creates a bit of friction, maybe even factions
(20:10):
within your locker room when you have this stuff. I
think of the kid who knows he's not going to
play in the NFL, who is at the end of
his college career, wants to play in this game. It
means something to him and wants to go out with
a win, and looks around and maybe sees a lot
of guys on the team who don't really care about
that for him, when that player has probably sacrificed for
(20:31):
his teammates.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Right, right, So I kicked off or our crew kicked
off Captain bug bol Mania on Saturday night with the
salute to veterans, and he had two teams in Western
Michigan and South Alabama that took two different approaches to
the portal. South Alabama and Major Apple White their head
ghasts decided that if you were going to go into
the portal, but if you wanted to play, we were
(20:55):
going to allow you to play if that's what you
wanted to do. If you did not, that's fine. Western
Michigan took the op it approach. If you were going
to go into the portal, you need to go and
move on and let us prepare for the bowl game.
I don't know if there's a right or wrong side there,
but we came on air on Saturday night and you know,
the one thing that I've wanted to reiterate in all
of this is that playing in a bowl is a privilege,
(21:15):
not a right, and it's a goal of every team
in America. You can go into every football operations building
in America and somewhere on some wall it will say
when the conference earn a bull birth, play for the championship,
so on and so forth, all of them. Right. Well,
for those who choose not to do that, now there's
an opportunity for some guys to come in showcase what
(21:39):
they're worth.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Allow the coaches to evaluate them up their stock, and
those are guys that want to stay and want to
be there. The guys who've decided to left to leave,
they're testing waters that are uncharted and unknown because what
they think their value may be probably isn't what their
value really is. And I think that's one also one of
(22:02):
the biggest.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Issues in this whole transfer portal world is these kids
are being fed a line of bull about, Oh, you're
getting screwed, you should be playing, you should be doing this,
you should be doing that, you know, go jump into
the portal. And then they jump into the portal and
they've just given up a scholarship and nobody's calling them,
and that's really bad for them.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Well, there's a lot of bad actors involved, and absolutely
for the crowd that says, if these ball games are
turning into essentially exhibition games preseason games, Yeah, glorified spring games.
And let's be honest, for a lot of coaches, they
value the dozen or so practices leading up to the
bowl games as much and more than the game itself,
(22:44):
so win or lose, it doesn't really matter. And so
you hear a chorus of folks who say, well, move
bull season to the beginning of the season. Have that
be week zero, week one, however you want to paint it. Now.
The issue is, and this is where money and television
comes in, and it's a ratings game. These bowl games,
even with all the opt outs and the transfers, they
(23:05):
still right. People are home for the holidays. They're home
in December, it's cold outside, they're inside watching football. In August,
they might be on the lake. They might be on
a boat, they might be at the beach, they might
be on vacation. They might be outside, they might be
in the backyard having a barbecue. Point being is these
games rate? So the current model isn't going anywhere. Ball
(23:28):
season is going to stay at the end of the season.
It's going to be in the same calendar area.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, but moving.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
But I do think that you do run the risk
of them losing significance that they already have. I mean
outside of the college football playoff. Now, and I've done
a couple of these games, it almost feels at times
you need a gimmick to sell it. Let's dump a uh,
let's dump a coach with mayonnaise. Let's uh, you know,
have a pop tart come out of the toaster. Let's
(23:57):
pour cheese its or French fries on the winning coach. Right,
these are the things, the entertainment factor, These are the
things that now supersede the game itself because again, the
stars have all opted out the draft eligible guys, you've
already lost your chance to see them one more time.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, you're not watching the team you had been following
for the previous two to three years. It's a shell
of itself, right, And you're right, So you have to
come up with other ways to try to sell the products,
sell the brands, or whatever the sponsor may be, whatever
the corporate might be. But you're right, and it's a shame.
And that's why, you know, like I really, I'll coach
Prime is a prime example of this at Colorado. I
(24:38):
applaud him. Yeah, I asked him point blank. He said, no,
we played football around here. No, but he's gonna be
opting out around here. That's what our job is. This
is what we do. Right. I love that. Right, And
again I go back, if we're gonna treat them like
adults and we're gonna pay them, then they have to
fulfill obligations, you know, And I think that's what's frustrating
for me. You know, I look at it from an NFL.
(25:00):
Let's just say a team's eliminated from the playoff or
the playoffs, does a player just decide they're not going
to play anymore. Nope, No, you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Well you can, but then you're not going to play
for the other thirty one teams either.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
That's exactly right, Campbell.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
From the forty nine ers, You make that decision, Yeah, buddy,
good luck getting a job in the offseason, no question.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
No question. There has to be consequences for this stuff,
and right now there's not.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Speaking of the NFL, Panthers had a tough one on Sunday,
falling to the Cowboys thirty to fourteen. Bryce Young turned
it over four times. I think this is a reminder
that progress isn't always linear. And for five consecutive games
we saw Young get better and better and better and better,
and then the blip and again for the low hanging
(25:53):
fruit hot take people. You can yell and scream, turn
up the decibels. He's regressed. The team is regressed. To me,
these last three games will dictate whether there is regression
or what you saw on Sunday was again just a
bad game. Now, I will say this, when you've had
(26:14):
the recent history the Panthers have had, you do lose
a bit of that benefit of the doubt. If this
was Patrick Mahomes and he turns it over four times,
people would say, Yep, Listen just had a bad game.
Lamar just had a bad game. Josh Allen Burrow just
had a bad game. Bryce doesn't have the track record
yet that those guys have, so again, people will jump
(26:36):
to the other extreme pretty quickly. But I kind of
walked away going, all right, you hope this is not
a regression, but you got three more games to kind
of figure out where this plot point fits in. I'm
not sure you can kind of make a bold judgment
in the here now because you did see five games
(26:56):
of evidence and positive evidence from this team.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Well, and I think that's why you have to step
back and you have it's almost like making post season
evaluations with a coaching staff and letting things play out,
making sure you get the full sample size to make
an educated and objective decision after you've gone through all
of the of the ins and outs of everything that
took place from you know, week zero to the end
(27:22):
of the season. And then you start to calculate all
of those things. Is a blip, a blip, is a
blip a trend? Do we see enough to think that
the blip was just a blip and we really liked
these other four to five to six instances that were
really really strong. And I think that that's why, as
you mentioned, these next three games are are very very important.
(27:43):
You can't just discount them. You've got to continue to
heavily scrutinize. And now I think off of a game
like that, and to me, you've turned them all over
four times, ten points off of turnovers, you know, very
fortunate that it wasn't more than that, and so I
think that it was a it was a poor performance
(28:03):
and a poor game. But let's see what the next
three weeks, you know, have to say before everybody makes
their decision.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
In totality, I'm gonna leave on this one because the
one bright spot in that game and a guy who
has been maybe the best rookie on the team this year,
wide receiver Jalen Kocher. I don't even know if he
was on your radar coming out of high school, Holy Cross,
small school guy, right, incredible catch radius. I was looking
at the advanced numbers for him, he's catching about two
(28:33):
thirds of his targets. He only has one drop the
entire season. I know he didn't play in the early
part of the year. He was on the practice squad.
He missed a few games with the quad injury. Went
for one hundred yards yesterday, had the big eighty three
yard catch, has shown the ability to make contested catches.
And yeah, it's funny when we think of these guys
(28:54):
who are rookies or even they've been in the league,
we default so many times to where they were taken
in theft and I think that's perception bias. Sometimes you
have to get rid of that, Oh he's an undrafted
rookie free agent, right. Oh he's a first round pick,
so he's gonna get multiple chances. Then you watch him play,
and I still think that bleeds in when CJ. Henderson,
(29:15):
the cornerback who they acquired from Jacksonville, former Florida Gator,
first round pick, top ten pick, he was here, right,
you wanted to believe that this guy could play. Then
he'd commit penalties and he'd get burned, and you keep
going back to the first round pedigree. At the end
of the day just wasn't there. And I think sometimes
you do that with the undrafted guy too, where he's
got to prove himself over and over and over and
(29:37):
over again ten times more than the guy who doesn't produce,
who's a higher pick. I look at Jalen Cocher and Lukes,
I think he's got a chance to be a real,
real key piece of this franchise moving forward.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
He's built so much so similar to des Bryant. Wow wow,
six foot six one pounds fIF frame right, And that's
where you talked about the contestant matchups, got strong hands,
the ability to go up pull the ball away from people.
You mentioned it the importance of being over take away
the fifty to fifty ball because you know the margin
(30:13):
of error and the windows are so narrow in that
league on just about every throw, and if it's one
on one downfield, you got to be able to prove
you can win. So, no, I'm with you, and I
think you know that's where the real work is done
in personnel, right, it's the guys that you uncover, that
that you believe in. You'll stand on the table for
that you've done your homework on and you're probably sitting
(30:34):
there going, I can't believe other people don't feel the
same way as we do. Are you going to be
right all the time? No? But when you are it
ends up being a huge, huge splat.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I've stolen your line on this the Underwear Olympics, which
is which is a great phrase, but so many times
you're right. You said it a few weeks ago. You
get enamored by the Underwear Olympics, and then the game
tape the further you get from the end of the
college season, for whatever reason, loses and then when you
turn on the game to oh yeah, in full pads,
(31:03):
this guy can make catches when he gets hit, He
gets up when he gets hit. He still hangs on
to the football. Things you don't say in the Underwear Olympics.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
You don't and you never will. And it's what makes
football different than every single sport on the planet because
it can't be duplicated in shirts and shorts. Tennis can,
basketball can, golf can no matter what time of year,
football cannot.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Well, I played tennis and you practically play that sport
in your underwear.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Anyway, there you go.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
All right on that note, We got another show coming
up on the twenty third after the Panthers Cardinals, and
then two more shows until the end of the season.
So until then we will chat again. I would say
happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and all that stuff, but
we've got another show before Christmas, yes we do.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I'm looking forward to talking to you. Then five
The holiday season is upon us. That means if you
turn on Hallmark or Lifetime, as my wife does every
night this time of year, you are bound to see
DJ from Full House or Lacey Shaver. I think that's
how you say it.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
In pretty much every movie. I think that's a law. Right.
If they're not in a movie that is made for
TV with a Christmas holiday theme, it is not a
made for TV Christmas holiday movie.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I think that's fair. I think that's there is there
a male version of that.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I think they all look the same, flannel shirt, lives
in the.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Country, scruff, scruff, but not a full beard.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Right, like a maintained scruff.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's it's like the dude who pretends he doesn't comb
his hair, but then really tries hard every morning to
make sure it looks that way.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yes, correct, that's exactly right, good call. Perfect.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And then DJ and Lacy are from the city, and
this dude obviously lives in the country on a farm
of course, probably a small family owned business.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Small family previous tragedy in his past that has caused
him to, you know, lose his faith in the holiday season.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I mean, we could, we could produce this right here
on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We could absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Got me thinking. Though there's also some really good holiday movies,
holiday comedies. And again this isn't a hot take because
I think most people appreciate how this is held up
over the years. But Christmas Vacation is timeless. I don't
(01:43):
care how old you are, I don't care what generation,
gen X, gen Z, millennial boomer, you can appreciate the
hilarity and the lasting power of Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, it just goes to show you what writing combined
with performance does for the ages, right, Like those jokes
work now. The cousin Eddie stuff is funny. Now, if
you saw that for the first time now, you would
fall off your chair. And there are very few, you know,
films that that can make that mark on society over
(02:20):
the course of you know, forty some odd years. And
I'm with you, I you know myself embarrass Lee. We
host every Sunday on Serious Exam and we had this
past Sunday. We had this question for our callers, you know,
what's what's the best Christmas movie and why? And unanimously
everybody said, Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
It's not close.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I don't think it's it's not close. I agree with you,
it's not close, which then kind of led into how
few times people said a Christmas story? Which I thought
was interesting? Okay, how how how few times people said
a wonderful life and some of the others.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
So this this will be possible, hairsay, oh boy, I
can't stand can't stand a Christmas story.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Now, let me ask you this.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Don't like it? I never did as a kid, as
a grown up, as a teenager, just ever the Red
Rifle BB. I just for whatever reason, I never really
liked Ralphie. It would be on all the time, and
I just thought there were so many better movies. To
be honest with you.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Well that's what I was going to ask you. Is
the reason maybe why you didn't like it is because
TNT ruined it for everybody, and TBS ruined it for
everybody by putting it all a loop for twenty four
straight hours for the last forty five years.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Possibly yeah, possibly yeah, And again, I just don't know
the humor in it. I just don't find it funny.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Hot take listen, I enjoy it. I don't think it's
the best Christmas movie out there. I think that there
are bits of it that are funny, like I love
the little brother and how he's all bundled up and
his arms are sticking straight out and he's he's an
absolute mass. I can totally, I can totally feel for
(04:07):
Ralphie because like my parents would have never let me
had a babie gun for the exact reason.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Well, they were right, number one, they were.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Totally they were totally right. And for the exact reason
why he shot himself in the eye a ten year
old a babie gun. So h So I could relate,
I think, in some ways to that one. But let
me let me, let me push this forward, because this
becomes a hot topic too. What is and is not
(04:36):
a Christmas movie? Is Diehard a Christmas movie? So?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I was searching for Christmas movies on Hulu the other day, Okay,
and shout out to the people who catalog their movies
on Hulu. You know what shows up under Holiday.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Fun die Hard one and two.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Die Hard. I don't know if I saw Diehard two
on there, but die Hard was there in between. I
think one of the t Alan Santa Claus movies and
another polar express type of Christmas movie right in the middle,
as you're scrolling through Diehard and I go, they understood
the assignment.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Absolutely, they know they get it. So I'm gonna give
you two fantastic Christmas movies that get glossed over. One's
recent ones a long time ago. Okay, Okay, let's start
with the one in the past, Scrooged with Bill Murray.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Oh that's a good one. That's a great good one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
And if you haven't seen that, no, that's peak Bill Murray.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
That's peak Bill Murray. That's a very good movie.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Brilliant. Yes, it is so so well done. So that
one I love. And then the recent one that I
think is one of the funniest movies I have seen
in a long time is Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn
and Reese Witherspoon.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Really, Okay, that one I haven't seen. I was going
to give you Bad Santa, which I think is hilarious.
Thurman Melman with the sandwiches, Absolutely, Can I make you
a sandwich? Kid? What is it with you and the sandwiches?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
What? Yeah? Hey, what is it? It's a wooden pickle?
Why would you give me a wooden pickle?
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Bad Santa? Hilarious. The second one not as great. My
seven year old is really into ELF and I could
watch that over and over. Elf is tremendous. Honestly, Home
Alone one and two I can watch over and over.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Oh, I can too. And you know what, I hear
a lot of people say that Home Alone Too they
think is better than Home Alone one. No, come on,
I've heard that multiple times.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I like them both. I like them both, but I
think Home Alone the first one because the concept was
just more original at the time. Now absolutely, okay, it
happens again, right, but it's still well done, same ideas,
same blueprint, same architectural structure in terms of the movie plot.
But the first one, and again you know the fact
they got Joe Peshy, they got Daniel to do that.
(07:08):
Who plays the mom great actress to Catherine O'Hara, I
mean to me, like you get those characters in the movie.
Props to John Hughes.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Totally absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
All right, before we move on to Heisman Portal and Panthers. Uh,
there was one movie we watched, the other night holiday movie,
Christmas movie if you want to call it that. It
was called The Night Before. Have you seen that one.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
With Seth Yes, very good very good.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Sneaky good cameo by Miley Cyrus in there as well.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Have you seen Office Christmas Party?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I have, also very good. That was the one with
Jennifer Aniston.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, Jason Bateman.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Speaking of which, So we've got an office Christmas party tonight.
Those always feel like a lose lose proposition, right, absolutely,
like there's very little upside to office holiday Christmas parties
these days, and stay.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Away from any xerox.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Copy machine in the old ESPN days. And I got
there right when they stop doing the holiday party. And
I had heard a lot of stories as to why.
Oh yeah, but usually when we've had the smaller ones
in Charlotte or whatever, we're usually on assignment this time
of year. You don't normally go and then all you
(08:31):
hear is so and so did this? Can you believe
so and So did that? I just feel like we're
in an age man where that that's a dangerous place
to go.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well, it is, and the problem is if you go there,
you may never return, you may never be seen again.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
I'm going for an hour, an hour, going for an hour,
we get done with Panther Talk Monday night, pop in
for an hour and then hopefully leave without any scars.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yes, good beyond your best behavior. By the way, is
is Gremlin's a Christmas movie?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Was great? I've seen that so long ago. I don't
even remember that being set around the holidays. It is,
yeah that I don't remember. All right, off to give
that a try. I don't know. Does Gremlins hold up it?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Does? It holds up pretty good? I mean it's a
good early Spielberg movie.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Okay, Yeah, I forgot that was Spielberg.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, Spielberg and I think Richard Donner, Ladies and gentlemen.
The weekend.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Close to the episode caught Fite feeling touchdown Carolina Weekend
Warriors Heisman ceremony was on Saturday. I'm just gonna put
this out there for all the Ashton Genty apologists. I
(09:54):
understand Ashton Genty had an incredible year, one of the
best seasons we've seen by a running back, maybe maybe
the best season by a running back since nineteen eighty
eight when Barry Sanders ran all over everybody at Oklahoma State.
And I understand that he is deserving and in many years,
even playing at Boise State against that schedule, he's got
(10:17):
a pretty good shot to win I just don't think
there was a debate this year because what Travis Hunter
did was unprecedented. The guy won the Bednarik, which goes
to the best defensive player. He won the Bulletani Coff,
which goes to the best wide receiver, that he shouldn't
have won. Okay, fine, but he's playing both ways. And
here's the thing. Even if you don't think he deserved
the Bulletani Coff, he was one of the top five
(10:40):
wide receivers in college football.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, I don't know how you question.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I don't know how you don't give him the Heisman.
He kind of had the season that Otani has with
the Dodgers or with the Angels, when he's pitching and
he's hitting, and he's doing both at a high level,
and the guy plays a ridiculous amount of snaps. Ashton Gentsy,
with the numbers that he put up, would also have
had to moonlight at safety or corner or somewhere else
(11:08):
on the field. I think to have had a real
chance to win this. To me, this was one of
the biggest no brainers in Heisman history. And again I
understand all the Ashton gents people out there. Oh, the
season he had the season at right, look at the
season Travis Hunter had.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I did vote for Travis Hunter
to win. I voted to Ashton Dent second. And my
reasoning was quite simply, nobody in the history of the
game has ever done what Travis Hunter did ever, and
I think you need to really peel back the layers
(11:44):
to have an understanding of what it must have taken
every single day to get to a Saturday healthy enough
to perform at that level for one hundred and forty
one hundred and fifty plays a game in all three
phases of the game, and not have mental errors, not
have busts, not be fatigued, not want to come off
(12:09):
the field. I mean, think about the week. Oh hey, Travis,
you got your offensive meetings this time, but maybe you
got to leave ten minutes early because we got to
get you out of the defensive staff meetings, and then
we got to get you out of the kicking game
special teams meetings. Then you got to get the cold
tub in the hot tub, and we got to get
you on ice and stem, and then we've got to
get you in a hyperbolic chamber. We've got to get
(12:30):
you over the massage. Probably everything that would go in
to pulling that off is unprecedented. It's unprecedented.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
That's at the things that you don't see. What we
see was unbelievably impressive. What we didn't see was probably
more impressive.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Yeah, how do you get to every Saturday for fifteen
weeks and perform to that level? I just I think
that people disregard that or they don't really truly understand.
You know, they see a game for three and a
half hours on a Saturday, right, they have no concept
of what happens from Sunday to Saturday morning, and I
(13:06):
think that needs to be appreciated. I likened this to
the nineteen ninety four Academy Awards race.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, what an unbelievable year for movies.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
By the way, unbelievable year for movies. So I posted
this on social media on Sunday morning. Ashton Genty is
the Shawshank redemption to Travis Hunters Forrest Gump. In any
other year, Ashton Hunter Ashton Genty runs away with it,
But it just happened to come out in that year
(13:40):
and say what you will. That's kind of the same
way that this whole entire thing played out, and there's
a lot of people that think Shawshank Redemption better than
Forest Gump. Okay, but Forrest Gump won the Academy Award,
and had Shawshank Redemption ben in another year, it probably
would have walked away with it, and Ashton Jenny probably
would have too.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, you know what else came out ninety four.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Pulp fiction?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Pulp fiction, I mean you talk about you talk about
a heavy hitters. Academy Award class was Usual Suspects ninety
four as well.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
The Usual Suspects was ninety four, and then the following
year incredible crazy because the following year, which was really
no competition, was Braveheart in ninety five. Wow.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
See again, everyone's got their own preference. Forrest Gump. Great
movie from a rewatchability standpoint rewatchability, it's Usual Suspects one,
pulp fiction. I got pulp Fiction one B very close
Shaw Shank, and then Forrest Gump. Okay, if you watch
(14:48):
The Usual Suspects over and over, you pick up a
different little clue every time, and then pulp Fiction to me,
the single best dialogue driven movie of all time period.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I would say that that is a very very accurate
and fair statement, and you'd have a hard time finding
people to disagree with you on that.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
We got back into movies. It was bound to happen,
It was bound to how that's a great analogy, though,
Ashton gent Is is Shaw shank In any other year
probably a runaway favorite, except that one year where they
chose Shakespeare in Love that was still okay, you know,
English Patient was another one, like, that's not a rewatchable movie.
(15:30):
I know, I know, you know that. That's when they
were trying to show, hey, we're smarter than you, you
don't appreciate taste, and then watching this going oh, so
we're supposed to like this, and you try really hard
to convince yourself you're a you know, you're a cinophile
and that you can appreciate great cinematography in this, and
then after a few years you get older, you go, no,
(15:52):
that's just kind of a boring movie. With all due
respect anyway. Anyway, you know, we're in a bowl season,
and we talked a lot about college football playoff on
the podcast last week, So if you want to hear
about the playoff games, go back to last week's podcast.
But the one part of this now that is gotten
in the way is the transfer portal, the opt outs,
(16:14):
and people want to make this a black and white issue, right, Oh,
you know, the players shouldn't opt out or they shouldn't
hit the transfer portal. Well, some of these guys are
looking for opportunities. Some of these coaches leave. There's also
the number crunch where rosters shrink to one zero five
next year, and there are coaches actively telling some of
their fringe players, Hey, if you don't go into the portal,
(16:36):
you might not have a spot here. This is for
your own benefit, right, You do a lot of the
things that go with recruiting your ESPN's national director of recruiting.
Is this, more than anything a calendar issue? Do we
need to change the dates? Is there a way to
fix this just by I don't know, shifting the window
(16:57):
when all this movement can happen. Is that even fea it.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Is feasible, it needs to be done. I cannot tell you.
Over the last ten days or so, well, not even that.
Since the portal started, I spent virtually every waking moment
of my day having to deal with portal stuff. And
you know, I think it was a step in the
right direction to move up signing day. Get that over with, right,
(17:21):
So now that's not in the middle of the bowl season,
that's not in the middle of the college football playoffs.
So that's a good step in the right direction. But
let's take what happened at Marshall for example. All right,
and I hate to say this, but what happened at
Marshall is going to be a necessary catalyst for change.
(17:41):
And I feel for those kids that didn't jump in
the portal, that played their hearts out, won the Sun Belt,
and now they can't go play in a bowl game
because twenty eight plus other kids decided to go in
the portal. You got a brand new coach coming in
who's sitting there trying to figure out, all right, where
do I go from here? So you have a team
pull out of both participation that they earned, that they
(18:03):
have the privilege to be there, and that's not how
any of this was supposed to go. We've got Bo Pribula,
who's the backup quarterback at Penn State, who you know
he can play at other places. Well, the problem is
is the portal ends on December twenty eighth, so he's
kind of in a tough position. You got to figure
out where you're going to go, so you can go
(18:24):
take visits and figure out where you're going to sign.
But you've got a college football playoff game coming up
this coming weekend, and that's not what any of us
wanted either. I think what we've got to do with
this deal is number one, if we're going to pay
these guys a niche, you have to fulfill obligations. And
your obligation is to play football. And I think if
(18:47):
we eliminated the portal throughout bowl season and throughout the
college football playoff, all right, and you back it up
a little bit, let everybody have a time in the
late winter early or you don't have anything else that
gets in the way, right, you can make some moves,
just like the NFL does. The NFL has a free
(19:09):
agency period. Does it start in the playoffs? No? Does
it start, you know, with four games to go in
the regular season. No, it's its own compartmentalized area throughout
the calendar. We've got to get to that for college
football because what we're doing right now is not sustainable
and it's not healthy.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
It's not healthy for the game, it's not healthy for
bowl season. You start preparing for these bowl games and
I've got Tulane in Florida. For example, in the Gasprilla Bowl,
Tulane's top three quarterbacks are in the portal. The number
two quarterback, who transferred in from Oregon last year is
(19:46):
in the portal and will start the game as a showcase. Again.
You can only imagine how that plays in the locker room. Right,
you're gonna play, You're gonna showcase yourself for your next opportunity.
What about the guys who are coming back? I would
imagine it creates a bit of friction, maybe even factions
(20:10):
within your locker room when you have this stuff. I
think of the kid who knows he's not going to
play in the NFL, who is at the end of
his college career, wants to play in this game. It
means something to him and wants to go out with
a win, and looks around and maybe sees a lot
of guys on the team who don't really care about
that for him, when that player has probably sacrificed for
(20:31):
his teammates.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Right, right, So I kicked off or our crew kicked
off Captain bug bol Mania on Saturday night with the
salute to veterans, and he had two teams in Western
Michigan and South Alabama that took two different approaches to
the portal. South Alabama and Major Apple White their head
ghasts decided that if you were going to go into
the portal, but if you wanted to play, we were
(20:55):
going to allow you to play if that's what you
wanted to do. If you did not, that's fine. Western
Michigan took the op it approach. If you were going
to go into the portal, you need to go and
move on and let us prepare for the bowl game.
I don't know if there's a right or wrong side there,
but we came on air on Saturday night and you know,
the one thing that I've wanted to reiterate in all
of this is that playing in a bowl is a privilege,
(21:15):
not a right, and it's a goal of every team
in America. You can go into every football operations building
in America and somewhere on some wall it will say
when the conference earn a bull birth, play for the championship,
so on and so forth, all of them. Right. Well,
for those who choose not to do that, now there's
an opportunity for some guys to come in showcase what
(21:39):
they're worth.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Allow the coaches to evaluate them up their stock, and
those are guys that want to stay and want to
be there. The guys who've decided to left to leave,
they're testing waters that are uncharted and unknown because what
they think their value may be probably isn't what their
value really is. And I think that's one also one of
(22:02):
the biggest.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Issues in this whole transfer portal world is these kids
are being fed a line of bull about, Oh, you're
getting screwed, you should be playing, you should be doing this,
you should be doing that, you know, go jump into
the portal. And then they jump into the portal and
they've just given up a scholarship and nobody's calling them,
and that's really bad for them.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Well, there's a lot of bad actors involved, and absolutely
for the crowd that says, if these ball games are
turning into essentially exhibition games preseason games, Yeah, glorified spring games.
And let's be honest, for a lot of coaches, they
value the dozen or so practices leading up to the
bowl games as much and more than the game itself,
(22:44):
so win or lose, it doesn't really matter. And so
you hear a chorus of folks who say, well, move
bull season to the beginning of the season. Have that
be week zero, week one, however you want to paint it. Now.
The issue is, and this is where money and television
comes in, and it's a ratings game. These bowl games,
even with all the opt outs and the transfers, they
(23:05):
still right. People are home for the holidays. They're home
in December, it's cold outside, they're inside watching football. In August,
they might be on the lake. They might be on
a boat, they might be at the beach, they might
be on vacation. They might be outside, they might be
in the backyard having a barbecue. Point being is these
games rate? So the current model isn't going anywhere. Ball
(23:28):
season is going to stay at the end of the season.
It's going to be in the same calendar area.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, but moving.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
But I do think that you do run the risk
of them losing significance that they already have. I mean
outside of the college football playoff. Now, and I've done
a couple of these games, it almost feels at times
you need a gimmick to sell it. Let's dump a uh,
let's dump a coach with mayonnaise. Let's uh, you know,
have a pop tart come out of the toaster. Let's
(23:57):
pour cheese its or French fries on the winning coach. Right,
these are the things, the entertainment factor, These are the
things that now supersede the game itself because again, the
stars have all opted out the draft eligible guys, you've
already lost your chance to see them one more time.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, you're not watching the team you had been following
for the previous two to three years. It's a shell
of itself, right, And you're right, So you have to
come up with other ways to try to sell the products,
sell the brands, or whatever the sponsor may be, whatever
the corporate might be. But you're right, and it's a shame.
And that's why, you know, like I really, I'll coach
Prime is a prime example of this at Colorado. I
(24:38):
applaud him. Yeah, I asked him point blank. He said, no,
we played football around here. No, but he's gonna be
opting out around here. That's what our job is. This
is what we do. Right. I love that. Right, And
again I go back, if we're gonna treat them like
adults and we're gonna pay them, then they have to
fulfill obligations, you know, And I think that's what's frustrating
for me. You know, I look at it from an NFL.
(25:00):
Let's just say a team's eliminated from the playoff or
the playoffs, does a player just decide they're not going
to play anymore. Nope, No, you can't do that.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Well you can, but then you're not going to play
for the other thirty one teams either.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
That's exactly right, Campbell.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
From the forty nine ers, You make that decision, Yeah, buddy,
good luck getting a job in the offseason, no question.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
No question. There has to be consequences for this stuff,
and right now there's not.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Speaking of the NFL, Panthers had a tough one on Sunday,
falling to the Cowboys thirty to fourteen. Bryce Young turned
it over four times. I think this is a reminder
that progress isn't always linear. And for five consecutive games
we saw Young get better and better and better and better,
and then the blip and again for the low hanging
(25:53):
fruit hot take people. You can yell and scream, turn
up the decibels. He's regressed. The team is regressed. To me,
these last three games will dictate whether there is regression
or what you saw on Sunday was again just a
bad game. Now, I will say this, when you've had
(26:14):
the recent history the Panthers have had, you do lose
a bit of that benefit of the doubt. If this
was Patrick Mahomes and he turns it over four times,
people would say, Yep, Listen just had a bad game.
Lamar just had a bad game. Josh Allen Burrow just
had a bad game. Bryce doesn't have the track record
yet that those guys have, so again, people will jump
(26:36):
to the other extreme pretty quickly. But I kind of
walked away going, all right, you hope this is not
a regression, but you got three more games to kind
of figure out where this plot point fits in. I'm
not sure you can kind of make a bold judgment
in the here now because you did see five games
(26:56):
of evidence and positive evidence from this team.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Well, and I think that's why you have to step
back and you have it's almost like making post season
evaluations with a coaching staff and letting things play out,
making sure you get the full sample size to make
an educated and objective decision after you've gone through all
of the of the ins and outs of everything that
took place from you know, week zero to the end
(27:22):
of the season. And then you start to calculate all
of those things. Is a blip, a blip, is a
blip a trend? Do we see enough to think that
the blip was just a blip and we really liked
these other four to five to six instances that were
really really strong. And I think that that's why, as
you mentioned, these next three games are are very very important.
(27:43):
You can't just discount them. You've got to continue to
heavily scrutinize. And now I think off of a game
like that, and to me, you've turned them all over
four times, ten points off of turnovers, you know, very
fortunate that it wasn't more than that, and so I
think that it was a it was a poor performance
(28:03):
and a poor game. But let's see what the next
three weeks, you know, have to say before everybody makes
their decision.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
In totality, I'm gonna leave on this one because the
one bright spot in that game and a guy who
has been maybe the best rookie on the team this year,
wide receiver Jalen Kocher. I don't even know if he
was on your radar coming out of high school, Holy Cross,
small school guy, right, incredible catch radius. I was looking
at the advanced numbers for him, he's catching about two
(28:33):
thirds of his targets. He only has one drop the
entire season. I know he didn't play in the early
part of the year. He was on the practice squad.
He missed a few games with the quad injury. Went
for one hundred yards yesterday, had the big eighty three
yard catch, has shown the ability to make contested catches.
And yeah, it's funny when we think of these guys
(28:54):
who are rookies or even they've been in the league,
we default so many times to where they were taken
in theft and I think that's perception bias. Sometimes you
have to get rid of that, Oh he's an undrafted
rookie free agent, right. Oh he's a first round pick,
so he's gonna get multiple chances. Then you watch him play,
and I still think that bleeds in when CJ. Henderson,
(29:15):
the cornerback who they acquired from Jacksonville, former Florida Gator,
first round pick, top ten pick, he was here, right,
you wanted to believe that this guy could play. Then
he'd commit penalties and he'd get burned, and you keep
going back to the first round pedigree. At the end
of the day just wasn't there. And I think sometimes
you do that with the undrafted guy too, where he's
got to prove himself over and over and over and
(29:37):
over again ten times more than the guy who doesn't produce,
who's a higher pick. I look at Jalen Cocher and Lukes,
I think he's got a chance to be a real,
real key piece of this franchise moving forward.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
He's built so much so similar to des Bryant. Wow wow,
six foot six one pounds fIF frame right, And that's
where you talked about the contestant matchups, got strong hands,
the ability to go up pull the ball away from people.
You mentioned it the importance of being over take away
the fifty to fifty ball because you know the margin
(30:13):
of error and the windows are so narrow in that
league on just about every throw, and if it's one
on one downfield, you got to be able to prove
you can win. So, no, I'm with you, and I
think you know that's where the real work is done
in personnel, right, it's the guys that you uncover, that
that you believe in. You'll stand on the table for
that you've done your homework on and you're probably sitting
(30:34):
there going, I can't believe other people don't feel the
same way as we do. Are you going to be
right all the time? No? But when you are it
ends up being a huge, huge splat.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
I've stolen your line on this the Underwear Olympics, which
is which is a great phrase, but so many times
you're right. You said it a few weeks ago. You
get enamored by the Underwear Olympics, and then the game
tape the further you get from the end of the
college season, for whatever reason, loses and then when you
turn on the game to oh yeah, in full pads,
(31:03):
this guy can make catches when he gets hit, He
gets up when he gets hit. He still hangs on
to the football. Things you don't say in the Underwear Olympics.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
You don't and you never will. And it's what makes
football different than every single sport on the planet because
it can't be duplicated in shirts and shorts. Tennis can,
basketball can, golf can no matter what time of year,
football cannot.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Well, I played tennis and you practically play that sport
in your underwear.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Anyway, there you go.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
All right on that note, We got another show coming
up on the twenty third after the Panthers Cardinals, and
then two more shows until the end of the season.
So until then we will chat again. I would say
happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and all that stuff, but
we've got another show before Christmas, yes we do.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I'm looking forward to talking to you. Then five
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