Steve Hartman and Rich Ohrnberger Debate New MLB Rules

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:22):
The way tire buy in should be now, Richie. We're
sitting here today and we got a blank slate. There's
so many things we can get to today. We got
NFL news, Major League Baseball news. Obviously a lot of
basketball news to get to over the course of the day.
I also want to get into that fight tonight at
some point. But I feel like we could literally do

(00:44):
the entire four hours today based on where you're at
right now in San Diego, California. Like every everything seems
to be revolving around what's happening in San Diego right now. Richie, Yeah,
there was for those who were up or I should
say him bed too early to see the finish to
the Aztecs hoops game last night, a road trip to

(01:06):
New Mexico. They beat the Lobos in buzzer beater fashion.
This looks to be a sixth seed, maybe a five
seed in the March tournament. So San Diego State men's
hoops again is going to have a fun finish to
their year. And then you wake up this morning and
there was a lot of speculation and commentary about what's

(01:28):
going to happen with Manny Machado after this season because
he had built in opt outs after five years every
year proceeding hit sith year played with the Padres on
a three hundred million dollar ten year contract, and Peter Sidler,
the owner of the Padres, has doubled down once again
and cracked off an eleven year, three hundred fifty million

(01:49):
dollar contract that will take him until you're forty one
of his life and most likely he'll retire a Padre. Yeah,
I mean it's an amazing run. By the way, just
you mentioned the aztex game, and I watched that game
last night. By the way, I heard you yesterday taking
the Aztecs minus two and a half, that's a bad beat.
That's what they called bad beat. It was close. Aztecs

(02:11):
were leading by four with twenty seconds left, less than
twenty seconds left. It was annumliable comeback because they were
down ten at the half, really outplay, did not shoot
the ball straight in the first half, came back and
ultimately won the game. But I mean, it's isn't that
amazing about basketball? Because I know, look at I know
you, you you know me. I mean, I'm the worst prognosticator
on the planet. There's no one even close to me.

(02:32):
When Mike, when I locked something, you can run to
the bank and go the opposite direction. But that game
comes down to a half point yep, a little hook
right there. Two and a half, just a smitch two
and a half, so close on that. But yesterday was
an insane day. Really got a little taste of March
Mandis yesterday. How about that sixty footer for Arizona State

(02:54):
to beat Arizona, Oh my gosh, oh on the road
into Oh how about the Iowa game? Oh my goodness,
is like I know I would say, I mean, obviously
we text a ton because I want I overlapped, you know,
him engineering and me broadcasting so many shows at Fox

(03:15):
Sports Radio, so I'm I'm getting pummeled with the Hawkeye love.
It's it's amazing. How about Florida State Miami. Miami was
up by twenty three and a halftime twenty five in
the game, and the Seminoles at nine and twenty on
the season, came back and won the game at Miami,

(03:35):
biggest comeback in ACC history. So we're getting a little
appetite right now. Right We got another week and then
we're going to get to the selection Sunday, you know,
the conference tournaments obviously, and then we're gonna get into
full fledged March madness. A lot going on today that
we're gonna get to. Um I want to get to
Machada for second. Here though, and this idea again. And

(03:59):
yesterday I was talking in Kelvin, Washington about how the
potres blew up everything for all these so called small
market teams and busted the myth that only a certain
number of teams actually have any money to spend. A
Major League Baseball is unique because there's no cap in baseball.
You will be penalized luxury taxes, but it's not an

(04:21):
equal playing field. You have teams with payrolls of close
to three hundred million dollars and other teams have payrolls
under fifty million dollars. So there's a wide discrepancy and
how much money each of these teams are being are paying.
But the idea that it's only going to be the
Yankees and the Red Sox, so the Dodgers. You know,
certain franchises are afforded the opportunity to spend a ton

(04:43):
of money because they're in major markets. And this pottery
team and Richie and I were in San Diego together
when Peter Seidler had assumed control as the owner of
the team, and he came out and boasted that, look,
if I feel like we can spend money to get
us to the ultimate goal, which is to win a

(05:05):
World Series, something that's never happened in San Diego Padre's history,
we will spend money. Now. We hear this talk before.
A lot of guys talk the talk, but you talk
about walking the walk. I mean, they just don't hesitate.
They give you Darvish a six year extension until he's
forty two years old. I mean, they're giving guys extensions
until they're in their late thirties forties. But they're not

(05:28):
concerned because all they're thinking is we got this window
right now. Maybe we got three or four years of
these guys together in their prime and if that produces
even a single World Series championship, that's it. Mission accomplished.
And you and I have spoken to people in San Diego.

(05:48):
This is true to a lot of other markets out there.
If you can tell me for a city that's starving
for a championship, we can get you there. Now, you
may pay the price on the back end of it.
But if we can get you and you're like, where
do we sign up, We'll take it in a heartbeat.
And that's what's happening down in San Diego. Yeah, oh listen,
you know during the pandemic, this is when the window

(06:08):
officially opened and that playoff run in Texas. The city
and I'm talking about the gas lamp quarter. For anybody
who's been to San Diego, there there is this, uh
this this gas lamp quarter that fills up during game
days for the padres and it's incredible. It's the downtown
area of San Diego and the East Village where Peco

(06:30):
Park has been built. And the fans during the pandemic
who could get outside the house and and celebrate in
the streets were literally mobbing the parking lots of Peco Park,
and it was a parade unto itself and this is
just for a playoff Berth and a few wins. What's
happening now with the Padres after an NLCS run and

(06:53):
Peter Sidler getting to observe how this city completely transforms
when you are building a winner. That is the investment
he was hoping, or I should say that is the
reward for the investments that he was hoping. And I
think it's been over the top. I think the reception
to all of the financial investment has been so insanely requited.

(07:18):
I guess is the right word that he wants to
pour more investment into this city and into this team,
and who knows. I mean, this is how dynasties are built,
when you lock down special players for a long time
and you have an opportunity to extend a window for years.
This Padres team is now a problem in the National League,

(07:39):
and it's going to be a problem for the next
few years. Yeah. Now, one of the problems again is
and I've always been curious about Major League Baseball because
all we hear about is a diminishing sport. Interest in
baseball's diminished, and we're going to get into some of
the rules changed and everything else and trying to do
speed up the game, get a few more people involved.
But the money's still comes from television. And one of

(08:02):
the problems for the pot Rais and several other teams
in Major League Baseball is the current state of Valley's
Sports and their parent company missing payments and suddenly jeopardizing
their standing. And even the Potrais to some degree have
acknowledged the fact that all this money they're throwing out
there and the Machado and Tatis and bow Guards and

(08:25):
Darvish and all these different players, is that it could
be a house of cards down the road. But they're
not worried about that right now. The money's there in
place now, and so that's why they are spending this money.
I applaud them, but a lot of people are not
applauding them. The owners of teams in these smaller markets
are like, stop doing this, because you're making us look bad.

(08:49):
But it really exposes the fact, and this is the
frustration of fans everywhere. If you're a fan of a team,
what do you want? You want the ownership of that
team had the same passion for winning that you, But
unfortunately that doesn't always happen. Chargers are a prime example
of that. So you look at a team like the
Potreys and they're all in for their fans, they're all

(09:11):
in for their own interests too. As you said, money
invested is going to gain money on the back end.
But there's a lot of owners rich they're very hesitant
saying no, no no, no, no, this is irresponsible. You're making
a difficult for all of us. So it'll be very
interesting to see over the next four or five years.
And remember they still have to make a decision on

(09:31):
the Soto contract in a couple of years. How those
will play out for the Potres Well, they're not. This
investment is ultimately going to garner them what they're seeking,
and that is a championship. Yeah. Look, you can't buy
a championship. You can absolutely buy the players who can
win you a championship, but there's you still got to
go out there and play baseball, right, you know, And

(09:53):
so you have to factor in everything that can go
wrong during a one hundred and sixty two games season
because things can still go wrong. Players can get injured,
players can get suspended. You could have a couple of
guys who are impactful go through slumps, bad years stuff
like that. We've seen this many times over. This has
happened to quote unquote large market teams with huge investments

(10:17):
from their owners, like the New York Yankees, how many
disappointing finishes recently for them. It's the reality of sport.
But it seems to be a general theme, and this
is across all the major sports leagues in this country,
at least, when you have an owner who invests, when
you have smart baseball minds around an owner who invests,
typically those are the teams who are the most successful

(10:39):
for the longest, and the fans almost undoubtedly support those teams.
In the NFL, there is obviously a salary cap, but
there's also a salary floor. So it's a competitive league,
but it's also a league that in every single market
is going to have competitive players because they have to
spend a certain amount of money. In the Major League Baseball,

(11:01):
there is in a salary floor, so like you said,
a lot of these owners can get away with spending
pennies on the dollar and they profit share, so they're
still making a ton of money on the back end.
Peter Seidler, what he's doing. The owner of the San
Diego Padres, is putting all these other quote unquote small
market teams on warning because these markets, you know, the

(11:23):
Rockies fans of the world, the Tampa Bay Rays fans
of the world, the Oakland fans of the world, the
A's have done this to their fan base forever. These
fans deserve better. They deserve an owner that can invest
into the team, invest into the city, and make a
better roster that actually has a chance to win a
World Series and not just small ballet and hope that
they get you know, the right combination of minor leaguers

(11:46):
coming to fruition at the same time at the major
league level. Hopefully this sets a preced in Major League
Baseball that they need to push the small minded, small
pocketbook owners out and they need to get real investment
in these these small quote again quote unquote smaller markets
around the league. It's amazing. The guy that actually orchestrated
the building of Peco was John Moores, who was then

(12:08):
the owner of the Pod Rays. He flat out lide lide.
I remember interviewing this guy saying, if you build a ballpark,
we'll take that money and invest it in the team.
They got the ballpark built, and he wouldn't invest a
penny in the team. Well, now they have an owner
that is, and they are reaping the benefits all right now,
speaking of baseball, Baseball has got an experiment going on,

(12:30):
let's call it right now in spring training. It's cutching
a lot of attention. The question is is it actually
going to deliver what it promises. We're on the clock
with Major League Baseball. This is Fox Sports Sunday, Steve Harman,
Rich Hornberger, this is Fox Sports Sunday. We're live from
the tai Iraq dot com studios. So on, a sport

(12:57):
is making a rule change, and we've seen this in
the NFL. Rich, during preseason, they will call it to
nauseum to make it clear to everybody there is a
new rule and we are going to enforce a rule.
So we've seen it many times in the NFL. We're
seeing it right now in Major League Baseball with the
new clock rule. And by the way, there seems to

(13:20):
be some confusion here because people are then we'll get
into what happened yesterday in that game between the Red
Sox and the Braves. But it's not just the batters
that have a clock. The pitchers have a clock, and
there's a different clock based on the basis being empty
or base runners on base. To me, it seems mind boggling.
I would love to go out to a Major League

(13:41):
ballpark this year and see multiple clocks all over the place,
like one that the batters got to watch and then
one that the pitchers got to watch. There's clocks everywhere. Now, yesterday,
in this game between the Red Sox and the Braves,
it was the ultimate situation for the umpire, right, you
have a tie game, there's no extens in spring training.
You got a bunch of minor league players out on

(14:01):
the field and bases are loaded two out, bottom of
the ninth inning, and you got this minor league batter
named cal Conley at the plate, three two pitch and
as he gets into the box there seems to be confusion.
He starts going to first base, not realizing that he

(14:23):
has been called out on strikes without a pitch actually
being thrown. Because now, get this, you have to be
set in the box when that clock gets to eight
seconds or less. So it's not what the clock running out,
but when the clock hits eight seconds, you need to

(14:43):
be set in the box for the pitch and Apparently,
according to the um umpire, this minor league named cal
Conley was not set strike three game over. Yep. Now
it happened to many Matchell Otto was a strike called
against him, you know, right at the beginning of the game.

(15:05):
But my big question to you, Rich is because I
know that you're a proponent of speeding up the game
far more so than I am. And I'll explain why
I'm not a huge proponent of this, But why is
this I take in your mind a good thing for
Major League Baseball? Because this has been one of the
chief complaints of a lot of people who go to

(15:27):
ballparks with their children. This has been one of the
chief complaints of mine, trying to convince my wife to
allow the kid the oldest to stay up and finish
watching a baseball game with me. I mean, on the
West Coast with seven ten first pitches, which a lot
of them are. They've since started to change this so
you have more of them, you know, first pitches in

(15:48):
the five o'clock or six o'clock hour. But a majority
of the time that I've lived on the West Coast,
if I had a kid old enough, whose school age,
who wants to watch baseball with me, his curfew or
his bedtime is somewhere in the middle innings. If you
are going to inspire a demographic of a younger demographic

(16:09):
to replace at some point all of these old head
baseball fans who are just grasping to the good old
days of baseball with their cold, dead fingers in some cases,
well then fine, keep going the way you're going, and
you're just gonna plummet in ratings and you won't have
a young base of fans that are interested in the game. Look,

(16:29):
I love baseball. I love watching it, I love to
going to games. I watch it on television all the time.
I don't want this game to be less popular. I
want it to be more popular because that means that
it's going to last, it's gonna make it, it's going
to entertain us for years to come. But the only
way that happens is if you start meeting these younger
fans at least in the middle, like find them where

(16:51):
they're at, which means you need more offense and you
need shorter games because that's what the younger demographic wants,
and that's what tests better in the NFL, it tests
better in the NBA and so that's what Major League
Baseball is efforting to do here. Okay, my feeling on
this is very different than yours, and I'll tell you why, because,
first of all, shortening the games are not going to

(17:13):
create new baseball fans. The nature of the game is
the game. It's not football and it's not basketball. But
I think that's incorrect. It is not the same game.
Rich And I'll tell you hang on, though, is gonna
push back block in baseball? I'm gonna push back on
the first thing you said. It's not gonna get you
new fans. How do you make sense of that? When
I just told you that these young kids, these third

(17:35):
graders through say, oh, I don't know, sophomore year of
high school, in certain households who can't stay up and
watch their favorite players play. You don't think eventually like
the thought process is going to fade. Like baseball is
important to you because it's important to your dad. But
if you're not allowed to watch games finish well, then
is it really that important to you? Again, the hardcore

(17:59):
baseball fans, there isn't a hard When I say hardcore,
I mean when you talk to people and to say,
what is your favorite sport, and they say far and away,
Baseball is my favorite sport more than football. I don't
like football, I don't like basketball. Baseball is my sport.
I've never heard a die hard baseball fan complain about
the length of a game. If anything, they want extra innings,

(18:20):
the gimmick of having a runner on second base. You
don't have Tom telling you you don't need those. That's
the base of your fanship. You already have those fans,
and you're not gonna lose them. You're not going to
gain fans by the clock situation. I will say this
one rule clutching that's not pearl clutching. What I'm saying
is is that I'll take a rule that has been

(18:40):
changed back that will help because I agree with you
on one thing. Offense wins. You gotta get offense. You know,
we've had diminishing returns and batting averages and everything else.
Guy swinging for the fences. The shift was a disaster,
I mean a disaster. Now that you're gonna put guys
on both sides of the second base, that will open
up more off fens for the game. Where happened to

(19:01):
the stolen base. These are things that we're exciting. If
you watch Major League Baseball at its peak, it was
a game on the move. He had runners moving around
the bases. You had pictures, by the way, where you
had the drama of going deep into the game instead
of a bunch of guys just shuffling in and out.
So the changes in the game are not helping the
game in terms of building an audience. Everything else is

(19:24):
a gimmick inter league play. I mean, I could go
down to listen, by the way, But John Paul Morosi
is going to be joining us later on the show.
We're going to get his thoughts on any of this.
This clock situation is a gimmick. Yeah, but it's simply
a gimmick, and it is. I don't know it. Explain
to you why. I'll explain to you why, because in
all other sports that are successful in this country, there's

(19:44):
a play clock. In football, there's a playclock. It counts down.
The offense has to break a huddle at a certain
point and they need to get a play round, and
they need their players set prior to that play being run.
So it moves the game along. There's a pace and
an expectation to that pace. During the course of a
football game in the NBA, if you didn't have a
shot clock, my goodness, we would see some of the

(20:04):
lowest scoring games because if a team is inferior in
terms of talent, but say they have a couple of
good ball handlers, well you're going to have teams on
the half court dribble out the clock for as long
as they can maybe shoot some perimeter shots. But you
would legitimately see games end thirteen twelve ten eight. I
mean riveting. That would be gamesmanship, but it wouldn't be

(20:28):
successfully entertaining. If you took away the play clock in football,
you would have a bunch of guys biding their time
when there's a lead in the game, and you would
have no action. So in baseball, this has been a
long time coming. It's gamesmanship. I agree with you. Hardcore
fans are gonna miss when a pitcher could play cat
and mouse games with a runner on to sit there

(20:50):
and reveal his build, all of this, all this momentum.
But guess what, when you're doing this one one hundred
sixty two times a year, it tires out even some
of the most loyal baseball fans. I got a cousin
who goes to pays for to go to twenty something
games a year. He's a Yankees fan in New York.

(21:12):
He tells me sometimes there are points in the season
where I have to turn it off because you want
to be fresh for the postseason, because you'll burn out.
It's too long, and it takes too long in these games.
It see even baseball fans. There are not many who
are going to be vocal about it, but even hardcore
baseball fans are tired of baseball being stuck in the past.

(21:33):
It's time to change. Well, I will speak for those
hardcore fans to say that that's not the problem. Offense
is the problem, and swinging for the fences is the problem.
And all the pitching changes and everything else, these are
the things that have slowed this game to a crawl.
All right, let's find out what's trending right now. Let's
walk him in and she'll be the deciding factor. All right. So, Monsey,

(21:58):
obviously you're of a of a generation that Rich is
familiar with. I am not. Well, I'm familiar, It's just
that I don't always agree. So do you believe that
the clock in baseball, which I applies to both the
batter and the pitcher. Yes, will actually help generate new
fans a Major League baseball. I do think it can

(22:22):
help generate new fans of baseball. When I talk to
friends who don't really care about baseball, the one thing
they say is, oh, but those games are so long,
I don't want to go. It is a topic of
conversation when you try to get somebody to go with
you to a Dodger game when they're not really into baseball.
So I think it will maybe not a real fan,

(22:45):
but I think it will bring in people to watch
the games more. Isn't an amazing that in an NFL
game which lasts three hours in a little plus and
you only actually have eleven minutes of actual play in
that three hours, that no one complains about it, not
at all. Yes, it's very different that giant. Yeah, it's

(23:06):
just the style of the play in the game and everything.
But you guys are talking about the clock. It is
a giant clock. You can't miss it. I think it's
my size five feet. It looks absolutely giant. So the
pictures have a clock right based on whether there are
runners on base or the bases are empty. So because
we're only seeing obviously from one perspective where the batters

(23:30):
are looking out at. So the pictures I understand, and
they only have one clock, or they're multiple clocks. If
they're looking at different angles, I'm gonna guess there's more
than one. But that one is so giant nobody can
miss it. Everyone could see it. And it's really quick.
Like you were talking about when Derek Jeter used to
like fix his gloves and he wasn't the only one.
I was watching, you know, videos of these spring training

(23:52):
games and I was like, oh, my goodness, they have
no time, and some of these batters are not used
to that. They're you know, they they're shining right now.
I'm watching the Yankees Blue Jay's game right now. Nuts.
How next clock is going? It is go? It is Coolick,
And you said you were going to talk about right
the Braves game, right, that's just okay, okay, I'll let

(24:12):
you guys talk about it. We did, Oh you did,
Oh you did. I was watching basketball. That was nuts
how that game ended. It was. But I mean, you know,
in a spring training game like that, we got minor
leaguers on the field at that point. Yes, they're gonna
use it as an example, right, we will call this. Yeah,
but that was nuts. We are giving you a warrning.
We don't care what the circumstances are. If you have

(24:33):
a clock violation, we will call it. Yep nuts, yep nuts.
Almost as nuts as Manny Machado. Yeah, seeing the San
Diego Padres are finalizing an eleven year, three hundred and
fifty million dollar contract extension after he said he was
going to opt out of his final five years just
earlier this week. This was first reported by ESPN. The
deal is expected to be official soon. We were tweeted

(24:55):
at by Dan Peterson, who said that Machado getting that
gigantic bag like and Ornberger from TV and radio. So,
if you guys are making this money, I did a
little bit of it for pizza. Guys. If you're making
just as much as Manny Machado, oh no, I need
a little pizza money, guys. That's fair, all right, fair,
thank you. We're sorry, we've been very selfish. Yes, yes,

(25:18):
you have one game going on in the NBA. It's
between the Suns and the very hot Milwaukee Bucks, who
have won thirteen in a row. They are playing without
Janni Santa Tecumpo because of a quad injury. But right
now they are on top of the Suns. Twenty six
to twenty is a score with a little over two
minutes to go in the first quarter. And in College
Hoop's Top twenty five two games going on, you can

(25:39):
catch number twenty Providence and Georgetown on Fox. This game
is that halftime. Providence is up forty six to twenty
seven and Maryland taking on number twenty one Northwestern Maryland
up sixty seven to fifty three with about five minutes
to go in the game. Back to you, guys, Hie,
thank you very much. Moncy. Well, I'm not surprised she
sided with you. Wow, that's okay. I know that I

(26:03):
speak with many listening out there right now. So well,
I'm here for you. I'm here for you again. You
can call it old school and everything else, but there
are certain reasons why Major League Baseball at one point
was the undisputed king of the sports world, far greater
than the NFL, and I am old enough to remember
those days. But in Major League Baseball, I will give

(26:26):
them this. They are trying things. The question is will
they actually read the benefits. Remember they had the intentional walk,
they eliminated the four wide pitches, and said, you're just
automatically take a base that was supposed to save time.
First year they instituted that the game actually was five
seconds longer on average than the previous year, So that
really didn't work. But it will be interesting to see

(26:48):
how many times this violation actually happens in a major
league game and under the circumstances. Well, let's put it
this way. If they don't institute it, then this was
all just a huge waste of time. And I would
agree with you that these changes should not have happened.
But if they do, if they're serious about this, and

(27:09):
they're gonna be punitive as punitive during the regular season
as they are during the spring training games that we've
seen so far, I think baseball is doing the right thing.
Do I think it's going to work? Yes? But is
it possible it doesn't also? Yes, And if it doesn't,
I hope they change back the things that didn't work,

(27:30):
but not be gunshy to make future changes. Because the
NFL has been rewarded for the changes it's made, and
it's been I mean cavalier at times about the changes
it's made, but it hasn't been reluctant to change back
when it gets something wrong. Perfect example was the past
interference review rule. They instituted that for a season, realize

(27:50):
that it was a complete disaster, got rid of it,
and so they move on. I hope baseball takes a
similar path. All right, I want to switch gears to
college basketball for a moment here, And yesterday was an
amazing day in college basketball. He had a lot of upsets.
Purdue lost again, by the way, and then we had
that buzzer beater for Arizona State over Arizona, the unbelievable

(28:12):
comeback by Florida State, you mentioned Iowa, and of course
the Aztec Santigo State winning on a buzzer beater against
a New Mexico team obviously on the bubble right now
trying to get into the field is sixty eight. But
the amazing thing about college basketball, I don't think we
fully appreciate this phenomenon that is the March madness. It

(28:32):
really is amazing. Because I was watching the other day
about the University of Houston back on the Achema Lodge
one Clyde Drexler days, right, and so here's Houston. They
got these future Hall of famers on this college basketball team,
and you know I was. You know, this was an
era of Georgetown with Patrick Ewing and he played four
full years at Georgetown, winning a national championship, And it

(28:57):
was an era when you got to know the guys.
I'm mullen was at Saint John's. The Big East was
exploding at the time, but you had your star players
stay two, three, sometimes four years. Tim Duncan played four
years at Wake Fours. Now in this day and age
of college basketball where if you have any ability at all,
before we even get to know you, you're gone. You've

(29:17):
moved on to the NBA or try to move on
the NBA. So ultimately we get to the nca Basketball
Tournament and it's a phenomenon. Everyone's filling out brackets and
rich you knowing with this as well as I do,
ninety nine point nine nine percent of the people filling
out a bracket probably cannot identify a single player in
the tournament. Not a single player. Oh yeah, they might

(29:40):
be familiar maybe with a coach or the school name,
but as far as the players are concerned, they don't
know any of the players, and yet they are frantically
filling out these brackets. And it talks about how an
event gets to a certain level where the star power
is necessary because you know, we talk about sports all

(30:02):
the time like, well you got to invest in stars
because you know, stars fill the seats and everything else.
But in this one instance, college basketball in March madness,
the players who we might get to know somebody for
a couple of weeks, you know, somebody gets hot. I
remember UCLA a couple of years ago. Johnny Jusang, Right,
he's making all his shots, and everyone's like in Johnny Jousang,

(30:24):
Where is Johnny Jousang? These days gone? But for a
couple of weeks we're all over him. This is this
is this is it's a phenomenon in creating an event
so big that can't be broken. And that is the
the incredible nature of the nca Basketball Tournament. It really is.

(30:46):
And we got a little taste of yesterday, of buzzer
beaters and everything else, unlike any other sporting event in
this country. Oh, I completely agree, And it really does
feel like one of those things. Well, I you know
what I will put. I will put the super Bowl
in a similar life, but for a different reason. Yeah,
because there's something for everybody, and you have stars, you
have NFL behind them, no question. And I'm not comparing

(31:10):
college basketball in terms of popularity to the NFL because
there is no comparison there. But I will say this
in terms of the event, the actual event of March
Madness and the cumulative ratings that they get every single year,
it's absurd when you really look at these metrics. It
is an insanely successful and profitable and widely viewed event,

(31:32):
you know, and it's an event that spans a month
of the calendar. And it makes it fun because there
is a component to it that is tangible for you.
Like this is what I always say about golf. Like golf,
if they could somehow find a way to encourage more
people to actually golf, they would find their ratings creeping

(31:53):
higher and higher, because when you have a tangible experience
alongside a sport, it makes you more interested in that sport. Now, golf,
the buying is insanely, insanely high. You know, in order
to buy a bag of clubs that are worth playing,
you know, you're spending hundreds of dollars. Tea times are
usually expensive, and so all of that stuff really doesn't

(32:15):
help them. But with March Madness, all you need is
a printer and enough friends to pool a couple of clamshells,
and you got yourself baked in interest. You print out
a bracket, you fill it in my hand. You go
online on Yahoo or CBS Sports or spend or whoever
provides brackets, and you fill in a bracket and you
can create a little fantasy group. It's insane. How when

(32:39):
you have a tangible product to go along with a
viewership experience, how much more interested people are. And I
think the tangible product has always been for the Super Bowl,
the parties that people build around it, and it's almost
become a holiday in its own right. For college basketball.
That bracket that they created, that sixty eighteen, it's worth

(33:01):
its weight in gold because it attaches itself to fans.
By the way, I've said this many times. I know
post Super Bowl, a lot of people insist the Monday
after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday because
everyone needs recovery from all the parties and everything else
going on Super Bowl Sunday. But in my opinion, the
two days that absolutely need to be national holidays are

(33:22):
the Thursday Friday, the first week of the nca basketball tournament.
Because you have sixteen sixteen games on Thursday sixteen. On Friday,
everyone's got their brackets. Everyone nobody is working that day.
You get the games started what nine am on the
West Coast, and all day long, all you're doing is
staring at your brackets, going from one game to the next.

(33:43):
You're getting nothing done. We know in the radio biz,
we don't do normal shows on these days. Usually have
an appearance and you're sort of interjecting a few thoughts
during the course of the day. You are totally wrapped
up to into those days. So can't wait. Countdown continues
as we get ready for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. All right,

(34:03):
we're gonna be skipping around a lot of different things today.
MBA's back in action post All Star Games. So what
is the biggest question of the day facing the NBA
down the stretch of this twenty twenty two twenty three season.
We'll tell you. This is Fox Sports Sunday, Folly Fusco
here with Tony Fusco. Yo. As you all know, we're

(34:24):
the host of the number one rated show in all
the sports talk, the Folly and Tony Fusco Shop numero
U No, Yeah, And we know why millions of people
tune in every week. They want to hear US talk sports,
not our idiot guests who think they know more about
sports than we go. He't listen to these dummies. You
don't know crap about. This is the worst thing. He's

(34:46):
still on the way off the shop that you don't
know basketball. If you want to hear how sports talk
should be done, ye listen to the Folly and Tony
Fusco Show on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or
ever you get your podcasts. Steve Hartman, Rich Armburger, Fox
Sports Sunday, We are live from the Tairac dot Com Studios.

(35:08):
NBA off and running and we're heading down the stretch now.
The Commissioner Adam Silver addressed a non problem for the NBA,
and that's load management. He says, there's no such problem
in the NBA. I don't know, you know, Rich, I
keep thinking about this, so I had to do a
little research. I always get back to Michael Jordan. He

(35:31):
was a rather significant figure in NBA history, you could argue,
and you know, after retiring the second time from the
Chicago Bulls, he was out for three full years and
he got in with the Wizards and realize the only
way to get any interest in the Wizards games was
to put the uniform back on, which he did for
two years. His last season, a season, by the way,

(35:55):
in which he turned forty, Michael Jordan played all eighty
two games. Yeah, he didn't miss a single game. In fact,
if you'll look over the career of a guy like
Michael Jordan, unless he literally had a injury, you know,
like a broken leg or something, he didn't miss any games.
I think he had seven or eight seasons where he

(36:16):
played all eighty two games. Now, you can't tell me
when I'm listening to Adam Silver that we're worried about
the well being of the players, the health of the players.
You know, it's interesting about load management, sort of similar
to Major League Baseball pitching, where you have starters pitching less,
and yet we seem to have more injuries than ever

(36:37):
everyone seems to beginning Tommy John surgery. Similar with the NBA.
It seems like the fewer games the guys are playing,
the more injuries they're actually getting, like legitimate injuries. So
it doesn't add up to me. And the other thing
that I keep thinking when I hear Adam Silver defending
the players in the sense that he literally says load

(36:58):
management is not a problem for this league is a
reminder of who is actually putting a paycheck in his pocket?
Is it the players or is it the owners? Because
the owners are getting an earfull from high price season
ticket holders. If certain stars, fully healthy are choosing not

(37:19):
to play in games, well listen. If he didn't speak
for the owners, he would be fired because Adam Silver's job,
like Bob Manfred's job, like Roger Goodell's job, is to
be a human shield for the owners. So the thirty
NBA owners or governors as they're known in that sport,
the owners in baseball, the thirty teams, they're the thirty

(37:41):
two ownership groups in the NFL, they all go to
their commissioner and say, hey, listen, we want you to
be the most unpopular guy on the planet when you speak.
When you speak, you're going to deliver our bad news.
When you speak, you're going to deliver bad news to
the players, to the fan base, and you're gonna answer
hard questions we don't want to answer, and you're gonna

(38:01):
do it in the least controversial fashion possible. And that's
not only controversial for the fans, but also for the players,
the least controversial you can possibly come up with. Those
are the type of answers. We got it. Okay, here's
tens of millions of dollars. Go do your job. That's
the job. So Adam Silver is doing exactly what the

(38:22):
owners want. The owners want to keep these players happy,
because if these players are unhappy, what's going to happen
with this next CBA Collective Bargaining Agreement that's coming up
very shortly, is they're going to press the owners for
even more. And they've gotten so much from the owners.
The NBA has one of the strongest unions now and

(38:43):
it's because you have a lot of older players who
can truly lead, who have seen the wars with the owners,
and they know exactly how much they can get out
of them, and as a result, they've gotten a lot
out of them. Still overpaying for raiser in this economy
gross dollar shade Club, Yeah, you can get a top
shelf shade at a regular price. Dollar Shade Club is
available at a store near you in the men's raids
or aisle. That's it. That's the ad, all right. So

(39:05):
I understand what you're saying here, Rich, but imagine a
job where you're getting paid to work five days a week, right,
but your employer says you can actually get the exact
same amount of money showing up for three days a week.
So you mean I get paid the same amount of

(39:26):
money whether I work five days a week or three
days a week. Guess what I choose three days? Yeah,
not everybody. Some people like to work all the time.
I understand that. But if I could get paid the
exact same amount of money working three days a week
that I do five days a week, where do I
sign up? And that's exactly those like the Even Silver
is acknowledging the fact even if they reduce the schedule

(39:46):
from eighty two to seventy two, that's not going to
prevent players from still taking off fifteen twenty games a
year because they're still going to be making the exact
same amount of money. So as long as they are
allowed to take advantage of the situation, they well. Ultimately,
bottom line is does it reduce any fan interest? The
ratings are decent for the NBA this year, so I

(40:07):
think that's why he feels confident in making his statement
that it's a non issue, because right now, the NBA
is actually looking good. All right, we got some NFL
news we got to desperately get to coming up. Don't
go anywhere, keep it right here. This is Fox Sports Sunday.
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio

(40:30):
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to
listen live. Rolling along on another big sports Sunday. This
is Fox Sports Sunday, and we are broadcasting live from
the tirerac dot Com studios Tirac dot com. We're gonna
help get you there and now Matt Selection fast free shipping,
free road has our protection of our ten thousand recommended installers.

(40:50):
Tirac dot com the way tire buying should be so rich.
This week, the NFL Combine will get started in Indianapolis.
Starts on Tuesday, will be going all week long. Yesterday
I talked to our dear friend Adam Kaplan, our Fox
Sports Radio NFL insider. He will be covering this event
from the next for he said the twenty second year

(41:12):
that he has covered the NFL Combine aka the Underwear Olympics.
And I was reading here Florio over a Pro Football
Talk talking about more and more coaches and more and
more teams have decided it's a waste of time for
us to go to Indianapolis. The reason being, of course,

(41:32):
is that when we're watching these guys run their forty
yard dashes, and how often does a guy actually run
forty yards in his underwear in a straight line in
an NFL game? And all these agilia events and even
the interviews that were once deemed very insightful for these
NFL teams, they say these players are so rehearsed in

(41:54):
their answers because they know what kind of questions are
going to be asked, that they're getting less and less
out of the Combine. I guess the big, big benefit
would be the medical examinations, which are very important obviously
before you decide to invest a player in the draft.
But could you see the NFL Combine being either altered

(42:17):
in its scope of what they're actually doing at the
combine because it really is now made for TV event.
But when you hear more and more teams deciding, you
know what, not really interested in sending anybody to the combine,
could this be the end ultimately at the Combine? No? No,
because I think the they're going to find a way

(42:38):
to keep this around as a television product because now
and also a fan fest. You know. So we're coming
off of the super Bowl, where, look, not a lot
of people can afford a super Bowl ticket. But if
you offer the NFL Combine, if you offer the NFL Draft,
where people who are planning bachelor parties or laurette parties,

(43:01):
or they're planning a trip to a city location where
they're going to host the combin or draft, that could
be something to do if you live in that area
and you're a huge football fan. You know, all those
things are moneymakers for the league. It drives interest the league.
It's going to create and they build out fan experiences
very similar to the super Bowl, where you go into

(43:23):
a convention center type place and you experience whatever a
punt pass and kick competition, or there's booth set up,
whatever it may be. Those sort of things are important
for the NFL because it's just more viewership capture. You're
doing work in the offseason to encourage all those people
who've visited with you during off seasons come watch your

(43:45):
game during the regular season. And so I don't think
the Combine's going anywhere. Even if it's relatively obsolete, it's
still one of those touch points where all of the
NFL sends their coaches, their scouts, player personnel directors, general managers.
Rarely do any teams miss this event, and it's a
big networking thing for coaches and executives alike, and I

(44:07):
think players because of the visibility it gives them, especially
coming off of all this success that many of them
will have with name, image and likeness out of college,
will want their name to be splashed all over the
TV when they run a four two forty. That's important
for their brand as well. So I don't think the
combines to go on anywhere. Well, again, there's been talk

(44:28):
because teams are not sending people to the combine. Not
all teams obviously, but some are. If the number continues
to increase, there's been talked to the league with mandate
mandate that every team have representation at the NFL Combine.
The other thing, again talking to Adam Kaplan yesterday, is
the move inevitable move out of Indianapolis two Los Angeles look,

(44:53):
LA is the intended new hub of the National Football League.
The NFL network is in LA. Have you ever been
out to SOFI stadium. The NFL has that huge building,
of which the upper floors are empty right now, because
essentially that's where the league office ultimately is going to move.
What's interesting to me that, again, LA still is a

(45:16):
market that the NFL is trying to figure out. For
twenty years, there was no NFL team in LA, and
I was on the air all twenty of those years.
And as I've told you, Rich, not once did I
ever get an unsolicited phone call from someone saying, Hey,
why an't we going to get the NFL back? The
whole generation to gone without the NFL. They had the Dodgers,

(45:37):
they had the Lakers, they had USC and UCLA. No
one was complaining. Stan Cronky forced his way into LA.
The NFL forced him to tag along the Chargers with him.
Both those teams are still trying to build their fan base. Inevitably,
we'll see how that all works out. But I'd be
curious about an event like the Combine in a city

(45:58):
like Los Angeles. Are they flocking in? Are they going
to fill up so far stadium to see a bunch
of college guys run around in their underwear? I'm not sure.
I don't know what they ultimately want. Maybe it's not
even important that anybody shows up. Like you said, anytime
the NFL puts anything on the air, and we've learned
that with the Pro Bowl over the years, people will watch.

(46:21):
But from a team standpoint, apparently some teams have decided
we're just not getting a return out of the time
invested by sending people to the combine. Yeah, I mean,
I'm scouring the internet to find an article that really
gives a number of teams. My guess is that number

(46:42):
is very low, right, that number is very low, the
number of teams that actually sit out the combine. Because
here's the problem with that statement. So you sit out
the combine and say you have a terrible draft, right,
you know, first through seventh round you just really whipped.
And this happens every year. It happens multiple teams every year.
None of the players they drafted really pan out. Their

(47:04):
first rounder isn't a franchise guy, their second rounder really
isn't ready to start. Their third rounders through seventh rounders,
you know they're gonna be camp fodder. Maybe some warm
bodies on special teams, but it wasn't a special draft.
If you're one of those executives or one of those
head coaches who told their owner, hey, look, we don't

(47:25):
really see a need to be there. We're gonna be
wasting resources going to the combine and then you draft poorly.
See that's the part of this conversation that rings hollow
with me is even if it's just for appearances, most
NFL executives and head coaches will be there. And in
terms of the players, here's the problem with the combine.
If this is going to make the NFL massive amount

(47:46):
of money on the players who, by the way, aren't
earning a single dime for being there, and as a
matter of fact, are attending an exclusive workout for just
one league, I mean that's pretty bad. So what the
NFLPA is essentially going to do is they're going to
push back on the league owners and say, if you're
going to try to make this a traveling circus every year,

(48:09):
you're gonna go to LA and Tampa Bay and Dallas,
and you're gonna leave Indianapolis and you're gonna try to
build a better mousetrap to make more money. You need
to play the athletes who are the product for the combine.
The whole reason why people are tuning in it's not
to see head coaches and executives with binoculars, it's to
see the players do these insanely athletic things. So that's

(48:33):
the only thing that I could see being problematic for
the NFL keeping the combine around is the fact that
if the NFLPA pushes back enough to make some money
for their players, well again the problem. And this comes
down to scouting in the NFL, and John Ross is
always the example people use, right, So John Ross, if

(48:55):
you don't remember, John Ross at the twenty seventeen line
ran a record four two two forty, so that officially,
now by the way, Bo Jackson at the eighty six
combine actually ran a four one three, but they didn't
have official time, so four two two is the official time. Right,
skyrocket at him ninth overall pick in the draft. All

(49:17):
of a sudden, a guy that's projected is maybe a
late first second round type pick out of university watching
skyrockets because of that four two two forty, people forget
he actually got hurt at the end of that run,
couldn't even do the agility drills, and he turns out
to be a bust. Although it's you know, it's interesting,
I did. I just saw this. Did you know that
last month the Chiefs, because he hasn't played in three

(49:38):
years or two years, they just signed him to a
future contract. Like, you know, we'll see if there's still
something there, because they're always enamored with speed, right if
the guy's first, you know. But this is that prime
example again of trying to watch guys running around out
of uniform and doing these agility drills out of uni

(50:00):
form and jumping or standing broad jump. I've asked you
this many times because you actually were pretty good in
the standing broad jump. How many times in your NFL
career did you do a standing broad jump during the
course of a game? Exactly? Zero? Zero times? Okay, So
again this is all window drave it's for the show.

(50:21):
Most important that combines are the medical examinations, which are
absolutely important before you draft anybody, and the interview process. Now,
this seems to be a new phenomenon because after so
many years of the combine, apparently the level of questioning
is pretty consistent, and so these guys are brought into

(50:42):
rooms saying here's how you need to answer these questions. Oh,
this was going on back in two thousand and nine. Yeah,
when I was being evaluated for the draft. I remember
at the training facility that I was working out at.
And this is post college career, this is pre you know, whatever,

(51:03):
whatever All Star game you're gonna play, and whether it's
East West or one of now they have an NFL
PA All Star Game, they have the Senior Bowl. You know,
you're getting ready for the Combine if you're invited, you're
getting ready for these visits, these pre draft visits to
different teams if you're invited to be visiting with them.
And during that time, one of the most important times

(51:27):
for us was sitting down with somebody who had a
experienced interviews at the combine recently, so a former player
or a current player who was sent there by his agency.
And then sometimes you would even have like I've heard
many different things, like you'd have FBI former free I

(51:48):
guys talk about what an interview process, what they're looking
to do to you during an interview process, or you know,
negotiators or like legitimately these places higher and what they
do today explain like here are the questions that are
going to trip you up here as the answers. You know,
if anybody asks you anything off the wall. You know,
you handle it politely, you do the X, Y or Z,

(52:09):
and that's going to get you the best scores on
these interviews. And so that's been going on for over
a decade now or longer, and these players are becoming
more savvy at it. So it's a process and putting
a roster together every senior year, you have to first
decide who are we going to keep from our current roster.
Then you look at the draft, and you also look

(52:29):
at free agency, which players with positions are we trying
to fill as we get ready for the NFL Draft,
which by the way, is two months away, so it's
going to be here quick. And this combine, obviously, is
that first step of evaluating the talent that's going to
be available in the draft. The big question hovering over
this league, shocker everybody, the quarterback position. We got the

(52:50):
latest in this musical chairs carousel going on right now.
This is Fox Sports Sunday Steve Harman and Rich Rberger
Fox Sports Sunday Alive from the Tirak dot com studios.
I am really looking forward to this draft this year
and there's a multitude of reasons. I know, we talk

(53:11):
about quarterbacks, the nauseam. But let's face it, we just
saw and I'm finally I'm on board, Okay, finally that
Patrick Mahomes is a notch above every other quarterback in
the league right now, and he's proven it by winning. Okay,
not just the numbers, he's done everything, but I mean,
his first five years as a starting quarterback are unmatched

(53:34):
by any quarterback in the history of the NFL. Where
it goes from here, we'll see. But in five years
as a starting quarterback, no one has matched two Super
Bowl wins, two MVPs, all the other numbers that go
along with it. So once again, when you have the
best quarterback who can actually do it in the postseason,
you got yourself a championship team. So the thing that

(53:55):
makes this draft so interesting to me, and again we'll
get into the whole Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson and
Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo and all those guys out there,
is the fifth and six picks of these drafts. Rich
Una asked about this. So the Seattle Seahawks acquired what
became the fifth overall pick from Denver in the Russell

(54:16):
Wilson trade, and the Lions get the sixth overall pick
in the deal they made for Matthew Stafford and the Rams. Now,
what's interesting about both those teams is that they stumbled
upon an unbelievable year for their starting quarterbacks this past season,
Gino Smith with Seattle and Jared Goff with the Detroit Lions.

(54:38):
So you've got Seattle Detroit sitting at five and six
and they have to sit there and they think to themselves,
is it real? I mean, if your Seattle was at
a one year wonder season out of Gino Smith, who's
been a pedestrian quarterback for his entire NFL career prior
to this season. If you're the Detroit Lions, break got here,

(55:00):
Jared Goff, this is the quarterback that the Rams thought
they got with the number one overall pick that looked,
you know, his first two years under Sean McVay, he
looked like that level of quarterback before things went sideways.
If you're Seattle, if you're Detroit, and you're suddenly make
deals that get you, you know, big time picks in
the draft. Are you looking quarterback for the future or

(55:23):
are you saying, no, we're good at quarterback. We can
invest those picks into another position an area need. The
Lions certainly need some defense, no question about that. So
how do you think the Seahawks with Gino Smith and
the Lions with Jared Goff will approach having these premium
picks in the upcoming draft? Man, I I understand where

(55:46):
a lot of Seahawks fans are probably saying, you know,
we're okay, which you know, but we could be taken
over the top if we have a better quarterback. You know,
I could see a lot of Lions fans saying the
same thing about Jared Goff potentially. But the reality is,
offense really wasn't your problem last year in Seattle. In Detroit,
it was defense. It was a track meet every single

(56:09):
game for the Lions. For the Seahawks, many of their
games ended up being disappointing losses because their defense just
really couldn't stop opposing offense or or i should say,
the best opposing offenses, which is who you're going to
need to compete with in order to make it to
the playoffs every year in order to have a chance
to play for championships into the future. So I think

(56:30):
personally that they'll probably both be looking for an edge,
you know, like a will Anderson junior, A Miles Murphy
out of Clemson, Will Anderson junior obviously out of Alabama.
You know, a guy like oh Shoe, who's his name?
Out of Georgia, Jaellen Carter. You know, I could see

(56:51):
those type of players being available when these two teams
are selecting, and I could see them going after that
because can you imagine what I don't know, Aidan Hutchinson
would look like if he had Will Anderson Junior across
from him in Detroit. I mean, all of a sudden,
you're solving a lot of your problems really quickly. Oh. Absolutely.

(57:13):
So you look at the draft order right now, and
at number two, the Texans obviously need a quarterback. At
number four, the Colts obviously needed quarterback. At number seven,
the Raiders obviously need a quarterback. You can say the
same thing for the Falcons. They at number eight, we
don't know their situation, nine Carolina, eleven, possibly of the Titans.

(57:36):
So there's so many teams out there that have to
make a decision on either an obvious need a quarterback
or obvious need to upgrade their quarterback position. Is the
draft the way to go now, Will Levis seems to
be the big question mark because we know Bryce Young
and c J. Strout are going to go very high
in this draft. Levis, of course, is known for putting

(57:58):
mayonnaise in his coffee that's right, which you tried. By
the way, if you miss this last week, can you
give the details again of what it's like to drink
coffee with mayonnaise in it, something Levis does and you
were forced to do. Yeah, I lost a bet on
Countdown to kickoff the Fox Sports radio show that really

(58:20):
walked you into the big noon kickoff on Fox on
the East Coast. Right. I would do this show and
we would do a rapid fire betting segment the final
segment of the show, every single time it aired, and
I came in a distant third place between me more
i should say myself, Jared Smith, who's a Fox Sports

(58:41):
radio betting analyst, so not really fair there, and Brian
Know who is a degenerate gambler the man he's betting
on everything. And so I just got absolutely romped by
these two. And yeah, Will Levis, there was this CBS
Sports I believe interview where he was showing the woman
or the people who are interview viewing him that sometimes
he likes to squeeze a little mayo in his coffee

(59:03):
and mix it up and suck it down. It sounds disgusting,
and I'm here to tell you losing this bat and
being forced to do this, it was disgusting. Have no misconceptions.
There is nothing redeemable about drinking mayonnaise and coffee. Oh anyway,

(59:23):
So Levis is one of those guys that could be
a real X factor here the Texans. So they need
a quarterback and Damiko Ryans comes in as the new coach,
and knowing that they've fired two coaches in consecutive years,
one and Dunn's I need some kind of job security

(59:44):
here if we're going to circle our wagons around a
rookie quarterback. By the way, the latest time hearing right now.
So Houston is sitting there with the second pick in
the draft. But Houston also has the twelfth pick in
the draft in the deal they got with Ditchaun Watson
as compens station from Cleveland, so they got the second
and twelve pick. Now you figure, all right, well, the

(01:00:05):
Bears are not going to take a quarterback, are we? Are? We?
A Hunderson certain on that on the Bears staying away
that they're still writing with Justin Fields even after a
three and fourteen season. Well, I mean it's very possible
they could trade him. I mean, if you stay away
from trades and you just say, hey, let's mock out

(01:00:25):
a draft. I mean, they could use a defensive tackle,
they could use help upfront. So, like, you know, the
same way we were talking about either Detroit or the Seahawks,
should Carter fall to them, jell and Carter could be
the first off the ball off the board, you know,
or potentially a Will Anderson junior. They need defense. But
but yeah, if they want to go quarterback, and they

(01:00:49):
could potentially then trade down in the draft, you know,
and still get a pretty darn decent quarterback. Because what
about the Texans? What knock on their door and say, hey, look,
we're interested in quarterback. What can you offer us to
move up a spot because we know you want one?
And what happens if we take the one you want?

(01:01:10):
You know what I mean? You know, bring up the
Indianapolis Colts at number four, Hey, what will you offer
to move up three spots to the number one spot?
We'll switch with you and maybe they take a quarterback.
The Bears do, or maybe they ride with US and
fields depending on what quarterback is available to them at
that slot. You know, the other interesting thing about the Texans,
and this hasn't been reported anywhere at least that I've seen,

(01:01:33):
Lamar Jackson would make a lot of sense in Houston.
He just would. Now, I don't know if he ends
up getting the deal done with the Baltimore Ravens or
if they franchise tag him or whatever, whatever the situation's
gonna be. But Lamar Jackson, first of all, you know
that the Texans, they're not afraid to pay. They have

(01:01:55):
paid free agents in the past or extended you know,
talented players in their own house in the past. You know,
couldn't you see a situation where Lamar Jackson ends up
with Houston and it's almost like vitamin C to that
offense and they're competitive in an AFC South that's still
quite frankly, outside of the Jacksonville Jaguars, pretty winnable. Well,

(01:02:17):
first of all, we have to decide. The Ravens have
to decide which franchise tag are they going to put
on him. There's two different franchise tags, one where he
really is going nowhere as opposed to the one where
he could be available for a couple of number one picks.
On the other side, though, I'm going to give you
the latest rumors circulating around the bears and that number

(01:02:40):
one overall pick. By the way, We're brought to you
by Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes bundlean easy and affordable. Get
a multi policy discount by combining your motorcycle, RV, boat,
a TV and more all your prediction one place bundle
and sayd at Progressive dot com. Let's bring back find
out what's trending in right now mancy guys, months see months.

(01:03:01):
How are you? How's the rain been for you? We
have had an insane I was driving in on the
one on one Freeway eastbound and I had to do
a double take because the mountains in the background were
literally covered covered in snow. Like I I've been living

(01:03:21):
here my whole life. I don't know if I've ever
seen snow at those levels, lanketing those mountains. Yes, I
was saying, I just want to say, it looked like
a scene. It looked like Lord of the Rings. It was.
It was amazing. I am I did I move to Alaska? Right? Am?
I living in the North Pole. Beautiful. But I just
seen those mountains with those levels that much. Yeah, that

(01:03:44):
low level of snow covering those mountains. Yeah, I couldn't
take my eyes off her. No, it's crazy. My mother
attackted me yesterday. My parents live in Norwalk, and she
was like, it's hailing right now. Oh no, we saw it. Yeah.
I was like, oh my goodness, it is just crazy
you when it's right there, when we're not used to it.
Absolutely not. I wasn't in Sandy. It wasn't as bad

(01:04:05):
in Sandy. It was it rich. I know it got rain,
we got rain. But last night I'm actually going to
send you this video I took up last night. Um,
it was hailing so hard that it actually stuck to
the deck. Wow. Wow, at like ten thirty at night.
I just sent it to Steve. At about ten thirty
at night, I went out to the deck and I
was scraping enough of this snowball. It's outrageous. Now, this

(01:04:30):
is southern California. The rest of the country is collectively
rolling their eyes right right. It's like, no, this is
why we're here, people, because we don't want to have
to hail, shovel snow in the morning. Hail hurts when
it hits you sometime. Yeah, it can sting right for sure.
For sure, guys were very sensitive. We are sensitive the ladies.
The Lakers have officially announced that they will be playing

(01:04:52):
the Dallas Mavericks today at three thirty pm Eastern Time
without D'Angelo Russell. He did go three pregame test on
his right ankle, but he's officially been rolled out. Dennis
Shrewder is likely to replace him in the starting lineup.
One game still going on in the NBA Phoenix Suns
Milwaukee Bucks. I was complaining to the fellas Milwaukee, why
is your floor blue? Why are you wearing a black uniform?

(01:05:16):
You are throwing me off. You look like the Brooklyn Nets,
and your jim looks like the Dallas Mavericks. I don't
like this. You should be wearing green. Stop it right now. Anyway.
The Bucks are up fifty five to forty eight very
early in the third quarter. They just got going. In
the NFL, ONBC Sports reports that Rams cornerback Jalen Ramsey

(01:05:36):
wants a new contract if he's traded. He's three years
left on a five year extension that he signed in
twenty twenty which was the second largest cornerback deal in
the league. But anybody that wants to trade in Pro
Football Talk says, is gotta be ready to pay him.
So if he gets traded, he wants another contract. You
guys were talking about Lamar Jackson. It was like a
day ago that it came out that he is group

(01:05:59):
has not asked for a fully guaranteed contract. Did you
guys get that? Stephen A. Smith said on first Take
that he's talked to Jackson's camp and that they're not
making those demands. So there's two stories out and they're
by ESPN people. That one is that he's asking for
a fully guaranteed contract, and then it just came out
on first take. Stephen A. Smith said that that's not true. Well,

(01:06:21):
I don't understand why he would not want a fully
guaranteed contract. If Deshaun Watson got one, he should get one.
I mean, his resume blows Deshaun Watson out of the water.
He look. I understand Lamar Jackson does one half to
cut the pie with an agent. Maybe his motivation for
not having one, but under these circumstances, he needs some advice, yes,

(01:06:45):
especially if he's going to be shopping his services around
the league to see what kind of interest is out
there in a possible so called sign and trade deals.
So I completely agree. Yeah, there was a report that
he was getting advice from the NFLPA because he doesn't
have an agent, right, Oh, no, he is. Yeah, when
when a player sculpts their own contract, it has to

(01:07:06):
go through the NFLPA anyways, so they'll have legal reps
look at it, even if you do it with an agent. Okay,
But but in the case where you don't have an agent,
you can use their attorneys to make sure that you
know the team that you're working with isn't trying to
sneak things in there that shouldn't be in there, etcetera, etcetera.
So he's doing the right thing. If you don't have
an agent, it's just probably the wrong time in his career,

(01:07:29):
does not have an agent, right for sure. I'm curious
to see how how all of that is going to
end up with Lamar Jackson. Back to you guys, all right, Monsey,
Well that's what we get to do. We get to speculate. Yes, yes,
but there are endless possibilities. Yeah, I mean, they're just
every one of these whether it's whether it's Lamar Jackson
or Aaron Rodgers or Derek or we'll get I just

(01:07:51):
knocked my mic out. We'll get to all of that
in a moment. Here. I wanted to tell you the
latest rumor about the Bears and then number one overall pick.
So look, if you're the Bears, to me, I would
just take Will Anderson and call it a day. That's
what I would do. I think Will Anderson is that
dynamic you know, when you talk about it. I don't

(01:08:12):
know if I don't want to compare, but when I
think of dynamic guys that can get to the quarterback
being a game change, I think potentially he certainly is that.
But the Texans are sitting at two, and I mentioned
the Texans not only have the second overall pick, they
have the twelfth overall pick. That pick they got in
the Deshaun Watson signing by the Cleveland Browns. So the

(01:08:35):
latest rumor is this that there's one quarterback who is
so hot right now that the Texans are not going
to take any chances that he's going to fall to
number two. So the rumors are that the Texans will
trade both the second overall pick and the twelfth overall

(01:08:57):
pick to move up one slot to guarantee that they
get CJ. Stroud in this draft. Now, Rich, when we
think of Stroud's performance against Georgia, we were talking about,
you know, Jalen Hurts and his amazing performance and a
Super Bowl loss. What's the last time we saw a
quarterback play that well in a losing effort. How about CJ.

(01:09:19):
Stroud at a highest state, right, he destroyed that Georgia defense, who,
by the way, then went on to win the most
lapside of National Championship game in history against TCU. Depending
on how you know, combines and workouts and go for that. CJ.
Stroud has got the it factor, like could he be?

(01:09:42):
Because he's not. He's not the athletic quarterback that a
lot of these other quarterbacks that have become the new
the new go to in the NFL. He's not that
kind of a quarterback. He's insanely accurate passes, and we
saw a certain level of athleticism in that Georgia game
that may be surprised a few people out there, But
if everything test out, look out, I mean, everybody's going

(01:10:05):
to be throwing packages at the Bears to get that
number one overall pick. I don't think it's for Bryce Young.
I think it's for CJ. Stroud. Well, CJ. Stroud put
on like you mentioned, one of the most impressive National
Championship game or I should say Semifinal game performances we've
ever seen. It just really was magnificent what he was

(01:10:26):
able to do against a defense that many people deemed
to be over the past two seasons now just an
iron curtain. They're just so difficult to deal with the
Bulldogs on defense. I look, here's what I'll say is
every year, you got to make a decision. If you're
a general manager, what is the move that I need

(01:10:47):
to make to make this team the best? Also, what
is the move that I need to make to keep
my job the longest. And if you are faced with
a situation where you can't convince any of the priority
free agent Sala der car to come to your team,
if you can't really find a way to get a
team to trade their quarterback, I'll Ravens, Green Bay, you

(01:11:10):
know you name it, because the reality is that a
lot of these quarterbacks have no trade clauses, and even
if they do, they'll they'll have their representation or they
themselves will refuse to come to Houston to play there.
So you have to because they're in a complete rebuild
right now, so you have to really probably look to
the draft. And so this happens every single year. Every

(01:11:35):
single year, there's a team, I'm barring very few, I
should say, there's a team that makes the investment, that
trades some picks, that moves up in the draft to
get the guy, because these general managers know how important
this is to get right. Otherwise you're not long for
your job. Do you think if Houston, if Nick Kissario
gets this wrong, that he's going to have a job

(01:11:58):
for very much longer? The answer is now, no, I
mean exactly. And again, look it's always a risk. And
when you think about past drafts and moving up in
drafts and making these kind of decisions. We look at
the situation with the Bears and Trubisky to move up
to number two at backfired. And yet you know, in
the same draft you have the Chiefs moving up to

(01:12:21):
ten to get Patrick Mahomes and obviously it's one of
the great decisions in any franchise's entire history. But look
for that. If Stroud continues to wow post playoff game
performance there, everybody's gonna be throwing everything at the Bears
for that number one pick, and Houston needs that quarterback.

(01:12:43):
I mean, if Stroud is the guy, you say, well,
that's too much. He can't give up the second and
twelfth overall picks to move up a spot. Yeah you can,
oh yeah, if he's If he's that, there's nothing else
you're gonna get with two and twelve that's going to
come close to that, to the value of your franchise.
So we'll see how that all plays out. All right.

(01:13:04):
On the other side, which we need to start talking
about a certain man that has emerged from darkness to
suddenly make it clear what his future intentions are in
the National Football League. You know who we're talking about,
that quarterback still in Green Bay. This is Fox Sports Sunday,
Steve Hartman and Rich Arberger. Once again, this is Fox

(01:13:25):
Sports Sunday, and we are live from the ti iraq
dot Com studios. Next hour, I got something at the
top of the air I desperately need to talk to
you about on air, so stay tuned for that. But
all right, I want to get back to the Aaron
Rodgers situation. So by the way. Did you see his accommodations?
So they got they we saw inside the room. It

(01:13:46):
was nice, you know where he sort of bundles up
and he's in the dark, but he has a nice place, right,
It's got like a bed, it's got a bathroom. Obviously,
did you see the inside? They head all over the internet.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I
failed to mentioned this to Steve, but I myself partook
on a darkness retreat. Oh you did tell us about this?

(01:14:07):
How did this work for you? And what was the
purpose of this darkness retreat? Well, so, I mean really
for the same purposes as Aaron Rodgers. I was looking
to find a way to sort of find my inner self,
I guess. But yeah, me and my knuckle head co
host down in San Diego Sports seven sixty Big rich
Tedium Fletch. So we blacked out every single light coming

(01:14:29):
through our studio windows, We turned off all the monitors,
we covered everything up, and we sat in darkness for
ten minutes. And I'll tell you what, on the other
side of it, I feel incredible, incredible, and it was
moving and there was a lot of crying, definitely a
lot of soul searching. At one point in the dark,

(01:14:52):
my co host Ben, who you're familiar with, he grabbed
my leg and scared the living daylights out of me.
So a lot of things happen. A lot of things
happened in the dark, and on the other side of it,
I think I'm a change man, so I fully support
what Aaron Rodgers is doing. Well, maybe my living arrangement
in San Diego for those eight years wasn't quite that extreme,
but pretty close. Yeah, you were basically a nocturnal creature

(01:15:16):
as soon as the apartment door close. I don't know
anybody that's lived in an apartment for eight years and
never had a plate or anything in their refrigerates anyway.
But ultimately the idea of this is that he has
to come up to a decision here now. I found
it interesting. The other day, two Jets players former Jets

(01:15:39):
players elected to the Hall of Fame class of twenty
twenty three from different generations, were being interviewed. One of them,
of course, is Durell Revs. The other Joe Kleco, who
played with the Jets back in the eighties and nineties,
and they were both asked about the possibility of Aaron
Rodgers joining the Jets. Revis was cautiously in favor of

(01:15:59):
it ology in the fact that Rogers can be complicated,
but then saying I think he can make it work.
Cleco was saying no, because, and his fear was this,
the Jets are a young team. I mean, think about
they had the offensive rookie of the year and the
defensive rookie of the year, and remember Breece Hall was

(01:16:19):
a rookie. He could have been the offensive rookie of
the year, plus that defensive front. They got a lot
of young talent on that team. And you're gonna bring
in a thirty nine year old quarterback and let's get
away from his ability on the field as opposed to
what he brings into that locker room, a guy pretty
set in his ways perhaps, And Joe Cleco argues that

(01:16:40):
would not be good for a team of this youth,
that they had this youth movement going on. So let's
just go with the Jets first, and knowing what the
Jets would have to give up, obviously in a deal
to get the services of Aaron Rodgers, do you believe
that is a good fit for the Jets? A good

(01:17:01):
fit for Aaron Rodgers? Okay, I know this sounds like
a cop out, I promise you it's not. Aaron Rodgers
fits everywhere. Aaron Rodgers fits everywhere. So whatever team you
ask me, Hey, does Aaron Rodgers fit with the Houston Texans.
Does Aaron Rodgers fit with the San Francisco forty nine ers.

(01:17:24):
Does Aaron Rodgers fit with the Las Vegas Raiders? Does
Aaron Rodgers fit with the Carolina Panthers. The answer is
going to be the same every single time. The answer
is yes. The answer is yes because ultimately, when you
are a supremely talented quarterback, which I still believe Aaron
Rodgers is, you fit in every system because this guy

(01:17:46):
knows every play that is conceivably able to be called
in the NFL. He's random all you know, whether run
plays or passing plays. He's thrown every route. He's lived
this entire time in the NFL is one of the
best to do it. So you're not going to surprise him,

(01:18:06):
you know, offensively, if he's paired with the coordinator who
wants to try some new things, Aaron is probably going
to have a backlog of experiences that inform him, Oh, well,
that's not new, that's just repurposed. We did that back
in you know, two thousand and seven against X Y ORZ. Look,
this is just the way it is. So Yeah, Aaron Rodgers,
to my eyes, to my opinion, I think he fits

(01:18:28):
in New York. I think he fits anywhere all right. Well,
then if he fits anywhere, then my argument would be,
then why would he leave Green Bay? He is guaranteed
a salary of fifty nine million, four hundred and sixty
five thousand dollars if he remains in Green Bay in

(01:18:48):
twenty twenty three. Yep, fifty nine million, four sixty five
let's just round it up, sixty million dollars if he
remained in Green Bay. So we had this conversation several
years ago where you insisted he had played his last
game in Green Bay because he wanted out. I insisted

(01:19:09):
that Green Bay's not going to get rid of him.
He's under contract unless they get the Eagle and return.
I do think the circumstances are different because I think
Green Bay is ready to turn the page on Aaron Rodgers.
I think they feel they've got something in Jordan Love
they can build around. They didn't have that a couple
of years ago. The question is how much are you

(01:19:29):
willing to give up if you're the Jets, because obviously
there's gonna be a lot of competition for the services
of Aaron Rodgers. And you say that he's still a
premier quarterback. He is a premier quarterback. He's not the
quarterback he was three years ago. He's thirty nine years old.
He's already thirty nine years old. And just the eyeball
test told me, beyond the fact that he didn't have

(01:19:50):
Davante Adams to throw the ball too, he missed a
lot of throws. He was a little bit short on
a few throws. It happens to everybody. So I'm not
so sure the Jets, who have this surplus of young talent,
I understand they need a quarterback. I'm just not sure
that Aaron Rodgers is the right guy. Yeah, because I

(01:20:12):
get it. I want to in fact, on the other side,
I want to get into the Derek Carr situation, because
we know Aaron Rodgers and his resume. Is Derek Carr
really a guy that can turn a franchise around? We'll
answer that. This is Fox Sports Sunday. Fox Sports Radio
has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch
all of our shows at Foxsports Radio dot com and

(01:20:35):
within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to listen live. All right,
once again, here are a very busy Sunday, this Fox
Sports Sunday, and we're broadcasting live from the tire Irac
dot com studios. Tirac dot com. We're gonna help get
you there in a matched selection, fast free shipping, free
road hats are protection of our ten thousand recommended installers

(01:20:55):
tirerac dot com. The way tire buying should be. I
told you before I have a big question for you,
and I've got it coming up here in a second ridge.
But one of the big changes in all the years
that I've covered sports are names, like the actual names

(01:21:15):
of people athletes. This is very challenging for someone in
our business, especially more so on TV, because in radio
we could pretty much not mention somebody if we don't
have to, and then, you know, usually if it's a
complicated looking name, you know, you learn how to pronounce

(01:21:36):
it over a certain amount of time. But many times
on TV they'll just throw a name out at you
and you're just you just have no idea. I mean,
it just looks like scramble letters and you're not sure
where did this name come from. So I was sitting
here with Ryan and Sam talking to both of these
guys future fathers. They both plan on having a multitude
of kids, and I said, have you guys decided on

(01:21:59):
any name? Um? So, Sam, we were talking about you
and if you had a daughter. Yes, And I have
other names. By the way, just because I said to you,
Ingrid wasn't going to be my first choices. Okay. I
like like Penelope, I like like, you know, names with
a lot of penelope Ingrid. I think he had like

(01:22:21):
Greta Garbo, Greta's okay, yeah, Greta. We had a dog
named Greta. If you tell your daughter you named her
after your dog, I'll just name my daughter Schnauzera. That's smart. Ryan,
do you have any names in mine your future or
multitude of children that you will sire? And him? I thought,

(01:22:44):
you know, like Megan or Michael Megan or Michael Megan
or Michael right right, Okay, Now, rich you have what
I call the ultimately versatile name. Richard is a name
that is very common, obviously, but there's so many different
ways you can go with Richard. I mean, he could
be known as Richard, like Richard Burton, the actor, he

(01:23:06):
was owned as Richard Richard Burton. Okay, yeah, but you
can go rich or Richie, you can go Rick or Ricky,
you can go Dick or Dicky. Yeah, and there's a
lot of different ways you can go when your name
is Richard. So again, rich Richie, Rick, Ricky, Dick, Dickey.

(01:23:27):
How did you finally settle into being known as rich
That's a great question, and I don't really know the
answer to that. And I think most people, especially when
their name is shortened or they get a nickname, yeah,
they just kind of happened. I had an offensive line
coach whose name was Richard too, but he went by Dick.

(01:23:50):
And I said to him, like, even when you were
a kid, like your parents called you dick. Anywent well, yes,
and I was like, okay, I was like your grandparents,
your friends, everybody called you dick. And he goes, that's right,
and I'm like, and you like, that was never weird.
That never really struck you as like odd that you

(01:24:12):
were called dick your whole life. And he goes, what
are you driving at? And I'm just like nothing, I
just I mean, it just it never occurred to me
that like that would end up being the nickname that sticks.
But I let's put it this way. I guess to
what I was driving out with him was if it
were his choosing, I'm sure he wouldn't have chosen Dick.

(01:24:32):
Like I'm pretty sure well Richard Nixon was known as
Dick Dick Nixon. Yeah. I have a cousin who's a
Richard and he's Rick. Yeah right, I mean and Rick
my dad. I'm named after my dad. Actually, my son
is named after me as well, or the two of us,
you know, so it's a family name now. But um,

(01:24:54):
my dad went by Rick, I go by rich and
as a matter of fact, because my wife hates the
fact that we named my son after me, we nicknamed
him Tie. So we don't even call him anything that
has anything to do with this, right I like that? Yeah?
Yeah yeah. By the way, you have engaged in Dick's
Picks over the years, I have, Um, everybody loves my

(01:25:16):
Dick's Picks. It's because when you're betting on games, you
are always looking for advice. Oh, Sam, knock it off,
Oh always looking for advice. You're out that camera down?
Will you please, please thank you? I mean, I'm not
gonna unveil these just Willie Nilly. I have to put
a little research in the old popper first, of course. Yeah,
so I was just curious. Yes, it is one of

(01:25:38):
those names. Richard. My uncle was named Richard. My cousin
was named Richard, and they went by Rick or Ricky. Yeah. Um,
but I call you Richie. Yeah, it's it's first. Yeah,
it's first of all. But Dicky that would be there
was there were some famous guys that see I always
like Howie Long, how many Howe's Do you know Howie Mandel? Right? Yeah,

(01:26:00):
Mandel If her name was Howard, you know Howard. You know, like,
not a lot of people go by Howie. There's just
a lot of those that you just you know, hold on, Sam. Yeah,
back to the Rick and Richard thing. I was thinking
about the Patinos, right, So Rick Petino the dad, he
could also be Richard Pettino, which is his son's name. Right,
So he's Richard Petino junior or sorry, yeah, he's he

(01:26:22):
is a junior then, right, because he is Richard Petino,
Well he's only j Richard. Middle names are identical, really,
Remember George W. Bush was not George W. Bush junior.
His father was George Herbert Walker Bush and he was
George Walker Bush, so he's not a junior. Same thing
with the Morris, the Jim Moore Jim Moore. They have

(01:26:43):
different middle names, so they're not juniors. Interesting, I didn't
I didn't know that. Yeah, technically the names have to
be identical, right, they got to share the same middle
name as well. The complete name has to be identical. Uh,
let's throw anund of their name out there. Derek Carr,
Now does he go by Dick Carr? Is that where
you're just gonna I don't know. Let me let me

(01:27:04):
see what his full name is now? His his brother,
of course, David Car. Uh, Derek Dallas Car. That's a
pretty good name. I like that, Derek Dallas Carr. Here's
my question about Derek Carr. Where did he get the
Southern accent? Born in Fresno, played at Fresno. He's he's
a Fresno guy to the roots. Okay, that's the Car family.

(01:27:27):
They played at Fresno. They're from Fresno. He's one hundred
percent Fresno. By the way, if you've ever been to Fresno,
it's a little bit of an accent there, and all
I'm saying is, you listen to Davidentral California gets a
lit It's not La, it's not the Bay areat, but
but you Central California. You hear from David Carr and
he's like, I think my brother is gonna end up

(01:27:48):
taking his time and we're go. And then you hear
from Derek and he's like, well, shoot, you know, I'm
just not I'm slightly undecided here. And you know, I'll
just say this, by the grace of God, I've been
able to play this so long, and wherever end up,
I'm gonna gi him one hundred ten percent. Now that
can promise you. Yes. By the way, that was the
same question of Al Davis back in the day. How
did the kid from Brooklyn get the accident that he

(01:28:09):
ended up having Over the years, some people thought he
had a brief stint as a coach at the Citadel
and somehow picked up on something there that sort of
mixed into his normal cadence out there. Let's let's get
the bigger question on Derek Carr. Okay, okay, So, by
the way, Derek Carr says he wants thirty five million
a year well, he's gonna get whatever the market yields,
so you can throw any number out there. The question

(01:28:31):
is this Derek Carr, and I've been a Derek Carr fan.
And by the way, we get back to Aaron Rodgers
with all his you know, first ballot, Hall of Fame
resume and everything else, I still question the kind of
leadership he brings into a locker room. I'm not talking
about the field. I'm talking about the leadership qualities he
brings into a locker room. I don't have that same

(01:28:54):
fear with Derek Carr. I think car his leadership qualities
exceed his actual plane ability. I think he is competitive.
I certainly think he showed that two years ago with
the upheaval after the firing of Gruden to literally take
over that offense and will that team into the postseason
winning four overtime games. So I'm a Derek Carr fan.

(01:29:16):
The question is is he a difference maker if you
were to throw him instead of Aaron Rodgers in as
the quarterback of the New York Jets, a team that's
right on the cusp of being a legitimate playoff team
parentially over the next several years ago as they have
all this young talent, is he that kind of quarterback? Well,

(01:29:36):
the reality is I think that Derek Carr is an
amazing quarterback that probably doesn't get his due because he's
not an elite quarterback. I've never felt like Derek Carr
is a top five quarterback in the league, but top ten. Yeah,
many times I felt like he was operating performing like
a top ten quarterback in this league. And the unfortunate

(01:29:59):
reality is our car. It feels like he's been limited
a great deal by the teams that he's played for
in Oakland and now Las Vegas. So maybe if he
gets paired up in a better situation with a team
with a better defense, because the defenses that have been
that have been performing for the Raiders over his tenure

(01:30:19):
as their quarterback have been pretty atrocious. You know, barring
maybe one or maybe two years, the Raiders defense has
been Swiss cheese. They've really struggled. And so Derek as
a result, you know, I mean, the offense scores, but hey,
the opposing offense scores more, you lose those game. And
so I think a lot of a lot of his

(01:30:40):
success is predicated on his individual ability, not unlike Matthew
Stafford and not what he's been able to do from
a team wide success standpoint. And as soon as Matthew
Stafford got traded to the Rams, he won a Super Bowl.
Derek Carr feels like a similar type of quarterback to me, Well,
that's what I'm asking because I wasn't convinced Matthew Stafford
was that. Remember I was laughing when they were splashing

(01:31:02):
billboards all over La Matthew Stafford's coming. I'm like, really,
Matthew Stafford, and the guy ends up winning a Super Bowl.
So we're going to get more into what this quarterback
carousel is looking around in the NFL. But on the
other side, we get reunited with one of our favorite
people in the world. Spring training is underway. It's time

(01:31:22):
to talk with our Fox Sports Radio MLB insider John
Paul Morossi joins us next. Already to roll right now
once again, this is Fox Sports Sunday, Steve Hartman, Rich Arnberger.
We're live from the tirerac dot Com studios. Yeah, we're

(01:31:44):
talking baseball right now, and there's only one person we
talk baseball too, because he is simply the best of
the best of the best. Yes, see him on the
MLB Network. Of course he's with the NHL Network at
times as well. Oh and also he'll do some professional
wrestling commentating. He can do it all. He is that
kind of an individual. We call him our Fox Sports

(01:32:06):
Radio MLB insider, our dear friend John Palmer ROSSI is
Johnny's JP. It's been a while, doesn't seem that long ago.
But the great thing about this time of the year
for all of us is that not only are you
obviously a huge baseball guy, I know your college basketball guy.
I am. I am. I've been watching a little bit

(01:32:28):
of college hoopsy these days as well. I saw that
great Buzzard beater there forever Date yesterday against Arizona. But
I'll tell you what a couple of things I do
have to correct the record there for Rich. I think
the last time I followed wrestling carefully would have been
the late nineteen eighties. I may have to updake my
roster of what it looked like there at WrestleMania at

(01:32:51):
the Silver Dome back in I think nineteen eighty nine.
But I will say this, Fortunately, the memo made it
to mister Sidler's office at Petco Park that we were
going to have this conversation, and he said, you know what,
Steve and Rich and John are all friends of the
baseball community, and we're going to make sure that we've

(01:33:12):
got a good baseball story to discuss for our first
segment of the new year. So how about that Mannie
Machado lifetime contract with the Friars. It is quite a
time to be a San Diego fan. All right, Well,
let me just fall up quickly here, because we got
a lot of questions for you. Where's all this money
coming from? I mean, I mean a lot. I mean

(01:33:33):
look at Rich and I remembered the days when we
were like in the company of a couple thousand people
at Petco Park. I mean the place was empty, zero
buzz I. Remember when the Chargers left town. I had
dinner with Peter Sidler and I said, look, you have
a golden opportunity, but you gotta give us something to
talk about. I mean, there's nothing to nobody cares about

(01:33:54):
the potteries in San Diego. I couldn't made it any
more clear. He understood exactly what I was saying. But
you talk about a guy that walks the walk, they're
just spending money like crazy. Think I've Darvish a six
year extension to least forty two. Where is all this
money coming from. Well, it's a great question. And what
I'll say is this, Well, whether it's Machado's deal, which

(01:34:16):
I believe takes him now to forty one, Darvish to
forty two, a couple of things. Number One, from a
baseball rules perspective, the longer the extension, the larger the
denominator over which you're averaging your average annual value. So
from a standpoint of the luxury tax, it helps you

(01:34:37):
out a little bit there. But we're talking about an
astronomical sum of money when you add it all together.
And from having all the years that we've had following baseball,
what I know is that when there's a question about
a big picture story, when it relates to direction of
the franchise, why one team gets a player in free

(01:35:00):
agency and another team doesn't, the answer almost always is
owner owner in one way, shape or form. And I
think in this case, you've got an owner in Peter
Sidler who is comfortable a overspending right now to put
the best team on the field that they can because
he senses a window. From a baseball perspective, which I

(01:35:23):
think is correct. They made it to the NLCS last year.
But the other part is there are owners who operate
their teams as strict businesses, which is a majority, and
there are owners who operate them as hobbies very much
a discretionary fun thing to spend one's fortune on. And

(01:35:47):
clearly Peter Seidler and the Padres are in the latter category.
Is that a fact? Because I have to ask this.
You know, there has to be a profit margin in
order to run a business successfully. There has to be
a break even point to know if there's a line
you shall not cross. And then also we know that

(01:36:09):
many businesses operate in the red for a lot of
years just because it takes money to make money. Where
do you think the Padres are? Do you think that
this is in market size twenty seven in the United States?
In Major League Baseball? That airs you know, one hundred
and sixty two games and then you can sell eighty
plus games of and earn that gate revenue. Are the

(01:36:32):
Padres a team in your mind that are breaking even?
Are they a way ahead? Are they somewhere? Are they
somewhere behind? How does how do the finances really work?
Or do we not have any specific detail to that,
Rich and know it's an excellent question, and I'll be
upfront and say that I do not have intimate knowledge

(01:36:54):
of what the Padres books look like. I will say this,
it would not surprise me if they were operating year
to year at a loss. That would that would not
surprise me. But remember this, there's the larger question. Are
you operating year to year in terms of revenues and

(01:37:15):
expenditures and what that number looks like versus the equity
and the value of your franchise. The second part is
the big question, and when you have a team with superstars,
if they become a perennial postseason team. We're entering this
phase as you guys both know where who knows where
the local media rights are going for various teams via

(01:37:38):
the situation with Diamond Sports Group. The more valuable your
team is as a marketing product, the more revenue streams
you can bring into immediate perspective, and we may be
on the cusp of teams truly being able to in
market stream and monetize their value. Right now, you understand

(01:37:59):
San Diego Tech Savvy plays a lot of younger consumers.
You've got a team for the ages, that's the only
pro team in town. What would San Diego fans pay
to be able to stream Podres games in market every month?
I would imagine a fairly strong sum of money. And
so I think that has to be part of the

(01:38:20):
calculus where the Padres are building a team that if
you are living anywhere in San Diego, North County, Carlsbad North,
all the way up to Orange County, you have to
watch this team and at some point that brings in
equity both in terms of your social capital and real
actionable money. And you guys both saw what the response

(01:38:43):
was like at fan Fest. People want to be around
this team, and I think that's the credit of Peter Sibler.
I guess one of the questions and we're going to
get a little business talking here for a moment. So
this Diamond Sports group, which holds the rights to all
the MLB, NBA, NHL teams, has been talking about the
their nineteen sports networks filing for bankruptcy and everything else

(01:39:04):
because all this money is coming out of television revenue.
But if the regional television networks, which really are the
lifeblood of Major League Baseball, they don't get the national
TV contract shares like the NFL, even the NBA, where
it's of course is getting a lot of money out
of China. What would that do to the economics of

(01:39:24):
the game. I mean, is there still a huge market
if this Diamond Sports Group folds up, will there be
another one right behind it to still you know, bring
the money that is necessary to pay these gigantic salaries.
Can they still get that kind of infusion of money
into Major League Baseball? Well, see that that's a question
that MLB is wrestling with right now that there's been

(01:39:47):
a special Economic Panel convened to address this issue. Now,
one possibility, and I stress the word possibility because candidly
we've never been here before really know what this means. Well,
we are at a moment that is really without precedent
in the history of team sports in the US in
terms of almost a post a post cable bundle world,

(01:40:12):
at least in terms of how the monetization of it
all looks. And one possibility is that the RSNS, if
in fact they declare bankruptcy the Diamond Group that and
if there's potentially some chaos that follows it, at least
in the short term, the places that are more secure.

(01:40:34):
Let's say the team own networks like Nessin for the
Red Sox, Marquee for the Cubs, Spectrum for the Dodgers. Yes,
one would assume with the New York Yankees SNY with
the Mets. More the brand name teams who have their
own really big brands are not affected by this, and

(01:40:56):
they are still getting their usual remuneration on a monthly basis.
So it's possible that unless and until MLB steps in
the short term with some money from Central Baseball, that
we could see a further cleaving of the way that
the hals and have nots operate in Major League Baseball.
That is a legitimate concern, But in the long term,

(01:41:20):
in the long term, I want to stress this, I believe,
based on what Commissioner Manford has said and other venues,
that if Baseball is able to bring back into its
purview the in market streaming rights, because that's been the
big bugaboo for a long time, how do you find
a way if you are a cord cutter in San Diego,

(01:41:40):
how do you watch the podres And that's been a
tremendous question. But in this world, if Valley Sports San
Diego is not in its current state any longer after
a period of time, and if MLB takes over ownership
of its digital rights in market, that's the key thing
in market. If you're a Padre fan living in Saint

(01:42:01):
Louis or Boston, you've been able to watch the Padres
on MLB dot tv for years without any problem. But
if you're a Padre fan in San Diego, you have
not been able to do so. And what this situation is,
chaotic as it may appear and frightening for a lot
of people in the sport, there is opportunity and if

(01:42:21):
MLB pursues it in the proper way, there could actually
be a pretty nice result for a lot of parties involved,
including the fans, if they can stream their games in market.
We're joined by John Paul Morossi here on Fox Sports
Radio Fox Sports Sunday, brought to you by tire rack
dot Com. I'm looking at baseball's rule changes right. I'm

(01:42:43):
looking at the pitch clock. I'm looking at the disengagements
from the rubber for the pickoff move. I'm looking at
the shift and the way it's now legislated where you
need two infielders on either side of second, I'm looking
at all these rule changes, the larger bases, and I'm
thinking to myself, what is going to be the most impactful.

(01:43:03):
I think we already have our answer, and I think
I'm overall supportive of these role changes. But what would
you say is going to be the most impactful And
how do you think that this is going to translate
when the actual regular season gets underway, John, So, it's
a great question. Rich a couple of things. I'll point out.
Number one, we saw it yesterday a walk off violation

(01:43:28):
right in the Red Sox Braves game. So a batter
from Atlanta had a chance to put his team ahead
and win it in a walkoff in the bottom of
the ninth inning. And of course we don't often play
extra innings, especially early on in spring training. So six
sixth tie, bottom of the ninth, and he was slow
digging in and the game ended on a game ending

(01:43:50):
strike violation, and so it was as if it had
been a swing and a miss, when in fact there
was no final pitch. And listen, that's going to be called.
It would be called that way. I hope, I really
say this with sincerity. I hope it would be called
that way. If it's Game seven of the World Series

(01:44:11):
as well, because it has to be the rule. If
it's the rule, it's the rule. Period Now. In the
short term, I think that we will see more moments
like that where something goofy happens and a hitter is
all uneven in terms of its timing and has a violation,

(01:44:33):
or a pitcher does the same and it begets a
lot of publicity. Guys, we got to adjust, and that's
why it's good that we're having this conversation in late
February and not April first, because there probably will be
some violations in April. But we're all on notice here.
No one can say that we haven't had time to prepare,

(01:44:54):
because we have. So I think in the near term
this will generate the headlines. Some tradition she lets will
have big issues with it, There'll be some complaining, and
then after a period of time they will just adjust.
Just like remember years ago when they instituted the limits
on mound visits and everybody thought it was going to
be the end of Western civilization. We're still here, and

(01:45:15):
I think that it's going to be the same thing
with respect to the pitch clock. The interesting thing is
the bigger bases are going to be a significant thing.
I was talking to Chris Bassett in the last ten
days or so, of course, a veteran pitcher now with
the Blue Jays, and Chris said he thinks that that
is actually once we get through the turbulence of the
early part of the regular season at the bigger bases

(01:45:37):
and the rules about disengagements and throws over that that
will actually be the thing that is the most enduring change.
So I Chris is a very thoughtful guy. So I'm
going to put a pin in that and revisit it
because while in the near term the other steps getting
the headlines, if you have a team that knows how
to run the bases and can do so where ninety

(01:45:58):
feet are able to be gained on a utchual basis,
I think it's going to be a tremendous advantage in July, August, September,
when most of the game will have already adjusted to
the clock and the shifting in a way that makes
us think about it a bit less. Well, I'm a
bit different generation than both you guys, and I do
remember a game where base stealers are very much in
the premium and the game. It was base to base

(01:46:21):
and a lot more excitement on the field. I'm a
big fan of, you know, getting rid of the shift.
I thought that was a nightmare for Major League Baseball.
But I'm not so sure about the clock situation. Rich
and I are very different in our thoughts on this,
because you have that fine line, JP, where you want
to bring in a new level of fan that maybe

(01:46:42):
he's turned off by the length of Major League Baseball
games without turning off your core base. Because I know
this people that love Major League Baseball, that's their sport,
they live and breathe, that they don't give a crap
about football or basketball. More is better to them, not less,
so that it's a fine line. The question I have
is all these adjustments to the clock clock and everything else,

(01:47:05):
will that actually bring in new fans to Major League Baseball.
I think it will and MLB has done a tremendous
amount of research on this. This was done with years
of research and conversation and discussion. It was done very thoughtfully,
and I would say, to back up to the initial

(01:47:27):
premise of your question. At the end of the day,
most fans watching most things say, in general, I want
more action, give me more action, and I don't know
of many baseball fans who would say I want more waiting,
which is basically what the current game has become. The

(01:47:50):
baseball has been criticized at times fairly for not changing
quickly enough. Here's a case where they've brought about some
some pretty dramatic change, but done so methodically and I
think thoughtfully. Now, at the end of the day, we
will see where attendance goes, where the rhythms go of

(01:48:10):
the game. I happen to believe that players will like
it a lot more than they realize, because if they
get twenty to thirty minutes back every day, that's basically
three additional hours of the week almost with their families,
or three additional hours of rest. This is important. I

(01:48:32):
mean for a sport that plays one sixty two and
all the travel. I like it. I think it's going
to bring more fans in. It gives you better tempo,
it gives you more action, it gives you better pace.
And again, this has been tested out at the minor
league levels and there's been tremendous amounts of success with it.
I believe that everybody involved here deserves the benefit of

(01:48:55):
the doubt and I think by the middle of the
season you're gonna hear a lot of people, including the players,
who quite like the new methods of playing. So here
we go. We got less less is more in Major
League Baseball. More is better with John Paul Morosi. Okay,
that's the way we feel, so JP, it's great to
start off twenty twenty three the right way with you.

(01:49:17):
We got a lot of conversations coming up in the
months ahead, as always with your insanely busy schedule. We
appreciate it one hundred percent. You join us here on
Fox Sports Sunday. Man, you guys are great friends. I
can't wait to connect next weekend. And by the way,
we got a lot of great World Baseball Classic Common Unimore.
Those games will be on Fox Sports coming up next month,

(01:49:40):
so stay tuned there. Can't wait, all right, j P.
We'll talk to you next week. All the best, guys,
Thank you, John Paul Morosi, the best of the best,
Star Fox Sports Radio, MLB Insider. All right, better late
than ever, because it's time to find out what's trending
right now. Sitting by always ready to go, Moncy Belangs.
Oh yeah, guys, this game is going down to the

(01:50:01):
wire between the Phoenix Sends and the Milwaukee Bucks, who're
trying to extend their Winnie streak to fourteen, playing without
Janasanta to koompull brook Lopez put them up by two.
With twenty four point eight seconds left, Devin Booker loses
the ball. They foul Joe Ingles on the free throw line.
He misses the second one, and right now they are
reviewing who gets the ball. The Nets are up by three.

(01:50:24):
E I say Nets because they look like they're wearing
a Nets outfit. I'm sorry. The Bucks are up by three.
The Bucks are up by three ten seconds left, and
they originally said it was Phoenix ball, but they're challenging it.
I do think it's Phoenix ball. I think they're gonna
get the ball back and go for one last shot.
Ten point six seconds left. Bucks up by three. They're

(01:50:48):
figuring out who has the ball. But I do think
it's gonna go to Phoenix. I think so. Going down
to the wire. Oh oh, I can, And it's making
me sweat. Over here. There's another game going on and
it is the Brooklyn Nets. So see, I'm not crazy. Guys.
They're playing. They're losing right now to the Hawks thirty
seven to twenty nine after one quarter of play. Soon
it's gonna be the Mavericks taking on the Lakers in Dallas.

(01:51:09):
The Lakers already announced that they're gonna be playing without
D'Angelo Russell. Dennis Shrewder is supposed to start in his place.
Big story in Major League Baseball. What you guys talked
about start their basement Manny Machado, he's not going anywhere.
He and the Padres are finalizing eleven year, three hundred
and fifty million dollar contract extension. And I don't know
if you guys saw this yesterday, Dolphins cornerback Byron Jones,

(01:51:31):
did you guys see what he tweeted on social media? Say? Yeah?
He said that he can't run or jump because of
injuries sustained from playing this game. It's been nearly a
year since he had achilles surgery, and he kind of
just was like, don't do this to yourself. I thought
that was such an interesting thing to put out there. Now,
that's a way to stay out of the league if

(01:51:51):
you want to do that. I mean, he has ever
right to say it, but it doesn't help his employment status.
No not. I don't think he wants to play though, No,
he's done. You pretty much announced his retirement there one
hund saying what he said, he announced his retirement one thousand,
one thousand percent. Well, it looks like Milwaukee just may
have stolen the ball. So it looks like they have

(01:52:13):
the ball ten seconds left and they are up by three. Fellas.
Back to you, all right, Well, Monsey, I got Iowa
Sam screaming in my ear right now, number six Iowa
leading number two Indiana, seventy seven, seventy four, three minutes
to go. That is true. Wow, Wow, yeah, wow. That's

(01:52:35):
women's basketball. The excitement is palpa and in the studio
and abroad, College game Day was there. Yes, College Game
Day was an I So there you go. I just
want to make sure that we got that in, all right,
all right. Coming up on the other side, Rich, I
want to get into because you and I are both
boxing fans. We are, and we are counting down to

(01:52:59):
the much anticipated showdown, long awaited showdown between two powers
in the boxing world, Tommy Fury and Jake Paul. That's right,
how did boxing get to this level? We're gonna tell
you coming up next Holiday Passers to Middleton, Back to holidays,

(01:53:22):
they're out there with Lochez Crowder and Ingles Holiday pulls
up shot Holloway got it three pointer from Drew Holiday,
who delivers in the clutch. You had one more time.
That is the Bucks Radio Network and that is our
Progressive Play of the Day, brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
Progressive makes bundling easy and affordable. Hit a multi policy

(01:53:43):
discount by combining your motorcycle, RV, boat, a TV and
more all your protection in one place. Bundle and say
app Progressive dot Com and that's the final. The Bucks
had defeated the Suns one oh four two one oh one,
So the Bucks forty three and seventeen on the season
really the main challenger to the Celtics for supremacy in

(01:54:05):
that Eastern Conference. Once again, this is Fox Sports Sunday,
Steve Harbin and Rich Oremberger live from the tire Rack
dot Com studios. We'll get to some MBA news coming
up in the next hour. The Lakers just tipping off
their game on the road against the Dallas Mavericks. But Rich,
you and I are boxing fans, yeah, and we've been

(01:54:26):
to Vegas together covering some boxing matches. I missed the
days believe me. As you know, Rich, back in the day,
I was literally in Vegas almost every single month, either
at Mandalay Bay or MGM Grand covering some fight, and
there were just so many great matchups potentially in the
boxing world. And then we get to where we are today.

(01:54:50):
Coming up later on today, Jake Paul is going to
get in the ring against Tommy Fury. Tommy Fury, by
the way, is the younger half brother Tyson Fury. He's
not Tyson Fury. In fact, Tommy Fury is really best
known for his appearance on a show reality show in
England called Love Island. That's really his greatest notoriety. So

(01:55:14):
he's murdy much like Jake Paul. He's a media creation.
He's only had eight fights, he won them all, but
nothing too overwhelming on his resume to say the least.
And yet here we are, and I hear where the
WBC has now stepped in and said, if Jake Paul
beats Tommy Fury, we're gonna rank him. Now, I understand that,

(01:55:39):
like any business, you gotta go with eyeballs, and who knows,
maybe we'll see that Jake Paul is all that down
the road. But how do we get here rich. I mean,
what has happened to a sport that, for so much
of my life has been a big part of my

(01:56:00):
must see and it's just not anymore. I feel similarly
to you. I have yet to buy any of these
pay per view fights that Jake Paul has appeared in,
or his brother Logan for that matter. And it's really
not because I dislike them. I really I'm kind of agnostic.

(01:56:21):
If I'm being honest, I don't know a lot about them.
I don't listen to their podcast. I don't. I don't
i'm their content. I mean, i just have never really
sought their content. I'm I'm more of a passer buyer,
like so, you know, on TikTok or Instagram reels or
on Twitter, when I'm passing by a promotional video or
training video of the Paul brothers, maybe I'll stop in,

(01:56:44):
I'll glance for a little bit, but then I just
move on with my day. But boxing's hurting right now.
Boxing is in a spot where kind of like horse racing,
because not I mean, I certainly wasn't. I know, you
weren't really around during the heyday of horse racing. But
horse racing at one point in this country was one
of the biggest sports. It was huge. Yeah, back in

(01:57:07):
the Willie's Shoemaker days. Any R Carr, you knew these
jockeys like they everybody knew him. Yeah, Sea Biscuit, I
mean like it was. It was huge in this country
and it has taken a distant, distant backseat to all
the other sports leagues in this country. Boxing had its
heyday during you know, the Holy Field Tyson era. Boxing

(01:57:27):
was a huge sport as well, actually around the same time,
if that was a carryover because boxing stayed popular. But
in today's in today's society, where the majority of the
best athletes are heading to sports like the NFL or
basketball to play in the NBA or professionally from Major
League Baseball teams, you're you're not getting as many highlight

(01:57:51):
performers going to boxing. In fact, the UFC and mixed
martial arts has stolen a lot of these guys who
are brave enough to get into a ring or an octagon.
A lot of them are going into going into mixed
martial arts. And that matters for two reasons. One because
boxing depends on fearless human beings from maybe some scrap

(01:58:13):
you know, you know, bootstraps upbringings to get into their
sport when they're young so that they can become the
faces of the game when they're old, and the UFC
is definitely stealing some of those talents. So that's kind
of how we got where we're at. Well, I mean,
outside of Canelo and Tyson Fury, I mean I'm looking
at the pound for pound rankings right now, like the

(01:58:33):
top ten were used to know every name obviously, forget
about Mickey Ward and Roy Jones had them all. Yeah,
honestly the only two names that maybe even a casual
sports fan that doesn't follow boxing would recognize or Canello
and Tyson Fury yep, and the other guys. You're a
hardcore boxing fan, you're like, oh, I know these other okay,

(01:58:55):
but you're all I'm talking about. Where the Oscar de
la Hoyas of the world, right, you know? Where Shame Mosley?
Where are the Manny Pacious, the Fluid Mayweather Juniors? These
are names that even if you didn't follow boxing, you
knew these names, and boxing just doesn't have that anymore. So,
you know, the WBC is rolling the dice here by

(01:59:17):
coming out and saying, yeah, if Jake Paul beats Tommy Fury, which, honestly,
Tommy Fury is barely a step up from you know, Silab,
you know, was a forty something near a forty forty
six year old you know, x M M A guy. Um.
Tommy Fury has only fought tomato cans, completely tomato cans,

(01:59:37):
and he took time off to do this reality show. Yeah, yea,
his name is Fury. He bears no resemblance to his
older half brother nuns. Right, it's a good looking guy,
good looking guy, and you know what, honestly looks good
in the ring, and you know wears his gloves well,
but I mean Kenny Crack probably not, you know. So
it's it's going to be one of those wins for

(01:59:58):
Paul and then the w BC is trying to capitalize
on it. All right, on the next hour, the NBA
coming down the stretch in the regular season. Do the
Lakers really have a chance to make a championship run?
We'll tell you. This is Fox Sports Sunday. Fox Sports
Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation.
Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio dot com

(02:00:21):
and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to listen live.
Oh hell's broken loose here at Fox Sports Radio. We'll
give you details in a moment. Here this Top Sports Sunday,
We're broadcasting live from the tirerac dot com studios. Tirerac
dot com. We're gonna help get you there. Hello, Matt
Selection fast free shipping, free road has our protection over
ten thousand recommended installers tirerac dot com the way tire

(02:00:44):
buying should be. So we added to Monsey's update at
the bottom of the last hour that Iowa women's fastball
number six Iowa was leading number two Indiana. So the
game came down to the final seconds. Indiana had taken
the lead. Caitlin Clark, who is the start of the

(02:01:08):
Iowa basketball team, gets the inbound pass. She has barely
enough time to throw up a three point shot all net.
Iowa wins the game. Iowa sam passed out. The only
thing that i go is a little surprised by. So
you have this dramatic win Number six Iowa, number two Indiana,
just to the second loss of the year. This is

(02:01:29):
at Iowa three pointer at the buzzer boom, we win
the game. They didn't rush the court. Wait, why they
had a full house. It was obvious they had a
full house. But are you not allowed to don't know where?
He doesn't rush the court? Are those real fans at

(02:01:51):
the game? What's going on? Well, I saw how many
people were there, but I mean, rich your courtside three
pointer at the buzzer to win the game at home,
crowd up, nobody runs onto the court. Steve's upset. Did
I was overstrained? Well, I will say this, the women's
game different on your ladder rush the court. This was

(02:02:14):
Iowa man. I guarantee they've been rushing on the court.
Hang on a second, Hang on a second because I
will I will defend Iowa and iwa Sam, you know,
and sort of more of a biproxy situation here because
he's such an Iowa honk by saying, I am not
a fan of that. I've never been a fan of
rushing the court. I've never been a fan of Russia.

(02:02:35):
Sometimes it's not planned, it's just spontaneous. It's overdone. It's
definitely overdone. If it's if you beat the number two
team in the country, you should rush. I don't have to.
I'm saying this. I'm saying this like I mean, you know,
when is it going to be when something awful happens
that we finally all go Yeah, maybe that wasn't a
good idea in the first place. Like I just feel

(02:02:56):
like we're just waiting for that to end poorly before
it's really strictly prohibited, you know. The only might I mean,
I might stick in the mud. I always get called
the stick of the mud for the your coach K.
Remember Coach K used to get upset about you know,
when Duke was on the road and they would get
upset and the fans are rushing the court. You know,

(02:03:16):
he always had a sour disposition. Anyway, you know, I
got scowled, paid to scowl blue devil head coach Ye
holding his pitchfork and yeah, something boarding over anyway, So
I was Sam's out of his mind right now. That
was pretty great. I mean, I mean it was exciting.
I mean, this fun Clark. She's all American and she's

(02:03:37):
the star of the team. I wonder, first of all,
she traveled on the play, but she got Okay, but
let's go back to the here's what Indiana players. She
traveled and she got She has very muddled time, and
so the pass came into her. She had to get
the shot up. But she she ran two full steps.
You're allowed to take two steps. After two steps is

(02:03:59):
when he the last step was one two man. Okay,
But here's the thing, and then she got the shot.
If they called to travel on the last shot with
one point five seconds, I don't know the fans would
rush the refsp well maybe so it was a hell
of a shot. Let me tell you that shot? All right?
Uhila um right. Meanwhile, right now, the Dallas Mavericks are

(02:04:21):
hosting the Lakers. Mavericks are up twenty to thirteen. Early
in this matchup, we had Lebron James at the All
Star break. Rich make it clear that these last twenty
three games, they got a victory against a Warrior's team
playing without Steph Curry and Andrew Wiggins. But these last
twenty three games are the most important of his career
regular season, and a lot of people are believing, with

(02:04:45):
all the deals that the Lakers have made that maybe,
just maybe this team has got a real chance to
not just make the playoffs, but dare I say a
championship run. And I'm saying to everybody, let's let's let's
just do the math before we get started. Yeah, hang

(02:05:06):
on before you do math, because I want you to
do math. You know me, I love math. Yeah, I
know you're not big math guy. Okay, so tremendous mathematician. Right,
If you have a healthy Lebron James, if you have
a healthy Anthony Davis, and you have any sort of
role players which they traded for De'angelo Russell, and we
know that the Lakers they don't have, you know, I mean,

(02:05:28):
this isn't the worst roster that the Lakers have had.
I mean, they've got some talent. You've got a chance
to win a championship. It depends on health. But if
you have a healthy AD and you have a healthy
Lebron most importantly, and then you have some role players
who understand their roles, you have a chance to win

(02:05:49):
a championship. Now give me math, all right. Well, first
of all, the acquisition of DeAngelo Russell. Speaking of injuries,
he's out of this game, Okay, if you miss the workers,
he accidentally stepped on somebody's foot, was out for the
rest of the game, and already he's missing time. So
it didn't take long for D'Angel Russell to hit the sideline.
So Shrewder is starting along with Vanderbilt Beasley in the

(02:06:12):
Big two A D and Lebron James. And by the way,
I will and I said this yesterday and I'll say
it again today and any day right now. Still if
Lebron James, who's you know, had a tremendous season this
year despite his age, and Anthony Davis who was having
a tremendous year before injuries again shelved him. But if

(02:06:33):
those two are playing at the top of their game,
which they have shown this season, they can still be
those kind of players. Oh yeah, Well, that's the best
duo in the NBA. They are the best duo in
the NBA if they're playing together and they're healthy. But
all right, let's do the math though, Let's let's do
the simple mass. So people are looking at the Lakers,
who are still sitting right now in the thirteen seed

(02:06:56):
in the Western Conference. Wait wait, wait, but they don't
count that. Okay, yeah, here it is. So they and
so people are saying, well, they have a real chance
to get to the number six seed, which would mean
they would avoid the play in games, is what they're
trying to do. Yeah, And so you're looking at the Dynamics.
It's like, yeah, they're only three and a half games
out of the six slot, which ironically is the team

(02:07:18):
they're playing today, which would be the Dallas Mavericks. But
it doesn't quite work that way because you have between
the Mavericks and the Lakers six other teams, so they're
all playing, and the Lakers a lot of their games
are head to head games. Every one of these games
is like a two games swing. So realistically, I'm doing

(02:07:40):
the math of what it would take for the Lakers
to get to that sixth seed, and it would take
at least forty four wins, meaning that a team that's
only had one winning streak over three games all year
long would have to go sixteen and six the rest

(02:08:00):
of the way. Okay, but hang on, okay, hang on,
let me make this make sense. Okay if Lebron James
and Anthony Davis are healthy, but go ahead, I know,
I know. Oh by the way, can I throw them
one other thing? Yes? Please? More? They won't look at
bit No. Okay, So Darvin hand, the coach of the Lakers,

(02:08:21):
because all this controversy about load management, yeah one on
record and said Lebron James and Anthony Davis will not
miss any games, Okay, the rest of the way, assuming
they can stay healthy. Go ahead, if that's true. If
that's true, yeah, okay, I'm gonna give you a scenario.
By the way, Dallas is up by eleven, but go ahead,
completely understandable. Yeah, that's a talented team too. The Yeah

(02:08:44):
they got Luca. Yeah they have some good players, some
good players down there in Dallas. Yeah, okay, here we go.
If Lebron James and Anthony Davis are healthy for the
entirety of a of an NBA season I'm talking about,
and they appear in eighty two games, do hang on?
I know has only had over seventy games twice, but

(02:09:05):
I'm just it's a hypothetical, So very happy. It is
a very epithetical. I love epitheticals. Okay, if they do that,
do the Lakers win sixty games? Oh? Probably? Yes? Okay,
so Lebron ad playing the remaining schedule sixteen games. All

(02:09:26):
they would have to do is exactly what I just painted,
but in a shorter sample size. So if they both
stay healthy and they both appear in the twenty two games,
these twenty two games they have remaining as of today,
excuse me, thank you for they would go sixteen and
six years, they would go sixteen and six. I mean,
because we're talking about winning two thirds of your schedule,
and so that's all we're talking about. If they are

(02:09:48):
healthy and they do appear, thank you, in the final
twenty two games, not a math guy, and they go
sixteen and six, then they will they I mean, or
I should say, if they do appear in those games,
they will go sixteen eighty six. We're talking about numbers.
We're talking about Lebron James, one of still one of
the pre eminent scorers in this league, Anthony Davis, who

(02:10:11):
lends a lot on the defensive side of the court
and also can score it well offensively. I mean, that's
really his trademark. And in an offensive league, this I
don't know if there's any secret to this. When the
Lakers are healthy, meaning when Lebron and A d are healthy,
they are one of the most dominant basketball teams in
the NBA. But there's also a team that is staring

(02:10:34):
at the possibility of their eighth losing season in the
last ten years. Well, I mean, but how many of
those Lebron James and Anthony Davis has been a part
of this is this is no, this is one, two, three,
both of them Lebron to together four four seasons. Okay, okay,
all right, so four of the eight. I get it.

(02:10:55):
They won a championship in the middle of that. I'm
just saying, like, we can't factor in history before Lebron
to talk about losing seasons with the Lakers. They were
an absolute mess before Lebron got there, and that's the
reason why he went there. And then he wanted the
Lakers to trade for Anthony Davis, which they did. They
got rid of all the pops on the team, and

(02:11:15):
they won themselves a pandemic. You know, Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Does it seem possible this is his fifth year with
the Lakers. It does seem like it's flown by a
little bit. Yeah, I mean, considering that he had four
seasons in his second return to Cleveland and four seasons
in Miami, this has actually been a longer run than
those two runs. That's weird because the and maybe honestly

(02:11:38):
actually definitely, now that I'm thinking about it, definitely it
definitely felt longer with the heat and longer with the
calves because they appear he appeared in so many finals. Correct,
So they actually were extra bonus seasons because in all
eight of those years, all eight of those years, the
four in Miami, in the return to Cleveland, he was
in the NBA finals. So and now and now in

(02:12:04):
the Lakers he has a miss playoff, a bubble championship,
a first round loss in the playoffs, a miss playoffs,
and now holding out hope that somehow they can actually
get to the postseason. Is that bad? Well, based on
the eight straight finals precursor, no, maybe it's not exactly

(02:12:25):
what you were expecting. But he was also relying on
different types of players back then. Wade rarely missed anytime.
Bosh love irving young guys when he brought them into Cleveland.
And then that last that last finals rum was on
Lebron's will. Yes, you know absolutely he was playing or

(02:12:45):
he was playing with guys who you know, I mean,
who would be in the slam dunk contest? These have
no idea who they are? Yeah? Where's Mac? Or is
he is he lighting up right now? Is that guy
he's with the Sixers? I'm sure he played a game
yet ten ten ten day contract? All right? Uh? The
NBA um okay, no problems according to Adam Silver, But uh,

(02:13:08):
they because we talked a little bit, Earli about Major
League Baseball adjusting. What adjustments do you think would actually
help the NBA get some new fans. Yeah, even the
NBA is looking for some new fans. We'll throw some
ideas at you. This is Sports Fox Sports Sunday. Clark
comes off the screen. She's gotta look fires it. Hal Clark.

(02:13:36):
Oh my god, Oh my god, what a Fritish. Oh
my god. They'll check to make sure, but it looked
like there was God a time. It's gotta be good.
That's good officially hard Holy cow Clark. The it's amazing three.

(02:14:01):
I've ever seen what a finish? Well, what happened did
she to? Did she fished? She said? Holy? Did she
say it? He goes That was actually the end of
the call, so it just cuts off at holy. I
got a little mixed up in my Dallas here. I'm

(02:14:21):
over stimulated, all right. So Rob Brooks of the Hawkeye
Radio Network, well he wasn't alone in that call. Jamie,
I think it's Cat Cavier. Yeah, she said holy, and
then I wanted to hear the next word. Maybe it
was a curse. I don't know. An obscenity. That was
the Hawkeyes victory over the Hoosiers. Number six beats number
two we were talking about earlier. That is not a

(02:14:42):
progressive play of the day because we've already had that
should be UM. Welcome back to Fox Sports Radio UH
Sports Sunday, and we are alive from the tire rack
dot com studios. Lakers are having some trouble right now.
They're down thirty eight to eighteen UH to the Dallas Mavericks.
The Lakers so far over twelve in three point shooting,

(02:15:05):
and Dallas is nine for fifteen. Okay, well that's that's
gonna be a problem. So Dallas is nine for fifteen
and the Lakers are over thirteen now in fact, they're
seven or thirty three shooting. So yeah, they got a
lot of work to do, so do my Bruins. Right now,
I'm watching UCLA again, the number of five, six, I
think seven, nine. A lot of top ten teams lost yesterday.

(02:15:29):
If u c LA beats Colorado today after Arizona loss
on the buzzer beater at Arizona State, u c LA
will clinch an outright Pac twelve championship with two games
to go. But right now they are trailing at Colorado
by a score of nine to two early on, but
the Buffs looking pretty good. Watching college basketball and the

(02:15:53):
difference between college basketball in the NBA, there are two
differences in the sports that I believe favors college basketball
over the NBA. And I want to get your thoughts, Rich.
If the NBA were to incorporate these two college basketball rules,

(02:16:18):
would it help the NBA? All right, all right, let
me hear it. The first one is the one and one, so,
as you know, in a college basketball game, until they
get into the penalties, there's a run where you only
get the second free throw if you make the first

(02:16:38):
free throw. I love that, especially late in the game,
right pressure, man, you better make that first free throw
because if you miss, there is no second free throw.
That is not the case in the NBA. Regardless, you're
going to get the two free throws. I love that
one and one. I love it. Yeah. I think that
this is a rule that, if incorporated to the NBA,

(02:17:01):
would be a positive. What do you think of that rule?
I don't hate it either. In fact, I'm I'm shocked
it isn't. I think I think that that would again
encourage um what are we looking for when we turn
on sports. We're looking for the most entertaining, entertaining product
product possible. So when you have circumstances where you can

(02:17:24):
heighten the entertainment value of the sport, which I do
think the one and one does as much and as
often as possible, let's see it. I think I think
it's I think it's a good idea to bring to
the NBA. All right, So here's another thing about the
difference between college basketball and the NBA. College basketball, you

(02:17:45):
don't have quarters, you have halves, So you have two
twenty minute halves. Yeah, and I'm a proponent of halves
in the NBA as well. And let me explain why.
So you have a forty eight minute so you would
have two twenty four minute halves. Now, the reason I

(02:18:05):
am a favor of this is that it maintains the
flow of the game. A lot of times we see
you know that comes to the quarter and maybe it
hurts the flow of the game. Yeah, the four break
I've noticed can do that. You got a team on
the run about the catch up and then I like
the game. This is why I'm such a fan of

(02:18:25):
the NHL, where they have the three periods that run continuously,
the line change, everything else, twenty minutes straight. It helps
the flow of the sport. So I think halves would
work for the NBA. I know the players that complain
about it, obviously, but again that's about substitution and bringing
guys in fresh bodies and everything else. But I think

(02:18:46):
it helps the flow of the game. You know, it
would be neat, and I don't think it'll ever happen,
but I would be very, very interested to see the
NBA not completely adopt the college rules. But can you
imagine if as a gimmick, as like a one off,
as like maybe even a week during mid season where

(02:19:07):
the NBA just started doing two twenty minute halves just
to see how it looked, just so you had more
consistency between college troops and MBA and you had maybe
some crossover interest. And like I said, this could be
a one off. You could decide this, You could decide
this in an off season. You could employ it during

(02:19:28):
one singular regular season and say, hey, it was just
something we were trying. We were just goofing around with
the ideas. We got clearance from that MBAPA, and it
just made sense to us. I feel like I feel
like the NBA could get a little bit more experimental
with their rules mid season tournaments. You could, you could
do all these Not a fan, what is the purpose

(02:19:51):
of a mid season tournament, I don't get it that.
Please explain. I understand in soccer and they do a
lot of this kind of stuff. I'm trying to figure
out how a mid sea I mean, you would have
to incentivize it, obviously, otherwise why are the players even participating? Right?
But what do you get out of that? Like, you
win the mid season tournament? How does that fit in

(02:20:14):
in terms of interest in the game. Well, here's the
reality of the situation. I mean, you have the All
Star Break, which barely anybody cares about. Nobody cares about
the All Star Break, So I just feel like anything
other than the All Star Break will be better. And
so the way I think of it is, you don't
even necessarily need to do it in a basketball city.

(02:20:35):
That could be you could legitimately take two weeks off
from the NBA and fly everybody out to Asia or
Canada or Mexico or you know, somewhere in Europe, and
you can play a mid season tournament where all thirty clubs.
I mean potentially thirty. Maybe only invite the top seeded clubs,

(02:20:58):
you know whatever it is, the tops six s each
conference something like that, to come out to a certain
location and you play a mid season tournament, and it
exposes a brand new fan base to the game. It
showcases a different area of the world that the NBA

(02:21:18):
is heading too, because it has grown into an international game,
not on like soccer or the NFL, certainly trying to
expand its borders and doing a good job of it.
I think that would be interesting. Africa, you could have
you could host games in Africa, I mean anywhere. I mean,
basketball has now really proliferated every continent outside of Antarctica,

(02:21:41):
So why not why not do something like that? And then,
like you said, you would have to hyper incentivize the
game to get pros interested in doing this. I would
like to lose a player to an injury in a
mid season tournament. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean this
is one of the reasons the Pro Bowl one. By
the way, say, by the way, you mentioned the NBA
All Star Game. The ratings were a catastrophe. Yeah, they

(02:22:01):
remember you remember one e seven percent from I mean,
you remember the target number was so cool that first year.
At the end of this game, Yeah, guys throwing up
half court shots. I watched literally half court shots to
try to hit that number. It was beyond unwatchable, Steve,
I watched the entire second half. I watched the halftime
show and the entire second half of the NBA All

(02:22:23):
Star Game. It's it is the most time I've said
him watching the NBA All Star Game in a decade,
because it's usually unwatchable. But I'm normally not a captive audience.
What happened to me this past NBA All Star Game
was the fact that I was stuck at a house
where there were people over who were interested in watching it,
and we all sat down and watched it, and it

(02:22:46):
was awful. Off was off. How about the end of
the game when they try to hit that target and
guys are literally he's always seen up half court shots.
I mean it was Look, look they're laughing. They're laughing
at the NBA. The NBA is trying to find ways
to encourage them to be competitive, and what they're saying is,
we don't want to be here because we don't want
to potentially hurt ourselves and affect our brand, So you

(02:23:08):
got to figure out something different. And like I said,
who they don't have to worry about getting hurt. They
just take days off anyway, even when they're not hurt.
All right. By the way, still overpaying for a razor
in this economy, that's gross. With dollars Shaved Club, you
can get a top shelf shave at a regular shelf price.
Dollar Shave Club is available at a store near you
in the men's race or aisle. That's it. That's the ad.

(02:23:29):
All right, Let's find out what's trending right now. And
moncy this nail bighter between the Mavericks. Nail bighter. Yeah,
because we're bored. The Lakers have twenty four points with
six minutes to go in the house. Yeah, no braun
and a D. That exact braun and a D. That
term is trending on Twitter. And it's not for good reasons.

(02:23:51):
People are already joking that they're about to be, you know,
sat down for the rest of the game, that they
are on their way to rest, that they're not taking
this serious, they're embarrassing, but they they're trending. They're trending
in The Lakers actually made a three point shot one
of sixteen s. Right, so now that's twenty six, yes, yeah,

(02:24:15):
oh yeah, fifty twenty six is a score. Five and
a half minutes to go in the second quarter. Luca
don Chich has fourteen points and six rebounds, and Kyrie
Irvine is playing, so everybody's playing kind of kind of.
The Wizards have a slight lead over the Bulls forty five.
Forty four is the score. They're about to head into halftime,
and the Nuts have taken the lead over the Hawks
seventy two to seventy one halfway through the third quarter.

(02:24:37):
Earlier today, the Bucks won their fourteenth game in a
row without Janisanta Tecumpo. They took down the Phoenix Suns
one oh four to one oh one. It went down
to the wire, and I know we've played it, but
let's play it again because Caitlin Clark's game winner was Nuts.
Clark comes off the screen, She's gotta look fires it,

(02:24:58):
love it. Oh my god, Oh my god, what a
Fritish Oh my god, Hawkeye Radio Network. Why doesn't everyone
sound like that when there is a buzzer beater? Why
did the fans not rush the churry? I don't know
the announcers are gonna rush the course. This is gonna

(02:25:20):
eat at Steve all day. It doesn't make any sound.
It doesn't. I was watching this thing live and it
was an insane shot. It's win this game, and everyone
sort of jumped up in their seats and then it
was just like everybody, Oh they were Sam, are you
kidding me? So I just want all play by play

(02:25:40):
announcers to sound like that when it is a game winner.
You should be out on the edge of your seats.
I want, you know, the crack in the mic, I
want all that. That was Hawkeye Radio Network because yeah,
number six Iowa took down number two Indiana. Thinks to
Caitlin Clark's game winning three eighty six eighty five was
the final score. A little hockey action going on the
Blue Jack. It's in the wild arts high at two

(02:26:01):
after three periods of play, and the Islanders are beating
Jets one zero early in the second period. It's been fun,
fellas is always. By the way, I'm trying to think
of who's been shooting words the Lakers or UCLA. Ucla
started their game one for eleven, still a lot of
game left off. Yeah, they're down fourteen and nine. So

(02:26:22):
UCLA finally hitting some shots. I don't know if the
if the Lakers can come back from this blow up.
See here's here's the thing about this. So the Lakers
have tomorrow off rich and then they have back to
back games, yeah, on the road against Memphis and OKC.
So if you have a game like this where you're
down twenty four, you're getting blown out on the road

(02:26:42):
by Dallas. They can't seem to miss and you can't
seem to hit. Do you sit a d and Lebron?
Because again, you your coaches on the record, because I
was looking at the Lakers schedule, they have three back
to backs remaining on their schedule. He insists that Lebron
and ad are missing games. In fact, they only have
two instances where they have more than two days off

(02:27:05):
between games the rest of the regular season. So if
you have a game like this where it's just not
your day and the other team's gonna beat you, are
you really going to play them all the way through
this game you're saying, you know what, guys, it's just
not our night. We need to win these next two
couple of games coming up. He can still bench them
and not be a liar, you know, yeah, yeah, at

(02:27:26):
a certain point, like when a loss is a loss,
it's a loss. So you can bench eighty and Lebron
and here you're not making a liar out of Darvenham. Also,
you know, going back to the start, the only reason
why Darvin him felt even remotely comfortable saying that to
the media is because both Lebron and Anthony Davis told

(02:27:48):
him that that was there ran yeah, and then in fact,
I would guarantee that he may have even cleared it
with them before he made that. I'm sure one speaking
for Lebron, I promise you that, Yeah, Lebron does enough
speaking for himself, there's no question about it. So so
to me, like this is this is going to be

(02:28:10):
what it is. The Lakers stars, Lebron, James, and Anthony Davis.
They will appear in every single game from here on out.
It'll just be whether or not the game is going
the way the Lakers hope it'll go. As to if
they finished these games and this could be one of
those games where you could see Darvenham or Frankly Lebron
or a d call off the dogs and that'll be that.

(02:28:34):
But yeah, could I see them finishing out the final
twenty two games of this schedule. Yeah, I absolutely could,
because it's the only way conceivably that they are going
to make a playoff runt and put themselves in advantageous
positioning in the West seating. By the way, Laker has
been very consistent in this game so far, outscored in
the first quarter twenty to sixteen, outscored in the second

(02:28:55):
quarter twenty to sixteen. That adds up to fifty six
to thirty two. That's where they are right now. All right,
So I want to go all the way back to
the NFL because there's something and I left out that
I wanted to ask you about. So we've been talking
about Aaron Rodgers, Derek Carl Lamar Jackson, all the players
coming out of the draft, and everything else. The San

(02:29:17):
Francisco forty nine ers, yep. I mean, here's a team
that almost got to the Super Bowl down to their
four string quarterback. They need a quarterback decision for the
upcoming season. They've written off Jimmy Garoppolo gone. And again,

(02:29:40):
this is a team that has everything everything to get
to the super Bowl, except from a quarterback standpoint, they
don't have a proven quarterback. That's right. Rock Purty looked good,
but his availability is questionable even for the start of
next season. And then you have Trey Lance. Honestly, the

(02:30:01):
jury's out, that's being kind. So you have Aaron Rodgers, right,
I mean he's I mean, if if I'm Aaron Rodgers,
there's only one place I want to go. I want
to go to the team that I'm still cursing them
for not drafting me in the first place. But what
if what if? Look, Aaron Rodgers is a different cat.

(02:30:23):
I understand he's a different cat. This is a guy.
How does he fit with How would he fit with
Kyle Shanahan in that group? Well, just Kyle Shanahan, Okay, okay,
he would fit great. Again, I said that earlier, he
said he thinks anywhere, steering us back to that. Yeah,
I honestly feel like Aaron Rodgers would look good and
just about any system in the NFL. I think he's

(02:30:46):
that talented. But what do we know about Aaron Rodgers?
He zigs when everybody thinks he's gonna act. He is
just sort of a live wire, so to speak. You
don't know how close you can get to him, you know,
because you don't know what direction he's going to launch into.
So I look at it this way. I mean, would

(02:31:06):
it be beyond my ability to imagine that he holds
a grudge against that franchise, against that ownership group from
all these years ago? Now I wouldn't. It wouldn't shock
me at all. Now would it also not shock me
if he didn't? Now, again, he is so unpredictable. I mean,
think about what he just did. Okay, I want to

(02:31:28):
put everybody into this, this thought process, because I promise
you everybody's going to come up with the same answer.
Imagine somebody important to you, you know, think of the person,
whether it's your brother, your mom, your sister, an aunt, whoever,
a family member. All of a sudden you heard from

(02:31:51):
a different family member that they were going to go
into darkness on a four day retreat to try to
figure out their life. You'd be worried about them, like
you would. You would get on the telephone and you'd
call them and be like, Hey, what's going on? Is everything? Okay?
I heard you're gonna go on a darkness or retreat.
It's the first time I've ever heard of something like this,

(02:32:14):
and I'm a little worried, So hey, could you just
give me a callback like when you get a chance, Like,
Aaron is an interesting cat. So it wouldn't shock me
at all if Aaron is giving the Green Bay Packers
a hard time trading him to the San Francisco forty
nine Ers. Also, it wouldn't shock me, especially since the
recent playoff history between the forty nine Ers and Green

(02:32:36):
Bay Packers. If the Packers are completely disinterested in trading
Aaron Rodgers to the San Francisco forty nine. Well, that's
a big point exactly. I mean, that's that's exactly the
point is that Aaron Rodger the Jets makes sense. I mean,
after all, that's where Brett Farve went right AC team
AFC team really have no interest to the Green Bay Packers,

(02:32:59):
no impact, I don't know. And the Raiders are another pass.
I want to get that out on the other side.
So the Raiders, right, they have multiple options here, so
you get rid of Derek Carr, you can make a
deal for Aaron Rodgers, perhaps a deal for Lamar Jackson

(02:33:20):
bringing in Jimmy Garoppolo, or you got the seventh pick
in the draft, do you go the draft for a quarterback?
We continue on much more coming up here on Fox
Sports Sunday. Oh a little night Ranger. Oh yeah, I
love this song. Underrated in the night Ranger portfolio. So good.

(02:33:45):
Here we are once again at Fox Sports Sunday, Steve
Hartman and rich Armburger. We're live from the Tirack dot
Com studios. Of course we need to thank everybody might
I was Sam delirious today. It was that the biggest
single sports victory in Iowa, his three. I don't know
if i'd say that. I mean, yesterday the Iowa men
tied Michigan State at one hundred and one and then

(02:34:07):
went on to win an overtime one twelve to one
oh six. I've had a delirious basketball weekend in general.
So DELI were to rewatch either that game or the
game today with the women beating number two Indiana, which
one would you sit and rewatch? I'd probably watch the
men's game again, which I probably will. I'm gonna watch

(02:34:28):
this game again, but like both had a kind of
a buzzer beating three pointer to either tie it, I
win it, Yes, Peyton Sanford yesterday for the men. So
it was a wild, wild weekend. My Bruins are trying
to come back in this game. We're only down six,
so we're a horrific start for UCLA in this game.
That can't shoot the ball. So my concern about UCLA

(02:34:48):
going in this tournament. We're just not a good I
say way because number bruinum. This is not a really
good offensive team. I mean, hockey is a good player,
but it's all about the defense. Similar to San Diego
State Rich, you know where their their defense. I mean
that first half yesterday for San Diego State Wolf, I
mean they could not make a shot. Dat found themselves

(02:35:09):
down ten, and the defense clamped it down. They ended
up winning that game. Uh. Monsey obviously doing a tremendous
job as she does every single day. Likewise, and we
love hearing everything months he does. And then Ryan here,
Ryan had this episode with Sam. So they ordered burritos,
and Ryan took a small bite out of his burrito

(02:35:30):
and realized that he may have gotten the burritos switched up.
So Sam had not taken a bite out of his burrito,
and so Ryan says, we'll take a bite out of
years to see if you got the right burrito. He
then literally took a bite that literally was half the burrito.
I mean he chopped at and he's like that, yeah, yeah,
I got I got the wrong burrito. Do you want

(02:35:52):
to switch? And and so the difference in what was
left of Sam's burrito that he took this giant bite
out of, To say the test if it was the
right burrito, Ryan ends up with half the amount of
burrito left because they cut off whatever they didn't want to,
you know, their COVID infested germs or anything on each other.

(02:36:12):
I understand that conventional wisdom would indicate that if the
burrito I had was Sam's, then the one that he
had must be mine. But I was hoping that they
had screwed up. But did he have to then, as
we were all eye witness take such a giant bite
out that's really sting. It was basically like the gaping

(02:36:35):
hole on the side of the Titanic. I mean it
was I can't it's like having you know, it was
like it was like a shark bite you ever see
those shark bites, or like half the body's gone. It
was you can back me up here. The stern, the
stern of the ship was compromised. Everybody knew it was
going down, and Sam started playing the cello. It was
it really was a rhapsodic scene. I will say this, Um,

(02:36:59):
it was like, if you have an opportunity to have
extra burrito at any point in your life, yeah, I mean,
even with friendships on the line, you do it. Well,
I understand, And you could also make this argument, Well,
the thing about buddy into a burrito many times is
that first bite you're not really getting much of anything
other than tortilla. Yeah, you kind of got you really

(02:37:19):
got to force your way down into the girth of
the burrito. But I have seen people don't know this
about Rich. So I've been with Rich on many eating
contests and other things. So we we've had, like when
I say, gigantic burritos, like you know, like the size
of the baby. Do you remember the bacon wrapped on
where you bit into the middle of it? I did.

(02:37:42):
So he took this burrito because it was gigantic wrapped
in bacon? Was it eight slices slices a ba eight
slices of the bacon. And by the way, you would
think it'd be all greasy. No, I mean this was
insane burrito. Rich takes big bites too, don't you. Rich.
I mean, come on down, cannot bite. He took a
bite out of the middle of the burrito. Okay, yeah,
really because I want it in half. I wanted the

(02:38:04):
first bite to really encapsulate everything that burrito was about.
And then, frankly, it was such a large burrito. I
felt like I made a tactical decision that benefited me
because then I chewed the rest of the way through
the middle of the burrito, and I had two separate burritos.
I was double fisting bacon wrap burritos that day. It
was so good. I do just feel good about myself.

(02:38:25):
That's a lot of burrito though. Man. By the way,
one thing about burritos and Rich. So there's a place
down in San Diego. It starts with an el. I
can't do advertising for the Sure Sure And the first
time I took you there, you had a burrito, and
Rich did because I'm a very fast eater or notoriously
people like slowdown, slowdown. But Rich did what I call
the double bite, where he bit into the burrito, and

(02:38:50):
before he's actually finished with that bite, because he could
see him chewing, he takes the second bite. Now this
is the one. You know, it's good. Yeah, so he
did what he's like people talk about double dipping, you know,
in the he was doing the double bite where he's
bites huge bite, chewing on it, and then goes in

(02:39:11):
for the second bite before he's followed actually swallowed the
first bite, the double bite. Yeah, you said. The trick
is um when something's delicious, regardless of how hot it is. Yeah,
I will. I mean, I sacrifice a lot of skin
on the inside of my mouth that day. But it
was worth it. It was magical. I mean, it was

(02:39:31):
a breakfast burrito. The eggs were perfectly perfectly Chris Richie
and I are like the owl from those old school
Tutsie pop commercials where you go, how many licks does
it take to get to the center of a tutsie Pop?
And it's one, two, three and the food is gone.
But the news was a test bite. You must approach it.
You need I don't care what your normal bite is.

(02:39:51):
A test bite has to be much a test bite.
I think I think we want now here comes a problem.
Now burst, we've fired him up. Now he's he's thinking
about that bide and he's replaying it in his mind.
All Right, who's gonna be the next quarterback of the Raiders.
You got two seconds to figure that one out. It's

(02:40:12):
gonna be

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