Troy Aikman, Robert Saleh Fired And Drake Maye Is Starting, College Football Talk And Max And The Phillies Down Bad
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Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. On today's Pardon My Take, we have Troy Aikman, three-time Super Bowl winner.

Good friend with our good friend Joe Buck. Yeah. Great interview with Troy. We're going to talk some football, Monday Night Football. Also, Robert Salah got fired, so we're going to start the show with that. Then we have Max's in New York for streams, so we will then have a portion of the show that will be on Zoom talking playoff baseball, so we will get Max's thoughts. We'll talk about the game.

We're going to do our college football on Wednesday. We're going to do Pardon Your Take, listener-submitted Pardon Your Take at the end, Hot Seat Cool Throne. And it's all brought to you by our friends at DraftKings. The rollercoaster of an NFL season is moving right along, and it promises to be a month full of tricks, treats, and, of course, touchdowns.

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Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by DraftKings. Score big with the DraftKings Sportsbook, the number one place to bet touchdowns. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app. Use code TAKE. That's code TAKE. For new customers, get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just $5 only on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Today is Wednesday, October 9th, and Robert Salah is fired. You're fired. You're gone, buddy. You're gone. Aaron Rodgers, coach killer, possibly...

He's a serial coach killer. He's a serial coach killer. Mike McCarthy and he's got he probably would have to, I guess, too, would make him a serious coach. Yeah. If you listen, if you kill two people, you're a serious. That's true. That's a good point. Serial coach killer means. Is this what you wanted? Is Nathaniel Hackett also fired? He's not. He's not. He's not fired yet. That feels like you got the wrong guy. Yeah. I thought he would go first. Then Bob.

But I thought he was going to get fired if they lost the next three games because they went Vikings, Bills, Steelers. And then after that stretch, he would have got fired. But they're just cutting ties with him. What if Bob got fired because he wouldn't fire Nathaniel Hackett? That's a fireable offense. Yeah. I would agree with that, actually. But then...

They would have fired Nathaniel Hackett still too. Yeah, no, maybe not though. Because maybe the worst defense is as a head coach, the litmus test is will you fire Nathaniel Hackett? If you say no, then okay, you can't run my – you're clearly not cut out for this job. Also, I want to say one nice thing about Robert Salah. Good defensive coach. He never got the QB and he might not have still had it. We'll see how Aaron Rodgers' rest of the season goes. Memes.

No, I think he had a QB. He had a QB? When? He has a QB right now. He has a QB right now. Okay. All right. But he never got the QB right, but his defense has always competed. And yeah, maybe he's just a defensive coordinator type of guy. I want to say a lot of nice things about Bob Sala. Okay. Because I don't feel like he is... He was not put in a position to succeed. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the entire team just became Aaron Rodgers. Yeah. And so he looked very frustrated for the last two years. Yeah.

obviously having to deal with the rollercoaster quarterback last year, and then all the media shit that's been going on in New York. It looks like he wasn't having any fun out there. Yeah, it seemed like the writing was on the wall. We should have paid even more attention. I know you said it was just nothing memes, but the moment when Bob Salah went to hug Aaron Rodgers during the Patriots game and Rodgers kind of pushed him off,

felt like that was the moment that was bad also do you remember i think this was last march at the owners meeting there was a report that woody johnson and salah got into an argument like in front of everybody i think the nfl network reported it and then the nfl then the jets came out and said this is bad reporting by the nfl network and then the nfl network did a split of like we stand by and also maybe things didn't happen the way that we thought that they happened i think that they just haven't liked each other for

while and i'd agree when you lose when you lose the london game it feels worse the london game always feels like a firing game yeah especially for woody johnson because woody johnson he was like the ambassador to ireland for a while he's got a bunch of friends over in the uk they were probably at the game he's like oh shit i feel i feel like real asshole in front of my friends you don't embarrass me in front of my friends i gotta fire so i also i don't know if there's anything to this but

a lot of the discourse about like the Lebanon flag on Salah's arm. So I saw that story. Yeah. I wasn't, so I know that he doesn't wear it every time, but it wasn't a thing in the last couple of years where coaches are wearing like where they're like their heritage. Yeah. And, and, uh, Belichick, he would just wear the Croatian thing just on a random day in December. Big Tom always has the Italian thing. Yeah. And I think, uh, Arthur, Arthur Smith, uh,

had the Scotland flag. Everybody knows big Scotland guy, Arthur Smith. So I got a, um, Oh, I got another spin zone for Robert Salah. Cause I know he's probably listening. Uh, this actually is like a great time to get fired because it's football season. Yeah. So you get to just watch football. And if Aaron Rogers had not gotten hurt last year, uh,

there's probably a chance he would have gotten fired last year and then going into this year he would have been like oh i gotta find a new job because i gotta work you know i gotta keep my name out there he's almost been forced to sit on the couch and watch football and guess what it rules you're getting paid to watch football yeah getting fired during the season is great actually just getting fired as a coach is is the best gig you could ever hope for yes college nfl you get paid money not to work it's a

pretty good gig. And also, you don't have to go into work for the Jets and deal with the media. Maybe I put like 30% of this firing on the media. Yeah, probably. Our hands are not clean in all this. So memes, now that you fired a coach, interim coach is... Jeff Ulbrich. Jeff Ulbrich, okay. Defensive coach. Great, because that was...

You should have just made it Hackett and just been like, fuck it. Let's run this back. I think they should have made it Aaron Rodgers. They should have just done player coach. They could have made it Hackett and then put an actual offensive coordinator in. Yeah, but if you just turn it all over to Aaron Rodgers and say, listen, man, this is your team anyways. Let's just see what you can do. You get 100% of the blame, 100% of the praise if it works out. I feel like he would have done it.

Yeah, 100%. By the way, I'm looking right now. Jeff Ulbrich, he's going to work out. This is now. He looks, the gray beard, and he's only 47 years old. Jeff Ulbrich's going to work out because when it comes to interim head coaches, you either need a fat guy or you need like an ex-player hard ass. He looks like the ex-player hard ass linebacker idealist.

I think he's going to work out. I got a couple reasons why I think this might work out. He has interim head coaching experience in his past. Kind of. He was Dan Quinn's would-be interim head coach if Dan Quinn got COVID during the 2020 season. He looks like a mini Dan Quinn. There's that, and there's also the fact that he's a wrestler. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Linebacker, wrestler. Being a wrestler, I feel like, is a big, big plus here.

in the interim head coach power rankings that we do. If we figure out what are the attributes that makes a successful interim head coach. Another big one is if you look up fun facts about Jeff Ulbrich online, you don't find anything. Love that. There's nothing fun about this guy. He's not a fun guy. All his fun facts are like he has a family. Yeah. He has relatives.

Fun fact. He likes football and he has a family. This guy's going to work out memes. I think he made the right choice. He's going to get people running through a brick wall. I think so. And then if the offense magically just works out too, that would be awesome. I don't think that's going to happen. But so where are you at for like this was a little shocking. I didn't.

I wasn't shocked that he was fired. I was shocked that he was fired this quickly. I thought he would maybe get a couple more games. Then you find the bye week and then you fire him. But they're just like, no, fuck it. Let's just fire him right now. How are you feeling overall? Is this a positive or negative? So I think it's a positive, but I do feel kind of bad for Robert Zola. No, you can't. Not in this business. Only because...

Aaron Rodgers-Achilles is the main reason why he got fired. No, no, no, no. Disagree. If Aaron Rodgers doesn't tear his Achilles, I would imagine Robert Salah would have gotten fired last year when Aaron Rodgers is old and everything's falling apart and then they don't make the playoffs. I think you're right, but you get an entire season's worth of...

of Aaron Rodgers and you could see how he dealt with that instead of just five games. Got it. I see what you're saying now. It does feel early and it doesn't feel like Woody Johnson doesn't fire head coaches in the middle of the season. It's just like a new thing for him. So it feels early. It feels like a panic move. Also probably makes it a little bit less likely that Devontae Adams, your prize possession that you've had your eyes on. Do you know?

Devontae Adams, I was reading some rumors. Devontae Adams to the Bills. Oh. I don't know if it makes any sense. How does that work out with the Ravens? I don't know also how it makes any sense. Well, as you know, Edgar Allen Poe lived later on in his life in New York State. And that's the only team that play in New York State. I don't know how it would work with the cap or any of that shit, but it was interesting. Memes. I am...

This sucks a little bit because I wanted forever for Aaron Rodgers to tear down a franchise, and he came so close with the Packers. But now he's on the Jets, and he's just doing that to New York. You realize that's what's happening, though, right? We can't really tear something down that's already torn down.

That's a fair point. True. That is a very fair, but there was the expectation of it existing. And then it just absolute gone to dog shit. He basically went in a guy getting hit in the nuts over and over and over. He showed up, got the guy a cup and was like, you're safe now with me.

And then just took a sledgehammer and hit him in the cup and smashed everything. I would say it's like kind of along those lines. If a guy was getting hit in the balls over and over, Aaron Rodgers came in and he goes, don't worry, I'm going to fix everything. And then he just cut your dick off. Yeah. The guy doesn't hurt anymore. So now, yeah, now you don't have a dick. You can still get hit in the balls. Theon Greyjoy. Yeah. That's memes. Reek.

Memes is befuddled by everything we've said to him. Got a little reek in there. There's a lot for memes to process. This is fucked up.

Okay. But memes, I would have thought that this was... I've seen a lot of dysfunctional franchises in my day, and this is just like... I don't think it's anything to be happy about if you're a Jets fan because it's just like, oh shit, we're just going to keep doing the same thing and we have no stability. Yeah, it all comes back to the owner, really. And it's just also Nathaniel Hackett might have more power now. That's the scariest part about this. If you're Nathaniel Hackett, you are terrified right now. Yeah. You're like...

Oh, shit, I have to stick around? It's like your mess. You have to clean it up. Well, maybe not because Rodgers seems to like him, and that's really all it takes to keep your job. You think Nathaniel Hackett's like Reek? Yeah, kind of. I think he's more of a Reek, and then Aaron Rodgers is more of Greyjoy. Yeah, yeah. Well, Woody Johnson went on... No, they're the same person, right? Who's it? Oh, Ramsay Bolton. Ramsay Bolton turned... Yeah. What? Woody Johnson went on...

The news. I don't know if it was Fox News or CNN. The news. Big end news. This is the best Jets team of all time since he's purchased. When did he say that? That was before the season. Oh, wow. So his expectations are kind of like my expectations. And some people may say I'm delusional, but that's fine. I was waiting for something else there, but okay. So when that fails and you start off the season two and three.

Somebody's getting cooked. I like that. If you get Devonta Adams, it's all forgiven. Well, because of Woody Johnson, we're not going to get Devonta Adams. Hassan Reddick's not going to sign. How? Everything comes back to the owner. Got it. Joe Douglas has no power. Joe Douglas was friends with Robert Salah. This came from the top. It's trickle-down sucking.

Trickle down sucking. Nancy Reagan would be a big fan of those things. Huge. All right. So other story before we get to playoff baseball. I do have a question for you guys. Would you rather if you're Bob Salah, would you rather get fired

In England, or would you rather get fired after you come back to the United States and then you have to go into work and then you're sitting in your office, you already started work, and then the owner comes in? Home. I'd rather get home. I think I'd rather get fired overseas. No, because then you've got to fly back on your own and you've got to tell your family and all that stuff. Would you rather get fired in person, like you have to wake up

early go to work get fired and then leave or just get like a text call or email this could have been an email I would rather get fired in England and just go on an epic bender over there just be like fuck it I mean I assume he would not yeah I mean I think he has like a bunch of kids yeah no I'm saying me I'm saying you yeah yeah yeah he's got a lot of kids I would rather he's got like a shitload of kids so many

How many kids does he have? I think 11. Are you serious? He's not doing a bender in England. There was that report. He was getting his house fixed, and everybody was just staying in a hotel. Yeah. He tells his kids, hey, guys, dad's going to England for a work trip. He'll be back soon. Seven. Seven. Never comes back. Seven is just as close. Once you get over five, it's like you're going to be doing a TLC show. Okay, so...

I would rather go home, though, just because I wouldn't have to deal with... Because then if you go on an epic bender, then you have the hungover flight home where you're like, fuck, actually facing the fact that you got fired. Then you just never go home. You're like, I'm an England man now for the rest of my days. Yeah, I would want to go home. All right, so other Monday Night Football. The Chiefs are back. They never left.

But that was the best the offense has looked in a while. Patrick Mahomes, I think, threw for over 200 yards in the first half. They also are doing just – we've said it before. We've made the parallels to the Dynasty Patriots. But what the Chiefs are doing is very Dynasty Patriots-esque in that they have shifted their defense's elite defense.

And now they also are adding in the fact that they got guys like Juju Smith-Schuster and Kareem Hunt and just making them good again. It's because they know what Kansas City is. So they just get back in the building and they're like, oh yeah, I remember, I'm good at football. It's crazy because there was, so Sola tweeted that it's been 1,366 days since Juju Smith-Schuster had

over 130 yards. That was the most games since he had the 2021 wildcard game. And then it had been 1,422 days since Kareem Hunt had gone over 100 yards rushing. Yeah, I feel like they're just throwing back to guys who were good four years ago. The Chiefs can take anybody, any player that's been on the roster in like the last 10 years and bring them back and then they'll just be good again. It doesn't matter. Like Shady McCoy. You can tell me Shady McCoy would get signed tomorrow.

And I'd be like, yeah, he's probably going to get 60 yards receiving. Yeah. And so... Also, their offensive line, I don't think... It gets lost sometimes because they have Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelsey. They've got superstars. They've got a great defense. But the Chiefs' offensive line is really fucking good. Yeah, but they keep getting injuries, though. Yeah. They got a couple last night. But they're still... Yeah. They just keep pushing you back. No, they basically just...

you know, change the whole team over and they've, they've lost some really good players in, in, in the shuffle of it. Had to let go of guys, had to, had to let guys walk for money, more money, but, or trade guys. And they, it doesn't matter. They're just really, really good. And they're going to win the Superbowl again. And we just all have to, to come to grips with that. As for the saints, uh,

We might have gotten ahead of ourselves. Yeah, it looks like two games into the season, you can still feel good about that. You can just close your eyes, drift back to that world. Go back three weeks ago and just be like, yeah, we might be the best team in the NFL. Or it turns out that you played against the Panthers. Yeah, you played against the Panthers, then you beat the Cowboys, you might not be good. Derek Carr also, is he trying to break a record for highest balls thrown? That pass that he threw was sick, though. He did a couple where he just, it was...

I don't know what he just put so much air on. It's crazy. I think that one he had to where he got the oblique injury. He said that he hurt himself when he threw it, not when he got hit or not when he hit the ground. So he fucked up his oblique. They couldn't shoot it up. He's going to try to play, I think, but he's a tough guy. I don't think he's ever missed a game due to injury.

But on that one play, it might have been the highest ball of the year, and he dropped it perfectly in the bucket. It was a very hard catch, so the receiver didn't come down with it. But yeah, the Chiefs had a cool play last night, or the Saints had a cool play last night. Yeah. Maybe the best play where they had Saunders that made that interception in the end zone. Big boy. Big boy, 320 pounds.

Tucking the ball. He switched the ball to his outside arm. He looked awesome. And carried it down the field. That was a great, great play. And the fact that he wears number 50, I think that makes him look so much faster when he was returning. I was like, is that a linebacker? Well, it's also the fattest number. Yes. Well, I would say 50 is a linebacker number. But it's also the fattest number on a fat guy. Because it squishes. Yeah, it squishes. It makes him look fatter, but it also makes him look faster at the same time. He was fast. Yeah, he was. He was 17 miles per hour, I think. It's crazy. So, yeah, Buckeye.

Chiefs are just do you see it Hank do you see it watching the Chiefs you're like oh yeah I've seen this before yeah I hate it it's it's they're like oh Patrick Mahomes how's he gonna get out of this one

Oh, there it is again. It's like picking up these trash wide receivers that were bad for other teams, like Juju Smith-Schuster. Weapon. Yeah. He was horrible. All he's got to do, they're running like a million tight ends on the field. They can just pick up whoever they want, and they're going to be good. Just slot them in. Andy Reid, he gets bored sometimes with just beating teams regularly, so he has to run the play where he's doing like Travis Kelsey with an RPO inside the five-yard line, which worked. Yeah. And he does, I mean, Travis Kelsey's,

Yeah.

The downfield laterals. He's been doing that for seven, eight years in the league. But it's a perfect play when it works because the defense collapses on the ball carrier. You've got a guy on the outside, and when you have a guy that can throw it like that, toss it underhand, that went probably 12 yards in the air, it's a beautiful play. And more teams need to start doing it. Yeah. Yeah. It was... They're just...

They just find ways and they're better than everyone. And we just have to all deal with it because now this year it's different than last year where last year they were showing struggles and it was like, Oh, now they're gonna have to go on the road this year. They have not been super. They started being super explosive last night for the first time. Offensively, uh, my homes looked not at his best, uh,

But they're 5-0, and it feels like their best is coming. So watch out for that. Yeah, I can hold two different thoughts in my head at the same time when I watch the Chiefs. And that one is, we are very lucky to watch this team because this team is awesome. They're so fun. And then at the same time, I'm like, enough. Enough. Yeah. Let somebody else have a turn. Yeah, right. Exactly. But still, I'm like, yeah, this is great football that we've never seen before. Yeah, exactly. It's...

It's crazy. Chiefs are just that much better than everyone. All right, so we're going to do some playoff baseball. We're going to bring on Max. We're going to be on Zoom for a second, and then we're going to do some college football talk. Okay, before we get to baseball, we have Breaking Moose. Breaking Moose. That might be the best cow he's ever done. That is a very excited cow. And that sounds like a cow.

who has a new quarterback drake may is going to start pretty much everything hank said was wrong uh there was a mutiny they call that wish casting i think yeah just say what you what you want to have happen yeah you're like the coach throwing a challenge flag on a replay where you know he's wrong hank you are going to watch nfl football on sunday with a new quarterback

And we're wearing the throwbacks, which is exciting. Wow. Wait, what kind of throwbacks? The red throwbacks. Oh, the real throwbacks. And you're playing the Texans. That is not as exciting. So, no, it'll be fine. I watched my rookie quarterback go against Texas. It went great. Yeah. With a bad offensive line, too. They don't really like to pressure the quarterback that much. Oh, boy.

Yeah, that's an interesting move, but I mean, I guess, you know, it's exciting. It was a mutiny. Yeah, the mutiny works. It was a mutiny. And then there's reports. I saw Rossini say that there's people in the league saying he should have been starting the whole time. Did you say you saw Rossini say that or you saw Rossini? I saw Rossini. Rossini. Okay. I mean, we're going to talk to Troy Aikman about it, about starting rookie quarterbacks, but that was my point when I said it on Sunday. Like, if your whole idea is that you can't start them

behind this offensive line, that means you can't start him this year. And that's crazy. So you got to start him. And now we are. And now, listen, now you get, this is fun though. Oh yeah, we have the Patriots-Bears, I think it's Patriots-Bears-Commanders back-to-back weeks. It's wild. Rookie gauntlet. Rookie quarterback. So now, but dude, Hank, this makes your Sundays exciting now. You'll be here every Sunday for the kickoff.

Yeah, I'm scared. Yeah, I can tell you're not excited about this. You're scared? He's scared. Why? You can't live scared. Don't be scared. Anyone can hurt at any time. Don't be scared. Rookie quarterbacks end up being great, and then they make you happy all the time. You could roll your ankle walking off a curb.

Yeah, I mean, I'm excited. We're going to probably get... No, you know what? We're going to shock the world. It is crazy. Hank, even in your position, if you know that the season's not going to work out well in the long term, having a rookie quarterback is fun. I want to see a jolt out of you. Yeah, this is the... Are you dead? Yeah, I think he honestly... I think he's dead as a sports fan. I think he wanted Drake May to never play. Yeah, just have him. So he could be like, well, we have Drake May. Yeah.

It's hard to get excited watching this team's – I guess maybe Drake May will fix everything. Yeah, Drake May is going to fix everything. He's not going to fix everything. But you get to see a rookie quarterback. That's the whole point. Here's what he's going to do, Hank. And listen, maybe this is presumptuous of me to make these wild predictions. I do think Drake May will try to throw to a wide receiver. That would be fun. If he has time, yeah. Right. So that would be fun. That would be fun, yeah. I mean, if we can beat – beating the Bears would be fun. Beating –

anyone would be fun why'd you single out the bears yeah what the fuck we just said it's coming up i don't think we're gonna beat the texans i'll say that not with that attitude you're right maybe you guys wear the letterman jackets this time airplane should we you should be if the patriots beat the texans we should release the t-shirt oh yeah we should the drake may hang henry lockwood t-shirt yeah

Yeah, I don't think we can because of Drake May, but I guess... What do you mean? I mean, you guys are going to release it at some point. I don't... It's insane, but... I feel like this would be cause to do it, right? I'd never want it to get released. I think it's a crazy t-shirt to ever even be made, but I know you're going to release it at some point, so I'd rather you just do it to get it out of the way. I actually like the idea of never releasing it, but just holding it over Hank's head. Like, maybe we'll release it. Hank, you should be excited. This is not what I expected out of you.

What did you expect? A rookie quarterback starting is an exciting thing when your team stinks. I don't think it's going to make our team stink that much less. Yeah, but still. Hank, you're looking at this in the wrong perspective. He's not going to save your season. The Patriots aren't going to win a Super Bowl this year. They're probably not going to go to the playoffs this year. But you have a rookie quarterback drafted, what, third overall?

Third overall pick starting for your team. You know what Hank's problem is? His tolerance has gotten too high. His tolerance has gotten too high where he's had all these championships. He was on the float in the parade. He got to be the keeper of the lighthouse. Now the things that should make a normal sports fan happy, like seeing their first-round quarterback start a game, that doesn't even register on the scale for Hank. I also think he just doesn't – so it doesn't matter. The team is irrelevant at this point in this season, okay? Yeah.

The team is irrelevant. What's relevant is that you just need him to look, like, good and progress. That's where the excitement comes from. Like, I saw...

Mitch had a bad first start. Do you remember Justin Fields' first start against the Browns? That was the worst first start ever. But it was still exciting to be like, ooh, maybe next week. And then you just like... You see like two good throws in that first start and you're like, oh, we can work with that. Little steps forward and you get excited about the future. That's what it is. It's the future. It's not the now. It's the future, Hank. Pick yourself up. It's the future.

The future. Yeah. You don't believe that. You don't. I'm excited at all. I think you're bummed out. This is the only thing that could possibly make this season exciting for you is to put Drake May in. Beating the Bengals was exciting. Winning the first game of the year was exciting. You were almost all the way back in. Sidebar. I don't think Hank believes in Drake May. No, I don't think so either. And so that's why he's afraid to watch him. Right. That's bad. Heavy balls? If he believed in him, he would be pumped.

I mean, I guess people are going to be mad. Our team sucks. But that's all. Most rookie quarterbacks. Tom Brady could be the quarterback of this team. But most rookie quarterbacks are on shitty teams. CJ Stroud, shitty team.

Most rookie quarterbacks are on sheet teams about watching them and being like, ooh, that was a nice throw. Ooh, that was a nice play. Ooh, he's getting better. Ooh, we just won a game with him. Ooh, there's... Oh, he's hitting the wide receiver. See, if Hank truly believed in his guy, he would be pumped to see this because he would watch Drake May thinking he was going to do something awesome, and then he would know... You don't think he's going to do anything awesome? He doesn't believe in him. You don't believe he's going to do anything awesome? He doesn't. He doesn't have that excitement at all. I'm excited to see. I'm excited to see. Yeah, listen, it's also like...

Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Jordan Love. People don't start their first year and they're fine. I guess Patrick Mahomes too. Shit.

But that's not always the case. I don't think it's crazy to be like it's not the worst thing in the world if he doesn't play that much his first year. But those guys also, wait, hold on.

I know what my response was. Those guys also had Hall of Famers, or Alex Smith, not a Hall of Famer, but I guess Drew Bledsoe. Hall of Fame person. Really good quarterbacks in front of them, and that's why they didn't start. Not because they had Jacoby Brissett. Aaron Rodgers had Brett Favre. Jordan Love had Aaron Rodgers. Tom Brady had Drew Bledsoe. Patrick Mahomes had Alex Smith. Those were good quarterbacks. Fair. That were starting for a reason, not Jacoby Brissett. Fair. Fair.

That was good. I recovered that. You don't even care. He almost had us. But he doesn't even care. And it goes down to a lack of belief in your guy, Hank.

Are you upset at yourself because you were in the camp of don't stardom? And if you had been in the camp of stardom, today would be feeling vindicated. What? I opened up my group chat from my friends from home to see what the feelers are. And? One Mayday, all caps. That's good. Well, you got to come up with a better name than that. Mayday is actually a bad thing. That's what you say right before a catastrophic accident. Yeah.

Yes. Facts.

That's true. Jacoby Brissett... Like... Sacks are partly on the quarterback. And holding onto the ball too long. And also... Like... No one... If you watch them...

No one was expecting Jacoby Brissett to throw the ball with any type of like, oh, he's going to burn us for like a 15-yard out or something. The defenses were all just standing right at the line and just like your O-line is going to look better with Drake May behind center. Oh, memes, hater memes just went like this. Oh, man, Hank, here's what can get you excited. Okay, Texans game, probably not going to go great. Jaguars game, probably didn't go better than what if you beat the Jets.

At home. What if you beat the Jets at home? Now we're talking. Patriots are 1-10 since the lighthouse has been built at home. What if you beat the Jets at home, Hank? Hank, how excited would you be if you get to... Memes will probably try to throw a punch at you, but I will do my best to be there to catch that punch. Hank, also think about this. Even if you don't beat the Texans...

Every good throw that Drake May makes in that game is going to bum memes out big time. He's going to be like, shit, he's got another good quarterback, and my team is just firing everyone. Do you remember the preseason? We were about to go. I think we were about to set up for maybe Doug's or something, and memes was slow, and I was like, what are you doing, memes?

and he said, I have to watch Drake May to make sure he's not good. Yeah. You have memes on the ropes. True. But David Andrews is out for the season. See? And he was on the ropes. He's on the ropes. Fight back against him. You got memes. Use memes. No David Andrews. Use memes. No one on the line. Go after memes. He's right about David Andrews. But if we can, again, I said that in the beginning, beat the Jets, beat the Dolphins, beat the Bills.

Yeah. Rivalry games. Beat the Bears. Whoa. Rivalry games. Yeah, beat the Bears. What are you doing, Memes? What is that, Memes? Memes, you're scared that Drake Mays is going to be good. You're scared Drake Mays is going to be good. He's not. He might be good. Oh, he's scared. I don't know if you believe he's going to be good, but you are definitely afraid of the thought. You have to be afraid. You have to respect the thought that he might be good. You're 100% afraid that he could be good. 75%.

He could be good, but no offensive line could break him. Yes, but they could probably get a new offensive line. Can you get a quarterback that's 20 years younger? No, but in my experience with no offensive line, it's very hard to fix. It takes years. Unless you have a younger quarterback that can escape that. Yeah.

Who can move, unlike a 40-year-old quarterback who's a coach killer and one foot. Do you remember that one time? Oh, this is what we've got to do. To get Hank up, we've got to bring memes down. That's what it's all about for Patriots. If you can't get excited because you're not going to win a Super Bowl this year, I get it. Standards are a little bit higher in Boston. It's like championship or bust. But if you're a Patriots fan, just think about how sad it's going to make your enemies. What did it take to get Hank's swagger back?

It took shitting all over memes. Yeah. You can snatch the future of every Jets fan. You're getting your swagger back. I mean, you don't need to get your swagger back. You had Summer of Hank like two days ago. Yeah, think about all the Jets fans, all the shit they talked when they got Aaron Rodgers. Guess what? If Drake May goes out there and lights it up this weekend, you can just laugh at them. Be like, look what you guys sold yourself on and look what I got. And hey, here's another thing. If Drake May turns out to not be good, it's not like...

PFT and I are going to laugh at you because our guys are good. Yeah, but that, again, we didn't have the choice. Yeah, yeah. What if Bo Nix and J.J. McCarthy are also good? That then would hurt. And Michael Penix. That would hurt. I mean, yeah, I would imagine. Spencer Rattler. Spencer Rattler. He's probably going to be good. Do you think this is because they're wearing the throwbacks and if they win, they're going to sell a shit ton of Drake May Patriots throwbacks? Oh, you're right. You're absolutely right.

Because why won't you do it against the Jaguars? Let's see. Whose line is it anyway? Did it change? Seven. It hasn't changed. It has not. Drake Mays worth zero points. That's fair. He's a rookie quarterback. That means he should have been starting. Yeah. Yeah. Every time I see the Patriots throwbacks, too, I just think of that game against the Titans. Was that the snow game? You remember that quarter, Hank? Six touchdowns in the first half. Go Mega Max on the Patriots this week. Put them in the Hungry Dog? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Believe. Believe.

Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Smash the button. Mayday. I said all aboard the Mayflower. Oh, that's good. Yeah, it's cute. That fits in nicely, too. Yeah. Plymouth Rock. Yeah, that's good. All right. Let's kick to ourselves for some playoff baseball talk with Max. Okay, playoff baseball. Max is in New York for the streams.

Max, would you like us to start with the Phillies or we could end with the Phillies? It doesn't matter. Is that – I don't know which way – you're the producer, Max. Why doesn't it matter? Max. Because it doesn't matter. I don't know why you guys – I got onto this Zoom call and you just keep saying my name like that. You've never done this before ever, and for some reason today you decide that it's a good time to start doing this. It sounds like the breaking news cow saying that Philadelphia lost. Yeah.

No, but it sounds like it's not even it's like a cow that's dying. Well, I guess the Phillies are dying. Yeah. I want to be fair. I agree with Max. He makes a good point. Like this series isn't about Max. It's not. But I do think that Max should start out. Yeah. Okay. So, Max, the Phillies, are they dead?

Yes. So it's over. Yeah. All right. So that was the Phillies-Mets series. Yeah. I don't know. I think they're dead, and then they win. So that's why I got to think that they're dead. I had hope coming into today, and then they died. I had hope going into game one, and then they died. And I thought we were dead, and then we arose in game two for a little bit. So right now I just have to assume death. Yeah. Well...

Your guy, who is actually the Grim Reaper, Nick Castellanos, did have a good quote. What was that noise? I think that was my computer. Nick Castellanos, this is as close to death as we're going to get as a group, so in a way it should make us feel more alive. There you go. That's huge. That's huge. I don't know what the fuck that means. What do you mean? They're close to death. When you're as close to death as you could be, you're also the most alive.

Yeah, it doesn't really make sense. Well, Al Pacino told us different. Well, that's coming up. Not to get out of order. Yeah, so Max, if you have a near-death experience, when you have a near-death experience, you come back rejuvenated. Anything's possible. You want to maximize your time. Maximize. Let's do this, Max. Shut up. All right, I got a couple questions for you, Max, first. One...

One, can you explain the hands on the ears like a little five-year-old with a fire truck going down the street move that you do when things go bad? I don't know. It's just like I don't want to hear people cheering around me because I'm with a bunch of fucking Mets fans. And it's like a panic. It's like, oh, no, this is bad. It's happening.

And I don't know how to explain my actions in these times. And you want me to explain, but I don't know what I'm doing. It's very adorable. It's great. Especially when you're sitting baby style and you put your hands on your ears. I love it. Yeah. It's so, so cute. You really are. Like, oh, here comes a fire truck. And it's super loud. Everyone put your hands on your ears. Oh, it's 4th of July. It's not even the real fireworks. Someone just let off like a Roman candle. Hands on your ears.

It's like in something about Mary when you won't let anybody touch his ears. And then Ben Stiller comes at the end. Got your baseball. Yeah. Okay. So that was question one. Question two. What are the vibes in that room? Tough, bad. It's just like, I don't know. It's just like assuming loss. Like the Mets, the Mets and the Phillies are just completely opposite teams.

The Phillies were tough on Sunday. I don't know. The Phillies are a soft baseball team. The Mets are a hard baseball team. They're a tough baseball team.

They come back from things and the Phillies just don't like they just die. Yeah. And tomorrow Harper tonight got mentally dominated at the plate that. So that was one of that. That was the moment that the game. Oh, I texted you that. Yeah. I was texting Max. Like, this is the inning. And you had to lead off walk from Schwarber. Then another walk. Two men on no outs. Bryce Harper up. Perfect time.

And he went three swings. Crumbled. Three swings strikeout. And the last swing that he had was maybe the most feeble attempt I've ever seen to hit a baseball in the playoffs. And then the next batter, it sucked. Cassiano hit that ball on the screws and we got doubled up. There's nothing you can do. Hit a line drive right at someone. It wasn't your night. Yeah. It wasn't your night. And Nola, you thought it was going to be a bad night for him.

When Alonzo hit the home run in whatever it was, the second inning. But he settled down. Obviously, they probably, I don't know if they kept him in. He was what, like 80 pitches? So you had to keep him in. He just always does that. He looks good for five innings, and then you put him out for the six, and everything crumbles. Yeah, because he was. He found his groove. Normally, he'll give up a bunch of bombs, but he just was walking everyone.

Yeah, he found his groove where he had, like, what, seven, eight strikeouts? He had eight Ks, eight Ks and five innings. Yeah, but he just – that was tough. So, and the Mets, credit to the Mets, they are –

We said it for last series. They just have that Team of Destiny feel where every big hit, every big – they got guys just stepping up in the right spots, big strikeouts. I don't know what it is. It's just you have that feel, and the other team that's got that feel right now is the Padres, I would say, where it's like the Padres – Shut up, Hank.

Well, the Padres do have that feel, though, where they just keep getting big. I mean, it's a home run every night. It's like Padres. Yeah. In a weird way, the way the Padres lost game two was almost better because it's like they were just never in that game. And.

Or no, what was game two? They lost game one. They won game two by a million. That was the one where Machado threw the ball at the dugout and then everything went nuts and they started throwing all that shit on the field. I love how mad the Padres make the Dodgers.

That's why I love this series. I want this series to go back to LA. I'm rooting for San Diego. I think that they're the most fun team to watch in baseball right now. They've got like a great combination of guys that don't give a fuck and are also simultaneously really, really good. So our friend Ryan Spader just tweeted this out. Pretty incredible. Fernando Tatis is batting at a clip where he's, he's got a 1.506 OPS. He's homering and 12.2% of his plate appearances during his career, the postseason and,

He's the all-time postseason leader in batting average, OBP, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, and home run percentage amongst people that have at least as many plate appearances as he does. So he doesn't have a ton of plate appearances, but he's really fucking good, and he's also excellent at making people angry. Yeah, he's pissing everyone off.

And that's what it feels like. It feels like the Padres and the Mets have the team of destiny. The Indians, sorry, the Guardians and the Tigers series has been awesome because it's just been great pitching. And Scooble, do you have a Scooble? You need a Scooble, Max. Scooble I would trust with my life. Yeah, we had a Scooble that went seven scoreless on Saturday.

And then we brought in a bull bullpen that just got fucking shelled the second he came out. Yeah. So, you know, we have a fucking Scooble Scooble on Monday. Uh,

That outing where he was like, there's just something about a guy who's shoving and he's reveling in the moment. And he's like, he was almost like, like whooping up the crowd to get louder. And like every big strikeout or double play, it was just, I love it. That's the best part about playoff baseball, like big home runs and aces that shove. Those are the two things that I'll just fucking give it to me all day, every day. I also love how excited the Tigers are to go back to Detroit. Yeah, they should.

They do. Shit. Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make that about the Phillies. No, no. You asked. I did. Take it back. You asked. I asked. My only note from the pods game is that John Smoltz is everything that Tony Romo wishes he was. He's so good. Good note. No, John Smoltz is elite. He knows every pitch that's coming. He calls it out.

I agree with Max. Hank doesn't know ball. I like John Smoltz. I like him as a pitcher. He's confidently wrong more than we are, which is saying something. Yeah, but he's John Smoltz. He's talking about basically what he would be thinking, and he is one of the best pitchers of all time. So it's like that's what he's saying. But it makes sense. I'd rather hear that POV.

Yeah. My, my other note about Hank's Padres is that they got 16 straight outs after the grand slam, which goes and it proves your point that grand slams are rally killers. You shouldn't hit them because then you get everybody off the bases. Then it's hard to keep scoring runs. Yeah. But it was all playoff. Baseball has been awesome because it was one, one all around until today, obviously Mets up to one and the Padres up to one. And then the Royals go into Yankee stadium and steal one. And I just love the,

This is just Groundhog's Day for the Yankees. Like, they're Yankees fans. Aaron Judge can't get a big hit. Giancarlo can't run.

They're just there. It just every year, the same thing happens. And they just, they're like, where are the stars? Why aren't the stars hitting a hundred home runs? And it would be very funny if the Royals, after all Yankees fans talked about, like everything's set up perfectly for them. Astros are out. And who were, who else were they scared of? Who? Oh, the Oriole. Well, not, they weren't scared of the Orioles, but they were like, Oh, Astros and Orioles gone. It's now just us versus the AL central.

Would be very funny if the Royals found a way to win this series. Pickett, I have a question. Yeah. Is Aaron Judge a true Yankee? So, good question. I talked to our good friend Tommy Smokes last night, and I said, do we have to take Aaron Judge's pinstripes away

And he said, did he ever have them? Yeah, I don't think he truly ever had the pinstripes because I think what happened was Yankees fans gave him, they had the pinstripe discussion when he hit the most home runs ever in the history of the American League. But I don't think he ever truly got the pinstripes.

So he did have, I want to say, what was the postseason? He had a postseason where maybe it was when they lost in the ALCS to the Astros the year that they cheated. I feel like he had a decent postseason for maybe a couple games, big hits. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm looking right now in that Houston, he had three home runs in the ALCS that year. So I feel like – and then the next year when they lost to the Red Sox in five, he had three home runs to start that series in a five-game series. So I feel like he was given his pinstripes, maybe like, hey, man, this guy's going to be incredible. He's been hitting a couple big home runs. But, yeah, he is not –

He's not doing it this year. I don't think he's a true Yankee, Big Cat, which is so funny to say because he's objectively one of the best hitters of his entire generation, maybe one of the best hitters, at least on pace to be one of the best hitters in Major League Baseball history, but not a true Yankee. Because true Yankees, they get it done in October. They do. That's a fact about true Yankees. Look at the calendar. What does it say? It's October. I'm looking right now. His batting average in the playoffs career is 208. Ooh. Mm-hmm.

Yikes. It's Mr. June. He is Mr. June. So, yeah, I mean, I just – and Giancarlo Stanton, like, I don't know. I don't know if they could do a designated runner rule, but they should think about it. The guy can't run. It's crazy watching him try to run. If he tries to run, that's when he starts pulling stuff. Yeah. What are you going to say, Hank? You want to predict the four games today, Wednesday? Yeah, let's do it. Ooh. I think Philly's got it. Same. I think no doubt. Who's on the bump, Max?

Ranger Suarez, he was the best pitcher in baseball the first half. Then he got hurt and he came back and he has like a boat above 60RA since he's been back. And you're going up against Quintana? He's not that scary. No, yeah, we can win, but it's going to be a shootout. And we didn't use our best relievers today, I think, in preparation for tomorrow being a big bullpen game. Okay. So, yeah, tomorrow's high leverage everything. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Is it must win or can't lose?

All of the above. I mean, both. They're going to lose, but they can't lose. Oh, no, Max. And I'm going to be sending that fucking. I don't know why I came out here. I'm over to flying out.

and coming to the, coming to these fucking streams. And neither of them were particularly close. I liked it when you said that you're not good in any room. I thought that was, that was a fair observation of your point. Have you considered watching outside? We talked about that. I don't get, I also, people say that people are, uh,

are like, why the fuck did you go to New York? You're just going to lose in New York. I don't get to choose where I go. That's a fact. Everything is a puppet. Here's a little behind the scenes of how Barstool works. Dave texted and was like, Max needs to be on the streams. And I said...

We need Max for PMT, at least on Sunday. And we have some stuff we're taping on Monday. So he can probably be back there on Wednesday. So the original idea was Max would go on Saturday and then he would fly back on Wednesday. After Sunday's incredible game, Dave texted me and said, I wish Max was on the stream, which was basically saying, hey, go talk to Max. I said to Max,

You get to decide. But I obviously know, like, I said to him, if I were in your shoes, I would go. And he was like, yeah, I'm going to go because he's a company man. So, yeah, he doesn't have much of a say. This is how we, like, these are the moments that make us different than everyone else. These are the moments that we have to capture, especially when we have two, you know, rival cities going up against each other. So credit to Max, he's a company man. If Dave cared about his Phillies future, he would send you back. Oh, yeah.

Should I? I'll send that text in the morning, Max. Max, here's the thing. Okay, go ahead. I'm willing to do whatever is asked of me, but I keep losing here. Okay, Max, think about this. What about watching in the hallway tomorrow? Put an office chair in the hallway. You're technically not in a room. I'm fine with that, too. All right, so try that. I think that might change the vibes. I'm fine with that.

Because they do have the outside thing as well. And you can still have Max moments out there, and you can come in to make cameos, but I think you're sitting in Frank's seat anyway today. Yeah, I mean...

I was just sitting where I was told to be sitting. Yeah. Okay. Do you want me to send that text tomorrow? I'm happy to send that text being like, hey. I don't want it to look like I'm trying to leave. Yeah, you're right, because you aren't. Like, you're a company man. Hank, you want to send that text? Want me to tweet him right now? Yeah, tweet him. He's not going to see that. Tweet him. Well, we have Pick'em tomorrow. We can bring it up. Oh, we do have Pick'em tomorrow. But that's probably not enough time for Max to get back.

Max, book a flight just in case. We'll figure this out. Okay. Okay. All right. Either way. Don't die yet, Max. Not a playoff baseball. Maybe we'll just watch it on a plane. All right. So let's predict these games tomorrow. All right. I got Phillies. All right. We have all four. Yeah. I'm going Phillies, Royals, Guardians, Pods. Okay. I'm going to go Phillies, Pods.

Royals, Tigers. I'm going Phillies, Dodgers. Don't do that. Don't do that. No, I get to go. I get to go. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I got Phillies, Dodgers because I want to see it go back to L.A. And also because you don't – you cashed out of that and Hank –

No, I know. Listen, straight up, I want to see the Padres win the World Series. No, no. Deep down, you don't. No, I do. That's absolutely false. That's not true, Big Cat. It's not true because I cashed that out so I could put the money on the Travis Hunter future. Correct. Which I do not regret. You could have just deposited a little bit more money.

But still, you don't – I get the feeling of being right, though, of being so early on the Padres. Listen, you can say whatever you want. I've done it before where I've cashed out a future. I'm rooting 100% against that team after I cashed out. You think I'm rooting for both you and Hank to lose your futures? No, you're not. It's not us. It's the fact that you cashed out. You have to root against –

If you cash out, you have to root against that team. You would root against your team. I'm telling you that I have done it, and that's a human nature. I am not doing that. I don't feel that at all. Deep down, you don't want the Padres to win. No, I swear to God.

I swear to God. You got a great number, too. I'm rooting for the Padres. Love the brown and yellow. You don't see a brown and yellow combination a lot in sports. It's good colors, especially the pink and the yellow. They pop when they wear those as accessories. They're a fun team. They piss everybody off. They make me happy. There's no way. Same. Maybe Jaden just turned over a new leaf in my head where I'm being optimistic about things. I'm choosing to embrace positivity. We're not talking about Jaden right now. Shut the fuck up, Max. All right. What was your last one? Then I got the Tigers. Then I got the Yankees. The?

Uh, Yankees. All right, Max. Max. I will go Mets. I will go Royals. I thought you were going to go for Mets. What? I think you should say Mets, Mets, Mets, Mets. Sure, yeah, I'll do that. Mets, Mets, Mets, Mets. Let's do that. Let's make a graphic of all our picks. Yeah, let's make a graphic. Yeah. Uh, should we let memes at least gloat a little bit? Although he's been...

We already talked about the Jets, but he's been in Jets land today. It's been a big day for his Jets memes. Would you like to twist the knife? You are Mets fan. I am Mets fan. I this team is very special. That was that was a fantastic game today, but I'm afraid the Phillies are probably going to win.

And you don't want it to go back to the bank. No. Mets, Mets, Mets, Mets. No, no. Phillies, Phillies, Phillies. Mets, Mets, Mets, Mets. I don't. I actually want my prediction changed to the Mets because I actually, now that I think about it, the Phillies are dead. No. Yeah, they are. They are. Let's be honest. We want to try to get Max back, but they're dead. I want Max to stay. No, no. No, I meant I wanted to get him back. Metaphor. Like, I wanted to, like, get his spirits back up. Oh.

You don't want him coming back here. No, no, no. That would make the Phillies win. Yeah, so the Mets. No, if the Mets win, Max is coming back. He can take the week off. What? What is going on here? What's going on? Just stay in New York. Whoa.

Is everything okay? Yeah, what's going on over there? Yeah, what happened there? No, just stay. You can stay. Is there like something broken that you don't want them to see? No, the Mets keep winning. Just stay in New York. Yeah, I think.

Max, you could definitely just come back and be like, I've only won and just sit right back down on the ground, right in the corner of the gambling cave with your hands over your ears like a big baby and watch the Phillies win. The hands will be over my ears regardless. Yeah. Okay. Anything else from baseball? It's been awesome. I love playoff baseball. There's nothing like it. Pods are the favorites to win it all. Phillies are in dead last to win it all. Favorites. The Padres are the favorites?

Yeah. Well, because they're up 2-1. I'm so happy. No, to win it all. Yeah, no, I know. They're up 2-1. The only other team up 2-1 is the Mets, and the Padres would have home field advantage. So it makes sense. I think they would. Yeah, they would. Yeah, they definitely would. What are the Phillies doing at all? Plus 1,000. DraftKings. I kind of like that. DraftKings. Max. The bats just come alive. Fight, Max. Don't let them get back to the bank. No, Mets, Mets, Mets, Mets.

When it goes bad, it just goes so bad. It was such a beautiful scene at Citi Field tonight. That sunset they were showing was incredible. Crisp in the air. Yeah. Mets fans are long-suffering fans. I also landed at Citi Field, or LaGuardia, which is right next to Citi Field. And it was just a bunch of people flying in to go to the Mets game. And then I was like, I'm literally looking at the game.

And I'm flying here to go watch the game in a room full of people that aren't Phillies fans. So that crossed my mind today. For the record, you're talking about the Mets fans.

Yeah. Not your not Rone Smitty Gia. Right. Yeah. I mean, I love the I love the Philly crew today. Yeah. Yeah. No, you have a good Philly crew, but it is you're you're playing an away game against. Correct. Because it is the Mets, the aliens of Barstool and the Mets crew. They're they're very entertaining, but they do kind of own that that gambling cave. So you're walking into their place. Correct. Max, who's the most annoying person that's rooting for the Mets that's in that room?

None of them. Bosco. I'll say Bosco. Yeah, Bosco. He's an easy one to say. Bosco. Bosco. Shout out Bosco for showing up. Thought for a second he wasn't going to show up. What? He got there at inning three. Tough. Game already started. He came up to me after the game. He's like, how much shit do you think I'm going to get for coming here for showing up late? Get Obloz. Obloz. He did have Obloz. It was a weird-ass starting time. Yeah, yeah. No one knew about it. I don't blame Bosco. You didn't.

I had my time zones wrong, and I thought it was an hour earlier. But if it was my team, I would have had that thing printed in my brain. There. Ryder Hank coming up. All right. Let's do some college football talk, and then we have an awesome interview with Troy Aikman.

All right, PFT, do you want to do an ad re- Wait, who the hell are you? Me? Me? I'm the replacer. I'm taking over from PFT or whatever his name is. So, you know, so he can play some Black Ops 6. So he's playing Black Ops 6 while I do the ad read? Yeah, you go ahead and read. I don't like reading the-

The ads. Okay, so he's playing a game. All right, all right, that's fine. Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Okay, I don't understand this, but I'm in for it. I'm in for it. Come on, man. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

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Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Pre-order now or I will get you. I like this replacer. You can stick around, okay? I like you. Yeah, yeah. All right. I like you. Fishbowl! What do we talk about now? Sports?

Okay, let's talk some college football PFT. We had the weekend of chaos. It was awesome. Apple picking weekend. You look at the slate. There's not that many big games. Oh, next week is going to be incredible. And then we had number one Alabama lose, number four Tennessee lose, number nine Missouri lose, number 10 Michigan lose, number 11 USC lose. And it feels like we're in a new era of college football where

These teams with the transfer portal, because like Vandy, I think had 43 new players. The floor of a Vandy has been raised. The floor of some of these teams in the Power Five have been raised where you can see these type of upsets and chaos. And now Vandy has the first time they've ever beaten the number one team in the country. They were 0-60 against top five opponents in their last 60 going against them.

It was an awesome, awesome... That's a trend. Yeah, that's a very big trend. It was an awesome game. They were non-competitive. They didn't win an SEC game last year. I think the closest they were was, like, a 15-point loss to Auburn. That was an awesome, awesome game. Like, whole thing, Nashville, putting the goalposts into the river. Diego Pavia was awesome. He's the best. I loved him last year at New Mexico State, but it was cool to see, like...

Maybe we're getting a little shift where everyone, maybe there's a little bit more parody in college football. I guess we'll find out. But right now this season, it's still early. But the chaos and the fact that we don't know who's good in college football right now, it reminds me of that 2007 season. And if you don't know about the 2007 season, go back, watch. There's a bunch of videos on YouTube that break down how crazy that season was with all the upsets that happened week after week after week after week.

We're on pace for that right now.

It's probably not going to last to the same extent that 2007 did, but the upsets are incredible. Vanderbilt, I love the new tradition, which is if you have a river in your town and you beat a good team, you're tearing those fucking things down. You're putting them into a river. They belong in the river right now. And they walked like two miles with the goalposts. There was some sick-ass night vision cameras, too, from helicopters where you saw all the Vandy students crawling down the steps to just –

very calmly and they were very organized with how they got those goalposts in the river. But it's just like a mindset that we have right now where we win football game, goalposts go river. And it's so much fun because we've had all this, you know, whether it be conference realignment, NIL, transfer portal, all this hand-wringing that college football, the playoff expanding, all this hand-wringing that college football is going to lose some of its luster and what made it unique. And yes, we did lose some things.

But I truly believe with the NIL and Transfer Portal, I think you're going to get these teams, the Vandies of the world, being able to take a little slight step up and be competitive in these type of games that you didn't have before. And it feels like there's – it's not like it was the last 10 years where there's three teams that can win the title and no one else.

Like you could put your life on it. These three teams, no one else has a chance. It feels like there is maybe 10 teams right now that, yeah, I guess on the right day they could win the playoff. Because if you're a big school, you're also using the transfer portal with the exception of Clemson. But I think that the smaller schools or the traditionally weaker schools have a much better...

bigger upside to the transfer portal, being able to access those guys. Yeah. Well, it's, it's the, it's also the depth chart where it's, you know, guys would go to Alabama, sit for a couple of years, then get their chance. Now, maybe they're going somewhere and they're not getting their chance right away. And they're very talented. And they're like, I'm going to go somewhere else. Or on the flip side, a guy at the lower schools, the lower schools are probably the ones that get hurt from all of this because a lot of like

guy goes to a Mac or Sunbelt, plays for a few years, then is like, I got one year left. I'm going to try to go play at the Power 5 level. Right, but if Evandy, what I'm saying... Diego Pavia. He goes up and wins that game. They don't win that game without him on Saturday. Yeah, so the smaller...

big group of four schools. They're going to benefit from it because they can get access to good players. Correct. The top schools are going to benefit too, but maybe not to the same extent that a Vandy would benefit. Well, they don't need to do it differently to their, their recruiting is always going to be elite and at a different level. Yeah. And, but it was just, I don't know. I think college football is in a great spot. There's chaos everywhere. And we didn't even mention like without cam ward, another transfer,

Miami would have been added to that list too because that was an insane comeback late night against Cal, but they have been on the ropes two weeks in a row. And it's just every Saturday feels like you get one of these moments that is just so much fun. And I'm just very excited about the future of college football when we've spent so many years being like, it's all dying. It's all going to suck. Like it's,

the sport we loved is gone. Well, conference realignment does suck. I don't like that, but it's going to happen no matter what. And there's nothing you can do about it. So just put that aside, put the systemic stuff aside and then just embrace all the chaos that's happening. Also embrace the hog. I love that quote from Sam Pittman. Oh, we got it. We got to embrace the hog. Tennessee's got, this is,

I feel for Tennessee fans, they've had elite, elite offenses and suspect defenses. And then this year they have an awesome defense and Nico's a freshman and he had freshman moments running out of bounds on fourth and five to end the game. Joe Milton did that. Yep.

Joe Bill did that against Ole Miss. One of the other greatest quarterbacks we've ever seen. That was tough, and I do feel for Tennessee fans, obviously their season's not over, but when you lose that game now, everything gets a little tighter coming up where you might not have the safety net. That's really what's happening here, and I love that part of it because the argument that –

the regular season won't matter anymore with 12 teams in the playoffs. It's just a safety net. Like, Tennessee has to win one of their big games coming up. Yeah, I mean, it's good, I think, for what we have for future football this year. It's good that we have the playoff because that loss to Vandy would have been disqualifying for Alabama, and we wouldn't get to see them play in any real serious postseason games, probably. Well, yeah, because Saban would have just gotten on a show and been like, we're one of the best four teams in the country. Yeah.

and they would have been like, yeah, you're probably right. Also, Nick Saban with the all-time quote before the game saying that Vandy was an easy place to play. He's right for him. Nick Saban doesn't lose that game. No, Nick Saban would not. He would have the stadium firebombed in the fourth quarter if they were losing. I think I saw a stat. I think Vandy scored like 16 total points against Nick Saban.

Yeah. They didn't play every year because they're obviously not in the same side, but it was something ridiculous. They were never competitive against Nick Saban, Alabama. Yeah, the last six quarters for DeBoer have been a nightmare. Yeah.

Nick Saban never had six quarters like that. Yeah. But we had Tennessee. That was tough to have Nico go down. Mizzou, they were underdogs. But now Texas A&M is back in the picture. They're back in like, hey, if they win one of their big games coming up, they could be in the playoff, which is crazy because that's –

Again, you would usually disqualify off of a loss and then say, oh, better luck next year. Now everyone gets back in here. And then you had Michigan, who they probably are out. And USC, who's probably out as well, probably was never in. But that was a tough loss against Minnesota where they're up –

going into the fourth quarter and Minnesota just grinds them. Yeah, and in big JMU news, Kurt Cignetti and his Indiana Hoosiers are looking pretty good for the playoff right now. What about real JMU? No, I'm talking about Kurt Cignetti, former JMU coach. The Hoosiers look like they're for real. Got it. I like them a lot. I apologize for your JMU losing.

Yeah, so I had hopes of Yoffs. I was thinking Yoffs. Just being in the playoffs would have been nice, and it was going to be an uphill battle, but did not expect to lose that game. It was bad. It was bad play calling. Team looked very out of sorts compared to how sharp they had looked in weeks prior. I don't know what happened with that. It was just all around bad. Our quarterback, I don't know if he's injured, had some accuracy issues.

It was bad. It was a bad night. I didn't, but at the very least it was not the big upset that happened. I was very thankful that Alabama lost to Vanderbilt because it's like, okay, well, yeah, we might've lost his 18 and a half point favorites, but at least we're not Alabama. Yeah. I mean those, yeah, right. Alabama was the story no matter what. Yep. Uh,

We also had, by the way, you mentioned conference realignment. I just want to say I feel really bad for James Franklin. I don't know if you guys saw this, but apparently in their upcoming game against USC, they

The State College Airport is not big enough to fly them out of, so they have to go to Harrisburg. So James Franklin did a press conference. It was like, yeah, we have to be on a bus for like an hour. Oh, my God. This is the new conference realignment. I hope he's okay. It's really tough. That's a lot of sitting. That's really, really tough. An hour? Hour. Yeah, that's tough. I think, let's see. I'm going to find out exactly how far it is from State College PA to Harrisburg because it could be more than an hour.

But it's just very funny that the fans are having to come up with a new normal where Cal and Miami are a conference game. I will never stop laughing when I see Cal playing against Miami for the Atlantic Coast Conference. The signs at game day for Cal were so funny when...

People were actually getting mad online. Yeah. There was someone who said... The Calgary rhythm. I think it was Ot for highs person. And they got very upset about that. That was a great one. There were so many good trolls on there. All right. Harrisburg and State College. Oh, my God. Hour and 28. And that's probably right now. You're looking that up at...

12 30 in the afternoon on the east coast yeah i don't think there's going to be much traffic is it gonna be rush hour no i don't think rush hour going to harrisonburg of traffic but yeah that's brutal um we also should we should mention um

Travis Hunter had a bye week. He should be the Heisman, but Ashton Genting is... God damn it, he's really good. He's so good. It's insane. It's insane the balance that he has, his burst, how quick he is. It's crazy. He is in a non-Travis Hunter year. That's what's so sad about this year is that we should be respecting Genting more, but unfortunately he's going to get just washed away in all the Travis Hunter hype. Yeah, he is...

On pace, right? So he has 1,031 yards and 16 touchdowns through five games. He's also sat out like a bunch of second halves. He's on pace for 2,474 yards and 38 touchdowns. Barry Sanders had 2,628 yards and 37 touchdowns in 1988. It's crazy. Big Cat, with the state of the running back position in the NFL where you have to maximize your healthy years as much as you can, is it crazy to think maybe Jenty should just sit down for the rest of the season and

I would agree. He's already got a season's worth of stats. Exactly. I want to see this guy make all the money that he can, have glory at the professional level, and I think for his own safety, I think it would be a good idea. Yeah. I think somebody should tell him that. He had a moment. There was a moment on Saturday where I think he ripped off like a 75-yard run, and then I looked at his stats, and it was like halfway through the first quarter, and he had like six carries for 82 yards, call it.

I was like, man, take out that 75-yard run. They're bottling him up. Yep. And then as I was about to tweet that, he had like a 65-yard run, touchdown run. I was like, all right, never mind. So I was thinking that during the game because he's reached the point of explosiveness where you don't know what the timeline is reacting to when they say, goddamn, Ashton Gentile is so good. Right. Because –

You might be reacting to a play that happened like two minutes ago. Yeah. Or he might have just done it again. Yeah. He's been incredible. So that is our Heisman Watch, we should say. I think it's a two-horse race right now. I would say so. We'll see what happens. Basically, we'll come down to, like, does Jalen Milrow have a big couple games? I can't, in good conscience, I cannot vote for...

uh, Heisman quarterback that lost to Vandy. Yeah, I'd agree with that. Uh, does Carson Beck have a couple of big games? I can't in good conscious vote for a quarterback that lost to a quarterback that lost to Vandy. Great point. Uh,

And then Quinn Ewers obviously missed a couple games, so I think he might be – I don't think there's been a Heisman in a long time that's won while missing a couple games. Yeah, yeah. I would agree with that. Two horse race. We also should say one last thing I had was Army and Navy are incredible, and it would be awesome if one of them went to the playoff. That would be very fun. It would be very, very fun. I also think – I might be wrong. No, I think I'm right. I believe the playoff seating comes out before Army-Navy.

Does it? So that, yeah, that game doesn't count. I've heard that that game doesn't count, but I don't know if that's one of those situations where it's like you're not allowed to, like all the people that come up with the seeding, you're not allowed to even watch that game. That would be crazy if one of them got in and then they beat and the other one beat them. They both play Notre Dame in this season. You want to get wild with it? Yeah. I think, I don't know this for a fact, but I think the way that the seeding is written is,

is that you have to win a conference, right, to be considered one of the top four teams? Yes, that is true. Does that get that by? Does it say that it has to be a power four conference? It does. Does it? It doesn't? Like if there's two conferences that don't have, like the Big 12, for example, if they have a conference champion that's got three or four losses. Right.

And then if you have another, like an ACC champion that somehow has three or four losses, is there a possibility that a conference champion could come from a conference that isn't one of those schools?

That isn't one of those power fours. I thought they set it up to basically screw the little guy, but maybe... I think that was the intent, but I don't know what the rule actually says. I guess it technically says four highest ranked conference champions, so maybe not. So it could be like a MAAC. It could be like Toledo. If they were higher ranked, yeah. If they ended up being a higher rank than whatever the Big 12 champion was. Yeah, yeah. That would be crazy. That would be crazy.

Army-Navy is played after the final. Okay, so I was right. December 8th. So that'll be interesting. Imagine if that happened. I'm rooting for Army or Navy to get in. How awesome would that be? How awesome would that be? I'm going to look right now. Anything else from college football? How about your Huskies, Hank? Big win. Big upset. Just kidding. They were favored. They were. Still, though, it's a good win. It's a good win. You guys lit them up. A lot of questions in Michigan. A lot of questions in Michigan. Hank, what did you think about the game?

We talked about it Sunday. It was a big win. That was as much as you could do? What else do you want from me? You guys aired it out. Maybe you would have watched tape. I did not watch any tape. I'm sorry. You didn't watch any tape. God damn it. I really want Army and Navy to get into the playoff. Both of them. Now, I do know that those two teams specifically are independent, but it could be potentially Mac school. Yeah. That would rock if a Mac school got a buy.

That'd be incredible. Yeah. I think they would probably try to rig it so it wouldn't happen. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Okay. Should we do Hot Seat Cool Throne? Hot Seat Cool Throne brought to you by our friends at Coors Light.

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nope al pacino oh oh yeah i saw this yeah uh he had a covid i guess near death experience and or like maybe he died and came back he said he didn't see anything he said there's nothing after you die so he just took a nap it just goes blank no he took a nap with no dreams no dreams yep i've been having crazy dreams recently but the fact that he remembered that there was nothing tells me that there was something to remember you know what i'm saying

True. It's like in that movie Contact where it's like your camera recorded when you went to the other dimension, your camera recorded nothing but static. Yeah, but it recorded eight hours of static. Right. He also didn't die. Well, I guess it left him with no. No, he fell asleep. Near death experience. I left him with no pulse. Is Al Pacino. No, it's Robert De Niro has like who keeps having kids. I think Pacino might have had one too. Robert De Niro is just like he has like a newborn. Yeah, he jumped off a boat this summer.

Is he okay? Yeah, did you see the video? Yeah. He just almost died falling off a boat. Wait, did he jump or did he fall? He jumped, but it looked like a fall because he can't be graceful at that age. Speaking of not being graceful at that age, my other hot seat is Bob Costas. Okay, I actually had him on my hot seat too, Hank. Thanks for doing two of them. Go ahead. Do you want me to? No, yeah, why?

Uh, he just sounds, he's, he's broadcasting the, uh, Yankees Royal series and he sounds horrible. He is a robot. Bob Costas is, uh,

A really good case for maybe nostalgia isn't always the best because when Bob Costas started calling baseball games again, I was personally like, this is awesome. Bob Costas called the World Series when I was a kid. This is cool. No, no, no, no. I think he's still stuck in the year like 1991. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when they do. I mean, I'm worried about.

one that's coming up it's like you know anchorman 2 when they do these sequels of comedies that aren't necessary and they're just bad and you're like this just kind of it doesn't ruin the first one yeah but it's not necessary he he has all the money he doesn't need to do it i don't get why why he chooses to do it i think bob costas believes that bob costas adds a lot to the sport of baseball remember bob costas did that whole remember what was it was it sunday football when they gave him that weird like

minute sitting on a soapbox. This is what I'm chewing on. Yeah. And he did the whole thing about how the NFL is too dangerous and how he, how he feels like he's been complicit in all this stuff. I think he thinks that baseball is the one true sport. Like Bob Costa strikes me as he wishes that it was just baseball, horse racing and boxing.

yeah that's it there was the bob costas minute he did the thing about football and then he did one about like guns yeah he would wear his little fucking scally cap and he just he'd look even shorter yeah what they do is they would essentially give him like a letters to the editor page except it was on tv for everybody to watch right but yeah it was portnoy's complaint yeah it was like having mr portnoy on the show except he's on during a baseball game for some reason i think he so that's why i think he does baseball because he thinks it's

You know, he truly is America's pastime is baseball. He's very romantic about baseball. Yeah. He would marry baseball, but he wouldn't fuck it. Right. He also dropped some F-bombs in the WWE documentary, which... Oh, yeah.

That's spicy. That's crazy. Spicy Bob Costas. Really spicy. What'd he say? I forget. It was laugh out loud funny. I forget the context, but he was like, it's just not the fucking same. It was two unnecessary F-bombs. That's wild to me that Bob Costas would be a wrestling fan. He is.

He, like, broadcasted in the beginning. I would have bet everything that I own that Bob Costas would look down on anybody that's ever watched wrestling. I think I forget the exact. No matter what. I'm pretty sure he said, like, I, you know, when it started, like, he was involved in the broadcast teams and, you know, WWE one and WrestleMania one and two and stuff. And he was like, I thought it was fun and entertaining, but it's just not the fucking same. Yeah. Whoa. Whoa, dude. Damn.

Okay, and your cool throne? My cool throne, I have a couple. One of them has a question mark. It's just Stefan Diggs question mark. Okay, yeah, Hank took a lot of mine, yeah. Hank, yeah. Yeah, do you know the story? Yeah, I don't know if this is a cool throne worthy. I feel like it probably makes more sense for it to be on your cool throne because that's like living your dream kind of. You calling him horny? Fucking an eight-month pregnant Cardi B. I do love Cardi B.

I think that she's wild. She's a little crazy. But Stefan Diggs allegedly had sex with Cardi B when she was eight months pregnant and also might be sleeping with, what, two other rappers or something like that? He fucks everyone. Stefan Diggs is? Yeah. So my cool throw and my take on the cool throw was more like it came out that the Cardi B thing happened, which then...

Other reports came out about him basically just banging everyone. So I was like, oh. Good for him. Kind of cool thrown, yeah. Guys can't bang anymore? He's a healthy... It's an act that's natural and healthy for an adult male. Yeah. And there was the video of him on the Vikings when they went around and asked everyone, you know, what teammate would you let date your daughter? And every single person, like, unanimously was like, Stefan Diggs. So Stefan Diggs is a dog. He's a dog. And that Lizzo lyric, new man on the Minnesota Vikings. Hmm.

That was when he was on. Do you think Stefan Diggs fucked Lizzo? I thought that was Adam Thielen. And then he fucked an eight-month pregnant Cardi B? Does he have a type? I think that was after he left, but that would be funny. Was it? I always thought it was Kirk Cousins. Yeah, probably Kirk. He's a dog, too. Yeah, I think. When did that song come out? 2017? No. No. I think it's after. I'm going to go with after. 2020.

No, it was like a lineman or something. They figured out who it was. Yeah, it was 2019, 2020. Someone figured it out. So maybe it is Stefan Diggs. You're right. I think it might be Stefan Diggs. Also, listen, at least it's kind of having safe sex. You're not going to get her pregnant. Who? Cardi B. Yeah. Although I feel like there's always one crazy story about double pregnancy. That's how twins are made. The baby comes out pregnant. Yeah.

Are you a hot sequel to Ron or did you get none? I mean, Hank ripped a couple of them, but good job, Hank. Great job, Hank. I appreciate that. Give it up for Hank, everybody. Way to fucking show up today. You just came in, you punched in, you showed up to work. What was that? Yep, I did. You had four. Are you...

What's going on here? What are the vibes I'm catching from you? Is it because people should make sure they really, really watch the golf video we did with the Bob Does Sports? No, I got over that. I woke up fresh late. What do you mean got over it? You were great. Yeah, it was fun. You should tune in. You will enjoy the videos.

Tune in. If you like seeing Hank destroyed mentally, oh boy, do we got a video for you. My hot seat then is going to be, I'm going to do the Indianapolis Colts on the hot seat. Because Belichick was on the Manning cast, which that's the only time I watch the Manning cast is when Belichick's on it because I feel like he's, it's a good fit that they have. Yeah. And he was talking shit about the Indianapolis Colts.

saying that, yeah, it's loud at Arrowhead, but you know, it was really loud at the RCA dome in Indianapolis when you guys used to pump in all that crowd noise. And then one time it skipped and we all heard that. And then Mr. Ursae responded this morning to the allegations that they used to pump in crowd noise. He said, reminder, piped in crowd noise myth, a thousand percent fictional. And the skip- 1,000? 1,000% fictional.

And the skip was TV broadcast. We get it, though. Visiting teams couldn't believe that 60,000 in an intimate domed stadium can make that much deafening noise. Wave, smiley face, a credit to Colts fans. So who knows? Who knows who's writing this? I have to wait for all the facts to come out until we figure out whether or not the Colts used to back in like 2006 pumping crowd noise. Wave, smiley

Wave smiley face, a credit to Colts fans. Wow. So 1,000% fictional or is Belichick telling the truth? I don't know. Yeah. Hank, do you remember that? Not. I don't remember like the details. I just remember them saying they pumped in crowd noise. I don't remember like the drama as it unfolded. I think a lot of stadiums do it. Definitely. I think Seattle does it or at least used to do it.

There was one coach that told us anonymously that he gave his grounds crew instructions when they went up to Seattle to pour muriatic acid on all the power lines connecting the speakers to whatever pumped in crowd noise thing they had. And then the grounds crew was like, no, we can't do that because that's illegal and possibly an act of terrorism. Yes. The coach didn't tell us this. The grounds crew told us this. And it's anonymous which coach it was. Yes. Yes.

And then, yeah, there was the Seahawks used to do it. I feel like the Vikings did it. The Falcons, I think, got in trouble for it. Didn't they get fined for it? Yeah, Falcons got fined for it. Yeah. Belichick probably squeaked on the Vikings then, too, or on the Falcons. He was like, hey, just so you know, if they didn't hire me, just fine them. The Commanders used to do it. I heard it all the time when I was there. Yeah. He is good. Belichick is...

I don't know what... I guess he was always this guy. He's a double. It's also a very, very funny picture of him with his girlfriend in Nantucket where he did the patented Belichick rip on a Taylor Swift sweatshirt. Yeah. So funny. Did you see what was in the background of that picture? What was it? A lighthouse. Whoa. A real lighthouse. Do you think he's coming back? No, that was Nantucket. No, but that's like the... But that could be a sign that he's coming back. That was his sign. It's like Devontae Adams posting Edgar Allan Poe. Yeah. What if he's coming back?

What if he goes back to the Jets? Sign the contract on a napkin. That would be incredible. All right, my hot seat is my Chicago Fire because we just hired Greg Berhalter as head coach. Oh, no. Yeah.

I think that's great. I think that's great for Greg because that just means that he's definitely not going to return to the U.S. National Team. Director of football and head coach. Hey, listen, anytime you can get a guy who's coaching the World Cup as your head coach, you've got to do it. Does this mean that we're going to have to get him on the show at some point? I think we should. We should because we also –

I usually get him on the show and do no research before. Yeah. And then just go off vibes of what everyone else said about him. Unfortunately, I've got a lot of mental background in Greg Berhalter. I don't. I just know it was always Berhalter out. But now we get to do Berhalter out again. That's true. Yeah. So are you Berhalter out right now? I'm Berhalter out. Officially. For the fire? Yeah. Fuck him. You know what? Let's give him one day.

10 o'clock tomorrow, I'm officially Burrhalter out. Okay. Does he have any playing experience with any of the fathers of the players that are on the current Chicago Fire? Because that could really screw things up.

Well, the good news for the fire is I can't name him. I was going to say Spencer Ritchie, not even just stud, but MLS player that didn't play on the. Can you name an MLS player that's not on the US national team? Yes. Spencer Ritchie. No, or wasn't like superstar somewhere else. Spencer Ritchie. Spencer Ritchie. Yeah. Easy. Fuck. Yes. Spencer Ritchie. Shout out. Husky. Is he? Yeah. Nice. Boys of Spencer. Backup goalie.

Your boys with Spencer? His boys with Spencer. His name is Spencer. And he's also... Boys with Spencer. Two Spencers. Got it. I knew who you were talking about, but the listeners did not when you just said Spencer Ritchie, boys with Spencer. My bad. My bad.

All right. And then my cool throne is Deshaun Watson because he settled another lawsuit. So we are now in a cycle that will not be broken because the Browns are paying Deshaun Watson way too much money so that Deshaun Watson can then settle all his lawsuits so that he can never be brought to justice for any of his crimes so that the NFL can't suspend him and the Browns can't get out of it. Yeah. The Browns can't do anything because his contract says that there's nothing in there. Like,

If it wasn't already all the stuff that's been reported about him, they can't take any action against him for any of that. And they're paying him so that he can basically stay afloat at paying off all these women. There will be no new allegations because all the allegations get settled using the money that he's getting paid from the Browns. And the Browns need the NFL to step in, but the Browns, the NFL can't step in until...

It goes from private settlements to public, and that will never happen because the Browns keep paying Deshaun Watson. Correct. Damn.

What a fucking disaster. Just bench his ass. I feel so bad for Kevin Stefanski. Yeah. He should quiet quit. I think he has. Yeah. I think he's still trying. Because his hands are tied. He can't do anything about it because the ownership's like you have to play the guy that we're paying money to. He's so bad at football. He's a bad guy. He doesn't talk about Sean Watson. James would save everything.

James is the lightest spark. What were you going to say, Memes? What if the Jets trade for Kevin Stefanski? That would be a smart trade. Yeah, that would be a great trade. That would fix everything. Everything. Everything. Everything. Ahsan Reddick for Kevin Stefanski, straight up? Yeah. I saw a lot of people complaining. Complaining about what? Pass rush on the Browns. Oh. Even though they have Myles Garrett. Yeah, he's been injured. Remember, he's got a thigh, ankle, Achilles, hip.

Two eyes. But it's almost Halloween season. He loves Halloween season. That's true. He'll be back. All right, let's get to our interview. We got Troy Aikman on the show. PFT, you want to do a quick ad before we get to Troy? I can't believe the replacer was so kind to let me go play this earlier, but this episode of Part of My Take in the Interview with Troy Aikman is brought to you by Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Forced to go rogue, hunted from within. Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Black Ops 6 is a mind-bending narrative. It's a story of a man who's been killed by a woman.

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Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest. It is Hall of Famer, Dallas Cowboy, Troy Aikman. Troy, first of all, thank you for joining us. We were just saying it's been long overdue. I guess I'll start with that first question. You obviously have this great relationship with Joe Buck, been working with him for years. He's a good friend of ours. What does Joe Buck say about us when we're not around?

Well, he talked about y'all to me for the first time last night as we were leaving the stadium. Okay. There hasn't been a whole lot of dialogue. I don't want to disappoint y'all. Damn. But it started. Yeah. Sounds like he's ashamed of us. Is that what it sounds like? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

No, but he heard I was coming on, and so he grabbed me, and he was fired up. He said he's been a guest on your show a few times, and he's really enjoyed it. In fact, he said it's the best thing that he's ever done as far as how people have –

have taken to him and have gotten a chance to see his personality. So all good. Yeah. All right. That's actually the whole interview. We just wanted a compliment from Joe. Yeah. I'll take it. I'll take it. So now that Joe's feeling all high and mighty about himself, what's the worst part about working with Joe Buck? You know what? In all honesty, there's not –

There's not a lot of downside. I mean, it's amazing that we've been together as long as we have. I think the one thing...

Joe won't let me do anything by myself. So, you know, he's involved in everything. And if I'm, if I'm doing an interview, I'm surprised. Is he going to sneak onto this thing? No, we're just talking to our friends behind their back. Yeah. The hair, you could say the hair plugs, those guys that got ridiculous. Right. I mean, that got a little ridiculous by him. Like, yeah, but you're talking about like the SVP interviews. It's like, Joe's Hey, Joe's here too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. So, you know,

That's just part of the deal. We're a package deal, so we do everything together. Well, I mean, and we're going to get into questions about your career and everything, but to talk about you and Joe and the games you call –

You guys, I love your booth. I love listening to games. You guys both have big game voices, but I think it's also a testament to your relationship where a lot of times it's lost that the relationship between the two guys sitting in the booth together matters so much, and it comes across on the screen, and you can tell you guys are friends. When you started with him, was there a feeling out process to get to that comfortable level? Because you guys are the best booth, in my opinion, and it's because of your friendship. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. And I've been asked, why do I think it works? And my first answer always is that I think the viewer, I think they feel the fact that we are really good friends and you can't fake that. So the fact that you understand that or sense it, it means a lot to me, but

When I got paired with Joe, so I retired in 2000 and 01 was my first year of broadcasting. I worked with Daryl Moose Johnston and Dick Stockton and Madden was the number one guy. So then after one year, John left for Monday Night Football and he called me to tell me I had no idea what that might mean for me. But they paired Joe and I and Chris Collins worked together. And so the three of us worked together for three years.

And, you know, that was a three man booth is challenging. So Joe claims that he had called a game of mine back when I was playing. I don't recall him ever. I don't recall ever being in a production meeting with him. You know, which you guys know, Joe. So that didn't go over real well, but.

I got to know Joe better once we got into a two-man booth. We were close when we were in the three-man booth with Chris, but once it became just Joe and I, then we had more concentrated time together. I was golfing at the time. We spent a lot of time in the off-season golfing. Our kids are

our daughters. They're not kids anymore. They're adults, but they were roughly the same age. We were girl dads. We've gone through a lot of life experiences together. So it's been a good relationship really right from the start. Yeah. It's been great to watch. And you guys do add like that element, like Big Cat said, the big game voices. It just feels like it's a spectacle when we got Troy and Joe on the broadcast and that's always great. And Les,

You make a minor mistake on the air and you accidentally say that Taylor Swift is married to Travis Kelsey. Yeah, like is that – was that a big deal? I mean was that – was I on a tightrope right there? This morning I woke up and I saw a headline like Aikman knew he was in trouble or something and I'm thinking, gosh, if this is newsworthy, I mean –

Yeah. I mean, look, really? Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever done the thing where you became an ordained minister online? You like fill out a form, takes you five minutes and you get a certificate? Because if you had... I've done that to become a bartender, but not a minister. Okay. All right. So they're not actually married. Have you ever seen that thing you do? That's what happens to the lead singer. They accidentally say he's engaged. The band falls apart. You might have just cursed the chiefs. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what? Someone, I don't know if I cursed him or not, but someone actually reached out to me today and said that they might actually be engaged. So I might have, I might have, I might have broke the story. Big J journalist. Is it? So, so the, I like, like I said, we're big fans of yours. I want to talk about your playing career real quick because you,

I, we always do whenever we have rookie quarterbacks, it's always like, well, Peyton Manning through 33 interceptions or whatever it was is his first year. You also had a tough first year. Didn't win a game through a lot of interceptions. Yeah.

Yeah. Was there ever a moment in your first year where you're like, this might not be like I might not be able to make it because we see it now all the time where they rush guys in and there's five guys drafted in every first round and three or four of them are failures. But what was it like when you were going through that and how were you able to overcome it? Because it's really something we should all look at and be like, hey, don't give up on a guy after a year.

Yeah, like maybe this isn't the profession for me, huh? Yeah. Maybe I'm going to something else. But no, I...

I'm asked a lot, as you can imagine, with these guys now, should a guy sit and watch for a year or two or should he play right away? And all I know is what I experienced, and that was I played right away. And I think the key is not losing your confidence. And fortunately for me, I had a former NFL quarterback that had played years earlier in Jerry Rome that was my quarterback coach. And he was great and just simply not allowing me to lose my confidence, which

which I didn't do, but I was demoralized a bunch. I mean, there were so many times I walked off the field thinking, what do you got to do to win a game? But I was 0-11, like you said, got beat up a lot. But I still always believed that we would get it going. And fortunately, my first start, my second year, we won. So I got that monkey off my back. But you're right in that we're so quick to judge players

I mean, we're judging these guys after three or four games. I mean, it's crazy. We don't even give them a year. And we're already making proclamations on Jaden Daniels, who I think is sensational. But Caleb Williams, you know, people are already comparing those two guys and who's going to make it, who's not. Of course, Bryce Young from last year. And I do think and, you know, a guy like Sam Darnold.

You know, who's been years now removed and he's gotten in the right situation and look what he's been able to do. So I really believe that so many of these quarterbacks are really talented. They just get put in bad situations. And I was in a bad situation my first two years. And then North Turner came in and it changed the trajectory of my career and really our entire team.

And it really is what allowed us to go on and win Super Bowls was when he came in and started coordinating our offense. And so I think that organizations and offensive coaches and offensive coordinators have failed quarterbacks more than quarterbacks have failed organizations. Yeah, it makes sense. And we just found out right now, actually, that Drake May is going to be starting for the Patriots this upcoming weekend. So they made the change. We were talking about this on Monday's show.

About whether or not it's a good idea to start Drake May right now, considering where the Patriots are at and really what they want to accomplish this season. So I'm curious to hear from your perspective. Do you feel like this is it's the time to see what the young guys got? Yeah, I think that, again, going back to if I were the coach, I would simply ask the question, one, can we protect them?

And can we put him in an environment where we at least give him a chance, where he has an opportunity to have success? And if the answer to those questions is yes, then I say, get him out there and

and let him give some reps. I mean, you talked about Peyton. Peyton struggled as a rookie. There was a time when all rookies struggled. The Dan Marinos were rare, and then Ben Roethlisberger came in, and he had a really good rookie year. And now we've seen Dak Prescott. We've seen others, C.J. Stroud. There's guys I'm leaving out, but we've seen more and more rookies who have come in and been able to play at a pretty high level. But if you're a rookie quarterback and you struggle –

and that somehow ends your confidence or somehow affects your ability to play at a high level, then you probably weren't wired properly to be a franchise quarterback anyway, is what I would think. Yeah, that's a valid point. So you were talking about the organization, having a good organization around you. I'm curious to know, did Jerry Jones, did he ever land the helicopter on the practice field while you were on it? Or is that something he's just recently started to do?

Well, he started doing it probably, I don't know, eight years ago or so, six, seven, eight years ago when he got the helicopter. But, you know, I came in the same year as Jerry. And when I came into the league with him,

He had mortgaged everything he owned in order to buy the Cowboys. So he was he didn't have the perks of a 300 foot yacht or a helicopter or, you know, all the other trappings that he that he now has. So we didn't have to we didn't have to deal with that. But that helicopter, it was.

It's running a taxi service back and forth quite often throughout the day, so it becomes a regular occurrence. That's awesome. That's what I would do. I would be the worst owner of the league by the way. I would just take all the pieces from all the worst owners, combine them into one. That's probably how I'd act if you just gave me a team. But at the time, you just mentioned you came into the league –

same time Jerry Jones got into the league, and then you guys kind of all grew together. At what point did you realize that your owner that you had was different from all the other owners? That's a great question. It's one I've never been asked. It's a great question. You know what? It resonates because I would tell you, well, first of all, as soon as you meet Jerry, have you all ever met Jerry? We've never had the opportunity. We want to get on that bus and have a couple Johnny Walker blues with him. Yeah. Yeah.

Hell yeah. I bet if he knew you wanted to do that, you would be invited. I'm being serious. And, you know, I think when anyone meets Jerry, anyone who listens to this that's had the opportunity to meet Jerry, I think would agree with this, that as soon as you meet him, you realize he's different and he's unique. And he approaches life just differently. And he approached the league differently. I mean, you think about it, that he had not been in the league very long,

when the league was about to re-up with the networks at the existing prices. And they were told, the networks told the league they weren't making money. Hey, we still want to televise NFL games, but we have to do it at the same price. And it was Jerry who put his foot down and said, no, we're not going to do that. And then he got involved and that's how Fox then got involved. And the rest is history with what the TV rating or the contracts have been. So, yeah,

I would say that right away I knew he was different. And then within a short period of time, you realize how competitive he is and how badly he wants to win. He does want to win. Now, some would argue as to how he goes about doing that, which is a valid argument. But yeah, he's

He's in it to win. There's no question. Yeah. So your run with the Cowboys in the 90s, the team of the decade, three Super Bowls. We talked about the 0-11 rookie year. But then you're building, you're building, you're building. Is there one game that you can look at and say, that was the moment that I knew that we were about to be something special? Because sports is about the climb.

and watching a team come together. Is there one game, though, you specifically are like, yep, that was it. That's when we knew we were different. Yeah, I don't know if you ever realize it at the moment when it happens, but we were, my second year, as tough as my rookie year was, my second year started out even tougher. It was because when you come in, the Cowboys were the worst team in football the year before I arrived. That's why they had the first pick, and that's why I went there, and

It's hard to take ownership in your first year because you're new and you say, "Well, heck, this team was bad last year. This isn't really my fault." Then your second year, you do start to take ownership and you then are part of the problem. We started that year three and seven. We were worse offensively than we had been the year before.

And we went to L.A., we went to play the Rams when they were down in Orange County, and they were a really good team with Jim Everett as a quarterback. And we beat them. We were heavy underdogs, but we won that game.

And we ended up winning four games in a row and put us, put ourselves in a position to potentially make the playoffs. But we didn't, we lost the last two games. And then the next year we had a good year. We made the playoffs. But when we all look back on when did it really turn for us? It was that game against the Rams in 1990 that kind of, kind of got things going at least in the right direction where we started to build on something. And I think that,

I think all teams go through that. We had the Redskins, I say Redskins, we had the Commanders a couple of weeks ago and nobody expected much out of them. And Jaden Daniels has a fantastic game against Cincinnati. And I said that during the broadcast, I didn't reference my own career, but I really felt that that was a game. I do think that we'll see how their year goes.

But I would bet that most people, if not everyone in that organization, is going to look back on that Monday night game against Cincinnati and say, that's when we really started to believe that we had something that was unique. And I think they do have something that's going to carry them this year. Yeah. And it's so funny because in sports, too, you could tell me if I'm way off, but the human element of it's not all just talent or scheme, but the belief in being able to do something matters a lot for a lot of these teams. Yeah.

In some ways, it matters more than the talent. I 100% agree with that. I've always believed there are guys within an organization, guys within a locker room on a team that may not contribute much on the field, but their contributions to the overall success of that team are...

you know, you just can't, you can't put a value on it because of their personality or how they keep guys loose or how they build people up or whatever, whatever it is. But the locker room dynamic,

it it means something yeah and you have to be in that locker room it's one of the reasons why I had always wanted to be a general manager I mean that time's passed me by but I'd always wanted to do it because I've been in a championship locker room I know what that locker room looks like I know what it feels like and it's not always just simply looking at a pay at a player on paper and saying well this guy's better than that guy uh there's more that plays into that

And having a belief in one another and having a trust is a big part of team success. Who was that on the Cowboys? Maybe someone, a name that we wouldn't think that popped off.

that was like, this guy is a glue guy, something that you can't understand it unless you're in that locker room? Yeah, I would say Kevin Goggin was absolutely one of those guys. He's the first guy that comes to mind. Now, he played. He wasn't someone who didn't play, but he wasn't this all-pro offensive lineman. I mean, he just did it on sheer guts and attitude. But what he meant to us during the week –

It is, you know, you can't, like I said, you just simply can't, you can't put a price on. Yeah. Yeah. It makes everybody else want to do their job a little bit better. Yeah. Right. So I read something interesting about you today. I don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, this might be the most interesting Troy Aikman fact of all time. You were the Oklahoma State typing champion when you were in high school. I had this written down as well. Yeah. What is that? Yeah. Is that true? What is that?

It's somewhat true. Sometimes when I'm asked that, I just roll with it, but I'll shoot you guys straight. I think it was like a tri-county contest. It was not a state title, but it's grown. It went from a county vo-tech contest.

deal to, hey, you're Oklahoma State champion of 1983 or whatever it was. But my sister, I was in typing. My mom was a typesetter at the local newspaper. I don't know if typing is passed down, if it's hereditary, but it might be. She was good. My sister is a year older than me. And we were in typing together. And she was the best typist in the class. I was the second best. And she was the one who was supposed to go to this contest.

And she didn't want to go. She said, hey, I don't like to compete. You're used to it. Why don't you go? And I said, hell, I'll go. I just figured I'd get out of school for a day. So I said, yeah, I'll go. So I went. I was the only guy in the typing contest.

and uh i thought i did okay i didn't think it was my best stuff i certainly didn't think i won and then we go into this room because they had an accounting contest and they had the most boring thing contests ever oh yeah yeah it was all kinds of stupid stuff like that and and i went into the auditorium at the end of the day and just sitting there and they said now for the typing winner and and they they announced my name and

Now that's when it got embarrassing is that I, you know, I had to walk down. I'm like, I'm the typist, you know, I was, I was, I was an athlete, you know, I thought I was. And, but yeah, I won that. But, but it's got, I, I, little did I know that all these years later, I mean, yeah, people are still talking about it on my Wikipedia page or something. I just, I found it when I looked up fun facts about Troy Aikman.

And that was one of the first fun facts about it. You guys are like the Manning family, but for typing. Yeah. Like your mom is a typist and then your older sibling was supposed to be the best one. Then you fill in. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's a good point. We are like the Manning family, only for typing. For typing, yeah. So what was your words permitted? That kind of felt like a shot a little bit, but I don't know. What was your words permitted on that? Do you remember?

Oh, gosh. I think I was up around 80-something. That's pretty good. That's really good. And back then, you know, they didn't have computers. It was all typewriters. And so little did I know that taking typing was going to end up being such a game changer for me in life. You know, I mean, I type out emails and, you know, I'm not doing this. Yeah, wait. So you still got it? You think you still got it? Oh, yeah. Still got it.

You could definitely take Joe. Joe Buck doesn't type anywhere. Joe Buck's got assistants that type all this shit out for him. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I might have to type his stuff. You never know. I just like the idea of someone walking by like,

a Hall of Famer, three-time Super Bowl champion, Troy Aikman, and being like, damn, he can type. What stood out to me was they had a quote from one of his friends, I think, back in high school that said, Joe typing sounded like a machine gun. Troy, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Troy Aikman typing sounds like a machine gun. Yeah, you just know who's typing. Close your eyes. You know who's typing. That's a powerful email. Yeah. So you also, I assume you sent out emails because you have a beer now, which is pretty cool. That's like...

I mean, you're a guy who has it all, Super Bowls, Hall of Fame. And you're like, yeah, why don't I just add another one? I'm going to get a beer, which is the coolest thing ever. So when did you start it? I started it, shoot, I guess it goes back five years ago now. So it was when I had the idea to do it. And it took two years to come up with the recipe. And what I wanted to achieve was, first of all, I worked for a distributor in college before when I was transferring from OU to –

And then I became really close friends with a distributor here in town and did a lot of his distributorship sales meetings. And I've done some campaigns over the years. So I've kind of been associated with the beer business for a long time. But I just two things. I felt that one.

the brands that were on the market i thought were tired uh and it was time for something new uh something disruptive and then two i felt that i could do it better and by better i i felt that i could make it cleaner so that was kind of the the approach and we partnered with oregon state uh they've got a terrific beer program in their food and science department

And it took two years. And so what makes eight different than any other beer is that we have no adjuncts, meaning we don't add any syrup, sugar, sweeteners, no corn, no rice. We're the only widely available beer that doesn't do that. So it truly is a cleaner, better for you beer. 100% organic grains, 90 calories, 2.6 carbs. So the measurables are important. They're important to me.

that McUltra, for instance, is 96 calories, 2.6 carbs. We're 90 calories, 2.6 carbs, and we don't have junk in it like they do. So I'm real proud of it. It's doing really well. We're in Texas and Oklahoma, and we'll see where it goes. We continue to grow, and then we'll start looking more expansion and growth.

Probably in 26. 25, we'll continue to focus on those two states. That's awesome. Very cool. And now you can drink beer while you watch football on Sundays since you're on Monday Night Football. That must have been a great switch for you, right? You get to watch all the games on Sunday as they happen.

Yeah, you know what? It's great for that reason. It also creates a pretty good pacing during the week. One, I'm home on Saturdays for the most part. So I get Friday and Saturdays at home in Dallas along with the rest of the week, which is good.

And then I also have the day on Monday. So I feel like I've kind of got a bonus day in my preparation that I otherwise didn't get. But, yeah, it's been great. I can't believe this is already our third year on Monday Night Football. Yeah, and Monday Night Football is the best. You sit down after a weekend of just watching all the games. You just get one game to focus on. It's great. Well, the big thing, I think –

is that we're getting good games. Right. There was a time when I don't know that they could necessarily say that, but the league's been fantastic. Roger Goodell's been amazing, and we've had –

We've had really good schedules. Now we've got flex scheduling. And so obviously that's what drives viewership. And we've been fortunate that the league support has supported us the way they have. Yeah. So flex scheduling that kicks in week 12 for Monday Night Football. I love that. I love the idea that we won't necessarily have to sit through a dud, just a game that doesn't mean anything. There's a game. I think it's week 12. It's we're, we're at Denver and I forget now. Is it

Is it Cleveland? It might be Cleveland at Denver that may end up being a flex is kind of what it's looking like as we talk. Yeah, we deserve good Monday Night Football games. I mean, you called the Chiefs Saints last night. Obviously, anytime Patrick Mahomes is playing, it's great to watch. We always say, like, just flex –

the Chiefs to every single Monday or Sunday night and you'll be fine. Is it awkward at all though? Has Patrick Mahomes brought up the tweet, the famous tweet? Because that was, that was bad, Troy. We consider you a friend now, but that was bad. No, it wasn't bad.

No, no, no, it wasn't bad. So for people who don't know, the tweet I'm referring to is the athletic Kansas City said, in case you missed it, Patrick Mahomes has thrown 36% of Troy Aikman's career touchdowns in about 8% of the games. This is from 2019. You quote tweeted, said, in case you missed it, talk to me when he has 33% of my Super Bowl titles. It took him four more years to get 100%. Right, right. What part? That was bad.

That was bad. That happened fast. That happened fast. Now, here's what happens. So here's what happens. Something like that happens, and then...

I mean, I could be on this show explaining what happened. I could go on every national show and you're still not going to reach all the people who saw it and have their opinion. So, you know, I don't get defensive about it. You know, in the world that we're in, if you get defensive about anything, you've lost your mind because there's no point in it. That's facts. So here's what happened. I don't even hardly get on Twitter. But in 2019, I just happened to get on it.

And I was looking at my replies and this one comes up. And I don't even know who the writer was. I'd be curious as to who the writer was. Because here's what I've said is that whoever this writer was, like why would he compare Patrick Mahomes, his stats to me? Like I was never known as a stats guy. Why wouldn't he compare Mahomes' stats to Dan Marino?

or Joe Montana or somebody like that. Well, so when I read it, I felt like the writer was taking a shot at me. You know, I thought like I said, I was like this jackass. I mean, like what, what, and does yards or any of that even matter to touchdowns even matter at the end of the day for a quarterback,

The only thing that matters is winning championships. I mean, that's all that we're ultimately judged on. And if a quarterback puts up huge numbers and doesn't win,

he's carrying this burden around with him for the rest of his life for people saying, yeah, but he never could win the big one. That's all that people will say is, oh yeah, he put up big numbers, but he can't win. So at the end of the day, the championships, in my opinion, and I know that sounds self-serving because I was able to win three that, but that's what matters. So I thought this rider was, I just thought, what does the, what are numbers mean? It's, it's irrelevant. So my reply was, was really a shot back at the

at the rider to say hey this is what matters let me know when he has that's what matters not how many yards he's thrown for how many championships does he have it was never a shot at Patrick Mahomes that makes more sense yeah so when I sent that out when I sent that text when I sent that tweet out I actually was kind of laughing about it I thought it was pretty clever I thought yeah

Fuck that guy. You know, I thought that was I thought that was pretty funny. And then the next day I get up and I just happened to go back on to see, you know, what the response was. And the response was totally opposite of anything I was trying to achieve. And so they all thought I was taking a shot at Patrick.

So now every time Patrick's had success, you know, that tweet comes back up. But I reached out to Andy Reid the next day and I said, hey, Andy, I said, here's what happened. I said, I know you don't, you could care less. You know, you've got a million other things you got to worry about besides my little tweet that went out last night. But I said, here's what I meant. I said, if you could just tell Patrick that this was not in any way intended to be a shot at him at all.

and Andy said hey I haven't even seen it haven't heard about it but you know I I know you and I know what you're about not even worried about it so blah blah and I saw Patrick I've talked to Patrick about it so it's all it's all fine but you know then he and I hope I hope Patrick wins 10. I I really do I mean I hope there's a lot of quarterbacks I hope win 10. I I pull for all these guys so it was never it was never about Patrick it was about the writer and I just thought

I thought he was taking a shot at me unfairly, and it didn't make sense to me. So that all makes sense, and I appreciate that because the game has changed and stats have changed. But at what point was it the second Super Bowl or the third Super Bowl where you're like, should I just delete this? Well, you know what? I was just thinking about this too because, again, I'm not on Twitter anymore.

that much but i don't think i've ever deleted a tweet no you shouldn't delete it this one's funny because it goes viral every time he wins a super bowl which is every year now yeah and i you know i'm yeah no i trust me i know it goes fine i see it i mean i see it yeah yeah i uh

I guess I'm fortunate that I haven't felt a need to delete a tweet. And even that tweet, it's not like I'm embarrassed about it or wish I hadn't have done it. I just, I just, I'm hoping the right, I'm hoping whoever, whoever tweeted that, whoever wrote that,

Maybe one day I'll figure out who it is, but whoever did it, I hope he understands that my reply was for him and not for anyone else. Yes, I like that. And again, I never thought it was like a shot at Patrick, so to speak. It's just so funny how fast he won three Super Bowls. Oh, yeah.

It was instant. It was instant. It was like, you treated that, and then it was like three in five years. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, you're right. Like, he didn't get to 33%. He got to 100%, like, overnight. You know what I'm saying?

I'm also reading up on this. And what you should do is when he wins another Super Bowl, because it's going to happen at some point, just in advance, change your profile picture to just like a picture of your beer. So then when you go viral and people look at you, they just, you know, they get your beer on there. Yeah, that's true. Now, I also saw that you are in a bit of a back and forth with Lamar Jackson about who has the trademark to the number eight. You guys are both trying to trademark the number eight.

I'm not trying to trademark it. I guess I like Lamar. I think Lamar's gotten some bad advice. It was news to me. I've not talked to Lamar about it. We'll have a game of his. I'm not even sure we'll talk about it then. But I think he's gotten some really bad advice from whoever's whoever's his legal counsel on this. But, you know, there's a there's been a lot of great

players that have worn number eight long before me and certainly long before lamar uh you know you talk about cal ripken and archie manning yogi berra and you know there's a lot of guys yeah and kobe of course war eight and so um to trademark a number i'm not i'm not sure you can do that i know he's

I know he's proud of wearing eight. Steve Young was proud of wearing eight. I'm proud to have worn eight. My beer is named eight and I'm wearing a hat that is for my beer. And I have the right as someone who has the trademarks for alcoholic beverage,

to promote my product on a hat, on a shirt, on a duffel bag, or however I choose. And that's why I think he's just gotten bad advice. And anyone who looks at Lamar's marks

no one would confuse what I'm doing with my beer with anything that he's doing. Yes. I'm not a big article guy. I just read a headline that said that you and Lamar Jackson are fighting over the number eight. We're not smart, just so you know. We're not smart at all. He and I aren't fighting at all. Like I say, I'm a big fan. And I invited Lamar on a post on Instagram to –

to talk about it over an eight beer and maybe we'd have Steve Young kind of officiate the thing. Get all the eights together, yeah. And Lamar, he liked the post, so I don't know what's going on. I think you guys are good, yeah. But that would be a great summit. Eight fest. Yeah, eight fest. Yeah.

Yeah. Just hang out, put the Heisman house to shame. I would like that. I got a question for you about the modern day NFL. If there was one team that like if the NFL was a stock market and there's one team that you're buying stock in for the next like three to five years right now, considering where they are, where you think they'll go, what team do you think that would be? Washington. Crazy. OK, I didn't I didn't think you would say that, but that's great. I would agree with that. Yeah, I wouldn't have said that prior to this year.

I probably wouldn't have said it if we hadn't have had Washington already this season. But I can't tell you how high I am on this quarterback. It's been a long time since I've been that high on a young quarterback. I watched him. So he played two games. I guess we had him week three. And I liked what I'd seen.

And then but there's a lot of quarterbacks that have talent. I mean, virtually every quarterback in the NFL has some ability. That's why they're in the NFL, especially if you've been a first round pick. But so then what separates them? Well, you know, the players like we've talked about the organization, the coaching, the players around them, all that. But but what can the player control? Does he have the intangibles? You know, does he want to be great? Is he smart? Does he put in the time? All those things. A good teammate, all that.

so when we did our production meeting with Jaden, uh, I, I immediately was that that's what sealed it for me before we even called the game before we even had the game against Cincinnati. When we got done talking to him, I said, wow, this guy is the real deal. I mean, he's really talented and he's really smart and his, his upbringing, you can tell he was raised right. And so I said, he has it. He just has it. And then he goes out and plays lights out. So I like him, uh,

And I'm a fan of Dan Quinn's too. And I said it on the broadcast, that Washington organization when I was playing, it was hard to go into RFK and play them. Joe Gibbs coached teams. They were well coached. They were talented players.

And I just hated to see an organization get run into the ground the way that one did. They had great fans, then people weren't even showing up for the games, all of it. I think the Washington, I think it's fair to say that like Chicago, like the Giants, like San Francisco,

I think the league is, even though it's been a while since they've been good, I do think the league is stronger when Washington's a good team. The NFC East certainly is. It's more compelling. So I like them. If you said who would the next team be, I don't know who I would say, quite honestly. There's no one who really just jumps out at me. Maybe Chicago. Maybe Chicago. I do think Chicago's got some talent. They're still kind of...

Trying to figure it out a little bit. I still think Caleb, going back to what we talked about earlier, I hate to even say still because he's in his first year. I mean, we shouldn't even be judging him on what's happened up to this point, but I think he's going to be a good player. Yeah. Yeah. He's gotten better every week. Yeah. And that's hard for you to say for a USC quarterback. Yeah.

You know what? It's actually not. I guess the other team I'd say would probably be Houston because of CJ Stroud and D'Amico Ryans I love. But no, you know, as a matter of fact, my UCLA family won't like hearing this, but I grew up in Southern California until I was 12. And it's hard to be...

it's hard to live in southern california and and have the name of troy and not be a usc fan true yeah i was a i was a big usc fan growing up and uh and then when i was looking to go to college

Had USC, had they have recruited me, there's a good chance I would have gone there. And there's a good chance I would have gone there even when I transferred if Rodney Peet wasn't as young as he was and already entrenched as the starter. But so I never, I mean, it was a great rivalry and wanted to beat them. Unfortunately, I lost the two games I played against them. But I've always, I've loved their uniforms. I've loved, you know, I've been, I don't have,

I don't have the hatred towards USC like some of my former teammates do. We'll get back to Troy in a second. He's brought to you by Thursday Night Football. It's on and it's only on Prime Video. This Thursday, we've got a clash in the NFC West. The 49ers face the Seattle Seahawks. We've got Al Michaels, Kirk Herbstreet, Kaylee Hartung for the latest chapter in this bitter rivalry.

Coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern with football's best party, TNF Tonight, live from Seattle. Going to be a great game. Are the 49ers the best 2-3 team in the NFL? I guess we'll find out. If they can beat the Seahawks, I would say that I was correct about that, and they might even be the best 3-3 team in the NFL. If you're not a Prime member, not a problem. Simply sign up for a 30-day free trial.

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Now, here's more Troy Aikman. So UCLA, obviously, in the Big Ten now, not the best start to Big Ten. I'm a Big Ten guy, and you have to work with one. How much does it suck that, like, for once in basically the history of all college football, Joe Buck gets to talk shit to you about Indiana being better than UCLA? If I were in your shoes, that would drive me nuts. If you played for the school and Joe Buck's wearing his Indiana stuff and probably giving you a lot of shit.

Yeah, that, you know, there was a couple of years ago, I said, something came up, the player was from Indiana. He mentioned it or something. And I said, hey, I'm a little, I'm surprised. I didn't realize they still played football at Indiana. Oh, no. And then, you know, then you're like, okay, now I should get on Twitter because I'm going to get blown up. You know, people are so sensitive about everything. And now just a few years later, I'm outwardly,

being supportive of Indiana. I mean, so I was watching them play UCLA a few weeks ago, didn't know anything about this coach, Coach Signetti, Carl Signetti. And I mean, how about that guy? What he's done is amazing. So all of a sudden I've become this huge fan of this guy's

And now I'm a fan of the Hoosiers. So I'm talking to Joe every – like I'm a bigger fan for the Hoosiers than he is. Oh, I like that. I actually think when I think Indiana football, I think Troy Aikman first. Yeah. Joe Buff second. That's a fact. I love that because you know he hates that too. You know that Joe hates that. Yeah, you got to learn every player on the two deep and just be like – just spouting out names like, oh, I guess you don't watch Joe. You didn't know the backup center. Yeah.

You know what? I love that. Yeah. But I like that. I like that you acknowledge when you think of Indiana football, you think of Troy Aikman. First name that comes to mind. I read a rumor that when you're in the booth on Monday Night Football, you're wearing the Indiana pants underneath the desk.

We can't see that, but Joe doesn't have his on. Yeah. He doesn't have his on. He's not bringing it like I am. Yeah. Hoosiers, Troy Aikman, one and one. I have a question about coaching. You obviously, Jimmy Johnson, you had a great coach in Dallas.

He goes to, he's a hard ass. I would assume like you have many stories about him and how he coached the team. He then goes into media and he's like this lovable, likable guy. We've seen the same thing with Belichick who was a hard ass for 20 years and now he's this gregarious guy on air.

When Jimmy made the switch, were you like, what's going on, man? You were cutting guys when they were sleeping. What is happening here? Or did you always know he had that side, he just wouldn't show the team? At the end of his time in Dallas, he and I became really close friends. So I got a little glimpse of really what he was about, but still not. Jimmy was highly driven and motivated to be great.

So he will try to tell you that he played a role. He played the role he had to play in order for us to achieve what he wanted us to achieve. I think I don't think it's quite that simple. I think that what he was, we saw. I think that's who he was. But at his core.

at his core, he is what we see on TV. Yeah. At his core, he wants to be, he just wants to enjoy life. He wants, he wants to drink his beer and, and just have fun. And, and I think that that's how he has always been his whole life. But,

in his profession of coaching, he wanted to be great and to be great. And same with Bill, to be great. I just don't know. I know times have changed, but I don't know many coaches. If you said, boy, they are like one of the greatest to have ever done it. I don't know how many of those coaches we would point to and say they are players coaches. Yeah. I think it's hard. I don't I

And I don't, I, I was drawn to guys like Jimmy Johnson, Bill Belichick, you know, I, uh, Bill Parcells, you know, those types, uh, those are the guys that I always wanted to play for because that's kind of how I'm wired. You know, I mean, I want to have a good time, but when it's time to work and it's time to get serious, I just want to know somebody is going to be there holding us all accountable. Um, and so, uh,

Yeah, he's taking, you know, Jimmy has certainly, and Jimmy and Bill or Belichick are really close friends. Yeah. And Jimmy would be the guy to tell me, hey, because I'd go in, I'd go in and visit with Bill in production meetings. And what you see of him or saw of him at his press conferences was what I got when I went in there and was talking to him. You know, there just wasn't, there wasn't much there. Yeah. And I'd say, and I'd ask Jimmy, like,

How do you get along with this guy? I mean, how does it work? And he goes, ah, he's great. And now the whole country has gotten a chance to see what his personality is. And obviously, he's a smart guy and he's great. Now what will be interesting is when he goes back into coaching,

uh if he has this persona again where he's gonna be the old grumpy coach who doesn't answer questions i mean it's no i don't i wonder how effective it's gonna be because now we're seeing this other side of him of course in the media yeah so you said something there i wanted to do a follow-up on on accountability and i was always wondering this because we we've had michael irvin on this show before he tells great stories everyone knows his famous stories was there ever a moment

in the 90s where you're like he came in maybe late or something like that where you're just like, come on, dude. Because it does feel like his talent was so special, he maybe got away with more things in Jimmy Johnson's eyes. Was there ever a moment where you're like, all right, I need a little help here? Well, he got away with more. Jimmy and our first team meeting every year,

Made it real clear. He's the only coach that I've ever had who would do this, but he would say to the team, I do not treat all the players equal. Everybody says, everybody says I treat everybody equal. He says, Jimmy said, I do not. He said, if, if, you know, if you're Emmitt Smith and you do this and do something wrong, you're,

I'm going to look the other way. If you're so-and-so who hadn't done anything on the field and you do that, you're not going to be on the team. You're going to be cut. So you're going to be treated based on how you perform in the games. And the better you perform, the more leeway you're going to get. He's the only coach that's ever been that honest. I mean, every coach does that. I mean, we all know that. Jimmy was the only one who admitted it. So Michael –

Michael always knew where to push the line. So he was going to take full advantage of whatever leeway he was afforded. But Jimmy did a great job. There was a game. We were going to Detroit.

And Jimmy was one of these guys who always did. He got on the plane early. He like our meeting, our first team meeting that we ever had with Jimmy Johnson. The meeting was at nine in the morning at 845. He started the meeting. Players were trying to walk in. He shut the door and wouldn't let him in. And they're like, he said, you're late. They're looking at their watch and it's it's five to nine. And he said, when the meeting starts, that's that's.

That's what time the meeting is. And if you're after that, so then everybody got into the meeting room 20 minutes before the time for Jimmy. So that's how Jimmy operated. So we're playing in Detroit one week and we're flying out at 1 p.m. or something for Detroit, the team charter. Michael shows up at 1250.

And he said, shut the door. We're leaving. And they said, coach, Michael Urban just pulled up. He goes, I don't care. Shut the door. We're leaving. So Michael was getting out of his car with his luggage. He wasn't late. But in Jimmy's mind, he was. So he shut the door and we took off without him. So we're all on the flight going, man, we just left Michael back on the tarmac. Michael had to take a commercial flight.

We benched him for the first series and then he came in off. Jimmy did little things like that. Once Jimmy left, I think Michael realized that he was afforded a lot more leeway and then he took more advantage of it. But

- You know, Michael is a really special person to me and I have a relationship with him unlike any other relationship with a male that I know of, you know? And the reason is, is that no one worked harder than Michael.

Nobody showed up and gave it everything. I didn't care what Michael was doing when he was away from the facility. As long as it didn't impact our ability to practice or what we were trying to do in a game, I was fine. And never once did I think that whatever he was doing away from the facility was affecting his play. And I love him to death. I think the world of him. He would...

He met my mom my rookie year. My mom passed a couple years ago. He met my mom my rookie year. He gave her the biggest hug, made her feel like a million dollars. My mom knew of some of the indiscretions that Michael had encountered over his life, but she passed loving Michael Irvin. And the reason was is because he made her feel so special.

Every time he saw her, he'd go up and give her the biggest hug. And that's Michael. I mean, you guys know him. He's just a really loving guy. And everyone I know loves him and loves

And it's given him a lot of grace, you know, of his life for sure. Yeah, I mean, the personalities on that team. And then after Jimmy, you had Barry Switzer, who's a wild man in his own right a little bit, wearing like the fur coats, having some fun. He liked to drink a couple beers too, right? Yeah, he's into wine now. And he's still, from what I gather, he still gets after it pretty good. You know, Barry's 86. I was with him this past summer.

He looks fantastic, sharp as he can be, funny as all get out. I mean, the guy is

he's uh he's he's an impressive guy i mean it was it was tough those years that he was the head coach it was it was challenging uh for me and i think it was for some other players probably on our team that you know barry hadn't coached in quite a while he'd never coached in the nfl so he was on his couch and and and i don't blame him he took the job you know he got offered the job he took the job we were defending world champs and

You know, he gave him an opportunity to get back into coaching with a really good team. I think it was really, it was the hiring of Barry, I think, was more an indictment on Jerry in maybe, you know,

I don't want to say how little regard, but when Jimmy left, Jerry famously said any one of 500 coaches could have done what Jimmy did in winning back-to-back Super Bowls. And I think the hiring of Barry kind of showed that.

what Jerry thought the importance of coaching was to the success of our teams. And I'm a believer in the, like I've always believed

at the collegiate level, if you have really talented teams and average coaching, you can win a lot of games. If you have average talent, but have really great coaching, you can win a lot of games. But in the NFL, you got to have great players and you got to have great coaching. I mean, you really got to have both if you're going to be, if you're going to consistently be good. And, uh,

So I'm one that puts a lot of value on the importance of coaches, whereas I'm not certain. I'll let Jerry answer that, but I'm not certain Jerry does. Yeah, well, we were talking about this a couple weeks ago, that Jerry has kind of, maybe he's learned from that, because in recent history, he's been very loyal to his head coaches. Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. When you say loyal, I'm curious as to,

as to why you would say that. Jason Garrett stayed for a long time. Mike McCarthy, it feels like, and Mike McCarthy's won a lot of football games for the Cowboys, but it feels like he's been, at least from the outside world, talked about as on the hot seat for a long time. Yeah, I think with Jason, I don't think Jerry ever wanted to have to fire Jason. I think he was hoping that Jason would be his Tom Landry and would be the coach until long after Jerry passed.

But when he was in the so-called hot seat, they had good years. And so then he'd get re-upped. But yeah, so that's where that's at. Yeah, gotcha. Hey, have you ever met Jay-Z? I've not. Do you think we look alike? I didn't say that. I was just asking. It's a segment we do. We say it's a question we ask everyone, have you ever met Jay-Z?

Oh, really? Yeah. Now that you mention it. Yeah. Hold on a second. Well, because there was a meme that went around saying I look like Jay-Z. Yeah, I mean, you do. You do. That was a very funny observation by whoever came up with it. You think I do look like Jay-Z? A little bit. Just a little bit. Have you guys ever hung out before? Never been in the same room is what you're saying? No. No, I've never met him. I feel bad for him that people think I look, you know, that he looks like me or I look like him. But...

I do think now in the, in the main, I don't know if it was doctored in any way or not, but I do think we look alike in the main, but, but I don't think we, I don't think we look alike at all. It is a funny meme though. Just be ready for that. Like Jay-Z. If, if somebody, if the police ask him, Hey, this looks like you at this diddy party. He might say, that's not me. That's Troy. Yeah. Yeah.

You saying I better buckle up that I might be in something? I'm just saying have some alibis ready. You never know. Not that you did anything wrong. That's Troy Aikman. It's a good legal defense. That wasn't me. That was Troy Aikman. Yeah, that was Troy Aikman. That was Troy Aikman. Well, Troy, it's been awesome. I have a couple last questions. I'll do the Roback question right now. Roback.com, R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com, promo code TAKE.

20% off your first purchase. Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Roback.com, promo code TAKE. Who do you have as your Super Bowl right now?

Week five, so things are going to change, but if you had to pick a Super Bowl and winner right now, who would you have? This is going to be boring, but I would have a hard time going against Kansas City. They haven't even played their – I don't think they've played great football yet, and they're 5-0. So they're obviously in a great position, and they're only going to get better.

So I would say Kansas City again. And I would stick with who I would have said to begin the season. I would go with San Francisco. Okay. Oh, you're staying with the Niners. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's good. Have some loyalty to your take. Memes, you want to let that person in? We figured we'd finish the interview how we started it. Let's see if he's coming in. We have Jay-Z for you.

No, we have the second biggest Indiana Hoosier football fan that we know of, Joe Buck. Joe, things have not gone well for you in this interview because we've declared that Troy is the number one Indiana Hoosier football fan.

He was saying that everyone knows that when you think of Indiana football, that I'm the first person who comes to mind. That's a fact. We did say that, and we believe that. Well, I'm only here because I heard that Troy was doing an interview, and he was trying to do it by himself. And I thought I'd just jump in. Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, Joe. It's a new contract, right? Whenever Troy shows up, Joe has to be there too. Yeah, Joe, you never talked to Troy about us? That hurt our feelings. Our first question was, how often does Joe bring us up? And he's like, literally never.

That's true. The only other way out of Arrowhead Stadium last night did I ever brought you to Troy Aikman. That would be true. That's what I told him. I said, last night for the first time. I mean, less than 24 hours ago. Damn. You're trying to hide a big part of your life from Troy. You're ashamed of us. I don't like that about you, Joe. Yeah, but I was effusive in how...

You two people have changed at least some of my perception out there in the Twitterverse, the universe. I mean, I love you guys. You know that. And I told Troy, I was like, these guys are great. They're going to give you shit. You got to be able to get back at them.

Don't get fired, but go in with your hands up and be ready to spar. Well, what we did for you, that was nothing because what we're about to do for Troy and the Indiana Hoosiers and his fandom is going to be on overdrive. The memes are going to be crazy. That's all. It's Hoosiers and Troy Aikman. They go hand in hand. Troy, say Indiana football is undaunted. You want me to say that? Yeah, say it. That's their thing. People will love it.

Oh, yeah. Well, Indiana football is undaunted. Yes. Come on. Yes. We all know that. That's going to be in a hype video. You're making a three-time Super Bowl champion your puppet. No. No. No. We're making a three-time Super Bowl champion fuck with his co-host. Yeah. We're fucking with you. All the roads lead back to fucking with Joe. Let's go. Hey, yeah. Signetti, baby. Here we come. Oh, Joe. Joe. Joe. That's Troy's team. Come on.

You shouldn't be doing that. I didn't graduate. Neither one of us graduated from there. Joe's trying to jump on my bandwagon. Yeah. It's disgusting what he's doing. It's disgusting. That's disgusting. Joe, this isn't really a question, and it's not directed at anyone in particular, but America misses you in postseason baseball. I'll just say that. Yeah. Leave it at that.

Well, where were all these people for 24? I'm glad he's not doing baseball because when he would do baseball, he would leave and I wouldn't see him for a month. But I agree with you. And it really is. It is amazing how many people share that sentiment that you all have because when I'm with them, there are people constantly, especially this time of year, that tell them how much they miss him. Yeah.

Doing baseball. Well, I think part of it is I just did it long enough where people just associated my voice with kind of October baseball. Some people hated it. Some people loved it. I loved every minute of it. I'm glad I did it, but I'm also glad that this is a football-only life in my world these days. It's just better. And also, God basically told you never to do baseball again when you tried to come back for one day this summer and it was rained out.

That literally happened. It literally happened. I come back one day and it's like, nope, have a nice drive home. We don't want this guy. We don't want this guy. Troy, thank you so much. Joe, thank you as always. You're now a recurring guest, so that means you have to come on. Joe knows. I'll just text him randomly and be like, hey, you want to come on? Yes, say yes. Legally.

Let's all come back on when my Hoosiers wrap up a Rose Bowl berth. Love it. Love it. We'll go to the game with you. I'll be here. I appreciate you guys. Thanks, Troy. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, guys. Thank you. You bet. See you. Bye.

Okay, I'll take this one, PFT. If you want the replacer to come back and take over again so you can go play again, this episode of Pardon My Take is brought to you by Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Black Ops 6 has so many new features and even more exciting content. You can dive into mind-bending single-player campaign, multiplayer, and round-based zombies, which we're all so excited for, on October 25th.

Our entire office will be playing Black Ops 6 and likely have guys streaming all day. We anticipate this game to really lower the productivity over here at Barstool, so the replacer will really have his work cut out for him. I'm pumped for this video game, PFT. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great, so go check it out. October 25th, Black Ops is back. Black Ops is one of the most exciting Call of Duty sub-franchises ever.

One of the best Call of Duties of all time. Yeah, facts. Spy thriller, cinematic campaign, best in class multiplayer, return of round-based zombies, like I said. Call of Duty Black Ops 6, available October 25th. Go right now. You can pre-order callofduty.com slash blackops6 and pre-order yours right now. Okay, let's wrap up the show. Pardon your take. Listener submitted. Go.

This guy's take, or girl's, who knows? The major sports should all have 17 games like the NFL. I'm in. Basketball, baseball, and NHL games would be 1,000x more electric if there were only 17 games before the playoffs. Much better than all the meaningless regular season games. People love NFL and college football because it dominates one day a week and all the games matter. On first glance, this sounds flawless.

Yeah, I'm in. But then what do we do during our weekday nights in May? Yeah, true. I think if they made the schedule correctly where it was like Tuesdays and Sundays are NBA. Yeah.

Mondays and Thursdays are NHL. Wednesdays and Saturdays are college basketball, where it's like you know what day has what, and it's like that day becomes the biggest thing ever. I like this solution, but I think we need to expand it a little bit. If we had— It's only 64 games. Yeah, we should probably make it a little bit bigger than that. I think there should be 52 games of every sport, including football.

Oh, I like that. And so every Sunday there's football. But that would diminish football. Every Monday night there's football. Every Tuesday there's basketball. Every Wednesday night we got hockey. 50 game schedule for basketball, hockey, and baseball would rock. Year round. Nobody gets a vacation. What if it's no sports in the summer except like the Olympics? Yeah, just everyone has to agree to play golf. Yeah. Yeah, everyone. Everyone. No work either. No work. No work.

Yeah, Europe does that. Yeah, I like that. I do think that there's something to be said for they'll never do it because owners want all the money. But NBA and NHL could be a little like 60 games would be awesome. Yeah, there's too many games right now. Baseball, too. Yeah. Yeah, baseball should be like 120. But again, that's never going to happen. No.

Yeah, it's crazy how much of a difference there is between playoff baseball and regular season baseball. It's nuts. NHL is not as drastic, but baseball is just so boring, and then it's so electric. Every second is electric. Oh, did you guys hear this take? I think it was Ken Rosenthal that talked about it. He wrote an article about the Padres and about how the Padres are quickly becoming not America's team. Oh. How he hates the Padres because they're too flashy. Ooh.

This is a great quote. He said, Machado is far from the Padres' only irritant. Fernando Tatis Jr. is a smiling, dancing peacock, which is awesome. You know what? I love it because we've said this a million times before, but Ken Rosenthal having this take is what keeps...

the world alive yeah now that need an angry man about little little short angry man angry about things that are so inconsequential yeah clutching his pearls he said jerks and pro far is the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school and then asks who me that kid was fun yeah we all knew that kid yeah maybe you were that kid yeah that kid was fun teaching oh fuck you know what without that kid that pulled the fire alarm we wouldn't learn about fire safety that's also a fact

Yeah, that was a good kid to be friends with. Saved lives. A simple question in light of this morning's news. Is Aaron Rodgers the LeBron of NFL? Old, period. Gets coaches fired, period. Ayahuasca equals vino, period. Getting his children on his team even though they might suck.

parentheses Hackett, Lazard, etc. Yeah, no, he does do the getting your friends or children. He absolutely does that. Overrated, doesn't have enough championships, despite how good people say he is. Oh, I like this, Hank. Right? Yeah. You think LeBron's overrated? Yeah. What if I said LeBron was the second best player in the history of basketball? Fair. So he's sometimes overrated by one. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I don't know what memes...

I've been rooting for this forever, and it's happening to you. You need Devontae. You need Devontae. Devontae fixes everything. You need Devontae. Everything's fine. Hit the Devontae button. I'm not a Jets fan, obviously, but I think if you were a Jets fan, if I was a Jets fan, I could sell myself on...

If you get Devontae, it's like, all right, old coach gone, new coach, great player. Aaron Rodgers can figure it out. We're going to be fine. Yeah. If you don't get Devontae. Over. Over. Yeah, I think the best way to fix this problem is by getting a malcontent wide receiver into a locker room with absolutely no leadership. And the best way to negotiate is to be like, the only thing that will save us is this one guy. Raiders, will you trade him to us? So it's all about Woody. Yeah.

Does Woody want to win? This will go well. We also don't talk enough about the fact that your owner's name is Woody Johnson. Yeah. His name is Woody. His son's name is Brick Johnson. That's kind of a cool name. Yeah. They're getting harder. Brick Johnson. I think the NBA and other leagues that do Western Conference versus Eastern Conference is better. I know there's history with AFC and NFC, but I think a divisions with more regional makeup is better. Wait, what? Basically saying the NFL should be...

Make more sense? It should be like baseball used to be before interleague play. Basically, like, I guess. No, but that's not what he's saying, because baseball. No, he's saying like Eastern versus Western Conference NBA. Yeah, that's the only thing that he's saying. Okay. Because he's saying basically like the. Is the NHL? Like the Eagles should be in the AFC is what he's saying. Yeah. It should be East West. I mean, NHL is similar too, right? Yeah, NHL is similar.

Yes. So what would be the divisions if we split it into East West? Just the Eastern division with all the NFC East and AFC East. Yeah, you'd have Patriots. Yeah, just be East West. It would be pretty much like hockey. Yeah, where the NFC would be like Bears, Cowboys over West. Yeah, that's what six divisions. Yeah. I don't know. That sounds crazy.

Generally, I like things the way they are. I do too. Because I understand it and I get it. But it's not always the way that makes the most sense. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I can go for this. Let's see. Do you guys see it on the TV? Nope. We see NHL, homeless Stanley Cup. We see a commercial. There's a Chick-fil-A. Commanders would be in a division with the Ravens. Now we see boobs. Eagles. Why'd you put tits on you? Panthers. Peppers.

Steelers. Why did you put tits on Aaron Rodgers? Are there tits on the screen? Yeah, on Aaron Rodgers. You photoshopped it. Memes. You dirty dog. Yeah, it's AI Aaron Rodgers. Shane's not doing it. Shane, nice Chargers sweatshirt, dude.

He texted me this morning because we were out doing a video at like 8 a.m. Me and Memes. He's like, hey, I think my package came. Can I open it? It was your mail. I didn't feel right opening your mail. This has been the most hyped sweatshirt of all time, and it looks cool. Dia de los Muertos. Thank you to the Chargers for hooking us up. Great holiday.

What is the significance? It's just a Chargers sweatshirt with the Chargers logo on it? I think it's like Mexican heritage or something. It's Dia de los Muertos, which is like they're... It's kind of the Mexican version of Halloween where they just celebrate everybody that's dead. Oh, now this is all making sense. Shane's going to use this on a date. Could. Yeah, Shane. It's a great holiday. Nice and spicy. Yeah, look at that smile.

Okay. But it was just funny that you're like, it's here. Can you like, it was, it was basically like a kid being like, is it, can we open the presence yet? It is a federal crime to open someone else's mail. That's a good point. That's true. I just, that's true. Send a text. That's good. That's a good point. Way to check. Um,

Okay, is that it? There's a couple more. Would you agree to your team winning the Super Bowl in exchange for you never being able to watch another NFL game afterward for the rest of your life? You get to watch the Super Bowl season, but you have to ride off in the sunset like John Elway and never watch another game. Would your team be guaranteed to never win? I would do this.

So the question is, would I watch my team win a Super Bowl, but then I'm not allowed to watch my team or I'm never allowed to watch football again? Another NFL game. No. The answer's no. I can't do it. The answer's no. I can't do it. That's too far. That's too far. Now, would it be difficult if it was saying, you can watch your team win a Super Bowl this year, but you'll never get to watch again, or you can watch the rest of your life, but it's a guarantee your team will never even go to a Super Bowl? I think I still would have to watch.

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to watch regardless. Life without football would be brutal. There's no life at all. Brutal. Oh, my God. I can't even think about it. I'd just move abroad. The only way I would consider it is if my team won a Super Bowl, and I'm not allowed to watch football anymore, but my team continues to win Super Bowls. But I can't watch, but I just know that I'm a champion. Yeah. Okay, last one.

Yeah, I don't think I've seen one. In fact, I've seen a couple hip drop tackles that should have been called that weren't called. But I don't know that I've seen a ref throw a flag on it. I feel like this was the NFL just trying to scare defenders before the season. Be like, hey, there's a penalty now. Don't do it anymore. Right. I've seen them.

Yeah, the tackles have happened. Yeah, I think someone's even been injured on it. But yeah, they just don't call it. It's just such a weird thing that they tried to legislate because it's like if you tackle from them behind and then you use your body weight to bring them down, it sounds a lot like a normal tackle the way they describe it. Yeah, yeah, I'd agree. Okay, good questions.

Should we do numbers? PFT and memes, have you ever gotten this? No. Nope. You guys have never gotten this? Sadly, we have not. PFT will get it one day. Memes is going to get it. No, you fired Bob Salah. All right, numbers three. Yeah. 80. Five. 99. Also, Mike Florio did Florio today. Oh, what'd he do? He said that Bob got escorted out by police. Oh. And everybody ran with him. No chance. No chance.

He got walked out by police? Well, security. He had to be escorted out. I feel like that's pretty standard, right? Yeah. Well, that was the thing. They were like, you just walk into his car. Yeah. Oh, man. When Big Dom gets a chance to escort Sirianni out for the last time. That would be emotional. It's going to be like in Goodfellas when Tommy walks in to get made. I thought it was going to be like Silvio with Adriana.

Oh, yeah. Or like when Christopher's suffocating in the car and then Tony comes up to him and finishes him off. You're a junkie. All right. Everyone say their numbers again. Three. Eighty. Five. Three. No, Memes. I'm sorry, but I don't know if you heard me. I said three. You said three? Yeah. The only way you're going to win is if I get you off this number. 69. There you go. 99. I'm helping you, Memes. You're never going to win with three.

Yeah, but what if you win? That would be awesome. 21. What if this is three? It's going to be five. Means you'll try to fight me. Five. Here it comes. Here comes five. Number five. Number five. 51. 51. Younger. Younger toes me.