Tim Tebow, Urban Meyer and the Christian Nationalist Surge at Ohio State

When candidates cosplay as football fans and QBs become a passport to the hearts and wallets of vulnerable Americans, the wrong people can get rich and powerful off sports. Electrician turned independent journalist D. J. Byrnes has pranked Buckeyes "fan" Vivek Ramaswamy, caught Urban Meyer in a lap-dance scandal and will go to trial over Shrek's private parts in the name of free speech. But nothing shocked Ohio's muckraker-in-chief quite like watching a college-football powerhouse combine the enterprises of church and state. • Subscribe to D. J. Byrnes' Substack, "The Rooster" https://www.rooster.info/ • Leak to us: Submit your confidential tips to Pablo https://www.pablo.show/tips • Previously on PTFO: We Investigated the Christian "Scam" Fronted by Tim Tebow https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmFiNDY0NmJmYmE4MTcxM2E0MmEzZWE2 (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

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• 0:19Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

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• 1:19Pablo Torre?

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• 2:27Pablo Torre?

  DJ Burns, aka The Rooster. You have an upcoming, um, trial next week.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  They're calling it the Trial of the Century. Typical fashion, things got out of control, and we're going to trial next week in Lake County.

• 2:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, I gotta read the headline to catch people up real quick. Quote, "Nude Shrek Text to Ohio State Senator Reportedly Lands Blogger in Jail." End quote.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, there was no reportedly about it. The facts of the case are undisputed. The text message was sent. It was in the context of a very influential state senator losing the presidency race to be the next president of what I call the state's most beautiful retirement home. We had a long feud. He lost. I sent a text, and three weeks later, I was arrested at the State House on, I believe, to be trumped-up charges.

• 3:21Pablo Torre?

  Well, Senator Jerry Serino?

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that would, he is the...

• 3:25Pablo Torre?

  He's the recipient of...

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Reportedly.

• 3:26Pablo Torre?

  And I cannot stress this. Do you have, can you actually, do you have on your phone the photo?

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, yeah, I mean, uh...

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  I just need to, if you wouldn't mind, I need to refresh my memory, our audience's memory, insofar as we can even show any of what you texted Senator Jerry Serino in May of 2026, which led to you rejecting two plea deals and, in fact, going to trial on October 8th, in which you might face up to six months in prison as you argue for the right to free speech, which encompasses...

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Lewd images.

• 4:02Pablo Torre?

  A sort of like, looking up point of view up at a giant, uh, Shrek penis.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  I don't even know if it would be considered giant for troll standards. It was described as hyper-realistic image...

• 4:18Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna mention that.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  ...of the cartoon Shrek, probably created with AI or similar technologies. And it's like, I don't know how you could describe it as hyper-realistic.

• 4:28Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 4:28Speaker 04

  Uh, but yeah.

• 4:29Pablo Torre?

  It's a constitutional question. Is it hyper-realistic for Shrek's green penis to be that enormous?

• 4:57Pablo Torre?

  So we're gonna get to our ongoing coverage here of Tim Tebow and his 44 appearances at Life Surge and the allegedly predatory business practices of that allegedly Christian company in just a second. But that photo of Shrek's penis that we started with, you should know, was sent to not one, but at least two different Ohio politicians by our fearless guest today, DJ Burns, the noted Ohio State football fan and political prankster, whose pranks I can possibly cosign in totality. But I know him best as the author of The Rooster, where he broke a story five years ago this week

• 5:38Pablo Torre?

  about the notably Christian head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars at the time, Urban Meyer, a leader of men who was previously a national champion at the University of Florida, where Meyer coached Tim Tebow, and also at Ohio State.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Top story we're following this evening, Jaguars coach Urban Meyer now addressing this video showing him in a compromising position with a woman at his restaurant and bar in Columbus, Ohio, a woman who is not his wife.

• 6:09Speaker 06

  I just apologized to the team and staff and for being a distraction. It's stupid.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  So I was working as a union electrician apprentice at the time, and it was Friday night, I believe, and I got a video sent to me of grainy images at the Urban Meyer Chop House that opened in the Short North, which is Columbus's one trendy district. And I actually knew a server there at the time who gave me the details, said they arrived with a local restaurateur. They were noticeably intoxicated. And knowing Urban, I knew how he was gonna play with it. So on Monday, he addresses the team. He gets up there, and he tells it basically, "Well, you know, I was out with my friends, and this young siren was trying to lure me onto the dance floor. I never thought I was gonna go like it did." But it became a national story,

• 7:01Speaker 04

  and I eventually lost my career in the electrician field over it.

• 7:04Speaker 07

  Another video has surfaced that appears to show Jaguars coach Urban Meyer in a provocative situation with a woman who is not his wife. We're blurring a portion of the clip because it's not appropriate for broadcast.

• 7:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, there was no room left for the Holy Ghost.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Yes, and The Wall Street Journal called me. And how many times do you get to use, you know, the phrase [BLEEP] cocktail?

• 7:28Speaker 04

  In The Wall Street Journal, I gave the interview,

• 7:31Pablo Torre?

  quote, "I do have a reputation as somebody who enjoys serving the rich and powerful [BLEEP] cocktails." End quote.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  And then 2 o'clock on a Friday, my foreman's like, "We gotta go out to the parking lot." "Why are we going out to the parking lot?" I have no idea. And, uh, yeah, I was fired like a dog in a casino parking lot on the west side of Columbus.

• 7:57Pablo Torre?

  And yet, and yet, that is somehow not the parking lot-related story that I also wanted to talk to you about today. Which brings us now to my former classmate, someone who you're quite familiar with through your reporting by the name of Vivek Ramaswamy.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  I'm familiar, unfortunately.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  If you wanna restore law and order in this country, vote Trump. If you wanna reignite the economy in this country, vote Trump. If you wanna revive national pride in this country, vote Trump. If you wanna make America great again, vote Trump.

• 8:34Pablo Torre?

  Alleged con man Vivek Ramaswamy is somebody discussed on this show previously, how he used to raise his hand in our Intro to Philosophy lecture by making the shape of a V, which we all thought was kind of like shining your own bat signal into the sky for the teacher to call on you. But I digress for a second because it leads us to...

• 8:55Speaker 04

  August 2024.

• 8:57Pablo Torre?

  Operation Desperado.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, Vivek, there had been rumblings that he was looking at running for governor.

• 9:03Pablo Torre?

  As a Republican against Amy Acton, a Democrat.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  And if anybody familiar with his presidential campaign would... Normal people, like, "I can't believe that's even a thing." But Ohio, as I've said from the get-go, is a state dumb enough to elect him. So I was very well-known in state political circles by then. But Vivek was basically the only Ohio Republican who wouldn't be familiar with me. And so my friend had randomly texted him in April of that year saying like, "Hey Vivek, this is head coach Ryan Day. Love what you're doing with the country. We'd love to have you on the radio show or come in and talk to the team." And he responds instantly, saying, "Coach Day, it's an honor. You know, love you, big fan, would love it." And so, fast forward, end of July. I was bored on my couch,

• 9:49Speaker 04

  and I resurrected one of my former alcoholic aliases, Tim Chitters, in his glory. He's a former Ohio State quarterback.

• 9:56Pablo Torre?

  Whose photo did you use for Tim Chitters, by the way?

• 9:59Speaker 04

  I searched Kid Rock look-alike.

• 10:06Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, the avatar

• 10:10Pablo Torre?

  checks out.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  And that was, that was in the Four Loko era. So yeah, it was a running-

• 10:17Pablo Torre?

  The Four Loko era was somehow a better time for America.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  It was, it was a simpler time, back when we had a functioning FDA. And I texted him as, I've learned in this business, if you go to the assistants, they're gonna like, whoa, I'm gonna Google this Tim Chitters guy. Uh, and I might see there's no connection to the university.

• 10:36Pablo Torre?

  Someone might do a minimum amount of due diligence about who Tim Chitters is, as our campaign is desperately trying to wear sports. Wear Ohio State football specifically as a costume to get elected.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Yes. I just laid it on thick and I said, you know, the guys in the locker room, they're really excited about the potential of you running for, uh, governor. And it's like, okay, do these Ohio, these 18 to 22 year olds, do they really have opinions on the inner, the inner workings of Republican state politics? And from there, things just escalated.

• 11:10Pablo Torre?

  They escalate to a parking lot at a Raisin Canes.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  The assistant shows up, they bring an entourage, which was against the whole thing. I've specifically stressed, it was supposed to be him and the assistant. And the only person who legitimately knew something was amiss was the intern. He was a big Ohio State fan and I just, I won the intern over by, he was a big Caleb Downs fan. And I was like, oh, I'm in with Downs, I can get you a handshake.

• 11:36Pablo Torre?

  Just to recap, you win over the intern by name dropping Caleb Downs?

• 11:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. We were discussing Ohio State football and I could tell he was just very excited. And he was like, you know, Caleb Downs is my favorite player and this is my last day with Vivek and this is why I wanted to come on. And out of all the people involved that day, I feel bad for the intern.

• 11:54Pablo Torre?

  And, and one of my favorite parts about your journalism, of course, on the Rooster is that you brought us a video.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  So I'm Vivek Ramaswamy, I'm a businessman. I was born and raised in Ohio, grew up in Cincinnati, but I'm in Columbus now and my wife, wife actually works at OSU. She's a cancer surgeon at the cancer hospital here. And I'm looking forward to talking to the guys on the football team. What I expect to be darn well the championship team of this year. I've been a big fan for a long time, but I want to share some of my experiences because one of the things I did over the last year was to do something that nobody expected of me, which was to run for US president. I wasn't successful in achieving the goal, which is to win the presidency. But I did beat out many former governors and senators and a former vice president that nobody expected of me. And I learned a lot of lessons along the way, both positive and some for me to be able to work on in the future.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Do you think we could get, uh, do you think we could get President Trump and you to a game this year?

• 12:48Speaker 05

  I think so. Yeah, absolutely.

• 12:50Pablo Torre?

  I do love when a failed politician shows up in the locker room to talk about the lessons they've learned in not succeeding.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I like the line, you know, nobody expected me to do, well, there's a reason for that. So I'm not sure how he would qualify beating anyone in that scenario, but his mind works in marvelous ways.

• 13:10Pablo Torre?

  But the one thing he wants you to know, Tim Chitters, is that he loves Ohio State football.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. And he say, he always says he grew up in Cincinnati. He grew up in Evendale, notably not Cincinnati. And the idea that he is, that he's fallen into this trap in the, in his gubernatorial campaign because he had that infamous tweet on Christmas Eve.

• 13:31Pablo Torre?

  We gotta respect Steve Urkel more.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, we gotta put some respect on Screech, put some respect on, uh, Urkel's name. And so he's kind of been trying to sports wash himself as a big Ohio State fan, but you can read it from the tape.

• 13:42Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I, I just wish we had more time to discuss the fact that Vivek Ramaswamy came out during the holidays and was like, we need to care about sports less.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  That's led to him showing up, uh, to three games over the past two years in bootleg merchandise, which in, to his credit is like the most Ohio man thing that he has generally done, showing up in a Chinese knockoff. But in typical fashion, he's a billionaire. So he just looks like a miser. And it's like, your team is obviously not doing you a solid here, man, by letting you leave the house like that.

• 14:15Pablo Torre?

  But it's very well worn now strategy in politics in 2026 that to get the favor of voters who are otherwise totally uninterested in you, you should claim you love the local football team and claim you love the god that they also love, even if neither of those things is technically true. But this brings us, by the way, before we get too deep into the story that we, again, we actually brought you to get into here. This, this ends with, uh, Vivek and his team waiting outside the football facility, the Woody Hayes Center.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Texting who they believed to be Ryan Day. Cause I, I had a shooter there, but then his brother got a DUI in typical Ohio man fashion.

• 14:58Pablo Torre?

  Your shooters.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, to get the pictures. And the only time he really was alarmed, his, everybody in his entourage was, and I said, all right, well, I'm gonna hop on my bicycle and I'll meet you guys over there. And they were very alarmed by that, like this guy's on a bicycle. And I said, well, it's an, it's a new era. We've got to pay the players, money's tight.

• 15:20Pablo Torre?

  NIL put me on this bicycle.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  And, and with gas prices and Joe Biden's economy. But, uh, yeah, I hopped off on my bicycle. I got out of Dodge. Cause he had a private security guy with him and you just never know how those people are gonna react when their boss is embarrassed.

• 15:33Pablo Torre?

  And so you left him there.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:36Pablo Torre?

  They end up waiting, never to enter.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  And he never called, he had my number, he never called me. He, he left that for his staffers. Meanwhile, he was texting my old friend, who he believed to be Ryan Day from the original conversation.

• 15:49Pablo Torre?

  Head coach of the Ohio State football team.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  I believe his exact words were, we're by the, we're by the area with all the trophies.

• 15:58Pablo Torre?

  And so the last communication that I need to document here is simply that at this point, approximately, you send him the Shrek penis pic.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I believe I told him he was never gonna be our governor, uh, which I was, it wasn't looking good for me for a while there. Like I really thought we were a state dumb enough to elect him. We still might be, but some polling's coming out. It's not looking good for our old friend right now.

• 16:22Pablo Torre?

  There's a lot hanging in the air in these next couple of weeks for you, for Vivek, for the state of Ohio.

• 16:36Pablo Torre?

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• 18:10Pablo Torre?

  So we are a sports show, DJ, allegedly. And you are, whether you like it or not, not just a guy serving quote [BLEEP] cocktails to politicians. You're also somebody who is inevitably digging into sports. And Ohio State football, we're gonna stick here because among the many things you've looked into as well, is of course a company by the name of LifeSearch.

• 18:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I, before I started the Rooster, I worked for, uh, I covered the Urban Meyer pretty much the entire tenure at Ohio State. I'm from, uh, the unfamiliar, I'm from a place called the City of Kings, Marion, Ohio, which is basically the most icely of Ohio. So my-

• 18:51Pablo Torre?

  A riched hive of scum and villainy.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  So I'm, I'm very familiar with Urban Meyer and Kirk Herbstreet. And when those two popped up with the guy who also thinks he can change and manipulate time and get 21 days in a week and that viral TikTok.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  My day is 6 a.m. to noon and I'm not crazy. You're crazy for thinking it takes 24 hours, just like some dude in a cave did 300 years ago. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6 p.m. That's day two. And then the next day is 6 p.m. to midnight. What I've done now is I have changed and manipulated-

• 19:23Pablo Torre?

  At a time, I now get 21 days a week. Wait a minute, that guy was at Life Surge?

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Yes, Ed Malley, yes.

• 19:28Pablo Torre?

  Oh my, how did I? There's so much going on in our ongoing Life Surge reporting, which we did last week, which we will, of course, remind everybody of as we go through this discussion. So this is the story that you headlined, quote, "Righteous Buckeyes Inside the Life Surge Scam Taking America By Storm" on May 10th, 2025. And I say this because you were one of the inspirations for why we wanted to get into this from this larger national perspective and focus really at the beginning of our episode on Tim Tebow. But the roster here at this Champions of Faith event.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  On stage, it's the Bentham Brothers, who were touted as the original victims of cancel culture because they lost in a Home and Garden television show thanks to their anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ views.

• 20:25Pablo Torre?

  How dare you merely describe the HGTV show Flip It Forward as some home improvement show?

• 20:33Speaker 04

  If I didn't put enough respect on that, I apologize.

• 20:36Pablo Torre?

  Did Kirk Herbstreet bring his dog?

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Yes, Kirk Herbstreet. He's running some sort of puppy mill operation, I think. The dogs were there. Alleged, yeah. In my opinion, I forgot one of the most beautiful phrases in the English language.

• 20:49Pablo Torre?

  Kirk Herbstreet, former Ohio State quarterback, ESPN star, brings his golden retriever. Urban Meyer brings the years of credibility that he gained as the coach at Ohio State from 2012 to 2018.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  The school attorney comes over to me and says, "Coach, you can't do that." And I said, "I can't do what?" She says, "The person says you can't have the Bible study and you can't have the church service." And I said, "Well, we're gonna do it."

• 21:16Speaker 06

  I said, "Well, you can't see separation of church and state, you can't do that." And I said, "I'm really busy, we're doing it." She got our athletic director, Gene, comes over and I haven't told this story many times, but he comes over and he can tell, he's like, "Okay." And I said, "Gene, we're doing this, and if not, you gotta let me go." Because I can't do this.

• 21:37Pablo Torre?

  Wow, wow.

• 21:38Speaker 06

  He's like, "We're not, we're good." And he said, "Let's go talk." So the compromise, we had to call it reflection, right?

• 21:45Speaker 04

  And Roy Hall literally leans over and says,

• 21:47Speaker 06

  Stop telling the secrets, man.

• 21:50Pablo Torre?

  Roy Hall, the former Buckeye NFL player, who is the chaplain. Also there are some alumni of the currently fifth-ranked Ohio State football team. All of them, by the way, 2024 national champions.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Yep, Caleb Downs, playing in the NFL.

• 22:06Pablo Torre?

  For the Cowboys as a DB, safety.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  And then Tavion St. Clair. Nobody besides Ohio State fans would probably know him, but he was a highly touted recruit out of a little place called Bow Fountain near Columbus. You'll probably be hearing him in a couple of years.

• 22:18Pablo Torre?

  Quarterback.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  Coming up, yeah, quarterback. Jeremiah Smith is a highly touted recruit out of South Florida. He could start for any NFL team this weekend.

• 22:26Pablo Torre?

  Unanimous All-American in 2025.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  There's nobody more known at the current moment than Jeremiah Smith.

• 22:32Pablo Torre?

  And as Life Surge announced on April 4th, 2025, special guest Jeremiah Smith is coming to Life Surge Columbus. Early bird special, up to 70% off tickets for Life Surge Columbus. Be a part of something bigger and make a positive impact at Life Surge in Columbus, Ohio.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Ohio State, it's kind of just another day at the office and really unsurprising if you know anything about the program and what continues on to this day under Ryan Day.

• 22:59Pablo Torre?

  Well, church and state ostensibly being separated. We do salary cap convention on this show. Didn't realize we'd be doing constitution convention as well. The religiosity of Ohio State's locker room, even after Urban Meyer, right? I mean, what you're saying and what you've reported here is that this focus on God at the expense of ostensibly the Constitution, it has transcended Urban and entered, yes, the fifth-ranked program as we sit here today.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, they're leading baptisms on the Oval, which

• 23:33Pablo Torre?

  You mean that literally?

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Literally, like, football players on the roster have this big event where students can come and get baptized in, I guess, oversized Tupperware containers on the Oval.

• 23:43Speaker 07

  Tonight, in a powerful display of fellowship, the tradition continues for the OSU football team. This evening, several Buckeye football players traded helmets for hope as they hosted a campus-wide faith event.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  At the end of the day, his glory is above anything that we can do.

• 23:57Speaker 06

  So, you know, Jesus is real, and, you know, if you can believe in him, you'll be saved. And it's so good to see so many people on campus get here together and just gather together as one, you know, in the body of Christ, who all child is God. So none of us here are perfect either, I think that's the biggest thing.

• 24:11Speaker 05

  Buckeyes standout Sonny Stiles and Caleb Downs among several players speaking to thousands.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  A thing that would be kind of scandalous, I would assume, at most Big Ten universities, that's just seen as another day in the life at one of the most prominent football programs in America.

• 24:27Pablo Torre?

  So I gotta say, it's not wrong or illegal or surprising that there would be athletes and coaches who are quite Christian. I happen to be Catholic myself. And in their free time, they would preach, they would do these events. The difference here is that what you're identifying is a strain of something that I want to define, which is Christian nationalism. Which isn't just, "We believe in the Lord and Savior." It is, "We believe that our nation, our government should believe in our Lord and Savior."

• 25:06Speaker 04

  And there is no better example of, I would say, the fanaticism behind it than the Ohio State University.

• 25:16Pablo Torre?

  And what we want to do on this show here at all times is follow the money whenever possible. Who's funding it? What's behind it? Because it's one thing to have even this circumvention of ostensible constitutional law to create this combined enterprise of church and state together at last at the Woody Hayes Center.

• 25:38Pablo Torre?

  It's also something that, as Life Surge has suggested, can be big business for some.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  I was stunned that it really wasn't a bigger story about like, "Hey, these guys are literally funneling, well-intentioned, financially illiterate Christians into a meat grinder."

• 25:57Pablo Torre?

  The athletes, in this case, at Ohio State, were used as seemingly part of the lure. I mean, what Life Surge dangled at the end of that stick as the carrot was that 25 lucky customers at Life Surge would receive a photo op with Urban Meyer and the players. But as someone who was there and was watching the sales pitch happen on the ground, speaking of ground games, can you describe what that was like?

• 26:24Speaker 04

  I was gonna spring for that, that was in my calculus. But I was like, man, just know, and knowing Urban, it's like, and this, like, do I really want to give these guys $1,000? And maybe for the chance of maybe being able to run up on Urban Meyer, I'm not so sure, just knowing these guys, I couldn't trust them. So I stayed with my little box lunch ticket. It was so depressing, because there were literally people in my section taking notes and like trying to actually learn, right? I said, you know, "I'll be back by one or two, how long can this really take?" And it's, I didn't get out till five. It is a 10-hour, just ground and pound operation.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  And if you just, if you're very familiar with just the tricks of public speaking and

• 27:10Pablo Torre?

  Oh, the motivational speaking industrial complex here is quite

• 27:13Speaker 04

  The repetitive nature and the call and responses. I mean, by the end of it, I was like, man, like, am I missing the boat?

• 27:21Pablo Torre?

  Am I about to delete this Shrek penis photo off my phone and become a new man?

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I could use some godly wealth.

• 27:29Pablo Torre?

  But it is about financial tools. That's part of what is different about this from prosperity gospel is that their sales pitch, as we outlined on the show, which has now been alleged to be predatory by current and former employees that we've spoken to, as well as certainly customers on tape with us, they are signing up because of this idea that you must learn how to do capitalism.

• 27:55Pablo Torre?

  To figure out how to create kingdom impact.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  It's just so depressing because I have a very, you know, I've read the Bible. And I thought the some, one of some moments was Jesus storming into the money changer tables. Yet here these guys are bringing out literal money changers. And I was gonna go to the class, but then I was thinking, I was like, I don't really trust these guys with my credit card information.

• 28:17Pablo Torre?

  And that's part of the story as well that we've reported is that credit stacking is one of the things they use to entice people. Hey, you need more than one credit card? Good news, we can make that happen for you right now.

• 28:27Speaker 04

  And I couldn't help but notice like they, after every speaker, they'd bring out the money changing tables and then they would get you in the concourse when you're waiting in line for the hot dogs. Somebody would run up on you like trying to buy a hot dog. Hey, have you signed up for these classes? I had multiple people on my schedule that I thought this was gonna be an Urban Meyer thing, like I've got stuff to do. They had left, so it was like the true believers by the end of it. And they made a very repeated point that this is your last chance. The money changing tables are going away before we get to the headliners. And I would suspect, in my opinion, that it was an intentional firewall to give the athletes, these headliners, somewhat of a deniability.

• 29:04Pablo Torre?

  So I want to explain what you've reported here, which is that the players arrived about how far ahead of when they went on stage?

• 29:13Speaker 04

  About 20 minutes. I had a guy who was working the arena, who was a staffer at Value City Arena, and he was feeding me intel from the backstage and they all got there about 25, 30 minutes, which would again beg some questions about, was, did they even get their picture?

• 29:33Speaker 04

  When did that happen?

• 29:34Pablo Torre?

  Our investigation into whether anybody got the photo with them and Urban Meyer, that also continues. But the premise here that the players, according to what we know at this point, are not even around for the rest of it, but are showing up because here are the headliners we promised. It feels like something that should both protect the players and now cause them to ask real questions in the present tense.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 30:04Speaker 04

  And I kind of gave them some grace, just because I was no Rhodes Scholar at that age. And again, I have the football brain disease, like many central Ohioans, so that could be me giving them grace where it's undue.

• 30:17Pablo Torre?

  I'm just trying to imagine being one of those players. And let's say you are genuinely religious, you are Christian, and you want people to know about it. You want to save others, right? So far, we're operating fully in the realm of sincerity. At a certain point, it's happening at Ohio State itself, right? And so you might imagine if alumni of our program are on stage with me, it's literally on our campus, that someone would intervene if this was not a thing that we should sign up for. Someone might even advise us one way or another.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  These guys have professional advisors now, especially those three on those guys. They have the agents, they have a team. I'm extending some grace to the players, but their team who is in charge of putting these guys in winning situations, I would have some serious questions after this.

• 31:06Pablo Torre?

  Well, and this is the thing that we're balancing in real time as we see, for instance, former Life Surge speaker and current Boston Celtics head coach Joe Missoula cut ties with Life Surge publicly. I mean.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  I'll give more credit than Tebow with his pausing.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  We're having our team do an investigation, but also pausing our relationship.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  Acting like he first learned of these allegations when the report came out.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday and team shared with me when we were leaving as we were flying to Alabama for an event and, you know, kind of caught off guard with some of it.

• 31:42Pablo Torre?

  I do got to point out that before the episode we did with Mother Jones was published last week, we exchanged emails with Tim Tebow's reps. And I'll just read the email here. On September 14th, 2026, at 6:11 PM Eastern, we provided a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 18 question list that ranges from, are you slash your team aware that stock market and real estate training courses, quote unquote, impact classes and surge you training are being presented, marketed and sold to attendees at Life Surge conferences? Are you slash your team aware that once at these impact classes, attendees are immediately

• 32:25Pablo Torre?

  pitched high-ticket investment courses and mentorships costing as much as $40,000? And it goes on and on and on. And it gets to question 18. Based upon the information that has now been brought to your attention regarding the sales practices of Life Surge, would you reconsider your relationship with the company moving forward?

• 32:43Speaker 04

  They, I don't think they understood the firestorm that you were gonna unleash upon them, because again, why would you not want to get out in front of this?

• 32:51Pablo Torre?

  And that's the thing. All the sports figures got requests for comment from us at this point. And what we want to know is, does this bother you? Does any of this bother you? What your name, image and likeness was used for? If it was to do allegedly predatory scheming that victimized sincere, perhaps financially undereducated people who wanted to know how to save themselves? Yeah, like, the reaction is not merely, oh no, this is embarrassing for me. It's, I presume also something like your conscience, reminding you that this is fucked up.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  And I, you know, and it kills me for them to say, oh, well, we're gonna pause it, which to me just is a specific word choice and kind of like, we're gonna see what develops from this and maybe we'll reexamine. What more do you need to see?

• 33:56Speaker 05

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• 36:18Pablo Torre?

  Look, I think the writing is appearing on the wall, but it does not mean it's too late for people to establish what they knew and when they knew it. And this is where the camera swings back to Ohio State. Because the fact that this was hosted at Value City Arena, the Schadenstein Center.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  Schadenstein.

• 36:39Pablo Torre?

  Schadenstein. This is the home to the basketball and hockey teams at Ohio State.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is the official athletics venue of Ohio State.

• 36:48Pablo Torre?

  What we wanted to know was, what does it cost? Like, what did Ohio State get paid to host this event?

• 36:55Speaker 04

  I'm gonna assume they didn't give it away for free in the name of award.

• 37:00Pablo Torre?

  And unfortunately, we do not yet know specifically what Ohio State got paid for the Life Surge event. We have our requests out, they have not yet been answered. We will update our reporting as we get it. But what we do know, thanks to documentation that we obtained separately, is that in a typical rental agreement, we have one from 2020 that was booked for a 2022 event and 2023 event, we're looking at about $45,000 for a local school, for instance, which rented out the arena for its commencement ceremony. And so that's what we're thinking about as the general ballpark. But I also want to note that on item number four on this contract that we have, it says,

• 37:41Pablo Torre?

  payment will be made to the Ohio State University within 10 days of receiving facility's invoice, which simply means that this was going direct to OSU, right? So we're following the money into a public university, perhaps in the ballpark of $45,000? And so that's what you get, perhaps.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  You ask who could have possibly greased those tracks for them?

• 38:07Speaker 04

  I would suspect Urban Meyer, in my opinion, would be at the top of that list because he still maintains clout within the university circles.

• 38:15Pablo Torre?

  He's still a guy who had a bar slash restaurant, very famously, not far.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  The steakhouse went away, but he still got the 7-0 pub, the Urban Meyer Brew House or whatever up in Dublin. So he was, this past weekend at the Ohio State Illinois game, they gave him a big entrance.

• 38:40Speaker 06

  Good to be home, bro.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Sounds it.

• 38:43Speaker 06

  All right, let's go. Let's get this place rocking.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  A legend, his name is intact.

• 38:51Pablo Torre?

  On television all the time.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  And on television all the time.

• 38:54Pablo Torre?

  Doing sports broadcasts as, again, this leader of men.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  And that's the funny thing about, he's great on TV, he's great at football.

• 39:01Pablo Torre?

  He is.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  Urban's problem is when you're not talking about football. And then he kind of reveals himself as just another money-hungry suburbanite.

• 39:11Pablo Torre?

  Well, as we then ask the question of how does Tim Tebow get involved in this? All we can say for the time being is that Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow, of course, have this intimate personal history. They won the '06 and '08 national championships together, as we alluded to, at the University of Florida. They are both, of course, fellow members of the College Football Hall of Fame, which Tim Tebow welcomed Urban into in 2025. They remain close since, as they will tell you quite often if you give them the opportunity to be on television together, as they were on College Game Day in 2016.

• 39:49Speaker 06

  We kind of snuck in and we used it as well, so we'll use anything we possibly can.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, Coach will say it doesn't matter, but he uses it nonstop. I remember in 2006, we had a whole wall dedicated to how disrespected we were. And shoot, there were a lot of Kirk Herbstreet up there, and he loved it.

• 40:07Pablo Torre?

  And do you remember what Tebow said about Urban after your reporting about the lap dance scandal?

• 40:13Speaker 04

  I think I might have missed that.

• 40:15Pablo Torre?

  According to the People Magazine headline that I have in front of me, Urban Meyer going through, quote, "one of the hardest times of his life," end quote, Tim Tebow says of Coach. He then proceeds to explain on, of course, First Take.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  I think, first of all, this is a very disappointing, frustrating, and honestly heartbreaking situation. You know, when I first saw and heard about what happened, my heart was hurting for Miss Shelley, Coach's wife, someone that I love very much, and his daughters, who I'm very close with, and who I've talked to both of them this week, and also had the chance of talking with Coach. And it's a very difficult week, and my advice to him was to apologize, to admit it, to learn from it, and to never, never repeat it.

• 41:11Pablo Torre?

  The biggest tie, perhaps, between Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow, you might argue, is on this piece of paper in front of me. Because for those who aren't familiar, DJ, and I'm not even sure if you're familiar, but I do just want to bring you the Form 990 for the Tim Tebow Foundation, which you might imagine has a roster that's also worth considering.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Oh, dear.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  I believe this is what the kids call getting caught in 4K. So what I'm looking at is Urban Meyer listed as a co-director officer of the Tim Tebow Foundation. Looks like he's working one hour per claim, unpaid, which is probably the most shocking part of this revelation, but yeah.

• 41:58Pablo Torre?

  So, look, we continue to try and follow the money, because we believe that there is the possibility, of course, that this is the story, on some level, of good intentions being abused. And the question is, who knew about the alleged abuse taking place when it came to, yeah, the thing that all of these people, I think, would say on all sorts of stages they consider the most sacred part of their lives?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  So with 44 appearances, you kind of lose the visage of deniability. You had no idea this is all just catching you by surprise, that there might be something not on the up and up with how all these people are getting funneled into what I would describe as a religious meat grinder. You don't have Google, you don't have the internet.

• 42:44Pablo Torre?

  And this reminded me that I do want to understand the origin story, you might even say the Immaculate Conception, of Life Search. Like, what was the first of these events that ever took place? And what I found took us to July of 2021 in Tampa, when then Jacksonville Jaguar, Tim Tebow, is the headliner, the face of the birth, the Immaculate Conception, you might even say, of this event.

• 43:13Speaker 06

  Are you ready? Join thousands of local Christian business leaders for a one-day event in Tampa, Florida, live and in person. This is not another virtual event. Life Search is the only Christian business event that brings speakers like CEO of Duck Commander and star of Duck Dynasty, Willie Robertson. Hear how Willie expanded his family's company from a living room operation to a half a billion dollar marketing phenomenon with Duck Dynasty, becoming the leading destination for all things outdoors. His story is a remarkable example of entrepreneurship and dedication, built on hard work, faith, and family. Also,

• 43:55Speaker 06

  hear how Auntie Anne Beiler left her Amish community, overcame major tragedies, and started a small pretzel stand called Auntie Anne's Pretzels.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  We got to cancel Auntie Anne now? She has an Amish villain origin story?

• 44:10Pablo Torre?

  It's a lot to learn that Auntie Anne is a real...

• 44:13Speaker 04

  My trips to the airport are never going to be the same.

• 44:15Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, that smell smells different now. It's just so much happening here.

• 44:18Speaker 04

  The lore of these people never ceases to amaze me. I would not have thought Auntie Anne, that's heartbreaking.

• 44:26Speaker 06

  And above all else, you'll leave Life Search transformed and encouraged to make an impact for Jesus after hearing an inspiring message from athlete, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, Tim Tebow. You will learn their secrets, along with their unique biblical strategies that not only help them, but can help anyone turn an idea, career, or business into a successful and influential force.

• 44:50Speaker 04

  That seems rather explicit. And that kind of just ties into, that's what this, in my opinion, scam seems to be run upon, is this ability to get, pull in these sports figures, business tycoons, and canceled reality television show operators, to get people, like a traveling circus, almost, to get people interested and kind of sportswash it and businesswash it, to give it the air of legitimacy.

• 45:18Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's the thing, is that sports, the show, the show that we do here, we're realizing over and over again that we are constantly asking the question of who did the due diligence on this, and how is it that sports keeps attracting the people who perhaps did it? And the answer is that sports is this passport to access audiences that otherwise are inaccessible. It's what Vivek Ramaswamy was doing when he was trying to be Ohio State superfan. It's what Life Search is doing. It's what all of these entities that we are uncovering see as their key into, in this case, the hearts and wallets of, like, vulnerable Christians.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  And I joke with my friends all the time that, like, sports fandom, I truly believe it has a similar effect on your brain, like any hardcore street narcotic, and that it warps it, right? And so, it's a perfect, because you're getting in a set of marks. Like, my friends with Cleveland Browns.

• 46:19Pablo Torre?

  The Cleveland Browns are, in fact, a street narcotic.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  And so you have, basically, this loyal fan base of people who are like drug customers, right? They keep coming back no matter the result.

• 46:31Pablo Torre?

  Makes them feel good, but it also makes them hurt, but they will say that they love it.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  And so if you can tie sports into religion, you have a very specific person who is already greased to believing the righteousness of their lifestyle.

• 46:48Pablo Torre?

  And there is no more recurring face and name in Life Search, which is the overlapping Venn diagram of those two circles, than Tim Tebow, who went to that first event that we just played the trailer for in July of 2021, and then appeared at 43 more as headliner over the next several years.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  To me, it's funny, he should have just taken his advice he gave to Urban Meyer. Come clean with what you know.

• 47:20Pablo Torre?

  Quote, "My advice to him was to apologize, to admit it, to learn from it, and to never, never repeat it."

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Because how much money is, you know, he's probably made, I would say, there's at least two commas involved, probably. I think that's a respectable guess.

• 47:38Pablo Torre?

  When you look at his reported base speaking rate of, you know, 50 to 100-plus thousand dollars, times 44, yeah, do the math. This is a lot of kingdom wealth that is being surged.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  Who is better to wrap a scandal or wrap a swindle around than somebody who is inherently above, that is as close to God as Tim Tebow has been throughout his entire career?

• 48:06Pablo Torre?

  I want to end on a Shrek quote, DJ, is what I'm attempting here.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  I've actually never watched a Shrek film in its entirety.

• 48:14Pablo Torre?

  Wait a minute. I'm glad that we could do this before you're called to the stand next week. What you're telling me is that The Rooster, the guy who is literally going on trial for sending a picture of Shrek's, quote, "hyper-realistic penis" to a sitting state senator, has never seen the film that that image is inspired by.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  No. I will note that, apparently, in this new film coming out, which is just amazing timing for Disney, apparently Shrek and his entire family get jailed.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  Baby, come back. Any kind of fool could see there was something in everything about you.

• 49:13Pablo Torre?

  Spoiler alert.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, not to spoil it, but it's definitely feels, maybe Alex Jones is right, and we are in the matrix.

• 49:22Pablo Torre?

  And so the question, DJ Burns, The Rooster, as we get to the end of this episode, in which we have found out so much together, is, yeah, is art imitating life?

• 49:33Speaker 04

  It truly starts to feel that way, you know, and, but some of these things, like, it's almost beyond parody, in this golden age of corruption in which we all live in, but here we are.

• 49:44Pablo Torre?

  Mr. The Rooster, thank you for your reporting, and I hope this isn't the last time that we talk to each other as free men.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  Anytime, and if our next conversation comes over, you know, smuggled cellphone into Lake County prison, then we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

• 50:01Pablo Torre?

  It's gonna be a good episode.

• 50:13Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Laura Newcomb, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tummanello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.

• 50:48Speaker 02

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