NFL Future Leans, the Yankees Malaise, Amy Bradley Theories, a Scheffler Makeover, and Hulk Hogan’s Career With Joe House, Jack-O, and David Shoemaker

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House to discuss their favorite NFL futures (2:19). Then, Jack-O joins to discuss the Yankees, Scottie Scheffler, ‘Happy Gilmore 2’, and true crime documentaries (41:13). Finally, David Shoemaker joins to remember the late Hulk Hogan and his lasting impact on the world of wresting (01:27:02). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Joe House, Jack-O, and David Shoemaker Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo Post your job today at linkedin.com/simmons The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by PNC Bank. In today's sports, everyone is constantly trying to outdo each other. Trick formations, infield shifts, constant rotation changes. Yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory. Banking, no different. While everyone else tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins just keep coming. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865, brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Incorporated. PNC Bank, National Association, Member, FTIC. This episode is brought to you by Expedia. You know how at the end of the season, your team goes to Cancun, sometimes earlier than

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  expected, sometimes after blowing a 3-1 series lead? But what if you went to Cancun? With Expedia, save up to 30% when you bundle and save. You can book the flight or the hotel now, then book the rest later. In all fairness, though, hopefully your team doesn't go to Cancun. 1-2-3 Cancun. Or if they do, you go with them. Expedia, the one place you go to go places. Sign in to save, savings vary. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where we have a bunch of great podcasts. We have a great website and you can find the rewatchables as well, which has a new episode coming on Monday night. I'm not telling you what it is, we're just putting it up. So that's coming Monday night.

• 1:27Bill Simmons?

  You can find it on Ringer, Ringer Movies, the YouTube channel. I almost blanked. So yeah, we have a new studio. We filmed two rewatchables, actually, in the new studio and we're still working out the kinks. It's still not fully decorated yet. It worked great for actually filming stuff. We're going to film something for this podcast in here tomorrow, actually. Still working out the kinks, though, including some light stuff. Everything was great, except for the part that we forgot about the glare coming mid-afternoon in a certain way. And I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that. So I apologize because there's going to be a moment. So first, we have Joe House and I are talking about NFL futures that have really jumped

• 2:07Bill Simmons?

  out to us so far, meaning gambling stuff, divisions, teams that we're worried about. Hitting that at the top. Then, for old time's sake, my buddy Jacko, John O'Connell, coming right in. He's, we, he demanded a spot to vent about the Yankees for 15 minutes. We gave it to him. And, uh, and then we talked about, um, Scottie Scheffler, Happy Gilmore two, true crime documentaries. That's when it starts to get, my face starts to get really light. So don't get freaked out if you're watching on video pod. Again, we're going to fix it. Bear with us. And then last but not least, Hulk Hogan died last week and, uh, I brought in David Shoemaker from The Ringer to talk about Hulk's career and, uh, and just the apex of it and just everything that we saw and everything we felt and thought. So that is the podcast.

• 2:52Bill Simmons?

  It's a long one. It's actually packed. Uh, I am going to have another podcast, middle of the week this week too. So this isn't going to be the only one this week. Uh, we're going to take a break. We're going to bring in Pearl Jam.

• 3:28Bill Simmons?

  All right. We're taping mid Sunday afternoon. The man, the myth, the legend, Joe House is here. We, we, we're texting so much about NFL futures and leans and feels. It's still July. We are six weeks away from week one of the NFL season house. Some of these odds are going to move around. We've been talking about it nonstop. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about some Happy Gilmore. We're going to bring Jack Owen to talk about the Yankees and true crime, but let's start with NFL really quick. First of all, how many bets have you fired off? Cause you live in a state where gambling is actually legal.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was going through the inventory. I, I, you know, I'm always a little nervous because now with the markets open in March, it's like, oh, so there were some numbers I liked early. I got on Green Bay to win the Superbowl at 22 to one. That's held steady.

• 4:16Bill Simmons?

  I would have booked that for you.

• 4:19Bill Simmons?

  Just sent that to me.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  I mean, no, I just.

• 4:21Bill Simmons?

  They're not winning this Super Bowl.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I just like some, some of the long shot. I really, this is like, you know, some of the long shot kind of stuff. And then as, as we get more information, then I start laying in. So I, I have been over indexing my skepticism of Cincinnati this season. Just way too many bets. Like one, every four days I wake up in the morning and I look at, at the total and I'm like, I Cincinnati, I don't like what they're doing. They haven't improved the defense and they still don't have an answer on the offensive line. And if Joe Burrow gets hurt, we've seen this. They are horrendous. So I keep betting against Cincinnati. I have them missing the playoffs. I have them on the under. A lot of skepticism about Minnesota.

• 5:07Bill Simmons?

  Wait, hold on. Cincinnati. On Cincinnati, I talked to you about this on the phone the other day. And I was saying how my theory, how they've become the fantasy football team that spent all their, all their $200 on the three guys and then did $1 guys everywhere else. And you were like, you mean like I did in two years ago in fantasy football? And guess what? You didn't win.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  No, I, I did that more in basketball than anything else. But yeah, either way, it's not a winning strategy.

• 5:36Bill Simmons?

  It's not a winning strategy. So Rahim was on this a year ago, who's on the Ringer Gambling Show with you and has popped on this pod from time to time about the concept of if they're out on a team, go really out. Go on some of those alt unders. And so Cincinnati's what, minus nine and a half?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  The win total, yeah, it's nine and a half.

• 5:59Bill Simmons?

  Right. So you're saying, I think Cincinnati is going to be awful, or not as good as people think, or they're one borough injury away. You're going under seven and a half. You get plus 280 on FanDuel. If you went under five and a half, which I guess would be some really

• 6:18Speaker 01

  I'm not doing that.

• 6:18Bill Simmons?

  bad injuries. That, that's eight to one. I'm just saying, we, we've seen this. We saw it last year with the Niners where if you had just said, you know what? I don't like the look of the Niners. I don't like the smell of them. I'm just going to go hard under and, and that's the way to do it. So, all right. So Cincinnati's one, and I agree with you because I think they're top heavy. And I think the odds are reflecting the ideal situation with all of their playmakers. I don't like teams that can't block.

• 6:46Bill Simmons?

  And can't cover. So that's a problem.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  The thing that that keeps coming back to me and I'll have more time to get into the the roster and so forth. This is, this is just the July take.

• 6:58Bill Simmons?

  We had six weeks.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  That was a career season out of Joe Burrow last year. They got the career season out of him. He was awesome. He was incredible all season long with those weapons. And I mean, he's capable of of replicating it, but a lot of stuff went right for them on offense and they still missed the playoffs. They still came up short because that offensive line subjects him to just too much abuse. And there are games where that offense underperforms. It, they tend to happen early in the season, especially, but that defense was just an abomination. And I just haven't seen anything. Again, we'll get into the rosters, but I just wanted to make sure that my skepticism was baked into my portfolio early on.

• 7:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, as you know, I, I love doing the player rankings every year and I felt like it really helped me last year and I spent even more time on them this year trying to, trying to perfect my formula like a scientist. Cincinnati did not do great in the setup. Uh, you take out Burrow and Chase. I gave them a minus one for their offensive line. I only had five offensive lines where I was like, not only do you get a zero, I'm giving you a minus one. Higgins, you know, who hasn't been as healthy the last two years, but when he is healthy, he's great. And then Hendrickson, assuming he's coming back and I think Chase Brown was good for them. And that's about it. That's their team. You know, and they went 98 last year, had some bad end of the game luck, but they're also pretty

• 8:29Bill Simmons?

  top heavy. Minnesota, you and I share the same concerns because this is my favorite week to really start looking at this. Like on the positive side, Josh Simmons, who the Chiefs got at the end of the first round, left tackle, hurt his knee. Everyone was like, oh shit, if they get, they can get him healthy in time for the season. This is like getting a top 10 pick.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:50Bill Simmons?

  It's like, all right, I've heard that one before. I'm not going to trust that if that's cool. Well, guess what? He looks. Great in training camp and now they went from like this offensive line that was the biggest reason they lost in the Super Bowl. They had Joe Tooney playing outside as a guard at left tackle. And now they have Simmons. They spent some free agent money. They actually have too much, too many guys. They might have like a, like a decent guy, not even starting, but this Simmons, if he can be left tackle, kind of changes how I feel about the Chiefs. I don't know about you.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Well, and, and you know, some of the smart folks that are doing some of the assessing of fortunes like this iteration of the Chiefs better than last year, the team that went 15 and two, mainly because it seems like they are able to be physical and it will be by virtue of what you're describing with, with Simmons, physical on the offensive side. You know, they're not, Kelsey will be a, become a possession receiver. They have two vertical threats, you know, whenever the suspension is done with Bryce.

• 9:54Bill Simmons?

  The receivers will be better Hollywood Brown's back. Like they actually weirdly should be better, except they're not going to go 11 and O in the one score games again, but it's leading to something I want to talk about in a second, but let's do the Minnesota thing because this is the opposite of the Josh Simmons piece. The couple days of McCarthy we've had and some of the quotes from the players already where it just feels like work in progress is maybe being generous.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:21Bill Simmons?

  It made me nervous house.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Well, with good reason. I mean, this, I have a lot of admiration for the Minnesota organization and for them doing what they did last season, especially on the defensive side of the ball. They were at, at times dominant and they were able to play physical football and it led all the way up to that unbelievable week 17 game against Detroit.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  But Sam Darnold was incredible for them and he and O'Connell were in such harmony. There was a synergy there. We can use all of the stupid business words, but it just made so much sense and you could see the team believing in Darnold.

• 11:08Bill Simmons?

  And that we had that famous locker room video.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 11:12Bill Simmons?

  They gave him the ball and they're just going fucking crazy and they're lifting them up.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  So I don't criticize them for not paying Darnold, but they lost something meaningful in my humble opinion. And we were supposed to believe that the one hour sessions, you know, some of the stories coming out with Minnesota.

• 11:32Bill Simmons?

  Oh, talk about, tell that story. What was that story?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  A story about, you know, O'Connell made a point of ensuring no matter what in his schedule, he had an hour to sit down with McCarthy every single week of the NFL season. So they could.

• 11:48Bill Simmons?

  Last year.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Last year. Yes. Yes. While, while McCarthy was injured. So they could talk about, you know, things that were going on, what McCarthy was seeing and, and just, you know, that undivided attention between the quarterback and the head coach, the offensive mastermind.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  That's great. I'm glad they have a great relationship. Need to see that dude get on the football field and throw the rock more than 10 yards.

• 12:13Bill Simmons?

  It's tough because there's two things going against them. The rookie quarterback piece.

• 12:19Bill Simmons?

  Actually three, the rookie quarterback piece, the I'm coming off a major injury piece. And then the I haven't played football in two years piece. And he's young. So you have all these things working against you. And I get it. They had to play it the way they had to play it because he's on a rookie contract. They made a big investment in him last year. Wouldn't have made sense to pay Darnold. I get it, but that doesn't mean I have to like Minnesota this year.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  The other thing that sucks is that other than the quarterback position, the most important position on the field, they're goddamn good on both sides of the ball. And there are a bunch of veterans on that football team with an expectation of, of high performance based on how they did last year. And if he comes in and sucks, like, you know, that's not an easy situation to, to navigate. So I just have a lot of skepticism.

• 13:09Bill Simmons?

  I know I won't be betting on the over the over right now. I guess it's eight and a half is minus 150. If you wanted to go over 10 and a half for them plus 180, but we're also looking at, you know, the biggest drop offs in NFL history of teams just dropping six wins, seven wins. It's not a thing that happens very much, you know? So what was that record last year? 14 and 3?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, 14.

• 13:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So you think like, all right, what are the biggest drop offs ever?

• 13:40Bill Simmons?

  We've had some ones go up. I don't even have the list of the drop offs, but usually it's like six, seven wins is the max for going from

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:49Bill Simmons?

  point A to point B. So for them to go from 14 wins to eight wins, that's like almost historic for a decade.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  We had it like the San Francisco, there's always a team. San Francisco last year backed up that much.

• 14:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  I mean, there are.

• 14:04Bill Simmons?

  Think about, think about all the shit that happened to them last year to make that happen.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:08Bill Simmons?

  It was like the all time year from hell season, starting with their fucking first round pick, getting shot in downtown. That was it. When I saw that, I was like, oh, we started going under on all the San Francisco stuff. So I am a little skeptical of this team. Anyone else? Cause I have a team that jumped out to me that I mentioned Nate Tice last week.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm.

• 14:29Bill Simmons?

  And it ties into a bigger, a bigger thing I want to talk about.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  I'm all ears. You tell me.

• 14:35Bill Simmons?

  I just really like this Broncos team.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Okay, sure.

• 14:39Bill Simmons?

  And I've looked at it from every way. I actually asked FanDuel and they said a lot of the action on the Broncos has been like basically all positive, which makes me a little nervous for division for the overs. But when I did my rankings, I just, they just have a lot of good players all over the place. They have a top four offensive line. They got better in some subtle ways. They definitely got better on defense. They have a rookie running back that if they hit with him, with Harvey.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:08Bill Simmons?

  Then that's going to be significant because their running backs were bad last year. They have Knicks in year two. The schedule is a little favorable in general for the AFC West and, and I had them in my rankings. I had them like right hovering around where KC is for a number, like just for like, like player.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Personnel.

• 15:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had them above the Chargers. I had them a little bit above the Rams. Like I had them. When I laid everything out, they were higher than I thought. And, and when that happened last year, those teams were usually good.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  I think what's, what's gotta be driving that is, is your defensive numbers, right? Because that, that defense was already excellent. And then they added two very good players. Now we'll see what they have left in, in.

• 15:50Bill Simmons?

  And I didn't even have a fun, I didn't have a fun guys as a, as a chipper. I had six chips on their defense.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  Benito Franklin Myers, Allen Greenlaw, Surtan and Jones.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  Six of their 11 guys made the list and they're all like legitimately, you, you have to put them in the top 15, top 17 range. So, and then Sean Payton year two, they got a little taste last year, which I like.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 16:16Bill Simmons?

  And I think with the AFC, when you take out Baltimore and you take out Buffalo and you take out KC, it's really it for, oh no, I don't want to see that team.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  I agree. You're right.

• 16:27Bill Simmons?

  So could they, could they crack top three? For the, for the over unders for them that it's nine and a half is over. It's plus one 10. The division odds, I think they're plus 330. And I, I just, I think those odds are going to move. I think that's going to be the team that I think, I think things are going to shift. Are you in or out on them?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  I'm in and I like their defense quite a bit. I love the idea of, of building the way that they built and what they surrounded Bo Nix with and, and Payton getting his guy in next. The, um, the aspect of, of that bet for them, uh, what did you say? Plus 330 to win the division?

• 17:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  That's just a Patrick Mahomes gets hurt the bet. Do we do that?

• 17:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, no, if, if Simmons wasn't going to be ready for the season on their line and, and I was worried about the Chiefs line again, I might've thought about it, but the only thing with the Chiefs, man, you, you look at their schedule and, uh, like, like what they did to them from a TV game standpoint and a night game standpoint, it's fucking bonkers. Hold on, I have it here. Uh, they have.

• 17:40Bill Simmons?

  How many night games? They, I have eight games that either at night, on Christmas, or in Europe.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  So they only, they only play, there's 17 games total. They only play nine normal Sunday games and then eight just completely wacky cra-. They start the season in Brazil. Week three, they're Sunday night. Week five, Monday night. Week six, Sunday night. Week eight, Monday night. Thanksgiving, they play Sunday night, Christmas. And then the Raiders game, for all we know, could be a night game. Like, that schedule is, made me nervous.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Well, the same thing is true. And I'm agreeing that there is, you know, we're going to see regression from the one score stuff. And, you know, even though we both think personnel wise, they're right where they were last year.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  But, you know, 12 wins is still plenty good.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  You describing all of those night games, all those island games. Sadly, Washington has the exact same, very, very, very similar.

• 18:39Bill Simmons?

  I'm aware, let's talk about it.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Very similar, very similar.

• 18:42Bill Simmons?

  I was a little down on your Washington team. What's?

• 18:47Bill Simmons?

  You want to go half glass full or glass half empty?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm, I'm only glass half full, so you should do the glass half empty.

• 18:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, do the glass half full and I'll do the empty.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  That offense is better than last year. And yes, there will be regression in terms of their effectiveness on, on fourth down especially. They're not going to be 87% effective on converting fourth downs this upcoming season. But they still have that multiplicity and they, they will keep defenses on their heels. They're not going to change their philosophy or approach. And so overall, even though they won't be 20 of 23 on fourth down, they're going to play four down offensive football. And with the addition of Debo Samuel and the additions on the offensive line. Now, look.

• 19:39Bill Simmons?

  Tebow Samuel.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Well, no, I mean, he's just going to be put into the perfect role for him. That's all. They're not going to, it's not like I would.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  He's a, he's a, he needs.

• 19:49Bill Simmons?

  Is he in shape yet?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  He needs the calories. He's gonna be, you know, out there trying to earn another contract. Let that man eat. Uh, he's gonna get his touches. I'm not worried and take some of the pressure off of Austin Eckler, like.

• 20:00Bill Simmons?

  Is it touches of a bagel?

• 20:02Speaker 01

  It's a team of, of yards after contact. And if some of that contact, look, he needs to build up the, the fortitude to take that first hit. I don't have no issue whatsoever. Let that man eat. In fact, I'll take him around Washington DC and make sure that he's well fed.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

  Debo, stay away from Joe House.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  No, no, he's, we're good. Me and Dee, Dee are on the same page, but um, I, I, I'm not worried about the offense, the, the, uh, and I, you know, it's hilarious with Tunsil, uh, led the league last year and, and accepted penalties from that position, but his, his, his blocking rates, you know, his, his grades are still very, very good. Um, the, uh, defense remains a work in progress and they lost, you know, some, some important guys there. So we'll see.

• 20:48Bill Simmons?

  That schedule you mentioned, they had the same issue that KC has eight games that are either night games or Euro games.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:55Bill Simmons?

  And they're playing on Christmas too. So, uh, here's the other issue with them. I was ranking the divisions, which I can't wait for you to talk about for just who I think is going to be best division in each conference. And I think you can make a legitimate case that they're playing the two best divisions in each conference. They're playing the AFC West, they're playing the NFC North. Those are eight games where the worst teams you're gonna play are either Minnesota or Chicago in the, uh, NFC North and probably Vegas in the AFC West, who I kinda like as at least being a little frisky with the new coach. So you have that. They're playing a second place schedule, which is Miami, the Chargers and Seattle. Two of those teams could be good.

• 21:40Bill Simmons?

  And Miami seems like they lucked out with that one, but it's just, it's a murderer's row. And then, you know, we, it's gotta be mentioned that the Jaden Daniels, just the reason people were worried about him when he came into the league was he's skinny.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  True.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  What kind of hits is he gonna take? So those would be my concerns, House. From a player, from a talent standpoint. They did okay in my rankings. They were, you know, they were kind of, kind of upper middle class.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  That's fine. I'll, I'll take it. Believe me.

• 22:09Bill Simmons?

  They were right. I had them in the Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Washington range, basically for,

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Oh, I see. For talent. Okay.

• 22:17Bill Simmons?

  But a lot of it depends on how you rank Daniels and where you think he, where you think he's gonna be. So some of the bets that we, uh, we were looking at, and this sparked, we have a thread, me, you, Sal and Hench that we've had for a long time that we named after JT Thor, a guy who carried us on the last day of the season a couple of years ago. What was that? The Charlotte over? What did we have? It was, or we had whoever Charlotte was playing, we had their under.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  It was a Cleveland under.

• 22:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And they played to be Cleveland.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  They put JT Thor was on Charlotte and Cleveland deliberately decided to tank the last game of the season. I don't remember the circumstances. Why?

• 22:59Bill Simmons?

  And Charlotte was trying to tank too, but JT Thor was like, I'm not tanking. I'm trying to impress people and looked at Karl Malone in the mid 90s. Anyway, so we always text bets and we finally got excited about one. And, uh, it was plus 158 on FanDuel when we were texting about it. Now it has dropped to plus 145. The bet is New Orleans and Cleveland, both to finish fourth in their divisions. I feel even better about it than I did a week ago. I love this bet. Um, there's some people we could throw it in, but it's, it's my favorite one, right? Is this your favorite too?

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so far. It's, it's very simple. I, the other bet that, that I've made on the other side of it is, um, Baltimore and Buffalo to win their respective divisions. That's plus 120 on the FanDuel Sportsbook. So I like to have a positive bet to go along with our, our negative bet.

• 23:50Bill Simmons?

  Right. For karma. You don't want to just all go negative.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 23:54Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't see any scenario where Cleveland makes, makes, uh, the third place spot unless there's some sort of horrible injury to somebody. And even then, I don't know if they would make it.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Have you seen the odds? I couldn't find them. I don't know if they're out yet. My favorite bet for Cleveland will be last team to get a win this NFL season.

• 24:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Their schedule is.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Excruciatingly tough at the outset and there are some unbelievable betting opportunities.

• 24:23Bill Simmons?

  Let's go through it for the audience because I looked at this too and I and it was one of the reasons I sent you guys that last place text. Plus, not to mention, we have no idea who their quarterback was. Kenny Pickett's already hurt. Yeah. So they're home Cincy, at Baltimore, home Green Bay, at Dallas, playing Minnesota in London, at Pittsburgh, home Dolphins, at Pats, at Jets, Ravens, at Raiders, Niners, or the first 12 basically. So I guess the best chance would be Dolphins, week seven.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  That's their first best chance. I, I, I agree.

• 24:55Bill Simmons?

  Unless they upset somebody, but they'll be.

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  Bengals game, I haven't looked at the lines yet, but they'll be at least like plus, plus five higher. They'll be plus five or higher in every game until that Miami game. So I don't see any case for Cleveland to not be in fourth place and I don't even think they care. I think they're going to use this year to figure out. They paid Miles Garrett. He's now he can't say anything. He took the money. They don't really have a lot of talent anywhere. And, uh, and that's just the way it goes. But the New Orleans, New Orleans, even though that division's obviously worse. That was one of only, I only had two teams that I gave minus twos for their quarterbacks and it was New Orleans and Cleveland.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the thing that's a tiny bit scary with New Orleans is that their offensive line is not horrendous.

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  Right. One, one good thing.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Offensive lines and they do still have guys that, that, you know, you see some spectacular plays out of Chris Olave, some spectacular, Alvin Kamara was like kind of a dog for as long as he could be healthy. Last season, which, you know, he, he's, he's in harm's way quite a bit, especially with Derek Carr.

• 26:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, a lot of it, unfortunately, a lot of it has that concussion. Thing that I think he's had four or five. I just.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  I hate it.

• 26:13Bill Simmons?

  It's hard to pencil him in for an entire season anymore. New Orleans has, I would argue, the least amount of talent in either conference. Combined with this David Carr piece, Derek Carr.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Derek.

• 26:26Bill Simmons?

  Just called him by his brother. That'd be the first of many mistakes in the podcast for me. Derek Carr, whichever Carr, but having to, whatever that salary cap, not being able to plan for QB anyway. So, so we like that. Plus it's plus one 45, New Orleans, Cleveland. And then you can get a little frisky if you want. You can throw Tennessee in there.

• 26:48Bill Simmons?

  For them to be in the fourth place, that's, that was plus 493. Now it's plus 520. Or you can go Cleveland, New Orleans, Miami. If you want to really go nuts, that's plus 724 house. If you think Miami can be the worst team in the AFC East, and I think they can.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  I want to tell you, I have lost some of my enthusiasm for Tennessee as the worst team in the AFC South. Cause when you go in and start looking at. I honest, I, I did this out loud on many of our shows. They were, they had all the hallmarks of a team that was point shaving, except for they weren't. I mean, I wasn't an allegation. They were just were the point shaving Titans. Because their level of special teams play was historically bad. And Will Leans was, I think our, our good pal, Warner Sharp called him a double agent. I mean, no, nobody, he led the NFL in opposing touchdowns, like letting other teams score.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  And he was, you know, a, a, by however many measures you want to use, the worst quarterback in the entire NFL. And so if you.

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  He was certainly the worst quarterback to gamble on last year.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Well, they went two and 15 against the spread.

• 28:07Bill Simmons?

  The first time. Confident and then he would become Will Leans and just pull. Yeah. So it was always better to be against Will Leans.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Two and 15 against the spread. Another historical outcome. So here's, I mean, it's not like a strong case for Tennessee. It's just they got rid of the worst quarterback in the league. Um, and replace him with a rookie and the rookie is a great unknown. Who knows? Um, and they got a legit special teams coach, uh, on the team. So, you know, they.

• 28:39Bill Simmons?

  Congratulations.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  But I.

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  Rookie QB, offensive line might not be horrific. I didn't, they didn't get a minus one. They weren't a bottom five offensive line. Division's not good.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Division's not good.

• 28:55Bill Simmons?

  Another positive.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  That's why I didn't like, I'm, oh, let me plow into adding Tennessee to the parlay. The parlay that we absolutely adore.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  But we did though.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  We did, but I mean, it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same denomination.

• 29:06Bill Simmons?

  We went less units.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 29:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's a Cleveland, Cleveland, New Orleans, Miami, Tennessee, all to finish fourth place is plus 1820. 18 to one odds. I think that's a pretty good long shot.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  The problem with Miami is the Jets are in that conference.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  How the Jets.

• 29:25Bill Simmons?

  Jets have some talent.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  We said this last year.

• 29:28Bill Simmons?

  I know, I know, but they have a better coaching situation. My fear with the Jets is, or a positive fear is they might actually have an identity. I don't know if I like the identity. I don't know if it's identity that will win 10 games, but you know, with fields and they have a better than average offensive line, right?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  They do.

• 29:48Bill Simmons?

  And maybe they're just going to be a pound the ball. Multiple running backs, hard to play, a lot of like 16 to 13 type games. And I could kind of see what they might be.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  All right.

• 29:59Bill Simmons?

  Right. They have enough, enough chippers on defense. Maybe. I don't see it with Miami at all. I don't understand what that team is. And that the first coach fired stuff hasn't come out yet, but I think McDaniel has to be, uh, lingering for that one. Right?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. He's, he's going to be in the top three for sure.

• 30:18Bill Simmons?

  Most shocking one on that list could be Mike Tomlin.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  I just don't see it.

• 30:24Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I just don't see it.

• 30:26Bill Simmons?

  Who else would you have on the first coach fired list?

• 30:29Speaker 01

  I don't know. All of the eligible candidates got fired.

• 30:36Bill Simmons?

  We have so, we have so many new coaches.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:39Bill Simmons?

  I guess like Zach Taylor would have to be mentioned if Cincinnati.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Cincinnati comes out slow again. He'll, he'll, he'll be there.

• 30:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Dayball might be if the Giants are horrific.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Don't you think he'll be, or, or did he get another, you know, years worth of dispensation?

• 30:57Bill Simmons?

  I would have McDaniel first.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that, that's just me. Um, so speaking of divisions, so

• 31:08Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to figure out, we did this, Sal and I did this when we did the over under pod. So I have a final answer on this. But if you go most wins by division and you go least wins by division, it's a good way to think of it. Cause last year, one of the things that helped me with my futures was I went all in on divisions or I was all out on divisions. We had the most wins by a division last year was the NFC North had 45 wins. The year before the AFC North had 43 and the year before that, the NFC East had 43. Those are our top three, 43, 43, 45. So we know the best division in the 17 game schedule is going to be in the 43 to 45 range, which is a lot of wins. You need one really good team,

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  another really good team, and then the other ones are probably around nine and 10 wins.

• 32:00Bill Simmons?

  Who is that this year, House? Who would be your best bet? Cause I'm going to have Fandel do some, uh, some division things for us, like win totals for divisions, divisions against each other. I have a pick. Who's your, who's your most reliable division this year?

• 32:17Speaker 01

  For me, it's the AFC West. I think that they're really kind of built for it. They, they have the best coaches in the entire NFL, in my humble opinion now with Pete Carroll. I mean, you could say whatever you want, make fun of Pete for the last couple of years in, in Seattle, but the culture will change and they have talent and they're headed in the right direction. What we saw out of, of Peyton and Harbaugh, and the way that they immediately arrived and immediately kicked those teams into gear. And then the Chiefs are just the Chiefs. And so, you know, you can get, I see like a 38 to 42 win sort of possibility for those four teams. And I can't get there with any of the other divisions.

• 32:59Bill Simmons?

  So the over unders right now, KC's 11 and a half, Denver's nine and a half, Chargers nine and a half, Vegas seven and a half. So if you add those up, we're at 38.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:09Bill Simmons?

  And if we're going over, if you think that division's actually going to overachieve, that puts us in that range. Here's the, the fun wrinkle. That division plays the AFC South and the NFC East. So you have the AFC South, which I do not think is going to be good. And the NFC East, which other than Philly, if your team goes backwards, if Dallas stays in the middle and then the Giants are bad, it's just probably the best, the best outcome would be South and South. But the, the next best outcome I think is, is this. So, uh, I'm with you.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  You're agreeing with me. Okay.

• 33:48Bill Simmons?

  I am. That was the one I had. That was the one I had as well. The AFC West. I think there's an interesting Vegas case.

• 33:57Bill Simmons?

  Where it's, it's basically just QB coach, which we've seen, you saw it last year on your team.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:03Bill Simmons?

  Change QB, bring in a competent one. Change the coach, bring in a competent one. That's usually worth five wins. It just is, you know? And that team was, I think their record was even a little better than we thought it was going to be last year. But I don't know. Could they go nine and eight?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. The Christian Wilkins thing.

• 34:25Bill Simmons?

  I didn't love the Christian Wilkins thing, yeah. Didn't love that. That was, that was, I thought, a red flag. But then you flip it the other way. Who's going to be the worst? All right, what are the numbers for that? Last year, worst division, AFC South, 25. We thought it was going to be the NFC South. And we did, we had special FanDuel bets. We went under, I think, 29 and a half. It actually did hit, but it, it was a little closer and a little hairier than we thought because Tampa turned out to be pretty good. But anyway, last year, AFC South 25. Year before, NFC South 27. Year before that, AFC South 23. So let's call it somewhere between 23 and 27 will be our range. And the two candidates are the two South divisions.

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  So we have the AFC South. They're playing the AFC West and the NFC West. So that's at least eight of the games plus each other. NFC South is playing the AFC East and the NFC West. So slight advantage to the AFC South. AFC South has Houston nine and a half, Indy seven and a half, Jacksonville seven and a half, Tennessee five and a half. NFC South has Tampa Bay at nine and a half wins, Atlanta seven and a half, Carolina six and a half, New Orleans five and a half. So they're one win less. NFC South is at 12, 29. AFC South is at, AFC South is at 30 for just if you take the FanDuel odds together.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:50Bill Simmons?

  And yet, House? I think I like the AFC South to be the worst division. What do you have?

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I agree with you.

• 36:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna have NFC South. I was ready for it.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  I'm not. And the reason I don't is because I think that Tampa will be good again, but I think that there is, speaking of double agents, speaking of saboteurs, going back and looking at what Kirk Cousins did to that Atlanta Falcons team, it's astonishing. They have a clause of action against that man. They were, they were six and three and that, that offense was, was very good until it got to the red zone. He led the, the Falcons led the league in turnovers in the second half of close games, you know, like games where they were sort of within one score and Kirk Cousins had seven picks

• 36:43Speaker 01

  before he got benched in the second half of close games and finished his, some might say, career with one touchdown and nine interceptions before they finally benched him for, for Michael Penix. I mean, they were, they, that was a legit playoff team talent wise. Now, look, Atlanta had plenty of challenges. They had no pass rush. They tried to address that this offseason, but I think the ceiling for Atlanta is, is high. Now, you know, got to look at some-

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  Higher. I would say higher.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Higher. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

• 37:16Bill Simmons?

  So I had, I had that as well because I actually liked Tampa this year. Like when I did my, at least this first pass of the rankings, I was surprised by how high Tampa was, including the fact that they have one of the best four lines in the league. They brought back continuity and offense, except for the coaches and, and it looks like they're in a pretty easy division. I don't feel as good about Houston as I do about Tampa. So even if you're looking at those two teams versus each other, I just have more questions and concerns with, with Houston.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 37:47Bill Simmons?

  That I do with Tampa. I think Tampa's gonna be good.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  They are good. They had to address their secondary. They were a bottom three defense in terms of of yards per game and overall total passing yards. They just give up a s-ton. They gave up a lot of career games to opposing quarterbacks. So they have to, you know, have some improvement there. And it is, once again, a new offensive coordinator for Baker, but it doesn't seem to matter. You know, he just gets cooking and it's a guy that was already, already there. So it seems like it'll be fine. The talent is good. The offensive line is good. So I like Tampa.

• 38:24Bill Simmons?

  I think it's a little easier when you have everybody back and you have the same system and all that stuff.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Only thing with Tampa is Tristan Wirfs is hurt and out for a little bit. Looks like he might not be there for the beginning of the season. He's a pretty important offensive lineman. So that might be like, you know, you mark him down a game, kind of thing.

• 38:41Bill Simmons?

  I didn't love that piece. But Houston just lost Joe Mixon for God knows how long, you know, so, you know, I'm just a little more worried about them. So we're gonna tell FanDuel, we're gonna try to do an AFC South versus NFC South, some sort of head that they're gonna put a couple futures up on FanDuel that House and I are gonna approve and we'll try to figure out. Before we go, New Orleans, Tennessee, Cleveland, Miami, all to miss the playoffs, plus 109.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Good. Let's do that. Plus money. We like plus money.

• 39:13Bill Simmons?

  Saints, Titans, Browns, Dolphins. I just don't see any of those teams making the playoffs. Miami would be the threatening one.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  That's who messes it up for us.

• 39:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like if the Pats are worse than people think, if the Jets are worse than people think, and they somehow go nine and eight and get a seven seed. On the flip side, Baltimore, Kansas City, Philadelphia, yes, they all make the playoffs. 14 teams in the playoffs. Plus 101.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  That's another one. Plus money.

• 39:41Bill Simmons?

  Who messes it up?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  We like those. Philadelphia.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I can't, I have to, I don't know how to make the case.

• 39:54Bill Simmons?

  I don't know who messes that up, even odds. Let's do that as well.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  I mean, I would say Philadelphia on the theory that first of all, I hate Philadelphia because they beat the hell out of us. But that's no, the reason, here's the thing. If you want to make a case to fade them a tiny bit, it is that they have, you know, significant turnover personnel wise on defense and it takes a minute to get that Fangio defense. That's, that's the best I could do. That's the best I could do.

• 40:19Bill Simmons?

  We're going to take a break and we're going to bring in our buddy Jacko.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:23Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24/7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Nice. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident you're getting the best. You can even add a hashtag hiring frame to your profile picture and get two times more qualified candidates.

• 41:04Bill Simmons?

  Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Simmons. Terms and conditions apply. And now it's time for Rookie Radar, a new segment from Yahoo Fantasy, the best place to play fantasy football this season. It's where we were going to be doing our big Ringer Fantasy Football Draft at the end of August. Starting August 4th, Yahoo Fantasy is dropping 28 big new features over 28 days, giving you more ways to play and draft and win. And whether you're building a dynasty or hunting for that late round gem, it pays to keep an eye on the next generation of stars. Obviously, Gentey on Vegas is going to be a crazy good running back and we'll see how high he goes in the rankings.

• 41:47Bill Simmons?

  I still like Hampton on the Chargers to get a lot of touchdowns. I think he's going to be good right away. My sleeper would be RJ Harvey on Denver because Denver has top four offensive line and I just think. I think he's immediately going to put up points. And then the other one I really like is Tyler Warren in Indianapolis. Cause I think he's as a tight end, I think he's just going to come in and be really good right away. So we'll see. We'll see if there can be more names on that list. Stay tuned and get started by creating or joining a Yahoo fantasy football league today. At yahoo fantasy.com slash Simmons. All right, house is still here. A very special tree for us. My buddy Jacko, it's been a while. We were all together.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  How many years ago? That'd be now be 37 years ago.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Incredible.

• 42:35Bill Simmons?

  You know, I was talking to somebody, a buddy of mine was sending his, his son off to college and we were talking, he had like some two day orientation that they went to the University of Oregon. Where they got to meet everyone. They're going to be the hall. You flew in, you flew back. And I ended up telling him Jacko's story about how he was introduced to his roommate, our friend Nikaiida. And I feel like you could just tell that right now. What happened? So we would get at Holy Cross, they would send us the name of who you're rooming with and a phone number. And that was it.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Right. And an address, I think. So like, I learned that Nikaiida, who is not actually Japanese, although it sounds like it should be a Japanese name. So I'm like, Holy Cross is like 90% Irish. And I'm going to have the one Japanese roommate at Holy Cross, which is fine, but I'm just like, this will be unique. So I called Nikaiida and this to tell you like what a simpler time it was. Like there was no social media of any kinds. There was no like Twitter, Facebook, you couldn't Snapchat, whatever the kids use these days. So you couldn't like see anybody ahead of time. So you would just cold call this person. And you were encouraged to talk ahead of time. And meanwhile, my parents, and to tell you how, what a different time this was. My parents had bought me like a fridge and a hard landline phone, which was a big deal at the time.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  So I call Nikaiida and I'm listing off all these things that I have for our room. And I'm like, I have a fridge and you know, my parents have a phone for our room and we're good with this and we're good with that. And he was kind of grasping at straws to see like what he could bring. And he's like, um, I've got a bunch of hangers. And I'm like, hangers? I'm like, does he think like my shirts are just on the floor right now? Like, oh, thank God, I'll finally have a place. I'll finally have something to do with my shirts and coats. Cause I was wondering what I was gonna do about that. So I felt bad for him. But so we told that story in college and of course Nick and I are fast friends now. But and then like Holy Cross Alumni Magazine, a couple of years ago, had a thing about going off to school and it had all the things you need. And one of them was like a big package of hangers. And I'm like, Aida was ahead of the time. Who knew?

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  He was 30 years ahead of the curb. Yeah, we and now you have a fantasy football team with them called the Wire Hangers.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. So it's lived on. It's lived on. Although you had a similar story because I remember when you called your freshman year roommate and he was like, I have to call you back. I'm entertaining some guests. And you had a vision like he was circulating like a tray with Cheetos on it or something like to all of his friends. Such an awkward thing. It's so awkward. My daughter started college last year and now they encourage you to like, go on, you know, social media and try to find a roommate ahead of time, which I don't particularly care for because if you get rejected, like you start off behind the eight ball, like there's already people you dislike or dislike you by the time you set foot on campus, you know? I don't care for that. But I mean, it worked out for her. She's she's going back sophomore

• 45:27Speaker 02

  year with the same roommate. So it's all good.

• 45:28Bill Simmons?

  Who knew college? Who knew college roommates was like Tinder? Like swipe left. Did you know this house?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  It would have made sense though, because I will say from my own experience, I got paired up with a very nice guy from like central Massachusetts. And I was describing to him my interests and stuff. And I would like really into the Washington DC music scene, you know, the punk scene here. And I was describing, you know, all the, you know, how I spent my time that way. And he tried to connect like he was, you know, we were on the phone. And he's like, well, my high school had punk day, which. We don't get dressed up. It's like, okay, that's a, you know, different kind of thing than what I'm talking about. But, uh, you know,

• 46:13Speaker 02

  House was like, every day is punk day for me.

• 46:17Bill Simmons?

  That's Tuesday for me.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  That's right. It's a day that ends in Y. Um, we were roommates for one year.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  Then you had the great Jeff Mazur.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:26Bill Simmons?

  Um, all right. There's a lot of things we're going to try to do with the three of us. We're going to start here, Jacko.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  All right.

• 46:30Bill Simmons?

  Yankees have not won a World Series. There are kids now turning 21 who are legally able to drink, who don't remember really what it was like when the Yankees won the World Series. They could say they did because they were like four or five. You absolutely detest their GM. You absolutely detest their coach and, um, and you fly off the handle anytime something goes wrong. So now Aaron Judge, who's been Superman, and, uh, now he's hurt. It seemed like there was some Tommy John stuff potentially, but they're saying he's fine, at least for a little while.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Disaster there, yes.

• 47:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I just give us, what, give it, just walk us through your emotions as we head into August.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you could just play any podcast I've appeared on since 2018 and it's the same story. Like literally, like there's no, no updates. It's, it's the darkest time in my Yankee fandom history. I am 55 years young, so I've been a fan cognizantly of the Yankees since about 1977 when I was seven years old. And there's just, there's just no hope. Like, yes, I, you say I fly off the handle. That's true. I can't help but react to some things that, that occur, but I'm like, why are you doing this? Like, what's the point? Nothing's going to change. It's like yelling at like the weather. Like what, what's it doing for me? It's not doing any good. The owner doesn't care. Like it's, we could, we could reenact all this again.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  The owner doesn't care because he gets 40,000 people a night ordering chicken buckets and beers and sodas. And he makes a fortune. So he owns his own TV network. He doesn't care. The GM has a job for life. Like he's been there, you know, I did a thing a while ago. This is like the, he's on the third pope, like the second British monarch and like the sixth president. It's the, it's the biggest job security on earth. Literally, he's been there longer than the Pope and like the King of England. It's ridiculous and he's never ever going to get fired because he's Hal's buddy. They're like brothers. So it'd be like, like, I would think like, if you put me in charge of the Ringer content, right? And I'm like, you're like, John, I don't think we need the 50th

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Hartford Whalers or Pogues podcast. I think like 49 was probably enough. You'd be like, I love you, but we gotta make some changes here. Like it's not working out. House Diamondburner is like, no, it's all good. It's great. I love it. And you have Aaron Boone, who is not fit to lead a pet store, let alone a major league baseball team and the New York Yankees, you know, a multi-billion dollar franchise. The whole thing's a disgrace, but like it doesn't change. And yeah, like they have, and last year I was going to console myself and say, well, you know, they haven't even been to a World Series since 2009, which they won. And they went to one and I'm like, all right, I'll give them a pass. But then they lose the World Series in the most embarrassing, mortifying fashion.

• 49:15Speaker 02

  In the history, one of the, one of the worst performances in the history of baseball. Like that fifth inning in game five, I will still have nightmares about that, like on my deathbed. It's so bad and so horrendous. So like, you can't even give them a break on that because they got through a very weak American league to win a pennant. Okay, a pennant is still a pennant, but you can't like mortifyingly embarrass yourself in your first World Series in 16 years. You just can't. And then they're like, whoa, we're going to come back stronger. We're going to be better defensively and they got worse. Like you can't make it up. They got worse. How do you, and they all have this fake swagger that they get from, you know, special advisor to the owner, Nick Swisher, who was the king of fake swagger and he like runs the organization with Cashman. And they're like, well, the

• 49:58Speaker 02

  league's caught up to us and we're still the best team in the league. Based on what? When Aaron Boone says these things at press conferences, I just want one media member to say like, you have all this confidence. What is that based on? Like what is the, what is it based on that this team is going to rebound and it's all right in front of them and you're going to turn the corner? Based on what? It's delusional. Like it is delusional. It's like me saying, I'm going to win the decathlon in the next Olympics. What is that based on? Oh no, I'm going to do it. Don't worry about that. Based on what? There is no track record or history to say that you're going to do anything. And the media is just like, oh, okay, they're going to do it. It's all right in front of them and writes it down. Oh, the whole thing is just disgraceful, disgraceful.

• 50:35Bill Simmons?

  Wow, House, you thought you had it bad with your baseball team?

• 50:39Speaker 01

  I do have it bad with my baseball team. The Yankees were in the F-ing World Series last year. Yes, yes, it was embarrassing, but they were in the World Series. That is, it's very good. It's a very, they won the pennant. That's very good.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  House, there's a lot of people at Yankee, like younger, and I'm not killing House, I love House, but a lot of like younger Yankees Twitter is like, oh, they've been in the playoffs 20 years, you know, out of the past 22 and they went to the World Series. Listen, that's great if you're the Kansas City Royals. That's fantastic. You could hang up the banner like the 2014 Colts with the AFC finalist banner. Go ahead and hang that. That's great. If you're the New York Yankees, you are the creme de la creme of North American sports franchises. Making the playoffs is not enough. And normally I would give you, I would say, cut them some slack and say, winning a pennant is good. We'll take that. But not when you lose in the way that they did. You just can't lose like that. I went to bed that night after the game and, and my wife had gone to bed before me

• 51:38Speaker 02

  and she said, I was sighing so heavily, she thought someone died.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  I worked with a woman who's, I worked with a woman whose husband is a big Yankee fan. And I went to work the next day and I said, how did your husband take last night's loss? And she goes, well, I went to bed early and then when I woke up this morning, there was a bottle of scotch that was empty on the table. And I'm like, yeah, that's about right. That's exactly right. So you can't tell me, well, we went to the World Series. It was great. When my wife thinks somebody died and another woman I know, her husband drinks a bottle of scotch to console himself after that. Like you can't be like, well, we still got that pennant to root for.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then Cole gets hurt. Now Judge is hurt. And then you have, this is something you and our buddy John Jostremsky has, have been on it forever. This, it's basically Yankee prospect porn where they just tout these prospects that are coming up.

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  So that they don't spend money on other people because they have the next Lou Gehrig's coming up.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:37Bill Simmons?

  The next Eric Jeter's coming up and they did this with Volpe especially.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Big time.

• 52:42Bill Simmons?

  Where they were like, this guy is so special. You're not going to believe it. And now it's turned on him to the point that I actually feel bad for him as a Red Sox fan. Like, I feel bad for him and his family and I hate the Yankees. Like, I hate them almost the most, other than maybe the Lakers, but that's how badly it's gone. Why did they do this with their prospects?

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Well, because Hal doesn't want to spend money and they have to justify it some way. So he didn't want to spend money on like Trey Turner and Corey Seager and even before Volpe was a thing, he didn't want to spend money on Manny Machado and they never went out and got Bryce Harper. And then they're like, there's like a joke about, you know, on Twitter or elsewhere where somebody's like, I want McDonald's. And I think it's like an old Eddie Murphy joke, like we have McDonald's at home. So the Yankees are like, we don't need like an all-star shortstop. We have one at home just waiting, Anthony Volpe. And they overhyped him and he's Italian. So they could play that up because the, you know, the Yankees have a history of great Italian players in New York, largely Italian Yankee fans, DiMaggio and Lazare, the whole, Rizzuto, the whole nine yards. And he grew up a Yankee fan. He grew up in New York. So they're like, oh, this kid, he's going

• 53:44Speaker 02

  to be great. He's awesome. And they put too much pressure on the kid and he stinks. Like, it's his third year and he stinks. And people got all excited because he had a halfway decent postseason last year, but that was like a very small sample size and it turned out to be a fluke and he stinks and he can't hit and he, but he makes up for not hitting by not being able to field either. So it's like, what, what is he doing? And the Yankees always do this where, you know, Clint Frazier was going to be the next great thing. Greg Bird was going to be the next great thing and Gary Sanchez was going to be Johnny Bench. And they do it because Hal doesn't want to spend money and he's, he's enamored of the, of the, of the Tampa Bay Rays business model of doing it, paying, you know, 75 cents for

• 54:25Speaker 02

  a roster. And it doesn't work. And I guess it could work if you had a GM who knew what he was doing, but the GM's been there too long and everybody in the system has been there too long and they don't know what they're doing. And they've shown that clearly. But so Volpe, I almost feel bad for him myself because he can't help that he just stinks. And then fans put too much in him because they're like, well, I guess if we're not going to get a competent major league shortstop, all-star, Anthony Volpe will be that on the cheap and we'll love it. And he's our homegrown guy and prospects and yay. And I read about him in baseball prospectus and all that. It's horrible. Everything's horrible.

• 55:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, at least Torres didn't go to the Tigers and lead off the All-Star game.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, that's a great point. Like when they traded Chapman for Torres and Torres was the number one prospect in baseball and they made another trade where they got Clint Frazier and he was supposedly like one of the top 10 prospects in baseball and the Yankees destroyed both of them. Now, Glaber was okay as a Yankee, but he never lived up to the top prospect in baseball billing. They couldn't get him to run to first base on a consistent basis and they coddled him and they never got the best out of him because Aaron Boone is like your big brother, like managing the team and he's not an authority figure. And he lets him get away with murder and he covers for everybody and you ended up with, like, you know, I had a thing the other day and a guy corrected me because I said they haven't, they developed Aaron Judge, who's a, you know, generational player, who they

• 55:48Speaker 02

  weren't even that high on as a prospect and they lucked out with him. They were higher on Greg Bird and Sanchez and Volpe at later on than they ever were with Judge and they lucked out with him.

• 55:58Bill Simmons?

  And Dominguez.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  But who else have they developed? And a guy said, well, Luis Hill won the Rookie of the Year last year. Okay. He's a pitcher and I think it was probably a weak field and he's been hurt all year. So I forgot about him. But before that, like who's the prospect that this wonderful analytics department of Brian Cashman has developed?

• 56:15Speaker 02

  You can't go back and find anybody that they've developed in their own system, except for Judge and I'll give you Hill, who won Rookie of the Year. But like they washed out on Torres by and large.

• 56:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, they have Schlittler.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  They washed out on Frazier, et cetera.

• 56:29Bill Simmons?

  You got your guy Schlittler.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, they got him and they have this kid Spencer Jones in the minors and they're probably going to trade them for like a, you know, backup third baseman because they don't have or a relief pitcher. That's going to be brutal. So yeah, it's, yeah, they get this. I like Schlittler because he, or whatever he says his name, because he throws 100 miles an hour and you know, they need more of that. He threw like the first game he pitched, he had the six fastest pitches for the Yankees all year, which tells you something else. So I like him, but like, you know, pitchers, who knows if they're going to work out. He looks good in small sample, but who knows? Who knows?

• 57:00Bill Simmons?

  I promise. This is a good faith question. I promise.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  How different, how different do you think the season would be if Juan Soto was still on the team? Because I, I will tell you that I think that they did make a legit effort to, to sign Soto.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  I mean, I think they did too, but I think Steve Cohen was never going to be outbid.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Yankees went to a billion, Steve Cohen was going to go to a billion and $1. And it's very clear when Soto was complaining about losing out on $100,000 bonus for not making the World Series that, I mean, for not making the All-Star team, that he was always going to go to the highest bidder, whatever team that was. So yeah, I do think they made a good faith effort to get him. And I would say like on paper, they getting Bellinger, Cody Bellinger, who's been good and getting Max Fried as like the backup plan were two good things. And, and I think Soto certainly had the capability of masking some of their offensive troubles because they, they haven't been able to get a clutch hit in about 10 years. And it's all like basically home run or nothing for the most part, although their

• 58:04Speaker 02

  offensive stats this year are good, but that's a little phony because it's from a couple of big games. They, they don't have any level of consistency and they don't believe in clutch. And they, I don't know what they teach in the minor leagues, but it's not defense or like any kind of competent hitting. I don't think they teach anything. I think Nick Swisher takes them out to dinner and tells you how to do a home run trot or something. But, um,

• 58:25Bill Simmons?

  Wow. Johnny's more down on the Yankees than I am on the Red Sox. I actually had a big comeback season with the Red Sox and I've watched the fun of the season.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  And you traded Devers and then you got better. It was the Ewing theory. It was the biggest Ewing theory of all time.

• 58:39Bill Simmons?

  It turns out when you trade your overweight superstar guy who won't help the team by playing first base and didn't seem like he was very happy and felt betrayed by everybody. Maybe it was a good thing to have him move on.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Apparently. And he proved them right because he went to the Giants and Will Clark's like, hey, I'd love to meet with you and work on first base. And he was like, no, I'm good. No, thanks.

• 59:02Bill Simmons?

  I think he played, he played there eventually last week. The problem is the Red Sox sold it to the fans as like, no, no. And then we're going to use the Devers money. We'll spend it on, and we're, we're still waiting.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:14Bill Simmons?

  But, but we have these young prospects that are actually, you know, pretty special. Like this Roman Anthony thing is, this is, this is like appointment viewing. This is a rare case of the prospect that they might have actually, yeah, they might have actually not been full of shit. He's pretty great. Even wears my old, the Fred Lynn number 19, which brings joy to my heart.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  How's, when did you know with Bryce Harper?

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Really? I didn't, I was not aware of that.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  Number, how's, what did you know with Bryce Harper when you were watching him?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  What about Bryce Harper?

• 59:44Bill Simmons?

  Like right away?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  What, well.

• 59:46Bill Simmons?

  When you, when they had Bryce Harper, like right away, right?

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Yes, immediately. Amazing. Immediately. Yes. But thank God.

• 59:52Bill Simmons?

  That's what this Roman Anthony thing's like. It's like, he's just clearly has it.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  We've had a wealth of those kinds of things come through Washington, Juan Soto, and now James Wood, who is an absolute goddamn stud, six foot seven, runs the bases so fleet of foot. But the organization is, speaking of abominations, you know, in this holding pattern, because the family that owns them can't figure out how to sell it, you know, for, for, for max price. So they, speaking of teams that won't spend any money. I mean, I'm not.

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  How fucking hard is it to sell a baseball team?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  It's really, it's, it's, it's very peculiar to me.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  Well, I have a question for both of you, because you each hate this team for different reasons. But does it, does it annoy you that the Mets kind of have their mojo back? Jacko, do you care about the Mets at all as a Yankee fan? Or you're just American League only?

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  I never really used to care. I never used to care about the Mets. It was like the Don Draper, I don't think about you at all thing. But then I kind of got my back up a couple of years ago. There was like a Mets, Red Sox game on ESPN and everybody was joyously chanting Yankees suck at the same time. And I got kind of mad about the Mets. I was like, what? I got my back meds. Who the fuck are you? The Mets? Shut up, you know? So I got my back up a little bit. So yeah, I mean, there's always a thing about, you know, who's going to be the dominant team in New York to the extent anybody pays attention to that? Like, who's the big kid on the block? And when they got Soto, you know, they talked a lot of trash. And it was like, all right, the Yankees are in a rough patch, rough, rough decade. But let's not, let's not go nuts about who the big boy in town is, you know?

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  So the Mets are cute, you know, like, let them have their cute little fun.

• 1:01:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're giving them the cute. Oh, I love it. It's dismissive. Jacko is one of my favorite Jackos. If you had Steve Cohen as the Yankees owner, though, you'd be delighted.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I would be in love. Yeah.

• 1:01:39Bill Simmons?

  I would be in love. You would love it too, House.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  I would, of course, I would. I mean, you're kidding me. I, I don't care about the Mets either. The Phil, I care much more about the Phillies and honestly, the Cardinals, because the Cardinals beat the Nationals a bunch of times in the playoffs. I, I, I like them less.

• 1:01:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, I feel really good about not only the Red Sox, but baseball. I, I don't want to say I gave up on baseball, but I definitely took a pretty long hiatus, partly from Mookie Betts, partly for how long the games, we won the four titles, like.

• 1:02:10Bill Simmons?

  But I really did kind of deep down miss it and getting back into it, especially when Tatum got hurt. And just kind of all of a sudden, it kind, they kind of slid into a void in a lot of different ways. But I think the biggest thing that I've loved, and we've talked about it last year too, is just how much faster the games move. And how much more enjoyable it is day to day to be like, oh, it's the sixth inning. And you just have it in your, in your head. You're like, oh, this would be another 45 to 50 minutes. I can actually stay and watch the end of this versus wherever we were before, where you're just like, time stopped. You had no idea how long anything was going to be.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Pitch clock is the greatest.

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Hey, are we going to watch that show? It'd be like, I don't, I, this game might be another three hours. I don't know. Their innovation with that, I think is one of the most important things anyone did this century. Like baseball to me is like pretty entertaining again, and I can't believe they fixed it, Jacko.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Well, especially you and I, you know, veterans of the Yankee Red Sox wars where a game would start at seven o'clock and go until 12:30 in the morning because, you know, guys are stepping out of the box and they're adjusting their gloves and they're shaking dirt off their spikes and there's a million pitching changes and the whole nine yards. So it was like, you know, I gotta go to work tomorrow. Can we please end this one way or another? You know, it was like a marathon. It was ridiculous. So the pitch count is fantastic. It's such a smart innovation and to speed things up, which was, I was obviously, you know, I'm an old school conservative guy. So I'm like, what are we making these changes for? But I'm like, oh, that was actually good. Good stuff. Good job, Manfred.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  I will tell you, my kid, my kid, this is how we're, he turns 15 this upcoming week. We're going up to New York to kind of celebrate. And I said, here's all the stuff we can do. The Yankees unfortunately are not in town when we're going to be in town, but the Mets are in town. He's like, F yes, I'll go to a Mets game. I definitely want to go because he knows that he's not going to be held hostage for hours and hours and hours. And, and he does get to see Juan Soto, who is his favorite player when he was in Washington. But yeah, we're going to go to, he's like, yeah, I want to go see him at the Mets game.

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, my son's the same way. He's been watching more this year, but a big piece of it for him was the MLB, the video game. The video game apparently is fantastic this year. And it's gotten him really into some of the players. And then, you know, they also, I can't believe they figured this out either, but they, the All-Star game was pretty fun to watch this year. And I thought the, the home runoff with Schwaber was, was awesome. Like I, I watched the entire game. I can't, I don't remember the last time I've watched the All-Star game start to finish, basically. And I thought the home runoff was good. Baseball, making a comeback, Jacko, in every aspect except for the Yankees who are the, basically the early 90s Yankees again.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  I wish I could enjoy it. Yeah, that's great. Good stuff.

• 1:05:04Bill Simmons?

  Are you nervous about the Red Sox at all? We're kind of bringing down our necks. I'll beat the Dodgers today.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Part of, I saw that. Part of me is, I really am at the point where I want them at this point to lose as much as possible. And I know nothing is going to change, but I just want them to wear the embarrassment. Like, I know Boone will never leave. Cashman is never, ever going to leave. It's not going to make any difference to Steinbrenner because 40,000 people will go. It's just like a place to go and see and be seen and enjoy the experience. So, nothing will change, but I would like them to have the embarrassment just attached to them like a, like a scarlet red letter.

• 1:05:39Bill Simmons?

  House, can you believe what you're hearing, House? He's spite, he's now spite rooting against the Yankees for the, for, for this sake of a greater purpose.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  I understand. It's a sacrifice and I admire it as a, as a sports fan.

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, House does it with the Wizards every year as he roots for a good draft pick. Let's take a break and I want to talk about golf and true crime with you guys. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you. So they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle. Whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season, whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the

• 1:06:37Bill Simmons?

  weather's fault, you're going to want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weatherTech.com today. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Fire TV. You ever sit down ready to watch the game only to search and scroll endlessly? If so, you need Fire TV. It shows you your live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on Fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required. Feature and content availability may vary. All right. So, I was going to do this with House last week and I forgot. And now Jack goes here. And I know, even though I didn't prep Jacko at all for this, Scottie Scheffler, who crushed the British Open a week ago.

• 1:07:20Bill Simmons?

  And is, I think unequivocally now the best golfer since Tiger Woods.

• 1:07:28Bill Simmons?

  But he's boring, Jacko.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  He is.

• 1:07:29Bill Simmons?

  It's not his fault.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:07:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I know you're, you're the typical, you're a casual golf fan. You will come in for the majors.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:07:37Bill Simmons?

  And it's fun to watch somebody be really good, but something's missing with Scottie Scheffler.

• 1:07:43Bill Simmons?

  And I, I want to dive into this because it's not his fault. I feel bad even talking about it. Sometimes you just don't have it. But do you, I just wanted to make sure you agree with the premise, like this is probably not fixable from a personality standpoint.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. Maybe they could bring in Nick Swisher to coach him on swagger. Like, I don't know. Maybe, maybe Nick Swisher could leave the Yankees alone and go join Scottie Scheffler team and give him a little swagger and he could like fist bump after like a, swing his fist after a big putt or something. But no, it's true. And I've, I've read this. There was just something on the ringer. I'll give the ringer a shout out about it. After he won and, you know, his press conferences are just, and he's sort of matter of fact about it. Like, there doesn't seem to be like even like a lot of joy. He's like an automaton when he wins. And even like getting arrested, you know, during a tournament at the PGA didn't even really make him interesting. And normally that would be like,

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  you know, the guy would be fired up or mad or whatever. And it's just not in his demeanor. He's just like this amazing golf robot. But yeah, that's true. He doesn't, I don't think you get clicks. Certainly not like for Tiger or even for like, uh, you know, DeChambeau or something, right? Or Koepka, like those guys, Rory, right? Those guys bring eyeballs. I don't think he does that at all. Right?

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's weird is the golf audience has been pretty good. But House, I know you, poor House is stuck doing a golf podcast with Nathan where they have to talk about Scottie Scheffler after he beats everybody by, six strokes. House, what do you, have you tried different methods to sound excited after these tournaments? Like, do you drink after? Do I even need to ask?

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Well, I, I, a couple of things. In the, in the first place, he does not possess the outward charisma. He's not even in the same league. We, you know, Jacko just ran through the top guys. Jordan Spieth, when Jordan Spieth was at the top of the game, like magnetic, you know, all kinds of generations coming together because he was a phenom. He was young. He was the golden child.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Sheppler just has, has, you know, been a very quiet kind of executioner kind of style of golfer. Now, there is a personality and the story of the British Open in advance of him going out and kicking everybody's ass was an interview that he gave at the press conference where he talked about getting life fulfillment from something other than than golf, that he liked golf, that he liked to beat the pants off of everybody, but it wasn't the true thing that gave him, you know, joy in his heart. It didn't. And there was a, you know, there was a lot of reaction in the golf community about, you know, wow, he doesn't really have the fire. Like, you know, people were sort of wondering what,

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  what, what he was trying to convey. There is, he's a very thoughtful guy. And when you can get stuff out of him. Now, I will say, I mean, I hope you don't mind. He, he did at the British Open, the Open Championship, let out a very long fart that a boom mic picked up.

• 1:10:38Bill Simmons?

  I heard about that.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  He confessed the fart and it was, it was very funny, you know. So there is something there. He just doesn't exude the charisma. And to the, the observation Jacko made, he was the number one player in the world at the PGA Championship, trying to turn his car into the entrance of the major championship. And the cop stopped him and had no idea who the hell he was and put him in the handcuffs and whisked him away. So that-

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  We've had, we've had some great athletes and it always feels like it's a diss to talk about it. But sometimes like Tim Duncan, House and I revere Tim Duncan. I think he's the best power forward of all time. I'll fully admit, if people were going to say he's really boring when he played, I'm like, I don't really have much of a counter argument. I'm, I'm in like, cause I love Tim Duncan, like,

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no. If you went to the game, like, to watch the way he interacted with his teammates, it was so cool. Still not exciting. It's not like Anthony Edwards.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  I think of.

• 1:11:41Bill Simmons?

  Thanks. John Stockton was another one.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Scheffler as Pete Sampras. I've heard that.

• 1:11:46Bill Simmons?

  Sampras is another.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  And I think that's, that's a good comp because, because Sampras really was excellent for the stretch. You know, when he was on, on top and he had a nice foil with Agassi and Scheffler has like kind of foil with, with should be, it should be Rory, but Rory's a tiny bit inconsistent. It could be Bryson, but Bryson was a little up and down this season as well.

• 1:12:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, here's the, I wrote down a top five signs when a superstar athlete is probably boring.

• 1:12:18Bill Simmons?

  Number one, they're boring.

• 1:12:23Bill Simmons?

  Number two, they play professional golf or professional tennis is usually a red flag.

• 1:12:29Bill Simmons?

  Number three, you feel bad that you think they're boring, which I think we're in that stage here. It's like, I don't even like, we're doing this segment. He seems like a great guy. It's not his fault. We know a bunch of, we have a bunch of friends who it's like, it's not their job to be the life of the party. He's just going and kicking everyone in his ass. Uh, number four. And they did, this happened during the British Open, the announcers were talking, they were trying to almost, almost promote that he's less boring than he used to be, but the way they were doing it was like, well, Scotty, uh, you know, he's made a lot of an effort recently to, uh, to open up and to be more personable and to, to share more. And it's like, well, that's, you're definitely boring if, if outsiders are.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Grasping at here.

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  He's opening up. I remember they used to do that with Sampras. And then the fifth one, which hasn't happened yet, is the media narrative shifting to people worrying that you're so boring, you might actually hurt the sport. Which I don't, House, we're not there yet, right?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  And I don't think golf isn't that way because if he continues on the, the streak that he's on of, of like very high, he's, he's won, you know, he's finished in the top three of 10 of the last 16 majors. He's won four of the last 16 majors. Like if that, those are, those are tiger style numbers. If he continues. On that that accomplishment all by itself is thrilling to the golf community. I don't know the answer as to whether or not you guys will, you know, make it appointment TV to catch the PGA championship because he's up by six strokes, you know, going into a Sunday.

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's just out at that point.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Maybe so.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  It's gonna be, it's gonna be great someday when you look at everybody's legacy and you're like Bobby Jones, you know, the first great American golfer. Ben Hogan, you know, came back from a year after a car crash and, you know, was a superstar. Arnold Palmer, the people's champion and Nicholas, the best ever. Tiger revolutionized the game and Scottie Scheffler, remember that time he farted?

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  The fart hurt around the world?

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  Killer, but he farted that one time. That was something, huh?

• 1:14:37Bill Simmons?

  Maybe farting could be his vice. Well, House, I was thinking two things with him. One, having a reliable rival that where there's like real dislike, I think would really help. So he's just, we're just gonna have to just feed some sort of Bryson versus him or Rory versus him.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  We have the Ryder Cup coming up, so there could be somebody on the European side, either Jon Rahm or Rory McIlroy.

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  Talking shit to Scheffler.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yes, try, trying to get it out of him.

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  The other, other thing is maybe we need to work, maybe he needs like more of a character as a caddy.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Like a fluff?

• 1:15:12Bill Simmons?

  Like a, maybe like a Shane Gillis type. Maybe somebody who's like a complete wild card and Scheffler is super loyal to him, but he keeps offending people with like jokes or I don't know. Maybe there's some, something we could work on with the caddy thing. The only other thing is the, the, the thing that really works is for something bad to happen off the field. And then you have to rally back and come back. Right?

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Bill Simmons?

  The comeback.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:39Bill Simmons?

  We don't want that to happen with Scotty.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:15:41Bill Simmons?

  That's, that's the third way this could play out. But other than this house, I think Ryder Cup is our best chance.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  To, to, to have him be like the, the Rambo in the mid eighties defending America's honor. Then he becomes the patriot and the hero Scottie Scheffler. And now, now I have some momentum with something.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  The challenge with the, what if the USA is down on Sunday, right?

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  And he's the guy that needs to come back.

• 1:16:04Bill Simmons?

  That's right.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  You know, like a miracle on ice deal or something.

• 1:16:07Bill Simmons?

  That would be good.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  And he, you know, he leads the charge to win the Ryder Cup. That would be a good narrative for him.

• 1:16:14Bill Simmons?

  That sounds great.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  The challenge for him is the shadow that Bryson DeChambeau will cast at the Ryder Cup because he has become like, uh, you know, the captain of America. Like he, when he.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  He's the people's champion.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  He's the people's champion. When he beat Rory McIlroy at the US Open down at Pinehurst, they were chanting USA as he was walking up the fairway.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  With his chance to, to win the tournament. So, uh, but Scotty, yeah, well, some kind of comeback thing at the Ryder Cup could help.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  That'd be good.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  Speaking of golf, Happy Gilmore two, Jacko hasn't seen it yet. Uh, I watched it, house watch it. We don't have to talk long about it. Um, you know, it's, it's, if you love the first movie, it's kind of a must watch. I was very surprised by all the cameos. I'm going to hold off on a review. But.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  You don't have to.

• 1:17:03Bill Simmons?

  I'm going to hold off.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  It was, it was terrible.

• 1:17:06Bill Simmons?

  It's, it's. Well, but it was terrible, but it was also good. Like I, I kind of enjoyed having all these people in my life again. House, the most fascinating thing to me is it was basically a two hour critique of the live tour. That seemed to be the actual purpose of the movie is to, to use this fake live tour thing they had as a proxy to make them the villains and. And, uh, and then to just bring in a bunch of actual golfer cameos. And let's just say, uh, probably John Daly, who doesn't golf anymore was the best one, but some of the other ones I, I don't expect them to maybe move into acting full time.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 1:17:44Bill Simmons?

  Be my guest. It's just, there's cameos. It's kind of like they didn't fully have a script, so they loaded as many cameos as they possibly could.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  I enjoyed that.

• 1:17:52Bill Simmons?

  Was there any interesting piece for you with all the PGA golfers that were in there?

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I like very much, um, Adam Sandler sitting at a table with Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus. Uh, and

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that was like, you know,

• 1:18:06Bill Simmons?

  And those guys having to do lines.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, the legends.

• 1:18:08Bill Simmons?

  Fred Couples was there.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  There, yeah, yeah. They kept bringing Fred Couples, uh, blueberry parfait, I think. That was, that, that resonated. Another dessert, Mr. Couples? Oh, why? Yes. Yes, please. That, that certainly struck a chord with me.

• 1:18:21Bill Simmons?

  So it was a little nostalgia ride.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  That's right. I agree with that.

• 1:18:25Bill Simmons?

  It, it was what it was, Jacko. I, I still think Jacko's gonna, Jacko, you'll end up watching it.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, yeah. I'm sure. I'll, I'll tune in at some point. See how much I can take.

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  It's fine. Um, all right. What, but what we really want to talk about on Netflix is the, uh, You Have Me with Missing Girl and a Cruise.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:45Bill Simmons?

  I think Cruise is, this has been a huge summer for Cruise documentaries because Poop Cruise was great. I'll Never Go on a Cruise. Have either of you ever been on a cruise?

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  No, I have. I went on one of the Disney Cruise's. We took my kid for, for his birthday.

• 1:19:01Bill Simmons?

  When was that?

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  I think it was

• 1:19:02Bill Simmons?

  Did you hide that for me?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  His ninth birthday or his 10th birthday, or maybe, uh, somewhere in, in one of those. And he was in a transition year where he was too young to get access to the video game room that he really wanted to be in. And too old, the, the age appropriate room is like, this is boring as F. I don't want no part of, of any of this. So we basically, you know, had to, uh, pay for wifi so he could play some of the video games that he wanted to play. And then, you know, placate him with, with chicken fingers. Um,

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  This sounds worse than the poop cruise.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  He wanted to get off as quickly as possible. As soon as we

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  Came apparent that he wasn't allowed into the video game room that he wanted to be in. We went to shows and stuff. We tried, but he's like, I went off. We made a mistake.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  I'm never doing it. One of the things I love about cruises, and they dive into this and this. It's called Amy Bradley is missing, but one of the things they dive into is like cruises. There's basically like no laws. Once you get in a cruise, you see like that's it. You just don't know anything's possible. Did you know this? Cause I didn't fully know this.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  No, I didn't realize that to the, the extent to which the cruise is like its own entity unto itself, including laws or lack thereof. Yeah. I was unaware, but this, this documentary made it all too aware. I would never, and my, I have two daughters. My daughters will never get anywhere near the ocean, let alone not even on a cruise.

• 1:20:27Bill Simmons?

  That's how I felt. I'm discouraged. All my immediate family from ever being on a cruise. One of the things when the girl, so this, this Amy Bradley goes missing.

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Bill Simmons?

  In the wee hours, like 5:30 house, like she's in the cabin next to her dad who sees her. She's on like the little balcony.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Cabin with her dad.

• 1:20:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah. She's on the balcony.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  For it's her, her 21 year old brother and her parents. They had one cabin and he sees her sleeping on the balcony. Yeah.

• 1:20:53Bill Simmons?

  Right. Maybe she's having a drink or a cigarette or something. And then a half hour later, doesn't see her at all and nobody knows what happens.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Never seen again.

• 1:21:02Bill Simmons?

  One of the great things that, yeah.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that's what I thought. I'm like, why is this three episodes? I'm like, she fell in the ocean. She got up to throw up or she threw herself off the boat and that was ballgame, but it turns out maybe not the case.

• 1:21:17Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Well, they zag against that because, well, first of all, the crews, they don't like send the alarm that somebody's, they let everybody off like three hours later in Caraseo, whatever it's called.

• 1:21:30Bill Simmons?

  Carousel. And that's another, I'm on like six missteps and mispronunciations as part of it. I'm in rare summer form, but they, they let her off. They let everyone off, but they don't know where she is yet. And that actually makes it worse. So then the theories become she's actually out there. She was kidnapped. She's part of sex trafficking and then a couple of different people see her and house. The whole doc is like these people being like, I was in a. Bathroom. And there was, and I knew it was weird because somebody was monitoring her. And then I realized two years later, that's who it was. It was Amy and her family like basically just, I don't know, losing their minds, like trying to figure out what happened to her. Now it's been 25, 26 years, Jacko?

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, since 1998. Yeah.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  Cow.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  And there's, there's like, there's a guy that you, they want you to hate, who was the cruise director. And he couldn't be like any more nonchalant about this. And it was like, did you ever think about like shedding the boat down? And he's like, well, yeah, she was missing, but there was 2,500 other people that wanted to go to Curacao or whatever.

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Right. So, and I was like, yeah, she would, she jumped off the boat, unfortunately, or fell off the boat. But then there's a lot of conspiracies where people seem to see her after the fact. And there's some weird internet things and it's horrible for the family. It's horrific because they, you know, like they still have her car like washed and tuned up and like to come back to.

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  They kept her Miata.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Oh, it's just, I can't even imagine what they go through and it's just gotta be horrific. But, and basically the behavior of everybody involved in this doesn't make like a lick of sense for the most part. Like the FBI, they're like, we can't do that. We can't investigate that. We can't do this. And I'm like, no, but I think you could like, like, what are we doing? What are we doing here? And it seems like things to follow up on.

• 1:23:21Bill Simmons?

  Carisau seems like a lot of shady stuff might be going on there too. Like they're afraid to alert the police and uh, yeah.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  And you think like if you, since we've already trashed cruises, we might as well trash the entire Caribbean too. Like everybody goes to the vacation in the Caribbean and you think like, oh, it's all good at the resort or whatever. But like Curacao had like this underbelly of like mob, mobsterism and prostitution. And it was like areas you can't even go to. And the police are like, eh, you know, I was like, Jesus, it's kind of troubling.

• 1:23:51Bill Simmons?

  Houses, house is going next week now. And house just, house just booked the flight.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Checking a lot of my boxes, Johnny.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  Checking a lot of my boxes.

• 1:24:00Bill Simmons?

  That talking house out of this. Yeah. So the big thing was there was some picture and it was on like a prostitution site that looked like her seven years later. And it really did look like her. That was the one where I was like.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  That was the scary part.

• 1:24:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then there was a thought that maybe she got pregnant and that um.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  They were holding it over her head somehow.

• 1:24:20Bill Simmons?

  The traffickers were like, you'll lose your kid.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:24Bill Simmons?

  There was she, she turned out she came out to her parents and then the question was, is that why she jumped because she was hiding the secret? Her parents didn't accept her. So they go through all the

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  It's a lot.

• 1:24:35Bill Simmons?

  machinations of what might have happened. And then you think it's leading to some ending where it's like, we're going to find out what happened.

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Bill Simmons?

  And then it's like, that's it. We never found out what happened.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  And then you just kind of go from there to, to the internet and you go to like Reddit and hope there's some Amy Bradley site, which of course there is. And it's like 2:30 in the morning and I'm reading the Amy Bradley Reddit site. Trying to find out what the fuck happened.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  And I still don't know what happened.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  It's well done. And they, and they, it's like a big, it's like a three episode unsolved mysteries essentially like, cause it doesn't get solved. And unfortunately for her family, and it's horrible. And my, my wife is currently in Ireland with her sister. I hope she may be at a Coldplay show. I'm not sure, but let's hope. So I was by myself and I'm like, watching it down here in my finished basement and it like freaked me out. And I'm like, I'm like, they're going to come traffic me? Like what? You're not on a cruise ship. Come on, be a man.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  I watched the, I watched the Idaho college murders one too on Amazon. And that's four episodes and probably should have been two. But that one, you know, they do, you guys got to watch that one because basically, and it's a terrible story, but the guy who ends up being the killer is somebody who was studying like criminology and

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Bill Simmons?

  Like clearly like lost his mind and was like, now I want to see if I can commit one of these terrible murders and nobody will be able to catch me because I've gone to school for this. And this fucking dumbass leaves his cellphone on as he drives to and from where the murder sites were. So all they had to do was ping his cellphone. Like, note to all the future murderers out there, leave the cellphone in your house. I don't know, like you, they didn't cover that in his criminology course, apparently, Jacko. I don't know.

• 1:26:16Speaker 02

  That's like, that's day one stuff. It's day one, it's day one serial killer stuff.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Leave the cellphone in your house.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  Speaking of serial killers and Netflix, I just, I'm five years late to the party, but I just banged through two seasons, the only two seasons of Mindhunter.

• 1:26:30Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:26:31Speaker 02

  Which was good. That was so, so good. Oh, that was a great show. And I'm so bummed out that it ended. And then I was like, there was rumors they were going to bring it back. And oh, so well done. It was so good. But yeah, between that, this Cruz one, I've been freaked out a lot, but I'd rather watch these depressing, horrible things than the Yankees. So that's what it's come to.

• 1:26:51Bill Simmons?

  How's your not true crime or you are?

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  No, I, I enjoy it very much. What was the one about the guy in Wisconsin? That I was, no railroaded, the guy who, his family.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  That's like, that's like early COVID stuff. That one. Yeah. What the hell was that called? Making of a murderer or something?

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly. That, that, that, that, yeah. I, I thought that was, uh, very riveting. I enjoyed it very much. And the, and the murder, the, the podcast that turned into getting the conviction overturned here in, in the, in the, up and near Baltimore.

• 1:27:30Bill Simmons?

  I think this true crime stuff is never gonna end.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  No, people love that.

• 1:27:34Bill Simmons?

  It's one of the few things you can watch, like if you're a couple, it's kind of a something for everybody, which a lot of these shows don't. Johnny, there's a show on Netflix called Hunting Wives that I would recommend.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  It's a, somebody else was just talking about that.

• 1:27:48Bill Simmons?

  It's a scripted, uh, just a lot of nudity and, and a very horny show about these Texas house. It's, there's murder. You get to see a dead body early. So you know where you're in for. And then, uh, it gets, it gets really horny and it's right in your wheelhouse. I've known you for a long time.

• 1:28:03Speaker 02

  Just watched, uh, Your Friends and Neighbors with friend of the pod, John Hamm, your friend. That was a good one.

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  That was a good one. All of these shows start with the murder in the first minute and then we go backwards.

• 1:28:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  That's, that's the model. So if, uh, if we ever do the Scotty Scheffler story to make it more interesting, it'll start with his caddy being murdered in the first minute.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  And then hopefully somebody left their cellphone behind.

• 1:28:27Bill Simmons?

  What do you, House, could we get him a more exciting caddy like in wrestling when uh, when they would give the boring wrestler a good manager, like a fun manager?

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  A lot of people would say that his caddy is the like, the thing that, yes, yes. Cause the guy caddied for Bubba Watson before and won two masters with Bubba Watson and now has all these majors being on Scotty's bag and they have a symbiosis. They're both, you know, they have the same religious background and religious belief. They, they pray together or there's a whole thing with the family. So it's probably not gonna happen.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  All right. We've answered it all. Ryder Cup is the key. Jacko's turned his back on the Yankees and don't go on a cruise.

• 1:29:08Bill Simmons?

  House, great to see you as always. Jacko, a true pleasure. I'm glad you're well. Talk to you soon, my brother. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  Anytime. Thanks.

• 1:29:17Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Excitement is in the air. That's right. It's the start of NBA season. I can't wait to get together with friends, share some Michelob Ultras and watch Tip Off. Plus, as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting you closer to the action with the experiences that make you feel like you're courtside to actual courtside tickets. Enter now for a chance to win at michelobultra.com/courtside. Michelob Ultra Courtside 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Opening US residents 21 plus. Begins on October 1st, 2026. Ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes and details.

• 1:29:58Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Core Power Protein Shakes. You know how we always talk about the little things that separate great athletes? Post-workout recovery is a big factor. Core Power Protein Shakes help you keep going after your workout with high-quality protein to build muscle and electrolytes to help hydrate. It's all you need for your recovery in one bottle. Available in 26 and 42 gram protein options to pick what works best for you. Visit corepower.com to learn more. All right, we're taping this Sunday afternoon. He already wrote about Hulk Hogan for the Ringer.com, a great website, talked about in the Ringer Wrestling Show. David Shoemakers here. We've been working together since 2011. There's been a lot of ups and downs with wrestling. We worked on the Mr. McMahon documentary series together. Knew

• 1:30:40Bill Simmons?

  the Hulk Hogan day was going to come at some point. Age 71, very complicated death. It's interesting when somebody has this outsized importance on a sport, or in this case, a, what do we call it now? Professional entertainment sport, sports entertainment, whatever we're using these days.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  I've gone full circle to just saying sport again.

• 1:31:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's go back. We'll go back. Somebody who was like, basically, he wasn't Babe Ruth for this sport, but more like Michael Jordan. And then the last 20 years becomes this huge part of the legacy. I want to go, I want to skip all that and come back to it later and just go back to the 80s specifically and what happened. And you wrote about a lot of it.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Bill Simmons?

  Does wrestling become wrestling without Hulk Hogan is the big question. And everyone has asked this. Dave Meltzer wrote about it in his newsletter this week about, could you argue that a lot of this stuff might have been in motion already? The grease, the greases were skidded. The skids were greased?

• 1:31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Bill Simmons?

  I still feel like it had to have him involved for it to happen.

• 1:31:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, listen, in everything in pro wrestling, there's a lot of what's accepted as truth or what's told as truth is just BS, right? Everything's sort of a work. Everything's trying to get the storyteller over, put forward some angle. So, truth is really hard to come by. I do think that, that wrestling going national would have happened with or without Vince McMahon, with or without the WWF, with or without Hulk Hogan, for that matter. I think, you know, it was already on some cable TV networks. And as those things expanded, I think that, you know, Georgia Wrestling, or if it was the Crockett's, whoever it was, the AWA, World Class, somebody would have become a real big national promotion. But it's undeniable that Vince McMahon had a very specific eye for a certain style of

• 1:32:33Speaker 03

  this professional wrestling that really worked on a national level, in and out of almost everybody's lives. And Hulk Hogan. Was undeniably a big part of that. Even if you just look at the whole, the Hogan part, I, I've tried to run this counterfactual in my head so many times. Like, what if it was Dusty Rhodes? What if it was Paul Orndorff? What if it was, you know, what if, what if superstar Billy Graham had been at his peak right then? What, you know, what if it had been Ric Flair for that matter? Like, there's so many things. I think it could have worked. I still find it hard to believe. I mean, Dusty's really, you know, Vince dropped a bomb on us that he was considering Dusty when we were doing the documentary. He was considering Dusty for that Hogan spot. And I mean, Dusty's the only guy with that level of sort of babyface star

• 1:33:17Speaker 03

  power. Um, but I think-

• 1:33:20Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it works with him the same way.

• 1:33:22Speaker 03

  It's just not, like, I mean, I started watching wrestling as a kid because it was like real life comic books. You know, it was like, it was the, it was the muscles. It was the screaming. It was the, you know, it was the monologues. Um, Hulk Hogan was just a real life toy, a real life superhero. And there is just, and he was just incredibly special as a performer, even though it's easy to look back now and say, his matches were repetitive, his storylines were repetitive, you know, whatever you want to say. He was just an incredibly special performer.

• 1:33:56Bill Simmons?

  Repetitive is a compliment. It was the same formula every time. So I think it was three things. I think it was Vince. I think it was Cable. And I think it was Hulk Hogan.

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Bill Simmons?

  But I think the Cable piece was the most important because Cable was, pushed everything from local to national. You know, when I was growing up on the East Coast, we got WWF and I didn't even really know there were other, you know, wrestling federations. I remember being in Boston, um, after my parents got divorced and, you know, spending weekends with my dad and stuff in the mid eighties and they had Texas on. And, uh, being like, what's this? There's, you know, you only knew it from the wrestling magazines, never saw any of those guys. And then all of a sudden they were, they're on. So stuff was popping up, but, uh, I think the Cable pushing it national was a big piece. Vince having the vision to understand that this was happening in the moment and trying to mobilize, like, I have to beat everybody else to this spot.

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  But I don't think it happens without Hogan. And I think if he doesn't have Hogan, I think he tries to beat people, but I think the the the South has a much better chance maybe to go national because they had TBS already, right? And I think maybe TBS in the South, and if Ric Flair had become the biggest star, maybe if Kerry Von Eric doesn't get in a motorcycle accident. There's some what ifs on that side that it plays out differently. And maybe they're and maybe they're the ones not WWF. It needed to be Hogan.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  I think so. I mean, I just don't think you can overstate the degree to which Hulk Hogan just worked in mainstream pop culture in those days. For one thing, he was six, whatever he was, they said six eight. He was he was a legit six, five, you know, back in those days. And he would go on The Tonight Show or whatever and just tower over everybody. And that in the in the days, you know, I mean, obviously wrestling's always walked this fine line between how real it is and how how how kind of wink wink they're being in public. But two, it's earliest days. The most important thing was to have wrestlers look like guys who could beat you up. Right? So Hogan like Hogan, but Hogan looked like that guy. But he also was a sort of circus clown personality. He could go on these shows and laugh at himself and laugh at everybody else, you know, and and

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  and he fit on MTV, you know, he fit on, like I said, late night shows. He was just sort of, you know, I think people looked at him. We had the Dolly Parton bit in that documentary early on. I mean, there was, I think people just looked at him and they immediately could process what they were looking at. And part of that was that it was a wrestling that was somewhat self aware because he was so corny. You know, but but also just so cool.

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  Well, you can't overstate Rocky III. And when we were working on the Mr. McMahon doc, Rocky III was such a big part of it because Rocky III was, you know, Star Wars was the biggest multi sequel franchise we had, but Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III was in the conversation and his cameo.

• 1:36:48Bill Simmons?

  Extended cameo in Rocky III, which I, it was funny. I was on a text this weekend with Sal and Gus and a couple of other people. We were like, where, where does Thunder Lips just rank in the Rocky characters rankings? Like just for like, just, just characters who just hit a home run. And Thunder Lips is just in the top five. He comes in, it's an all time Dion Waiters performance that we, we talked about on the rewatchables and just crushes six minutes of it. And it was just so clear. He was this larger than life wrestling star. And after that happened, then I didn't, you know, he was at AWA, which I think they were running some stuff on ESPN, but I don't really remember seeing him that much. I was watching a ton of wrestling, but I do remember the whole storyline with Backlund, the Sheik beating

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  Backlund, Hulk Hogan coming in as reinforcements for Backlund. Then I watched, I watched him win the title live on the MSG network.

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Bill Simmons?

  At that point I was in Connecticut. My parents had been divorced. I was there and it was on and it was, it was, I can't tell you how exciting it was.

• 1:37:47Speaker 03

  I came along right after that. I was actually repeating that. I wrote about this in the piece. I was going back through the timeline saying, I remember being, I remember where I was and I watched that, where I was and I watched that. And I almost said, I remember being in my, in my TV room when, when Hogan beat the Sheik. I was like, no, no, no. I wasn't watching it. I started watching because Hogan beat the Sheik because of this like tidal wave of like, you know, popularity that came after that.

• 1:38:10Bill Simmons?

  It just felt, it felt new because Backlund had gotten stale and I think he'd had four and a half plus years and he was just this baby faced All American. And it just, it felt a little stale. There was other stuff going on, other battles, other villains and Andre was looming over everything, but it just, it felt like we needed, we needed, we needed a hero, which was where we were in America because that's when Stallone has first blood. That's in 82 or 83, but leads to Rambo first blood too in 85. We have Schwarzenegger coming in. We have Ronald Reagan taking on the Russians. And we did this when we did the documentary, this little section about like, you know, testosterone superheroes defending America. Hulk leaned into that as, as much as anybody. Like after they changed

• 1:38:55Bill Simmons?

  the Eye of the Tiger song and he does the real American. Like this was a real way to market yourself. I am your patriotic superhero. It wasn't going to happen with Bob Backlund.

• 1:39:04Speaker 03

  No, I mean, and Bob Agland, in some ways, in the more traditional lens, might have fit that role a little bit better, but it was just a different casting call when it came to 80s pop culture, right? I mean, it was, it's exactly like you said, the competition, you know, when pro wrestling is at its best, it's not competing against pro wrestling, it's competing against other things in the mainstream. And you're, I mean, what is competition then was those action movies, you know, I mean, that, that was it. For me, like I said, younger, I mean, it literally, wrestling literally came on after Saturday morning cartoons. So at some point, you just got, you, you, you were watching, you know, the, these muscle bound dudes on cartoons, and then you just sort of got old enough to watch the real thing. You've, you matured at six years old or whatever.

• 1:39:42Bill Simmons?

  Well, it was never cool either. And that, that's one of the things that shifted in the mid 80s was as it became more mainstream, there was this weird validation that came with that. Like, ah, maybe I'm not a fucking complete loser. Like, it's, this is now on MTV. Like shit's happening.

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, we've been through, I guess, three of those at least now in our lifetimes where wrestling got cool again. And, and, and everybody, and every wrestling fan has that same feeling every time. Remember, I talked to the guys who, who filmed the curtain call video in the, in the Attitude Era days, and they were told their story about meeting each other. They were like, we were the only two guys wearing wrestling t-shirts at high school. And then everybody started wearing wrestling t-shirts, you know? They were, they were kind of despondent, you know, they're like, ah, we're not, we're not, we, we, we didn't want to be nerds, but now we were sad that we're not unique. But yeah, Hogan, it really did just change everything, man. I mean, like, you know, I think I was always the biggest wrestling fan amongst my friends, you know, when I was, when I was a kid, but everybody was into wrestling. Like every, every boy that

• 1:40:44Speaker 03

  I grew up with, like, could tell you what happened on Saturday Night's main event, you know, and Hulk Hogan was such a big part of that. The other big part of every big wrestling movement moment is expansion. And they went from, you know, zero pay-per-views to, I think they were at three when Hogan left the first time, but there's, you know, these huge, they went through closed circuit, they went, you know, do, onto pay-per-view, and then the Saturday Night's main event phenomenon. And that's to say nothing of the MTV shows and all this. I mean, that, I mean, it was just enormous as a cultural influence at that point in time.

• 1:41:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there was this little checkpoints. I think Thunder Lips helped. Hogan coming over, Hogan winning the title and that becoming like a huge thing. The slaughter versus sheik kinda showdown, that really helped from a, from a, just where we were in a cold war standpoint. MTV, having Cyndi Lauper. Kind of be involved and, and make it seem like she thought wrestling was cool. It was like, okay. And then WrestleMania, um, but even after WrestleMania, it was on USA, that, that Tuesday night Titan show was like a talk show. Vince Hook Band did the Letterman anniversary thing. That was a big deal.

• 1:41:51Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:41:51Bill Simmons?

  And then Hogan just started selling out everywhere and the mainstream media started writing about it, talking about it, doing news segments about it. I still feel like after he won the title, that first year or so that he had, um, he was about as big as any athlete, sports entertainment. Like this dude's just selling out NBA, he could have sold out NBA arenas and you name the city every night, night after night. It just didn't matter. Everyone went to go see him or wanted to see him.

• 1:42:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:19Bill Simmons?

  That was it.

• 1:42:20Speaker 03

  I don't know if it was, I think it was Alvarez actually who said, uh, that you put Hogan's name on the marquee and it sells an extra 4,000 tickets that day. You know, like it's just, and that's, you know, it's just immediate name recognition. People buy tickets and it was, I mean, the business just blew up. It was, it was absolutely crazy. And I know, I mean, and there were times, I have one memory, I wrote about it in the piece about seeing Hogan when I was pretty young. And I was trying to find the date of the show and get it all specific. I look back and they had three house shows in one night. On the night that I saw them, they were all in Kentucky. They were also working in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Like they were just going wall to wall with this product because of, in large part because of this celebrity that Hulk Hogan brought.

• 1:42:58Bill Simmons?

  And a lot of the stuff he was doing had been done in different forms before him. It wasn't like he was Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. But he elevated or perfected certain things, like when Paul Orndorf turned on him. Cause everyone always points to Macho Man turning on him, which was the most famous one. And that was on the main event show at that point, but. Orndorff turning on him, which was basically the Zbysko San Martino. Wait, I thought we were, I thought you guys were buddies. You, oh my God, you turned on him. I mean, that's, that's, that's been wrestling 101. But when that happened and then Hogan just, we just had this steady stream of either he was buddies with them and the guy turned because they were jealous. They couldn't be Hogan, so they had to, they had to like get him back.

• 1:43:42Bill Simmons?

  Or um, just like these weird villains that would come in out of nowhere.

• 1:43:46Speaker 03

  Oh, the bigger the better.

• 1:43:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, big monsters that our patriotic superhero had to defeat. And it's the same recipe. They would beat the shit out of him. They would beat the shit out of him. He'd Hulk up, he'd come back and, and the match would end the same way every time.

• 1:44:01Speaker 03

  Finger and, and yeah, wag the finger, punches the face, clothesline, leg drop. It was a, it was, it was a tried and true, tried and true recipe. And you're right, they did. I mean, the Orndorff thing was similar to the Zbysko San Martino thing, except the same thing with Orndorff and Macho Man. If you look back, Hogan's kind of actually the asshole in all those situations. Like he was, like that's sort of the low key thing about Hogan through his career is he wrestled like a heel. He sort of was a heel to his friends, but he was still the babyface in, of record. He was still the one that they were, had to turn against. And talk about repetition, one of his, one of my least favorite Hogan moments, when he came back at WrestleMania nine, after Bret Hart lost to Yokozuna to just be, to, to take the title from Yokozuna.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  That was the same thing that happened with Backline of the Sheik, basically. He came back, led by, you know, they, he, he's like, I'm buddies with the, with the, with the champ, the now ex champ. But I'm just going to take the belt while he's, while he's out of the picture. He's, he's kind of a jerk at times in character, but people kind of love that, you know, they loved him no matter what he did. I think that's what made Hogan so irrepressible. But you're right to mention those moments. I mean, after WrestleMania three, when it was him and Andre, and we don't have to skip over that entirely. I mean, you know, WrestleMania, I mean, the, the Macho Man match at WrestleMania was absolutely huge. The mega powers colliding. And then the Warrior match where he was supposed to pass the torch to the Ultimate Warrior, did pass the torch to, in a very good match at WrestleMania to the Ultimate Warrior.

• 1:45:29Speaker 03

  But that was sort of it.

• 1:45:30Bill Simmons?

  Massive matches. Well, I mean, going back to Andre, which I should have mentioned sooner, which has been written about and discussed ad nauseam. And we've been involved in multiple documentaries about that one.

• 1:45:40Speaker 03

  And heard multiple versions of the events from Hogan himself.

• 1:45:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, Hogan couldn't keep track of what, uh, what he told us, but I, I can just say this, like, the Leonard versus Hagler fight was within two weekends of it, and it might've even been within one weekend of it. And Leonard coming out of retirement, Sugar Ray, to fight Hagler. And it was just like one of the biggest boxing fights of all time. Everyone was so excited about it. And Hogan, Andre was around there. And I love both. And I was equally excited for both.

• 1:46:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:16Bill Simmons?

  Like, that's, that's, it felt like they were on par, that this matchup was on par with the biggest possible boxing event that we could have. And that's just where it was. And it kept going. And the Macho Man, I think that's been underrated over the years, how big that was and how they used main event. You look back at some of the main event ratings. What did I send you that one time a couple of months ago? I texted you how it was like 26 million people watching, watching one of the main events?

• 1:46:41Speaker 03

  The, the Hogan-Andre main event that, that had the, the twin referees.

• 1:46:46Bill Simmons?

  Another famous moment.

• 1:46:47Speaker 03

  I think that, I think I just, I think it was, it was either, I think it was 33 million people, which is still the, I mean, a record. Yeah.

• 1:46:53Bill Simmons?

  That would be bigger than, than a Super Bowl now. Yeah, that was the other thing with Hogan. You know, there were so many, so many things like that were going on, but there was some great unintentional comedy with him when he would try to act, you know, like, uh, when he would, when, the pinnacle was him versus Macho Man over Miss Elizabeth. In the hospital room and Macho Mantone, "You got jealous eyes."

• 1:47:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17Bill Simmons?

  "You got jealous eyes." And Hogan stood there, "What do you mean? What do you mean, Macho?" And it's just, so we're, we're kind of making fun of him as we're idolizing him in the 80s.

• 1:47:28Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:47:28Bill Simmons?

  This guy's a complete idiot, but we love him anyway.

• 1:47:31Speaker 03

  It's totally true. I mean, listen, he got, in the, in the Hogan-Andre feud, in the, in the, uh, the Piper's Pit segment where, that sets the whole thing up. Uh, when, when, when Andre grabs his shirt and tears it off, he unintentionally grabbed his necklace and tore it off too. And it cut Hogan in the chest and Hogan was holding the necklace and he's bleeding.

• 1:47:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:50Speaker 03

  And, and aside, but that's one of those serendipitous things that makes wrestling so amazing because without the blood.

• 1:47:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Speaker 03

  He, he's doing the same shit you were just describing. He's like, "Why, Andre? Why?" You know, and, but, but the blood makes it feel like a real moment. And we're just all totally roped in. I mean, Andre was also, of all of those big menacing bad guys, probably I think the only one who was really bigger than him. Who looked like he could beat up Hulk Hogan. So, uh, um, that, that was, that helped a lot too. And of course Andre's history. I mean, he was just terrifying.

• 1:48:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And meanwhile, he could barely move. So, so you have Hogan, much like Stallone, much like Schwarzenegger, much like some of our other favorites from that era. Where there's like unintentional comedy. They're a one-on-one. We love them. Um, it's, there's a question of how long, how long can you keep this going? How long, what's the shelf life of a gimmick like this? And we hit the 90s and he's had this, you know, phenomenal run, but then we have the steroid trial. He's still doing, he's still hulking up. It's just not working the same way. The crowd's starting to flip a tiny bit. And it leads to him eventually starting to do TV shows, going to WCW, but then improbably ending up with this other incredible moment.

• 1:49:06Bill Simmons?

  You know, with, with this, with WCW and NWO and him becoming the third man and him, Hogan going heel, which. Is in the running for biggest wrestling moment of all time. I don't know if it's first, but it's in the top four, right?

• 1:49:21Speaker 03

  Oh, um, dude, I feel like I should have an answer prepared for this. Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely up there.

• 1:49:28Bill Simmons?

  If you're doing the top four, it has to be mentioned.

• 1:49:30Speaker 03

  It's, it absolutely changed everything. Is it the biggest moment of Hulk Hogan's career? I mean, maybe you can make the case that everything he did led up to this moment. Like it was the culmination of, of 30 years in the ring that, that made it so poignant.

• 1:49:45Bill Simmons?

  Well, and to reinvent, to reinvent something that seemed like it had run its course.

• 1:49:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Bill Simmons?

  I think is one of the hardest things to do, you know, it's like, we've seen athletes try to, it was like Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay. Even that seems somewhat realistic. Hogan reinventing himself, becoming the biggest heel in the business and basically flipping WWE versus WCW. It was like the odds on that were like a hundred to one.

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  No, it was, it was really, I mean, it was really improbable. And you know, just like in a wrestling match where you got, if you have a big moment coming, you kind of like, they, they, they lower the stakes a little bit for like the four minutes leading up to it, you know, they're not going to do anything too crazy. They accidentally did that in WCW by making his first couple, his first year and a half there, just the most boring thing possible, you know, because they're just replaying the hits. It was just like a fake, it was like, it was like what, what wrestling is in a movie, you know, just this, just silly Hulk Hogan feuds against people you didn't care about. And then all, but you know, the announcers are there, Tony Schiavone, God bless him, screaming his head off, like this is the most important thing in the world. When he came down to the ring to take, you know, to, to presumably take on the outsiders and then he joined them.

• 1:50:53Speaker 03

  I mean, that was just an absolutely irreplaceable moment in pro wrestling.

• 1:50:59Bill Simmons?

  He's the third man. No. So he gets like one more year out of that. And then it seems over again. WCW completely falls apart. There's some great stuff that I, in the couple of days after he passed, uh, some stuff I even forgot about, like the, the 2000 bash on the beach and, um, just when it's, it's gone so bad. We're like almost Dirk Diggler jerking off in the church parking lot level, like grizzly. That's how bad it goes. But then we had the merger. He comes back. And then he has another iconic all time moment against The Rock in WrestleMania, which probably the best moment of the whole match was when they're just in the ring beforehand,

• 1:51:41Bill Simmons?

  staring at each other and the crowd's going apeshit and they just kinda do the facing different directions move, just kinda soaking it in and he ends up winning the title. I think I even wrote about this for ESPN the magazine about like Hogan's last comeback. So this was the last great thing for him.

• 1:51:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, the WCW NWO run was, it was just a few years and it had some great moments. You know, everyone remembers the Sting feud. Everyone remembers, you know, Goldberg in the Georgia Dome. Everybody remembers, you know, Hogan versus losing the title of Lex Luger, which was an incredibly transformative moment if you were at just the right age to really love Lex Luger. It was, I mean, there's a lot of good moments, but by the end, he was just, you know, the internet had come to exist and Hogan was sort of got, was one of the first guys that really got saddled with the baggage of being a guy who was like kinda hard to work with backstage or had too much creative control. Let's just say it wasn't really, yeah.

• 1:52:38Bill Simmons?

  He had both.

• 1:52:39Speaker 03

  And, and I mean, listen, the moment that he passed on, I got like five texts in a row that were just like some version of the joke he said to St. Peter, "That's not gonna work for me, brother." You know, like, like that's, that phrase is just everywhere, you know, when it comes to any joke about wrestlers being hard to work with backstage. But, you know, he had all this baggage and it, and then not coming over immediately when WWF bought WCW was not his fault at all, but like it kinda saddled him with a little bit more. When he finally showed up, you know, we were excited to see the NWO again, but like, you know, no one quite knew Hogan was not just like, it wasn't not a triumphant return for him until that match. That match against The Rock was.

• 1:53:24Speaker 03

  Another just, a moment can only exist in wrestling where the entire, I mean, God bless Canada, the entire crowd just decided, we will accept you back, Hulk Hogan. And that's what happened in this match. He enters as the heel, he walks out as the biggest babyface that business has ever seen once again. And, you know, I don't want to rewrite history, but if he had hung up the boots that night, he probably would have gone down as the greatest wrestler that ever lived, like full stop. You know, I mean, people would still be making the case for the guys who could work better from bell to bell, you know, like Flair and Macho, whoever else, but like, but I mean, Hogan, I mean, that was, that was the, that to me, I was the end. I don't, I don't care about the McMahon feud, you know, it was just sort of another, just, they, I mean, they kind of, they had to do it, but whatever.

• 1:54:09Speaker 03

  The Mr. America run was funny, but whatever.

• 1:54:11Bill Simmons?

  Him winning the title is probably the epilogue. And then anything after that, literally everything after that, you could probably toss in the, in the garbage bag. Cause so the, the cheat sheets were bad for him. Once that really started, the dirt sheets and the, what did I call them? The cheat sheets? No, I'm washed up like Hogan. The dirt sheets. The, that was bad. Cause that was the first time people like us were like, wait, Hogan's a dick?

• 1:54:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:40Bill Simmons?

  I didn't, wait, Hogan, everybody hates working with him?

• 1:54:43Speaker 03

  It wasn't even so much that he was a dick, because it was just that he had the, the power and the influence to demand creative control in his contract. And they said, yes, you know, like, he's like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna stop doing Thunder in Paradise unless you give me creative control, you know? And they're like, okay, we'll get, and the people that are paying this money don't, I mean, this isn't the promoters, they don't, this is Time, this is Turner, you know, I mean, like, this is, this is the whole, the big parent company. They just think Hulk Hogan's famous, whatever it takes, we'll bring him in. But then yeah.

• 1:55:09Bill Simmons?

  Unfortunately, every instinct he has was, and then Hulk will come in and Hulk will pin so and so.

• 1:55:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:55:16Bill Simmons?

  And here's my idea.

• 1:55:18Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, that's what almost every wrestler thinks. He also did help out a lot of people along the way. You know, I talked to Kevin Sullivan before he passed along, and he was leading that Dungeon of Dooms table that Hogan was shooting with before the NWO. And he was like, oh yeah, all those guys were just Hogan's buddies. And Hogan, and, and we just had to keep him employed. So I just made this thing up for everybody to do something. You know, that was just, Hogan, Hogan had a lot of dudes, Brutus the Barber, you know, the, the nasty boys who kept jobs for a long time because they were associated with him. So I guess, you know, I'm sure they're gonna miss him especially.

• 1:55:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, sometimes this happens. Sometimes you die at the perfect time for a career move. Not obviously for for yourself, because dying dying is never a win. But from a career standpoint, sometimes people can die at the perfect time. People can last way too long. Or in some cases, the post-career stuff can then overshadow whatever happened in their career, which I think is a big piece of what I mean, the the scandal with him and Bubba, Bubba the Love Sponge and the sex tape and the all the N word stuff and the racist stuff. Like, it's just, it's really rough and and he was never really apologetic enough about it. You know, and then even when he went to talk to the roster, that apology didn't work and.

• 1:56:33Speaker 03

  That might have been the worst part of it. I mean, I went back through as I was writing my piece. And this is so morbid, but I was like, if he had died, like, what are the moments that he could have died? And he would have been remembered purely positively. I mean, it's kind of any moment before that tape came out. But really, if he had, I mean, listen, he had all this success in Japan before his WWE run. If he had, if he had, like, you know, just disappeared, I won't say died, just disappeared after WrestleMania one, it would have been like, you know, Jim Morrison, like, it would have been one of these like crazy, like, look at this run and then he's just gone. And like, whatever.

• 1:57:04Bill Simmons?

  I was used to say that about the Smashing Pumpkins guy.

• 1:57:07Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:08Bill Simmons?

  If he had just disappeared in 1998 and nobody ever saw him again, we would be like, genius.

• 1:57:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:57:13Bill Simmons?

  Cobain, Corbin, like, sometimes that's, and then sometimes all the stuff you do after ends up infecting how you think of the best stuff.

• 1:57:21Speaker 03

  It's true, but like, yeah, it was basically the past, if anything, before the past 15 years. And he would have just been the greatest icon this business has ever seen. I mean, Hogan's knows best. The reality show wasn't like deplorable. You know, it was just like, you understood why he did it and it kind of made him look like a goof and kind of weirdly obsessed with his daughter. But like, you get it. Like, it was, it was cool that there was a wrestler getting that kind of attention. But yeah.

• 1:57:45Bill Simmons?

  The Raw was the shocking one. Did you go to that first Netflix Raw? I can't remember.

• 1:57:50Speaker 03

  No, I was not there. I was not there. I was watching it at home, but the boos were just as loud in my home theater.

• 1:57:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my Lord. I went with Ben. You know, and Ben's always, he's not reading up on what the legends, how they're fucking up their lives post-career. He just knows Hogan from the wrestling stuff. And Hogan came out. And it wasn't like, oh, some people are booing him, some people are cheering him. This was like just passionate boos. And the most fascinating thing about it,

• 1:58:20Bill Simmons?

  you know, in the old days, he would have fed off the crowd and flipped. And he would have been like, oh, I'm getting a ton of heat right now. Let me actually play off that and be like, how dare you? You guys are so ungrateful. Everything I did for this country. And he just would have flipped it the way, honestly, Rock kind of flipped it a little bit during the lead up to WrestleMania last year. But he didn't and he seemed like he was just going through his plan. He was confused. He had Jimmy Hart behind him waving a flag. And it was awful. It really was like, and I think it would have been a bigger story, but tragically, the next day was when the fire started ripping through California. And there wasn't a lot of like dissection for three days of what happened at this Netflix Raw event.

• 1:59:04Bill Simmons?

  But I gotta say, in the moment, Schumacher, I was like, I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe like, it was like actual hatred, it felt like. And I don't think it was just the Trump stuff. I think it was a variety of things.

• 1:59:18Speaker 03

  No, I mean, you mentioned it before, when he gave the, when he came back, and again, this is the dirt sheets getting the better of Hogan. When he came back to give the speech to the locker room after, you know, kind of being banned for a year and a half after the racist, the racist video came out.

• 1:59:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:32Speaker 03

  He apologized in the news, he apologized in ABC News and in People Magazine. And apology, the fact desk, when I was writing my piece, said, are you sure we're going to use the word apology here? Because the words, I'm sorry are never spoken, but it's, I was like, yeah, it's kind of an apology, whatever. But, um.

• 1:59:46Bill Simmons?

  It was an acknowledgement.

• 1:59:47Speaker 03

  It was an acknowledgement that he was, that he, you know, regrets it or whatever. But then he came back into the locker room and instead of saying, I'm sorry for hurt, I'm sorry for being a racist. I'm sorry for hurting you. I'm sorry for saying these things. He said, you guys better watch out for hidden cameras because they can really ruin your life. And then everybody there, I know guys are in that locker room, but they're just like, I'm done with them. I can't, I just can't, you know, after that. And fans all knew about it too. So that was a lot of what it went into it. I mean, WWE does this thing now and they have a very, very savvy, very, very savvy PR department. But they'll do this thing, you'll see them do this thing where they leak out a story like WWE considering a relationship with Hulk Hogan's beer company. And then two days later, it happens. But and you they and it's almost like they're doing

• 2:00:32Speaker 03

  a trial balloon, but deliberately not waiting for the results, just so after it happens, they can say, hey, we put out a trial balloon, you know, like, right. And they did it with Hogan. And they said, oh, he's gonna come promote his beer. But now that just meant all the fans were ready for it. Right. So instead of it being a surprise that Hogan's there and like, you know, he just happens to be wearing a beer tier shirt and he's there a beer T shirt and he's there to hug everybody. They were all just like, he's coming back, but only to sell us some bad beer. Like, what? And they and and these were already have these issues with him. And it seems so contrived. And they were ready for it. And he came out and just got the biggest boos that you could possibly get, man. It's just, it's like, fans really hate when they feel like the wrestlers don't

• 2:01:14Speaker 03

  care about wrestling. Right. It's why, like, you know, when Brock Lesnar and Goldberg were at WrestleMania 20 or whatever, they were both leaving the company, the fans hated. You guys don't even want to be here. Get the hell out of here. They got booed the whole match. I mean, if you come back just to sell beer, the fans are just like, get the hell out of here, dude. Like, come on. You can't even like, apologize, right? You want us to buy your beer? Like, let's see, that's so funny. I mean,

• 2:01:35Bill Simmons?

  It was a rare misread by the room, by especially and by the WWE and TKO to think that that was a good idea. I mean,

• 2:01:42Speaker 03

  No, and to have no back and no way to back out of it. Oh, you're holding up a Hogan glass right now.

• 2:01:46Bill Simmons?

  I'm showing you the Hogan glass. I have all these old WWE glasses from the 80s. But this is like, this is where we were. This was like a cartoon superhero. I'm holding up, if you're watching the video pod, the Hulkamania on the glass with the, you know, this was, the guy was a merchandise machine. He was, I genuinely felt like on par with Stallone and everybody else from that era, from how famous he was. I would probably didn't make as much money as Stallone.

• 2:02:13Speaker 03

  But he definitely sold more T shirts than those guys.

• 2:02:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And, you know, you think back and you think it was him and Vince, growing this company, blowing it out. And then the steroid trial happened. And it seems like both of them are done, but they're not. And it keeps going for another 30 years. And now, one's gone. And in, in a pretty fairly disgraceful way, even in death. And then the other one is just gone, Vince. And we probably will never see him again. But he's out of it. He sold the company. To say it's been a rocky five years for him would be an understatement. And we'll see how it plays out legally. But it's just, this was the backbone of this entire business. And both of them just left in disgrace.

• 2:02:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe it shouldn't be too shocking. I remember when the, when the tape came out, when I, when the tape came out about Hogan, I was talking to, this might have been on one of those early Cheap Heat episodes or something with Rosenberg, but I remember saying, this is super disappointing. Now, you know, if we can magically, you know, if we could, if we could, an angel came down and gave us a list of all the other wrestlers who've said the N-word and, and, you know, private conversations, I think it would be a pretty long list, you know, like, you know, you look around the world, you don't, you know, maybe we shouldn't have been too shocked about that sort of disgrace, especially as we enter the modern world.

• 2:03:35Speaker 03

  Wrestling is a very, very odd space. But yeah, I mean, it's, when Vince put out that statement about, you know, like acknowledging Hogan's death, it was just like, I'm sure he wasn't super excited to do it, but it was like, do we really need this right now? I don't know. The last time I saw Hogan, I think, was when he did the interview for the, for the, for the Vince doc.

• 2:03:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:55Speaker 03

  We, we went down to Florida and, you know, I was there as the sort of bullshit detector on set and, and they're, what can you do with Hulk Hogan? You know, I mean, it's just all bullshit, but, you know, he looked okay at that point. He was walking around with like a staff, like a giant, he, I guess, you know, he's, he's not going to be carrying, using a cane, he's Hulk Hogan. So he had like a giant walking stick that he, that was like seven feet tall, that got him from his like super tall truck in and out. And, and he was always very open about the physical pain he'd been in since he retired. And even while he was wrestling, you know, he got hit multiple hip replacements. I think four, three or four hip replacements and had, I remember at one point, there was, he was, he couldn't sit in a folding chair to sign autographs for 15 minutes, you know, like he was in that kind of physical pain.

• 2:04:38Speaker 03

  But he was sort of getting around and then, but, you know, he was very, he was much more complimentary of Vince in that interview than I expected him to be.

• 2:04:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:47Speaker 03

  You know, he, he was much more, and, and again, the truth varies in Hogan's mind from moment to moment, you know, like whatever, but it did seem like there was some sort of, it was time to just sort of make peace with everything and, and, and go out on a good note vibe coming from him.

• 2:05:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, I can't imagine what he put into his body over. Over like a 40 year stretch. So to, to, to live to 71 and then die of heart failure. I can't say neither of us would have been shocked by that one. This was, you're talking about ground zero with steroids of the seventies and eighties before the steroids were even that good. You know, they just made you bulk, bulky and watery and all these guys were doing it. And you know, it's, we're not breaking any news here, but there's, uh, there's just a slew of wrestlers who have died at ages younger than this. So we've been getting the 71.

• 2:05:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're right. This is, and this isn't even like, you got a sports doctor. This is like, you bought them from another dude in the gym locker room in Tampa or whatever, you know, steroids. These are horse steroids. This is like terrible shit to be putting in your body. And yeah, a lot of people is just like, hearts exploded, you know, when they were in their thirties and forties and certainly in their fifties. Um, yeah, I mean, it's crazy and it's crazy to see him. I mean, we've all seen video of him working out with the back brace on, you know, Hogan had, he was Hogan until the day he died. He always had the, the, the tad, a little bit of stringy white hair and the, and the mustache and the muscles and the tan and, and, um, you know, that was always part of the gimmick, brother, you know, he, he lived it till the end. I guess, you know, when we look back now, that rumor about him dying

• 2:06:21Speaker 03

  a few weeks ago, that Bubba the Love Sponge put out was probably closer to true. At the, at the time it was dismissed, but that seemed like the beginning of the, I mean, that, you could probably draw a straight line and, and, um,

• 2:06:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, to put, to put a bow on this, I still feel like Rock had the, the total package as a wrestler in the best possible way with the mic skills combined with what an athlete he was growing up in the business. I still have him one for kind of overall talent. I think Hogan is the most popular I've ever seen. Um, I wasn't, I didn't see Bruno in his peak or some of these guys from the earlier in the mid seventies, but I can't imagine anyone got a louder pop than Hogan, especially in the eighties, walking into a 17,000 seat arena as people, and I, I'd feel like those crowds kind of pre 85 were wired a little differently. Anyway, they would just lose their fucking minds at every match.

• 2:07:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:07:16Bill Simmons?

  Um, and then, and then Ric Flair is probably. You know, he's like, he's like the LeBron of all this, right? Like the longest, best career, did the most things. But if you're gonna start some sort of list, I feel like those three have to be on it. Is that who's, are there two other people you feel like have to be on it? I'm not saying about Rushmore, I'm just saying like, just the guys that have to be mentioned.

• 2:07:38Speaker 03

  You know, I would always put Austin, Austin above The Rock. I mean, just because he had a very long career with a bunch of different stuff, you know, a bunch of different angles and the heights of the Attitude Era with, I mean, that was his, it was the glass breaking, you know? The Rock is, you can make a case for The Rock, especially since all this, you know, he's made all these movies, he's gotten so much more famous and he's come back now a number of times.

• 2:07:56Bill Simmons?

  The case for The Rock is he was overqualified to be a wrestler. He's the only one you could say like, I actually am slumming at doing this. I've got to go become a movie star.

• 2:08:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's true. You know, there's some people in the modern era that try to make the case of Roman Reigns or CM Punk or John Cena. I think Cena would get a lot of votes now that he's on his retirement tour.

• 2:08:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:15Speaker 03

  You know, I, I find it really hard to separate Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes. I mean, a lot of their careers were very separate, but Dusty was the one guy that had that sort of charisma, you know, that sort of magic. It's really hard, but Hogan, I mean, I think that you look back and it's pretty easy to say that Hogan stands above everybody else, you know? I mean, it's like you could look back at the, the first like eight years, you know, whatever of Hogan's, of the Hulkamania era. I mean, who is the second most important character? Like who is second on the call sheet? It's probably Mean Gene Okerlund, you know, like, like it's, it's Hogan, this was like a one man show for almost a decade, you know? And it was just the people that, that, that orbited around him. I mean, it's really, it's, I mean, it's, he is, he's pretty singular, you know?

• 2:08:57Speaker 03

  And again, not a great professional wrestler, but about, but he told the stories in the ring and maybe that's the most important part.

• 2:09:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and there's only a couple of guys left though. Ric Flair, still hanging on, Vince still hanging on, but we're looking at a pretty, pretty soon, I think everybody from the seventies and eighties is going to be gone.

• 2:09:18Speaker 03

  It's true, and everybody from the nineties is somehow still wrestling. So I don't know how, I don't know how we're gonna reconcile this.

• 2:09:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, the, the medicine's better. David Shoemaker, great to see you as always. Thanks for popping up.

• 2:09:29Speaker 03

  Great to see you too, man. Thanks.

• 2:09:32Bill Simmons?

  All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Shoemaker and Jacko and House. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahow as well. Don't forget, you can watch all of the videos from this podcast on the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. We have new rewatchables coming too as well on Monday night, and I'm going to be back midweek with one more podcast on this feed. See you then.

• 2:10:05Bill Simmons?

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