Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Behind the Curtain of Distraction: We Went Undercover with the Most Creative Fans in College Hoops About this episode Nobody makes opponents miss free throws like Arizona State’s student section and their infamous Curtain of Distraction. On the brink of March Madness, we embed with the Sun Devils writers' room — and the Lorne Michaels of college basketball — to test the limits of absurdity (with a little help from the likes of Donald Glover and Mike Schur). Then we activated polyamorous conjoined unicorns on the baseline… on live national television. What could possibly go wrong?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:48 Pablo Torre? This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef. The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory, two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles side by side. So every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill.
2:28 Pablo Torre? My move: QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery, fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
3:03 Speaker 02 Oh my gosh, stock! We're in 2025!
3:06 Speaker 03 Great Scott! Has anyone seen this man?
3:08 Speaker 02 Is this you?
3:09 Speaker 03 It's him! He's out there! He's right there!
3:11 Speaker 02 This is you!
3:13 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:16 Speaker 04 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:31 Pablo Torre? Has the curtain of distraction ever been used as an actual curtain in front of a window before? Are we making history right now?
3:38 Speaker 05 It has never performed the duty of a legitimate curtain.
3:42 Pablo Torre? This is exactly how I wanted this, uh, this session to begin. By, by using the curtain of distraction to block the sun.
3:50 Speaker 05 Yeah, it is finally, uh, it's finally become the big time. It has grown up to an actual curtain. It's what it's always wanted to be.
3:56 Pablo Torre? Your title here is what?
3:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, my name is Bill Kennedy. Uh, I'm an associate athletic director here at Arizona State University. I've been working full-time here for 37 years. I went to school here, uh, way back a long, long time ago. And anything else you'd like to know?
4:13 Pablo Torre? Who are the two guys sitting next to you, both of whom have intimidatingly long hair?
4:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, uh, my name's Harry DeCheco. Um, I'm a graduate student here at Arizona State University, uh, studying computer science. And I've been part of the 942 crew every year I've been at ASU.
4:30 Speaker 03 My name is Logan Sears. I'm a sophomore here at ASU. I'm majoring in graphic design. This is my second year in the 942 crew. Last year, just joined as a performer for The Curtain, and now I'm taking over for this guy and trying to lead the whole operation.
4:50 Pablo Torre? So if you're not familiar with the whole operation that 19-year-old Logan Sears is talking about here, it is officially time to take you behind the curtain, as it were. Because the curtain is an actual black curtain, about 6.5 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and it hangs from a frame of yellow PVC pipe that gets wheeled out from the student section in the second half of every Arizona State men's basketball game, right behind the hoop, right in the shooter's line of vision, and it terrorizes every opponent who dares to set foot on that free throw line.
5:25 Speaker 06 And this crowd, the curtain of distraction.
5:29 Speaker 06 It's working. One for three going to this end.
5:34 Pablo Torre? Since 2013, when the curtain first opened, the list of people popping out from behind it have included, but are not limited to, Thanos snapping the Infinity Gauntlet, a topless student smearing mayo all over his chest and nipples with a spoon, a very cranky old lady, a large bearded kid waving around a Miley Cyrus-inspired wrecking ball, and also the actual Michael Phelps doing a Speedo striptease.
6:04 Speaker 06 You know why this is great? Because Michael was such a good swimmer, he didn't go to college. So he's getting his college experience.
6:10 Pablo Torre? That's right.
6:11 Speaker 06 That's great.
6:15 Pablo Torre? While wearing fake gold medals and a bowtie in order to make a random kid from Oregon State miss.
6:23 Pablo Torre? Two of them! That's unbelievable.
6:27 Pablo Torre? And while I did go to college, as you may well know, I also knew how Michael Phelps felt. Because around this time every year, college basketball reminds me that I absolutely did not have the Arizona State college experience either. I've never had anybody tell me, "Forks up, go Devils." I've never experienced the Sun Devils student section, the aforementioned 942 crew, and I certainly have never experienced their legendary curtain of distraction.
6:58 Pablo Torre? But this season, current leaders Harry and Logan agreed to give Pablo Torre Finds Out an unprecedented and until now entirely secret honor of joining college basketball's foremost writers' room, which is the only adult in the room's office.
7:19 Speaker 05 My all-time favorite characters, because they're one of the ones that we started with, are the unicorns. We have two unicorns that kind of make out. That's been an ongoing one for almost 12, 13 years, so that's kind of one of my all-time favorites just because of its longevity and its Hall of Fame nature.
7:35 Pablo Torre? I'm getting the sense now of how ridiculous Bill's existence is.
7:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
7:42 Speaker 05 Oh, believe me, I have a ton of fun with this Pablo. I'm, I'm, I, you know, it keeps me young.
7:47 Speaker 02 The person that was in charge of the curtain before me, he starred as the Sexy Cookie Monster. And he did an amazing job with that, uh, character and we had a lot of fun with that. And that's who Sexy Santa appeared alongside. Have that curtain of distraction off in the background and here they come. We got Santa Claus.
8:08 Pablo Torre? We will give them credit. Some of the analytics behind this, Harry, a master in computer science student, are you the record holder for most consecutive misses?
8:18 Speaker 02 I believe I'm number two. I got, I got showed out recently.
8:22 Speaker 05 By, by Logan, yep.
8:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, I got showed out, but yeah, I just love seeing the young guys, you know, pass, pass the older record.
8:29 Speaker 03 Pass, pass the torch.
8:31 Pablo Torre? Wait, wait. Logan, what, what did you do to break the record?
8:36 Speaker 03 So it was, it was a skit. It was just called Nature and it was just a bunch of animals. So we had like a frog, a bear, an eagle, a fish and just, just show this like this forest scene. It was probably like five consecutive misses that the first game ended and we're like, okay, we gotta continue this. So we were back on a Sunday and then got like two or three more misses.
8:59 Pablo Torre? When you get five consecutive forest misses, Logan?
9:04 Pablo Torre? What's that feeling like?
9:06 Speaker 03 It was definitely crazy because I didn't think of it at the time. Like when it happened, I'm like, oh, like we got a couple misses, like that's whatever. But then I'm like, wait, I just joined this group like two, three months ago. And now I hold the record versus like legends that have been doing this for years. Like that's crazy. I've loved it for years before coming here. And now, not to toot my own horn, but now I'm the best one here. Like that's crazy.
9:32 Pablo Torre? Well, but just Harry, the power that I imagine I would feel of I'm actually making a difference here.
9:41 Speaker 02 I'm going to be honest, that's probably one of my favorite parts about it. It's 100% how I grew up, a sports fan too. I'm from Philadelphia, so I'm very used to trying to scream at the enemy team. And Curtain just allowed me to have a much more direct impact on that. It's just a great, enjoyable time. Some of the best moments have been last year, I played an aerobics dancer, like an 80s aerobics dancer. I put on this leotard, I put on this big Afro.
10:10 Speaker 02 And I remember getting a miss.
10:13 Speaker 02 Knowing that they spent their whole lives dedicated to basketball and me in a leotard is making you miss something that you've trained to do. That's an amazing feeling.
10:23 Pablo Torre? Watching Bill watch you guys, he's just proud. I sense deep pride in the coaching tree here, Bill.
10:31 Speaker 05 You have a rough night, you have a rough night. And on those games when you have really good games, you feel good at the end of it. So it's, you know, it's kind of like coaching, I guess.
10:40 Pablo Torre? Well, this season, I mean, I want to be blunt about this. This season's been rough for fans of ASU basketball.
11:00 Speaker 06 Arizona State won't foul, so an epic battle to the end will go the way of Texas Tech.
11:02 Speaker 05 In its history, we're at about a 67% success rate of free throws being made against it. This year, I will be completely honest, we're struggling a little bit this year. We're a little bit over 70%.
11:18 Pablo Torre? I wonder if part of what's happening here is that you guys got so famous that people know to expect it. Does it feel like the element of surprise has decreased, perhaps?
11:29 Speaker 05 The funny thing is, we've actually heard that some schools have actually practiced against the curtain. Effective or not, it's making them at least acknowledge it.
11:40 Pablo Torre? I love the idea that some school out there needed their own sexy Santa to practice against. How do ideas get generated? Are you guys all pitching stuff?
11:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, so typically what we'll do is we'll get together the week of a game or set of games to kind of see what's going on and we'll look at what is trending. And so we start just pitching those ideas. And then we always say, as much fun as we have and all the kidding we do, obviously we never want to be offensive to somebody, we never want to do anything inappropriate. So there are definitely some skits that start to go down the wrong path that we have to bring back to the right direction or not use at all.
12:21 Pablo Torre? Is there an idea that you remember saying no to, where it was just like, this is too much?
12:27 Speaker 05 We have often joked about different things, like, hey, if it came down, like, win an NCAA championship, it's the last thing we ever do. We know if we do this skit, we're done, we are out of here, I probably won't have a job at the end of the day. But we will take the bullet for the team so that we can win that championship.
12:49 Pablo Torre? The nuclear curtain.
12:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, absolutely. We had a series of skits kind of called dogs being dogs. And so you can imagine maybe how dogs greet each other and things like that, that would look really odd in the curtain and would not be appropriate in any way, shape or form, but if we need that, miss might work.
13:08 Pablo Torre? What you're saying is that Logan and Harry are all too happy to be sniffing each other's asses while wearing dog masks.
13:16 Speaker 03 Basically.
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17:06 Pablo Torre? I'm realizing now that you are the Lorne Michaels of college basketball distraction. You got some gray-
17:12 Speaker 05 That's an honor. That's absolutely an honor to me.
17:14 Pablo Torre? No, it's just clear to me. It's clear to me that you run a ship not unlike Saturday Night Live. This is what's happening here in this office. By the way, I am like, I am currently a disembodied head at the table with you guys.
17:26 Speaker 05 Yep.
17:26 Pablo Torre? In the writers' room, and I do, I do wanna be of service. When we look ahead to Houston, Houston's, that's a big game. A perennial power now, visiting you guys at Desert Financial Arena, on ESPN, national television. And it seems like a lot is on the line. And, and I, I don't say that to put pressure on the curtain, but I want to explore how the curtain might meet the moment. And so what I did was I canvassed a number of suggestions myself.
17:59 Pablo Torre? Okay. I had my own writer's room that I have pieced together. And I just wanna throw some ideas at you guys and credit those ideas to others if I could. I've gone to Hollywood to start. So I asked Donald Glover, who is a friend of mine.
18:17 Speaker 05 Nice.
18:18 Pablo Torre? What would you like to see behind the Arizona State Curtain of Distraction? And Donald proposed a fat man pooping on a clear toilet.
18:29 Speaker 05 Okay, that would definitely be in the category if we needed a miss, but we were gonna shut it down immediately afterwards.
18:37 Pablo Torre? Noted, noted. I'm just feeling out.
18:38 Speaker 05 Hey, and tell Donald Glover he's got a ticket here. If he wants to be in the curtain, we're ready for him.
18:43 Pablo Torre? Also, we went to our friend Mike Schur, who is one of the great Hollywood showrunners, who's behind The Office and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place and Parks and Rec. And he proposed Einstein on the toilet, reading the newspaper, but then suddenly getting embarrassed and trying to close the curtain.
19:06 Speaker 05 You know, I think we might have to stay away from the toilet part of it, but if we can think of something else that is great.
19:12 Pablo Torre? I'm writing that down, avoiding.
19:15 Speaker 05 Yeah, anything that doesn't involve a toilet problem.
19:18 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, I do have some in the non-toilet category, but there's a lot I gotta delete right now.
19:26 Pablo Torre? What about conjoined twins? Logan and Harry in one shirt with two neck holes.
19:34 Speaker 03 Done. Let's do it.
19:35 Pablo Torre? Done.
19:36 Speaker 05 I think we could do something like that.
19:38 Pablo Torre? Now, what if the two conjoined twins then made out with each other?
19:44 Speaker 05 So we do two conjoined unicorns. We could put the unicorn masks on them.
19:48 Pablo Torre? You know what? I would be willing to compromise and go unicorn masks.
19:53 Pablo Torre? There's a lot, there's a lot we have. I mean, are you guys familiar with the movie Human Centipede?
20:05 Speaker 05 Yeah?
20:12 Speaker 05 You might want to skip that one.
20:13 Pablo Torre? Okay, noted, noted. Mike Schur also proposed Cat in the Hat eating a messy meatball sub. He proposed a Cybertruck and a refrigerator making out. Shakespeare doing the Running Man, the twins from The Shining playing pickleball. There's a bunch of Elon Musk ones in here that I don't think I want to make you do. That seems beyond the pale as well at this point. Fake injuries, have you guys gotten fake injured before? We have a lot of fake injury submissions.
20:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, so we did two major skits basically that we had. But our idea behind it was what if we killed the opposing team's mascot? We went out, very first curtain, the mascot got killed in some sort of fashion, whether it be knockout or whatever the case. And then the dead mascot was propped up in front of the student section and basically ragdolled.
21:04 Pablo Torre? Okay, so violence, but of course whimsical violence.
21:09 Speaker 03 Fake, fake violence.
21:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, movie violence.
21:10 Speaker 02 Tasteful, yes.
21:11 Pablo Torre? Right. I got a couple of other suggestions here from Wyatt Sinak, former Daily Show correspondent, one of my great friends and an excellent stand-up himself. He was like, can you get the Hock Tuah lady? I'm like, I don't think so. I think she seems, she seems to be hiding these days. You had the masturbating bear from Conan O'Brien's late-night show. You guys might be too young for the masturbating bear, but a true classic in the genre.
21:34 Speaker 05 No, not, no, no! Not that masturbating bear! That masturbating bear!
21:45 Pablo Torre? Anyway, you get the drift. So, in this case, we have producer Mike Ryan from The Levitard Show saying, "What about Randy Johnson, who I believe lives, lives in Tempe, local? Randy Johnson reenacting in slow motion that time the bird exploded when he threw that pitch?"
22:03 Speaker 05 That would be amazing.
22:04 Speaker 03 Incredible.
22:05 Pablo Torre? I'm gonna cross off, uh, guy running in a hamster wheel.
22:09 Speaker 05 Wait, that would be actually kinda cool.
22:11 Pablo Torre? Okay. Yeah.
22:13 Speaker 05 If you can create a hamster wheel and have somebody run around in it, that would be kinda interesting.
22:18 Pablo Torre? Right. When I was a kid growing up, I had hamsters and we had a hamster wheel. They eat their young is the thing about hamsters. And so I grew up with a hamster running in a hamster wheel. And in the wheel, and this is not a thing, I'm just saying for you guys, it's true. And maybe explains the psychology of me. The hamster I had would run and it would be a hamster wheel full of decapitated hamster baby heads.
22:42 Speaker 05 Oh my god.
22:43 Pablo Torre? Cause they have like thirty babies. And so they would just be running in like a death wheel of, of.
22:50 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, I think the hamster wheel in itself would be enough. I don't know if you'd have to add the decapitated babies to that, Pablo.
22:56 Pablo Torre? I'm, I'm seeing the value of Bill in the writers room. I'm seeing, I'm seeing your grounding force, I get it. I get, I get.
23:04 Speaker 05 I don't wanna discourage anything, just wanna redirect it, Pablo.
23:07 Pablo Torre? This is, no, this is, this is, I, I get why you're in this position of power. My friend Kevin Wilds, host of FS1's First Things First, he was saying he loves the idea of a curtain behind the curtain. Right? So have you guys toyed with this sort of experiment of like, okay, so?
23:26 Speaker 05 But yeah, where you're going with it?
23:28 Pablo Torre? Yeah, just like a Russian nesting doll of curtains. And so one idea, the curtain opens and there is a doctor wearing scrubs standing next to hospital curtains. So different curtain, but a second curtain. And that curtain, when that gets thrown open, there's a patient wearing a hospital gown, but their head is a mask. And that mask is an AI-generated photo of the person at the free throw line, but aged like fifty years.
24:06 Speaker 05 So that would be amazing. The one thing we've kind of forgot to mention is we have like five to seven seconds to pull this off. So, so to, if we could figure a way to get it done that quickly.
24:19 Pablo Torre? Well, okay, hold on, just to be solutions oriented, right? So I understand that this is a very compressed amount of time. If we were to prepare a dozen, truly, like, we will take the Houston roster, cut him out his masks, so when the guy is going to the line, you already know which one it is.
24:36 Speaker 05 Right. So what would then the doctor do?
24:40 Pablo Torre? So the doctor would throw open the, the hospital curtain and would be horrified to discover this grotesque patient who happens to be the person at the free throw line looking at themselves in the future, grappling with their mortality.
24:58 Speaker 05 Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's wonderfully deep, first of all.
25:03 Pablo Torre? I mean, there is a poetry, I think, and a reality.
25:07 Speaker 05 No, very meaningful, very meaningful. And I think, I think it's something that we could definitely, we could definitely explore. My only reservations, not on your end, because your idea was outstanding, would be our ability in a short amount of time to make sure we had the right head going out there, because just of the chaos factor. My fear would be that we would not do it justice, Pablo.
25:30 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I see what you mean. By the way, that was a suggestion inspired by Amina Kimes, our friend, a friend of the show. We're disappointed to hear that you don't have faith in Logan and Harry.
25:42 Pablo Torre? That's...
25:43 Speaker 05 It's not that I don't have, I just want to go and put them in a bad situation, Pablo. Because I think we could put, you know, like, a group of them together and they could be doing like various old man things as old men.
25:53 Pablo Torre? Oh, okay, okay, so, right, right, right, right, right. So it's like the Houston basketball team, maybe even their starting five.
25:59 Speaker 05 As their old, as old men, yeah.
26:02 Pablo Torre? And they're moving around very elderly.
26:05 Speaker 05 Correct, yep.
26:06 Pablo Torre? Yeah, maybe making out with each other?
26:08 Speaker 05 Maybe, yeah.
26:13 Pablo Torre? I'm just trying to, look, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just trying to distract.
26:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, let me, let me give that one some thought. I do think that one has some, has some merit though Pablo.
26:21 Pablo Torre? Have you guys thought about, the curtain is thrown open and there's kind of a Wheel of Fortune setup? And by that I mean, there's a group of words with some letters missing and the person at the free throw line is now trying to figure out how to solve the puzzle by maybe buying a vowel. Is that something you thought about?
26:43 Speaker 05 I love that idea. I, I think that is a very, a very cool idea. Yeah, you can give them some kind of puzzle that they gotta think about.
26:50 Pablo Torre? So Harry and Logan, you, you, you're ready to be assigned, uh, some, some theatrical work here? You guys ready to do this?
26:58 Speaker 02 Oh yeah. Oh yes.
27:01 Pablo Torre? Again, I apologize for making you guys make out, but I think you'll understand it's for the larger good.
27:06 Speaker 05 You will be written into the lore of the curtain of distraction Pablo.
27:11 Pablo Torre? Forks up.
27:12 Speaker 05 Go Devils.
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30:43 Pablo Torre? The last time we met, I had summoned my entire network of Hollywood elites, a cabal of comedy writers, in an attempt to get you guys some ideas. And I wanted to set the scene here for people who are not lucky enough to be awake so late at night on the East Coast, watching Arizona State basketball.
31:01 Speaker 06 We're here in Tempe, Arizona, inside Desert Financial Arena, as Arizona State's got a tough task tonight. One of the best teams in the country, fifth-ranked Houston Cougars, at home taking on the Sun Devils.
31:14 Pablo Torre? I should reveal to our audience here that we did embed a camera crew with you guys.
31:19 Speaker 03 But we're not, we're not closing in, so we have-
31:21 Speaker 02 No, no, no.
31:21 Speaker 03 A little extra time.
31:22 Speaker 02 Like 20 hours.
31:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:23 Speaker 02 Because we got like normally 7, 8 seconds for each shot, and then the time in between close and open. And then you can, are you having-
31:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's a, it's a lot of, a lot of planning, a lot of prep. With all the costumes, we have a giant racks, we're getting everything organized.
31:39 Speaker 02 Think I've ever had somebody film me getting dressed before, you know?
31:43 Speaker 03 I think this game was a little bit different, especially with the unicorns we had to do. We got pretty close during that game.
31:50 Speaker 05 Yeah, that stuff, either you can flip it over and in, or we can use the tutu to cover it.
31:56 Speaker 02 Probably tutu's gonna be easiest, is my guess.
31:59 Speaker 03 We were one with the unicorn.
32:02 Speaker 05 We're actually-
32:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do hoodie first, because that'll, that'll get us together.
32:07 Pablo Torre? Give us the, the visual here, guys. What, what are we seeing?
32:10 Speaker 02 A big sweatshirt, um, two armholes like normal, and then just two heads. And me and Logan were both in there.
32:18 Speaker 03 Tight fit.
32:19 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
32:22 Speaker 02 And then to convey the one type of body, what we ended up doing was wearing both black and white morphs. So on our outside leg, you'll see white morphs, because, um, our unicorns are white. And then you'll see on the inside leg are black legs. Right, left, right, left. Perfect. So our idea here was basically to try to make those inner legs disappear, and just have a set of two legs, making the walk look as natural as possible, quote-unquote "natural."
32:54 Pablo Torre? In our last taping, you hadn't told me that there would be side pieces.
33:00 Speaker 06 Right.
33:02 Speaker 03 We got lonely.
33:04 Pablo Torre? Right. What did you guys innovate here?
33:07 Speaker 03 We just got two of our other current performers, Matthew and Anthony, both great guys. And we said, listen, first skit.
33:15 Speaker 02 Okay, so me and Logan are like conjoined unicorns, okay? So first skit, we're gonna walk out, we're gonna take like three paces or whatever. So like right, left, right, like that, yeah, like three paces. And then me and you are gonna make out in the unicorn mask, right?
33:31 Speaker 05 Second one, we're gonna step out, except we're gonna both turn inwards, make out with each other. And you two are like, what the heck? Like you guys are pissed that we abandoned you.
33:42 Pablo Torre? We actually reached out to Randy Johnson, by the way, just for the record, who politely declined to explode a bird under your baseline. But when I saw that you guys had unicorn side pieces, I was like, clearly, we're in good hands.
33:54 Speaker 06 Yeah.
33:56 Pablo Torre? So I tune into this game, it's on ESPN, it's on national television. And of course, the magic happens in the second half.
34:05 Pablo Torre? As Houston shoots towards the curtain of distraction, towards you guys in the student section. And it takes a while, right? So it's 13 minutes left in the game for the first foul. And I am listening at home. I'm hearing the play-by-play man, John Schifferin, along with King McClure, the broadcast team on ESPN.
34:24 Speaker 06 Okay, look what's coming out here in the second half. We have the curtain of distraction.
34:30 Pablo Torre? And I hear them say that they are trying to find out what is hiding behind the mystery curtain. And you guys behind the curtain at this point are thinking, what? As the game is taking a while to shine its spotlight on you.
34:47 Speaker 05 Two shots, go! Go, go, go! Quick, quick, quick.
34:54 Speaker 05 What happens is they're in the back, they're ready to go. There's a door, as you can see, that they kind of come out with. We try and hide everybody until that very last second. All right, here we go. You're ready?
35:07 Speaker 02 So, we're waiting for the shot. We coordinate our walkout, and we just start making out.
35:12 Speaker 03 Snout to snout.
35:14 Speaker 02 This skit was really interesting, too, because this shooter held the ball for three centuries, it felt like. I feel like I was making out. I was getting tired. I was getting winded for making out so much.
35:25 Pablo Torre? It seemed like you guys enjoyed it. The disappointment, though, of him making the shot. Now the mountain becomes clear.
35:36 Pablo Torre? And so, shot number two. Let's roll that tape.
35:41 Speaker 05 Okay. All right, long, long, long. Remember, long. Go, right, left, right.
35:48 Pablo Torre? The side pieces are furious.
35:54 Pablo Torre? It's a remarkable psychological testament to that shooter at the University of Houston to not miss a shot.
36:05 Pablo Torre? On the broadcast, you could hear King McClure, who himself was a sharpshooter at Baylor, incidentally, on this broadcast team. He says... Does that stuff even work? I mean, yeah, sometimes you might see, like, something like that probably would work, sometimes it not. We should do a study done on when they have the credit distraction, what the actual free throw shooting percentage is. There should be a study on that. I'm sure there is. And so, this is the context for a costume change.
36:32 Speaker 02 You ready?
36:33 Speaker 03 Hold on.
36:33 Speaker 02 Tom, are you ready to take this?
36:34 Speaker 03 All right, let's go.
36:35 Speaker 02 All right, so we've got the next one. Marty McFly.
36:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, Back to the Future.
36:39 Pablo Torre? In our writers' room, we had a friend of the show, Mina Kimes, suggest this AI rendition of the opposing team had aged 40 years. What I didn't know was that you guys would back to the future this.
36:48 Speaker 05 Hey, did you find the hair?
36:50 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's here.
36:51 Pablo Torre? That was, again, that creative flair that, of course, only you guys can provide.
36:56 Speaker 02 We kind of all thought up the idea.
37:00 Speaker 02 Our vest over top of this. That Marty McFly and Doc, we were coming back from the future trying to look for somebody.
37:08 Pablo Torre? You guys, you guys improved it. We did send you, uh, yeah, the art department here, uh, created those AI-generated, uh, faces of every single player on the Houston roster. And it's remarkable how unbelievably disturbing it is to, uh, in this case, look into the eyes of a very old and balding and strangely smiling LJ Cryer. Who is, uh, yeah, the 23-year-old point guard at the University of Houston, who by the way, was having a great game.
37:40 Speaker 06 Three minutes here in the second half and Cryer, another three, back-to-back threes and timeout Arizona State.
37:49 Pablo Torre? You guys are down 20, Arizona State is. They're draining threes all over the place.
37:59 Pablo Torre? And so I imagine like when rain isn't falling, when free throws aren't happening, it's just frustrating because what you're, you're just pent up.
38:11 Speaker 02 It's building, it's building. He's gonna drive to the lane right here. I feel it.
38:18 Speaker 02 Travel violation. Good for the game, bad for the curtain. Woo-hoo. They're nervous. They're nervous. Wait, how much are we, how much are we down by?
38:26 Speaker 03 12. Come back, I sense it.
38:31 Speaker 02 Cleanest layup I've ever seen. Nobody touched him on the way up. Come on. This is ridiculous. I can't. He was on an island.
38:41 Speaker 03 Pablo picked the wrong game.
38:44 Pablo Torre? We overheard you guys praying for, uh, quote-unquote foul power. It's a foul power.
38:52 Speaker 05 Well, we didn't want to disappoint you Pablo, so we were, you know, hoping we'd get a few more chances in that, uh, Houston game. You're giving us three skits to do and we wanted to make sure that all three got out there.
39:03 Speaker 06 Some of the students behind us are getting real hyped. They may have some other interests in this game.
39:09 Pablo Torre? But then finally, under a minute, there's a full-court trap and Bobby Hurley, uh, gets Arizona State trying now to commit a foul.
39:18 Speaker 06 And there is Ali committing the foul.
39:20 Pablo Torre? And so 47 seconds left, the second foul is committed.
39:31 Pablo Torre? So it is worth pointing out, and this is truly ridiculous, but on the ESPN broadcast, you can now see Marty McFly and Doc Brown finally popping out from behind this curtain, back from the future, to confront Houston guard LJ Cryer with our portrait of his own mortality.
39:52 Speaker 03 Oh my gosh, Doc, we're in 2025!
39:55 Speaker 04 Great Scott, has anyone seen this man?
39:57 Speaker 03 Is this you?
39:58 Speaker 04 It's him, he's up there, he's right there!
40:00 Speaker 03 This is you!
40:02 Pablo Torre? On national television, all across America, John Schiffer, the broadcaster, is saying, "He's got a picture of him." "I don't know how you guys could have been any clearer." The fact that LJ Cryer drains that, um, it's just... It's just amazing. But then, the second shot, you're like, alright, let's try something different.
40:28 Speaker 04 We're 50 years in the past, where is he?
40:30 Speaker 03 I think I see him!
40:32 Speaker 04 He's out there, he's right there!
40:33 Speaker 03 In the back, on the air!
40:38 Speaker 02 Second shot, we wanted to be somebody that was on the court. Whoever we did it for was standing behind the three-point line.
40:46 Pablo Torre? Number seven, Mylos Yuzon. So it just felt like I was [bleep] with them at this point, which again, it's a pretty good strategy. But Houston made the shot. And so just to do the math here, this is a bummer. It's four-for-four from the line in the second half. The curtain therefore is 0-for-4. The game is a blowout, and we didn't even get to the third skit. And so I'm sitting at home, my producers and I are up late, we're on Slack, we are so disappointed. Then we realize, you look at the schedule, there's another opportunity for justice to be served.
41:25 Speaker 05 We absolutely believed in these skits, we thought they were fantastic. So as soon as the game's over, I'm on my phone texting Producer Matt, like, "We're coming back for BYU, you guys in?" He replies, "All in."
41:51 Pablo Torre? So BYU is a week later.
41:53 Speaker 05 Tempe, Arizona. Number 25 BYU taking on Arizona State as the teams battling here heading toward the Big 12 tournament.
42:04 Pablo Torre? And the skit that I'm most looking forward to is still in the chamber. Because Wheel of Fortune is not just a skit, it is also a puzzle. And I wanted to test the intellect as well as the cojones of the Cougars. And I just want to point out, Bill, that this is where the editorial discussion of what the clue is gonna be, did it seems, require some editing. Because again, to remind everybody, my suggestion was make this if you're D blank CK apostrophe S
42:46 Pablo Torre? small. Make this, of course, if you're duck s- small. You know, you have rubber duckies, all that stuff. People remember that. I had also suggested, by the way, this is the best exclamation point, which was an homage quietly to a real thing that happened on Wheel of Fortune, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with, but it is this.
43:17 Speaker 05 Tamaris, right in the butt?
43:21 Speaker 05 No.
43:24 Speaker 05 That is hilarious.
43:25 Pablo Torre? That is, uh, this is the best, as Pat Sajak pointed out, not right in the butt.
43:32 Pablo Torre? Unfortunately, that contestant went permanently viral for answering.
43:38 Pablo Torre? Bill, I was bummed. I was bummed we didn't do either of those.
43:43 Speaker 05 You know, we're a family show, so, you know, we want to keep it, uh, we want to keep it appropriate, certainly, and we want to make it relevant to what is going on. So, you know, we took the very, uh, very, very high road and we just, you know, we want them to miss the shot. So that's what we put out there, miss the shot.
44:01 Pablo Torre? You have to be the adult, I get it. I get that that's your role here, as the Lorne Michaels of Arizona State. But walk us through how you staged this, right? So again, Wheel of Fortune, you know how it is, up on the board, in studio, with Pat Sajak. But for you guys, what was your execution? How'd you do this?
44:18 Speaker 03 I was the host, I guess. Harry was the contestant.
44:22 Speaker 05 Yeah, so we'll get shot out of the... The point is trying to get shot first. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So H first, which will flip these two around. It's also like, what, two shots? So I have, what, 20 seconds? Yeah.
44:31 Speaker 03 So we just got a bunch of students. Each student got a different gold shirt with a letter on it.
44:38 Speaker 05 And we'll put them in the T-shirts. And we got the T-shirts over there.
44:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:40 Speaker 05 Laid out by words.
44:42 Speaker 03 They're in order, yeah.
44:43 Speaker 05 Okay.
44:44 Speaker 03 And we just had them all on the line. We just told them, "If you hear your letter called, turn around."
44:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:51 Pablo Torre? It's under 13 minutes left. You guys are down 12. BYU star Richie Saunders drives the lane, and finally, and one.
45:01 Speaker 03 That was probably one of the worst skits to be at half one. So me and Logan kinda looked at each other. We knew what we had to do.
45:09 Speaker 04 Give me a letter! Give me an H! Give me an H! Give me an O! Give me a D!
45:18 Speaker 06 Falls off for Richie Saunders, and the curtain of distraction did its work right there. You could see it.
45:23 Pablo Torre? I don't know if my neighbors will ever understand why I yelled so loudly. So late at night, at a game that no one else apparently seemed to care anywhere in the universe of how much I cared about this.
45:39 Pablo Torre? It's very clear that he missed it because of you guys. And I love that the announcers cannot help but talk about this.
45:46 Speaker 06 That's what I love about college basketball, right? The crazy fans, and the kids, the student body, the cheerleaders, the pep fans. It doesn't get any better than college basketball. You keep that stuff...
45:56 Pablo Torre? It is very clear that he was trying to solve the puzzle. And clearly thought it said, uh, missed the [BLEEP]. And got it wrong. The rest of the half, though, is where this gets crazy.
46:13 Pablo Torre? So I'm like, again, we're on Slack, we're talking to my producers and we're like, we got it. We got the payoff. This kid worked. We're done. Like, that's the end of the episode. Play the outro theme song. Good.
46:26 Pablo Torre? But then, under 10 minutes left, Trevin Nell, who's a sharpshooter for BYU himself, he's fouled on a three.
46:39 Pablo Torre? And just to recap here, the most consecutive misses that you had forced apparently so far this season was two. Again, kind of a struggle. But Trevin misses the first, misses the second. This is now three misses in a row. The curtain is out of control at this point.
47:01 Pablo Torre? And on the broadcast, again, uh, they give you credit.
47:05 Speaker 06 The curtain of distraction. Shit. Is that what's getting up? And Nell is able to figure it out. And he goes one for three.
47:13 Pablo Torre? Then the next set of free throws. I didn't know that I would see Doc Brown and Marty McFly again.
47:21 Pablo Torre? I didn't realize that that was in the cards, but it's a flagrant, it's a flagrant one.
47:27 Pablo Torre? And, uh, it was just good to see your faces.
47:48 Pablo Torre? BYU at this point is now four for nine from the line, two for six against the curtain, which is irrefutable statistically. And the next set of free throws, BYU goes one for two. 7:18 left in the game. ASU's over the limit, one and one. And here we have Yegor Demin, freshman out of Russia. And I don't know if his home country is familiar with what you guys bring back.
48:17 Speaker 06 When you lead with the forearm so aggressively that far away from your body, you're making it an easy call for the officials. And I say, this has been a real good officiating group. BYU is having some problems at the free throw line here in the second half.
48:32 Pablo Torre? The literal horniness of these unicorns, riding the high of this streak of misses. And this is, this is, this is the American dream. This is what this is. At what point do you realize this is a threesome?
48:47 Speaker 02 It was actually the returning side piece from the previous curtain ensemble. The right half of the unicorn was going at it with the right side piece again. The left side of the unicorn never made up with the argument that happened at the previous game. They did not return, so they were mad that the right side was getting all the action and they were not involved.
49:08 Pablo Torre? Narrative continuity is a key to free throw distraction. Keeping track here, right? Three each up to the line in a row, all of them work. And we did, by the way, reach out to Jaeger Demmon to find out if he had any sense of what was happening. We await his response.
49:35 Pablo Torre? So this is where I regret to inform you that BYU's sports information department did not respond to multiple requests sent by Pablo Torre Finds Out for comment from Jaeger Demmon. But after the game, BYU's head coach, Kevin Young, did seem to indicate that he knew something was up.
49:56 Speaker 02 Tonight, I think, was an anomaly to go three of 11 in the second half. So we got, we have a worker light group and they'll be, they'll be anxious to get back in the gym.
50:06 Pablo Torre? But what I found out today, I believe, after going behind the curtain here with Bill and Harry and Logan and Arizona State, again, apologies, I guess, to BYU, is that one institution's anomaly is another institution's tradition.
50:26 Pablo Torre? The kind of tradition, actually, that no professional team or Olympic medal, as no less than Michael Phelps himself discovered, can even begin to replicate. The curtain can magically turn an otherwise forgettable college basketball season, let alone a single game, into something that you really do fondly remember. And that feels like the entire thing that makes college special. The curtain of distraction is something that a bunch of kids invented and continue to perpetrate and pass down through the generations, and it is for each of those generations, something to celebrate with their friends before they have to go and
51:11 Pablo Torre? apply for a job and enter the real world and grow up.
51:23 Pablo Torre? You guys, spoiler alert, don't win the game. You lose 91-81. But BYU, 3-for-11 against the curtain. Redemption can be spelled so many ways. In this case, it happens to be in a Wheel of Fortune format. I do want to point out, Logan, of course, is the younger star of the show, but Harry, I'm looking at your report card here. You're about to graduate, right?
51:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, I'll be out of here in like two months.
52:04 Speaker 05 It's funny, you know, some of our students, after they're done the list, actually on their resumes, that they were in the curtain of distraction, and it is absolutely a great like conversation starter. They'll come back and tell me they asked about the curtain. They're like, oh yeah, I've seen that before. And it's a great way to make that connection. So it has some real world benefits to some of these students.
52:26 Pablo Torre? You know, I do now understand why you moved us away from the whole human centipede thing, given that this is on actual resumes. And on that resume, by the way, Harry, I do look forward to seeing number two all-time most consecutive forced misses.
52:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, I know, I had the title spot, but somebody stole it from me, so.
52:48 Pablo Torre? Part of what I found out is clearly that there is a deep, deep and very real part of me that is very jealous that I did not go to Arizona State.
52:58 Speaker 05 We appreciate Pablo, you've got an open invitation anytime you want to come out. And if we need ideas, we're going to hit you guys up for sure and your vast network of individuals.
53:07 Pablo Torre? I mean, look, most of them involve [BLEEP], but I am gonna, I'm gonna have some new ones for you.
53:12 Speaker 05 We can clean it up and make it presentable.
53:14 Pablo Torre? Um, as always, forks up.
53:18 Speaker 05 Go Devils.
53:19 Speaker 03 Go Devils.
53:29 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media Production.
53:35 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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