Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Share & Tell-ichick (Super Bowl Edition) with Mina Kimes and Dan Le Batard About this episode Who gets to take pride in football, even (and especially) if Sam Darnold is your quarterback? Who gets to lock the gates on excellence, even if you're snubbing Bill Belichick? Did Tom Brady only get better in the booth... because he couldn't get much worse? And do people only care when you're wrong? Plus: brrrtue-signaling, the pageantry of nonsense, The Polian Dimension and the Kraft family syndicate on Jason Whitlock's bulletin board.
Further content:
• "In the 'no' camp is a known liar...'" https://x.com/OllieConnolly/status/2016449665340752186 (Ollie Connolly)
• "Sources: Bill Belichick will not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer" https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47747076/belichick-not-first-ballot-hall-famer (Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham)
• "Tom Brady knew he needed to improve on TV. So he channeled his 'quarterback' days" https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6990290/2026/01/22/tom-brady-fox-nfl-afc-championship/ (Andrew Marchand)
• Subscribe to "The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny" https://pod.link/1437647915
• Take a PTFO audience survey http://theathletic.com/survey26 for your chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 No, don't do this.
0:08 Pablo Torre? Transparency. Sunlight is the only disinfectant. Right after this ad.
0:15 Speaker 02 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
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1:55 Speaker 03 The take that I am gonna stand 10 toes down on that people who pretend like football in terrible conditions is enjoyable are completely full of it. Liars, liars. In fact, I came up with a word for it. Burr chew signaling. It's the same people who love bragging about how they live in the Northeast and they wear shorts in the winter and you're so soft on the West Coast. It's not about the toughness of the fans, it's about the enjoyability of the game. The games in [BLEEP] weather mostly suck. You can have some great moments, no doubt, but there's no, no chance people actually enjoyed watching that second half. Lies.
2:40 Pablo Torre? This is all just Mina clearly still trying to justify moving to LA.
2:45 Speaker 01 She's also right, though. The idea that that is football weather and all you're doing is getting in the way totally of-
2:52 Pablo Torre? I'm sorry, Miami and LA agree on how warm weather is better. Oh, what a shocking turn of events.
2:57 Speaker 01 No, but no, it's the point-
2:58 Speaker 03 Pop, tell us one thing that happened in the second half of the game. One thing that was-
3:01 Pablo Torre? You know what?
3:01 Speaker 03 Like a play that stands out in your mind.
3:03 Pablo Torre? It was super memorable, the time that Drake May like ran in the snow and bootlegged. That was awesome. I'm gonna remember that forever. Forever.
3:11 Speaker 03 You're gonna remember that forever?
3:12 Pablo Torre? Yep. The snow.
3:13 Speaker 03 What a play.
3:14 Pablo Torre? The white.
3:15 Speaker 03 What a moment.
3:16 Pablo Torre? It's gonna be very memorable.
3:17 Speaker 01 The point of the whole thing is to find out who's best with a metric of some sort other than the scoreboard that measures merit. And we're gonna just make the second half something where people can't play successful football. Where there's no one who can play successful football. That's stupid.
3:35 Speaker 03 I also keep hearing that, like, oh, the game was bad before the turn. Jared Stidham threw a bomb down. Like, at least things were happening. I understand that, you know, it wasn't the best football. It wasn't comparable to what we saw at night. But the second half of that game was unwatchable. So anyways.
3:51 Speaker 01 The whole thing was unwatchable. The whole thing. Compared to the late game where you have 17 storylines, an inch on 17 different decisions would have made the Rams the team that's representing the best conference in the best game.
4:04 Pablo Torre? Is one of those storylines how Mina Kimes is not being allowed by the internet to celebrate the Seattle Seahawks? Is that one of the takes that Dan was referring to?
4:12 Speaker 03 We want to start with this one?
4:13 Pablo Torre? I mean, we're here, we're already arguing about, about who gets to, yeah, take pride in football.
4:20 Speaker 03 Set the table, you're the host.
4:22 Pablo Torre? This was last year, this was the offseason, Geno Smith.
4:24 Speaker 03 Right, right after he was traded.
4:26 Pablo Torre? They throw Geno Smith out a window, Mina, Seattle Seahawks, and Mina tweets something along the lines of, "This is a decision that we, the Seattle Seahawks, and their fans will regret." And that has been resurfaced all over my feed, at least, because-
4:39 Speaker 03 That's not what I actually posted.
4:40 Pablo Torre? Okay, well, what did you, what did you say?
4:42 Speaker 03 Flat out, I think this is a mistake, chances of upgrading are low.
4:46 Pablo Torre? That is basically what I said.
4:48 Speaker 01 She, no, well, she used fewer words, did it more efficiently, and more accurately.
4:52 Speaker 03 I was tweeting, I was sharing my opinion, not as a fan, but like, as my football opinion.
4:57 Pablo Torre? Point being, that Sam [BLEEP] Darnold took you guys to the Super Bowl, so eat it. That is what people are telling me.
5:02 Speaker 03 Well, that's just not true. I gave a take, right when the Seahawks traded Geno Smith, where I was critical of it, and very critical of it. This is before they signed Sam Darnold, but I was like, "This is a mistake, very unlikely they're gonna upgrade." And that take, which was proven wrong very quickly, Darnold was really good in the first half of the season, but it was more that Geno was so bad with the Raiders, right? And it happened very quickly. So I took the L on this, I think in Week 5 is when I posted, "Yeah, that was wrong." And I went on Bill's show and talked about it was wrong. And the take kinda simmered down, and it's come back to haunt me because the old Takes guy reposted it because he knows it's great business for him. The night that Sam was great against Washington, which is a horrible defense, and then this
5:42 Speaker 03 last game in which he was legitimately excellence, which is, you know, I was clearly wrong. Like, they did upgrade. Now, for the second half of the entire season, Sam Darnold was not good, and I think people like, didn't watch those games, apparently, the way people are talking now, but it doesn't matter. In the biggest game, when it mattered the most, he was the engine of their victory.
6:03 Speaker 01 I don't understand why Mina, and this makes me so naive, I know in today's America, where we have so many people fighting over race and gender and DEI and everything else. I don't understand how Mina's football opinions or her personality can be taken as any kind of polarizing, given how solid and obvious her, her information is, how prepared she obviously is.
6:27 Pablo Torre? Oh, no. Oh, no. Dan's doing the thing where he makes it worse for Mina by defending her. Oh, no. It's a classic Dan move.
6:37 Speaker 03 I don't want to, like, single myself out here. I think generally, right now, like, everybody loves dunking on the internet, so, like, old takes is a thing, right? Me having a bad opinion and getting roasted for it over and over and over is just kind of how social media works right now. Maybe because it's me, there's, like, certain level of response, there definitely is a different reaction from others.
7:03 Pablo Torre? People want to see Mina Kimes taking L.
7:06 Speaker 03 The, the thing that you have to realize, though, is like, and this is something I struggle with, taking the L is never going to be enough for most people, right? Like, so, the actual take was, like, about Geno, not about Sam Darnold, really.
7:17 Pablo Torre? Yes, the, the take was, we're going to miss Geno Smith.
7:20 Speaker 03 Geno Smith, yeah. And Geno really regressed this season, part because of his declining abilities, I believe, and also a large part because the Raiders were an absolute train wreck, and I don't think anybody would have had success there. Not to make an excuse for my take, obviously, it was the right decision for Seattle. I was wrong. But I was talking to Bill Simmons, like, I went on his show in, like, Week 6, and was like, damn, that was wrong, it was after a Geno game. But when confronted with the dunking again, you know, people were like, you haven't acknowledged it! And it's like, oh, right, you can never actually make people happy or satisfy it.
7:58 Pablo Torre? Here's the real question, which speaks to exactly the dynamic in Mina Kimes's brain, which is, of course, fully supportive of the Seattle Seahawks making the Super Bowl. Is there a part of your brain where if Sam Darnold has the worst game of his life, there's going to be a part of your neurological heat map that's going to light up and be like, eh, not the worst thing for old Mina Kimes?
8:21 Speaker 03 No.
8:22 Pablo Torre? Or Sam Darnold to suck ass?
8:24 Speaker 03 Here's what I've learned about the internet.
8:30 Speaker 03 You get nothing out of being proven right and only get people kicked away when you're proven wrong.
8:36 Pablo Torre? All of which explains, of course, that Mina knows the reality of Twitter and that is why she has tweeted 37,700 times.
8:44 Speaker 03 How many times have you tweeted?
8:45 Pablo Torre? I'm afraid to look.
8:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, you can't just throw mine out without, "Show me, show me yours."
8:53 Pablo Torre? I don't want to do that now that I see that.
8:55 Speaker 03 Nope, nope, tell us, tell us, tell us.
8:58 Speaker 01 This could be right.
8:59 Pablo Torre? Tell us, tell us.
9:02 Speaker 03 68,000!
9:04 Speaker 01 68,000, that's twice, that's twice, that's twice what you accused.
9:09 Speaker 03 Pablo?
9:10 Pablo Torre? A lot of, in my defense-
9:11 Speaker 03 68,000 tweets? That's more than, yes.
9:14 Pablo Torre? In my defense, that was like, a lot in that first decade and it was ironic. Can I say that? It was all ironic.
9:22 Speaker 01 No, you can't defend this. You can't have twice as many-
9:25 Pablo Torre? I was parroting people who tweeted a lot by tweeting. I think that was-
9:29 Speaker 01 Mina, what a, what a great gotcha, Mina. Good job by you. Twice as many tweets as you while trying to shame you for how much you've tweeted. Unbelievable.
9:37 Pablo Torre? This does not feel good, if that's what you're asking. Does it feel good to discover that I've tweeted 68,000 times? The answer, friends?
9:47 Pablo Torre? God damn it. God damn it.
10:08 Pablo Torre? Can we talk about Bill Belichick now? Can we talk about the thing that was the thing that also got people very mad? Can we do that?
10:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, I thought all of that was super interesting as somebody who has lost his Hall of Fame vote in baseball.
10:22 Pablo Torre? "Lost" is a very generous verb for what happened with your vote, Dan.
10:27 Speaker 01 What is your take?
10:28 Pablo Torre? Is that you, in a flagrant but very funny stunt, dared the Hall of Fame to take your vote away and they did.
10:38 Speaker 01 That's not exactly how that happened.
10:40 Pablo Torre? Tell the story about.
10:41 Speaker 03 I don't, tell the story, yeah.
10:42 Pablo Torre? Tell the story.
10:42 Speaker 03 I vaguely remember.
10:44 Speaker 01 Okay, so I am bothered by the fact that the morality gatekeepers of the Hall of Fame aren't letting Barry Bonds and the best baseball players I've ever seen get into the Hall of Fame because they're treating it as a moral epicenter instead of a museum. And so I quote unquote, "sell my vote to Deadspin and allow their readers to pick my Hall of Fame ballot," and they pick a really good one, and I would have had a decision to make if they'd picked a really bad one, but they picked a good one. And so I let the whole stunt go on, and then of course, the Hall of Fame took my vote. But the entire reasoning behind doing it, beyond the "look at me narcissism" of enjoying
11:25 Speaker 01 the circus and the pageantry of nonsense, was very much to object to the idea that I didn't like baseball writers, my brethren, using that kind of sanctimony to lock the gates on excellence. And it's the same sort of thing that has happened here to Bill Belichick, where they are embarrassing him, he's getting a phone call that is stunning him. I would love to see his reaction to that in real time, as he's learning, like the rest of us, the shocking news that the most obvious of first-ballot Hall of Famers doesn't get to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer because the morality police have arrested him.
11:59 Pablo Torre? So the BBWAA in 2014 said about Dan, quote, "The BBWAA regards Hall of Fame voting as the ultimate privilege, and any abuse of that privilege is unacceptable." And they have removed you. That was 2014. This story, by the way, Mina, like, me, Jordan Hudson, Donald Trump, who has Truth sociald about this, Mike Lombardi, who I've also investigated on the show, we all share the same opinion, which is that Bill Belichick should be in the Hall of Fame, and it's insane that he isn't. And the thing that made me laugh, though, was that...
12:38 Pablo Torre? Okay, that is obviously the correct take. But in a sense, this is also the best thing that could have happened to Bill Belichick.
12:46 Speaker 03 Mmm, great spin zone. Yeah, everybody's now just talking about how good he is again.
12:50 Pablo Torre? God, we're all like, it's now a brave take to say Bill Belichick's the greatest football coach of all time arguably, that he's won all these Super Bowls.
12:57 Speaker 03 Well, it's not, I mean, literally, everybody agrees with that.
13:00 Pablo Torre? But the whole point is, the villain is now the underdog.
13:03 Speaker 03 Is anybody gonna take the opposite? Like, I was, I saw one person, Greg Doyle, the columnist.
13:08 Pablo Torre? Greg with three G's.
13:10 Speaker 03 No, but I agree with you. I do think it's been really valuable for him. Because, yeah, everybody's rising to his defense. Everybody agrees this is crazy. I think the actual mechanics of how it went down, which are still up in the air, are really interesting though, right? So, for those who don't know, Mike Sando posted about this, and I thought this was really illuminating. He's one of the voters, he voted for Belichick. By the way, that whole thing too, now everybody's trying to sniff out, we can talk about that in a second.
13:35 Pablo Torre? The Belichick 11?
13:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. Ali Gottlieb, who's a guy who comes on my podcast sometimes, who's gray, has been posting like a spreadsheet of all the votes.
13:43 Pablo Torre? Oh, we've been making calls here as well, like, to add to Ali's tabulation. I will say, as a sneak preview, Dan Fouts confirmed that he voted for Belichick by giving us a thumbs up on the text message we sent him. So, our investigation is also continuing.
13:58 Speaker 03 Have you got, have you found a no yet?
14:00 Pablo Torre? No. We've had abstentions because it's against the rules, the rules that Dan Lebatard doesn't respect.
14:05 Speaker 03 That's what I think the no's are all gonna say, though. This is like Traitors. It's just like Traitors, which is a show that I'm recapping. Okay, but Sando says something interesting. So, this is like the senior vote, right, for Belichick to get in, which is limited to, you get, I think, three people get in? So, Sando hypothesized that, since they don't talk about their votes, and you have to pick three, that it's possible some of the Belichick no votes were people who thought he was such a lock, that they could spend their votes on getting some of those guys in who they wanted.
14:46 Speaker 01 So, 11 voters did that, though? You think it's possible that 11 did that?
14:50 Speaker 03 No, I'm sure some of them just hate his ass.
14:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, so what's it supposed to be, though? Is it supposed to be merit or morals? Like, I know, so we're all in agreement. There were a couple of takes this week that were pretty universal and that I didn't hear something on the other side. This one, and does Shador Sanders belong in the Pro Bowl? Like, it's just an easy opinion to have that Shador Sanders doesn't belong in the Pro Bowl, and it's an easy opinion to have that obviously Bill Belichick is a Hall of Famer. But you guys believe that, because cheating's pretty egregious, and I don't know football the way Mina does, but Mina also doesn't know football the way Bill Polian does, and so when Bill Polian maybe has more information about how much success Bill Belichick had
15:38 Speaker 01 because he was cheating, would there be any merit to the idea that Bill Belichick somehow cheated his way to more glory than he deserved, or it's just petty nonsense?
15:48 Pablo Torre? I want to introduce the Polian.
15:51 Speaker 03 The Polian thing is fascinating. You should, yeah, please.
15:53 Pablo Torre? The Polian dimension. He's 83 years old. He has given quotes about what he did or did not do as a voter. Don Van Natta and Seth Rogen broke this story, by the way. Credit to them. Don Van Natta called up Polian in the reporting and asked him, "Did you vote for Belichick?" And he said he couldn't remember. And I'm just like, and elsewhere he had said that he had voted for Belichick, I think. So, anyway, on that level alone, like, concerning, if not dispositive of what he may or may not have actually done.
16:21 Speaker 01 But he remembered that he voted for Robert Kraft. Like, he remembered 100% certainty that he voted for Robert Kraft and didn't remember with 100% certainty whether he voted for Belichick.
16:30 Pablo Torre? And I always find it funny when someone doesn't remember something, especially something that just happened, let alone stuff that is, like, pretty memorable. Instead of saying yes or no, I just think "I don't remember" is a very legal go-to when you don't want to say what you really did.
16:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:44 Pablo Torre? In this case, though, the Kraft thing that Dan mentions, Mina, is also pretty instructive because Robert Kraft, and Van Natta had also reported this previously, had been campaigning to get into the Hall of Fame and is in the same class, is one of the candidates who got voted on alongside Belichick in a way that has seemingly
17:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:02 Pablo Torre? made a con- Conflict of interest, especially for Bill Polian, who definitely supports Robert Kraft unambiguously.
17:07 Speaker 03 Which also just like, spare me the idea that Robert Kraft deserves even an iota of the credit that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. We can parse out, you know, I think history has shown Brady probably deserves more, but undeniably Belichick deserves a lot of it. But give me a break.
17:23 Speaker 01 Well, the idea that Kraft is getting in before Belichick is obviously, it's idiotic. But if I were to go back like six or seven years with you guys and say, look, let's stand next to Bill Belichick where he is in the world right now. And let's tell him that all of the following is going to happen. Tom Brady is going to immediately win a Super Bowl without him going through Rogers and Mahomes and Drew Brees to do so. There's going to be a 10 part docu-series that Robert Kraft is going to manipulate in order to shame you into the national perception we didn't have before. You're not actually as responsible for everything that happened there as people think you are. You're going to start dating a 20 year old and bonus, one of your linebackers is going to do the same thing with your organization
18:08 Speaker 01 and take them to the Super Bowl that you did, rendering what you did less meaningful because one of your linebackers can do it.
18:16 Pablo Torre? I mean, it is exactly why this is the greatest thing to happen to Bill Belichick. The narrative on Belichick, for all those reasons, no one has lost the polycule divorce of Kraft, Brady and Belichick more than Belichick. And now there is this movement to find the Belichick 11.
18:37 Speaker 03 Doesn't this connect to what I was saying earlier about like the desire of the internet to just find people to dunk on, right? I'm not saying that.
18:46 Pablo Torre? Here are some people that you can't dunk on because they said yes, they voted for Belichick. Dan Fouts, Ira Kaufman, Bucks beat writer. Jeff Legwold, Broncos beat writer. Paul Damowicz, Eagles beat writer. Matt Maioko, Niners beat writer, give us a thumbs up. Mark Craig, Vikings beat writer. Calvin Watkins, Cowboys beat writer, also another thumbs up. A bunch of people have not responded as we are recording this now.
19:08 Speaker 01 I just love, I love, I love this.
19:11 Speaker 03 More than that, right? I saw a spread.
19:12 Speaker 01 They're 50, they're 50, 50 voters.
19:14 Pablo Torre? Those are the new additions to what Ollie Connolly has tabulated. We're trying to like fill in.
19:18 Speaker 03 Which is a lot.
19:19 Pablo Torre? Yeah, we're filling in the spreadsheet.
19:21 Speaker 03 So between yours and Ollie's, how many people are left?
19:23 Pablo Torre? We got, here you go.
19:25 Speaker 03 Like, how many names are uncounted for between the names that Ollie put out and then the ones you just said?
19:29 Pablo Torre? 13, 14, 15, 16? We have 15, and we have an eye on the 16th Tony Dungy.
19:36 Speaker 03 Oh, wow. Okay, so you and Ollie together have 35?
19:40 Pablo Torre? Ollie had 17, exactly, and so we're getting.
19:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, but, but, but, Mina, here, here's the thing about this, Mina, though, while you say wow, and I understand why you say wow. Let's examine for a moment what's just happened here.
19:51 Pablo Torre? Journalism.
19:51 Speaker 01 35 people have run forward with the totally obvious opinion proudly, ta-da, yes, I voted for Belichick. And the others are in complete hiding, and Pablo's not going to be able to find them, because of course, it's the easiest thing in the world to vote for Bill Belichick and to find the people who voted for Bill Belichick, because they want to now be seen, because they never thought their vote for Bill Belichick could possibly be wanted by anybody, because it's the most obvious thing in the world.
20:19 Speaker 03 They're all defending themselves, right? Because what you've got here, there's got to be some name for this kind of like, it's not a prisoner's dilemma, but like, essentially.
20:27 Speaker 01 The Belichick dilemma is what it's going to be named.
20:29 Speaker 03 Nobody's supposed to reveal their votes.
20:32 Pablo Torre? Correct.
20:32 Speaker 03 But the people here are so afraid of being the odd man out, that they're willing to buck tradition to come forward, thus throwing the no voters under the bus. And, I mean, I don't mean to malign them, God knows I would do the same thing, so I just want to be clear. But, let's be clear about what's happening here. People are coming forward because they don't want to be bullied.
20:55 Speaker 01 It's so good.
20:56 Speaker 03 And then, then the remainders are shrinking and shrinking. This is so fascinating to me.
21:01 Pablo Torre? So you may even then, using the powers of reality television logic, deduce that there might be some liars potentially, but, but the people who won't tell us their vote might be the most suspicious of all, ironically, right? And so I'm looking at you, Jeff Duncan, who wouldn't tell us his vote, New Orleans Saints beat writer, or Scott Garceau of the Ravens.
21:19 Speaker 01 Don't, don't do this.
21:19 Pablo Torre? Jerry Dulock, Steelers beat writer, Darren Gann.
21:22 Speaker 01 No, don't do this.
21:23 Pablo Torre? Darren Gann, covering the Panthers for NBC Sports.
21:26 Speaker 01 No, don't do this.
21:27 Pablo Torre? Transparency.
21:28 Speaker 01 This is unfair.
21:29 Pablo Torre? Sunlight is the only disinfectant.
21:32 Speaker 03 I would lie to you. Who's gonna expose this?
21:35 Pablo Torre? I know. That's a thing. Somewhere there's a-
21:38 Speaker 03 Also, it's not like state secrets. It's not like something we're like lying about.
21:42 Pablo Torre? It is now. It is now. By the way, I love that like Armando Salguero, fellow South Floridian Dan, a guy you've known for a very long time, is like, he's like, "I was the one who suggested Belichick, and here is the, here's the wedding toast I gave him, and here's..."
21:59 Speaker 03 He did his, yeah, somebody has to present the case.
22:01 Pablo Torre? And he, and by the way, like, apparently confidentiality around none of this matters anymore if you're in favor of Belichick, because he was like, "Here's the speech I gave, here's the thing that Brady sent me to read to everybody that didn't convince the Belichick 11."
22:12 Speaker 03 There is a strong connective fiber between these two stories, though, right?
22:15 Pablo Torre? Avoiding the dunk tank. People are terrified of being like, "Oh, no." And by the way, in fairness, I mean, you alluded to this before, like, you know, what Darren Gant was saying to us while he was avoiding disclosing his vote was that like, "This is a process thing, too." I'll quote him, "This is far more of a process story than a personality story." In terms of like how rigorous, or rather, how restrictive the voting structure is now, where people were like, "Ah, I shouldn't vote for Belichick, I want to get this other guy in there this year, and they might disappear if we don't get him in now." Here's some other things, though, some other just breadcrumbs to throw into the recipe here. Because what someone else pointed out to us is that, here's the list of stuff that was thrown
22:58 Pablo Torre? into the discussion against Belichick. There was Spygate, of course, that was the thing that was most famously reported, that we gotta get accountability for Spygate. The other thing, I guess we should also acknowledge that, yeah, there's the whole like, "He didn't win without Brady" argument, which seems just farcical in totality for all the football reasons that we've acknowledged. But the third thing that I didn't realize was in the discussion that apparently, according to people, one of the voters who were in the room on this Zoom call said was, "It's possible that Belichick could come back as a coach." And they didn't want to vote him in if it's possible that he might still be in the NFL. And that, to me, is funny, just as a matter of Belichick is absolutely desperate to get back
23:41 Pablo Torre? in the league, and no one will let him back in, and that might also be the reason, according to at least one voter, that they would like to not vote on him right now. So that's also apparently in the discussion.
23:51 Speaker 01 When presented with something this kind of absurd, right? One of the fun things with conspiracy theories is going and finding whatever the reason might be for something that doesn't seem to have very much reason. And you can find any number of them. But Mina, would you buy the idea that Jerry Jones is reportedly, according to Don Van Natta, keeping Bob Kraft or has tried to keep Bob Kraft out of the Hall of Fame? Would you believe the idea that Bob Kraft would not want Bill Belichick to be part of his big weekend and would keep him or try to influence folks to make sure that he could remain that small? You wouldn't buy that kind of pettiness?
24:33 Speaker 03 If that's true, and I don't know Kraft and the state of that. I know I've read a lot of Don and Seth's excellent reporting about the dislucitive relationship. The dry sand effect is pretty serious, my guy, because if you get in and Bill does it, it's all anyone's going to be talking about, right? So I don't think, I would imagine he recognizes that on some level. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it would be very smart on his part if he wants this to go over well.
25:04 Speaker 01 If I may, Pablo, can I suggest to the Hall of Fame voters who, and the people who run the Hall of Fame, if you've got this many voters who have come forth and broken the rule of not making their vote known as public, you might want to take away their vote for breaking the rules, the way that my vote was taken away for breaking the rules because you're supposed to follow the rules.
25:29 Speaker 03 The rule followers.
25:30 Speaker 01 Well, no, but these are the gatekeepers who are telling Bill Belichick that he's also got to follow the rules or he's not allowed in the Hall of Fame. So if the rule makers want to follow their own rules, they might want to ban some people for getting in front of everybody and be like, I voted for him when it's supposed to be secret.
25:48 Pablo Torre? So I just got to jump in here with a quick update because the Pro Football Hall of Fame Did in fact threaten in a rare statement that it could remove voters who violated their bylaws. But not only that, the Hall of Fame also decided, perhaps paradoxically, to correct Bill Polian's elusive memory forum, declaring that the 83-year-old former Colts general manager didn't even speak during the discussion about Belichick and his candidacy. And that, according to the Hall of Fame's independent auditing firm, Polian did actually vote for Belichick. Meanwhile, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, Vehe Gregorian, finally texted us back in our ongoing quest to hunt down the Belichick 11. And he wrote, quote, "Sorry for delayed response.
26:31 Pablo Torre? Wanted to write about it so I could explain vote as best as possible." And what Gregorian wrote about in the column was why he voted no. Explaining that he did not vote against Belichick or Kraft. He voted for three other candidates who had been, quote, "snubbed for decades." But this story, apparently, does not stop there. Guys, I have a late-breaking update.
26:58 Pablo Torre? Jason Whitlock has just added a photograph of me to a corkboard he's created on the internet in a conspiracy to destroy Bill Belichick.
27:07 Speaker 01 I mean, you belong up there. That's good work out of Whitlock.
27:10 Pablo Torre? I'm part of the Kraft family syndicate now. This is hard for me to discover. Goddamn.
27:15 Speaker 03 Who else is on there?
27:16 Pablo Torre? Robert Kraft, Bill Polian, Tony Dungy, me, Mike Florio, and then a rain.
27:22 Speaker 01 You gotta get off the internet, Pablo. You're tweeting too much and you gotta get off the internet.
27:25 Pablo Torre? I regret. I regret all of this.
27:27 Speaker 01 You're sitting there on the internet while we're doing the show. You're just perusing where are people talking about me?
27:35 Speaker 03 Have you been refreshing Twitter as we've been talking this whole time?
27:37 Pablo Torre? At least you used a good photo. You did use a pretty good photo of me.
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29:00 Pablo Torre? Should we talk about the other take that we wanted to throw in the faces of various people? Which is Tom Brady, as we continue the theme, the through line of this episode?
29:09 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. By the way, this, yes, the through line of "nobody cares when you're correct, only people care when you're wrong." Dan came in over the top last year texting us, "Tom Brady's bad about this, I was right, you guys were wrong." Nary a peep from a lebatard this season as Tom Brady has built some support and received accolades for his performance. Would you care to apologize to us, Dan?
29:37 Speaker 03 His one personality trait that we know of is competitive freak.
29:43 Speaker 01 Yes.
29:44 Speaker 03 That dude is hearing all of this. And by the way, like, you know, when he took a second, right? He didn't jump right into the booth. Again, knowing what we know about him, he's probably been doing an insane amount of preparation. Like, he's not, like, the criticism of Romo now is that he's maybe not as prepared as he was initially. This is, these are all the, you know, leaked stories we're seeing. That's not going to be the case with Tom Brady, based on everything we know about him.
30:12 Speaker 01 But Mina, I would say to you as someone who has done that, I would say to you as someone who has a lot of information at her disposal, you know how fast all that moves. You can prepare for that. Tom Brady, I'm sure, will have a lot of things to say and not enough time to say them because you are not prepared for how quickly all of that moves when you've got 700 sheets of paper in front of you and you need to know who the backup nickel package is on the left side, you know, who's in too deep coverage this time. You need to know every, I don't think people understand that Al Michaels, every week, for 17 times a year, however long it is, that the burden that is Al Michaels at his age
30:54 Speaker 01 just learning every player on the roster because you need to know who recovered that fumble.
30:59 Speaker 03 As opposed to the NFL when he had three seconds to identify every player on the field and get off like a perfect pass? What are we talking about here?
31:06 Pablo Torre? I just want to say.
31:07 Speaker 01 I would not care to, and I will not apologize to you. He has indeed gotten better because he's good at getting better, and he couldn't have been much worse. It was this season, earlier this season, that I legitimately thought and said that he was distractingly bad, like, he was getting in the way of my enjoyment of the telecast by not merely just being boring and bland, but by being bad. What I will give you, though, is that he was great on the call and far exceeded my expectations on Rams-Seahawks, and it made me realize something that I had not considered. There are two ways to be great at that job. You can be at the trough that everyone else is at and then just be legitimately better than
31:52 Speaker 01 everyone with your information and your stories and your wisdom and your perspective. Or you could just have great enthusiasm for football. Gruden did it that way. Madden did it that way. The best announcers that there have been, Romo did it that way at the beginning. They were enthusiastic about football. So when I'm on my couch and Matthew Stafford breaks a tackle to make a fourth down gain on a run, and I am more surprised than if my coffee table had gotten up and run those three yards because I can't believe Matthew Stafford can do this with 17 years in his body of NFL football. And Tom Brady merely does this. Oh, my God.
32:35 Speaker 01 He's great at broadcasting because all he's got to do is match the enthusiasm of the customer. And it's not that hard. And he figured out how to do it. He figured out how to be human in one of the best games I've ever seen that felt like the Super Bowl before the Super Bowl.
32:49 Speaker 03 I think you hit on something that is definitely true there and underappreciated by those of us who are like grilling down into the details. Did they, he get situational football right? Was his analysis of this coverage, did he predict whatever? Is that the vibe, the enthusiasm, the joy is the most important thing. You've got to know the game, you've got to know the players, you've got to get them right or whatnot. But overwhelmingly, when I talk to fans about games and football coverage in general, they respond well to passion. And so I think that's absolutely right. I think that is definitely one way in which Brady has been good this year is like he's, you can tell he enjoys watching the games.
33:31 Speaker 03 And I know Collinsworth, it can be divisive, but I think he shares this as well as like, you know, you also get the sense that he is like excited by watching these young quarterbacks and he's excited when players play well. That's fun to watch. It's fun to be a part of. I think that people are responding to that.
33:48 Pablo Torre? So Brady's now giving interviews like a victory lap on this season to throw it in Dan's face and into Boog Shyambe's face. He's given an interview to The Athletic and he basically said a couple of things that made sense to me that also speak to what you guys are discerning, which is that number one, Tom Brady went into his rookie season trying to say way too much. And I empathize with that. Anybody who's tried to do television knows like you start off trying to say a lot of stuff to be like smart and persuasive and prepared. And then you realize, oh, my God, I didn't have any time to say the things that I had memorized and you look like an idiot. One of the quotes here was that it's a lot easier to start something than it is to finish something in terms of just speaking in public. And that is absolutely true. The second thing that was mentioned was that he loves Kevin
34:33 Pablo Torre? Burkhart in a way that
34:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:35 Pablo Torre? is clearly real enough to be transmitted through the screen. Speaking of Bob Kraft and Belichick, Brady said this about Kevin Burkhart, quote, "I value Kevin as much as anybody I've ever worked with." And this goes on and on.
34:49 Speaker 03 Wow, Julian Edelman, dagger.
34:52 Speaker 01 Oh, because he was vulnerable. No, but when's Tom Brady, when's the last time he was terrible at anything? Like, you've got someone there holding your hand. A professional broadcaster, as you do the reps, is sitting there putting his hand on your knee and helping you.
35:04 Speaker 03 Burkhart is so good at setting him up. And if you pay attention to like the mechanics of these things, you and you really listen to the way he talks about plays and asks him questions. It is masterful. He's a great guy and like, I think, really talented. But like, the work he's done to help Brady get to this level is masterful. Not surprising that Tom Brady, who's like the consummate teammate, say what you will about the dude, beloved, recognizes that he has a really good one. But I also think that that dynamic too is something that's underappreciated that people respond to is like, people like it when the play-by-play guy and the color guy seem to genuinely like each other.
35:45 Pablo Torre? Yeah, like a buddy cop thing.
35:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's one of the things I love most about Buck and Aikman, who I think are just the gold standard company woman, whatever. But like, there's a lot of times during the game where you can feel them like chuckling to each other and there's like references to things they've seen in the past or remarking with like amazement at something the other person has said. It's a hang. Like, a game is a hang and you want to feel like you're in the company of actual friends. And I think Brady and Burkhart are starting to Create that vibe.
36:16 Speaker 01 It's an underrated thing, though, that I don't think people know very much about sports television, Tony and Mike, or wherever it is that you find chemistry pairings. Yeah, the people need to love each other in order for there to be people dissolving, laughing in front of cameras in pressurized moments just because they enjoy each other's company and their friends hanging out. Like, the shared joy elements of chemistry have been humanizing for the robot of Tom because it's, you see the enthusiasm for sport, you see the love story of him having a connection with a partner who is helping him, and it has to be a long time since Tom Brady doubted the way that he had to doubt, "Am I good at this?" When the gasbags of the world like me are saying, "Man, he's terrible.
37:00 Speaker 01 It's distracting how terrible he is."
37:02 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I mean, he was in the dunk tank in a real way, in a way that resonated with his vulnerability, and I think all of us have felt a version of that. I will say, though, Mina, that Dan didn't eat the L. He just sort of, like,
37:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:16 Pablo Torre? Said a bunch of stuff and then refused to do it.
37:19 Speaker 03 Where's the accountability?
37:21 Speaker 01 No, I'd like to see a little more of a sample size from him to see if he's going to continue to get better because while he has gotten better, almost all of the people who do this with reps do end up getting better.
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38:14 Speaker 04 Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
38:53 Pablo Torre? I've realized that despite talking about three seemingly very disparate topics, they're all the same [BLEEP] topic. Everything we've talked about is the story of people who have been successful, being brought down and figuring out how could we then establish that all along, we're as good as we think we are. That is Mina, that is Bill Balachek, that is Tom Brady. And by the way, because Dan is calling for sample size, in terms of like, how much better can you get at this? It's also probably worth us seeing this.
39:28 Speaker 06 The Miami Herald High School Sports Show.
39:38 Speaker 06 Today's show is brought to you by Health South, Office Depot.
39:43 Speaker 03 Love the special effects here, the mirroring.
39:45 Pablo Torre? I love Ratancheck.
39:46 Speaker 06 Powerade and Sound Advice.
39:53 Pablo Torre? Good morning and welcome to another edition of the Herald High School Sports Show. I'm Dan Levitard. Killian and Southridge have two of the top baseball teams in Dade. But when we featured them a few weeks ago, it was no contest as Killian pinned a 7-0 defeat on the Spartans. However, this week, Southridge was looking for some revenge as the two teams met again in a District 16 rematch. Now, in softball, the Douglas Eagles have one of Broward's top teams.
40:19 Speaker 03 This is fun! Oh, the little smile.
40:22 Pablo Torre? The smiling. For those who are not watching on YouTube, you've missed the smile of a Dan Lebatard. At how old? How old was that smile?
40:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, how old are you there?
40:33 Speaker 01 I'm in my very early twenties. It's legitimately my first television appearance was that show. And till my brother's dying day, he will make fun of me because we taped on Wednesdays, but the games were on Friday. So I'm taping before the games are played. And so this is what my brother would do when impersonating me. Wow, what a play.
41:04 Speaker 03 I personally always enjoy clips of young Dan, which we rarely get to see because whenever I watch them, I just imagined it's what would have been like if A.J. Soprano had done sports.
41:16 Pablo Torre? Hold on, hold on. Dan going, wow, what a play. This all, what I found out today is that Dan resents Tom Brady because Tom Brady is literally doing what young Dan Lebatard used to do and being praised for it.
41:27 Speaker 01 Yes, yes, it's just secretly jealousy, yes.
41:31 Speaker 03 Why are you so jealous of Tom Brady?
41:33 Pablo Torre? What a play.
41:35 Speaker 01 Wow, what a play.
41:38 Speaker 03 Amazing.
41:39 Speaker 01 Two days from now.
41:40 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:51 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tubinello. Our studio engineering is by RG Systems. Our sound design by Andrew Bersick at NGW Post. Digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern. And our theme song, as always, by John Bravo. We'll talk to you next time.
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