Deshaun Vs. Cleveland, and a Mega-Mailbag With Joe House. Plus, UCLA’s Bob Chesney.

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House to answer some mailbag questions. Then, Bill heads out to UCLA to chat with Bruins football coach Bob Chesney about his coaching history, changing the culture at UCLA, and much more! (0:00) Intro (2:43) Mailbag with House (01:27:41) Bob Chesney interview Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Joe House and Bob Chesney Producers: Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Jessie Lopez See what boring banking can do for you. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at https://ChatGPT.com by selecting Work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines 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 PayPal. The holiday rush is coming and you can get ahead of it with PayPal. Shop your favorite online stores with PayPal this season like eBay for collectibles, Fanatics for teen gear, Walmart for tech. Check out the flexibility to pay now or pay later and split your payments with Pay in four with no interest, no late fees. Shop now with PayPal. Paying for subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com slash paying for PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 0:39Bill Simmons?

  The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network where we have a new rewatchables coming for you on Monday. We did Apollo 13, a movie that somehow we had not done yet, even though we've done almost 450 movies. So that is coming for you on Monday. It's an action packed week for me on The Ringer. I'm on Sean Fantasy's Big Picture Podcast doing a movie draft. I am on Wait a Second with Jason Concepcion this week. On Tuesday, the fantasy football guys, Craig, Danny and Danny are going to be on this podcast. We're going to do our annual my guy fantasy draft. And Thursday, we have me and Sal doing NFC over unders. Part one will be Thursday live on Netflix.

• 1:22Bill Simmons?

  And then Friday, live on Netflix, we are doing the second annual Ringer Fantasy Football Draft. Football is here. This will be my last non NFL podcast for a while. Joe House coming on first to do a mailbag. Bob Chesney, new coach of UCLA for football, coming on. We actually went to UCLA. We filmed like a 45 minute interview with them. My goal is to get you to like UCLA and at least like, even if you don't care, like kind of secretly hope they win because he has a tall task ahead of him. But I have a lot of belief he's going to pull it off. So that's the pod. We're going to take a break. Pearl Jam and then Joe House, mailbag time.

• 2:07Bill 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. And yet it's proven time and time again that strong fundamentals are the thing that will lead you to victory and banking is no different. While everyone tries to outdo each other, PNC Bank just keeps going right down the middle with steady, calculated money moves and the financial wins, they 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 FDIC.

• 3:17Bill Simmons?

  All right, recording this part of the podcast, it is mid afternoon Pacific time. I just watched the Red Sox sweep the Giants. Fenway Park was alive, House. Boston was alive. Really, the Scots and the Jalen Brown trade turned around the Red Sox season and Boston. Fenway's packed. Everybody's happy. The game last night, my dad went, he stayed the whole game with my uncle Chuck. They came back, they won in the ninth and it's just when you have a good baseball team, it really energizes the city. It's unbelievable.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd like to invite the Red Sox to eat a fat dick because I bet them consecutive games against the Athletics. What was that, two weeks ago, a week ago? Yeah, they're the worst team in baseball.

• 4:00Bill Simmons?

  Why didn't you ask me?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Openly.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  We were, we were due to have a couple of bad, bad games.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  The Athletics are trying to lose.

• 4:06Bill Simmons?

  I know.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And, but I will say the 12 to one to win the World Series and whatever we have them at to win the pennant for the Red Sox. I'm a rational economic actor, even though it's distasteful.

• 4:19Bill Simmons?

  I can't figure out the season anymore. They had a guy that won the game last night who came from Pawtucket with a five ERA. I'd never heard of him. I follow the Red Sox diligently and I'm in an ale keeper league and I was like, I don't know who this guy is, old and he won the game. We have, we have Sogard, we have Mickey Gasper, who's now, his nickname is Mickey Gas came in, just started hitting bombs for like eight days. He might be going down this week. Roman Anthony comes back. It's just, it's so funny when you have these baseball seasons when random, no name guys get hot. You just don't understand what's happening as it's happening and then all of a sudden you have a chance in the playoffs. Anyway, enough about the Red Sox.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Part of the charm. Yeah, well, we're gonna miss a whole season of it next year.

• 5:04Bill Simmons?

  I know, I'm really, it's like two seasons. We're going to do a mailbag. UCLA coach Bob Chesney is coming up later. So this is ostensibly a Holy Cross.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's go. Why not?

• 5:16Bill Simmons?

  And then you're coming out here, you're going to be in the Craig rewatchables producer chair for me and House. I bet for me and Sal doing AFC, NFC over unders.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  An honor.

• 5:28Bill Simmons?

  NFC is going to be live on Netflix on Thursday. And then we're going to be running the AFC one on Sunday. Okay. Before we get into the mailbag questions, I got a great one from Brett from DC because was talking with somebody about, yeah, DC guy was talking to somebody about what are they going to call if the NFL does any tanking for Arch Manning and the other QBs? What would that be called? And Brett from DC says it should be called Arch badness.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  That's very good.

• 6:00Bill Simmons?

  Really good. Cause usually we have like the, yeah, there's some sort of, that one's like a little level beyond the level. I don't know. I liked Arch badness.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I, I listened to you in Pellicero. I was being a part of my own, you know, rev up for this NFL season. And I, I was like parch for arch. I was doing it. I was working on it. I was spitballing, but Arch, Arch badness is phenomenal.

• 6:24Bill Simmons?

  Arch badness is the leader right now. Okay. Questions, as always, people sent these to BS Podcast 33. I sent you a couple of these because there was a couple like mild prep ones. Didn't send you this one. Came from a lifelong Browns fan named Ryan in Cleveland. He said, I need to know, has a fan base ever hated one of its own players as much as Cleveland hates Deshaun Watson? He listed some facts, which I bullet pointed. He's made roughly 12 million for every game he's played as a Brown, which is 19. He's made 12 million per touchdown pass, also 19. He followed Baker Mayfield, shoved him out of the way, who's the most beloved Browns QB of my lifetime, he says, I'm 37. Made the worst trade in recent history to get him, gave him the worst contract in NFL

• 7:09Bill Simmons?

  history. Helped waste the backend of Nick Chubb's prime, burned through most of Miles Garrett's prime before we end up trading him. Meanwhile, Watson has settled more than 20 civil lawsuits while showing essentially zero public remorse of accountability. On top of all this, he sucks at football. He, he, he tore his Achilles last year or retore it because apparently even his Achilles had had enough of him playing football and now he gets booed at home preseason games. And yesterday said it was disrespectful and personal. And he says, no shit, Sherlock. Have you ever been in a situation with a hometown athlete where the entire city turned on them like this? Cause I honestly, Boston's had a few where there's been like, we really turned on Tony

• 7:54Bill Simmons?

  Eason. We really turned on Jack Clark, who wasn't there that long. Like there's been blips like this, but I can't remember anything like this where it's like completely ruined his ability to play football.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would have to be somebody from the Redskins and it would have to be Redskins slash commanders. It would have to be during the Daniel Snyder era for it to rival anything at the, at this level that Deshaun has achieved. I mean, really incredible.

• 8:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, like, like Haynesworth, everyone turned on Haynesworth. But he was a defensive tackle. Like he's not going back to pass and just throwing the ball in the ground to wide open receivers.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you can't really boo him individually. And really what you're, all of the dissatisfaction around him is he just got that check. It was like, thank you, I'm good. And that was, that was really the, the, you know, hallmark of the Snyder era. A lot of checks given out to guys past their prime.

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because there's been a few of these over the years, like Anthony Rendon, when he went to the Angels and basically just cash checks for them, decided he didn't like playing baseball anymore and had some injuries. You lost him and Strasburg from that Nats team, right? And he was paid like a combined half a billion dollars for those three guys and everything and again, I don't know why anybody gives those giant baseball contracts at this point with the, how bad some of them are.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  That's the Boris, Scott Boris waving his, you know, his, his magic juice all over the place.

• 9:19Bill Simmons?

  But that was the Angels. This is the Browns who haven't won in 64, who have always needed a quarterback saved for that one Baker thing. It falls apart a little when they're like, we got rid of Baker to get him because then Baker bounced around the league for like two years. So I'm a, and Baker was really bad that last Browns year. The more interesting piece to me about this is what do you do? Like Todd Monkin said, he was going to announce the starter for week one tomorrow. We're taping this on a Sunday, so on Monday, I can't, Shador was, was really good yesterday against somebody's backups and Watson was really awful and got booed the whole time and his body language was awful. I can't imagine Shador is not going to be the starter, right? So then what do you do with Watson? Do you just make him the third QB? Cause there's all these cap ramifications.

• 10:03Bill Simmons?

  You can't waive them. It's actually worse for them. So what do you do? It's like a staring contest, trying to get him to like retire or quit, right?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Well, and this is the position they were in, you know, the, the trial run here for the preseason was, is there any possibility of salvaging anything on a football field? That's it. He's doing the, he's, he's in this, these preseason practices. He's playing these preseason games. Is there any shred of salvageable, productive football left? Because they already are prepared to just eat the shit. They have been eating the shit for the entirety of the contract. And it's like, if you can give us anything, then it, then it's worth it. By the way, the answer to a place turning that we must include in this is Ben Simmons. Ben Simmons is, is a.

• 10:53Bill Simmons?

  The Sixers.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yes, Ben Simmons on the Sixers absolutely needs to be included in this conversation. I was going through some NBA guys.

• 11:00Bill Simmons?

  That was a little like the Watson thing where it felt like there was some psychological stuff happening as well. Like a severe confidence loss that.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:09Bill Simmons?

  People could, could sense, yeah.

• 11:12Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what they do because I actually think the Browns have some talent. And you know, they're not, I don't think they're a 10 or 11 win team, but they could be friskier than they were last year. They won five games last year, you know?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  The hard thing to assess with them, and this was the challenge of their win total, where we're sitting and going through it, is if they aren't very good as the third part of the, the latter, uh, you know, final six games or so arrives. Yes. Because like, oh, Shador, you know, he might be a, just a career backup guy. Now it's time to just turn it off and, and, you know, get ready for the college quarterback.

• 11:52Bill Simmons?

  I would urge the Browns to go, Browns fans to go half glass full here.

• 11:58Bill Simmons?

  You haven't won a title since 64, but you can now claim making the worst NFL trade of all time.

• 12:06Bill Simmons?

  People think Herschel Walker? No. People think the Colts trading the rights to John Elway for Mark Hinton and Chris Herman and a number one pick? No. Like you have it. This was the worst one ever. So you won.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  It was such a bad contract by that ownership group that the NFL, the remaining owners openly colluded. Like there, there was discovery. There was an arbitration about this, you know, a couple of years ago, where the, the union and the league ended up settling the arbitration, but like, the record says, we are never going to do a goddamn Deshaun Watson contract again. How are we going to avoid this? The, the owners are talking to each other, uh, you know, openly, uh, you know, working together to never do that, that, that again. I mean, that's, that's an achievement. That's an achievement. Yeah.

• 12:54Bill Simmons?

  They changed the league. I think they've, they've set a good example for what not to do. People will point to this. I, I think, I think from a Jimmy Haslam standpoint, it can't get worse. Like this was it. This was rock bottom.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  That would be his all, all time legacy.

• 13:11Bill Simmons?

  And then the really fun part is if Shador is even, I mean, we were talking about with Pelissero, I was talking about how just C plus Stroud, please. We, you can nickname you C plus Stroud. Just be a C plus. Shador could be a C minus and it would feel like the biggest win of all time, right?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. For, for a fifth rounder and you know, the, the thing that remains with Shador is he is so good in front of a microphone.

• 13:37Bill Simmons?

  He really, that interview yesterday. Yes. Your boy, your boy Warren Sharp, who's not afraid to have some hyperbole on Twitter, was basically making it seem like this was the greatest sideline interview in the history of mankind. So I watched a few minutes. It was fine. Um, but he's, he's very good with the, with the press, Shador. So if he can be any good, who are their, who's their first three games against? They have, I think they have, uh, now I gotta go through. God forbid I was more prepared for the mailbag. Well, it's just a different document. Um, okay. I'm going past Pittsburgh. There's, there's, is that, yeah, there's Cleveland.

• 14:16Bill Simmons?

  At Jaguars, at Bucks, home Panthers, home Steelers, at Jets is the first five. So if I'm Shador, like, none of those defenses are scary, save for if the Steelers do the thing where their defense looks pretty good in the first month of the season. But you know, maybe they don't, then they go Ravens, at Titans, at Steelers, at Saints. They don't really play a scary defense till the Texans at home in week 10. So a lot of time for old Shador to get his legs. I thought he looked terrible last year, just for the record. Didn't think he really showed anything, but he was thrown in a bad situation. They have a lot of weapons house. They, they look like they nailed both rookie receivers in the second round. Fannin's coming back. I really liked Jugkins last year. Like it's not.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Solid.

• 15:02Bill Simmons?

  Their offensive line isn't as good as it was the last couple of years, but maybe it'll be okay, but who knows?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  They, they won that trade, the Miles Garrett trade. I mean, when you, when you consider all the permutations of it, I think that they, it's not that the Rams lost it, but the, you know, they, they did very good in terms of the asset gathering there.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  So some silver linings for the Browns. Like this is almost over.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Um, the team building is very good.

• 15:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the last two drafts were great. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I thought Travis Hunter trade was great. Both you and I both really liked the Miles Garrett trade. So things are looking up. Maybe that Deshaun Watson trade was rock bottom. Yeah. My guess is Sanders gets named the starter tomorrow. Watson will be designated third QB. Um, and maybe there's a couple of guys like, how much, what, how, how high of a draft pick would you give up for Tyson Bejat?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  Would you give up a third for him?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Is he the third quarterback now?

• 16:00Bill Simmons?

  No, he's second for the Bears. Yeah. They love him. Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:05Bill Simmons?

  I think I would give up a third for him.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I don't think anybody's given up anything. You know, every, every team, we, we see this every single year. You have to have a super competent backup if you're hoping to contend.

• 16:16Bill Simmons?

  So the Bears would say no thanks. Stetson Bennett is available because Ty Simpson could be the Rams. Maybe, maybe a little Stetson Bennett action?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that kind of thing.

• 16:25Bill Simmons?

  All right. Next mailbag question from Justin from Westport, Connecticut. He's been listening and reading for 20 years. Thank you, Justin. First time writing. Really was an important one for him.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  You.

• 16:36Bill Simmons?

  Question. Why couldn't an East contender trade for Bronny? For the sole purpose of guarding LeBron during key moments in a playoff series? No way he's looking to embarrass his son, right?

• 16:51Bill Simmons?

  This is really good. This is really good. I would have a lot of trouble embarrassing my son in front of a crowd of 20,000 people on a nationally televised game, and I know you would too.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  You know what team he, it would be awesome is, is Cleveland.

• 17:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  And I have to tell you, I think their, their Peyton Watson acquisition, that, that's changed my entire estimation of, of the Cleveland Cavaliers coming into the, this season. He, he's the who they've been missing for, for a couple of years now. Now maybe I'm a little high on the supply with, with Peyton Watson, but I, just to give myself a tiny pat on the back, tried to make a compelling case on our worst contract draft with Was.

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  In, in March of 2026, that they paid the wrong dude, that, oh, they overpaid Christian Brown. It wasn't sustainable. They needed the money for Peyton Watson and they fucked that up. I think Peyton Watson is going to come to the East and, and really be effective in Cleveland. I know the Harden thing and we're going to talk about James Harden today.

• 17:58Bill Simmons?

  He's coming up.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  You know, that's, that extension is.

• 18:02Bill Simmons?

  They, they made a huge mistake with the Deandre Hunter contract a year and a half ago.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:07Bill Simmons?

  They were able to sort of get out of that with the Schroder trade, which then they dumped him on Charlotte and got, forget the wing they got back. Who was the wing they got back? Trey Mann.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  No, Washington got Trey Mann.

• 18:21Bill Simmons?

  No, maybe, maybe they didn't get anything. Anyway, they were able to dump Schroder. And then they were able to dump Struce on the Clippers. Um, by the way, Max Struce, come on the Ringer Podcast Network. We, we can do a pod for the season.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I, I've enjoyed his pod appearances. Um,

• 18:38Bill Simmons?

  they somehow turned Schroder, I guess Hunter into Schroder and then Struce, who's an expiring into Peyton Watson.

• 18:48Bill Simmons?

  Which.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Pretty good.

• 18:49Bill Simmons?

  I like. The problem is they then gave James Harden three years, 97 million dollars.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  That's going to be fun.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Do we sit down and do Trey Young, James Harden? Those, those contracts are going to be fun to discuss.

• 19:06Bill Simmons?

  He's made over 500 million dollars now. He screwed up. There was some contract extension he turned down. I think it was at Brooklyn or Philly where he could add this giant max and he's kind of been chasing the money ever since, but I think he caught up to the money. He passed it.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Who, who am I to judge?

• 19:23Bill Simmons?

  He made over 500 million dollars playing basketball. You can't, you can't possibly hope to make the finals if he's on your team. But people keep giving him money. It's amazing. Uh, all right. So this LeBron thing, so if you're Cleveland,

• 19:38Bill Simmons?

  you would go, you trade like a minimum for Bronny, bring him back. Bronny's on the team and now he's just kind of lurking as, as almost like a kryptonite situation for LeBron. Put him on there and LeBron just has to naturally, that's, it's your parent. You naturally have to ease up. Your, your, your instinct is always to protect your kids at all times. I think it's a great idea.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Well, let me ask you though, let's, let's just ponder that for another 10 seconds.

• 20:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  There are times when I'm playing with my 16 year old where I just want to bust his ass.

• 20:10Bill Simmons?

  Okay, but there's not 20,000 people watching though.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Uh, fair enough. Okay. That's right. Yeah. His, his, his career, like, I mean, whatever. It's, I guess it's a joke to talk about his career because he could do whatever he wants after he stops playing professional basketball. He'll, he'll do, he'll be good at golf and he'll be in whatever entertainment realm he wants to be in.

• 20:30Bill Simmons?

  They should tell him, let your dad score once and then seem really upset like you're going to break down. And then your dad won't be able to cut straight into the game. This is great. Use the product or something against him. Get at the brunt of it. Okay. Next one from Paul from Chicago. He says in parentheses, former home of the Bears.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a tough one. That's a tough one.

• 20:52Bill Simmons?

  That's not really going to happen, right?

• 20:53Speaker 01

  I don't think so, man.

• 20:55Bill Simmons?

  How can that happen? How can we live in a country where the Indiana Bears is a thing that happens?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Though the Chiefs are really leaving Arrowhead, right? They're really leaving the Chiefs.

• 21:04Bill Simmons?

  I know, but here, the difference with them is nobody can tell the, nobody knows Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas. Nobody can keep all those states apart.

• 21:13Bill Simmons?

  I don't know which state they're in now.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Very fair.

• 21:19Bill Simmons?

  Okay, Paul says, if Fernando Mendoza has an underwhelming NFL career, will there be a Mendoza line named after him for pro football? Like if he hovers around six yards per attempt, will we be calling six yards per attempt the Mendoza line? I think he'll probably be better than this, but let's play it out. So I had to go back and deep into my archives. Two thousand nine mailbag, Dan F in Maryland, in Maryland asked, you know how baseball has the Mendoza line? What if we had it for NFL? I'm partially using Bubby Brister's career QB rating of seventy two point three is the NFL mark. Had a whole thing. So I had a counter.

• 22:05Bill Simmons?

  Nobody went, this is just for QB rating. Nobody was lower than fifty three point nine this decade. So that was the two thousands. The ideal mega suck rating seems to be right around sixty three. And I listed guys who did it for a single season who dipped below sixty three. Kellen Clemens, Andrew Walter, Kyle Orton, A.J. Feely, Kyle Bowler, Cordell Stewart, David Carr, and Joey Harrington.

• 22:29Bill Simmons?

  Not great.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  That's a list.

• 22:30Bill Simmons?

  So I offered Jack Trudeau.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:34Bill Simmons?

  As the person, he played for nine years, lost his first eleven starts, forty two TDs, sixty nine picks, hundred three sacks, never played in a playoff game, sixty three point three lifetime. And I said it was the Trudeau line. I have a vague memory of him getting upset about this because he was on a radio show and taking shots at me, whatever. So I like the Trudeau line. I'd like to keep it. Could we do something with QBR for the Mendoza line? I looked at QBR. What if fifty was the Mendoza line? Like if Mendoza is better than a fifty QBR, Jalen Hertz was fifty point three last year.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:10Bill Simmons?

  Tyler Schuck, Bryce Young, Cousins, Rogers were all in the forties.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  I have a confession.

• 23:15Bill Simmons?

  Tua, J.J., Gino, and Cam were all under forty. Could that be the Mendoza line? What's your confession?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  It's still August, and I have no fucking idea what QBR is measuring as we sit here.

• 23:26Bill Simmons?

  August two thousand twenty six. I don't either. I think it's slightly more reliable than QB rating.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Down and go, we'll be ready. Football is right around the corner. We are going to be ready for all of it, but like fifty, I don't know what the fuck that means.

• 23:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't know either. I got into the research. Here, I had the answer, though, for the Mendoza line. I think Mendoza himself is the Mendoza line. And each year we just compare other quarterbacks to him, whether they're up and down. So even if Mendoza is like the sixth quarterback in the league, we'd be like, oh, Josh Allen's above the Mendoza line. And he's just a floating line.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  For the entirety of his career, that what a great gimmick.

• 24:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:05Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, is he better? Is he over the Mendoza line? Because that if Mendoza is bad, that will give us a sense of like, oh, he's at least doing better than Mendoza. And Mendoza is really good, same thing.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Oh, this is great. This is, this will help solve a bunch of the challenges. Is this a top ten quarterback? Is he a top five quarterback? Is he a top fifteen quarterback? Well, where is he? Where is he in relation to Mendoza?

• 24:30Bill Simmons?

  He, his interviews are really incredible. I have such high hopes. Like when they get better and they're on more nationally TV, get nationally televised games, it's going to be tremendous.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Love him.

• 24:42Bill Simmons?

  So you like the floating Mendoza line, depending on what happened?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Okay, and I hope he's awesome. I hope he's a top ten quarterback and we're doing.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  Because we need more quarterbacks. I don't want to watch shitty quarterbacks.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  We really need more quarterbacks.

• 24:53Bill Simmons?

  Like watching good quarterbacks. Ryan McQueen writes, a long time ago, when X was Twitter and fantasy basketball leagues were still prevalent among friend groups, I would send you my team names. And here applies, never respond, never a response, not even for Chris came in my pants. That was a team name he said, apparently. What's the guy going to do for a pity laugh right here? Chris came in my pants.

• 25:22Bill Simmons?

  I'm positive if we were still playing fantasy basketball, that that would have been a team name for you.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  For sure. I mean, of course, of course.

• 25:29Bill Simmons?

  Not too late for football. Chris came in my pants.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Well, it's too late. It is too late for football because I have that one that I, I don't feel like I should share.

• 25:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, don't share.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Inspired by the WNBA. Take that, take, take that in whatever direction you want.

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  Dan in Raleigh said, since the NCAA is always talking about expanding, expanding March Madness, which is true. They're expanding it again. I think they're adding more teams.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Awesome.

• 25:55Bill Simmons?

  I have a half baked college basketball idea. What if we expand the tournament to one thousand and twenty four teams? This would be a ten round tournament and would include every D one, D two, and D three team in America. We would still reach the point when it narrows down to sixty four, where everyone could have a normal March Madness bracket to fill out. But you could see some D three school playing in a first round matchup against Duke. I mean, at this point, why not?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  What's the difference?

• 26:22Bill Simmons?

  Why not?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  They literally turned the perfect thing, the perfect vehicle into arch madness just out of sheer fucking greed. No reason to tinker with it, no reason to fuck with it, no reason to make up some bullshit games on a Tuesday and bullshit games on a Wednesday in Dayton, Ohio, wherever the fuck they do it.

• 26:42Bill Simmons?

  The plan to the plan. It's a play plan.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Yep. Speaking of eat a fat dick.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  You're riled up today. You haven't eaten dinner yet. I can tell.

• 26:54Bill Simmons?

  He's a hungry Joe House.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Good.

• 26:56Bill Simmons?

  Adam R. from Indiana.

• 27:00Bill Simmons?

  I'm so glad somebody sent this email. Am I wrong to think it's ridiculous that not only is Halliburton's first game back not on national television? He goes parentheses, fine, whatever, but it's not even at home. It's hard to imagine any other star who led his team to game seven, the NBA finals for tearing their fucking Achilles would have their first game back after missing an entire year. And then that game would be in New Orleans of all places, just hoping to shine a spotlight on the continued Pacers disrespect. I wholeheartedly agree. I don't understand why they played it this way. And this is a league that over and over again loves to prioritize its thirty five and over stars, who are all not going to be in the league for much longer, over something like Tyrese Halliburton's first home game in Indiana,

• 27:43Bill Simmons?

  which is on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, like what the fuck else?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and we will be accused because I, I can tell already from the way that we in the Ringer basketball community are talking, the Pacers are going to be beloved by many of us. We're all sort of on the idea of the Pacers.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  We, we, we, what's the word?

• 28:06Bill Simmons?

  Even Spock Low is in on them.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, well, sure.

• 28:10Bill Simmons?

  Croatia, watching people jump off cliffs. And he's still like, I like the Pacers. He's thinking about Zubot's pick and rolls since he's watching cliff divers.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Getting themselves back to where they were. And, you know, I, I'm still pondering the question that came up on the pod that we did where we were talking through Jalen Brunson. And we, we, we together made a case and came into agreement on the idea of him as a top fifty all time player.

• 28:40Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  And, and Halliburton, if they had won that series, we would have to make that same case for him. And he would, he'd be in there. But they didn't win the series.

• 28:50Bill Simmons?

  Top fifty, but he definitely would have been top seventy five.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  But hi- his resume already is, is stronger than Brunson's resume. Like Tyrese has, I, you know, I, I think in terms of All-Star appearances and all NBA teams. But I, there, there was a, a very quick aside. I think you did it with Koppelman. You, you were going through the last eight NBA.

• 29:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I did with Derek. Yeah, yeah. Eight, eight legacy titles.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  And there was a place for, for Brunson to be recognized. And I, I'm, I'm not recalling it, but Brunson has most unlikely.

• 29:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:28Bill Simmons?

  The case, the reason I went with Curry was because I thought it vaulted him into a Kobe, Jerry West area. Where if they hadn't won that title, that's not, that's a nonstarter.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  And I think that's the difference.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  That's fair.

• 29:45Bill Simmons?

  All right, we're going to take, have some good ones left, but we're going to take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by Chat GPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice, that'd be a dream of mine. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst, three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent, and all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where Chat GPT work comes in. It's a new way to use Chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. Give Chat GPT work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents. For instance, spreadsheets, slides, structured reports.

• 30:30Bill Simmons?

  You can bring all those to your next meeting. And when you don't need answers, you need help just getting the work across the finish line. Guess what? Chat GPT work can move your projects forward while you stay in control. Put Chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started, just go to chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans.

• 30:57Bill Simmons?

  All right, mailbag coming back. So Mike Gordon has summoned Conspiracy Bill. By the way, I wanted to give a promotion. Conspiracy Bill is on Wait a Second with Jason Concepcion and Tyler Parker this week, doing his top 12 conspiracy deep dives that he's done in 2026 so far. I wasn't on Conspiracy Bill was on.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 31:19Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, Mike Gordon asks, with all the coverage of what's happened to the Lakers being sold, what may or may not be happening behind the scenes with Mark Walter. Does Conspiracy Bill find it odd that LeBron got out of there just before the shit hit the fan in Los Angeles as a possibility intel that this organization was on the verge of becoming a complete clusterfuck?

• 31:41Bill Simmons?

  First of all, thanks for sending that to Conspiracy Bill. We enjoy all conspiracies at all times. This is just a flat no for me. I don't think they wanted LeBron anymore, and I don't really think they wanted him since last winter. And I think they moved the team away from him. They did not want him to come back. It was spun a certain way, you know, because LeBron has a lot of media people. He's got an agent who has a podcast on The Ringer. Like, there was a way to spin it to make it.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  He deserves the respect.

• 32:10Bill Simmons?

  And he's the second best player of all time and deserved all the respect. I don't think they wanted him to come back. And you could see it with Luka this week where he had a team building thing in Slovenia. The entire Lakers team, they were posting photos. It was dinner in Slovenia. I just feel like it couldn't be Luka's team if LeBron was there. He's too famous. He's too powerful. I think they felt the tug and pull of that all year last year. And I think their intention this entire time was, we have to start fresh. As great as LeBron is, thanks for everything. And I think LeBron knew it. Nobody, especially him, he doesn't want to be somewhere where he's not wanted. So I think both sides wanted him to leave.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I agree with all of that. And, you know, they had a little bit of a taste of what that combination of Reeves and Luka and the efficiency that those two playing together. But I think I take tiny bit of, you know, a different view. I don't think the Lakers are going to be a clusterfuck. The ownership situation and everything that led to it.

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Because I think the team, you know, it's a lot of white guys. So you could, you know, you could maybe point to that, but.

• 33:26Bill Simmons?

  It's a lot of white guys.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  They'll be competitive.

• 33:28Bill Simmons?

  They fit right in in Slovenia. This is from, oh, oh, another Conspiracy Bill email. This is from Andrew in Kitchener. He wanted to point out the recent NBA trade deadline. Giannis stays in Milwaukee and then makes his big surprise announcement that he became a shareholder in another gambling company. And that's not Fanduel. I'm not going to promote them. A strange partnership. And then after months, he was traded to the Miami Heat. But before and after that happened, the Miami Heat accidentally posted, then deleted his scheduled YouTube livestream LeBron James introductory press conference. It caused

• 34:11Bill Simmons?

  a big spike on Kalshi, the prediction thing. And LeBron ended up going to Philly, which was, I think, 9% of the bets. And he says, I'm not saying, but I'm just saying, that's an awful lot of money moving a platform. Giannis is a shareholder and thanks to a team Giannis plays for, it's enough to at least do a year and a half long investigation and have a lot of guys at training camp having no comment. I can't quite get there with this, but I did enjoy it.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 34:43Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Connecting of the dots. But for it to matter, there has to be some evidence of the money.

• 34:51Bill Simmons?

  The YouTube thing was extremely suspicious. It was like, oh, I set it up. I didn't realize it was scheduled. It moved the market when that happened. And if you're doing that, thinking that maybe he wasn't going to go there and then bet the other ones. Anyway, listen, I didn't agree with that one either, but Conspiracy Bill enjoys all Conspiracy Bill emails. This one, speaking of prediction gambling platforms, John from Maine wants to know, if they had been around in 1895, what would the odds have been of OJ being guilty? And which way would you have bet it? I did send this one to you because I wanted to really talk about this.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:28Bill Simmons?

  I think OJ was probably, I would say minus 2,000 after the Bronco chase, maybe him off the board. Would you, what person would have bet the other side on it?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  So this is what's fascinating about this conversation is that I don't, there's no trial that's rivaled it since, right? All of America was watching this on a daily basis. And all of America, the ups and downs of opinion around the outcome of the trial, even though I think the point of view of him being responsible for those crimes, that that element didn't really change. I think whatever.

• 36:10Bill Simmons?

  It was more, is he going to get off because there's not November?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Yes. Or look at how bad this prosecution team is doing.

• 36:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Chris Darden blew the glove. That screwed it up.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, incredible stuff out of the defense team.

• 36:23Bill Simmons?

  So if we had texting and gambling in 1995, the day Chris Darden screwed up the glove, would we have been out there banging, like doing salvage bets for our OJ bets?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I mean, by the time the verdict was, it was time for them to go do that thing. I think it was less than 50% of America, if you go back and look at the polling, thought that he was going to be found guilty. Less than 50%. So yeah, the Darden, that would have been the time to jump in, for sure. We would have got good numbers.

• 36:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So that's when it flipped. What do you think it was, like after the closing statements? Who do you think was favored? Was it OJ? OJ gets off or OJ goes to jail? I would have said OJ gets off was like minus 180.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it was closer.

• 37:13Bill Simmons?

  Closer to even?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do think.

• 37:15Bill Simmons?

  I thought he was getting off after.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  But part of that also was like, right down racial lines.

• 37:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Like, you know, so of course.

• 37:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was living in Boston that summer. And there wasn't a lot of back and forth dialogue in the trial. I'll say that. People are just like, yeah, he did it. So you think it's like minus 140? The only thing that really compares, and this was a faster runway, but the 2016 presidential election.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:50Bill Simmons?

  Which I think Trump was, I don't even know what it was, like 25 to 1, 20 to 1. That dipped. They were even. Then it went back up. And Sal and I had that, our famous parlay that we've talked about many times. The Pats were in the AFC East. Were you in on that too?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, of course.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  The Pats were in the AFC East with Hillary with the presidency. And we had all these times to hedge and decided not to. But the weekend before the election, Trump was plus 500. So I wondered like if the OJ trial would have swung like that. Right?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  We all decided we couldn't hedge it. Anyway. Scott B. says, after seeing James Harden just resigning with the Cavs for three years, 97 million, I'm curious, do GMs actually watch the games at all? This guy will have earned 500 million as perhaps the greatest resume of all time crappy performances. And then parentheses, game six Rockets Spurs 2017, the cherry on top of the poop pie.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Poop pie.

• 38:46Bill Simmons?

  Have we used that one before?

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 38:48Bill Simmons?

  The cherry on top of the poop pie?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Pretty good.

• 38:51Bill Simmons?

  That's going to be great for us. Who else would you put on the Rushmore of guys like that? I sent this to you. Do you have any other ones? Because Harden really stands alone.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think he does. And part of this is how you kind of frame it. So the first, for me, is like, okay, who's made the most money in the NBA, right? So that's your first kind of review. And some interesting names around James Harden. Now, nobody, James Harden is now all the way inside the top five, well inside of there.

• 39:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  And LeBron's number one, but you know, KD, those guys aren't eligible. But if you sit down and look at how much money Chris Paul made over his entire career, north of $400 million. And if you look at Chris Paul's playoff resume.

• 39:42Bill Simmons?

  You don't give him, you know, he didn't shake that off of the 2021 finals?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Well, he, he, it was a good performance.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  He took them to the finals, though.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  They, they.

• 39:52Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that basically came down to Devin Booker getting stripped and then the Drew Holiday, Giannis alley-oop, then Giannis scores 50 in game six. I don't know, Harden never had a, Harden never had a run like that.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, he, he, he Harden doesn't get credit for being on teams. He's played in, in five different conference final.

• 40:15Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Situations Harden has. I mean, Chris Paul has two of those and the teams that Harden was on have a superior postseason record to Chris Paul. He's, he's played in more playoff games than Chris Paul.

• 40:30Bill Simmons?

  That if you're comparing those two only, the teammates Harden had, it's just a completely different class.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  I don't, well.

• 40:35Bill Simmons?

  Chris Paul's best teammates were David West, Blake Griffin.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  They were teammates. They, they were teammates.

• 40:41Bill Simmons?

  Right, yeah, James Harden. James Harden was probably Chris Paul's best teammate.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  The, the task, though, is to try and come up with the Mount Rushmore, so.

• 40:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  That's three other names. That's, that's all.

• 40:53Bill Simmons?

  Harden, Chris Paul.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  The way, uh, this is not surprising. Um, Paul George has made a fuck ton of money in this NBA. Over 405 million dollars and counting. I mean, he, he's going to be north of 500 million when we're all said, done.

• 41:08Bill Simmons?

  That's pretty good. So conference finals in 13 and 14 dragged the, uh, aspiration Clippers to the conference finals in 21. And that was the best run that he had.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:19Bill Simmons?

  It's about it. It's where the train gets off.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Nine, nine and 12 in, in terms of series one.

• 41:24Bill Simmons?

  Wow, you did some real research for this, huh?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Well, you, you said, uh, Rushmore is hard. You have to come up with names.

• 41:30Bill Simmons?

  These are good names. I like this.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, this is a good, and then I hate to do it. Um, but Russell Westbrook is in this conversation, um, just because.

• 41:40Bill Simmons?

  He was where my mind went first.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, you, he, he's, his playoff game record was 64 and 71, 135 games. Two conference finals, both of them with, uh, Oklahoma City and a finals appearance with Oklahoma City.

• 41:58Bill Simmons?

  And a couple, a couple of good flame outs. And then after they trade KD, he basically never gets even sniffing close ever again. I don't think he makes round three after that.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Did he make it? Was he on Denver? No.

• 42:11Bill Simmons?

  He, he was on Denver the year after.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  After.

• 42:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So you would have Paul George, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, and then captain of the Mount Rushmore, James Harden. He's like George Washington.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 42:22Bill Simmons?

  You wouldn't have Karl Malone on there? I know the money wasn't different back then.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  That, that's the problem. Like, uh, my, my gaining criteria, my first one was who's made a, a butt ton of money over two decades.

• 42:34Bill Simmons?

  This is a full poop pie.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  That's a, that is, yes. It's a full poop pie.

• 42:39Bill Simmons?

  That's pretty good. I'm, I really feel bad for Bradley Beal. I think he was on pins and needles wondering when you were going to mention him.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Well, he was in the top 15 of all of the money made. He wasn't inside the top 10 of all the money made, but.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he understands what else he had to do to get mentioned. There's still time Bradley Beal. A couple of years left.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  Ryan Dempsey.

• 43:03Bill Simmons?

  He writes, he heard about the Caleb Wilson jizz room all-stars. I think people really enjoyed that. He said, I have not heard the word jizz since the days of the lunchroom at my Catholic all boys high school in the late 90s. Now, in the last couple of weeks, Luke jizzed on Nate's sheets became an all-time great below deck quote. I don't know if you watched Below Deck, but that was the biggest below, below deck moment of the year. After decade Luke.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Literally below deck.

• 43:28Bill Simmons?

  Decade Luke did in fact jizz on both, Bosa and Nate's sheets. Something that happened.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Why didn't he do it?

• 43:35Bill Simmons?

  My wife explained it to me. I was not paying attention. Then you start throwing jizz in relation to Caleb Wilson and the Bulls offseason moves. Australians start sending you emails about it and jizz is becoming a regular thing. It's back in the lexicon like it or not. Hey, we're happy to help.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Welcome back, Jizz.

• 43:53Bill Simmons?

  Can we bring back Boner?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Oh, Boner never left.

• 43:57Bill Simmons?

  I think Boner left. I don't think people say boners the same way that they did when.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  It's, it's in all my text threads with, uh, with the frequency.

• 44:06Bill Simmons?

  But what about Boner as a mistake?

• 44:09Bill Simmons?

  Like Russell, Russell Westbrook committed a boner.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Boner.

• 44:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Boner was right there for years. Fred Merkel's Boner that we always heard about that growing up. Fred Merkel had that boner in the World Series.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Well, let's use it. We have the whole NFL season to use it.

• 44:22Bill Simmons?

  I've been trying to bring Boner back.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  There's going to be a lot of mistakes. All, all Deshaun Watson's boners.

• 44:28Bill Simmons?

  Jay Taylor sent in, uh, he really enjoyed the Russell Westbrook thing I did with Kirk, but thought I missed, thought I missed the number one what if. And he thinks it impacted two NBA championships. February 2009, forgot about this. The Thunder traded for Tyson Chandler and then rescinded the trade because they were worried about his toe. They sent out Joe Smith, Chris Wilcox, and the rights to Devon Harden for Tyson Chandler. Cause the, the, what, I forget New Orleans Hornets at that point were tanking. Um, Thunder's team doc, doctor, uh, failed the physical, was the same guy who performed the surgery two years earlier.

• 45:14Bill Simmons?

  Two years later, Tyson Chandler wins the title with the Dallas Mavericks.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  And then they had to trade Jeff Green for Kendrick Perkins. They just could have had Tyson Chandler and Jeff Green.

• 45:27Bill Simmons?

  It's a pretty good what if. I do think that might have swung the title. Right? 2011 or 12, one of those, maybe they win.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Going back, was he really hurt? Was Chandler for the following season after they said no to the trade?

• 45:40Bill Simmons?

  I mean, he, he played, played, he was on the Mavs, he was on the Knicks, so I would say no.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  That was.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he had a couple of good years.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Career.

• 45:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:49Bill Simmons?

  It's a good what if. Westbrook had a lot of whiffs, uh, uh, what ifs. David from Iowa, I had that Westbrook stat about usage rate plus assist percentage and Westbrook had a 99 one year, which is by far the highest. And I was saying how you, you can't win that high if you have a Westbrook that high. He wanted to know what was the highest Westbrook while also winning the title.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Winning the title.

• 46:16Bill Simmons?

  And the answer is, it's that there wasn't really a high one for winning that title. It's all the usual suspects you would have anyway, like LeBron, uh.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  Jordan. But for guys who played 12 plus playoff games, only four people had a Westbrook over 80. 2021 Trey Young, 80.2. 2018 LeBron, fucking awesome LeBron season, 81.4.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Great.

• 46:42Bill Simmons?

  That was when it was just him and just by himself. 2015 LeBron, when everybody got hurt and they made the finals anyway, 82.8.

• 46:53Bill Simmons?

  And then the winner at 86.7. 2016 Russell Westbrook.

• 47:01Bill Simmons?

  He holds the regular season and playoff Westbrook records.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 47:06Bill Simmons?

  So, yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  I'm surprised that Allen Iverson didn't crack it. That 2001.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  The assist percentage, he never got assists like that. When he was scoring like that, he wasn't getting like 15 assists.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  He was not passing the rock.

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  One more Westbrook email from CH, who said, I coached basketball a long time. A player's glaring weakness cannot be the most important quality for his position. As a point guard, leader of a team, decision-making is a very important quality that your leader, your point guard and your best player must have. Russell Westbrook is a walking brain fart with incredible explosiveness and competitive fire. I can't have him at the point guard position if I want to win a title. That's harsh, but I also don't disagree.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  I don't disagree either.

• 47:48Bill Simmons?

  I think that was the Westbrook conundrum, right? We loved all this, this was the 90, 10. We loved all the stuff he did, but there was that other piece where he just couldn't figure out how to slow himself down in the right time. So, um, there we go. All right. I'm excited for this one. I didn't send this to you. This is from John from Boise, Idaho.

• 48:08Bill Simmons?

  He said, it's hard to stay excited about all the cool things sports was and is with all the news about wildly increasing team values, shitty owners, money scandals, athlete gambling, et cetera. Please give me in the sports world, some reasons for optimism in this current sports climate. I would appreciate a pep talk.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 48:27Bill Simmons?

  I'm happy to do this.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 48:30Bill Simmons?

  Um, I, I'll start here. The schedule for sports is the best it's ever been.

• 48:38Bill Simmons?

  I, I feel like week after week, weekend after weekend, there's stuff going on. Even last night, there was, there was a good, uh, boxing fight last night. The baseball was good. I think the WNBA is the best it's ever been. E- even in middle of August, there's shit to watch. Premier League started this weekend. Tottenham got absolutely smoked. Um, had to get a transfer guy from Manchester, uh, City United today, one of those. Anyway, um, I just feel like there's more going on than we've ever had, right? When we were kids and we were teenagers, I don't remember the schedule being stacked like this.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  It was dead. We, we, I mean, there was nothing right now.

• 49:15Bill Simmons?

  And no, no way to watch all this stuff either. Like we complained about the streamers. Yeah, but it was like today, the base, the Red Sox game. I go to ESPN, it's not on. Like what the fuck? Look around, is it on Pico? Oh, it's, it's the NBC game. And it's like, you take that 70 seconds to kind of, you're clicking on stuff and then, oh, there it is. Better than it was in 1982. I'll tell you that much.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 49:41Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't find anything. Like remember, remember when USA started showing NBA in, in the early eighties? And it was like, oh my God, like Washington's playing Atlanta. This is on television? What's happening?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, national cable games.

• 49:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  National game, like games, right?

• 50:00Bill Simmons?

  I remember when USC started, USA started showing WWE. Um, ESPN had the Sunday night game they had it in the 1980s. Like, these were like seminal moments for us.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:11Bill Simmons?

  And now this stuff is available, like you're watching golf today. You could go online and watch any version of it. You can watch Nate's brother in whatever tournament he was in. Like you can do whatever you want. So that's good.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  True fact. Yeah, that, you're right. Good start.

• 50:25Bill Simmons?

  Good start.

• 50:31Bill Simmons?

  I think the players, for the most part, are more committed to their craft and being good at it and staying in shape and being aware of the discourse around them and not kind of fucking up their own careers than what we grew up with.

• 50:48Bill Simmons?

  Would be my.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Amazing. You unwittingly touched on something that will come up in this conversation today. One of the the future mailbag questions we're gonna do. I have a candidate that that is, you know, the epitome of what we grew up with.

• 51:05Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  A person that wasn't able to maintain.

• 51:08Bill Simmons?

  How many, how many of those did we have, like dating to when we were like young kids?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 51:12Bill Simmons?

  Like David Thompson, that era. And then, you know, I think I wrote about this in my book, but the all the guys in the 90s that we loved in college, you know, Sea Web, Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman, these guys that we thought were gonna be in our lives in the NBA for 20 years and, you know, they their careers, Christian Laettner. We did all these dudes were like, oh, here's the next group and like 20% of them made it. Larry Johnson got hurt, but I think in general, the guys are in better shape and take care of themselves and just have more wherewithal about what's happening.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  I would say that's the key. They have more wherewithal because the teams are smarter. The teams understand. Like I was fortunate enough in the last handful of years, nah, maybe going pretty far back now.

• 51:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  To visit Memphis with Verno and they gave me a tour of their facility and walked through.

• 52:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  All of the rehab stuff that they have, all of the recovery stuff that they have.

• 52:10Bill Simmons?

  That's another example. Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  All top of the line and the guys are coming off the court from games and immediately going into your cryotherapy, your whatever, you know, all of the kinds of, of, of, you know, let's, let's get inflammation, let's address it right away. Super impressive. And that technology continues to just advance, advance, advance. And so for sure, guys are are able, because what we want more than anything else is to see the stars play the games. We want.

• 52:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, to be their best.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Players to play. Yes.

• 52:44Bill Simmons?

  Uh, another one I'd go, the internet, like fantasy, the connection you have with people you went to high school, college with and, you know, like we, we've been in the ZFL, my buddy Gus's pick pool that he's had forever. He used to just mail it out. Come in the mail and be like, well, who won last week? And now we, now we have a website that we can make picks on, whatever fantasy league we want to be in, we can do, we can find out what happened to guys on our teams.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Well, the, the corollary to that is the text threads that accompany the leagues.

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Because, you know, the ability to have the, the in real time shit talking where the entire group can see it right away, uh, and, and participate in it. That, that really ups the overall enjoyment of, of all of it from my perspective.

• 53:37Bill Simmons?

  Text threads would be another one, I would add.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  There we go. Text threads.

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  I think you're on my most text threads. You're, we're on text threads for all different kinds of things with all different kind of groups of people.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  That's true. That is true.

• 53:51Bill Simmons?

  But, but yeah, we have, we have a bunch of fun ones. Um, and then here's another one that doesn't get talked about enough. You know, I was bitching about the stadiums with Derek Thompson and how the billionaires should build their own fucking stadiums, which they shouldn't. You know what's really nice now? Stadiums and arenas. Remember what we grew up with?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Man.

• 54:13Bill Simmons?

  Fucking terrible arenas. The Patriots football stadium was the worst place on the earth, but literally we had nothing good ever happen there the entire time, the first 30 years of my life until the, the Tuck Roll Snow game, the Tom Brady game. That was like the first happy moment in the history of that stadium. But, you know, when you think about obstructed views and just 25% of the seats just being the shittiest seats possible, like that's gotten better. It's more expensive.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Immensely better.

• 54:46Bill Simmons?

  The food's better? Important for you?

• 54:48Speaker 01

  The, the, um, the Capital Center is what I grew up with for the, for the Bullets and, and the Caps. And, you know, in the seventies, you could smoke. This thing was subterranean. You would come in and there would be a giant cloud of smoke.

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Indescribable. Indescribable. Boston Garden had it too.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  A cloud of smoke.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  You couldn't even, it would be smoky for the entire third quarter.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Smokey, right? It's like shooting off fireworks inside the fucking, you know, enclosed dome. The other thing is like, speaking of, you know, recognizing the impact of, of those stadiums on, on the players, we went to Three Rivers, uh, to see a Pirates game for our buddy Chip's wedding.

• 55:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Um, I couldn't believe how fucking terrible that place was for baseball.

• 55:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  And I couldn't believe they played football in there either.

• 55:38Bill Simmons?

  I've been to some awful baseball stadiums and all of them, like when we went to Camden.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:44Bill Simmons?

  Where, where we saw the inside the park homerun where the guy got knocked out by the throw as he slid home for the inside the park homerun.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't remember his last name. Yeah.

• 55:54Bill Simmons?

  And Jacko said, that's the most unbelievable thing I've seen all weekend. And then somebody we were with was like, there was a whole story that I won't tell because it was obscene. But it was a famous story for us. But yeah, but we, we were at Camden and we were like, we, and you were used to it because you lived near there, but Jacko and I couldn't believe how nice Camden was. And now there's probably 15 stadiums better than Camden?

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Better. Yeah. All the baseball stadiums that are coming online.

• 56:22Bill Simmons?

  Way nicer now. I mean, some of them are sterile. Like I, I think old Yankee Stadium versus the new one. I don't think it's a contest.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 56:28Bill Simmons?

  The old one was just better, but.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:30Bill Simmons?

  Um, and there's some good ones too. So those are some good things.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Those are all good things.

• 56:35Bill Simmons?

  I, I'm throwing podcasts too. I think podcasts have been really fun for learning more and not having to be so trapped to kind of the generic network or local sports radio. Um, just you can kind of pick what you want, whatever you care about, you know?

• 56:52Speaker 01

  I'm not coming in fully prepared, so I don't have the full litany of this, but I really, I feel like we've been really treated to a slew of, um, very good playoff slash, uh, you know, championship outcomes across.

• 57:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, like exciting stuff. Yeah.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Yes, because there's a lot of unexpected shit happening. Nobody had, um, Indiana playing Miami for the national championship in, in college football last year. And that happened and that was fucking awesome. Uh, and, and, you know, what we got with the Spurs, the Knicks, nobody at the beginning of last basketball season had the Spurs and the Knicks as the combatants. And then we, that, that was incredible, uh, outcome wise. And we're having this, this flip over in football where immediately, you know, there, there are no dynasties in, in football. The Chiefs go six and, and, you know, 11, and it's the Patriots and the Seahawks in, in the, in the goddamn Super Bowl.

• 57:53Bill Simmons?

  Right. And next year, that can change.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  It's gonna change.

• 57:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  I mean, we're, we're sitting here. It's definitely gonna be two different teams in my opinion.

• 58:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, sports is great. And by the way, with these owners, I know I've done a lot of podcast content about it. It's not great that you have teams, you have guys, you have guys or companies or investors buying teams solely as assets, right? Like I, I look at, like we, we hung out with Ryan Smith a year ago at the Masters.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:23Bill Simmons?

  Somebody who bought the Jazz and then really wanted to like build in Utah and understood the fan base and then bought, not to blow smoke up Ryan Smith's ass, but bought the hockey team.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  He's a steward. He understands.

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  Wanted to grow Utah.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  The responsibility. Yes.

• 58:40Bill Simmons?

  Through the teams. And we either had terrible owners, and we've certainly both have had terrible owners. You have had bad ones. I've had bad ones. Snyder's a good example.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Peter Angelos I had. I just quit the Orioles because that motherfucker.

• 58:54Bill Simmons?

  Some horrible ones I did too. Snyder at least was a Redskins fan. When he did that, he was just terrible at owning the team and, and was an unlikable guy.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:05Bill Simmons?

  Um, my point is, that's the part that worries me is if people are buying these teams, but don't give a shit about them. And it's basically, how can I flip this later?

• 59:17Bill Simmons?

  That part's scary, but we've had bad owners our whole lives.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  Go back to the seventies and eighties, man. They, owners have always been bad. It's like, they like, you remember the good ones, you know? So anyway, um, Mike in Ridgewood, Queens wants to say about Denzel Boston, who I've been raving about in the Cleveland camp. He said, you know how the Equalizer franchise stars Denzel Washington and is set in Boston?

• 59:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, his name is basically the movie. Why isn't Denzel Boston's nickname, the Equalizer?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:53Bill Simmons?

  So there's been three Equalizers. They've all been set in Boston starring Denzel. Done. I'm, I, I accept this. This guy should be named the Equalizer. How do we get this going? My most successful nickname push ever was PG 13. I single-handedly started that.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:00:13Bill Simmons?

  Maybe we can start the Equalizer.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  It's good. I, I want him to be good.

• 1:00:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  The thing that's gonna hold it back is if they're, they're bouncing dirtballs 10, five yards in front of him. If the door is, or overthrowing him by.

• 1:00:25Bill Simmons?

  Even worse if it's over his head and he's jumping up and getting nailed.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  Jim in South Pasadena.

• 1:00:33Bill Simmons?

  I never knew this. This is one of the craziest emails I've gotten. Do you think it's a big enough deal that the Giants and Dodgers right now are tied all time in their rivalry? They each have 1,294 wins with 17 ties. They are dead even. They've been playing since 1890 and they play, what, 17 games a year and they're exactly dead even. How is anything more insane than this?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  There's nothing more to say. How is that possible?

• 1:01:07Bill Simmons?

  They played almost 2,600 games and they're dead even.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  That reminds me, it's akin to the fact that LeBron never had a 2777, right?

• 1:01:18Bill Simmons?

  That's another one.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Wasn't that the stat?

• 1:01:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, some nerds came out. Some nerds came out and was like, oh, that's actually totally conceivable that that would happen. But I still think it was pretty great.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Dodgers and Giants tied.

• 1:01:31Bill Simmons?

  Terry P. had a two-part question. Did Seattle beating the Patriots this year lessen the joint enthusiasm Patriots had from the Malcolm Butler Super Bowl victory? The answer is fuck no, and that's in all caps. Then he asked, are the Seahawks the first NFL team since the 01 Patriots to have no haters? That's a more interesting one.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Good one.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  Who doesn't like the Seahawks?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:55Bill Simmons?

  I guess like Niners fans. You'd have to have a team that played them or, you know, you were rivals with them.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  You'd have to come up with something even like at the, Mike McDonald hasn't arrived and been a dick. Like there isn't a noteworthy rivalry between McDonald and Shanahan and McVeigh. Man, that's a good one. Yeah.

• 1:02:18Bill Simmons?

  Everyone likes JSN.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Legion of Boom had an identity and everybody wanted them to shut the fuck up.

• 1:02:25Bill Simmons?

  And Sher- yeah, Sherman talked a lot of shit. He talked to Brady that time. People were like, who's this guy?

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this one Seahawks don't, they just kind of keep them out of it.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Business.

• 1:02:34Bill Simmons?

  Everybody loves the city of Seattle.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Darnold is a, you know, a very likeable reclamation project out of left field story.

• 1:02:45Bill Simmons?

  By the way, I think we're doing a Seattle Portland swing for live shows.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Oh, do tell.

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's happening. I don't know if you wanted, I know, you might have to come along.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  My hands up. Great food in those cities. Two great food cities.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  I think we're gonna do a rewatchables in Seattle and then a sports one in Portland. But yeah, we, we have the dates. Elizabeth Fearman, um, she's on it. Yeah. She's probably the single most beloved Ringer employee.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Deserved it.

• 1:03:13Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, I think, I think we're doing a Pacific Northwest swing. Man, speaking of the Pacific Northwest, from Andrew in New York, I know you already have a distaste for Tom Dundon. But were you aware he's also responsible for the growth of your least favorite sport? Pickleball? He's the majority owner of the Major League Pickleball. Has a whole thing about it. This is true. El Chepo is, uh, the number one pickleball investor. Makes perfect sense.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  See, I'm, I'm, I'm torn here because I'm boys with a guy.

• 1:03:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  That has been a champion.

• 1:03:48Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Of, of, of just the, the expanding popularity of it. And I, I've never, I've touched a paddle for it one time ever. I won't do it because I'm not like popping at Achilles. And not playing golf for six months because I played fucking pickleball.

• 1:04:03Bill Simmons?

  Bunging back and forth.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  I'm not doing that. I'm not doing, but I'm just saying, I recognize it's, it's broad popularity. The demographic that, that it, it, you know, it's seeking, uh, and I like the idea of the tiny intimate little, um, stadiums they're doing and everything. I, I, I get it. I get it. That's all. I'll leave it at that.

• 1:04:23Bill Simmons?

  That was.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  It's not for me.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  That was disgusting, yes.

• 1:04:28Bill Simmons?

  Aaron Reich wrote in with his son Ezekiel.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  He said, he's been listening to the podcast with my kids. They're 10 and 7.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Ezekiel Reich.

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  Sorry for, sorry for all the, uh, F bombs in this pod.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry.

• 1:04:41Bill Simmons?

  I asked my 10-year-old if he could ask a question. What would it be? He thought for a little bit and asked, do you think a healthy Jason Tatum would have led the Celtics to the same regular season record? If you switched him with Jalen Brown last season?

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  It's phenomenal. Phenomenal question.

• 1:04:58Bill Simmons?

  It's interesting that nobody's ever asked me this one and I've never really thought about it before.

• 1:05:05Bill Simmons?

  I think they would have been around the same. I think that's one of the great things about what Jalen did last year was he was able to basically match the production of somebody who just made four straight first team MLBAs. But yes, I think, I think they would have had the same record. Maybe even a whiff better because of the rebounding.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Well, I'm, I'm agreeing because the true architects, the person that deserves credit for this is Missoula. They played a certain way, a certain approach, and they, they took no nights off.

• 1:05:35Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  They were going hard from, from jump, uh, you know, first tip back in, in October 2025.

• 1:05:44Bill Simmons?

  I haven't told you this, but

• 1:05:48Bill Simmons?

  you knew it was gonna happen.

• 1:05:51Bill Simmons?

  I've kind of talked myself into the Paul George trade.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Oh, this is so good.

• 1:05:55Bill Simmons?

  August 23rd took, uh, took over 50 days. It happened this week. Yeah. I was gonna tell you.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have so much fun this basketball season.

• 1:06:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it happened.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  The, the problem is when guys are missing games, we're gonna be able to say, well, this is what happens. Guys miss games. This is who these guys are. These guys miss games.

• 1:06:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I've talked myself into it. I knew I would. You knew I would. I didn't, I honestly, 50 days was a long time, but now I've talked myself into it. I had to. What else am I gonna do?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  No way. You're gonna root for the Celtics this upcoming season and they have a chip on their shoulder and you know, they, okay, who's the laughing stock now? It's Paul George. Look at Paul George, this defensive stopper out on the wings and all the rest of it.

• 1:06:43Bill Simmons?

  Paul George, Hugo, Ron Harper, Baylor Shireman. We can replace Jalen with bulk.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Bill Simmons?

  All kinds of looks. Paul George, much better fit with Jason Tatum.

• 1:06:57Bill Simmons?

  Good catch and shoot three-point shooter. Not gonna care about an alpha dog situation and your turn, my turn because he's, he's in his mid 30s. He's ready to be a supporting guy.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  The basic question is, the chemistry of this team is Jason Tatum plus Mitch Robinson plus, uh, um,

• 1:07:18Bill Simmons?

  Paul George.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Paul George.

• 1:07:19Bill Simmons?

  With the, with the guys that got a year older.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Can they play though, the way that, that Missoula wants them to play? That's that question.

• 1:07:33Bill Simmons?

  I thought Brad Stevens had this, they had this show that only Celtic fans watch. It's like a YouTube show. And he had some quote in there where he was basically like, we had basically said, I felt like we had taken this group as far as it could go. And what he meant was these two guys, I think we had taken as far as it could go. And it was time to figure out a new version of this. And that's why they did it. And you get one year out of Paul George. And then he's an expiring next year and you have all these picks and maybe you can flip them into something legitimate.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  That particular proposition I remain immensely skeptical of. I call bullshit on that. I call bullshit.

• 1:08:11Bill Simmons?

  This is why it took 50 days. It took 54 days.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  How about this? Why don't you just see, let them play together with, with Mitch Robinson and let's see what the team is capable of. Let's see that. Cause those two fucking guys won an NBA championship together. And you knew that you were gonna have Mitch Robinson. Mitch Robinson's been in your plans.

• 1:08:34Bill Simmons?

  I don't say, I don't say I feel 100% great about this, but I had to, you gotta talk yourself into things. You're, you're on a long car ride and then there's two hours to go. And you kind of get into the car ride and you're like, there's two hours to go. Let's, let's just, it's gonna, that same thing. I had, it was a long car ride.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Powering through it. You're powering through the Celtics.

• 1:08:57Bill Simmons?

  And guess what? When I, when I figured out how to justify the trade of my head, it was like when we would drive to Vegas and you would see the Arby's.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:09:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like, we just need, we weren't, probably weren't winning the title this year. We needed to reset the team, get under, expiring next year, build the team around Tatum.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Bill Simmons?

  I tried. I tried, guys.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Tatum years. Let's keep wasting Tatum years.

• 1:09:22Bill Simmons?

  Chat from Fresno said, I sent you this one. We've all seen the guy that isn't good at a sport, but he's dripped head to toe in the best apparel and shoes for that given sport. What about sports apparel items that you can only buy if you meet a certain skill level? Like special pink hats for people that are scratch golfers, different tennis shirts or headbands for tennis players above four or five, et cetera, et cetera. You see somebody in a certain hat or shoes, you immediately know they're good. So there's a slight parallel with this with the Masters.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  I know. I knew you were gonna go to this place.

• 1:09:52Bill Simmons?

  Different stores and then Berkman's has like some special swag, but then if you get into the clubhouse store that only the members in.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:01Bill Simmons?

  There's really special hats and stuff there, right? So there's like tiers. What do you think of this idea?

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Um, I love it. I have no notes. Um, the problem is it creates, I mean, what's gonna stop me from buying one of these things?

• 1:10:15Bill Simmons?

  Like, oh, your buddy has a pink hat. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  The person earned it, but I'm gonna fucking buy it from them because it's the coolest one and I want to be, you know, the guy walking around.

• 1:10:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's where it falls apart.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Imprimatur of excellence. Yes. The same way that we use, I'm not gonna say out loud, the way the techniques that are out there. I'm sure people can figure them out, but you can get some great stuff out of.

• 1:10:37Bill Simmons?

  I got scared. I thought you were talking about like massage techniques or shit.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Not yet. Not yet. The Augusta Pro Shop, there's ways to sort of get, our, our buddy Chris Chen has, has some, has some, some great strategies he's used over the years. He gets a putter every year out of.

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  So there would have to be some sort of honor system, almost like when you get your own Masters jacket, like Jeff Yang. We know a couple of people have Masters jackets. Jeff, Jeff Yang has.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Heidi Ubaroff.

• 1:11:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Why do you have that? Why do you have that on?

• 1:11:08Bill Simmons?

  The Masters jacket, you wouldn't let like, oh, house, borrow my Masters jacket. So maybe these hats are like, maybe they're like $1,200 hats.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  Good. I like this.

• 1:11:18Bill Simmons?

  I wouldn't want to give that hat to anybody because it's my only one.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Lend it there. Okay. All right. Okay. Yes.

• 1:11:23Bill Simmons?

  There's something there.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Something there.

• 1:11:25Bill Simmons?

  It could be like, it should be awarded from the PGA Tour or the, or the country club. You win the country club. Yeah. Okay.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Chad from Fresno. Good job.

• 1:11:36Bill Simmons?

  Cody Larson basically wants to know if, if, um, Myles Garrett is a Ewing Theory candidate. He checks every box.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  Okay, let me hear it.

• 1:11:45Bill Simmons?

  Superstar. They never won anything with him. Everybody's written off the team without him. That's basically the Ewing Theory in a nutshell.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:11:54Bill Simmons?

  The problem is it's the Browns and their quarterbacks, Deshaun Watson or Shador Sanders.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  And they, they, they've had a lot of suckitude. There were a lot of years of real suck.

• 1:12:04Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna keep my eye on the Ewing Theory for that.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

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• 1:13:32Bill Simmons?

  Luke from North Carolina said the Hornets have acquired around 20 second-round picks over the next few years. I think that's pretty close to accurate. My question is, if you offered all 20 picks, who is the best player you could acquire for 20 second-round picks?

• 1:13:47Bill Simmons?

  Did I send you this one or no?

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  You did. And I'll have to confess, I didn't get around in the research. This remains the one of the most confounding elements of the way that the business of basketball is conducted.

• 1:14:02Bill Simmons?

  Team that teams valuing second-round picks where you and I could give a shit.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:07Bill Simmons?

  We would just trade off. We would have, we would never have second-round picks. But here, take them. I have a 1 in 10 chance after 32.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  It clearly creates, it is a lubricant in the machine. It is. It greases all of these deals. All of these deals slide right in very nicely. They can make things work to some kind of satisfaction because we constantly see these second-round picks added in as sweeteners and elements. There's something about the way the collective bargaining agreement works, or something about the way the cap works, that these, these, these second-round picks, there's something there.

• 1:14:46Bill Simmons?

  So, I couldn't get Jalen Durin for 20 second-round picks?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:14:53Bill Simmons?

  Could I get Herb Jones?

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  See, now we're talking. Yeah.

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  I think it's like Herb Jones.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Right. Like, that's, that's a great, we gotta do, I'm gonna do some, some, some research as the NBA season.

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  It's the Herb Jones level.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  It's like, great. That's a great call.

• 1:15:07Bill Simmons?

  Could I get Nas Reed for 20 second-round picks?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  I don't know, man.

• 1:15:11Bill Simmons?

  Basically, the Hornets would have 40 second-round picks at that point.

• 1:15:15Bill Simmons?

  Is Alex Caruso?

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  I feel like Nas Reed is too good.

• 1:15:17Bill Simmons?

  Alex Caruso were 20 second-round picks?

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  At this stage of his, where he is, and the kind of the injury risk, now, now, maybe. And everybody knows, you know, Oklahoma City, speaking of traffickers of second-round picks.

• 1:15:32Bill Simmons?

  Could Washington get 20 second-round picks for Anthony Davis?

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  I don't know what to do with them. For what?

• 1:15:41Bill Simmons?

  By the way, I'm glad I brought this up. What the fuck was Dallas doing the last nine months?

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  The last nine months? What do you mean?

• 1:15:52Bill Simmons?

  They basically gave Anthony Davis away last year for reasons that remain unclear, and then he immediately had more value on Washington, right?

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  There is.

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  Why didn't they just keep him? They just bought out Klay Thompson to save $9 million. Why didn't you keep him as an expiring? Maybe, maybe your team's gonna be a little better than you thought. Maybe you could package him in a deal. Instead, now he's just a $9 million son. Oh, congrats, you saved $9 million. Your, your team's tripled since you bought it. Well, I don't understand these teams at all.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  This is like, but this Dallas team, it goes, I mean, the original sin of the Luka trade, and every element of what they've done since. And I'll never forgive the fucking league for giving them Cooper Flag. They, they could fuck off, continue to fuck off for that. I'll never forgive it.

• 1:16:42Bill Simmons?

  Peter from, we're almost done. Peter from Chicago said, you and House were talking about how the new Vegas expansion team, which by the way, I know for a fact is in the nines.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  Nine, it's in the $9 billion range for Vegas team. It's just, there you go. We were talking about they shouldn't be named the Ates. And Peter said, it got me thinking. In the WNBA, they have a new expansion team in Philadelphia. They've yet to come up with a team name. They want to use fan support as input. Using your platform, I think this would be the greatest time to market the idea for them to be named the Philadelphia 70's Sisters.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Hey, there's precedent.

• 1:17:23Bill Simmons?

  I kinda like that.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  There's precedent. To this day in my life, there are multiple places where I have the Sol Sisters, S-O-L, S-I-S-T-A-H-S, which was the Miami mascot for the Miami WNBA franchise that does not exist any longer. The Sol Sisters. Uh, look, I, I'm into this, but let, let me.

• 1:17:47Bill Simmons?

  The Philadelphia 70's Sisters.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  It's strong.

• 1:17:51Bill Simmons?

  It's really good. We had a couple of good ones. Arch Madness and the Philadelphia 70's Sisters. Good mailbag. All right. Martin from Estonia asks, who are my all-time drive them to the airport Celtics top five?

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Estonia? Hi, Martin. Thank you.

• 1:18:09Bill Simmons?

  This comes from Kyrie's last year with the Celtics, which did not go well. And then I was joking constantly about how I wanted to drive him to the airport to make sure he got on the plane. And then I think we made a social video of me driving Kyrie to the airport. By the way, Kyrie, I'm glad he's figured out. I like this stage of Kyrie. I'm glad he's at a better place in life, but he was not a fun subject.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Were you wearing your, your seatbelt on that ride?

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  I definitely was not.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Definitely not. Nope.

• 1:18:39Bill Simmons?

  So, I asked you for your five bullets. I'm gonna give you, you go first, and I'll give you my five Celtics after.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  Okay. So, this was tough because I do, there are some sympathy cases in here, and then some that I have absolutely no sympathy for whatsoever. Top of the list because of recency bias. I was gonna say Kyle Kuzma because his bags were always packed over the last two years he was in Washington, but I don't really have animosity towards him. He tried, and then the circumstances changed, and whatever, man. Jordan Poole is a whole nother kind of deal. Like, after, and, and really, it's not Jordan Poole's fault. It is the, the organization that as the rebuild, you know, was, was arrived upon, they put this dude, they gave him a microphone and let him say, welcome everybody to the state. Like, they put him front and center as a guy that was like a kind of leader thing, and

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  it blew my fucking mind. So, Jordan Poole.

• 1:19:30Bill Simmons?

  Didn't they give him the end of the Jumbotron intros, where it was like, he was the last guy introduced, all that stuff? Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Crazy business. Just insane business. Speaking of crazy business, insane business, and I do have sympathy for, for this guy, John Hot Plate Williams, by the end of his five years here. Now, the story is that he was dealing with an enormous amount of stress, and the way that he was handling that stress was eating it. And I understand that. He was an early case, well, I'm sure.

• 1:20:03Bill Simmons?

  You just like to eat without the stress. Yeah.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  Both. I'll eat the stress and I, but he, they, they put him, that guy had paycheck skipped by, by both Washington and the Clippers where he went because he could not get the weight thing by the end of his five years here.

• 1:20:20Bill Simmons?

  He meant sense to your team.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Bill Simmons?

  Can we, quickly on John, on John Hot Plate Williams?

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:27Bill Simmons?

  This was Peter Vessi, who was a really influential NBA writer for The Post for years, and we loved reading his hoop de jour. But his two best nicknames ever, he called Joe Barry Carroll, Joe Barely Cares. And then, there was a John Hot Rod Williams, who was on Tulane and the Cavaliers.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:46Bill Simmons?

  And Peter Vessi called the other John Williams, John Hot Plate Williams, to separate them. And it was just like chef's kiss, 10 out of 10. Phenomenal. Anyway, all right. So, Hot Plate's on there.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then some guys from this era, in the, in the sort of 2000s, Andre Blatch.

• 1:21:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. If you didn't say Andre Blatch, I was gonna not even know if I knew you anymore.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  He was, again, if you wanted to be slightly sympathetic, he was, he did get shot. He arrived in Washington and got shot in a carjacking effort. But then he got arrested a couple times. There was some solicitation kind of stuff going on.

• 1:21:23Bill Simmons?

  You ended up amassing him.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  And he was, there's some famous clips of him going for triple-doubles in all the wrong ways.

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  So, by the time, you know, he was done.

• 1:21:34Bill Simmons?

  Stat chaser.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. These two guys I put together because they were both traded together, and their most famous moment in Washington was, was attempting the, I mean, I'm not gonna use that word, the colossally stupid cinnamon challenge. Nick Young and Javale McGee. Nick Young, Jesus Christ.

• 1:21:54Bill Simmons?

  I did that with Jalen.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Had it from 2008 to 2012, these two big dummies here in Washington with just incredibly outside, like their, their connection to reality. So, that, those guys together, I was, I was happy. And now, this one, I gotta proceed carefully because I don't want there to be any repercussions that that might be visited upon me, but I'm gonna whisper it. Javaris Criden.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  You gotta be careful cuz you know, he has, he had connections.

• 1:22:27Bill Simmons?

  So is Brad Beal not on the airport list?

• 1:22:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause he was pretty good for you guys at that point.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he'll be, you know, he's still at the, at the top of, of all of the record books.

• 1:22:39Bill Simmons?

  I thought for sure Brett Price was gonna make your list.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  No, he didn't do anything wrong. He just showed up and his foot didn't stop working. Yeah, but that's, that's what Washington does. That's what they did. I, I didn't, I don't, I don't bear him any ill, ill will. He didn't, you know, have a gun in the, in the locker room and, and you know, with the, the genuine threat of, of gunplay in a locker room.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  I thought for sure you were also, who was the, the shooter you had in the mid 2010s that you overpaid?

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:23:09Bill Simmons?

  It was like a six foot eight, three point shooter. God damn, was it, uh, Ursana Elie-Sovva? It was like one of those type of guys. You, you paid one of those guys.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  I mean, it sounds right. I could easily go back and pull up.

• 1:23:22Bill Simmons?

  Now I'm gonna have to, was it Yannick Henni didn't make it for you?

• 1:23:26Speaker 01

  Nah, cuz again.

• 1:23:28Bill Simmons?

  You liked him. Okay.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'm gonna give you my, I did buy the decade. I did one per decade.

• 1:23:36Bill Simmons?

  1970s Sidney Wicks.

• 1:23:39Bill Simmons?

  Um, it was really him and Curtis Rowe together, but the Red R back is dumbest move ever. Let Paul Silas leave, wouldn't pay Paul Silas, who was the heart and soul of two title teams. Whole Celtic run. Won't pay him and then tries to replace him with Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe. Curtis Rowe had the famous quote, it was something like, there aren't any W's and L's in paycheck. Something, something like that. He was not, not a popular Celtic. Sidney Wicks was worse though and, and, um, was just a losing player his whole career with good stats. But kinda peaked when Calvin Murphy punched him out in a Rocket Celtic game. Calvin Murphy was 5'9", and Sidney Wicks was 6'9" and ended up getting a, I think a broken or bloody nose.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Bill Simmons?

  Everyone hated him. So that's one. Rick Roby in the eighties. Um, he was a nice guy, great guy, backup center. Um, one of the most frustrating Celtic. He would just come in, he'd bowl somebody over, he'd, he'd be moving on a charge. He'd go over the back on somebody and then he would like have a nice lefty hook and, but he was just incredibly frustrating.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, was so delighted when we traded him for Dennis Johnson. I wanted to drive him to the airport just to make sure he got on.

• 1:24:55Bill Simmons?

  Todd Day in the nineties.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:24:57Bill Simmons?

  The most selfish player I've ever watched. Um, it was the mid nineties when I, when my dad would always give me the tickets. Um, he had the Fleet Center record for a while cuz he was just, I mean, he was, the ball was, if he had the ball over half court, it was going up. He was one of those guys. And you could just watch him suck the life out of everybody else. He was a good college player too.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  He was really good. I love that Arkansas team.

• 1:25:20Bill Simmons?

  Mark Blunt in the two thousands.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  Sure. I get it.

• 1:25:24Bill Simmons?

  When we paid him a big contract, I wrote an entire piece using a Thelma Louise analogy of Harvey Keitel at the ending, running toward the cliff as they drove off it. Because I hated the contract. I couldn't, he suckered them in. He did the Jerome James. He had like six good weeks, suckered them in. And, um, and then eventually we dumped him on Minnesota somehow. So he's for the two thousands and then Kyrie in the, uh, in the two thousand teens. So we're only halfway through the 2020s. Seems like a nice guy, but Nikola Vucevic in the lead right now for the airport. I did, I did hope, I hope he got on the plane.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  Well, he, I mean, how long was he in Boston? He wasn't there long enough to, you know?

• 1:26:07Bill Simmons?

  Was him and Evan Fournier are the, are the two leaders for the 2020s right now. Evan Fournier came in, he was the big 2021. He was like our big trade, trade deadline scorer off the bench and he went like three for a hundred in the playoffs. Okay. Uh, last question from Parker from Utah. Finding out Joe House played water polo was not on my 2026 bingo card. I wasn't as shocked as when I found out Luca was traded to the Mavericks. But I was definitely more shocked than when I found out Tyler Durden was really the narrator of Fight Club the whole time. I don't have a question.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Spoiler.

• 1:26:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I don't know. Can we spoil that movie or no?

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  No, it's fine. Um, I think it's okay.

• 1:26:53Bill Simmons?

  I think we have to show the photo.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Okay, I, I'm still working. I'm, I haven't been to my parents to get up into the attic yet.

• 1:27:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, you sent me the photo.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  I did. I went, that, this is the team.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Who did you send it to?

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:27:06Bill Simmons?

  Now I can't find the photo.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  I sent it to you, just you, only you.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  It was just to me only?

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Me to you. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't send it around to any of our threads.

• 1:27:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I found it. Okay.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  It's just a group of young men.

• 1:27:23Bill Simmons?

  All right, here we go.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  In bathing suits.

• 1:27:25Bill Simmons?

  The Joe House water polo photo. There it is. Joe House is in the back.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Good on my guys. Some idea of you guys. Shout out to the feet.

• 1:27:34Bill Simmons?

  Head of hair and skinny body and.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there you go. The Joe House water polo photo exists. So you're gonna try to find some more for us?

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  I feel like there's some action shots that are out there. Like his, you know, with the water splashing, you know, you're up, you caught the ball, you know, there's gonna be some of that kind of stuff.

• 1:27:52Bill Simmons?

  High school and then you hid this from us when we were in college together. You were, you're ahead of me.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  I didn't hide it. I played on the College of the Holy Cross team.

• 1:28:00Bill Simmons?

  You never talked about it. None of us had any idea.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  It was always in the fall.

• 1:28:04Bill Simmons?

  Five times a week and I somehow never knew you were in the water polo team till you were a junior.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  We were in the NSCAC league and we played like Bates and Colby and, uh, Trinity. I can't remember all, everybody.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  You played all four years at Holy Cross.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  I did. I missed. So all, my, my number one activity at Holy Cross was the radio station, by far my favorite thing. Um, and every year there was a great, um, college, the college music journal, CMJ hosted a, a weekend down in New York and the radio station would send people down. And I was invited and I couldn't go any of those years. I chose to go to the water polo tournament cuz that's when the championships were every year up at Bates where it's fucking freezing cold.

• 1:28:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God, that's the worst ride from Holy Cross to Bates. It's like four hours.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  They let us take a van. The College of the Holy Cross let us, you know, cuz it was. We had a van, a Holy Cross van. Guess how many cases of beer were?

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  I mean, it worked out. It was fun. I enjoyed it, but holy cow. Yeah.

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  There you go. Joe House's water polo career. Amazing stuff. Um, I'm gonna see you this week. You're coming in. Um, thanks for doing the mailbag with me. Thanks. Everybody who sent in the questions. Yeah, a couple dinners. Um, thanks everybody who sent the questions. We're gonna take a break and come back with the guy who briefly resurrected our Holy Cross football program and now is trying to do the same. UCLA Bob Chesney is next, right after this.

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

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• 1:30:05Speaker 05

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• 1:30:33Bill Simmons?

  All right. I have not cared about college football since I was in college at Holy Cross.

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  Holy Cross.

• 1:30:38Bill Simmons?

  You coached too, Bob Chesney. Um, but yeah, we were really good once upon a time.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  Really good.

• 1:30:43Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, I grew up in Massachusetts and New England.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Bill Simmons?

  Didn't really have, with Doug Flutie for a couple of years, but we just wasn't like going, being in Michigan or, you know, where you just, Texas where you fall in love. So I never really had a team.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:30:57Bill Simmons?

  And now in my mid 50s, I have a team. UCLA football. Cause you got here.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Welcome, welcome to the team.

• 1:31:02Bill Simmons?

  Thank you. I'm your unofficial booster.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:31:05Bill Simmons?

  Um, walk me through everything. Like, so you're at James Madison last year.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Bill Simmons?

  You're in the playoffs.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:13Bill Simmons?

  And now eight months later, you're here, you're in LA.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:16Bill Simmons?

  And you're in the NIL era, like. What's the single hardest thing about doing this?

• 1:31:20Speaker 06

  Well, I think that you hit the nail on the head. The timing of it was just, that was the hardest part about it.

• 1:31:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 06

  You know, you don't want to be, you want to be solely focused. You don't want any distractions in your team as you feel like you got a good team and you're doing something pretty special, which we felt like we had at JMU. And, you know, you go week after week and then your name starts popping up in something and somewhere else. And you're, you know, you're taking a Zoom or a couple Zooms during a bye week and you're trying to fit it in. And, you know, you definitely have interest in places, but at the same point in time, you know that you can't mess up the product that you're, you know, and that journey that you're currently sharing with that team. So it was.

• 1:31:55Bill Simmons?

  And they know too, right? They hear about your name.

• 1:31:58Speaker 06

  Like they know indirectly and they see stuff out there, some true, some not, you know? So ultimately to them, I said, come ask me anything, I'll tell you the truth. I don't want you to ever feel like, you know, I'm not being honest with you. And there's sort of a business side to this, but whatever we're talking about is talking about next year.

• 1:32:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:17Speaker 06

  Not the journey we're on. So, you know, it ultimately went in through, you know, there's a couple of home visits and things of that nature that occurred. And I really started to just see what, you know, UCLA was all about. And you start talking to some of the guys that were on the search committee and you start, you know, talking to Martin, you start feeling like, man, they want this thing back on track. And you felt the energy from them. And I felt like it was a, you know, a young crew, but there's, you know, Adam Peters, who's the GM of the commanders. Right?

• 1:32:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Speaker 06

  There's Bob Myers, who did, you know, work magic, obviously with, you know, the Golden State. And then there's Casey and then Doc Roberts is calling me on the side. And like every piece of it, I was like, man, these are some like high level, you know, people that have won at the highest level.

• 1:33:03Bill Simmons?

  With money.

• 1:33:03Speaker 06

  In the sports, right? In the sports world, not just, hey, they're CEO or something else that doesn't know what the team dynamics are. And I was just so intrigued by that, that it really made me think, you know, more and more about it. And then eventually we make the decision, you know, it goes public and after it goes public, we're still in the championship weekend. Right? So we're still trying to play this championship game and I did not want to be a distraction. And I remember when it popped, I told the team on the field first, I said, look, something's going to come out later today. Cause guys text me that they got this story and they're going to go with it. I said, so I just want you to know what they're talking about again is next year. Now I've said that and I was like, how do I, like, what's an exercise that I could do to prove to them that I am still solely focused on this?

• 1:33:47Speaker 06

  And it's funny enough, once that all came out, you know, probably 400 text messages in the first couple of hours. So I end up, uh, you know, holding up my phone the next morning, team meeting and I have, you know, 400 or whatever it is, text messages. And I said, this, I have 400 text messages on her. I took a screenshot of it actually. And I said, I'm not answering a single one of these. I said, these are all about next year. I said, we're still, I said, so you guys need to do the same. And it was cool because by the end of the week I showed him, it was like 1,200 and I never, I just, it kept growing. And I was holding true to my word that I'm not interested in talking about this stuff for next year. I'm interested in finishing this with a conference championship, hosting it at home and then maybe making the playoffs. And then fortunately enough, we made the playoffs, had a little bit of time off.

• 1:34:31Speaker 06

  Got to come out here, do a press conference, meet the team and figure some things out about the lay to land here. And then, you know, that was really it. Started to develop a staff and put together, you know, our GM role ultimately, because recruiting was going to be the first thing we had to do. Didn't talk to a single kid at JMU about, hey, you're coming with me. I wanted that to stay pure and be about, you know, that team that year. And I didn't want to talk to them about any of those things till the season was over. So.

• 1:34:56Bill Simmons?

  So that only happens in sports movies?

• 1:34:57Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Bill Simmons?

  Taking you, I'm taking you.

• 1:35:00Speaker 06

  Man, it happens because then it was funny because then we waited, because I also was, you know, just trying to be respectful of the relationship with JMU. And I didn't want to technically tamper with any of these guys. So we weren't calling until the portal opened. And then when the portal opened, we start calling them, they're like, where were you? Like I've been talking to coaches this entire time and I didn't think you guys were interested. We're like, no, we're, we're trying to play by the rules here and do it the right way. And, uh, you know, then obviously a chunk of them came with us, a couple didn't. But, you know, I think that what, what's here with us, we're really proud of, and I think helps set the culture of this, this program. And it's been really good. But the thing that saved me, that's a long ass answer too, by the way, right?

• 1:35:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm along for the ride.

• 1:35:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. The thing that saved me was probably the fact that this is three hours back. Right? So I look at, uh, like Stein who went over to Kentucky from here on the West Coast. So you get done with your day at 10 o'clock, you know, it's one in the morning on the East Coast. So he's got to find time during the day and take away from what he's doing, you know, at Oregon. I didn't take anything away from JMU. I got to complete the day, 10, 11 o'clock at night, get on the phone with, you know, GM candidates and start figuring those things out. And you still have three hours at the end of the day, you know, that you want to normally have.

• 1:36:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm sure your wife was delighted.

• 1:36:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, she, I was in the basement, she didn't even know where I was. So.

• 1:36:16Bill Simmons?

  She's like, I'll see you in June.

• 1:36:17Speaker 06

  That's right, pretty much, pretty much. So that's how it all kind of went down, but it was good because I got to stay true to the mission we were on and not take anything away or dilute that in any way. And at the same point in time, do a little extra work. It was harder on me, but really just me, not on anybody else.

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's always for decades been one of the worst things about college sports.

• 1:36:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Bill Simmons?

  When a guy that's there is going to leave and it could go one of two ways. Like you can go in a limbo, it could tear the team apart or.

• 1:36:42Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:36:43Bill Simmons?

  You know, you keep everyone focused. So I'm sure you put a lot of thought into that.

• 1:36:45Speaker 06

  A lot of thought into it. And I think the way we did it, I was trying to hold off from anything going public till after the championship game. It just didn't work out that way. Once media gets it, they get it and it's kind of the end of it.

• 1:36:56Bill Simmons?

  I had it for like a month. I just sat on it.

• 1:36:57Speaker 06

  That's right. And you should have, and I appreciate that you did, if you did. But, uh, those are the things that, you know, were, and, and then it came down to, if we're in the playoffs.

• 1:37:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Speaker 06

  You know, I am coaching in this game and that had to be part of this conversation with any school I was talking to is, you know, if we're in a bowl game, I'm probably coaching in that game. Like I am not gonna, not gonna like leave this team. I just, it wasn't going to be an option for me to go forward with any other team if they didn't respect that. So, uh, and I knew it would put us at a little bit of a disadvantage in the recruiting class. I knew our portal class had to, you know, then carry a lot of the weight, but is what it is. Like for me, I think, you know, the loyalty to that place that supported me so much and, you know, and had our back. I felt like I had to, you know, really do the same. So.

• 1:37:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And you know, you're, you're UCLA. It's a great school. You're on the West Coast. You're still going to get some.

• 1:37:44Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:37:44Bill Simmons?

  Some kids.

• 1:37:45Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 1:37:45Bill Simmons?

  So the, the JMU thing, ultimately like it played out pretty well.

• 1:37:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:50Bill Simmons?

  You made the playoffs. Nobody was expecting that.

• 1:37:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:37:54Bill Simmons?

  You lose, then you come here.

• 1:37:55Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:37:57Bill Simmons?

  You take over, when, the last time I talked to you and it was with a bunch of people and you were explaining, I think it was in the spring. I can't remember. It was like March, April, somewhere in there.

• 1:38:05Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:06Bill Simmons?

  And you were explaining how different it is now to try to get people.

• 1:38:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Bill Simmons?

  And dealing with, not only are you paying players, which has never really happened.

• 1:38:14Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:38:15Bill Simmons?

  Above the table before.

• 1:38:16Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 1:38:17Bill Simmons?

  But, um, but you're also dealing with like weird representatives, people that don't have the credentials to really negotiate.

• 1:38:23Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 1:38:23Bill Simmons?

  People that don't understand, you give your word to somebody and then you just, oh, you're giving me that? I'm going to go here then.

• 1:38:29Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:38:29Bill Simmons?

  So what, what is this world like? Cause from afar, it seems like a nightmare.

• 1:38:33Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's close to a nightmare. I think that, you know, you look at the NFL and the cool thing about the NFL is that you have contracts, there's tampering rules. There's all the things that come with it. Their season completes, then it opens up the hiring cycle and everybody, you know, free agency happens, coaches make moves, all those things go down. You have to have permission to talk to a coach. That's not the case here. You know, obviously it won't be the case here for some time, I think till 2031. I think the national championship game is already scheduled at the, the time of the year that it is, which is starting this, you know, this next school year. Right? So you're still playing through the Christmas break. You're playing, you know, into the next semester. And now guys are going to transfer out or transfer in or figure it out.

• 1:39:16Speaker 06

  So I think those teams that are, you know, in the, in the playoff hunt, that's a hard, that's probably a really hard juggle. Cause you gotta have official visits during the middle of, you know, preparing for the first round or second or third round of the playoffs.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  And it's, you're making job interviews, but it's like one year job interviews.

• 1:39:29Speaker 06

  Exactly right. So that's the stuff that's different. And then, you know, you, you find a kid, we love you, you know, you love us. It's great. Everything's going good, but shoot, can you just, I love it. I'm going to definitely come visit and everything, but just can you talk to my agent real quick? You know, and then the agent gets involved and when the agent gets involved, you know, he goes a whole different direction sometimes and the visit never happens or it does. And you gotta promise money upfront sometimes with a kid you never even met, or at least promise a ballpark.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  So you're just walking around with cash? You just have hundreds on you? Just, you don't know who you have to grease up?

• 1:39:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right. So that, that's what it feels like. So it's really one of those things that, uh, and then you gotta know the market and the market seemed to escalate, you know, significantly this past year.

• 1:40:06Bill Simmons?

  How do you keep track of the market when there's like over a hundred teams looking for a left tackle, a tight end?

• 1:40:11Speaker 06

  And really the truth is the market might be the market, it might be set for you. But then there's one other school that's extremely desperate and has money and just raises, you know, your value all of a sudden.

• 1:40:20Bill Simmons?

  Turns into an eBay auction.

• 1:40:21Speaker 06

  Out of nowhere. It was just a big spike in it. And now you gotta figure out, is that worth it or not for us? And we, you, you just have to do a really good job of understanding your own budget, understanding your position allotment and allocation of what you're trying to do. And then you just gotta try to stand by it.

• 1:40:36Bill Simmons?

  You've never wanted to do this stuff.

• 1:40:37Speaker 06

  No, no, no.

• 1:40:38Bill Simmons?

  You just want to like coach, coach 11 guys on your. Side and go.

• 1:40:42Speaker 06

  So that's the interesting part is that nobody, I name one coach that got into it to be a GM and to understand this and you know, have the portal open twice a year, you know, not too long ago, run a budget, raise money, do, I mean, I was always a little bit part of it, but then now you're doing all of that. And I, I realized that JMU, when I was the one talking to all the agents, you know, and we'd get on a phone call, you know, and it would start and then there'd be a, you know, a rebuttal that would come back, you know, minutes later, then we'd have to go back to it was like four, five, six phone calls with every guy until you could even get near a number.

• 1:41:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like, why are you doing that?

• 1:41:14Speaker 06

  That was at the point of this ain't, this is really hard work. So, you know, obviously having a GM and an assistant GM and a recruiting department, you know, is necessity at this stage of the game. But then the thing that, that I really don't like about it is that as soon as you put an agent in contact with a GM, it's all business. And it's not about what's the best fit? Where should he be? What's his playing time like? Does he gel well with the coaches? Is the culture going to fit him? You know, is he going to be happy there? Does he like the area? All those, those things go out the window and that agent, all he cares about is the, the highest number he could get for the kid. He could throw him in the shittiest situation and he's still happy because he got paid. And that's the thing that

• 1:41:52Bill Simmons?

  This happens in sports media too, by the way.

• 1:41:54Speaker 06

  Does it? Yeah. There's some good agents that don't do that. And they will be like, this is not worth the extra money for you to go to this place. This is, and, and the guys that I think were the NFL guys that are truly credentialed and, and absolutely know the value of going to a good program or a program that fits their player. Um, there's a long game to be played. And I think a lot of them, it's really hard to, to, uh, you know, give up a lot of money on the front end, but man, there's a chance if you do it right, to make a whole lot for a whole lot longer. And here, not only with football, but the connections and the education, you know, this is, I always say it to our guys all the time, like this is your life. This is your football playing life.

• 1:42:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Speaker 06

  Right? What's happening from here to here? And are you preparing yourself in that small window of football life for the rest of it? And here's a place where you could do it both, you know, do both. And I think that's, uh, you know, that's what I'm most proud of. We're not just football. You know, we're helping, you know, mold these young men into becoming great employees and employers and husbands and fathers and all those things. And that's what you get at a place, you know, with this type of, you know, education and people around you.

• 1:42:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like in the, this would be like in the NBA of Kawhi was a free agent and his uncle was asking for under the table stuff from multiple teams.

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:43:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wait, that happened.

• 1:43:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. And here's the number I gave you and then chop that number around and go find another.

• 1:43:07Bill Simmons?

  Did I say that? Hey, how about, can you give me more there? Um, you talk about bringing people in a program, but this is 2026 and everybody seems like they're here for a year and then all decide after. Whereas like probably when you got into football coaching, like someday I'll coach in college.

• 1:43:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Bill Simmons?

  I'll build a program. I'll get somebody from high school. He'll be with me for four years unless something horrible happens and he transfers.

• 1:43:31Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:43:31Bill Simmons?

  Um, but now it's like you're just, it's transactional and it's one year a piece. So how do you have a culture when everything's one year?

• 1:43:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. So it's interesting that you say that because let's go back to Holy Cross, right? I was there for six years.

• 1:43:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:44Speaker 06

  We had, I think, two transfers and both of these kids got in on their own and were like, hey, we just, we're transferring. We got in on, because you couldn't get a transfer in to Holy Cross. It was nearly impossible. Uh, academically, it was really hard to get into.

• 1:43:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, thanks for pumping up Holy Cross. This is great. Thank you.

• 1:43:57Speaker 06

  Only smart people could do that.

• 1:43:58Bill Simmons?

  Really appreciate that.

• 1:43:59Speaker 06

  So that is really, you know, then you go to JMU, right? So I go from six years and two transfers in six years. No NIL, no work, but you're working partial scholarships. So it's kind of like NIL, you've got to value people and, and break up these scholarships and do what you got to do. They earn more, you give them more, all the things that come with it, but they were there. Those kids stayed because that degree mattered to them. They really wanted to stay. They wanted to graduate and they wanted those connections and the mentorship that came from that place, which is second to none. Uh, then you go over to JMU, 67 new transfers. We brought in that year, 67. I went from two in six years to all of a sudden 67. Like imagine what that's, like, I don't know about the portal. I don't know about NIL. I don't know about any of these things. And our whole budget's like $250,000 when I get there.

• 1:44:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:45Speaker 06

  Right? And that's what we're trying to, so we couldn't take anybody based on money. They had to come because they loved the place. They saw the value in it.

• 1:44:51Bill Simmons?

  They liked you.

• 1:44:51Speaker 06

  And they liked everything, that it worked.

• 1:44:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:53Speaker 06

  And then at the end, the final piece of it, that all these, majority of those 67 kids we took came and said, I'm in. They never asked about the money. And then later you'd have a conversation of, hey, here's what we're thinking. They'd be like, great, I'm good. I said I'm coming there. That's where I want to be. It would be some of those other guys that showed up with a number, you know, agents weren't as prevalent back then. You know, their kids mostly represent themselves, but they show up with a number that they wanted. You'd sit there with them and you'd be like, this is not going to work. This is only about the money for you. And it wasn't possible for us to buy kids at that time because really if we acquired them with money, we were going to have to motivate them with more money and we're going to have to retain them with even more money.

• 1:45:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, and then you have the starting sitting thing that too, like you got this guy, we paid this much. You expected he was going to start.

• 1:45:39Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:45:39Bill Simmons?

  And then he checks out if he's not starting.

• 1:45:41Speaker 06

  That's right. That's right. And then you still have the spring portal too. So you still have that spring portal window that, that happened in there. So 67 new guys. Uh, next year went down a little bit. Our budget went up to, I think, four or 450 or something like that.

• 1:45:53Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:45:54Speaker 06

  You know, so that's what we walked in that Oregon game with a roster of about $400,000.

• 1:45:57Bill Simmons?

  So you made the playoffs with a 450K NIL budget?

• 1:46:01Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:46:01Bill Simmons?

  And you're competing against

• 1:46:02Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Bill Simmons?

  Like 30, 40 million that some of these schools are spending?

• 1:46:06Speaker 06

  Hmm. Probably more.

• 1:46:07Bill Simmons?

  Pretty impressive.

• 1:46:08Speaker 06

  Probably more. Yeah. Probably more. So again, it was the kid, the right kids, the right kids that, that had a chip on their shoulder and wanted to go do things that, you know, nobody thought they could do and were maybe passed over, whatever it might be. Those are the guys that work in, in our program.

• 1:46:20Bill Simmons?

  Is this system better or was the old system better?

• 1:46:22Speaker 06

  What, meaning what?

• 1:46:24Bill Simmons?

  Which is like, is the system we have now, is this the right system or it's a better system than what we had? What is it?

• 1:46:30Speaker 06

  Oh, I think that players need to be paid. I think, I cannot, I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine back in the day, looking up in the stands and seeing everybody wearing your jersey and you got $0 for that. That sold in the bookstore.

• 1:46:41Bill Simmons?

  Football of all the sports where you potentially get an injured or all kinds of things.

• 1:46:45Speaker 06

  That's right. So I, I think it was so extreme. You couldn't have a work, study job. You couldn't have any job if you were on scholarship. Like that was so limiting and extreme and everybody was making money on these kids.

• 1:46:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:55Speaker 06

  Right? So then it's the way the world works, right? You overcorrect. So then you overcorrected to, no, you could have all the money you want and you could have NIL, not pay for play, but then it becomes pay for play based in the guise of NIL and all those things happen. I think there's a, there's, there's somewhere in the middle. When you look at the NFL model, you know, we're slowly working, you know, towards a, you know, triple A team for the NFL, right? And we are, we are the feeder program for the NFL. I think that, you know, agents that are actually certified can only take a certain percent. Some guys are taking 15, 20, 25% from these guys, right? You shouldn't be able to do that. Um, you know, if you tamper.

• 1:47:33Bill Simmons?

  They're not governing any of it though.

• 1:47:34Speaker 06

  None of it. If you're, if you're tampering, you should be automatically barred from being able to represent anybody again. Uh, just all the things that come with it, you know, like the NFL has is what we really, you know, need to institute a little more multi-year contracts, you know, that kids can't be.

• 1:47:48Bill Simmons?

  I was going to say, could you make it, you can't transfer for two years and that goes for coaches?

• 1:47:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. But then I think you just get into this anti-trust things and are they employees and all the stuff that comes with it. There's so many, every move has a, you know, equal and opposite reaction, right? And then, you know, then it's just what road do we really want to go down? You know, when it comes down to it. And I think every, every, that's hard because every school, every, every conference feels differently about things and you're trying to get, you know, uh, a unanimous decisions and they're just impossible to find.

• 1:48:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then everybody's jumping conferences. That also makes it hard to find.

• 1:48:20Speaker 06

  Correct.

• 1:48:20Bill Simmons?

  All right. So going backwards, you start at assumption.

• 1:48:23Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:48:24Bill Simmons?

  You're there forever.

• 1:48:25Speaker 06

  Started Salve Regina University in Division three, Rhode, Newport, Rhode Island.

• 1:48:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:30Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:48:30Bill Simmons?

  Um, and then assumption.

• 1:48:32Speaker 06

  And then assumption.

• 1:48:33Bill Simmons?

  Which puts you in Worcester.

• 1:48:34Speaker 06

  Put us, put us in Worcester. Yep.

• 1:48:35Bill Simmons?

  And assumption, so Worcester has Holy Cross, Clark, WPI, Worcester, the Polytech.

• 1:48:42Speaker 06

  Yep. Worcester State.

• 1:48:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Speaker 06

  Nichols, Becker.

• 1:48:45Bill Simmons?

  Bunch of schools.

• 1:48:46Speaker 06

  There's like eight of them in there.

• 1:48:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And you're just, at some point you start killing it at assumption.

• 1:48:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Bill Simmons?

  And then Holy Cross hires you. And at that point, we've all given up on Holy Cross football.

• 1:48:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55Bill Simmons?

  It's just, it's never going to happen again. I was there when they got rid of scholarships.

• 1:48:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Bill Simmons?

  And we've talked about this, but when I was there, it was right as it was transitioning. It was big sports school, could have potentially, it was the first one asked in the Big East.

• 1:49:09Speaker 06

  No doubt.

• 1:49:10Bill Simmons?

  And a lot of the people that were there were like jocks and high school athletes and

• 1:49:13Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  Um, and that was such a big part of the school and we watched it kind of get nudged out as we were there.

• 1:49:19Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Bill Simmons?

  And then we just kind of all gave up on it.

• 1:49:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:21Bill Simmons?

  Um, and then you brought it back.

• 1:49:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Bill Simmons?

  And you're winning and you have this great season and then you stayed for an extra season.

• 1:49:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29Bill Simmons?

  Which I think we were all like, oh, he's out of here. He's gone. So why'd you stay?

• 1:49:35Speaker 06

  There, to be honest with you, like, I didn't, if I was still there, I'd be happy, right?

• 1:49:40Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:49:40Speaker 06

  That place was very special. My, my, uh, my daughter just turned 16 on Monday. All right. So she, that's all she knew. She had three years in Newport, Rhode Island.

• 1:49:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Speaker 06

  But my middle daughter and, and then my son was born in Worcester and we were there for 11 years in that town.

• 1:49:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:55Speaker 06

  And when you're, I remember being at Assumption and I went over to a game, a Holy Cross game. And, uh, I remember sitting up top, we parked in the baseball field and tailgated, then we went and sat up top because we played a Friday night game at Assumption. And, uh, they ended up beating New Hampshire, who was like number 15 in the country or 10 in the country at that time. And I was like, oh, man, this is a cool place. Like, look at this stadium. Look at these people. Like, how cool is this? Uh, natural grass field, the history in that field, the names up above on the, you know, the, um, in, in the Ring of Honor in the stadium. And you're like, damn, someday this would be really cool, you know? And it just happened that that was.

• 1:50:31Bill Simmons?

  Then you get the call.

• 1:50:32Speaker 06

  You know, the final, that was the, the next year. So, uh, I don't think they wanted me. I think they wanted a lot of other people. And I think eventually it fell, you know, to, to me. And, and I remember, it's like everywhere I go. I, I, when I first became a D3 head coach, it was like, ah, you don't know how to, you've never been a head coach. You can't do this. And we, we won. And then I went to D2, they're like, well, now this is scholarship football. I'll never forget a referee, and I know his name and I won't say it publicly, but we were at, we were at Bentley. And, uh, I remember it was an awful call. He knew it was an awful call and I was on him pretty good. He's like, this ain't D3 football anymore, son. Something like that he said to me. And I was like, okay, all right.

• 1:51:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:06Speaker 06

  And that's how I was perceived when I got there, which is fine.

• 1:51:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:08Speaker 06

  And then very quickly, we were able to, you know, just become a top five team in the country. Then went to Holy Cross, same thing. You don't know, this is now full scholarship, right? Not only is it full scholarship, you're talking about this academic index thing. That's like the Ivy Leagues. You're going to have to recruit nationally. You've never done any of those things. There's no way you could win here. And we were able to win there. And then I went to JMU and it's the same thing.

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  But wait, go back. So you, you won in a huge, huge way. And everybody's like, oh, so he's getting poached.

• 1:51:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. So then.

• 1:51:33Bill Simmons?

  So why'd you say?

• 1:51:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. That was the question.

• 1:51:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, you take, you did the politician thing.

• 1:51:39Speaker 06

  But the reason why, no, I was saying it because of just the history I had in that town. I love that town.

• 1:51:42Bill Simmons?

  Yes, that's it.

• 1:51:43Speaker 06

  There was just some, you know, blue collar, tough people that loved football, that I got a chance to, you know, everybody knew who you were. It was just one of these.

• 1:51:51Bill Simmons?

  And you had unfinished business too.

• 1:51:52Speaker 06

  Unfinished business is what you felt. I felt like the South Dakota thing was probably the thing that really drove you more than anything. Is that we gotta get these guys, right? And we went out and played them in the COVID year and they got us pretty good. And then we came back and we had that next year where, you know, I look at it all and there's a fourth quarter call that, you know, I just.

• 1:52:09Bill Simmons?

  Are you the worst luck that season?

• 1:52:10Speaker 06

  Yeah. And if I just make this one call, I feel like we got, we're, we're, we're winning that football game, you know? And, and we end up, you know, flying back on a plane and it, it didn't work out. We knew guys were graduating, but we knew we'd still have a good, a good class coming back. And, uh, there were some really young guys in there, uh, that I knew were going to have to play with some freshmen, but I felt like we had them and, and the, the ones coming in were going to be good ones. It just happened that we lost the corner, then we lost the other corner, then we lost the backup to the corner. And then just it, it kind of puts you in a spot where you're playing with really young guys, you know? And then at the end of that year, really, you know, I stayed because I, I still believed in it. I, I felt like we could do it. I felt like we're still, I'm, I'm not walking away from this yet. Like, I wanted to win a national championship, really.

• 1:52:52Speaker 06

  But then I'll remember after that, next year, all the kids, I, I'll never forget, like, sitting in my office, looking out in the lobby. One kid came in and I remember, you know, he said to me, coach, I'm on a quarter of a scholarship. Like, I need at least a half or three quarters or full, like my, you know, we can't do this anymore as a family.

• 1:53:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:10Speaker 06

  And I was like, how many catches did you have this year? And the kid like started crying. He's like, one. I was like, you can't come ask me for more scholarship money. I said, if you need financial aid, we should go talk to the financial aid office. I said, but we can't do more. And then I looked out in the hallway and I saw like eight kids out there. I was like, so I stood up. I said, you, you all here for the same reason? And they're like, yeah. I said, well, let's have a team meeting. So we went to a team meeting. And I realized very quickly that that had turned because of the portal. And because of the ability for them to watch all the other guys going places and getting paid and getting scholarships and promises and all these things. And I was like, this is going to be hard to sustain if we don't find a grad program or if we don't open the door more to transfers. And that wasn't, we weren't built that way.

• 1:53:54Bill Simmons?

  So you're not getting transferred, but then you also can't keep gems.

• 1:53:57Speaker 06

  Correct. So that, that's what it felt like, you know, to me. And then obviously, um, you know, JMU came about and.

• 1:54:04Bill Simmons?

  And that was it.

• 1:54:05Speaker 06

  Yeah. It was, and it wasn't, it initially, like, it, it took a while, you know? And I remember, you know, there's, uh, you know, I remember my wife watching like the, you know, these people like track flights of where the AD's driving and flying to and they're flying to. And, uh, you know, I did my interview. They came to my house, everything. I'm like, boy, that was great. I think we killed it. And then it was like, maybe three, four, five days later and I was out at the Campbell Trophy, or Campbell Award Ceremony, is that what it's called, in, at the Bellagio. And I remember coming back on the, on the plane, uh, before I was in the airport, I just, I called my agent. I'm like, let's not do this. I'm just going to stay at Holy Cross. I said, this doesn't, uh, these guys aren't going to call me back.

• 1:54:44Speaker 06

  They don't see it the way I see it. This ain't going to work. And he, as soon as I hung up with him, the search firm called me, right? So what, I didn't even talk to, he didn't even talk to me. He said, hey, they want to talk to you. You know, can you get on the phone with the president and everybody else? And long and short of it, I was flying back. It was midnight. I put on this shirt and tie and sat in my kitchen and accepted the job to JMU.

• 1:55:05Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the big mistake was Syracuse.

• 1:55:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:07Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what they were thinking.

• 1:55:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:09Bill Simmons?

  I thought, I thought that's where you're going to go.

• 1:55:11Speaker 06

  I like where I did it.

• 1:55:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This all worked out perfectly. One of the things you talked about the last time I saw you and you were explaining to some, some of the people behind the program.

• 1:55:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:55:21Bill Simmons?

  About how you come in and how you have to change the culture. And you were talking about, um, people just competing every day on anything. And I thought it was so fascinating.

• 1:55:33Bill Simmons?

  I just want you to explain it, like, just explain it the way you explain, like, just how your mindset of day after day after day, I want everybody pitted against each other in some way.

• 1:55:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. So I, I think you always wonder where you stand on a team, right? You always wonder and you just never get this feedback. I was talking, uh, actually it was in the book, The Cubs Way. If, if you've seen the book, The Cubs Way, and I was talking about, uh, Madden and what he and Theo did with this team. And, and he was talking about, you know, in the minor leagues, they'd cut a guy and never really tell them why. And then he'd see him years later and he'd be like, man, it was just, you weren't doing this or that. And, and he's like, he had a, like, sort of a profile moment where the, the guy was like, why didn't you tell me that when I was there? I would have worked on that, you know? And I, I felt like that was, I was like, you know what? That's what this thing has to be. And this started way before, but that's just sort of solidified the idea of it.

• 1:56:24Speaker 06

  Just constant feedback, constant feedback. Am I winning? Am I losing? Right? Am I getting better? And I don't need to compare myself to other people. I need to compare myself to myself a day ago, right? That's ultimately what we're, we're trying to do here on a day-to-day basis. But if you don't put them in situations to succeed and fail, then I think they're guessing, right? And to me, I always say it all the time, the leading cause of success is well-managed failure, right? Well-managed failure. Any successful thing you did in your life, you probably failed at it first or a couple of times at it first. And it's just, you're going to learn that lesson. It's got to cut a little bit, right? And then you get into the part of, you know, the leading cause of failure is mismanaged success, right? So they both, you're, you're successful, but do I forget about the, why I got there?

• 1:57:08Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:57:08Speaker 06

  And now am I feeling like I have a ride? I'm entitled to this now and that, what does that do? And you're going to watch yourself fail pretty quickly. So to me, the other side of this was, I'll never forget playing, uh, Southern Columbia was the name of the team. They were all black uniforms at home. Their field was down. And then you, and you had to walk down this, this like, you know, blacktop road from the locker room. Uh, and you were wearing white because you were the away team and you heard them come down this, the, the thing. And you could just, their cleats hit the ground different than your cleats hit the ground, right? And then when they walked on that field, like, they looked different. They played different. They felt different. And to them, they didn't think anything of it, right? To us, it felt like this energy and there was like a hurricane, you know? But they were just in the eye of the hurricane. It was good. They were, they were good.

• 1:57:50Speaker 06

  Uh, but for us, you're like, how do I, I want to break through that thing and it's not that easy to do. I think that's no different to me in your personal journey on success and confidence. I don't think that you could have any success if you don't have confidence. And confidence is just a belief initially, right?

• 1:58:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:07Speaker 06

  But then you have this confidence, right? You could then start to have success. And then with a little bit of success, might create a little more confidence, which might create a little more success, which might create a little more confidence. And that's now you start spinning, you know, like in this little vortex, like I said, and you're in the eye of the hurricane and everybody's looking at you like, holy shit, this guy's got it figured out, man. He is unstoppable. That, to me, is what you're trying to create. But you can't build confidence if you don't give them moments to succeed and have these micro successes over and over and over again, every single day. And these failures, these failures so that they could get better and learn and, and, and become something that maybe they weren't a day ago. Uh, so that's ultimately what this whole thing's built on. We're not just competing for the hell of it and to keep score and embarrass people. We're doing it to have these micro successes, which will bring.

• 1:58:50Bill Simmons?

  But you're doing stuff like everybody's splitting into weightlifting groups.

• 1:58:53Speaker 06

  Everything.

• 1:58:53Bill Simmons?

  Five different groups. Explain some of that stuff.

• 1:58:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. So we, we come in in the winter and we'll go through a couple of workouts and, uh, then we'll have the team. Uh, and especially when you came here, it was different because they didn't know. You had to give them a couple of weeks with each other. And then we'll pull the fastest, you know, the number one fastest, one through five. And then the number one strongest, one through five. All right? So the fastest guy will go with the fifth strongest guy. The second fastest will go with the fourth strongest guy. And it'll work its way that way. And then they become the team. So we were B-R-U-I-N, right? So we're the Bruins, right? So as we went through that, they draft the whole team, which is now kind of cool. Because we publicized.

• 1:59:30Bill Simmons?

  Now it's getting competitive.

• 1:59:31Speaker 06

  The draft results of who was picked last, who was picked first, all the things that come with that. And then their team is set to compete every single day. So we go out on that field and their station's set up. Five different stations, might be sled pushes, ropes, tug of war, uh, whatever it is. But before you go to bed that night, you get a, the email comes out or the text comes out and it's like, Bill against Bob the entire day. So you're like, oh shit, right? So now.

• 1:59:58Bill Simmons?

  So now I'm measuring. Myself against you for the next day.

• 2:00:00Speaker 06

  That's right. And really what you're doing too is like it's teaching you how to prepare. Like if I know it's going to be a hard day, probably going to go to bed a little bit earlier, probably going to hydrate a little different. I'm going to eat a better breath. I'm going to figure out what I gotta do to be at peak performance because I know I'm going against you. But then there's other moments where I think this will be an easy one. I don't need to really worry about it. But all of that score gets kept, gets publicized and the team wins based on it.

• 2:00:23Bill Simmons?

  So how many days before people were like, ah, I get, I get what's going on here?

• 2:00:28Speaker 06

  I think it happens pretty quick.

• 2:00:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it happens really quick that with for the most, you know, fierce competitors. And we break our like in my mind, our competitors, right? You have guys that just survive and they're just getting through it. And then you got these other guys that are competitors that will be pushed and, and push up like not push other people, but be pushed. But you gotta kind of outside motivate them. Then you got these dominant competitors. These guys don't need any pushing. They will win all the time. But then you got the other one, the ultimate competitor. And this is a guy that is the dominant competitor, but brings other people with them, right? And there's a big difference in there. I love Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay, right? The one, the example I love too is Doug Flutie playing for the, what the stampede for all those years, right?

• 2:01:11Speaker 06

  And winning Grey Cup after Grey Cup, then he gets traded to the Alawet. It's the worst team in all of Canadian football and wins there. The one guy goes in there and does that. So that, that's a dominant competitor or the ultimate competitor. And then you have the dominant competitor. He can do it, but he's not bringing other people. Then you have the competitor that's got to be outside, you know, motivated. And then you have the survivor that's just watching the clock and trying to get through the day. And they start to fall into these buckets and they start to understand, you know, who they are. We define that for them so they could self identify and then eventually correct whatever they got to correct. So, you know, that stuff starts happening right away and you see who kind of rises to the top, you know?

• 2:01:45Bill Simmons?

  I mean, basketball is probably the best. One of the things I love about basketball is you're measuring these guys by stats and all these different things. But the guys who actually won had that extra quality. Like when you talk about the ultimate competitor that bring everybody up. And that's like Bill Russell and Duncan and Bird and Magic.

• 2:02:00Speaker 06

  A hundred percent.

• 2:02:01Bill Simmons?

  Where you either, either caught up to them or they got rid of you.

• 2:02:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, you're not, you're not like taking a day off of Michael Jordan.

• 2:02:08Bill Simmons?

  Right, Jordan's the other one.

• 2:02:09Speaker 06

  It's not gonna happen, you know, and he ain't taking a day off.

• 2:02:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, or he'll send you packing.

• 2:02:13Speaker 06

  That's right. So that, that's what you're looking for and that's hard to find. You know, you don't have a ton of those on any team.

• 2:02:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, so when you show up or you're like, who's my, who am I? Do I have a couple of these guys?

• 2:02:22Speaker 06

  Looking and you're here, you hear people talking and you see people that have clout. Why do they have the cloud? Are they popular or are they, are they the competitor? That's the question. And that's what you're trying to kind of sift through and figure out. And every day we film it all, we watch it all, we grade it all. Like that's all part of the process.

• 2:02:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's, I don't know why more people don't think this way. Cause even like my daughter's first club soccer coach, he used to have these Friday games and it would be like these three and three games. It'd be, you know, you keep going and then the winner would win. And some of the parents were like, oh, this is bad. Like my kid, my kid ended up on a bad team. They lost. It's like, that's not why he's doing this. He's trying to figure out week after week, who are the two kids? That always end up in the finals, that it doesn't matter who's on their team. And he's trying to teach them certain habits, but that's.

• 2:03:10Speaker 06

  That's right. Yeah, it's interesting. And that's where I think it's just honest with us. They gotta be vulnerable. The score pops up and they suck that day and they gotta eat it in front of the team and they gotta live with it in front of the team. And that's all just part of it.

• 2:03:21Bill Simmons?

  So is there a moment when you feel, obviously it's like you're rowing and everybody's rowing in different directions? Where you kind of, there's this one day or one moment where you were like, oh, we're all in the same boat now. I can feel it.

• 2:03:34Speaker 06

  And, and those moments, I have screenshots of them. Like I'll never, you know, I'll never forget it assumption the first time. Like the, the, the centers in his stance pointing at like this linebacker that's fake blitzing, who's pointing back at him. And then over there's some kid talking shit to the quarterback from the third level. Then the other kid's coming up and you just see this thing. You're like, oh, this is it.

• 2:03:55Bill Simmons?

  It's happening. Yeah.

• 2:03:56Speaker 06

  They love this. They love this game. They're buddies. They're talking tons of shit. They're, they are excited to win this, whatever we're doing. And that's when you're like, all right, we got it.

• 2:04:07Bill Simmons?

  Right. So when did that happen here?

• 2:04:09Speaker 06

  You know, I think it's a more recent thing. You know, I think today was really a step that I felt different. Yeah. Like I felt.

• 2:04:15Bill Simmons?

  Cause I was coming?

• 2:04:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, probably. Yeah, we thought you were out there. So I told them all they have to practice.

• 2:04:18Bill Simmons?

  Simmons is up there. He's watching.

• 2:04:20Speaker 06

  That's right. No, but today felt like it. Today felt like, I mean, the offense is always going to be a little bit behind the defense, right? Because defense just gets to run around with their hair on fire and make plays. And then the offense eventually catches up and today felt competitive as hell out there. Felt like they were having fun and we could have stayed out there and practiced. I brought them up and then we called it, you know, like they thought practice is over and we went into an overtime period. So we did the overtime ones, you know, however, we did it. And then after, you know, we, we brought them up again and they're like double overtime, like they didn't want to leave that field today. And to me, that's a good sign. Like they could, we could have stayed out there for three more hours and they would have loved every minute of it.

• 2:04:56Bill Simmons?

  Can you talk about your quarterback without going into coach speak?

• 2:04:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I can. Okay. Yeah, I sure can. I, I think, you know, first I, I empathize with what he went through last year. It was his whole life up to this point in time in his collegiate life. You know, he was the villain in college football for a minute there, right? And he's so far from that. Like he is an unbelievable young man from an unbelievable family. Cares a lot about his, all of his eight, I believe siblings. Has a mother and father at home who love him and support him to no end and, and you know, a brother on the team. And it's pretty awesome to watch this guy, you know, just go out here and compete every day. He's one of them too. That'll be, you know, hands under, you know, ready to snap the ball and talking some shit to somebody else out there.

• 2:05:38Speaker 06

  You know, that he's a fierce, fierce competitor and a really, you know, unbelievable person that has the attention of this team.

• 2:05:45Bill Simmons?

  Can you have a quarterback that's not a fierce competitor?

• 2:05:49Speaker 06

  It depends on.

• 2:05:50Bill Simmons?

  I mean, and succeed, I guess.

• 2:05:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think it depends on what's around him. I won't say any names, but there's NFL guys that won Super Bowls that had unbelievable defenses. Unbelievable returners in the special teams game, you know, and really ran the ball. And all they wanted to do is try to punt it on fourth down and not turn it over. And the defense and special teams will take care of the rest. You can do that. But it's a lot harder to do that way. And you have to be really buttoned up and dominant on the other sides. When it's pretty even in a league like we play in, where probably teams will be more talented than us at certain positions in certain moments of the year. You know, you need a guy, like you need a guy, like you need the guy.

• 2:06:24Bill Simmons?

  Cause he's the one, every time I tell everybody that you're going to win at least eight games, they're like, oh. And then they're like, ah, what about the quarterback? And I'm like, well, he's definitely talented.

• 2:06:33Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:06:33Bill Simmons?

  Right? And you know, you have all these transfers. That's the other thing people can't figure out.

• 2:06:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:06:38Bill Simmons?

  What do you have? How many transfers you ended up with?

• 2:06:39Speaker 06

  I think we had 54, I think we ended up with.

• 2:06:42Bill Simmons?

  How many did you think you were gonna end up with?

• 2:06:45Speaker 06

  Oh man, I don't.

• 2:06:46Bill Simmons?

  Did you think it was gonna be like over 50? Like, did you have any idea?

• 2:06:49Speaker 06

  You do, you know, so this was the interesting part. We showed up here on the third of January, right? And that's when I think the portal opened on the third. So the portal opened on the third and later that day, we had 17 kids come and visit on the third. Okay. So, uh, think about it now, we're in school because we're on the quarter system.

• 2:07:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:06Speaker 06

  So the semester started. So the whole team's in here. And as the whole team's sitting in this room, uh, you're looking like, all right, I gotta grab a meeting with this kid and a grab a meeting with that kid. I gotta figure out if they're staying, but you don't have time to really do that a lot. Because of the fact that you're bringing in 17 other kids and you're parading them around while your team's lifting in the weight room. You know, doing what they're doing.

• 2:07:29Bill Simmons?

  And this guy might not be staying.

• 2:07:30Speaker 06

  And you're walking around 17 guys and, and then the agents are calling and everything else is happening. And eventually like, ah, we can't, yeah, we're not going to get to his number. He, he could go, he can go, he can go.

• 2:07:39Bill Simmons?

  I understand how you do this and also have a family.

• 2:07:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my family wasn't here. So I was living in that hotel right there. I was living in that hotel for 60 days, you know, and it was what it was. You don't want your family here at the beginning because you're never going to see them anyway.

• 2:07:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:52Speaker 06

  And I think it just was, it's part of it. So that was ultimately, uh, you know, bringing together an entire team and coaches, by the way, that now you're going into an official visit. You met these guys three days ago, some of them three days ago. You don't really know them and you're trying to speak the same language through these official visits and figure it all out. And you know, next thing you know, there you have it. But the number grew when kids laughed or saw how many kids were coming by. Eventually I remember having to go to the weight room and say to our current team, like, look, stop it. Like stop having your agents call. Stop worrying about who we're bringing in. We're going to get to 105 guys on this team.

• 2:08:28Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 2:08:29Speaker 06

  I don't care where you go. You're not going somewhere where there's not seven or eight running backs. You're not going somewhere. There's not 20 some offensive linemen. You're not going somewhere where there's not 10 safeties and you know, eight corners. You're not going, like that's what, how these rosters are built. So you can go somewhere, but know if you go somewhere else, they're probably bringing someone else too. You're not going to go somewhere and be the only running back on the team. So relax. If you like it here, if you value this education, if you like what you see so far from all of us, just stay. If you don't, leave. And that was ultimately, you know, what we just had to eventually get to. And then the good and bad of the quarter system is that the kid visits on the third, your school started already. So they fly back home, pack a bag and fly right back out, right?

• 2:09:12Speaker 06

  As we got later in that window, we would tell them, if you're coming out here and you like it, just, you know, pack a bag. You gotta fly somewhere. So they have to fly back to their aunt's house somewhere in Arizona or wherever, and then come back. Cause they couldn't really stay. They had to fly out and come back. So we had that set up for guys. Like to be able to understand that, uh, you know, you gotta move in quick. Cause school started. Then the quarter ended, you know, wherever it ended and guys were still in the portal. That allowed us to bring a couple of guys in before spring ball started. So it was almost like we had two windows, you know, as an unfortunate, because most, most of the time I've been at places where school starts on, uh, January 27th. So the portal opened on the third. You have all that time to build your team, right? We start school on the third, the same day the portal opens. Like that's kind of a, a tough job.

• 2:09:57Bill Simmons?

  So, you know, I don't want to say you inherited like. A losing culture, but it wasn't going great here.

• 2:10:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:03Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, you gotta basically pour disinfectant all over the place and try to reinvigorate stuff and change.

• 2:10:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Bill Simmons?

  Make it an optimistic situation and not a pessimistic one.

• 2:10:13Speaker 06

  That's right. And I think that's what it's been for a little while. Like if it's gonna go wrong, you know, it's probably gonna happen here. It's gonna go wrong here with, with, with us. And I think coming in and, and I think being on the outside, looking in, you really see the power of this UCLA, you know, degree university. I said it a million times. There's first round draft picks and Olympic gold medalists walking around in the athletic department. And then there's future CEOs and lawyers and doctors and everybody else walking around this campus that are regular students. Like you have a chance to breathe some pretty rare air as you walk around here. And we're one good football team away from being arguably the most dominant athletic department in the country. We won three national championships this year and eight conference championships. I don't know that we might already be the most dominant, but if you

• 2:10:56Speaker 06

  don't have a good football team, it's hard to say that you are that. So, um, you know, that's, that's what we're charged with and that's what we're excited to do. But you're right. The, the biggest way to win is first stop losing. Stop doing the things that the losing teams do, right? And I think that is.

• 2:11:11Bill Simmons?

  Which is being unprepared during the week.

• 2:11:14Speaker 06

  Being undisciplined.

• 2:11:15Bill Simmons?

  Not giving a shit.

• 2:11:16Speaker 06

  Worrying about yourself first, right? Not putting the team first.

• 2:11:19Bill Simmons?

  Do I get credit over the team?

• 2:11:21Speaker 06

  All that. And that's what breaks teams apart. And I think we gotta keep identifying it.

• 2:11:25Bill Simmons?

  He only mentioned these three guys in the post-game speech. Meanwhile, I had 70 yards rushing.

• 2:11:30Speaker 06

  We just gotta keep talking about the team, the team, the team. Ultimately is what this entire thing, you know, has to be built on and, and everybody's got to understand that. And, and then in the end, for us, we'll treat them how they treat the team. And if they treat the team well, they'll, they'll get it back, you know, well. If they don't, they won't. And I think that's life though, right? Like you get whatever you give. You know, if you're kind of a shitty person, you're probably gonna have.

• 2:11:53Bill Simmons?

  You're probably gonna be shitty.

• 2:11:54Speaker 06

  You're gonna view everybody as like, they don't like me and they're, they're this and they're that. Well, it's probably what you are the them. Right? It's kind of the way the world I believe works. So our guys understand that and keep fighting that fight every day.

• 2:12:04Bill Simmons?

  Speaking of shitty, people don't realize your abject hatred for USC. I think you've really concealed that. Now I'm just trying to get in trouble. But you see, USC is your big, USC is your big rival now.

• 2:12:16Speaker 06

  Yes, yes.

• 2:12:17Bill Simmons?

  I'm ready for it to come back.

• 2:12:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:18Bill Simmons?

  I don't feel like it's ever fully been cooking.

• 2:12:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Bill Simmons?

  The entire time I've lived there since 2002, where it was like, this, this is, cause the USC, all of those, everybody who went there, all the alumni, they all hate UCLA and vice versa.

• 2:12:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:34Bill Simmons?

  And yet we don't really get a chance to battle that much.

• 2:12:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's healthy, I guess, right?

• 2:12:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:38Speaker 06

  We gotta change it.

• 2:12:39Bill Simmons?

  It's an underrated rivalry though. Cause people think about like Duke, UNC and, you know, that, just in general, like for the schools, but I don't think people realize there's a lot of animosity between the two colleges.

• 2:12:50Speaker 06

  You know, we gotta get it back. It's gotta be a lot more competitive, you know?

• 2:12:52Bill Simmons?

  You wanna say something mean about Lincoln Riley or no?

• 2:12:54Speaker 06

  Nothing, nothing. I enjoyed meeting him. Seems like a great guy.

• 2:12:57Bill Simmons?

  Why do, um, why do you think you got underestimated over and over again with these coaching searches?

• 2:13:02Speaker 06

  I, I think that, uh, you gotta, it's gonna be, it's easy. It's lazy to do, right? And lazy to say is, hey, you never coached there. That's easy, right? Like it's a very easy thing for anybody to say. And I think for me, again, from, from D3 to D2 to FCS.

• 2:13:18Bill Simmons?

  You always say, yeah, but, yeah, but.

• 2:13:20Speaker 06

  That's right. And I think that's always what it's gonna be till you, till you prove it. So I don't, there's not a minute that I worry about, you know, what anybody on the outside says, cause I've lived it so many times over, you know, and to me, it's not.

• 2:13:32Bill Simmons?

  You've had a lot of winning the last 10 years.

• 2:13:33Speaker 06

  Yeah. And it's not about any of that. It's about what do we believe in this room? Forget about everybody else, right? And that's the other thing that I try to make sure our guys know is that you don't, don't read the good, right? Because then if you read the good right now, cause we're great right now, right? We haven't played a game. Like everybody loves us. It's unbelievable. It's phenomenal. Undefeated. Like it is all what it is. It's, it's when, you know, the tough times show up, you know, you're not gonna wanna hear what they have to say on the outside. And those that were your biggest supporters sometimes become your biggest opposition. And for me, I wanna know that we're doing it right in this room.

• 2:14:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's true. This is like the perfect time right now.

• 2:14:06Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:14:06Bill Simmons?

  It's like you're on the second date with somebody you might date for like three years.

• 2:14:09Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 2:14:10Bill Simmons?

  Like this is awesome.

• 2:14:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, that no flaws.

• 2:14:12Bill Simmons?

  Let's go to the movies and get some ice cream.

• 2:14:13Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 2:14:14Bill Simmons?

  You're perfect right now.

• 2:14:15Speaker 06

  It's perfect.

• 2:14:15Bill Simmons?

  What's the number one thing you're getting from UCLA fans? When people meet you and they talk to you, what do they say?

• 2:14:21Speaker 06

  They, they have energy, man. They got energy. They got some juice right now. Like they, they are, I don't feel desperation. I feel hope and I feel like gratitude and I feel like excitement. You know, I feel like there's a belief and, and what is, you gotta believe it long before you ever see it, right? And it takes all of them. And there's a village of people that we need to support this and they're doing an unbelievable job. But we just had an event on the, over there at the hotel. And I think last year there was a hundred people there. It was close to 400, you know, in this donor dinner that we had the other day. And just, you know, the, the energy they got for this, the excitement they have for this. Um, you know, this time around, they feel like it's gonna be different and it will be.

• 2:14:57Bill Simmons?

  Well, it's like Louis Cage has done, helped us with PR at The Ringer and me personally for a year. I haven't seen him in 10 years. And then he showed up today for this.

• 2:15:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:15:06Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, I just thought that he's locked in. He's a UCLA fan. But it was, it was, it was great to finally meet him in person again and see him, talk to him. Um, when's the first game?

• 2:15:16Speaker 06

  Uh, September 5th.

• 2:15:18Bill Simmons?

  Who are you playing?

• 2:15:19Speaker 06

  Cal. At Cal.

• 2:15:21Bill Simmons?

  I think I'm going to the Michigan game.

• 2:15:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, do it. Do it.

• 2:15:24Bill Simmons?

  That's it. I got a lot of girls soccer this, this is my daughter's last season. So I have a, I have a packed schedule, but I'm, I'm coming to at least two. I'm coming to a couple of home games too. This is my new team.

• 2:15:34Speaker 06

  Yes, you have to. You have to support it.

• 2:15:36Bill Simmons?

  This is, I, I have a lot at stake here. You gotta come through for me.

• 2:15:38Speaker 06

  I know you do. We will, we will do that. And we have, we expect a lot from you too, though.

• 2:15:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. You, you gotta tell me what else you expect.

• 2:15:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:15:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm happy to be like, I'm trying to think of like the positive adult in the sports, in the college sports movie. I don't wanna be like the JT Walsh, blue chips character that just comes in and screams at you.

• 2:15:56Speaker 06

  No, no, no. We'll talk about it. We'll carve that role. Let's talk about it a little bit more.

• 2:16:00Bill Simmons?

  I wanna be like the guy in Hoosiers who's just in the stands rooting for everybody.

• 2:16:04Speaker 06

  Everybody. Just positive and happy. That's you.

• 2:16:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Not shooter, not the drunk guy.

• 2:16:08Speaker 06

  That fits your personality.

• 2:16:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Just wanna be the happy guy. All right. Good luck. I'm glad you're here.

• 2:16:12Speaker 06

  Yeah, man.

• 2:16:12Bill Simmons?

  Thanks for, uh, thanks for hopefully turning around UCLA football.

• 2:16:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, thanks for being here. And honestly, thanks from the beginning. You know, I remember talking to Casey about the whole thing and, and he, he said he had a conversation with you and, and, uh.

• 2:16:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, he sent me the list.

• 2:16:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:16:25Bill Simmons?

  They had some preliminary list and I'm like, where's Chesney? The hell is going on?

• 2:16:30Speaker 06

  Right.

• 2:16:30Bill Simmons?

  And then you just kept winning.

• 2:16:32Speaker 06

  Right. Right. Well, I wanna be here without you, brother. So I appreciate it.

• 2:16:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, you'd be, you'd be here either way, but I was, I was happy to play a small, small, tiny part.

• 2:16:40Speaker 06

  I appreciate it.

• 2:16:40Bill Simmons?

  Good luck this season.

• 2:16:41Speaker 06

  Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

• 2:16:43Bill Simmons?

  All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to House. Thanks to Bob Chesney and everybody at UCLA for helping out. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. Thanks to Jesse, um, who somehow joined the pod today, even though the Dodgers are in semi-freefall. I'm glad he was here. Um, I am gonna be back on this feed on Tuesday. Fantasy time, fantasy football. We're doing it. The big preview is gonna be on Tuesday and, uh, rewatchable is Monday, April 13th. So, uh, see you later in the week.

• 2:17:33Bill Simmons?

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• 2:18:09Speaker 04

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• 2:18:40Speaker 01

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