Ravens Fire Harbaugh, CFB Portal Madness w/ Max Olson, Plus Hoops w/ Robbie Hummel

Hey, we're still a listeners. You can find every episode on Apple podcast and Spotify. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon music. The Rhyme We're Still a show is presented by DraftKings. Today we're taking a look at the chance for portal max Wilson's all over it, where the big names are going, where the big names have already signed an interesting story out of Washington that involves LSU. And then we'll take a look at the games as well. So a lot of portal stuff. We're going to talk about Robbie Hummel, who is terrific on the NBC Peacock NBA Monday game, where they're doing it from the bench. He and Austin Rivers, I'm going to get his thoughts. He's been around Detroit a lot. We'll do some college basketball stories. So a lot of fun with him. And then of course, we have life advice and my open on John Harbaugh out in Baltimore. 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I like that one and I'm really, really tempted. I just feel like am I going to fall for the Green Bay, Chicago rematch thing here? But if I had to right now, I would lay the one and a half with Green Bay in the rematch in Chicago. Nice little story out of the bears there. Kind of wish I had bet against them the last couple of weeks of the season. Anyway, so jump in, bet live and let the entries roll for a shot at a share of over 2.5 million dollars in prizes. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use the code Ryan RYEN. That's code Ryan RYEN. Bet live for your share of 2.5 million in prizes with the code in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. I want to start with the breaking news out of the NFL. John Harbaugh out after 18 years of the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. So I want to do the resume. I mean, he didn't die, so we're not doing a obituary here, but 180 in 113. That's the record. 13 playoff wins. Super Bowl in 2012. Incredible Super Bowl, by the way. Only three losing seasons. He's got a 5 and 11 in there and then two 8-9s. That's pretty heavy stuff. When Steve Busciotti was looking for a head coach prior to hiring Harbaugh, he had said he's looking for a Hall of Fame coach. I don't know. Harbaugh will make the Hall of Fame. Pro football Hall of Fame is the best Hall of Fame because they are selective. They don't just let everybody in. Then I think they celebrate the best. I don't think that they worry about the lean years. I think they look at your best stuff. Usually Super Bowl for a quarterback could get you in, but for the most part, there's probably way more guys that we think should be in it as opposed to some of the other sports that that guy got in. So look, I don't know if Harbaugh gets in there with the one Super Bowl and he still has a lot of work to do. He's a young man, young man in his 60s, but he looks young. If Tyler Loop makes that field goal in the last game of the season on Sunday night, Ravens win the division. They're in the playoffs again. Does this happen? I don't know. It depends on what the playoff game looks like, right? Put together a little bit of run and no, it probably doesn't happen, but I don't think it was about that kick. I don't think it was just about the 25 season because look, if you just look at this year, you go, all right, this is one of the Super Bowl favorites before the season started. And this is probably one of the single most disappointing teams in 2025 that you could have. There's probably a lot of choices there, but the Ravens probably have a few more excuses of some of the injuries that they had to deal with on top of everything else. But the division is terrible. The Steelers, that Steelers team, you watched them this year. They're in the playoffs. You're not. So the expectations division, I don't think it's just the loop, miss field goal, although it's the first thing I thought about. I mean, I thought about that kick a lot. And by the way, I love that kid in college too. So Steve Bishotti, who's the owner of this team, who if you read the John Feinstein book on him, you're going to like him. You're going to like, you're going to wish your owner were more like him. He's just, the way he comes off in the book is terrific. And I think even since that book, I think that book's like over a decade old, it feels like the book was a really, really good accounting of like how he goes into decisions and how he sees himself as an owner and what he wants his franchise to be like. But there's also something else happening here because this is somebody who is incredibly patient. And I don't think firing horrible after 18 years shows impatience. I don't think that's an owner that's watching that kick be missed and be like, all right, time to make a change here. There's clearly more to it because that's what I think Bishotti does. I think he kind of steps back and takes a bigger picture. But if you look at the trends of coaches being fired, and I just want to point to the guys that were fired after one season, if you go from 1980 to 2000, only seven hit coaches were fired after one season. If you go from 2001 to 2010, five coaches were fired after only one season. If you look at it from 2011 until now, it's 15 coaches that have been fired after one year. So we're basically averaging one a year after having seven and 20 years and five and 10 years prior to this. Pete Carroll has now been fired after one year twice in his career with the Jetson 94 in Vegas this year. Speaking of all of fame, I'm like, can you be a all of fame head coach and also be fired twice after one year? I think with the Super Bowl and what he did at SC, Steve's going to see, he might have read, I don't even know, do they, I lose track of some of that stuff every now and then. It doesn't sound good when you're averaging one firing after one season every single year, but you know, it kind of speaks to what we have in this sport, what we have in college football, on top of everything else, because there's just less patience. There's less patience in a room for it. I don't know that it's directly related to money, maybe the money in the college game, but not necessarily the pro game. If you look at the college salaries, it's just rising tide for all. In the NFL, it's not really like that. It feels like there's this upper class and then maybe no middle class. I was looking at the salaries this morning, like there's 20 million for Andy Reed, Sean Payton's like 18 million. Harbaugh was like 16 million. I think he was making a little bit more than Jim was with the Chargers. So there was a good chunk of guys that were like 14 million north, but there was only like a couple, like a 20 or 18. But then at the low end, there's guys still making like $4 million a year being a head coach in the NFL. Like that's ridiculous. Basketball, the money hasn't caught up necessarily. Baseball has gone in the opposite direction. I think there's podcasters making more than all the managers combined in the AL Central. But for football, I think this money to the coaches with the salary cap projected to be 300 million next year and the revenue that this league makes, that we may, it may not just be like, Hey, things are more intense and the new owners have less patience than ever before. And if you're making all of this crazy money and then you don't step up like we're going to fire you, I think that money is like nothing to these guys anymore, especially when we're talking about coaches that are being fired, that are making less than eight figures a year, not that anybody's crying for them. But the money, I don't think has, I don't think it's been a full rising tide thing that's happened with NFL coaches the same way. So yeah, good. It could get back to that, that lack of patience. There were quotes about Harbaugh being dismissed. And I thought one was really simple for me, SPN this morning that I was reading that it was a current player. And he's like, you know what, it's a little surprising, but I'm not shocked. And that's the day to day stuff being around the franchise that, you know, you don't have access to, I don't have access to, I'm not even, I don't care enough to talk to somebody about the Ravens every single week, like what's going on over there. But this is part of the process of like, I don't know that any of us necessarily know. Like I just don't look at a record. I won't look at a record and be like, that coach sucks because of this record. And do you like the work that the coach is doing? Do you not like the work the coach is doing? Do you have a good record, but you think you have a long term mistake? But again, that guy never ends up being fired. I also think there's a really interesting Lamar storyline in all of this because the disconnect was real. I don't know what Lamar wants to be. The story, whether you go back to like when he was sort of offered as a free agent, but not really, there any interest in was a clue, like there's a lot of weird shit that's gone on with Lamar that has some of it has nothing to do with him. And some of it directly has stuff to do with his decisions on like sitting out one practice a week and all that kind of stuff and hard about being frustrated. So this feels like at least a win for the Lamar camp part of it. If this was becoming more untenable, this relationship between head coach and their star quarterback, a star quarterback who was diminished this year. I hope it's because of injuries. There was a couple runs in that Pittsburgh game where it's like, that does not look like the same guy. And that part of the game for a quarterback, as you start approaching 30, it usually starts to fall off of a cliff. And Lamar is so special physically, like I'd almost think that it would take longer for that to happen for him. But this year, the running part of his game was the worst it's ever been in his career, which is fine if the rest of it's all terrific. And he's so good. His resume is so good, the MVPs that you should just look at 25 Lamar Jackson deserves a pass. But this decision tells you they're way more like all in on Lamar than maybe some of the stories that we're reading about. Ultimately, whenever you're deciding to fire or hire a head coach and meaning hire, keep a guy around and not fire, it's probably the way I should phrase it. I think it's just really simple. Like, do you think you have the right guy? And yeah, you could meet a new voice, especially after 18 years. But look, it's not like it's the same players all the time over those 18 years are cycling those guys out. And it felt like for a long time there, there were some lean years there. There was like this middle section for Harbaugh from 2013 to 2017, where it became a topic more often. It's like, hey, you know, should the Raven shake it up? And so many other franchises would have done it. Like, yeah, we know we want a Super Bowl, but you know what, what's going on with this season? Like, why are we down here? What's going on with the offense? Let's just make a change because we're going to make a change. And it gets back to that point of Peshadi and like, he knew the whole time. It's like, I think I have the right guy. I know the results are not based or the results are not to the level of the standard that we had when Harbaugh first came in here, because when he first came in, I'm going to tell you in a second, like he tore it up. But you know what, I still think he's kind of the right guy. And clearly, it got to a point where it didn't feel like that was the right guy. First five years for Harbaugh, five playoffs, three conference championship games, one conference championship game appearance since that Super Bowl. So I would close with this. If Peshadi thinks it's time, that's good enough for me. The Game Time app gives the advantage back to the fans. It's the hack for unlocking amazing tickets and experiences. In a few taps, it's incredibly easy to use. And the Game Time guarantee means you can trust you'll get 100% authentic tickets on time and at the best price. Plus, fees are always included. So what you see is what you pay. The Hornets are coming to town Monday. And I was looking in the app and I see Clippers Hornets tickets starting at $25. You're telling me I only have to pay you $25 to watch Hornets basketball? We've talked about Canopy Luton. Probably haven't talked about Diabati enough. Brandon Miller's last week has been spectacular. I'm talking like poster, not just posters, but like, hey, I would order that poster if I were living in the greater Charlotte area with some of the stuff that Miller has done. I love this team right now. Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets, Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account and use the code RISILLO for $20 off your first purchase, terms apply, again, create an account and redeem the code R-U-S-S-I-L-L-O for $20 off. Download the Game Time app today. We are in the transfer portal season for college football. Day one, we had over 4500 players enter the portal. We're going to go through all the big names, all the latest stuff. A guy who crushes it when it comes to this, which I think is going to become a bigger, bigger season every single year from ESPN. It's Max Olson. Good to see you, man. And the number is 5800 now, Ryan. So it won't stop. Day one was 4500. I did not. I lost track of the next 1300 players. Yeah, we're in. I counted up this morning. If we're talking the 105 man rosters, there's enough FBS scholarship players in the portal right now. You could field 26 college football teams. So... All right. Well, let's show some of the headline stuff here because there's a lot of places I want to go here. So let's try to get through it as quickly as we can. Soresby, is this just a Texas kid going back to Texas after leaving Cincinnati? Yeah, I think that's a big piece of it. I think Brent Soresby has shown a ton of improvement over his two years at Cincinnati. He started his career in Indiana before Sid got there. And I think he's one of those guys that at the start of the year, he was maybe a fringe top 10, big 12 quarterback in terms of perception, but as a guy who's super confident and believes he's the best quarterback in the big 12, he's a super... If you spend any time around him, very confident in himself. He had a really good year, great dual threat player. He is a guy that thought about going pro and he's got good measureables. The tape, like he could certainly build on it. And maybe if Dante Moranty-Simpson were staying in school, you'd be kind of dumb not to go pro, but he looked at Texas Tech as a chance to go try and prove he's a first round pick and go play with a ton of great players there. Go back home to Texas. And then certainly if you can make five, six million bucks, that helps. Yeah, because I think there was a lot of push that maybe he was going to end up at LSU. And then he goes to Tech. There was the line about him just being blown away by the facilities, which I think we all collectively laughed at. I think that's when... Was it Mike Hampton who once said he loved the schools when he signed with the Rockies? Yeah, so anyway, good for Mike Hampton. I'm not being critical of it at all. They are incredible facilities. But I think there's also something where... Again, I hear this all second hand. This is something that you're reporting on, but you'll wonder like of the cycle of the boosters that get excited about getting involved and the rules that I put in quotes about what a team can or can't do. And then if they get burnt, then it's like, do the same people go, yeah, let's do this all over again. And with Tech that clearly ramped up for the 25 season, when the Big 12 feel like, I don't know what kind of wake up call that Oregon playoff game was for them. But this was not a one and done thing for the people that were behind the money decisions with Tech. If anything, it felt like they were more empowered about what they were able to pull off in 25 and being like, let's just keep heading in this direction and not screw around. No, it's absolutely well said. And I've written about Tech's Tech a bunch this season. And I think for them, and Joe McGuire was like, well aware of the pressure. They needed to win the Big 12 this year for the first time in school history. They didn't win the Big 12. It was a failure. And there would be a lot of pressure and a lot of problems, I think, if you had all this talent and you just went eight and four. And so I think for them, winning the Big 12, just covering that game, being down in the field then afterward, there was just kind of that sense of relief of like, okay, we did it. Now we're going to the playoff. We think we can make a run, but it's kind of house money from here because we did what we set out to do in winning 12 games. And in some ways, yes, they were like, if you talked to their GM, James Lancer and the people there, in October, they were like, here's who we're going to go get in the portal in January. They were well prepared to make a run here. But to lose, to get shut out by Oregon the day before the portal opens, I think also motivates the money people of like, yeah, we're not going to lose to LSU on this quarterback. We're not going to go, we're going to go chase the best players that become available. And they've picked up the number one defensive tackle to help replace Lee Hunter. They have Cam Coleman, the number one wide receiver in the portal on campus today. You know, they're chasing, they have a chance to probably sign maybe four of the top 10 guys in the portal. So yeah, this is not a one year deal. They are very much invested on running it back. Okay, so what do you think happens now at LSU, a quarterback, because we have the DeMond Williams angle. We have the Sam Levitt visit, but he was on his way to Tennessee after Baton Rouge. So I also think it's important to point out this Williams story out of Washington's nuts, because he just days ago signed what was quote, a lucrative NIL deal that they said that he had not filed his paperwork to transfer, but he just announced it on social media. So they were like, what the hell is going on here? And of course, it's worth reminding everybody, there's a back connection there with Kiffin where Williams was committed to Ole Miss for like six months, about three years ago. So what can you tell us on this one that basically is a package deal of all the things that people hate about college football right now? No, absolutely. This was like, as the portal opens up, you know, Thursday at midnight, and we go through a few days of this, like there are names that pop up that are like surprising. I think DeMond Williams announcing on Instagram that he's going to transport was like the first like, whoa of this cycle, like we're like just, there was not rumors. They had publicly announced five days ago, he's resigned from what we've heard. That's that deal is, you know, north of four million, he's going to make him one of the highest paid QBs in the country. So it wasn't a money issue, you know, in terms of his deals with Washington and just really, yeah, not indications that he was thinking about doing anything else other than staying at Washington. And so the timing of this on Tuesday night was insane because first he announces that he plans on the port, he's going to do what's best for him and his family and enter the transfer portal. At the same time he's posting this, Lane Kiffin is sitting court side at an LSU men's basketball game with Sam Levitt on the visit. And there's a, I don't know if you saw it, there's this incredible photo of Sam Levitt looking at his phone and Lane Kiffin looking at Sam Levitt as this is like playing out. And then Levitt wraps up the visit sides. Okay, I'm going to go visit Tennessee now because I think it became clear to a lot of people that DeMonliums appears to be the target for LSU now and obviously for a lot of money. And so there's a lot of complications with that. And we, you know, Washington, he signed a deal, like you to sign a deal and then make this flip, like the school is going to try to enforce that. The big 10 is going to try to enforce that. You know, we saw one of these issues play out last year with a defensive back that Xavier Lucas is trying to transfer from Wisconsin to Miami to go home. And Wisconsin said, they put their foot down and said, you signed something, we're not going to put your name in the transfer portal. We're just not going to do it. And so, you know, we can try and talk things out, but we're not going to let you get transferred there. And he ends up withdrawing his student and enrolling at Miami. You can do that. You can operate outside the portal. I think we're going to have a similar dispute here because there's, at this point, there's no like coming back, right? You can't say like, Hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to really be tough on you, but you're, you're coming back, right? We're going to change your mind and stay watching. So yeah, this is going to be a big issue, bigger issue than it was a year ago. And one that's going to bring a lot of attention to these deals they signed, you know, ultimately, like it could also create some hurdles here for Linkith and who needs to go sign one of these quarterbacks as fast as possible. All right. So I don't know how this changes anything, but Ty Simpson, just as we started taping this, announced that he's leaving Alabama and entering into the NFL draft. Again, any of these major programs have to be prepared for any of this stuff. I imagine DeBoer and Simpson's relationship is strong enough that it's not like Alabama is waking up going, Oh my God, now what do we do? But how do you think that impacts any of the stuff that we're talking about? Because there's still, look, there's still another list of like 10 quarterbacks that we don't know that are all like name brands, at least in the college football world, we don't know where they're going to end up. But Alabama certainly changes the equation for some of the other teams that didn't think that they were going to be out there hunting. Yeah. I think it probably at the start of the season, this probably would have been the ideal scenario actually for Kailin DeBoer, as much as you'd like to have Ty Simpson as a two year starter. The fact is they've got a five star freshman in Kailin Russell from Dallas who's really talented. And it's just, you know, how it is nowadays, Ryan, it's like those guys don't sit for two years, right? So like if Ty Simpson is coming back, then your back ups Kailin Russell and Austin Mack, they're going to kind of figure out like, do I got a bail on this? And so to have Ty Simpson go pro and, you know, I think probably at this point in time, we'd say be a first round pick. And then you kind of hand the keys to Kailin Russell, I think is kind of a good outcome for Alabama. I think it's one that the fan base will be excited about. It does to me though, like as you have this musical chairs here, there's a couple really big programs that don't have the QB solved yet. You've got LSU, you've got Oregon, who's still waiting on Dante Moore's decision. You've got Miami. To me, Miami is like the big mystery one in all of this, because there was a lot of speculation time then to Lenora Sellers. He's staying in South Carolina. CJ Bailey announced he's staying at NC State. You know, last two years, Miami pulled a guy out of the portal who had already announced they were entering the NFL draft. And so I think that, talking with personal people last night, as they're trying to figure out like, what is DeMond Williams doing? I think that the one we're still trying to solve is, what is Miami up to here? What do you think DeMond Williams is doing? He must know if... Yeah, I mean, everyone you talk to thinks that it's going to be LSU and it's going to be for, you know, something in the range of five to six million bucks. And so, again, the question is, how quickly can you get that wrapped up? But I think that that's a guy that Len Kiffin knows really well and really wants to get. I think Oregon likes DeMond Williams, but probably is not trying to spend at that level, maybe for a quarterback. You know, maybe Miami can get in the mix there with him. But yeah, again, it's as you kind of have this musical chairs play out here, now Sam Levitt goes on and maybe goes to Tennessee now. I think Dylan Riola is hoping to go to Oregon and we'll see if that actually happens. Yeah, it's as these guys make commitments now, you've got to, you've got still a few big stars that got to make a move here in the next few days. I guess I'm just trying to figure out on the money part of it, when you hear about money announced, can you check with somebody to find out how fake the announcement is? Because usually, like on the player side, it feels like there's a lot of rounding up. So what do we know about, like, I don't care about per player, but as you were kind of alluding to position, like, where has that spending gone? What is real about what it costs to get a top end guy at some of these positions? Yeah, it's tough to report on. Like, if I just went and tweeted the first number I heard from somebody all the time, like, I would be wrong all the time. I think that's, you know, they're generally always considered outrageously like rounding up numbers, right? From what I hear. Yeah, like, yeah, generally, generally, you hear something that's maybe a little bit too high, right? But like, I'll give you an example, like I wrote a piece on Texas Tech's defensive line this season. And, you know, if you talk to the players themselves, you talk to their agents, you talk to Joe McGuire, talk to Cody Campbell, you talk to their GM James Lancer, everyone's going to give you like a slightly different number. And so you're like trying to like triangulate that and like ultimately like Cody Campbell's writing the check, like I kind of trust what he's saying. I'm not saying I don't trust everybody else, but you're trying to kind of like, no one's like, Hey, here's a PDF. Well, let me just show you. So you're trying to like kind of figure out what's right. And, you know, certainly for Texas Tech, they spend a lot of money, they're going to continue to spend a lot of money. But yeah, it's hard to narrow down, you hear a lot of stuff that's just going on. I would say the quarterback position, it certainly jumped up for the proven guys. I think last year, you could re-sign your quarterback, or you could go get like a pretty good proven quarterback for about 1.5 million. Like that was like considered like fair. And now I've talked to a bunch of GM's who are trying to re-sign the quarterback this year. And it's like, man, the conversation is starting at three. And I think for some of these programs, especially like in the big 12 where you've seen a few of them move on, it's like, we love this guy. Yes, we could come up with 3 million bucks, but like, we also have to go get like a dozen other players in the portal. And like, we're trying to stick to a budget, whether the cap stuff is real or not, like we are trying to stick to a budget. And so you get into these pretty complicated decisions as these prices keep going up. And other positions, you know, I think the perception is usually like, if a guy is pretty good, he wants half a million bucks. If he's been a starter, he's looking for, you know, 500 to a million plus. And I think good linemen and good pass rushers and great receivers, you know, are going to get over a million bucks. And I mean, we've got some big time running backs right now too. You would say like, Hey, why would you spend a million bucks on a running back? But, you know, some of these superstars right now, Kiwan Lacey, Jayden Baud, Florida, Isaac Granite Louisville, like schools are going to have to pay two, three million bucks to get those guys or keep them. Yeah. Because if we look at like the payment structure over the years here, you know, you could sit there and I've already touched on this a little bit, like, but I wonder how many new money people would feel burnt by it. Because look, I'll say this, it's very clear that this is now a three year trend with the SEC, where this is not to the standard. This is not what we would expect. And even if I think it's the deepest conference still, the domination, there's just too many results now that I can't, like, I don't have the evidence that I used to have in the past to be like, what are you guys even talking about? That is not happening. So whatever the gap SEC, Big 10, if you think the Big 10 is better, like, you know, now I'm like, open to all of it. As we're like on year three of kind of what this is. But, you know, I've seen some other stuff written where it's like, well, once the SEC, like the other, the other schools could pay and like sometimes I'll hear it from a fan base or a guy who I know played at one of the other schools where I'm like, you guys, you seriously want to argue that you guys were never doing anything that was like in the shady area of things? Because we know that you were. So like, what are you talking about? But for the schools that maybe were more by the rule book, I wondered if they would get excited and be like, oh, we can actually kind of do this out in the open. And, you know, we can, everything's sort of allowed here, which again, other people would argue that not everything is allowed, but we can kind of get to that. And that there'd be a bunch of excitement and there'd be a bunch of money. And then they'd go, hey, we went seven and five again, what a waste of money. Like, why am I, why am I doing this again? Like, we paid how much for this one guy and he stinks. And so I wondered if there'd be some kind of correction. But then at the same time, I would think of like, the first time you were actually able to compensate your college quarterback, you're like, we're going to give them $1 million. Like, oh my God, $1 million for quarterback. And then it's like, yeah, but do you realize like, once we get through a couple of cycles of competition and bidding on this stuff and we know that people cannot help themselves. That's why there's a salary cap and football and hockey and basketball. Because if you just let it be a free market, guys would be making $80 million a year in basketball. All right. So that even if there's some correction for the passion of wanting to cut these checks for all of these kids and different fan bases and boosters feeling burnt by it, you would at the same time have a lot of schools going, I can't believe we were getting a difference maker quarterback for the total of $1 million. Like it would make sense that it's in the five or $6 million range that we're hearing about with the top end guys, because you just knew, based on competition alone, that it was going to get there. So I wonder how those two things play and feel free to point out anything that you think is inaccurate in my assumptions or my summary of where this has gone in a couple of years. But as it feels like those two things are battling each other, and it's also sort of hilarious too, like how do you spend five or $6 million in a quarterback when you supposedly have $20 million in cap space to use for your entire athletic department? That's right. Yeah. I mean, or let's not try to do that math because it just doesn't. We can just move on from that. I will say this season, right? I think you are already seeing the signs of like, you know, I think with Brian Kelly, I think with Mike Gundy, I think even a couple of years ago, Jimbo Fisher, like we're already seeing the signs of like, hey, man, like we spent, I mean, James Franklin too, like, hey, we spent a lot of money on this team, and you're blowing it like you're we're going to fire you. Like that's just like that's what it is now. If the investment level rises up, then the stakes are just heightened every year, even though your team is completely different every year. And you know, I think that right now you're also seeing what SIG is doing in Indiana is so insane. And yet it sparks hope for everyone, right? And so it's like, I mean, freaking Indiana is doing it, right? Like their championship window opened the second he got there. That's insane. And so it's like, all right, well, what are they doing? Let's try to do what they're doing. And so we've in the last two, three years, like you would talk to you would talk to, you know, personnel staffers at playoff programs, and they'd be like, you know, we're trying to take like five to 10 transfers a year, like we're not trying to overdo it. Like we're signing blue chip high school recruits, all that we, you know, we develop guys, we get into the pros on that. We've normalized in the last like two years here, not only like paying a lot of money for every player, but flipping it every year and just bringing in 25 transfers every year. And, you know, constant just constantly looking at who can we go get to make us better? And I think you could also like look at where we're at today and say like, I've had this conversation with Blandra Texas Tech, like some of these teams we thought were going to be really good to start the year and back in August, like Penn State, like Clemson, who had everybody coming back and it looks so good on paper. There's there's maybe like an argument to be made here of, yeah, having that veteran retained, you know, experienced team, like if you stay out of the portal because you've got those guys, that might be a mistake with kind of where this is going right now, because some would argue like you need to just be constantly recruiting your roster, you need to constantly be recruiting over even the veteran starters you got the NFL guys you've got and applying that pressure every year and boosting the roster every year. Because otherwise maybe the guy that's, you know, a junior doesn't get that much better as a senior and maybe there's that complacency a little bit and you're, you know, you're looking at a season like Clemson or Penn State did and you're like, man, how are we not better than we were a year ago? Like it doesn't make sense. And so just this need for everybody to flip this all the time, whether you're winning or losing, it's very expensive. There's a lot of attrition to it. It kind of makes the whole market like a little bit worse and crazier. But that as you see people and these four programs that are at the end here have success with it, like I think for everybody else, it's like, man, we want to keep our players like we want to be competitive. We see their, you know, Indiana is showing it's, it's possible. But it also creates like a lot of spending and a lot of hope that's like probably not going to pay off. Yeah, the biggest mistake is like thinking that Indiana is fucking everybody else up because it's discrediting what they do as evaluators. Oh, for sure. And, you know, there was a stretch there forever. I can go back. I've always talked about like revisiting this. There was a stretch that like early 2000s and so on. It was like, look at everybody like stooped as soon as you got their title, right? Urban as soon as he gets there, save it was right on the map immediately. Mac took a little bit longer, but it was very clear like it felt like the coaches that mattered were doing their best work in the first few years, but that window was still like a three or four year window. So just because Signetti's doing what he's doing, any other AD or fan base holding their program to the same side, I've seen it written about it's like, Hey, no excuses, no excuses. It's like, well, I'd rather just praise what it is and how special this is. Also, he's a plus at all of these categories, right? In terms of how they're doing it. Can you add more to, I mean, is it Wilson and they're like, by the way, I love Hoover. I love that pickup at quarterback. I mean, it just makes sense. Like I don't know if it's a Signetti pitch, but there is another part of this story that I feel like deserves more just awareness on how these guys, like if I owned an NFL team, I'd want to meet with the Indiana staff and go, what do you do to so perfectly identify what you need? Because again, if we're talking overall talent rankings, there's an argument to be made that Signetti doesn't even have this thing going yet. And yet they're a game away from playing from a national championship. Yeah. And they've already loaded up for next year. They have Josh, you were coming from TCU. They have Turba, Richard, they're running back from Boston College. They got Nick Marshu, probably the second or third best receiver in the portal. You're going head-to-head with Notre Dame on him and getting him to sign. They've got one of the best pass directors coming in. So they're going to run it back to, they're going to keep doing this. It's incredible to watch because you're right. Like the thing people say last year is like, oh, I mean, they brought all these GMU guys with them and that really helps. That sets the culture. These guys have played before. These guys, what they can do translates in the big 10. It's not that bad of a jump from what they're doing at GMU to doing it in Indiana. And you get a lot of credit for, yeah, we brought these 12, 13 guys with us and that really boosted the roster in year one. Okay. Well, some of those guys stayed, but how do you explain your two then? Because I think that they did an exceptional job. It's not just the Heisman quarterback. You go through the whole depth chart. They either had returning seniors or they went out and got exactly the guy they needed. And I think part of it is like the availability of talent and they know exactly what they're doing, what exactly what they're looking for. They're very well prepared before the portal opens to go get the guys they want to get that fit them. And part of that, like we say, if there's 5000 guys out there and it only takes 20, like they know what they're looking for and they don't have to give each of those guys three million bucks to come to Indiana. Like the guys are bought into, hey, I see the results. I see what they're doing here. It's exceptional. It's what they've done this year. And I don't think it's going to drop off one of these JMU guys graduate or this portal classroom. Like we've seen in the past, like, yeah, it can be hard to maintain if you're doing the portal thing every year. But I think they're also a pretty exceptional developmental and cultural program. And so, yeah, I think now guys see it. I think the signetting pitch in the past has been, he's had five or six guys since 2019, win offensive player of the year in the conference. And so, Frida Mendoza buys that pitch and comes out and takes this game to another level. Now Josh Hoover is going to have a chance to do the same. And so if you can keep stacking this, and you have the proof of the playoff like this, like guys are going to keep coming. It doesn't matter. Yeah, they could go to Ohio State or Michigan or Penn State or all these other schools, but like, they're into it. They're into the brand he's created and they want to win. Have you talked to teams that have decided they're just not even going to bother with high school quarterbacks anymore? It's a good question. I mean, it is because ultimately we're getting the whole like, how much should we pay a high schooler and how much should we pay for a high school class? That is its own conversation that I have with GMs all the time that I find really interesting because the statistics are what they are. Like these guys don't stay. And now that the rule is unlimited transfers for their career, you know, guys are, I'm seeing players pop up in the portal who are looking for their fourth school right now. Like it's pretty commonplace. Like that's going to keep happening as long as things are set up the way they are right now. And so part of the challenge is like, okay, how much are you going to pay? How much are you going to invest in a guy before he actually gets on the field for you and like starts producing? And then once he does do that, then is he jumping up to a million or two million or three million bucks? Right? I think that that's, it's a tough business right now. You know, you've got to work really hard to keep guys on board. And even if you're successful, and even if they're in all conference guy and performing at a high level and love the offense, like somebody can come along and offer them something better. And so yeah, I think the high school, like you're seeing freshmen quarterbacks who just got through a year who redshirted are hitting the portal now. Like I think everybody is looking at this from just this direct path to getting on the field. And, you know, a couple of years ago, it was kind of clear as heading this way that like past year two, if they weren't starting, they were leaving. And now I think that's happening even earlier. So, you know, you've got obviously the four teams in the playoffs at the end here, all did it with transfers. And I think that's going to continue. I think whether it's just, it's expensive to keep them. And, you know, they just don't stay very long if they're not the guy as soon as they get there. Let's run through just more of the players here then. So it sounded like, I mean, this is twice now with tech, whether it was the LSU tech battle over SourceB, but, you know, a week ago, it felt like Cam Coleman, hey, Alabama, he'll stay in the SEC or whatever. But you think Cam Coleman is going to end up in Lubbock? It's a Texas versus Texas A&M versus Texas Tech battle, which since, you know, since they left the big 12, we haven't seen too many of those, Ryan. Like, I think that's going to be extra spicy here. I think it was pretty evident, especially like once he frees got fired, like, man, people are coming after Cam Coleman. I, you know, I talked to one source that thinks that he could, as a water receiver, he could get like $3 million from this next school. He could get $3.5 something like that. Like he has the potential to be a first-round pick a year from now. He's, you know, he was the top five recruit coming in. He's played with five different quarterbacks in his two years at Auburn. He's shown like, you've watched Vanderbilt this year, like he can take over a game for Texas, for A&M, for Tech. Like this is going to just be a straight up bidding war. And fascinating to see what he prioritizes here, what he and his family prioritize. But yeah, he's a true number one receiver and he's the number two player in our rankings right now. Give me some other big names. I mean, I remember I'll put you on the spot too much here where you feel like I'm just asking you to predict where all of these kids are going to land. But like, give us a few more names and so the bigger ticket items right now that you're trying to figure out. Yeah, you know, the Levitt one, the same Levitt recruitment has been pretty interesting to follow. You know, I, like, I covered that, that playoff game last year, Texas, Arizona State, like watching him live. It's like, dude, this kid is special. He was only a redshirt freshman last year. Exceptional year with Scataboo last year at Arizona State. Got hurt this year, got knocked out for the back half of the season. Kind of like it was kind of out there, but a little bit surprising. He made a move considering how tight he was with Kenny Dillingham. And he goes to Kentucky for a visit. Now Kentucky has flipped Kenny Menchie, the Notre Dame backup from Nebraska. He goes to, he was going to go visit Texas Tech. Texas Tech gets the deal done with Swar'sby in their battle with LSU. He goes to LSU. LSU is now on, on, evidently chasing DeMon, William Jr. from Washington. Now he's going to Tennessee and Tennessee's just kind of been like seemingly kind of quiet. They haven't, I don't think had a lot of OB's from, from quarterback so far. Certainly would be a good move for him, but you know, there's people kind of assumed he's from Oregon. Would he end up at Oregon at Dante Morgo's pro? So I think he has an interesting decision to make. That could be another one where Miami just comes into the picture and says like, Hey, we got to figure this out. You're the guy. Like it's, it's, I think it's been a good quarterback market this year. You've got Drew Mestermaker going to Oklahoma State from North Texas after, you know, leading the country and passing this year. Byron Brown going with his coach to Auburn. You know, we mentioned Hoover, Rocoback going to Penn State. You know, you've still got DJ Lagway out there, which honestly, Ryan, a year ago, if you told me, I can't believe there's not like, I still am a Lagway believer. I'm just saying that I am too. And I think if you had told me in August, he's going to go in the portal and he's going to go take official visits to Virginia and Stanford and Baylor. You'd be like, wait, what, what the hell happened? Like I, because he was truly like, we all kind of viewed him as a five star freshman, like a truly like has a chance to take the step and be a top 10 quarterback this year. He's just had some of the injuries. And I think that that is really, you talked to personal people, like that's just like the concern is like developmentally, two years in that he's not where he should be because he's missed a lot of practice and he's just missed a lot of time and it's not even been throwing the football very much in the off season. So I think there's a lot there. I agree. Like I think that would be a great guy to invest in. You know, I wondered when he entered the portal, like if you're dabbling Clemson and then they recruited DJ Lagway in high school and have a good relationship with them, like, wouldn't that be an incredible move for Clemson with when you've just got, you know, backups returning and you want to have a competition? You know, his dad went to Baylor. I think he just visited Baylor. You've got Stanford fighting. You've got Ole Miss is trying to get him in because they don't know what's going to happen with turning out Chambliss. And so Ole Miss is on him and they're on deuce night from Auburn and they're trying to kind of figure out what to do here. So yeah, it's a, I'm surprised, I agree with you. I'm surprised that he visited Florida State. Like I'm surprised that it's not done yet. Either Baylor's got to like find the money to get this done or he's going to go pick a spot and a big reset here. How about his teammate there, Jayden Ball, who I think behind love is my favorite running back from college football this past season. I mean, a lot of this stuff can get lost. The receiver's gone after a year. It was a big time recruit, but I know the running back price. I don't know if there's, it's the same as like not drafting one in the first round, but I'm telling you right now in the college game, that guy is a fucking stud. And I just don't think I don't blame anybody for not watching Florida games this year. He was so good that you would just, I would like, I'm going to watch him this, this series. That's how special I think he is as a running back. You talked to, like, especially as, as Napier is on the hot seat during the season, like talking to the SEC personnel folks, they're like, yeah, no, it's Jayden Ball. Like that's, if that, if that opens up, like we're all lining up to try to, you know, get Jayden Ball here. Tough runner, like Justice sophomore, like really talented. And it's been, Jayden Ball has never put his name in the portal, but there've been a lot of people fighting over Jayden Ball here over the past two months. And he announced yesterday he's staying at Florida. And that is going to, that came as a surprise, I think to some people, it's a huge deal for John Somerle, obviously, and a big priority as soon as he got the job, like we got to get this done. But yeah, Florida is running backs coach, Jabar Jaluk went to Texas, Texas lost both of their running backs to the portal. And it was pretty clear like, yeah, they're going to try and get Jayden Ball if they can. I think LSU certainly, you know, if they couldn't get Q1 Lacey to come, they certainly wanted to get Jayden Ball. And so it's a big deal for Florida. Well, you know, hey, we still got a little more time here with portal closes. So you've got to kind of fight and hold on here. But I think Jayden Ball is a player that is absolutely, you know, a couple of years ago, you would say when Quinchaun Judkins was going to the portal from Ole Miss, I remember there was a lot of conversation about like, come on, like, why would you pay a running back a million bucks? Like look at the NFL, like that doesn't make any sense. Of course, he goes and wins the national championship at Ohio State. But like, now it's like, you got to keep that guy. It's not really about the economics of it and about that we look smart for this. It's like, this guy has to stay here. And so yeah, those guys are going to get paid over a million bucks. And those deals, you know, could approach two or three million bucks. Yeah, I guess I am always a little bit like, you know, considering all the turnover that they've had. I was I was a little surprised by that. I just looked up the John Henry Daly latest, the Edge for Utah. It's going to come down to Michigan Notre Dame. I don't know if something's changed since I read that this morning. I loved him. I thought he really popped whenever you watch Utah this year. It feel a little surprising that he wouldn't follow Whittingham to Michigan, right? Yeah, that would be that would be a little bit surprising. Really premium player that that I'm curious how that sits you too. But like the way that this is that shook out Utah pretty well. And I think as soon as Whittingham, you know, he's going to like coach the bowl game and then he's done, then he gets Michigan, then I'm not coaching the bowl game, I'm going to Michigan. And then as soon as that goes down, then it's like, okay, now Michigan's top defensive players are going in the transfer portal right away. Yeah, it's I would be surprised if some of those guys didn't go to Ann Arbor with him. Yeah, Daly was really impressed this year. One of the best pass rushers in the big 12 in his first season as a starter got hurt at the end of the year. He says he's going to be fine for spring ball. And I don't think teams are really going to hesitate about the injury there. I think I think that he's going to be a high available guy. And I think, you know, truly that's a position pass rusher where if you're, whether you're experienced and you have production or you're just a freaky freshman and we've got a few of those in the portal right now, like, yeah, easily a million bucks. Yeah, the Whittingham thing could not have worked out better for Michigan. I mean, just when you're trying to figure out like who can come in and then also like command the respect and Whittingham, there's extra boxes that he checks that you wouldn't even be thinking about. Although I was reading about Michigan the other day, and it was like, we just need to get back to like whatever this is. And you're like, well, what do you mean? Like all the controversy around Harbaugh and then the next coach was at best super horny at worst, dangerous to women. So you have a national championship with this group. Are you telling us like none of that fan base? And I wouldn't expect any single fan base to actually go like, well, I'd rather this be more respectful without the national championship. But Whittingham, like from getting the right coach, a coach that I absolutely love the demeanor and all this stuff and like buying whatever his contract is, there should be like another 20% of just instant credibility, right? That all of a sudden all the nastiness of like the Michigan football brand of the last few years with also a national championship in there, as I say it, second time. It just washes away immediately. Like Whittingham is like the perfect cleanser for everything that they're worried about. All right, let me let me close with this because you had mentioned it. We had a transfer portal quarterback matchup in the final last year, the final four this year are all portal quarterbacks. Which game, which outcome here are you more confident in picking between the rematch with Indiana and Oregon and then of course Ole Miss Miami? Man, I think Ole Miss will get it done. And I do, I was you look at this Ryan, like it's certainly not outside the room possibility here. If we have Indiana Ole Miss in the national championship game, I think it's going to be a real representation of the thing we've been talking about here because those are two programs that are not in the blue chip ratio, right? They are not like Ole Miss does a great job recruiting the roster, but they're not on that same level as a lot of those SEC schools in terms of just stacking five star, four star high school recruits. Obviously Indiana isn't. And so to have those two at the end and one of them is the champion, like I think it would be a reflection of like, you can call it NIL, you can call it portal. It's obviously both, but like that is like we're in the new era of this and that if you can do this at the highest level, you can win a national championship. And I think that there's still been that skepticism over the past few years of, yeah, cool. You spent a lot of money, built this great portal class. You know, they're not first rounders, they're not second rounders. Like, does that really change? Does that really put you on that same tier as Alabama and Georgia and Oregon and these programs that just stack it year after year in high school recruiting? And so I think Ole Miss can do it, which is wild for everything that's going on there every hour of every day. Like you talk to people on that staff and I talked to one right after they resigned Key 1 Lacey, which was a huge deal for them because there's no question. Like, they were fighting LSU on Key 1 Lacey. It wasn't in the portal, but you know, that you're trying to fight and convince him to stay put as so many of these players have agreed to. But like, you talk to the guys that have been there and been there for the past, you know, or they've gone through the past like two months now. They're like, dude, it's not, it's like a multi-part Netflix documentary. Like just if you're living in it every day, the Ole Miss side and the LSU side of it, right? Like it's, it's one of them say, he's like, I think it's like, Godfather 1 and Godfather 2. Like you can't just like tell the Ole Miss piece of it. There's like, there's two whole stories here. So it's like, it's just been completely insane in that motivation. I can't think of a, can you think of like a pro sports example of a parallel of, hey guys, the head coach just bailed on you. He doesn't think you can win the national championship. How about we go win the national championship? Like if they get to this title game, like not, not only is it like just a total nightmare for Lane Kiffman, but like they might actually do it. Like they, like they might, despite their phones ringing every day about, hey, we want you to transfer here and go here. Like for that group to like come together and play the way they did against Georgia and be as resilient as they were. And then they go play Miami and like, yeah, Miami's D line is going to give them problems, obviously, like as it does everybody else. Wouldn't be stunning Miami, you know, won that game. But like I, the Ole Miss story here that's playing out every day is, is pretty wild and can't really think like, is there a pro sports one like that? We're like, yeah, coach left, but we just got, we got better. We won plow games. I'm trying to remember how the, I don't think the Nix did that great after the Pat Riley. I just remember that being like a ton of drama. Certainly, look, it wasn't the equivalent of what Ole Miss is doing right now. I'm just trying to, like I'm starting with like, what pro scenario do you have? Yeah, it's not like the Jets went on some tear after Belichick decided to fax, resign as the HC at the NYJ. So yeah, I'd have to, I'd have to think about it more. To have like, you know, it's instead of like, instead of those guys just being like, wow, this is heartbreaking. This ruins our season. Like, and now we're all, you know, all the coaches are going to LSU, a bunch of our players are going to LSU. The way that Pete Golding, it just galvanized it and the way he's handling this every day. And with just like, you know, pretty straight talk and just like, not dissing Lane, but like, hey, I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to like, do what I have to do to kind of get this team through the rest of this. Yeah, it's unbelievably impressive. And I truly think we could see Ole Miss in the National Championship game, which, you know, you would have said as Lane was deciding this, you would have said, like, no, they probably can't do it. But, you know, they took down Georgia and it took a, took a lot of punches to take down Georgia. And, you know, I think that kind of proved like, man, I think they've got an opportunity to finish this run here. This is where people who don't like me are about to get really annoyed though, because I would point to a couple of things here where I feel like we'll have these results in a moment. Like, I don't know that you'd ever look like it at a string of data of like, hey, look at how long this has happened. And then we're like, oh, what happened in 1947? And you're like, oh, that was kind of an outlier year or whatever. I'm like, oh, what happened over here? Specific to Lane and the Ole Miss LSU part of it. Anybody that thought that Lane should be coaching throughout this entire thing, as it extends, it's an outrageous thing to even propose. So, the fact that Ole Miss was like, you can fuck off, man, I completely agree with Ole Miss. Because Lane would be this entire time working these guys to follow him to Baton Rouge while he'd be like the star. And it was just going to be, it was just going to be a thing. And is it extended? It's like, Lane's like, you don't think I'm going to handle that with integrity? It's like, no, dude, we don't think you're going to handle that the right way. Like, of course not. And by the way, if you're LSU, you'd be like, we actually, even if it's like an inside agent, you know, we'd like to get our thing started down here. So like, what are you going to do? Host Sam Levitt for a portal visit while you're prepping to go up against Miami. That was argued I personally think was absurd. Now, here's where I think I'm going to annoy people is that the, hey, look at Ole Miss and the job he left for LSU because he didn't think he could do it. Ole Miss, what he can do with LSU while Ole Miss is on the doorstep of doing this thing. No one has ever, ever in the decades that I've cared about this sport has ever argued that Ole Miss is a better job than LSU. So we could have a result that makes it very easy to make fun of Lane and be like, you know, look what you did, dummy, now they're in the national championship game and you left. But I feel like that's like the one data point out of like 50 to what feels like a really good point in the moment when in fact you're actually just not telling the truth. Yeah, you have to like, you can, you can tell me, I just have to appreciate like, this is a very like magical run from Ole Miss here, right? Like, of course, it just that that's like, what can you say? And then you have the quick turn around from the sugar bowl to the semifinal here and like, you know, it's an interesting thing to navigate going, going four rounds, like they're going to, right? Yeah, no, it's no one is saying it's, it's a, you know, we all agree, LSU, you're on the fast track to playing for national championship, no matter who the coach is, no matter whether you're from the South or not, right? Like it's, it is set up for success. But to Lane, Lane will want this credit, obviously, but he put together a very special team here and then had to leave that team and not finish the job with them. And then like I said, for that to just like galvanize them and be like, yeah, screw it, like, let's just go in a national title together, guys. So like, and then we'll figure out all the rest of this stuff after the season's over and the coaches will leave. But like, you think about it, right, right, right now, Ryan, like, those assistant coaches, it'll miss. Some of them are like working during the day, getting ready for the playoff game. And then at night, we're going to go over to this room and we're going to go recruit for LSU here. And then we're going to fly back to LSU and host these visits and we're going to fly right back. And every round it's like, is Lane going to let us go back to Ole Miss and keep coaching? Or like, is this going to, can we work this out? So yeah, it's just kind of, I, as divorces go and college football, it's just one of the craziest things you've ever seen. Yeah. In a sport that has signed up for more and more crazy, especially the last few years, Max Oleson, you can read all of his portal rankings, updating it hourly for ESPN.com. He is one of the best to be doing this. We appreciate the time. Thanks, Max. Thanks, Ryan. We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. Toys Superstores. Joining us now, NBA analyst, NBC analyst, Robbie Hummel, who also, you know, from the college game as well, he'll be on Peacock's NBA Monday, January 12th, Celtics at the Pacers with more on the bench coverage. I have loved this. I can't believe TV tried something new and it's worked this well. You and Austin Rivers, I know they mix it up a little bit in the routine, but, you know, I'm going to start there. I'm going to talk to NBA and everything, but how do you think this has worked this well? Because I'm actually shocked how great this is going. Yeah, I was very skeptical when it was pitched because of where your location is. You know, I was like, wait, so I'm going to be on one bench and Austin's going to be on another bench. And then Noah or Michael Grady will be across the floor. You know, how are we supposed to not talk over each other because in three men booths, there's a lot of nonverbal communication. You know, there's a lot of like, I might point at you if you're going to take a replay or, and when you're all the way across the floor, you really can't do that. So I was a bit skeptical of that, but I will say we did some practice games out at Summer League in San Francisco and it went pretty well. So the point was like, wow, you know, there's maybe something here. And Sam Flood, who's the president of NBC Sports had done this with hockey and he's kind of brought it to basketball. And obviously with hockey, it stuck and it's kind of become something that all, you know, hockey broadcasts do now where they've got an analyst or a reporter right down there on the glass, is what they call it. So I think it's gone great. You know, it's been really, really interesting. I think Austin and I have developed a really good chemistry and then Noah is as good as anybody. And you could say the same for Michael Grady. Like I think the people that we work with in this broadcast have been tremendous. And then I give a lot of credit to NBC for putting crazy amounts of resources to, you know, we have the same crew, we've got a bunch of cameras, we've got really good, good people working on these, these shows. And then I give the NBA credit to, you know, they, they are a big part of this in terms of saying, all right, we're going to give you this access. The coaches have been really, really good. They've let us come to shoot around. And that's a lot more of a college thing for the NBA, the way that TV usually works is you might meet with the coaches, you know, before the game, but you're not going to shoot around. You're not getting that level of access to see how are they going to guard things and, you know, what's the scouting report on certain players, but they've been willing to do it. And, you know, without their accessibility, it would have been a lot, lot harder to pull this off. But I think it's gone great too. It's been really, really fun to do it. And, you know, like even last game, you know, we're, we're sitting courtside, we're doing our thing in Philadelphia and I'm sitting next to Bob Myers. So it's just kind of like, it's been surreal. You've got executives, you've got actors, you've got, I was sitting next to this dude named the watch king in Brooklyn. So it's, it's a hodgepodge of who you sit next to, but you do meet some really interesting people. I love it. And I, I always think of like, are there no new ideas or if you have that approach to any of this stuff? Does that mean you're just limited creatively? And that it's like, of course there's like, there's all sorts of things that we have not thought of. And I was thinking about, there was that NFL game where the camera thing got messed up. I don't know if it was because of the fog. And then we went to like all 22 for half and then everybody online is like freaking out, being like, Oh, this is amazing. We should stay with all 22 and teaches you the game the whole thing. And then they stayed with it for a little bit. And then you realize like, yeah, actually the whole reason why we've had it the other way is because it's just a way better thing to watch on television. And over the course of a full season, this doesn't really work. And so first when it was announced, I was like, are they just trying to do something different? Like, how are they not going to like feel disconnected? And it's been incredible, man. I really enjoy it. And I imagine too, there's, with this access, there's an understanding and maybe because you're a former player and obviously Austin's very close to it as well, there's a tremendous amount of trust in that you're going to share what you think helps tell the story, but you're not going to betray anybody and be like, Oh my God, they want to bench this guy. Like he's a dog right now. Like nobody, you know, there's all this stuff that I imagine that you have access to that you have enough of a filter to understand what will work and what will get you in trouble. Sure. You know, Austin has grown up in the NBA. So he has a tremendous feel for locker room, you know, what it's like to be to the day to day thing, just being around coaches, players, all that. So I think that he's got a tremendous feel with that. And then, you know, I wasn't in the NBA long, I played two years, but I think I've done TV long enough to understand like what these coaches are going to think is okay to have out there and what's not. We ran into something really interesting in Detroit, like in the third or fourth week of this, they were playing the wizards. It was actually a really good game. Even though Washington is obviously rebuilding. And there was a late game situation where it's like, all right, they're going to draw up play and Detroit's going to draw this up. And I'm in the huddle and I watch exactly what JB Bickerstaff draws up. There has been, and I understand this a little bit, I think of hesitancy from head coaches of like, they can't just say what the play is, right? Like that, that could be very, I think just kind of, you know, maybe breaking the sacredness of what's coming, even though there's a delay, even though it's not like the wizards can be watching this and, you know, yelling at the guys, hey, pin down for Duncan Robinson or whoever. So like, we had to kind of like navigate that. And I think we actually did a good job of saying, all right, you know, we waited as long as we could. The ball's about to be inbounded. And then just being subtle of watch Duncan Robinson, it's screen, re-screen, and it actually worked out perfectly where they ran the play right and Washington just blew it up. Like basically three guys ran into each other, they all fell down and then Detroit threw it to the corner for Danish Jenkins and he hit a three. But it ended up working out, I think, as well as it could have. But that's one of those kind of tricky things to navigate of, you know, how do you do that? And it was the first time. So we were lucky that it ended up working out probably as well as it could have. But yeah, you're never going to say, because obviously there's times where coaches are trying to motivate, maybe in the NBA, not as much as you'd see in Europe or in college or high school where there's like a coach really, really yelling at a player. But when those things happen or there's an argument on the bench between team H, you can say, hey, there was some heated discussion without being like, hey, he just cussed this dude out to the maximum, right? Like you've just got to use some common sense, I think, and that's kind of the approach we've taken. The story from the most recent game, the Denver win in overtime against Philadelphia is like perfect for it because, you know, Denver's got this lineup, these different groups of guys, you know, and B's played better, he's moved better, you know, Maxi's in the MVP conversation. And then next thing you know, you're like, we're in overtime for this one. So how different is the experience between what you're dealing with with your bench versus Austin because there are two vastly different expectations based on who was playing? Sure. I'm sure with Austin, and it was funny because we both played for David Adelman, you know, I had him for two years in Minnesota and Austin had him for a couple years in Denver. So we know him well. I'm sure that he was every time out, he had to be thrilled, right? Like just because these guys are playing hard, they're getting an opportunity. That's one of those games where he's just like, man, I just hope we hang around and we have a chance. Whereas with Philly, I thought the way they played at the Garden on Saturday was uber impressive. Like their offense is just clicking, they're getting whatever they want. New York can't guard them. And their big three, you know, Maxi has been so good. You're right. Absolute MVP discussion and B, I saw him in Memphis on last Tuesday and I was like, man, he's throwing the ball with the backboard trying to dunk. He's protecting the rim a little bit better. He's leaving his feet. He's looked better. I thought he looked, you know, kind of the same thing in New York. And Paul George is starting to fit into that equation. Plus the whole VJ edge come dynamic where you're like, man, this dude, this dude is a beast for being a rookie, the clutch factor, the athleticism, the shot making. And yeah, I will give Nick a lot of credit. He was, he was very calm, but the constant message of we need to guard the ball. We need to stay out of rotation. We have got to keep these guys in front of us. And I saw Jalen pick it a lot in college. He's a hard guard, man, because he's herky, jerky, and he's kind of, he's a bigger guard. He's got some size, but they couldn't keep them in front of him. And then Peyton Watson is pretty good. Like he doesn't get the opportunity, but that, that's my biggest takeaway from this game. And I, I kind of understood this being a lower tier NBA player for two years. Even the guys that don't play are really good players, you know, and they, you just need an opportunity. You need a situation where you're like, man, I get to play through some things. Denver is making three after three after three from guy like Zeke Najee. I think it's shooting 28% from three. Hunter Tyson was like 22% from three. Those guys aren't bad shooters, but, and I always used to give my college teammates such a hard time for this. It is so hard to sit on the bench for two and a half hours, get put in when the score is decided by 20 or 25 points and be like, all right, go make some shots. And I used to give our walk on such a hard time. I'd be like, man, it's basketball. Go out there and just shoot that thing. And they'd be like, dude, it's hard. And then when I got to the NBA, I was like, all right, they have a point. It is hard because you're just, you're not in a rhythm. So I think it's a great lesson and like everybody in that league can play. And when you get the opportunity and you play hard and maybe a team like Philly that's trying to be labeled as a contender, they're looking at that roster like, man, there's nobody playing. They're starting five is out. Tim Hardaway, Jr. is out. Anything can happen. It's why the NBA can be so fun. Who is, you know, I'm kind of like, this is one of those answers to somebody's like, hey, who do you think the best is? Then it's like, well, it's not that I'm rewarding the best. It's that all of a sudden other people are going to think I'm not the best, but have there been a few moments with a team or with a coach where you've had access to the season where it's just really impressed you or maybe this thing? Yeah. I would say that they all have been great, you know, like they all have been willing to talk about their teams and showcase. I think the coaches look at this like, you know, in Austin made this point early on, like so often with the NBA coaches or just scapegoated, you know, he's doing a bad job. He's fired. And I think that this job can do it or these broadcasts can do a good job of celebrating how good these coaches really are, you know, because the basketball IQ and just the way that these guys take from all different places, you see action that gets run in Euroleague or college or, you know, some stuff that guys have come up with themselves. I think that's a cool part of this. Kenny Atkinson has been tremendous. J.B. Bicker staff has been tremendous. I really enjoyed my talk with Joe Missoula. You know, I played against Joe in college. So I, that might, you know, just in terms of having a familiarity, I know Joe can be tricky with some of his media that you see, which is actually hilarious. And I was roommates with Deshaun Butler, who's his college teammate and also on the Celtic staff. We were roommates in USA basketball back in the day in Belgrade for four weeks, along with Evan Turner. So like that, that goes a long way. I think of having a relationship. Honestly, I can't, of all the teams we've had, and I bet we've had like 12 teams, every coach has been great. Sit down, give access, you know, talk about their teams, talk about their game plan. There's not been a single person that's not been good. Okay, with the, this is probably slanted a little bit, who you've been around versus who you haven't been around. But like, if you look at the East contenders, right? Because, you know, the expectation of Cleveland is they're, I still expect a Cleveland run at some point, but you know, it's really up and down, depending. I mean, even last night, a battle with the Pacers, you know, Detroit gets off to the start, New York would feel good about Boston sort of surprise. There's some of this meaty middle part of the East that early on, they had some good records, be like, I don't know if they're really necessarily talented enough. If there's one team that you felt like, Hey, this might be the team. Is there an answer for that for you? Boy, I, because the Pistons have come back to earth a little bit. And I do worry some about their shooting and the court getting shrunk come playoff time. I did love that next game, though, by the other night. It was like, really intense defensively, some of the individual 101 defensive matchups, you're like, man, you know, go ahead. No, I mean, they guard, they destroy you in the paint, they destroy you on the glass, like they win the margins at everywhere. And it's like, if they can just shoot a decent percentage from three, they're going to have a chance. And then Kate is a legitimate star, right? Like, so I, I really like Detroit's team, but I think you can make the case the shooting, you know, Boston, it's like, God, they've gotten rid of just everybody and they don't have Tatum, but Jalen Brown's playing like, like a, you know, a first team, all NBA type guy. The Knicks, there just feels like there's something that's been, something just seems amiss. And maybe it's, you get Josh Hart back and you become whole and that all comes together here. I agree with you on Cleveland. I think that they're certainly a team. I think like missing Max Drew has been a lot more impactful than maybe people have given credit for. And you've been, you've missed Mowbly some. God, I've, I've done so many stinking games. Well, no, Garland, Garland was slow back with the toe injury and he hasn't always looked like himself. And then what's my man, the shooter? God, he's actually, he was, yes, yes, Sam Merrill. Unbelievable start to his season. And then he hurts his shooting hand. So it's like, I think he's a really good player. So if they get healthy and whole, I could see that. And I feel the same way about Philadelphia. You know, you get Ubre back in the mix and you have a healthy and B'd and you have a healthy Paul George. Now I get that NBA fans would be like, well, that hasn't necessarily been the case over the last three, four, five seasons, you know, like that. But if they can be healthy, watch that next game. And you're like, whoa, you know, they're, they're talent. I had an executive text me that like, look at Philadelphia's talent when they're healthy and they're scary. So, you know, I don't know if anybody has necessarily separated themselves. I, and I, I might be biased because I've seen Detroit like five times. But I, I do love the physicality and toughness that they bring alongside Kate Cunningham. Yeah, I'm with you on that. Like I think they're in their own level in the East. And they had that Nick's win without Durin playing, you know, and I probably talent wise still hold out hope for Cleveland and Mitchell wasn't playing in that Pacers game where, you know, they had to come back and then the Pacers put together this little kind of like mini burst at the end there. But I just like, we could talk about stu, so we want, but if you have Allen Mobley, Hunter, Garland and Mitchell and even the erratic part of this, like stru should not be the deciding factor for like, oh my God, you know, they don't have this guy. It's like, well, look at all these other dudes they have. I mean, Hunter's the most expensive fifth option in the NBA. So, I look, I'm with you on Detroit, even though it's not like, hey, oh my God, if Detroit isn't in the NBA finals, I'm going to be shocked. Like I'm not that far along with it. That would be aggressive. Because you've done so much college every night has been like, I have so much fun now watching this rookie class where depending on how the games are kind of like flowing and like what I want to get my eyes on, there might just be a moment where I'm like, you know what, I mean, look, Conn Cnipple has been like a default. Charlotte's almost like a top five league pass rating for me here just because I'm blown away that somebody this young could understand the nuance of basketball as well as he does. It blows my mind. It's not just the shooting and the scoring and the rookie numbers for three pointers. It's like, oh, he understood how to do that. He read that this way. He's always dribbling with a purpose. He's moving the ball of the purpose. Give me your kind of breakdown of like where guys are versus what you would think they would be because again, you've watched them all season long and there's so many rookies to get excited about. Sure. So I guess you start with Cooper and I think it was widely thought generational talent and he clearly has been, right? It's just been phenomenal. He's been even better. No, he's playing. He's got the ball on his hands and if he starts making threes at a clip, like, man, good luck, right? And that's probably going to happen because even at Duke, he started a little bit slow from a shooting perspective and by the end of the year, he was shooting a pretty good percentage. I just think his feel, his size, his footwork, he's just, and then like defensively, the way that he can be off the ball, you know, as a secondary defender, there's just, there's so much to like about Cooper. So yeah, I'm with you probably even higher than I would have thought with how much responsibility has been shouldered there. You know, in terms of Dylan Harper, I haven't gotten to see San Antonio yet and I will say the one thing that's tough for me because I'm doing so much college, I kind of helicopter into the NBA. Now I saw him a ton at Rutgers and I thought really, really highly of him just in terms of pace, size, ability to get to the rim, has a mid range, can shoot it from three. Has he, I'll actually, I'll throw it back to you, has he played as well as, because I haven't seen San Antonio in person yet. I don't, I can't really even answer that for Dylan Harper. No, I think that's, that's actually like a fair way, even if you've been watching a lot of it only because he's, he's asked to impact the game in a way that's really tough in comparison to some of the other young guys. Now he comes into the San Antonio team that's super established, Fox is coming back from the injury, Castle has made a massive jump. There actually, it looks like their preference is to have Castle run the offense and Fox play off of him. So depending on injuries and how they want to go with the Kelden, the cell part of it, and then Harrison Barnes, I mean, so hands totally out of the rotation at this point, Champagnes game minutes. So Harper has to come in and kind of find his spot and it's tough for him, but I would say in the flashes where he's allowed to be himself, it's really, really impressive. Unfortunately, he's not on a bad team, just running high ball screen and then reading off everything. My favorite thing about him may be how advanced he is around the rim with his size and his footwork is phenomenal. Like he just has these moments where like, okay, there's so much to work with here, but Castle has made such a jump and playing like real, yeah, playing like real point guard, which I didn't really know if that was true, even though they were trying to package him that way before the draft. So like Fox looks like he's off the ball as a preference, more often than not. So for Harper, it's just, it's harder to find a flow of like five or six minutes where he's in charge of the ball. It's just not going to happen a lot, but I've liked it. With Steph Castle, it was like, if he plays point guard, the team just go under and under and under and under. Like are they going under to the restricted arc? And the fact that he's been able to make that work is really impressive. Edgecomb, I guess, is the third pick. I thought he had a chance to be good. Obviously, no one thought this. The clutch stuff is crazy. You know, I know he missed the game winning layup and Philly the other night, but he makes some defensive plays even where you're like, man, he's just always making things happen at the end of the game. And we saw him in Memphis last Tuesday and he hits the game winner. Just pretty unbelievable to see his mixture of high end athleticism, shot making, you know, being dynamic, getting to the rim. I love the way that Philly just reverses the ball and he just rips it down the scene. Like I think for somebody that's athletic with the way the NBA guards at the nail and help, that's an unbelievably simple action, but also at the same time, so incredibly effective. So I would not have thought Edgecomb could have impacted the game like this, but clearly he has. Canipple would be fourth as the fourth pick. I knew he was crafty. I knew he could score. I knew he could shoot, but to see what he's done, you kind of hit the nail in the head earlier with Charlotte is actually incredibly fun to watch. Now their defense at times is like, whoa, but they, they score, you know, they got dudes that could really score the rock. And he's a big part of that. The fact that he's like in this conversation, in terms of threes made with like the best shooters in the league is pretty phenomenal, because there is, I thought the adjustment to the NBA three point line, just in terms of like at the college three as a player, I felt like, or I can be off balance. I can kind of fade back. You know, you get to the NBA three point line, you start doing that early on and you don't maybe have some of the strength that these guys that have been there for 10 years and you're off balance, you're fading, man, you're going to shoot airballs. So I just think that he's made that adjustment so quickly and just his, his knowledge of how to score, how to play off two feet, how to find angles that that's high level stuff. Like it really is. And to round this out, I guess the fifth pick was ace Bailey. I don't have to do the whole first round. I've seen him play none, but I will say I did see him in college score 39 in Indiana and the shot making was absurd. Like he's making shots off one foot, he's doing, but he doesn't, in college at least, he didn't get to the free throw line. He wasn't great at getting to the rim. He tantalizes you with some shots. You're like, there might not be another freshman in the country that can make him. But at the same time, you're like, does he manufacture points in a way that like the best scores in the NBA do of getting to the line stealing easy baskets? That, that wasn't a thing. And I will say I have not watched much you talk. Cause we haven't had them. So. Yeah, no, I know. I knew you didn't have everybody here. So I wasn't going to be like, all right, now the 23rd pick. Stell blue coffees, new can lattes are here crafted with 100% Colombian coffee. 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Well, I, you know, at Staples or crypto or whatever they call it now, or Mazda square garden, which we haven't been to, but at some of these places, the real estate there is so, so expensive as you know. So it's like, they, I don't know if it's at a seat or, you know, just squeeze you in or beg the owners for their seats or whatever it is. I was told before the game. So this is, this became a thing, right? I was told before the game, Rob, you're sitting next to Jimmy Goldstein. I was like, hell yes. Like this guy, you know, I'm sure you know, yeah, the cowboy had, you know, goes to all the NBA games has a very distinctive look. So I was like, all right, I can't wait to talk to him, you know, like just because when I was playing him and Roni Turia would always have these like discussions before the game, during the game. So I'd always like see that. I was like, I really am excited to just kind of talk to Jimmy Goldstein and see what he's like. Well, I looked to my left, that's not Jimmy Goldstein. I'm like, this guy's probably a model or I, I will say I have really lost track of like movies, shows, especially during the season. But I have not seen much of his work. So Noah, being the bad partner that he is, he calls it out. Like it's not like he said it in the time out like, oh, Rob, you're sitting next to a famous actor. He just has it on the broadcast and I, I had no idea. But yes, he, he was very oblivious to what we were doing. I was oblivious to what he, I guess who he is. And the sad thing was I had made a point that night to go out there early and look at just who's around. Okay, there's Eddie Murphy, there's Jimmy Iveen, there's Pat Sajak. Sadly, those are all people that like my fricking grandma would know. I was not aware to the new age actor. And I have had more people reach out to me and be like, have you not know this guy? Then I'm in the grocery store. I see him on the cover of like men's health. It was, it was a funny moment, but it's like it was an awakening for me that I need to get up in my pop culture. Yeah, I don't look, everybody gets older, you start worrying about things. He feels like he's kind of a big deal. And he was decked out a lot of length on him though. I don't know if you guys are sizing each other up, but he's, he's got some long length as they say. And like a lot of those actors that you run into and you see him in person, you're kind of like, man, they're not very tall. Like he, he that that probably didn't help my cause either that when he's standing up, he's not maybe looking in that way, right? Like so I'll make any excuse that I can't for myself to not know this guy. But I will say I will know Austin Butler for the rest of my life that that will not be something that I, excuse me. Who knows, you can be staying with him next time you come out to LA is just the origin story. What was it like sitting next to Bob for that game? Bob Miles. Honestly, it was awesome just to kind of like, we spoke in a lot of timeouts, whether it was about, you know, does he miss TV? Does he like his new job? He's obviously got a fascinating perspective on players because he did play and then he builds the Warriors and has been an executive for so long. I was blown away with how cool he was, you know, just in terms of talking to him and he could not have been nicer. And I, you know, that's one of those things where you're like, man, that was pretty cool that I got to sit next to Bob Myers and kind of pick his brain during timeouts. Yeah, he's one of the most impressive basketball people that I've ever talked to. How many teams in the West have you had that you felt like you had a good read on? I've seen LA once, now Denver, but you know, Denver played nobody. Timberwolves once, Suns twice, Grizzlies. And that would be, yeah. So we have Oklahoma City coming up. That'll be fun. I think we actually, we have San Antonio at Detroit. That'll be a good game. Well, you've had the Rockets too. We had the Rockets early on. So actually, more of the West than I would have thought. But it's been, we've had, we've been heavy East and we haven't gone West nearly as much, but I guess in terms of lately, it's hard to just say the nuggets, you just got to survive, right? Like just try to keep your head above water, get healthy, and then come back and make a run when you get Yoke-H's back. Laker-wise, I guess we haven't seen God. That was, that Austin Butler game was, that's almost like a month and a half ago. So they almost feel like ancient history. Same with the Rockets. The Suns have been a great story. Like the Dylan Brooks thing, it is fascinating to watch him psych himself up into these games. Because everybody, like you kind of talk to him beforehand and he's very thoughtful and he's good to talk to in terms of, I think, kind of just figuring out what he's trying to accomplish and how they're trying to play. And then you watch him go into this routine of like psyching himself up to kind of go into this alter ego. And man, I give him credit. He doesn't back down to anybody. He's not backing out of LeBron. He's not backing out of Durant. He doesn't care. And, you know, I know that he's going to be a very polarizing figure in the NBA because obviously a fan of any team, but the team that's rooting for him is going to hate him. But I do give him credit because it can, it's hard, I think, when you're not maybe at the level of Durant and LeBron. And yeah, I think if you asked Dylan Brooks, he'd say, well, I am at the level of those guys. But when you're not, maybe that's a credit to just kind of his confidence, but it's hard to do that with those dudes because those are some of the best players to have ever played this game. How important is it for you to be able to say, through all your injuries and everything, and you were one of my favorite college players when you were playing? I just loved the way you played, man. How important are those two seasons for you when maybe you're around it and you're thinking like, man, if this hadn't happened, this hadn't happened and all this kind of stuff, like you can say like, look, at least I did play in this league for a couple of years. How important are those two seasons? It's very important. I have such a complex thought process of my professional basketball career. It is, if you had told me in high school, I was like a top 75 recruit come out of high school. If you'd told me, all right, you're a second round pick, you played two years in the NBA, you play your league, you play in Spain, Russia, Italy, will you sign up for this today? I would be like, yes, sign me up immediately. I obviously hoped I could make the NBA, but when you ranked 75th in your class and granted, our class was absolutely loaded. You've got Derek Rose and James Harden and Kevin Love and Kyle Singler and Mike Beasley and Billy Walker and OJ Mayo. The list just goes on and on and on of Blake Griffin, Evan Turner. Then you get into the guys that were just really good college players and then fringe NBA guys. It's like, man, there were so many good players that when you're playing against that, then you get to college, you're like, it's not that much of a difference, maybe other than the physicality and the age gap. But if you'd told me that, as a senior in high school, I would sign up immediately. But after my freshman year, and then you start having some success and you make the World University Games team for USA Basketball, and my junior year, I'm playing as well as I'd ever played. And then you just, you blow your knee out twice in eight months and you don't play basketball for 17. You're like, I don't know if I'll ever play again. And I think that I'd certainly have a good feeling about persevering through that and making it through all that and getting drafted and then going overseas for a year and playing in Spain and playing well and getting to the NBA. But I think by the time I was a junior, my thought process is that, man, I can play 10 years in the NBA and I can be a good role player and I can impact winning and I can help a team win. And I think I go to Minnesota and my first year, we've got a team that's pretty good, but in a loaded West, we won 40 games, but it was K-Loves last year. He was all NBA. He was tremendous. But then we trade him and we bring in Zach Levine and Andrew Wiggins who are rookies and Anthony Bennett, who's a second year player that's trying to kind of find his way through a tough rookie year and we win 16 games. And we were laughing with David Adelman before the game. He used to create an edit because they would put me in some really hard spots. Like they'd be like, Rob, you're going to bring the ball up, put your guarding DeMarcus Cousins. So David, just to kind of keep spirits light, would make these man's game edits and it would be essentially like, and I knew that I'm obviously not a center. I'm a three or maybe a stretch four. So he'd pull some of the funniest clips of these guys just like weight rooming me, just to kind of, it sounds bad, but we would laugh so hard like, dude, what are you going to do? DeMarcus Cousins is 6'11", 2'8", right? Like I'm 6'8", 2'15", 2'20". What am I going to do with that? So yeah, I think in terms of also like this isn't happening for me to broadcast these games if I don't play in the NBA. So I honestly, I look back and I had a surgeon. He actually just passed away. He had brain cancer. He's one of the best orthopedic surgeons that there was in the world. And his name was David Alchek out of New York City. And when I found out he passed, it honestly punched me in the face because I'd had a bad experience with my first surgery in Indianapolis and I go to New York and again, like I'm thinking, I don't know if I'll even ever play basketball again. And this dude could not have had a better bedside manner. He could not have had a better confidence about, we're going to get you back. It's just as simple as doing the surgery. And I look back on that moment of having my second surgery in New York City at the hospital for special surgery. And David Alchek not only saved my basketball career to go on to having all big 10 seasons as a senior, get drafted, play in the NBA, play overseas for three years. But now in terms of just TV, I'm not doing NBA games if I didn't play in the NBA. So when I found out that he passed away, it really kind of like, it just, it punched me in the face. And it's like, man, I owe so much to David Alchek for the job that he did to just get me back up to being functional and able to play basketball. And for the rest of my life, I'll thank for him. I owe a lot to that dude. And he was an incredible doctor. Yeah, well, that was really well said. And I'm sorry to hear that. Oh, it's yeah. But I think about that question with guys that I've got to know all the years of working at ESPN, some of the guys that become friends, like I have a friend who pitched in the minors, I think, for 12 years, and he was in the majors for six days. And when he got sent back down, you know, we were just waiting for him to get the call back up and then it never happened. And I don't, I think it really hurt to talk about it when it happened. And then the off season of like, what's next? And then I think now years removed, you can be like, thank God, thank God, I got those six days, you know, and I know Jay Will, well, there's so many Jay Wills, but Jay Williams, Duke, you know, we've worked, we live near each other in Connecticut, and there's a couple of times we're hanging out. And I'm thinking like, I'm complimenting him being like, dude, when you had it going, you know, when you had it, but then what I didn't realize is that it may have been something that he was like, I don't want to talk about this because it's still something it's going to be, especially when you're him and you're the number one pick and it looks like you're like, you're going to, like who knows what's possible for you in your career. But I imagine like anybody like life, you just have to get a little bit older, a little bit more removed from it. And you'll find a way to appreciate things that maybe you didn't appreciate nearly as much. Yeah. And you also realized that like being in the NBA is such a gift in terms of like, it's such a unique place. It's such a, it's not the real world, but you're around these guys that are the best athletes in the world and some of the best players to have ever played. And, you know, I think when you're there, you're thinking, I'm going to be here for a long time. And it's definitely not, not the case for most of us, right? Like most of us, when it's done, it's not like it's your choice. And my ending, this is a bit of a hard pill to swallow as well. You know, I had had really good talks with Minnesota and our team was dysfunctional is not the right word. We just, we were tanking for Carl Anthony Towns. And I had some good talks with the front office of Minnesota about coming back and my agent, Mark Barble, had as well. And, you know, they offered me a qualifying offer. And then on July 4th, this is the worst holiday I think I've ever had. On July 4th, I get the call from Mark that my qualifying offer is rescinded because Minnesota can sign Nemiah Bellatza, who was the Euroleague player of the year. And I played against him in college and I'd seen him overseas. And look, he was in a really good player overseas. So I understood the business of it. But that's, you know, I'm thinking, all right, at worst, I signed this qualifying offer, I'm making 120% of what I made last year. And I get to run it back with Minnesota and try to be a part of this young court with Zach and Andrew and Anthony and all these guys. And just like that, I never play in the NBA again. So it's like, it just, it ends so fast for most of us. It's not like you get the retirement tour, you know, it's just like when you're not good enough, they tell you and you're never seen again. And I will say that the silver lining is I have some incredible stories of playing in Milan for Georgia Omani's team. My, my year after I got cut by Denver, because I did go to training camp with them or the year, excuse me, the year before I went to training camp with Denver. And then I played Moscow and Russia was a free for all in so many ways. So from a life experience thing, I did gain some incredible experiences, but you want to be in the NBA, like my rookie year in Spain, this is a great example. I get there. I remember we landed and I, I cried. I think I cried every time I landed in Europe because you're like, I have 10 months, which seems like an eternity, even though it's not, it's not that long. And if you're going over there by yourself, you know, I, if you're not married, or you're not, you know, taking somebody with you, it's, it can be a little bit daunting, you know, at least in Milan and even in Moscow, to an extent, there was more English speaking people. But in this, I was in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. So it's not like you're in Barcelona, Madrid, where there are more English speakers. It's, it's heavy Spanish. And honestly, they speak, they speak Gaiagan, which is like a dialect. So it's sort of Portuguese, it's sort of Spanish, like I took Spanish in high school, but I'm going to really have a hard time if it's just normal Spanish. And I'm definitely going to have a hard time with Gaiagan. So it was just like, I get there, I have a workout the next day. And the trainer, I'll never forget this after the workout, he's like, Robbie, are you good? And I was like, yeah, can I just get two bags of ice? And the trainer laughs. And he points to the ice machine goes, the ice machine's over there. We have no wrap. So you got to hold that stuff on your knees yourself. And you can make the bags. And like, not that I was opposed to making my own ice bags, but I'd never, I get Purdue. What do you need? I need some ice in my knees. Sweet. There's a cooler right there. They wrap it on. Same with the NBA, you know, you've got ice bass, you've got the ice baths in Spain. They were garbage cans. They would just fill them up with ice water. This is in the ACB. This is in the second best basketball league, probably in the world and level of play. And we were a smaller budget team that had done a really good job of evaluating like we had saw a lot of measuring who played for the Dallas Mavericks on the team and a couple guys that ended up moving on to your league. But like William Buford and I, we were taking the baskets down and putting them up like we were building maintenance. After every practice and before every practice, we shared the stadium with an indoor soccer protein. So think about how crooked the backboards were when we're putting, I mean, it was just like in terms of life experiences, but also living overseas and seeing different cultures and eating different foods and meeting some really, really good and cool people. That, that's probably the silver lining. I didn't play 10 years in the NBA, but I did, you know, get to have some experiences of playing for George Armani's pro team or playing in Moscow or, or even after I retired, you know, playing three on three and traveling the world and playing in like 19 countries in 2019, trying to make the Olympics. That that those are really cool life experiences that, okay, maybe the NBA is what the goal was, but it doesn't always work out and you've got to pivot. And I think that's one thing that, that my knee stuff is certainly talking. Big thanks to Robbie Hummel. Again, the Peacock NBA Monday game, January 12th Celtics at Pacers. I enjoy it so much. You three guys are terrific on it. Again, I know they mix up some of the things, but I'm, I'm, I'm not overstating this because when I, the first game I'm like, what are they going to try to do? I'm like, this isn't going to work. And it's, it's gone completely the other way. So all of you and everybody at NBC deserves a ton of credit. So thanks again, man. No, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Ryan. And yeah, we'll, we'll keep doing our thing on Mondays. I appreciate it. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice, life advice, R at gmail.com. We've got hi hat on the hi hat, Kyle and Saruti. Yo, no, Mike, Kyle. Fuck. I just said nothing gets past you, man. That's all I said. That's like you have the pompadour lean going. What's going on? I think it's good from this angle. Honestly, I thought about this and then immediately right off the bat, you know, he throws cold water on it. Even if that's not what you were trying to do, that's how I took it. It's all right. I'm going to keep it like this. I think you look good. I'm going to keep it like this. You look useful. Yeah, I agree. You look like, you know, not how you do fellow kids, but you know, you look, you know, it's a good, useful look. Great. Right. But I'm just talking about like hat placement. That came off. No, it is, it is, it's different. It's certainly different. I was, it was sort of like, I was like going into school like first day of the new year and someone's like, dude, what are you wearing? Kind of weird, different for you. But you know what? I'll just, I'll take it positively. It's kind of like a late 80s lean on it. Late 80s, early 90s movies, guys just, they just made it down to Daytona. Who knows what's going to happen. I'll tell you, I had that. I rocked that for a little while. Okay. Jesus. Yeah. Someone would say your hat placement selection isn't the greatest. So I don't know if that's the best thing to go off of, but. Oh, thanks. Thanks for coming to my side, buddy. Yeah. Listen, I'm an equal opportunity. You know, what would you say is the issue? You got a lot of, actually, you know what? Now that we're on this topic, we got a long pod today, but you know what? We'll do it. You know, every once in a while, I'll just check out the YouTube comments about things on the pod, whatever, see what people like, what they don't like. And man, a lot of comments about your hat last episode. And I honestly, I thought it too, very aggressive thing. The tool thing, like the path, whatever was on there was like, it was pronounced. Yeah. Yeah. What were the issues? So I think somebody said it was casting a shadow over your faith. That's how big it was. That's funny. Well, that's my guy, Dave Prescott, invented the fast wrench, firefighter down in Florida, college buddy. And he invented this wrench that basically, his whole thing was like the way his mind works, it makes all the sense in the world. Because in college, you'd be like, this guy's going to invent something. But if you really knew him, you're like, yeah, he probably would. So he's a firefighter. He's been down there forever. He's an awesome guy. And he realized that they had to use like multiple tools. They needed all these different tools to be able to access their job. Like however they're doing it, hooking up to different water supplies. I mean, it's beyond my understanding, right? Because I don't fight fires in my spare time. And so he basically just decided there needs to be this like multi tool that's incredibly durable, that basically handles all of these different things that you're dealing with. And it's incredible. So I ordered one, I'm bringing it to Miami, not Miami, I'm not going to Miami, Manhattan Beach Fire Department. So that is his company. So I wore the hat and we're just giving a little shout out there. So anybody that has an issue with that. You need firefighters. You have a pretty successful group of college buddies. I'd say I'm probably near the top of my group. And that's not saying a lot. So you have that new four runner. Oh, well, yeah, obviously that would give me a small bump. But I think in the grand scheme, I mean, we've got like country music stars, guys inventing fast wrenches with honestly pretty cool gear to go with it. And every once in a while, yeah, it was it was certainly it really draws a lot of depth on the logo. Yeah, I mean, it's a patch. It comes off. I think there's other patches that was part of the branding. Oh, it's detachable. Yeah. Yeah. That would make a little more sense. Yeah, checks out. Yeah. But I was looking, I'm glad it was even brought up because I didn't expect to even give him that kind of shout out. But there you go. If you're running, if you're on the fire, you're in the wrench business, you're looking for a new one. There's no formal code. We know a guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. While we're just honestly, I'm just gonna start airing this stuff out on the pod last night. Okay. Serves to be to be done. Oh, no. Big Cat text last night. And honestly, this guy, the guy was getting in DMs yesterday too. Not the DMs of the show. He was following up on the pictures about the wine thing yesterday. We have a Steven Shea wants to do a wine review of your wine. And Big Cat was asking us, like, how do we get the wine to them? And I was like, I don't even know if this one exists yet. It's like, I think it's like a prototype technically. But are you open to to Shea doing a wine review? I guess he's got the fastest growing Somalia show on X right now. So that's just the fastest growing in America. I know. Tough to keep track. I got to know when we're shipping because this whole thing is kind of starting to feel like a little over the skis. Oh, yeah. I'm not getting tech. I can't put you through to him. I'm sorry. Because I don't think I don't think he's that that stage yet. But the backstory is it was this real estate deal with a friend. And then they were like, hey, while you're here, do you want us to make you some soft? And I was like, yes, great. And then they made logos. And then they were telling me yesterday, they're like, all right, this can start shipping in two months. I was like, whoa, like what the fuck? I was like, I thought you're just going to make like a couple cases. Yes. Right. And so I have, I'm, I got a lot of other stuff I have to worry about, but there's a pretty good chance I'm going to be really like, annoyingly not responsive about anything having to do with this wine for a little while. If that's okay with everybody. Wait, it's just TBD. We got a lot of content right now, football playoffs. We don't need it. We'll need to do this. Push this into the spring, summer, so we get content then. Yeah. I mean, Solve is good year round. This would be great post June. Yeah, what, it's hot? Yeah. So you're open to having him do a wine review. I don't know if that I want him doing the first review though. Does he have enough credibility in the game? He just started. He's not just some guy. I mean, he took a football class I heard. So he is that guy. No, I, I, I get the football. I think Chase, I'm just joking. I actually never met him, but I think he's funny. And I like him. Not a dance. But, and by the way, it's not really like, I may be on the label, but it's not a hundred percent my business. And so the guys in, guys in Oregon might be like, who is this up and comer? That might be a nice way of saying it. No pub is, no pub is that pub though. You know, oh man. All right. Hey, Kyle, pull up the spreads on draft Kings. Okay. Let us know what they are. I think as of this morning, both lines were at three and a half. Miami and Indiana favored looks like Sarutia. He has them wants to say don't, I thought we were just going straight up, but now I got to do the spread. So here we go. Now we're going to do a little mini contest for draft Kings, mini alliance, side alliance. So we're all going to pick both games and then overall, what's that three and a half. You are correct. Both three and a half. All right. All right. So Kyle, the board is yours. You can pick whatever you want. We'll do combined record off of the semifinals and then the finals. We have to come up with a final score and everything else. It'll be Super Bowl lunch, not dinner. Can't afford it. We'll do a Super Bowl lint. I just, well, I don't know that we're going to have time to do all these dinners based on what you guys have already signed up for. So this will be different than the salad bar? I'll tell you what, the three of us, Ruby Tuesday's old school, as many times you want to go as many fixings as you guys want. Fixing. All right. Okay. The winner has to pay though, because you want to celebrate friendship. Yeah, I like that. So with that being said, I'm going to take Ole Miss plus three and a half. And you got to pick the other game too. And yes, and an Oregon plus three and a half. Okay. I love it. Not paying for the salad bar. It looks like I'm just kidding. I actually do believe. Me? Sure. I'm taking Miami. Don't really have it. I just think the front is awesome. And I think the Ole Miss fairytale thing is a little over, but I do love Trader Dan though. So I'm going to hate to root against him. And I honestly don't like rooting for Miami either, but I think Miami is just a better team. And then I'm going to take Oregon too. I, two guys pick it against Indiana. It's probably stupid to pick against six, but you know, got to be them twice in one season. I think, you know, Oregon's good. I think they get them. Wow. All right. We're done. Lose by three. So there you go. I kind of like the points on both sides. The points haven't really done much. It was four at one point. It was like a three, then a three and a half. So I don't know how much is going to change in the next couple of days. I'll take the points with Ole Miss, even though I'm, if I had like, hey, you get to pick the game straight up, I would pick Miami. I do feel like Beck not even having to do anything to this points. Like he's probably do. And if there was a defense of all the playoff teams that were ranked, like that was my whole point with Ole Miss's defense. And it's not like they shut down Georgia, but Georgia is just not, not to the standard that you'd expect with that defense generally. And I'll take, I'll take Indiana cover. I'll do something different here. All right. So all three of us have different variations. There you go. I like that. So the variations vary. Let's get to life advice. As we all knew, the amount of dog poop content dominated the above overflowing. Yes. Couldn't put a lid on it. Nice. Uh, are you just looking at that? I think most of you got it. I think, I think most of you got it that it's not the greatest thing. And then those of us that have garbage cans are supposed to think about you walking around with a plastic bag of dog poop. Like nobody wants that in your hand. Right. Long throw. Throw it in some construction lot or something just because you've held it long enough, you know, there's better options. Yeah. But I mean, I'm a dog guy through and through. And that's a choice that you make. Like you don't know how to do that. You don't have to have a dog. You know, the people that work, I mean, the worst is the people that like think that like they're just like biodegradable and they just leave them on the sidewalk. It's like, well, not really how this works guy. But okay. No, yeah. There was a construction lot that was just empty for a long time. And it was insane. The amount of people that would just throw their dog shit over the, you know, small little flimsy fence. And it was just like, there must be 100 bags of dog shit in its corner lot that eventually somebody's going to start construction on. It was crazy. LA was crazy. The only one that like, I think most people got it in the sense that if it depends on where you live, right? So a lot of it has to do with where you live. And I'm biased in my setup because like everybody decides to live where I live, like you just accept the fact that everybody's just on top of each other. And like, that's just the way it goes. Like Chris Long comes out to visit and he's like, I can't fathom having a house where it's like all it is is just people all the time. Like how do you do that? And I'm like, I'm so used to it because I've never really lived on like, I mean, growing up, I did, you know, driveway property, you can't see any other neighbors. But from college on, this is kind of the way it's always been as I've always lived sort of like with him walking in the sense of everything. And it makes you think like, wouldn't I eventually want to at some point have, but I think this is an entirely different topic when you're trying to figure out plotting, building lots. So let's not do that right now. Most people, I think get this right. A lot of people were like, look, if the trash can is out and it's trash day, and there's trash that's already in there, it's all going to the same place. Like, what's the issue with throwing stuff on the top? I would tell you, I agree with that. I'm not to the point, maybe in 15 years, I'll be so old that I'll just be like looking for things to be pissed off about because I think there's like an age thing that's like, wait, so you're now telling me that you don't want your garbage messed with. And then the line coming from your garbage is too. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Like that's my garbage. And I don't, well, it could be a little emasculating if it's like, you're just going to do that right in front of me, you know? So you think there's something to that? I think again, I think there's no wrong answers. The only guy who would be wrong is the poop thrower. And so that's why that guy is like, if you get caught, you just say, yeah, sorry, you're trash can, your rules, my bad. I don't think you're supposed to defend your thing. But if somebody who's just saying in general, all poop throwing is bad unless you own the trash can or the city owns it, you know, I would maybe argue with you. But I'm saying if you're caught in the act, I think you just kind of bow to the trash can owner. You're like, my bad dude, I'll remember that one. Throw it in your neighbors next time. Here's the one that pissed me off. And I'm going to, yeah, I knew you had one. I knew you had one. Let me just say this. It's been stalling until this. It's just been scrolling the whole time. Let's try to find it again. It worked. Over 90% of the responses were basically like the common sense part of it of like, hey, look, that we even had some guys be like, I've done it. I don't love that. Yeah. Right. And if I had a dog, and I was like, I don't want to deal with this right now. I'm telling you right now, I'd probably do it too. But if I lived in this area that I live in, I would stop doing it. I would map out where the garbage cans are, you know, the strands really nice. Just take a little U-turn down there and there's public waste baskets there and there's plenty of options. Right. And you're going to get there pretty quickly. You know, you're not going to be walking across a desert here with fecal matter in your hand. But this guy, this guy fucked it up and we're going to read his email now. His dog's Rufus 85 pounds, lab mix, player comp, 2016 Marcus Peters, ballhawk, insane ball fixation and fetching ability. So he did a nice little, that was kind of cool, but not cool enough for me to think that the rest of the email work. Every single time I walk my dog and there's a can on the curb, I use it. If cans aren't put away by the morning, following trash day, it's fair game. My only concern is if they are garage cans versus side cans. We had a few people do this where if you don't have your cans away by a certain amount of time, then that's essentially on us. And the taxes, your dog shit sitting in my trash bin for six and a half days. That's property of the community. If it's not put away by a certain time. Yeah, that's classic. I broke into your car because you had it unlocked and like exactly what it is. Hey, my car got broken into. Why did you, why did you park it there? And you go, okay, never mind. Done talking about it. Yeah, that's insane. Okay. Well, I hope that guy changes his ways because that's, I mean, that might just jade your whole topic. If you have a guy on the street who's looking, he's trying to snipe your can. He's doing a 630. He's saying next morning. So what's next morning? He's 630. If he's snipe, if he's mentally there, that means he's not like, because here's the deal. I have to put mine out super early. I miss it occasionally because it's always on a taping day. It's just me. So if I miss a pickup, it's not the end of the world. But if I had to put the can in my garage, it would be really bad. But I have sort of like an outdoor organizer bin. You're not a night before guy. You're a morning. Yes, you got, I just do it the night before. Well, you know, you get a little wind off that, that offshore breeze, brother. You see how close he is. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. There's a little more distance between the driveway and the trash can up here in the northeast. Nobody cares. If somebody has a thing of dog shit in their hand, they're just going to go, oh wait, the cans have already been emptied. And it's just a little bit later in the day. And he hasn't had time to put them away. But the town will actually get really on your case if you don't have some sort of organizer. And if you want to leave them sort of expose the street, because they don't want every single house having all their garbage cans all over, because you just want to look that good. But then it's like, all right, so now I got to pull it into the garage. And if you're doing squats that day, and somebody was like, Hey, this guy didn't put his can away in time. Come on, man. All right. It's a long show today. It is. Yeah. Why don't I just do a quick one? Maybe a one. Yes. Just a one, a single 15 minutes in and we haven't done anything yet. I mean, we're doing poop follow ups, but we really haven't. This is a quick one. I let an 11 year old beat me a pickup. I think we've covered this neighborhood before six foot 180 bench 165. Well, no kidding. He beat you. I'm just kidding. I'm squat deadlift 225 mostly rock climb do yoga. Yeah, you're going to be in much better shape. Your back isn't going to hurt. Don't worry about my bench joke, man. Good for you if you're doing all this stuff. Pick up comp. Andre Robertson, all D no jumper was never the same method. Some knee injuries. I volunteer with an organization that matches me to the kid who wants a positive role model. My little Jack, he did change the name just in case we have an 11 year old listening to pop. Jack just started playing basketball. One of his goals is building skills and confidence. So we played a couple of games of one on one. He's got solid fundamentals, but he obviously can't compete with the height, speech advantage. First game, I hit a couple of layups and immediately realized this isn't training. This is a grown man destroying a fifth grader. So I switched to only lefty threes and hook shots and gave him three to five feet of space on defense. I let him win a close one and then a little wider in game two. He had a blast. We got ice cream. Great day. Great coaching mission accomplished. Wow. Next time we hang out though, Jack is talking crazy amounts of trash. I'm fine with good nature ribbing, but I also want him learning sportsmanship and not turning into the kid. Everyone avoids it open gym. Now I'm torn about what to do the next time we play option eight demolish him. 11 zip is a lesson, but then he learns I was sandbagging and I risk shattering the confidence we were trying to build in the first place. Also, I'm in my thirties. If I celebrate a shutout at an 11 year old, I can't go back to Whole Foods. I don't know what the Whole Foods is. Is there a rule? Maybe that's a pop culture thing. I don't know. Maybe, you know, maybe that's a line from a show we didn't watch. Maybe we need like a social influence around the show. Should be like, Oh, you're not looks maxing option B. Play it close to win like 11 eight, but keep the hope alive that he can get me. Kyle, I sound like you had something there. I'm just saying that's not real. Is it like smashing your face with a hammer in order to like build up some sort of calluses? Is that true? Well, I mean, I don't want to give away all the secrets. Option C, keep letting him win close games and trust his real coaches develop his game. I'm here to build confidence. Appreciate your thoughts. As you, as we pivoted into the trash talking part of it, I was leaning toward option A 11 zip, but I don't, I think it's, I don't think it's 11 zip, but I think he needs to lose a game. Yeah, I like a happy medium. Like maybe you are decimating his shit, but you're still keeping your left-handed thing that you're doing. Like maybe you're hamstringing yourself a little bit, but still to the point where if you're, if you're blocking a trash talking 11 year old shots, that's got to feel pretty good regardless of what you've allowed the score to become. You know, maybe you just, maybe you just amp up the defense Tony Allen, this thing instead of, you know, just demolishing the kid. Yeah, well, I mean, Ryan, you probably, I think you've talked about this, like the, like the dad bowl of like the first time you beat your dad, like that's like a big deal in life and in a sport and like competition. My dad wasn't a big athlete, so I didn't really have that. But like, obviously, I know it's a thing. And I don't know, I just don't like the idea of giving it to like giving him a big deal. I know, I'm like, off of that to begin with. Like I think, I think you, I think you already kind of screwed up. So that's over. So I don't, I don't, I think you just kind of lost. I mean, I'm happy for you. You're helping out the community. It's great work. But I think, you know, just if I'm coaching up, like the, you know, I don't know if it's the boys and girls club or whatever we're doing here, like, you know, I think you got to, you got to like legitimately beat the kid until like, yeah, at least it's somewhat close to you. And that just, it builds callus. It's the callus point about hitting somebody in the face with a hammer. Like you got to, you got to kind of like let that kid learn how to take an L first. Cause then if he's, if he's the guy that starts, you know, talking smack with no actual backup to it, then that's not, then he ended up with somebody like me and college is talking shit to people who probably shouldn't be talking shit to. So I don't know. I kind of don't like that idea. I think you got to, I think you should be Steve. I can't think about that picture. We were sharing those pictures. And I was like, that's exactly, you can see the words coming out of my mouth. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't great. So as someone who was that kid, maybe, I don't know. No one ever punched you. I had actually never got punched. No, I find it. That's probably hard to believe. Probably. Probably. Yeah. But, you know, and I didn't really have any bigger friends. So I don't know. Was it the coin and P act thing? Well, see you had a hawk. Well, cause like you, our big, I wouldn't do that. I wasn't talking shit to hockey players though. Yeah. Like we always talking about UVM is like, there was never really no one to be afraid of. We didn't have football and then we were friends with all the hockey players. So didn't, didn't matter. Your friends are all fucking geniuses apparently. So that's cool. Engineers, engineering country, ballads and goals. Shout out, St. Louis. Nice. You don't disagree though. Like, I don't know. I just, I don't like the idea of just letting the kid win. I don't, I don't, I don't love it. I agree with you. Like, I think he already started off with that way. So I mean, whatever, he's not, maybe he's not a born coach and he's just trying to figure it out. It's like, what do we do from now? And I don't know if you should go from, you know, I think you knock it back then. Yeah, certainly knock him down. And that's why I think getting your shit swatted often will do that anyway, whether, whether you're, you know, whether you're scoring 11, nothing on him, or whether you're just blocking everything he puts up, which is probably it's going to be satisfying to you as the guy who is just getting shit talked. Think about our emailer here though. Yeah. He was concerned about changing the kid's name. He does yoga. His first thought was like, I want to volunteer and help kids build confidence. And then he noticed something about the kid's personality. He didn't necessarily love like, this is a very thoughtful. Yeah. No, I agree. This feels like a very good person emailing the show here for a bunch of different factors. So this is, this is somebody who's probably not an old only child and struggling with the processing the way others emotions could be impacted by their decisions. This is somebody I imagine has multiple siblings and can can see the world in different ways. No offense to the only children out there, but there's just a lot of data. All right. Sorry. So I think this person's like, this person's like coming from a great place, right? So it might even be hard for the person emailing us to understand that Jack needs to fucking taste a little humility here. Right. So even if you're 30 and he's 11, don't let him win anymore. Doesn't mean you have to destroy him. Doesn't mean you have to start beasting him on the block, scream out mouse in the house too small, that kind of stuff. Slap the backboard. Yeah. Right. The emotional roller coaster being 11, you know, although I don't know, 11 year old boy, feel like you're pretty sturdy with stuff though. It depends on who you're at, like where your upbringing is. Then you can start getting a little weirder, you know, after that, you know, emo and I'm trying to think of what age was like the peak? No one could say anything to me. Age, 11 is high. 11 is very high. 11 is like, because you don't know, you don't know shit, but you think you know everything. She knew it. Yeah. I don't know. I think I was pretty like deferent to adults still at 11. At 11. Oh man. I don't know. It was still like my mom was like, don't let me hear you being disrespectful to anyone in this big wide world. You better keep that shit tight if I find out. So what about the part with it, like outside of earshot, let's say, of any adult Kyle? Oh, well, that's a night and day Jekyll and Hyde situation, you know, right? Your weed story is phenomenal, by the way. You don't get enough credit. Like that needs, what? People need to talk about that. You just coming home and telling your parents like, yeah, smoked it. I'm not supposed to debate over. Whatever you guys think, whatever you guys think is just probably like, what are you going to do? Then telling your brother, don't deny it. They know you did it. Dude, they want you to have a little shame. That's right. Have a little bit of shame. Then they think they really got you and then just figure out how you're sneaking out. Like, if I were a 15 year old kid came back just reeking of the old gonj and I'm like, hey, what the fuck is this? And they'd be like, you know what? I did it. It's on me. Stupid. Like went to the room. I just be like, what are we supposed to do now? He's two moves ahead of us. Yeah. Yeah. Came in and enjoy this. Yeah. It's true. You know, I'm going to reflect on my decisions. Thank you for your input. I'll be paying Zelda. That's exactly what was going on. Are there any uncrustables around? All right. That'll do it for the show today. Thank you. We're saying thanks to Tom and Kevin until they come on at some point. We'll bring them on. Ask them if they got high when they were in high school and get caught. Thanks to Kyle Seruti. Thank you for checking out. And please subscribe to the Rhymer Solo Show. 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