It's a Wednesday edition of PFT PM back from the league meetings in Arizona. I love Arizona. I don't know how anyone can live there. Open air convection oven, especially in March when it really shouldn't be 90, 95 degrees. It was warm. It was toasty. Thank God for air conditioning and, man, you want a good business. Air conditioning repair in Arizona. Somebody's probably making a ton of money. I say this from time to time after I come home from a trip, especially one of these short trips with a long flight both ways, only there for three days. Left Saturday, got back very late last night. I say I'm never traveling again. And I've been saying that for several years now. One of these times I'm going to mean it because I can do everything I do from here in the great state of West Virginia. I'll no longer have to say country roads take me home. I'll be home and I won't leave. One of these times I'm going to mean it. And last night, look, I got over my whole flying thing in 2014. I was on a flight sitting next to Paul Hicks, who was the former head of PR for the NFL. And we were having a conversation after the week one game, Packers Seahawks after the Seahawks had won their first Super Bowl. And we're talking and as we're talking, I noticed the plane was in the air and just at that point, something in my brain said, why do you worry about this? Now, I also had this weird belief that I had to at least stay alive until I turned 18 or until my son turned 18, excuse me. And then he doesn't need me anymore. So that was one of the reasons why I was like, Hey, I can't fly. I, I'm trying to stay alive here. And I know it was stupid in hindsight, but that's how I was wired. So I've been flying now for 12 years and I don't know how many hundreds of times we've gone up and we've gone down, but twice now, twice, I've been involved in what's known more innocuously as a go around, technically an aborted landing. It happened on the way to Phoenix for Super Bowl 57. My wife and I were on the plane and as it was coming in for a landing and it was getting very close to wheels down, all of a sudden it was nose up, full thrust. What the hell was that? It turns out there was something on the runway that wasn't supposed to be on the runway. So good to know that we went up instead of down at that point. And then last night coming into Pittsburgh and that's never happened to be flying into Pittsburgh. And a lot of traffic on the runway late at night in Pittsburgh, we're coming in, we're about to land. Next thing you know, nose up, full thrust. And those three or four minutes while you're waiting for an update from the pilot can be old tense to say the least. Why did we not? We were just about to land. Why did we not land? So apparently it was a wind shear warning last night. So it's good to have those safety protocols in place. But again, those three or four minutes while you're going around and we were low enough that the cell signal was coming through. So like our son was tracking the plane. It's like, why is your plane going in a circle right now? So he was very concerned too. But I didn't kiss the ground when we landed, but I probably should have because that was just a few minutes of what have I gotten myself into? All right, what have you gotten yourself into? Well, if you visit this show from time to time, you know, we go over a few different topics as it relates to the National Football League. And because we didn't do a live show on Wednesday, I finally got home at 1.30. I think Chris got home late as well. Matt Casey offered to just play some of the interviews that we had taped that weren't on the live show during our two days, two full business days in Arizona. And that's what we saw. You saw if you watched on Wednesday morning. And if you did, thank you. We'll be back Thursday morning with PFT Live. For now, though, some updates on the things that continuously are happening in the National Football League. And it is April Fool's Day. So always be leery of whatever someone is going to try to pull. The Browns had a new helmet that actually had as the logo, the Browns helmet. The Colts had the best one ever when they decided to go completely white with their uniforms, white numbers, no borders, white everything. You couldn't even see the number. You couldn't see the name on the jersey. It was a great presentation they did. I think who was the tight end that used to play for the Colts? And I can't remember his name. He was the guy that was the centerpiece. This whole thing they did. That was the best April Fool's joke I've seen. But we're always on the lookout. And I'm on the lookout everywhere for the possibility of an April Fool's Day gag. And when I caught wind early this morning of what I'm about to talk about, I made sure that someone wasn't pulling my leg. And really, it's not a crazy thought. The more I think about it, the more I've talked about it with different people, the more sense it makes. Evan Rogers has been a free agent for two or three weeks now. Oh, and by the way, thank you, Kristen. It was Dwayne Allen. It was Dwayne Allen who was the former Colts tight end who wore the all white uniform when the Colts did the best and arguably only good NFL related April Fool's Day joke. Aaron Rogers, still a free agent. I remember last year, there was some Aaron Rogers news unrelated to the Steelers. We had reported he reached out to the Giants to gauge their interest. I don't know how seriously they considered him. The Rams had Aaron Rogers as their fallback in the event that Matthew Stafford had been traded to the Giants or the Raiders. Those are the two teams that were interested in Stafford. Obviously he didn't leave. Aaron Rogers reached out to the Vikings, the Vikings at least talked to him. They ultimately decided not to pursue it. And he ends up in Pittsburgh. He had said late in the 2025 season, he expects to have a few options in free agency. His name had not come up for any team other than the Pittsburgh Steelers and all indications are it's just a matter of time before the Steelers announced that Aaron Rogers is back for 2025. That's why I thought it was very interesting when I caught wind today of the possibility that the Broncos will consider, explore, pursue whatever. It's all still very early. They haven't done anything. I don't know if they're going to do anything. And yes, yes, I did. I did vet my sources before I posted the story at PFT that explains it in very general terms. There's a possibility that the Broncos will have interest. Why? Most obviously, Bonix had the broken ankle that was suffered in mid January during the playoff win over the Buffalo Bills. I know Greg Penner, the CEO of the team, provided a positive update. He's ahead of schedule. Andy Reed separately said as it relates to Patrick Mahomes, what does ahead of a schedule even mean? What is the schedule? Nobody really knows. And professional athletes tend to yield faster and respond faster and recover faster than the average person. But even with that, how healthy will Bonix be as of week one? What restrictions, if any, on the ability to throw him out onto the field and let him do his thing will apply for Patrick Mahomes? If he's back week one, do we really think he's going to be doing a lot of lateral movement on his new ACL right out of the gates? We'll see. So, the notion that the Broncos may be considering Aaron Rodgers is really not as far-secret as I think the Broncos want us to believe. The Broncos have mobilized to call it an April Fool's joke. I mean, come on. I've been doing this 25 years. I know the difference and I know my sources and obviously I can't reveal my sources, but the reality is when you look at it, where are the Broncos right now as a football operation? They got the number one seed last year in Bonix's second season. They made it to the AFC Championship and they had some confidence that Jared Stidham would be able to play well based upon how he has performed in practice. But there's a fundamental difference between what you do in practice and what you do in the AFC Championship game. And if they get back there this year, it'll be Bonix's first AFC Championship appearance. The highest stakes he's ever experienced. Jared Stidham's the one who got that experience in 2025. So, consider the bigger picture here. Sean Payton has a Super Bowl win from the 2009 season with the Saints. Every coach that has ever won a Super Bowl with one team knows keenly that no one has ever done it with two teams. Some people say, well, I thought Bill Parcells did. No. He took the Patriots to a Super Bowl. He didn't win it. He won with the Giants and nobody else. No coach has won a Super Bowl with two different teams. And look at the backlog of coaches to get into the Hall of Fame. Exacerbated by the inexplicable failure to put Bill Belichick in this year. That just delays everything by a year because nobody else is getting in until Belichick's in. So, Mike Shanahan delayed. Mike Holmgren delayed. Any other coach who isn't in, who deserves to be in, is pushed back. How does Sean Payton get in? How does he get in? It helps to have two. It also helps to be the first one to win one with two different teams. How can you deny Sean Payton a bronze bust if he's the first and only coach who has won Super Bowls with two different teams? And then you have to ask yourself this question. All things equal. Setting aside the bow-nicks angle. All things equal, given where bow-nicks is right now in his career and whatever Aaron Rogers has left in the tank at age 42. When you look at everything else the Broncos have in place, great defense. Vance Joseph, defensive coordinator, didn't get a head coaching job. Maybe should have. Maybe should have. Didn't. He's back. Bad news for Joseph. He didn't get a second shot to be a head coach. Good news for the Broncos. He's back. There's continuity. They got a lot of great players. If you're a Broncos fan, ask yourself the question. Aaron Rogers at 42, bow-nicks in year three, knowing that he didn't have the benefit of the experience of playing in the AFC Championship game last year. Who's the guy that is more likely between the two to get the Broncos to the top of the mountain? As Sean Payton understandably has urgency to get that second Super Bowl win and to be the first coach to win a Super Bowl with two different teams. It doesn't take much to talk yourself into the idea that Rogers gives the Broncos a better chance than Nicks. There's been that kind of parcel's vibe between Payton and Nicks. Remember, Payton said something about past injuries that Nicks had and Nicks bristled at that. I watched Whiplash last night on the plane and I've seen it a couple of times and I think it's an excellent movie. J.K. Simmons won the Oscar for best supporting actor. There's a little Terrence Fletcher vibe sometimes that comes from every head coach, but I think sometimes there's a little of that coming from Payton as he tries to get more out of his players. But the Broncos have bow-nicks under contract for two more years. They have the fifth year option at their disposal. If they want to bring in Aaron Rogers, if it gets to that point, and I'm not saying it will, it's not ludicrous to think that it could happen. And it isn't all that difficult to take a broader view of this and say maybe 42-year-old Aaron Rogers is the guy that makes the difference for a team that otherwise looks to be ready to make another run at being the number one seed and maybe go farther. Look at all the flux in the AFC right now, all the new coaches, all the questions with all the other teams, Mahomes and the ACL. Where are the Chargers right now? All of these different things that are part of the picture. So it's really not crazy to think about the possibility that the Broncos are pondering it. Makes things interesting for the Steelers because of your Rogers, you got, let's say that it comes to having two options. And you want to go out ideally as deep into the postseason as you possibly can. If you're Rogers between the Steelers and the Broncos, who gives you a better chance of ending your career with your second Super Bowl win? I think that one's an easy call for Rogers. If the door's open in Denver and he knows he's going to play. Now once you sign the contract, you're at the mercy of the team and maybe you won't play. Maybe Aaron Rogers is the guy that gets even more out of bow nicks. I don't know. But from Rogers' perspective, capping your career with a Super Bowl win is more likely if you're with the Broncos than if you're with the Steelers. And I don't think anybody would dispute that. And anyone that would say, Sean Payton isn't going to cast his lot with a 42-year-old quarterback. Remember, it was 2022 after he had resigned from the Saints and after Tom Brady had retired as a member. I'm getting my years wrong, but it was early 23. Payton had just resigned and he was getting ready to embark on a year of TUE. But what was going to happen? Remember, that was the story that nobody was talking about in the off season. Sims and I came together and we put the threads together and we reported that Payton was going to be essentially traded by the Saints to the Dolphins. Tom Brady was going to take a front office job with the Dolphins. At some point in May or thereabouts, he would have decided he's going to play again. And Tom Brady and Sean Payton joined forces and Payton pursues his second Super Bowl win and his landmark first coach to win a Super Bowl with two different teams. So it's really not crazy. And based on the reaction that I've become aware of within the Broncos, I have a feeling there's a degree of consternation that the cat got out of the bag prematurely. And now that it's out there, they've lost the luxury of being able to discreetly and quietly explore this possibility and make a decision. And it could be, it could be that there are folks in the organization that aren't really thrilled about the idea of Aaron Rodgers being there and this was an opportunity to throw the wrench in the potential Aaron Rodgers, Sean Payton alliance. So we'll see where it goes. It may go nowhere, but it's not April Fool's Day joke. It's not crazy if it happens. There's still a lot of boxes that need to be checked and hoops that need to be jumped through and needles that need to be threaded before it ever happens. But the possibility is out there. And we'll see where it goes from here. On Tuesday, the commissioner met with reporters, as he always does, at every meeting of the owners, especially at the annual meeting. One of the hot topics, the Rooney Rule, especially after Florida Attorney General James Othmeyer or Oothmeyer. I probably should get that right. The Attorney General of Florida demanded that the NFL suspend application of the Rooney Rule to the teams headquartered in Florida, the Buccaneers, the Jaguars, and the Dolphins. The deadline is May 1. If the NFL doesn't dump the Rooney Rule as did the Florida teams by then, there may be an enforcement action. It isn't a clear threat, but that's the content and the message of the letter that was sent last week by the Florida AG to the league. And hey, I've been a proponent for the league to stand up and say, bring it on. Bring it on. So what the commissioner said yesterday is, we're committed to the Rooney Rule. It's not going away. They didn't quite say bring it on directly, but he made it clear they're not going to abandon. They're not going to change. They're going to hold true to their values, the values that have been reflected by the Rooney Rule, which has been in existence for 23 years now. And it's not a hiring mandate, as the commissioner said, and others have pointed out. It's just a requirement that the teams slow it down. So many owners, and this still happens. They know who they're going to hire, and they go hire them. This requires the owners to slow it down and conduct interviews of minority candidates. And if nothing else, it gives minority candidates an opportunity to have their names injected into the conversation. Other owners become aware of the candidates as potential candidates consider for their own jobs. And it also provides valuable interview experience. So it's been around for a long time. And if anything, the argument's been it doesn't do enough. Now you got to deal with the Florida Attorney General. And I do think a lot of this is performative, and it's pandering, to a certain segment of the base attacking the mere existence of the rule as discriminatory against non-monorities. So the NFL is in a little bit of a box here. But so far, so good. Roger Goodell said what he needed to say yesterday. Words and actions are two different things. And the action of reducing to writing the message back to the Attorney General, maybe they'll just ignore the letter. I'd like to see a letter that goes back to the Attorney General saying, bring it on. We're not going to do it. Put it all in writing, send it back, and basically continue this game of potential legal ping-pong if Florida is going to launch some sort of an enforcement action against the league. Stand up for what you believe in, stand up for what's right, and tell him, bring it on. Let's go. The other thing too, and I thought this was over, but it's not. Kevin Warren, the Bears president and CEO, told reporters on Wednesday that they're still trying to get the two third round compensatory draft picks they believe they should have gotten when Ian Cunningham went from assistant general manager of the Bears to general manager of the Falcons. The NFL added a tweak to the Rooney Rule several years ago to reward teams for developing minority candidates who get the best jobs elsewhere, head coach and GM. The NFL's position as it relates to Ian Cunningham, the Bears don't get the picks because Matt Ryan is the primary football executive. We had Matt Ryan on the show two days ago in Arizona. We made it clear Ian Cunningham is a general manager in the NFL in every sense of the term, and it's clearly not Matt Ryan's call. It's the league's call, but the Bears are appealing, and they're still trying to get those two third round compensatory picks, and they expect an answer soon. Now the NFL's really in a box, because if they had just given them the third round compensatory picks a couple of months ago, who would have said anything? That's why I called it a ridiculous, unforced error by the NFL from the get-go. If they'd given the Bears the picks, nobody would have said boo about it. Were they that concerned about getting some sort of political pushback? They'd say, well, you know what, we can exercise some discretion here. No sudden moves. Let's not do anything that may attract the attention of some politician who's going to attack us over this. Let's just let's, Matt Ryan's the primary football executive in Atlanta. Let's not reward those picks to the Bears. Now if they do it, it's going to be a big deal. It's going to be a far bigger deal than it would have been if they'd done it in the first place. See, that's the problem. Are they going to admit they were wrong? How will they couch if they would do an about face on this? How do you sell that? How do you explain, well, you know what, we got it wrong. Now we know what we've developed additional information. After further information and reflection on the matter, we have decided that the Bears do merit the two third round events story picks. We'll see where that goes. But actions are critical. And I feel like the NFL had created a middle ground for itself where they'll say all the right things, but ultimately do nothing. Every year, especially this year, 10 head coaching vacancies, one minority hire, Robert Sala, no black coaches hired. We showed the photo of the coaches and the GMs. Like, do we need to say anything more? Just look at the photo. But we say all the right things, ultimately nothing changes. A year goes by, commissioner meets with reporters before the Super Bowl, as he does every year, gets a few questions, answers them, says all the right things. Year goes by, nothing changes. Now is the time for action. Two actions. One, give the Bears their picks. Two, respond to the strongly worded letter from the Florida Attorney General with a strongly worded letter of your own. All right, next, the 18 game season is going to happen at some point. The only question is when? At what year between 2027 and 2031 will we have an 18 game season? And maybe there's a chance it won't be until 2032. If they ultimately let the CBA expire in March of 2031, and if they lock out the players and the players cry uncle, presumably there's a good chance the 18 game season wouldn't start until the next year, 2032. But at some point between 2037 and 3032, we're going to have 18 games. Very few things do I feel strongly about that as one of them. So will it be 2027? They're going to have to move quickly. Goodell said yesterday they want to give JC Trutter the new executive director of the NFLPA some time to settle into the job. But at the same time, and a source told me on Sunday, and the word used was constipated. The league's business has been constipated over the past couple of years by the turmoil at the NFL Players Association. They want to get stuff done, and they can't get anything done if they don't want to negotiate with. They don't have anyone they can do a deal with who can then sell that deal to all the people who have to buy that deal in order to turn it into a new CBA, whether it's a full blown collective bargaining agreement, or what they call a side letter where they just agree to 18 games in exchange for whatever they can do that anytime they want. Anytime they want, they can reach any agreement they want anytime they want. All they have to do is get together and do it. The NFL hasn't been able to do it because there hasn't been stability within the organization. At some point sooner rather than later, I believe they're going to make their move. And this all gets back to Super Bowl 62 in Atlanta. There isn't a date yet. Peter O'Reilly, NFL Executive VP, earlier this week tried to downplay it. Well, it's not uncommon. It's not uncommon to not have a specific date. Scheduling reasons. Well, there's no scheduling reason unless they're thinking about adding more games. Under the current schedule, we know when week one is. It's the week after Labor Day. It isn't very difficult to go through the calendar, count out 18 weeks of the regular season, wild card round, division round, conference championships, week off, Super Bowl. February 13, 2028. That should be the date already announced if we're going to do 17 games with one buy per team. We're going to do 18 and a buy or 18 and two buys. Well, that changes things. We need some flexibility. Better not announce February 13. Better not lock in the convention center for that week. Better not reserve the hotel rooms, the thousands of hotel rooms for that week. That's why they haven't picked one yet. We reported that the day after the Super Bowl. The NFL has not picked a date for Super Bowl 62 in Atlanta in February 2028. Because of the fact that they're holding out hope for an 18 game season by 2027. So we'll see where that goes. But this is all part of the broader effort at the NFL to have greater inventory and not just more games per se, but when you have more games, you have more options to drop games in standalone windows, more prime time games, more nights of the week where they're going to play. I thought it was very interesting yesterday and one of our most visited stories so far today. The explanation for ditching the ill-advised Monday night simultaneous overlapping double headers. You got two games on at once. What do you do? Well, you know what you do if you're the league? You take one of those games and you play it on Tuesday or you play it on Wednesday. I think that's where this is heading. This whole night before Thanksgiving, that's the first toe in the water toward Wednesday night football. It may take a while, but we learned during the pandemic they can figure out how to pull off games Tuesday and Wednesday if they have to. How hard would it be to schedule it? Especially with the popular teams, the chiefs. If the chiefs are still a big draw, and I think they are even though they had issues last year, didn't make the playoffs, they're still a big draw. Cowboys, they've been a big draw even though they haven't played in the NFC championship in 30 years. Well, one week you play on Wednesday. The next week you play on Tuesday. The next week you play on Monday. There's three of your games right there. And with AI and everything else, they can figure out a schedule. They've created this exemption now that Sunday to Friday no longer counts as a short week. So basically five days off, not five days, because you only get four days off between those games, you get Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but it's a five day split between the games, Sunday to Friday, that no longer is a short week. Because right now, all teams are limited to two Sunday to Thursday games. Well, okay, if five, so four days, you only do it twice a year. Five days, fair game. Six days, fair game. I think that's where it's moving because the NFL is going to have its standard weekly packages and they're going to be carving off mini packages that go to the streamers that will want to have a game here, game there, night game, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, 20, 25, 30 million people, especially if you have the flexibility to put the best teams in those windows. Let's do all the other teams on Sunday at one Eastern. We're going to pluck out the best games and we're going to drop them, not just Monday night, not just Sunday night, not just Thursday night, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then when you get deeper into the year and that limitation on Friday night and Saturday games goes away in December, Friday. I'm surprised they haven't done more Friday games late in the year. They do Saturday. There's that one weekend where they do a full three game slate on Saturday. So it's coming. 18 games is coming. More standalone football is coming. That's the way to make more money. That's the way to grow the game. It hasn't happened yet, but expansion. Just wait. As I've said, the end result of all of this and I probably won't live to see it and many of you won't either because I think it's going to take decades to get there. It's going to be 40 teams playing 20 games each with no preseason. Mark my words, somewhere, somehow, hey, hey AI, save what I just said and bring it back in 50 or 60 years when I am wherever I deserve to be at that point. Couple more topics. One, Jerry Jones talked yesterday about George Pickens, who's been franchised tagged and Stephen Jones and saying, Hey, Stephen Jones was as reluctant as he's ever been on any subject when he was asked by reporters about George Pickens and his situation earlier in the week. Jerry, well, Jerry's always going to talk and the one thing that he said that really caught my ear and this was posted by Mike Garifolo of NFL Network now operated known by ESPN, which is 10% owned by the NFL. It gets very complicated, but Garifolo had a snippet from what Jerry said and basically the message is, and this all gets back to Jerry's habit of talking directly to players. He wants to negotiate directly with players. We were all over this with the Michael Parsons thing and this has happened with the ZQ Eliot, it's happened with Dak Prescott, it happened with Des Bryant. They like to sidle up to a player and get him to agree to something without the agent being involved. The player is not skilled in negotiating contracts. They are. They'd rather negotiate with the weaker party. They'd rather bypass the agent and they routinely have done that. Jerry took it a step farther on Tuesday, basically suggested that George would make a lot more money without an agent, which is just ludicrous. Look what Michael Parsons ultimately got from Green Bay, 46.5 million per year, 120 million fully guaranteed over the first three. Jerry wasn't going to do that. Jerry was trying to kick the can, I believe through 2025, the fifth year option, and then they would have done the franchise tag game for a year, maybe two before they finally gave Michael Parsons his long-term deal. If he was still healthy and if he was still effective, that's the problem with delaying a guy's payday. The player continues to carry the risk of injury and the risk that he's just not going to be the guy that he was. Just normal wear and tear, 27, 28, 29, 30 years old. I can't play like I used to. Well, we're not going to make this major financial investment. We've gotten greater benefit of your skills at a time when we were paying you less. No one from the NFLPA has challenged Jerry on this. Now, David White, the former interim executive director, he made some noise about it when Jerry was doing it last year. But Jerry's making a business calculation. He talked about this on the 105.3, the fan when it was all happening. The fine, well, the fine for the first offense under the CBA of directly dealing with a player or dealing with someone who's not certified by the NFLPA to engage in these talks, i.e. the player directly. The first offense is nothing. The second offense is a $62,000 fine. The third offense is the same thing. The fourth offense is the same thing. Do the math. You can get fine 100 times and you're still going to save money if you can get the player to do his own deal without the help of an agent. It's one of the reasons why from the moment, and it started with Russell O'Kung and Richard Sherman, not just deciding that it made sense for themselves to negotiate their own deals, but advocating that all players should do their own deals, you're going to come away typically. You get a good agent and I know there's bad agents out there and everybody thinks, oh, you're just trying to help your agent friends. No, I'm trying to help the players. You get to keep everything you can get on your own. You also could have the ability to keep what's left after the agent takes his or her fee. The number is going to be greater than net. What you get when it's all said and done, it's going to be more if you have a good agent who's been working all the channels and making it happen, negotiating the deal, not backing down, holding firm, working every button and lever under the CBA to the advantage of the client. That's what the Cowboys had to deal with with Michael Parsons. They thought they had him in check. Parsons put him in checkmate. Once it was clear that he wasn't going to practice or play because of his back situation until he got the contract, gave him the financial security that he deserved, once they knew that there was no way out of that, that's when they traded him and that's when he got paid. All right, last subject. There's been so much talk recently about the NFL and the NFL referees association, the collective bargaining agreement talks, the possibility, if not likelihood of a lockout, they'll marry too. This time around, they'll use an enhanced version of replay. They passed that rule on Tuesday for one year only to allow in the event of a lockout, in the event that there are replacement officials from junior college and high school level handling these games. They'll have expanded replay available to help them clean up their messes. Beyond that, and this one kind of just popped up quietly. John DeLorenzo, the third female official hired by the NFL, hired in 2022, worked three seasons, then was let go. She has sued the league. She has sued Walde Anderson, who was the former senior VP of officiating. He's now the NFL rules analyst byron Boston, longtime official who was part of the training, structure and apparatus within the NFL. He's sued for gender discrimination, harassment, retaliation, et cetera. I'll defer to the item that we posted at PFT. Some of the details are available. Football Zebras has an article that goes through a lot of the different allegations. These obviously are all allegations at this point. That's how it works, but still, the lawsuit is there. Look, I don't know if they put the arbitration clause into these contracts. I suspect that since she was a member of the NFLRA, the first line of defense, and the NFL does this in every case that's filed against it, how can we take this case out of the court system and insert it into the secret rigged court kangaroo court? I'm getting my own stick-wrong, secret rigged kangaroo court of arbitration where the commissioner presides. We know that that procedure is under attack and it's getting wobbly. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has struck it down. They're going to have to take it to the Supreme Court and see if the U.S. Supreme Court will say, yeah, it's okay. It's okay for the person who is in charge of the company to ultimately be responsible for the processing of claims made against the company. It's been ludicrous from the moment I first realized that that's how they did things. It's taken 20 years for it to finally crumble. So that'll likely be the first play, finding a way, any way possible to try to cram that case into arbitration and keep it out of open court. But it's there and the NFL has to deal with it. And obviously the NFL's issued a statement. Nothing to see here. No violation. Nobody ever comes out and says, they got us. Oh, well, we thought we'd get away with that one. They got us. Tell us how much of a check we should write for this when it never happens. The clearest and most obvious breaches of the law get resolved before we even know that it happened. The stuff that ends up in a public fight is because one side says one thing, the other side says something completely different. And how do we resolve it? Through the civil justice system. And they call it the civil justice system because it is a way of civilly resolving disputes. So somebody doesn't show up at someone's house with a shotgun, which is how they, you know, once upon a time in the olden days, you took matters into your own hands. What did Doug Llewellyn always say? Don't don't take the law into your own hands. You take them to court. That's what Robin D Lorenzo has done. We'll see where it goes. But you know, it's an example of the potential conflict that can arise when an organization tries to advance and maybe some of the people within the apparatus aren't as willing to welcome a female official. Not saying that happened. But Robin D Lorenzo was alleging that happened. She was treated differently than her male counterparts by the people working for the NFL to administer the overall officiating function. So we'll obviously be following that one, maybe try to get our hands on the full complaint, take a look at that, get some more information, see where it goes. My prediction, step one, secret rigged kangaroo court of arbitration. They'll at least try. They'll try. Try is all we can ever do. We try to give you some stuff that you can wrap your head around and sink your teeth into especially on days when there wasn't a fresh and new edition of PFT live. There will be one tomorrow, 7am Eastern, Peacock, NBCSN, SiriusXM85 podcast will be posted, clips will be available at PFT. You know the drill. So it's great to be home. There truly is no place like home. And as I said at the top, one of these days when I say I'm never, never traveling again, I will mean it. We'll find out whether or not this is the time I mean it. We'll see. Have a great day. Thanks for some of your time. We'll see you Thursday morning.
