What do MLB and the NFL have in common?
Well, I guess a lot play clocks and bought, but for the purposes of this conversation, what I'm getting at is both their seasons this year, open on a Wednesday. Yeah, Rogers League is just a Tuesday here, they're from making like baseball and being in every day's sport. Now I don't know if you like that, but I do like the spirit of stealing from our former
national pastime and some other sports too to punch up football a bit. Yeah, it's already great, but it could get even better. There's a few thoughts in that direction.
First, fix the lame in-game punishment mechanism, aka the yellow flag.
Guys are out there committing crimes of passion and all they get is a flag thrown at them. Pretty lame. Also lame. If you commit an error in MLB, they put an E up on the scoreboard, I guess that stands for EAK.
“If you want to stop discourage a recidivism, you need stronger deterrence, like in basketball.”
When there's a file, they let your victim take three shots and they make you stay in there, like a jackass watching from just a few feet away. Maybe even better, they at a jail has a whole box for its rules violators. What net in that other guy in pulp fiction did with the gimp, hockey refs due to jerks and skates.
So in football, where guys have to sit in a blue tent if they get bonked on the head, and it only be justice for the guy who did the bonking to have to go sit in a shame tent and make sure it's see through. Or maybe make him just play the rest of the game nude. No bad ideas here.
The English Premier League has relegation, which would be fantastic.
There's never a year in which some dumb fans don't ruminate about whether college football's
best team could beat the NFL's worst team, spoiler alert they couldn't, but if only to prove a point let's do it, it'll be great for everyone, except those poor Ohio State buck guys, I don't know how they'll rebuild their self-esteem after losing to the jets. It'll be at the last second on a field goal, but still. Next, pro football's got better players, but college football's got a better soundtrack.
It's soccer too, and their fans are the ones who provide that soundtrack. What do we do? Nice aqua pelisons, my fellow football Americans? At least we get the fight songs on Saturdays, but we need more on Sundays. There's bare-down Chicago Bears making every play on the way to victory and hail to the
commies or whatever they call that team. And the Steelers Polka, where we're from, that time we're at that great football team. Bap, bap, bap, bap, and fly Eagles fly, but where are the rest of you at? I thought this was a copycat league. Next, the Lombardi trophy sleek and stylish and a minimalist kind of way, I guess.
But no one would debate the Stanley Cup and Heisman are more iconic, and that's a problem when the NFL's by far in a way or most popular sport. Why do we know who won the Heisman a decade ago, but not the NFL MVP?
“The cool trophy with the cool name, that's why the NFL needs to do that.”
Pick your enduring legend, I'd say Walter Payton, but he's already got a really cool trophy. I'm Brady maybe? Could make it the flatable? I don't know. Let me know what you think.
Next, pretty much every other professional sport has a minor league system, so pro football should have one of its own, and wouldn't you know it? The CFL's just sitting there, serendipity. Now please don't confuse me with the crazy old guy who wants to take over the whole country,
but I do think both sides of the board are what ultimately be happier, and despite the
short-term ego below, I know the Canadian league would ultimately be way more relevant. I'm on a board, rough riders, you too, rough riders, can't you see? It's not that football's not already great, it's that we have a chance to make it even better. Oh and one more thing in that regard, if baseball managers have to wear their full uniform,
“then NFL head coach you should have to suit up too.”
Show some solidarity fellas, let's start the show. Yes, hi, hello, my fellow football Americans, welcome to Football America, presented as ever by draft King's, draft King's, the crown is yours. We've got Pablo Tore coming up, can't wait to talk with him big time celebrity guy who was investigating athletic celebrities and otherwise, now a celebrity himself, multiple Emmy
nominations, all the rest of it, excited for that, and before we do get to that, first things first, subscribe, please, wherever you find podcasts and to our YouTube page, football America is how you track that down on the YouTube, and spread the good word, and while you're in YouTube, please, more conversation on there, I'd like to steer everything away from social media, large, and specifically into the YouTube comment section, so we can have a
rolling back in fourth, and now let's say hello to our pals, Gino and Mike, Mike and Gino Fuentes behind the glass of Miami, Florida, it's episode number 57, so Gino Fuentes, let's get to it, the greatest player to wear the number 57 and NFL history and sports history at large. NFL, this is kind of an old number, really got a few, we got Tom Jackson, Dwight Stevenson,
If we want to take it for the Dolphins, Mike, I mean, there's a few Steelers ...
but who's worth mentioning, really, let's just move on, K-Rod, the Closer for the anti-Mangel's. Wait, I went through the world series in a lot too against the gigantic, Barry Bonds with the gigantic head and all of his teammates, game six that iconic when I was there for that, and he was behind John Wettland, who was the Closer, he was the eighth inning guy. That was when that sort of emerged.
That was during that air and major league baseball and happy baseball season, everybody out there who followed us along, yeah, with those glasses and he was scrawny and otherwise, so he cut a distinct figure out there, and in that world series, Barry Bonds hit the longest home run I think I've ever seen in my life. Unless it was that one and hosed by Jose Conseco and Skydum, the longest one I ever saw in
my life was Glenn Allen Hill and Ridley Field in the bottom of the eighth, that one is iconic on the north side of Chicago. He hit it and I don't know if it went through a window on Waveland or wherever it went, but
“it was a moon ball one way or the other and the reason I remember that one is because did”
you guys, Gino and Mike, you ever play mound ball at Marlin's games or elsewhere? Don't know what you're talking about. Down ball is at the end of every half inning, of course, once the final out is recorded,
the catcher or first basement or whoever records that out always rolls the ball back at
the mound and mound ball is everybody in your group, aunties up a dollar or $10 or $20 or $100 or whatever you want and everybody aunties that up into a hat and if the ball stays on the mound because as you may have noticed it's slope, so the ball is dis inclined to stay a top to hill, it usually will roll off, but if it stays on there, you win that money. My friends and I played that for a while at Ridley Field, we were regulars going to
Ridley when we all lived around there, but it was a little too passive, so then we came up with home run ball, which was more dynamic and everybody, every batter you would auntie up again, whatever, $10 or $20 or whatever and then every batter, if your guy didn't hit a home run and instead made an out, you had to put a dollar into the cap and if he was
looking at a third strike, $2, if he hit it into a double play, $2, but if you got a hit
or a walk, you didn't have to put anything into the hat and every batter you pass the hat until somebody hits a home run and on that one, we were in a really large group, it was one of my friends brought like 10 other guys and there was like $1,200 in it, which was a massive amount of loot, it still is a massive amount of loot for somebody who was 23 and I won all that money in one fell shot, the thing is the part of the deal is that if you
“win that money, you have to spend it on booze for everybody, so I was left with roughly”
$11 after I bought everybody a beer, but still it was a memorable moment, thank you for listening to my story about Mount Ball that turned into home run ball and give it a try your next big league ball game, we need the NFL version, we need a football version of that is what I'm getting that sounds like everyone got drunk that's my read we may have shown up, we may have shown up to the ballpark that way, maybe we just continued going in that direction, Mike
Fuentes or Gino did my opening remarks inspire you in any direction, do you have anything that we can steal? I just volunteer Mount Ball, I don't know what the NFL version of that would be, but what could we take from another sport to jazz up the NFL a little bit more? Okay, let's see, we got we talked about this a little bit, power plays from the NHL, yeah, if you have let's say let's call it a personal foul penalty that it brings that up,
you have a personal foul penalty, you lose a player for the rest of the drive. No, I don't like that, you don't like that one? Sounds fun to me. I do like more points in the NFL, it's all about how to do it. I mean, you get a pass at your fear, it's about to have the quarterback on the face mask when you're rushing him and it's 15 yards, so we don't need anything to help them anymore, right?
I mean, the cheap one to say is fighting, but that don't want to lose a guy for two minutes either, you know, so it's it's even though it would be pretty epic if like an offensive Lyman
“and a DN just throw off their helmets because you got that's what the hockey players do,”
you take their helmets off, take the gloves off, and they start the ref just let it hold out.
Yeah, but the second they go down, that's it, you know, the thing is I don't think you'd be able to
keep the other like gigantic people away from each other. What's the fist starting throwing up? So the idea, well, well, what it might inspire though is much like hockey has, it has goons. Would you start? Well, I guess NFL players are all by definition. The entire defensive line on the other side is Goons. I guess you already have a bunch of feudalists ready to go, right? I guess,
Maybe you make it, Mike, maybe that the solution is you're allowed the fight,
but it has to it can only be your kickers.
Ooh, no, what if like we take? They'd be good like MMA because they could kick you.
“Yeah, well, that, well, thanks. How about we just take those two guys and we separate them to like a pin?”
Like a like a squirt circle off on the side right? Yeah, so that way you don't have other guys trying to jump in, you know, and then maybe even better you electrify the fence. There you go. Now that really keeps everybody out. It keeps these guys doing it, and then that's, there you go. And then who, you know, after that, it's, you know, we'll say five dry. You know, it's five minutes major for fighting. We'll just say five dry. I can't play for five drives.
All right, I got one. How about if, how about if you do this?
Let's, you got five plays. My soccer does here. You just have a running clock the whole time.
And the end of the game when the clock runs out, the referee decides an arbitrary amount of time that they can play it. Only he knows the amount of time left at the game. Even better at the beginning of this season. We get every team like like the Walter Pay and Man of the Year award, except everybody picks a fighter and they all go to a secret island in the middle of the center of Central Asia and they have a Kumatee, right? And then the winner of the NFL blood sport,
“they automatically make the playoffs and everything I'll play this season. How about that?”
Well, let me listen. If they're now doing, I don't know if you saw that flag football drive, and I really am anxious to talk with Pablo about that and who it benefits. If they, if they can now and the league has signed off on them running around out there and, you know, they literally were getting knocked down to the ground and everything, you couldn't do the old superstars competition at the cathalon of actually popular sports like 50-R-Dash and closest to the
pen. And now you know, I've long wanted to do this with my friends. I just them too lazy to actually organize it. But they used to have on TV the superstars competition. There was an obstacle course and a bike race and everything else. We could have all of that and fighting can be one of the events. Let's not just have it be MMA or, or, or Pugillism, but that is just one of the 10 or 12 events we have. They say just a little, a little powwow here and look at how we've just improved football. I hope
Roger Gidell, like Trust Roger Gidell, is listening. Before we get the Pablo, a couple of things I've been thinking about. This isn't a new thought for me. I don't understand why we call pants, as in plural. When it's only one item of clothing, I understand there are two pant legs, but you get the pluralization when you say two pant legs, much as you do, when you say two shirts
“sleeves. They're shirts sleeves because they're two of them. But it's a shirt. You understand?”
Why is it? Why is it? Give me my pant. I want my pant. I need to put on my pants so I can go, why would I put on pants? That implies I'm putting on two things, doesn't it? And when you pull on your pants, what do they cover up? They cover up your butt. So if we're going to pluralize what's covering your butt, why aren't we pluralizing? Well, technically, technically, they also cover up your balls, all right, which is plural. So you chose to go, and that's my point. But there's two
butt cheeks as well. There are two butt cheeks and two balls. It's one butt, and so, but right, but I think we accept as a society and we did long ago that your butt is your butt, but in fact, they're really two of them. They're side by side, they're two. No, that's a two cheeks make a butt, just like the two bars make a sack. Make a ball sack. Correct. And the sack is one, but you need two pants. Well, they're not from two pant legs, don't make a pant. Do you think about that?
No, I don't. I never thought about that actually. Actually, it was balls equal nuts,
but I'm not talking about those kind of nuts. Another thing I was thinking about, the other day, because I enjoy nuts, the kind that you eat. And I enjoy the deluxe pack, except what I don't like is the sucker nut, the big one. I forget what it's called every time I ever think about a sucker nut. I don't want to honor it by knowing it's a real name, but it's the big one. And it consumes like two thirds of the can and nuts, and they call them deluxe nuts, and you
think like, oh, I'm fancy. I'm going to get those, because they have pistachios and cashews and almonds along with peanuts, but it also comes with that gigantic, that big sucker nut in there, that nobody wants it, that has no taste. It's value is to the nut makers, is that it consumes the whole thing, and you got to pay for it, and it comes along with all the other nuts. And so they just throw them all in there. I can't think of what that dang nuts call, but I don't want to know what
it's called, but I'm not going to eat them. But anyway, whether you're eating the deluxe nuts, or you're eating peanuts, or almonds, or cashews, or shame the devil, the sucker nut, what they have in common is they're all a snack item, but they're the worst snack item, bar none, to eat
With a sandwich.
with your sandwich? I don't know. I wouldn't like, I consider cookies a snack, but I wouldn't have it with a side of sandwich. And you don't have a snack, they're a treat. Okay, now that's fucking some antics. All right. What did what did Pablo say? I went, what do you mean? What did Pablo say? Those are just, those are just some antics. Those are some antics. Get to the Pablo interview. This is some antics. Oh, they're not a, they're not a snack. They're a treat.
What? What do you, what do you, you, you, you, you, you, uh, you're on the payroll a big not here or something. My point is that you wouldn't, it can't be a snack item. Sometimes I treat myself with a big nut if they don't say. Well, it, I'm working blue here. I'm trying to have a nice
“conversation with you about something important, and you have to turn it into something ugly. All right.”
I mean, I just think, I like, I like what you got going. Because you just want, you just want, nuts to be chips. That's all you want. You just want nuts to be chips, and they're not. Okay, we get it. nuts are not chips. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, nuts are not french fries. We got it. All right, enjoy. I enjoy a nice pretzel with my sandwich sometimes. No, you don't. That's a lie. That's a lie. That's a lie. How dare you, sir. Oh, but you're thinking, you're thinking of like, hard little
pretzels, not big soft pretzel. That's what he's okay. I get you. I need a soft. These are all bar snacks. Bullet pretzels, bullet nuts with a beer. That's it. I mean, what my sandwich? A soft pretzel is a tone thing that you get at the ball. Yes, but the hard pretzels. What's the
name of the pretzel that comes in the bag? A hard pretzel. Yeah. No, yeah. You had the first time. Yeah.
What's it called? It's a hard pretzel. No, I know. But what's the name of the brand? Like, what's the most famous brand? I don't know what they're called. They didn't pay for advertising on the show. They're snipers of Berlin. And then there's snipers of the other one. And I can't think what that one is. But why, I mean, of all the pretzels, of all the people, all the surnames, on the planet earth, two pretzel makers, both names snider have the two most popular pretzels
“in the world. That's fascinating. And I think that's a good thing for Pablo to investigate.”
Maybe we should get to him right now. But instead, let me tell you this, um, or ask you guys what you think about this. My sister Debbie sent me a meme. And it was, uh, it was a, it was like a
hypothetical. And it was, you get a billion dollars if you can call somebody in your, uh, in your
list of contacts. And they don't answer. If you call that number right now, and they don't answer, you win a million dollars. Who would you call? And she said, I would call you David. And I said, wrong. That's that. I said, you're wrong. Because I've conditioned you through decades of hard work of forcing you to live my way. I'm not going to live in your world. You're going to live in mine. Everybody in the family now knows. Don't call Dave on the phone. He's not going to answer.
But that means when you do call me, it's got to be an emergency. Someone must have kicked. So I do answer when I see your name. So if you did call me, I would answer. And you would win a billion dollars. And I would say, who died when you answered the phone? And then you would say,
“nobody, in fact, I'm a billionaire. And I would say, can I borrow some money? That's how that conversation”
would go. So she's a dope. And now I hope she doesn't call me because she doesn't deserve a
billion dollars for her lack of faith. I'll say you, guys. But wouldn't she be more upset that you picked
up because then she wouldn't be a billionaire? All right. She wouldn't win the billion if I could go. So that should be upset at you, too, for picking up. That's what you can't win. This is a loose situation. The situation is just cooked. All right. Go eat some nuts, Mike Flint. There's here we go. Let's get the Pablo Tory. Ooh, time to get fancy everybody. We have a three-time Emmy nominee with us by the way.
Congratulations, Muzzle Tuff, all the rest of it to everybody associated with the great show, Pablo Tory finds out our pals Bailey and Randy and David and Amine and Matt and everybody else who works on the show. Good for all of you, guys. And now the guy whose name is actually a part of that show, it's Pablo Tory. Congratulations to you. How are you, man? Thanks for the time. Dude, thank you for already being better at incorporating this thing into my own resume.
I have yet to break out that that honorific, and now I will do so without fail multiple times during this program as a three-time Emmy nominee. Thank you. Well, first things first, Pablo, have you considered if you do win one? Let's just say one. Let's not get greedy. You get one. Have you considered how you'll handle your acceptance speech? You know, I, this is sincere answer, which I will give you, which is that
are staff. We don't know where we're, we're so, we're so, we're so, we're so overworked and tired
That I will genuinely thank everybody for being terrible parents and husbands...
in order for us to drink from the chalice of external validation. That is the first response that I
“will have. And the second thing is that I will abide by the lesson of Tony Cornheiser who keeps”
this word semis as he has told me numerous times in his bathroom. And so, I aspire to do both of those things with no guarantee, of course, that either of those things will be presented to me, but it is, it is a delight to contemplate. I've had the occasion to provide council, no one's taken it. I haven't been an Emmy nominee myself directly, but I'd like to think that I would actually do this, that if I want an Oscar and Emmy, or I would throw a big party for
everybody who helped get me there and thank them one by one sincerely, but I would use my limited
time to call out everybody who ever doubted me. Oh, that's a good idea. Right, use of your time, and you can do it right now. If I could try to run right now, if you'd like to. If I would like to also shit on the guy that Michael Jordan invented as the reason he's good at basketball, that like JV basketball player who was just like at home being like, what, why am I being criticized at the basketball Hall of Fame induction for the greatest athlete of all time? What did I do? I need to invent someone.
I need to invent someone so I can be mad at them, and then in a turn of events that is
surprising to everybody, start weeping and become immortalized as a meme. I need to do these things
in the honor of a great establishment. All right, you have a little bit of time to get your ducks in a row. This is a good workshop, I know. Yeah. I mean, you're talking with senators about prediction markets now on the show. It was a ban or episode or in fact series about the NFL PA on going. The 18 weeks schedule seems like it's all but a certain day and sooner rather than later, all the other great work. As we jump into that though, I mentioned at the top of the show,
I feel like your work has coincidentally or ironically propelled you into being a celebrity yourself.
“You're talking to all the big shots. And now you're one yourself. So I think it warrants”
treating you that way. If you remember, inside the actor studio, James Lipton used to wrap it up with that question air from Bernard Pvo. I think I'm going to give Pablo the Bernard Pvo question. Oh, do you have a stack? You don't have any blue index cards though, mercifully. No, you don't have like the Liptonian just like stack. This voice, this voice limits my ability to do the action. I wish I could do a James Lipton, but I'm not going to even try it here.
Pablo, the best. What's your favorite word? God. You know, my actual, my favorite word, Dave is journalism and allow me to gag on my own vomit by embodying the parody of myself that I have become. I'll give you a word that that I do think of in times like this. I'm in New York, you're not. And the word "oppricity," the word "oppricity"
“refers to the warmth of sun in winter walking around. Remember what was like on the East Coast?”
Cold, brutal character building, actually. And then the the Sun will peek out and a ray of sunshine will catch your face and despite the fragility. You will think to yourself, "oppricity, warmth possible despite all of these horrific conditions." And that's what it's like to do journalism. And, sorry. Sorry. You didn't even have to check one of your extra cell phones that you keep in front of you, even while you're doing shows and otherwise,
like real journalists these days do a pricity. I like that one quite a bit. What's your least favorite word? Oh gosh. Oh man, so this is the real answer is like, yeah. I guess it is a word. It can hyphenate it. This is my staff. I become a tiger parent to my staff, meaning that I am the immigrant parent who abuses them if we don't get an A. And B plus, B plus, Dave, just not good enough. Just not not up to our standards. It's like, you know, we think we're good,
but you're not, you're lying to yourself. That's enough. B plus is my least favorite word, actually. Thank you for asking. Wow. Motivational. I love it. This also makes me think that if James Lypton were doing this, this, your answers are too long for the, yeah, you know, bad question. And, you know, like, if you were an actor and I were James Lypton, we would not even
Have time left over to discuss why, why you got into the craft of acting like...
Bobby, you know, was I nervous when I met Robert De Niro, sure I was, but, you know, Bob is such a generous
partner doing scene work. It's why I got it. You know, like, but we're not going to have time for any of that. Yeah. Very quickly. I just, we just had a little debate here and I got sideways before you joined us. Mike Fuentes said that his favorite snack is a cookie, but a cookie's not a snack. When did I say my favorite snack was a cookie? I never said that. I never said it was a favorite. I said, you don't have cookies with a sandwich. That's all I said. You don't eat cookies with a sandwich.
That's all I said. Nobody in the history of the world has had a Philadelphia cheese stick with a side of cookies. No one knows it. But I said that you can't buy, I said nuts are a snack food, but they,
“but they can't ride shotgun with a sandwich. What does that have to do with anything?”
Properly, well, because then you brought up the cookies are a snack and they're not there. So what, so, but what you're saying is that I can never have a snack unless I have a sandwich with it,
because I'm never having a snack unless it comes with a sandwich. That's basically what you said.
That makes no sense. I mean, I think the association with what a snack is is that it rides shotgun too. It's the one. That's a side. That's a side. That's a side. If I go to a restaurant, I'm going to say which I get something on the side. It's a side. Is that a snack? I've had a listen. I'll do the pvo questionnaire with you once Pablo moves onto something else. Can I please speak with the guests again? Is the agree that a nut is a that's a short coming
of the snack food item called a nut Pablo? You're asking me are cookies, snacks and are nuts, snacks. Those are, that's a double barrel proposition. Are what do you two? I guess so. Well, because a cookie's not a dessert, and I think people would call it that, but it's not that either. It's a treat. My constitutional standard is very simple. It's what's in a luncha bowl. You familiar with luncha bowls? Sure. I am, of course. Yeah. There's a cookie in that thing.
They give you a cookie. I'm going, I'm saying cookie snack, cookie snack, nut. I'm not seeing it luncha bowls. Not seeing that in a luncha bowl. Oh, I didn't work out the way you thought it was going to do, Dave. No, I'm thrilled for you. Enjoy.
“Enjoy. Hey, Pablo. Here's the thing I've noticed. Is that everybody, you know,”
if they are on the wrong side of some of your investigations or their supporters of teams or individuals or otherwise, it seems like I see on your social media feed a lot of people coming at you like you hate sports. And I'm sure that's not the case because it also
bleeds through and almost every conversation that I hear you have. And they're always recorded.
It's not like I'm, um, Eve's dropping on your private conversations just to make that. Wouldn't be alone. It's central. It seems to me that you don't just enjoy sports, but you are, in fact, a die-hard sports fan. True. It's, it's funny for this to be my PR challenge. Do I love sports enough guy who's only professionally worked in sports? Um, it'd be a very funny bit of self-loathing
“if I hated sports, but immediately only did sports for money. Um, yeah, man, like I, my origin story”
as a human in, in all of the ways that I guess are increasingly, uh, a thing that I should take pride in. Like, yeah, I was like radicalized by like the 92 dream team. David Stern is responsible on some level, like his, his, his, his, his siop worked. I grew up writing down statistics into little notebooks. I grew up learning about the dream team as if they were superheroes. I grew up a sad parallel fan of the New York mix. Um, while also weirdly having that whole thing of like,
I do think Michael Jordan is Superman though. Um, I'm wearing, I'm wearing my, it's opening. I mean, the Yankees blew out the giants. I am wearing my Yankees, uh, sure's he right now. It's my 55 Matsui, um, because we're also doing an investigation in the hand, which I should not spoil any further, but like, I love, I love the New York Yankees despite it all. Um, yeah, I, I don't know how to credibly convince people who wonder whether I really like sports. Um, I don't know how to do that
without showing them like the, the actual cardboard boxes in my parents apartment of all the cards I've collected, which are, again, aesthetic, um, but real, very, very, very real. Um, so yeah,
That's fantastic.
people challenge whether or not I know anything, because I like to jag around, and I'm such a
“homer, but I think the conclusion is the same. What I think and what I want are two different things.”
As long as you can figure out where that line is, I think you're in good shape. Yes, I, my heart would, would love for certain events to happen on the fields of play. Doesn't mean I think they're going to happen. Look, my thing as a matter of, can you love something, but also criticize it and investigate it and make people who do it hate you. Uh, is, is I don't want to go, like, uh, you need me on that wall here, but just generally, I, I just have felt more like a guy who
believes in me sapy motivational speech, a coach gives in a locker room as time has gone on.
I, I, I, I, I am like, yes, sports should be a place where like fair play matters and the rules
matter, and that, I just like, yeah, I actually do feel that now. Um, and so my version of a sports that I love is a different burden from yours. I am, I am the guy who's like, can we just get it to be the version of sports where people aren't like corrupting it and therefore ruining my childhood retroactively. I would like to not have wasted all of this time. That's great. And by the way, that would be an interesting investigation at what point, um, in recorded history did motivational
speeches in the locker rooms largely stop working because that's a 20th, 20th century method and Bill Bellachek do your job. Just listen to what I'm telling you. Don't go outside anything
that I'm telling you. Just do this one thing for 60 minutes and we'll win. That's the winning
message. The, the Marty shot and the hymers of the world. Like, there's a gleam and this is your one opportunity. And for the rest of your life, you'll treasure this moment if you get it right too much pressure coach. We're ready. We're ready. We're ready to know the stakes. Man, now you're ready. You're the way to the world. What do you mean? The inches we need are everywhere around us.
“What do you mean? You got plenty. You want more inches?”
You know, in the age of free agency and all the rest of it and how much a specific jersey costs to get a player's name on the back of it, you don't want to make mistakes because that guy could leave town five months later and now you're left holding this jersey with nothing to do with it. So let's say you're on a tight budget. You can only get one or two or three of the best New York specific jerseys which are the ones that you want as a New York City Sports fan. And I will also ask
you to name the one, two, three that you definitely don't want. This is a, this is probably the biggest, my, my definition, the biggest list available at any sports town is New York City. Right. So you're saying if I, if I can only afford three jerseys to honor my, my, my metal stand of New York athletes and then the opposite. Okay. So number one, I mean, one of them I'm wearing. So let's just say for the sake of consistency that I do care about Matsui so much that he deserves
to be on that. Great. I'm going Charles Oakley, man. I'm going Charles Oakley. I love a guy. So Oak briefly Oakley, the patron saint of the security guard being evicted from the garden by Jim Dolan security guards. How heartbreaking was that of Ben for like the security guards to apprehended Oakley to have a single tier in my, this is how I imagine a single tier rolling down their cheek as they must throw out their favorite human. And so I will honor Charles Oakley in that
regard. Um, good thing he, he's fully, too. Right. I'm, I wonder how many security guards that could, it might have taken. Yeah, exactly. Uh, man. And then I'm going, look, and I own this literally 17. I want, I want the Jeremy Lynn the most fun I ever had as a New York sports fan despite many, many world series was insanity. And I still, I still have a Jeremy Lynn Shersey. It is the most compromised I've ever been journalistically was covering Jeremy Lynn for sports
illustrated despite him being also an Asian American Harvard graduate who I talked to me before he became a person that tablets are rumoring might date Kim Kardashian, which was an actual thing.
“Stunning way that we should all remember that the New York Post once reported.”
Then the bottom three. Oh, boy. I thought he because I think that again, from three thousand literal miles away, it's easy for me to say L. T. 56, a Geter II. I would say Rangers Brian Leach,
Too, not Mark Messier.
Oh, sure. Clyde Fraser mooky. I'm, I love. I'm not for a Yankees fan. Yeah, understand. But I, so yeah, and I, hmm, look, I have a different criteria for what I choose to enthrine, but like many Agbayani, the Hawaiian Punch, met outfielder. I've been claiming him as Filipino even if he's not for years. He deserves consideration as well. Gosh, I remember being woken up by my parents to be like, hey, uh, the Rangers, they're winning the Stanley Cup in '94. I mean, being like,
“I end up in the hockey, but not really. I mean, like, oh, cool. Mark Messier. That's why they take”
my seat for that reason. Yeah, um, but honestly, like if you, you just named some guys where it's like, could I be caught dead? We're going to L. T. Jersey in 2026, no. Um, Darrell Strawberry, who we, we tried to book on this show recently because we want to do an episode. We did an episode. We wanted him to be a character in it about people have been pardoned by President Donald Trump. He promised an interview
he'd never delivered on it, hard for me to wear a strawberry jersey for the reasons aforementioned.
It's a rough man. When Darrell Strawberry comes up, could you believe a year in New York City at the time while you're a little kid, obviously, but if anybody would have tapped you on the shoulders, say, hey, by the way, you know, Dwight Gooden and Darrell Strawberry, the two, the, the
“twin stars of the Metropolitan, in 1988, if somebody said this to you, neither one of them is”
going to the Hall of Fame. You would never believe it. Dude, I was looking back at Darrell Strawberry is baseball reference like all the fame resume and was still stunned to be like, oh, he's not even close. Like, not even close. Like in my mind, I'm still like, this was the greatest young hitter in Major League Baseball and he was. And then everything, of course, happened that explains why you won't take my call. This point. At Chris Dudley is my third. I'm sorry, man. You got a ball
thrown at you by Chiquillo Neal after he's, you dunked on by Shaq, you throw the ball at Shaq afterwards. You go to Yale, you run for Senate. It's horrible. I'm sorry for letting the world, the real world inflect my choices for like the three least favorite jerseys I would ever purchase.
“But it's hard for me to not look at those three guys and be like, what are we doing?”
What are we doing, man? Fascinating, fascinating stuff from you there. Did you hear about the team that it was in last place and stayed there and then their star player ran into the wall and he died right out on the field. But then he was replaced by this reserve guy, mysterious, 35 years of age he was and he came out of, no, mysterious circumstances. And one of your peers older than you,
Max Mercy, somehow never could get to the bottom of this until deep into the season. It was a crazy
season, by the way, because the owner of that same baseball team New York based was gambling against his team, which is a no, no, you're not allowed to do all that. And by the way, I should mention, it turns out once Mercy did get to the bottom of this scandal that the guy who came from nowhere actually got shot by a ray in the woman who didn't like athletes for some reason. And so she shot him. Do you know about this? Would you wear a hobs number nine? Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like
Roy Hobbs is a person I would have investigated if I was around. Yes, sorry, it doesn't quite add up. How natural are you, sir? That's right. I have, let's let's talk about Wonder Boy.
Let's talk about it. We get some tests. Let's test that wood. Wonder Boy cracks in the critical
moment as I don't have to tell you. And then he says, he says, go, go pick me out of winter, Billy, or Tommy, or Billy, Billy, Billy, Johnny, Jim, Jimmy, go pick me out of winter. And the kid goes over grabs the Savoys special. We're allowed to do that in the bottom of the night. They're allowed to just go grab a bat and throw it in there. The jump has no questions about this. Just as there was literally a character in deflate gate, whose name internally with the Patriots was the, sorry, it was,
you know, it was the deflator. So, too, is that kid? Like, that's, that's okay. Sure, let's not ask questions about what he's up to. The Savoys special. It, that's the, that's the, that's the home run, bat, priceless. Um, another movie I was thinking about some of these things. It would be fictional sports stuff, but that would be great Pablo investigations. Would be, did you see the game the other night with the star receiver? He made his ninth catcher the game
in the end zone to essentially seal the game before the nation. But when he caught the ball,
He got knocked cold on the field.
like two of for like three, four seconds and then like woke up and like, whoa, what happened, kind of thing. He was out cold for a minute on the field and the doctors and everybody are out there.
Then they finally wake him up and he starts dancing because he's got presumably some serious
head trauma. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know where he is. And then he's conducts interviews in his hug in his agent. They don't take him to the hospital. They don't do anything with him. I just did dance away there, Phela. That's a great investigation for Jeremy McGuire's top client, right? Look, Rod Sidwell. Um, I was, I was, the other day I was like, is this, like, did Michael Irvin sue over this? Like, did he have like, did he have an objection to like,
that's clearly based on like me? This character, um, and all of his like, uh, general aesthetic and vibe. Um, but yeah, I would like Will Smith's doctor Bennett Omalu to have to interview Jeremy McGuire over how old. We want, we want this to feel real, everybody. So we're going to
break the third at the climax. He does have to get tested. You know, he has to go to the blue tent.
That's right. And then years later, um, his brain gets donated and uh, researchers have to thin slice it for town, the protein that contains traces of chronic traumaticants have a lot of
“the, um, yeah, it's a dark, you know, I get why they did it that way, honestly. It's probably”
best that they didn't go that direction. Uh, just a couple more things for you, um, uh, back to a reality here. I don't want to get up on Mount Pious about this, but can you explain to me what went on in Los Angeles with the flag football thing? I understand that I understand that Prince Boan saw man in Tom Brady made out, but, but sincerely, why I get that the Olympics are going to happen in two years and so on that level, like showing the world what it looks like, I guess, kind of thing,
but why otherwise should normal people be watching this? You know, uh, I was watching the war in Iran and thinking of myself, how will this affect the flag football contest that fanatics is putting on with Tom Brady and Saudi Arabia and low and behold, low and behold, the gut, you got relocated to Los Angeles. I mean, yeah, exactly. We could talk about insider trading on Pauli Market all you want, uh, and Kalshi, but really, the tell happens to be that you had the stars
of the NFL community against the bunch of dudes who just clearly, I don't know, we're willing to do things that tested their ligaments strength way more. We're living in this era in which
the greatest, most powerful, most valuable thing is sports rights. And so the notion that you
can sort of like shoots and ladders your way to being a new popular sport, using the existing popular well-paid, very famous human beings that play the most popular sport already, and all you got to do is call it flag football, feels like a real, if it feels like a shark tank idea, like you say you want more sports in America. Well, what if I told you sharks that I'm going to give you football, but not will there be Tom Brady? Well, yes, for the first one,
you know, I just like again, and then it goes from there. It's it's, uh, I get it. I get why they're
“trying it. Why should you care about it? I think the question will be when Tom Brady and Joe Burrow”
and all these, and Odell Beckham Jr. who's just like, you know, whatever, you could, you could do any catches in the end zone with his life football, I guess. Um, you could, you could persuade and audience that this is this is football. Um, just try doing it though without the guys who you recognize. In a way though, right, that it by by that logic though, it would have been better than for the NFL guys to whip the guys who are nominally flag football, professional flag football players,
because it undermines that it's football if these randos can whip our heroes. I agree. I agree. I, I, I, it's like, uh, if the NBA had its all NBA first team placed landball, well, actually, no, that now I'm, now I'm already convinced that that's a good idea. I would want to
“watch that, and I do think this landball pros would defeat them. Oh, that I think of right it. You know,”
I did color analysis on, uh, on slamball way back. Wait, is that right? Yeah, that's true. Is that right? That is true. Oh, my god. How many, how many concussions did you see in your announcing career, and that's for? I must be some kind of a cynic, because I, well, I am some sort of a cynic,
As it turns out.
football. I'm going to have to wait 18 months and see how it goes before I, before I buy in time
as precious. I'm speaking of which only a couple more here for you. What would happen for real from, as far as you can tell? What would happen if Spain, and let's say Brazil, or maybe Mexico, or some combo of those, just said, we're not coming to the world cup. We don't like the looks of things there. You're, we're making a statement here. We are actually concerned about our athletes, or rather, we're, you know, a spread of core. We're not showing up because of the way you're
treating brown people around, around the globe. What would happen? I mean, look at the group that
“the United States got that was not accidentally, I think, engineered by FIFA. We would so immediately”
in the United States at the direction of the most powerful people in our country, immediately
not give a shit and proclaim that we were, in fact, the one true champions, if that's the way it would have to go. Oh, so I wish that you think it would bend to the U.S. Is what brave news? What great news? The actual good teams are, I mean, again, I'm not saying that they did the war on Iran to move like football to LA. I'm not saying that ISIS killing American citizens so that we could discourage other actual powers in soccer to not show up to the world cup. I'm just saying
a bit of a convenient outcome, a bit of a convenient outcome for the U.S. and a, you know. It really does seem though. Maybe you're right. I mean, it feels to me like they have actual
“leverage and could actually change, you know, what's happening politically by making threats like that.”
That would be such a black eye or maybe maybe you're right. Speaking of powerful institutions
against individuals, the Baltimore Ravens did what they did with Tray Hendrix and it stinks and everybody knows what happened and everybody just kind of toes the line. But so long as we're going to allow it to happen and you're going to accept bogus, easy to see through excuses. What's the stop someone like Malik Willis serving as this generation's Kurt Flood and saying, well, things have changed in Miami since I signed there. Yeah, that, that deal. I, I was sold a bad bill of goods there.
So I don't have to go there. I'm reopening my free agency. Yeah, I like the era of Baxies. Yeah, sports is entered into. You thought it was no Baxies surprise. It's Baxies. Like, the whole thing around how do you get out of this, you know, it's, it's the, it's the medical tent, but in a contractual sense. Like, what's happening on those tests? What are you seeing? Who gets the pull the trigger based on that? Can you, why is it? Why can't the player medically test the owner? And be like, whoa,
whoa, you thought your problems with my degenerative knee condition? I just ran a DNA test on you and you carry the biomarker for Alzheimer's. What the hell? I have to work for you now. That's
“exact. I mean, but for real, like, hey, GM, like, you know, I, I think your process of building a football”
team seems degenerative, or at least kicking it down the row by a year. I wasn't clear on that, so now I'm not showing up. And who's to say, well, that's, that's bogus. You're exactly right, when it's a subjective thing that the raven say his knees know good. I mean, obviously it's out in the open. It's, it's just nonsense because seems like he's going to play for the raiders just find this year. So if team by team can assess meta of conditions and say not high enough, not good enough
for us, then what do we do? Why can't players do the same? I think we're, unfortunately, as much as we just attempted to be like a better advocate for labor rights than perhaps the actual NFL PA this moment. As much as we just tried to do that, I do think this probably just directionally brings us to yet another televised special, like it's not the combine, but it's just like medical tests. Like we're, we're now going to watch the scope of Max Crosby's knee. It's going to be a
subscription product on ESPN+. You can pay for it. And I demand to see those MRIs. And now I can get them for the low price of 99 a month in addition to my, you know, regular NFL premium package. Oh, score scored with some of that great NFL film Sam Spencer am music. As the probe is going through the
Knees, that's going to be great.
one of those like those snake cameras entered into his body in solidarity as the guy was running
to failure like the players. Yeah. Exactly. As far as the NFL PA thing, it really, I mean, I encourage everybody to go check it out and how it, I guess that's the last question for you. You know, first of all, it seems from a distance to me that Dominique Foxworth just, you know, made made better sense. If only because of what Pablo Torre and company uncovered with JC Trader and JC Trader steps down, it was cleaner to go in a different direction. But I completely
understand the explanation that you provide for it. But I guess bottom line is how does this impact
“things for the for the football fan? What is the, what is the, what is the long and short of it?”
Yeah. So my main political position in sports and in politics is competition is good.
It is if you have a really powerful entity that just gets decide whatever it is that they want
and they can make it happen because there is no competition. There's no countervailing force. The product you get is worse. Think about it in every realm of your life. You don't want to just buy one thing that only one company can sell you. You'd like competition to create pressure to make that really good. And the NFL, of course, which is itself, the one distributor of NFL games, the only competition provided is really from the players union. And so if you're a fan who's like,
you know what? I love football. And I, in fact, love the fact that football is, in some sense, scarce,
“it's events. It's a thing you need to appreciate because you only get it so often. And therefore,”
I don't want an 18th game or a 19th game or a 20th game. I don't want to make, I don't want to continue to force the Jacksonville Jaguars into the throats of every foreign country. We don't need more international games. Like, why are we doing this? It's not making the product better. I want the product to be better. If the NFL PA is not led by credible people who are not immediately, immediately, seen by the league office as the greatest gift they can receive
because they're pushovers because they're more concerned with self enrichment than they are with actually checking the NFL on its fundamentally unchecked desires. Then the product of football will get worse. And the thing about the NFL PA, I can just summarize it very simply,
“the last regime was the most corrupt regime I think in the history of sports unions,”
let alone the NFL PA. And in fact, in labor unions across America throughout our history, corruption has been one of the biggest problems in all walks of life and all industries. And so coming out of that context, you would think that this union, which needs to be a check on Roger Cadellum, the owners, the multi-gazillionaires, you would think that their number one concern would be, let's just make sure we get a guy who demonstrates a commitment to calling out and preempting
corruption when it arrives. Ideally, before it arrives, instead, they got in J.C. Trader, the guy who installed the most corrupt executive director in the history of sports unions. And then sat as his number two under a new creative job and watched all of this happen and didn't resign until after that guy was forced to resign. And so it's went, you went the opposite way with the corruption problem. And therefore, the product of football degrades because no one believes you're credible
at checking your own institutions self-interest. Wow, you know, the scarcity argument,
I definitely believe in the go back to the first point you made there. You know, death is the
mother of beauty and all that. The thing that makes it tough, except that all the other player unions seem to do a better job of it pretty consistently. And this includes going back to Gene Upsha, not to take shots at people now. Sure, pretty far down the line. But, you know, it's pretty consistent how lousy the NFLPA has been. And there is something to that. But it should exist more in all sports. They cannot transcend that that the owners are the team brand. And players have
leverage up until they stop doing what's best for the brand. So they can hold out the day after the season ends. And like he deserves his money that guy. Why isn't the team paying him? But once
It gets to be laid off.
as good for these next three months. That's the ultimate leverage. But a guy who is already aligned
with the owners is never going to, is never going to fill in that gap. It's just the so obvious
to me that right. What it does is mirror so much what we see in American politics the last few years. Yeah, look, it's a blowout. It's a historical blowout that continues to go on and on and on. And look, if you talk to Dominique, we're talking to anybody who who really has studied unions and
“is a true believer in the premise of them. In brief, the only thing you can really do is”
credibly threaten to organize your workforce to not work. That's the real check on on on these owners on
league office. And if the owners don't believe you, then you got no shot. And so if nothing else, the league, Roger Goodell, these owners, who I want to be checked so that the product can be better, they're looking at the NFLPA and they are laughing because this league is watching it's only
“check effectively eat itself. And in that regard, it's like, yeah, good luck organizing you guys to”
sacrifice anything because self-interest seems to be the number one goal at the very top.
Well, magnificent stuff. Congratulations again on the multiple Emmy nominations. Hopefully, now you'll go on your way and start figuring out and accept and speech three shots at it. I hope you get one, you know, like you found out everybody who tried to hold you back over over your rise and all the rest of it, but in the meantime, thank you very much for the time Pablo and congratulations again. I genuinely fear now that I'm going to get slammed all dunked on three times. And I will think of
your face. I'll think of you announcing it as it happens. Thank you. I said, that's where I came up with the phrase. I's three words for that dunk. Ooh, la and la. That was, that was
“that's why Dave is not currently doing color analysis on any sports. You know what I found out”
today, what I found out today is why Slambal died. This guy right here, everybody. Thanks, Pablo. Thank you. All right, there goes Pablo Tory. Obviously, make sure I'm sure you already are, but if you aren't somehow make sure you are following Pablo Tory finds out wherever you find podcasts and on YouTube and do the same for your pals here at football America. We'll talk to you in a few days until then. Thanks so much, my fellow football Americans. It's been a thin slice of heavy.
