Latest / Normal Men / Episode 61 - Transatlantischism

Transcript

Episode 61 - Transatlantischism · Normal Men

• 0:11
  Ed: So what are we doing?
• 0:12
  George: You're doing the old timey wwe, like the chair thing.
• 0:19
  Ed: Oh, I,
• 0:21
  Lowtax: I don't know what you guys are doing, but I'm thinking about making some carnitas tomorrow and congratulating myself on how not racist I
• 0:32
  Propter: see.
• 0:32
  Ed: That's where I figured this was going to start. Not my, my. Terrible. But yeah.
• 0:39
  George: Anyone eating salsa is woke. Sorry, pejorative. Woke that.
• 0:45
  Propter: Yeah, yeah, it's a cilantro.
• 0:47
  Ed: That was a weird day.
• 0:49
  Propter: You know, everybody, everybody gets a couple of crash outs on social media.
• 0:52
  George: It's fine if you haven't. If you have no idea what we're talking about.
• 0:57
  Ed: Again.
• 0:58
  George: Again. Good. Yeah, a standard disclaimer there. A fellow of the persuasion who actually the four of us all like and think is quite a smart guy. And he is, He's a smart guy. He's written a couple of good books. He's quite well informed on a variety of things in the financial industry. He's quite amiable and, you know, interesting dude decided to call Mexican cuisine just all right. Which regular listeners to this podcast will know does not sit well with your boy. That would have been bad enough, but the take then doubled down into yeah. Americans only say they like Mexican food because they want to burnish their not racist criticism.
• 1:49
  Propter: For the record, I like Mexican food because it's delicious. That's right.
• 1:55
  George: I go to New York City twice a year for business and the last time I was down there, we were at lunch. Lunches in Mexico city start at 2pm and go until 5 if you're lucky. And until you're done. 6. Yeah, until you are good and done and you know, you're talking to clients, you're, you're messing around. And I made the point to say, look, Mexican cuisine is the best cuisine in the world. And the reason for this is not that it is the most refined or the most storied or most historical, whatever. I mean, that's not why. It's because it is the most varied, varied cuisine in the world. You get every kind of meat, every kind of seafood, every kind of acid, every kind of heat, every kind of rich and umami. And it's just, it is every texture you can imagine. Mexico is so unique in how many different biomes it has and the mix of the. I mean, it was ground zero for the Colombian exchange. It is. There's just so much going on in Mexican cuisine, from ho cuisine to the most street level food you can imagine. And I tell Mexican clients this all the time. Like, it's like, I love Yalls food. I love it, I love it, I love it. But apparently it's just because I'm woke. So that's.
• 3:25
  Ed: I mean, we knew that.
• 3:27
  Lowtax: In all fairness, he has. He has had to listen to.
• 3:37
  Propter: Hey folks.
• 3:38
  Ed: Ed here in the editing bay. I'm just gonna level with you because you are fine. Audience deserves honesty. There are too many instances of the word British in the next section of this podcast for me to come up with funny drops for each of them. Because I have been asked, some might say instructed, some might say bullied, into not using the standard worldwide 1kHz sensor beep. As such, I'm afraid that the next section is going to be full of British. You'll just have to survive. We apologize for the inconvenience.
• 4:22
  Lowtax: People rip on British food, like all the time.
• 4:27
  Ed: And by people, we mean low tax.
• 4:29
  Lowtax: No, we mean George, actually.
• 4:31
  George: Well, well, both of us.
• 4:35
  Lowtax: See, I know a lot of Americans.
• 4:37
  Ed: I will rip on. I will rip on our. Our. Our. Our special relationship friends across the pond for many other things, but I think their food's fine.
• 4:47
  Lowtax: Their food's fine.
• 4:49
  George: It's. It's not as bad as we give them a hard time about.
• 4:52
  Lowtax: No. And the French, the French definitely shouldn't like be holding themselves up as so much better than that because like, French food is just British food that some idiot dumped a bottle of wine into.
• 5:04
  Ed: You forgot the butter, like, and.
• 5:07
  Lowtax: Yes, and a mountain of butter.
• 5:09
  George: And they stole a bunch of stuff from the Italians too. I mean, you got to throw that in there. But yes, yes, we'll come back to the wine.
• 5:15
  Propter: I've always. Maybe this is a just so story, but I've always been partial to it as an explanation for British food, which is that you had lots of sort of indigenous cuisine of Britain pre empire that basically all got died out or refactored because they burned down every tree on the goddamn island during the industrial revolution. So like all of a sudden you no longer had these. You no longer had these wood roasted dishes. Like, like, like that's how they cooked things. And then all of a sudden they didn't have any more freaking wood because they used it all to build a British empire. So you're cooking over gas instead. You're cooking over coals. And the recipes just don't freaking work. You can't do a slow roast.
• 5:55
  Lowtax: And then Maggie shut the coal mines down. And then Maggie shut the coal mines creek.
• 6:00
  Ed: Yeah.
• 6:01
  Propter: So you know, like, like certain other empires that may be on their last legs, their cuisine now is primarily driven by Former and in some cases still current members of the larger empire.
• 6:16
  Ed: Weird that you talk about Canada like that.
• 6:19
  Propter: Immigrants to the Metropole.
• 6:23
  George: Well, the other thing too is a lot of what we think of as national cuisines, and this is true of Italy, of France, of wide swathes of Europe did not exist prior to the Second World War.
• 6:35
  Ed: Right.
• 6:36
  George: And British standards of living in the 1950s, which was sort of like the formative period for a lot of national cuisines, not great, they had dropped. There was an issue there. So like, you know, post war scarcity I think is also a thing with British food. You know, again, British food is fine. Like it's not actually as bad. But ripping on British food is really fun because you get reactions like,
• 7:05
  Ed: like
• 7:05
  George: we saw today that lead you to takes like actually Mexican food is bad. The only reason to like it is woke. And you can't pair a single wine with any of it. Which would be news to the vast array of Mexican wine producers who are producing domestic wine, to say nothing of various different varietals from France and Spain that go great with Mexican food. So, oh, buddy, you know, I mean this is, this is why we post people, this is why we do it, to bring you this kind of content.
• 7:32
  Lowtax: I just love that he polarized himself so much that he didn't. He wanted to go after Mexican food because Yanks like it. And then he just, then he got like a fafo thing. If you come at Mexican food, every citizen of the United States is going to come at you. Like even, even the most rancid maga chud will go at you if you go after Mexican food.
• 7:58
  Ed: Right. Because they're woke up. Right? Yeah.
• 8:01
  Propter: Well, I mean, it's like attacking a curry in the UK or attacking a kebab in Germany. Like that's not necessarily the indigenous cuisine, but it kind of is now. Like it's very much part and parcel.
• 8:16
  George: Mexican food is not American food. Like I would never claim Mexican. You can eat fantastic, phenomenal Mexican cuisine almost anywhere in the United States. It's very accessible. Like you might have to go down a dirt road you didn't know was there, but it's there. Like, trust me, it's there. And sometimes it's higher. And there isn't as much high end Mexican food in the United States. It exists especially in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, where I live, there's no high end Mexican cuisine to speak of. We have a high end Peruvian place, but not high end Mexican food. And that's fine. But that none of it is American food. Americans eat it. But I would never claim it as American food in the same way I would claim Creole barbecue. I mean, Pacific Northwest. Like, there's so much stuff out there that is definitively American. Mexican is not. But Americans love it because it's good. Like, nobody, nobody in their right mind is going to look at the panoply of flavors and colors and textures and aromas that come at you out of Mexico and go, yeah, that sucks. That's not. That's just. All right. I mean, there's nothing there. Too much chili, too much acid.
• 9:23
  Ed: There's some de facto versus de jure here, though, because, like, you say that it's not ours, but the Katamari ball has rolled that completely up into the United States. Right. Like, but yet possession is 9, 10 of the law.
• 9:38
  Propter: And I mean, there's also. There's also some historical quibbles about. About Mexican food that comes from regions that were Mexico at one point and that now are Texas. But, like.
• 9:50
  Ed: And I'm happy. I'm happy to give those back.
• 9:55
  George: Oh, that'd be great. I would. I would really appreciate if we could give them back.
• 9:59
  Lowtax: Why? We have been mean enough to Mexico. Why would you wish that on them?
• 10:05
  George: It actually would solve a lot of our trade issue problems. But anyhow, Proctor, you were saying, George.
• 10:10
  Propter: George is right. That Mexico food is ubiquitous within the United States in. In some way that. That, you know, it's. It's near you, wherever you are. That, that. That this is our. This is, with all due respect to Canada, our. Our most important border in a lot of ways and has been for a long time. And that it's been permeable for most of its existence. That.
• 10:31
  Ed: And now you're on Mark Kearney's shit list. Thanks.
• 10:36
  Propter: Like, like some of it also maybe is that the cultural transfers are more obvious because Mexico is more differentiated from the United States than the United States.
• 10:47
  Ed: Yeah, I know.
• 10:48
  Lowtax: Do not get us in trouble with the elders of Galway. Proctor.
• 10:52
  George: Also, like, let's just it to our Canadian listeners, including Sharon, we know you're out there. Sorry. He's right.
• 11:02
  Ed: Wow.
• 11:03
  George: We speak the same language. Like, not that many Catholics in Canada, except for Quebec, but they don't count. Anyhow.
• 11:09
  Propter: Whatever. Yeah. I did think that there was one interesting area that Dan went. That Dan kind of gestured towards, and then the entire thread dissolved under a torrent of rage, which was that I think he's. I. I think he's gesturing in. In the direction of an argument that I believe is correct, which is that cuisines Co evolve with beverages that they're consumed with that you see movement towards. In wine regions, you see movement towards food that tastes good with wine. In regions that drink a lot of beer, you see movement towards food that tastes good with beer. In regions that drink neither, you see movement towards food that tastes good with something else, whether it's, you know, lightly juiced water or whether it's tea or
• 11:53
  George: whether it's there any food that doesn't go well with either beer or wine.
• 12:01
  Propter: So we're getting out of. Out of my wheelhouse here, but there was. There was some talk about. About how some Muslim countries where alcohol is obviously not a big part of the picture, their heat tends towards the complicated spicy rather than the take your face off spicy. And there might be something to that. There are sort of flavor subtleties that you seek out in terms of aromatics that maybe show up more in places where you're not drinking alcohol with your meal, which is a minority of kind of high dining.
• 12:40
  Lowtax: And then there's German food, which is just bad on both sides.
• 12:44
  Ed: I mean, look, how dare you criticize having a salad with mayonnaise thicker than your arm on it?
• 12:52
  George: I mean, but, but, but I mean, what you just described to me is a dish that I think goes really well with a light beer. Right? Like, and also, I will also say, like the take your face off spice, like, that's not most Mexican food. It's out there for sure. But like, again, it's a. It's an incredibly diverse cuisine. So there is tons of Mexican food that isn't this spicy, but absolutely not take your face off spicy. Right? Like, yeah.
• 13:18
  Propter: And maybe, maybe there's something to that. And I mean, North African food is take your face off spicy, and there's a lot of Muslims there. So I don't know, maybe. Maybe I'm off base on the entire.
• 13:28
  George: I just, I like, I just. We've all the four of us combined have eaten a lot of things in our time, and I'm just really struggling to come up. Like, I was thinking maybe something from the Indian subcontinent, but then like a curry again, is really good with kingfisher. Like that, that, that, that goes well together. And maybe not every single curry, but also, like Beaujolais pairs really, really well with Indian food. Right? Like there, you know, sushi excellent with champagne. Like, that is how you really should drink if you're eating sushi. Like, it's phenomenal. It's got to be the right champagne, but incredible. That was another one that jumped out to me as a Relatively not beer and wine oriented cuisine. There is really good Japanese beer. Asahi Super Dry is one of my favorite beers to drink when I once a week have a beer these days. But still, I mean there's just not a lot. Not the cuisine wasn't oriented around beer when it emerged. I'm struggling to come up with something that is better with a non alcoholic third beverage than either beer or wine or that doesn't work at all with beer or wine and does with a third beer. So listeners sound off in the comments. I guess.
• 14:41
  Propter: Burger, like a bean paste kind of thing. Burger, burger, fries and a beer works fine. Although milkshake is a third option.
• 14:49
  Lowtax: I was gonna say I prefer a milkshake or a coke with burgers.
• 14:52
  George: I was not 12 years old, so I don't drink milkshakes.
• 14:55
  Lowtax: But you eat al. You are 12. Everyone's 12. George.
• 15:02
  George: Bean paste. Yeah. I mean I'd have to think about it, but I could see that pairing well with a bunch of different wines. Like, you know, maybe not as like an obvious first choice, but I could see it working.
• 15:15
  Ed: I mean it mostly depends how much sugar is in it, right?
• 15:18
  George: Correct. Yeah, we only.
• 15:22
  Ed: I don't know why I'm too long beer and I don't drink wine.
• 15:25
  Propter: But so what pairs with monster anyway,
• 15:31
  George: Doritos and shame.
• 15:34
  Propter: As long as we're talking about food, I tried out the Parmesan garlic Doritos this weekend. They're pretty good.
• 15:38
  Ed: Ooh, ooh.
• 15:39
  George: You know the World cup chips, the, the garlic sauce chips. The Brazilian themed lays are phenomenal. They're really good. The Argentine chimichurri steak, not so much. Yeah, French onion lays. Eh, whatever. Sour cream and onion with a little bit of razzle dazzle. But the garlic sauce like for Brazil are excellent. So. All right, maybe those would go with a monster. I could see that working.
• 16:07
  Ed: I mean, I haven't really tried. It's the especially like with the GLP1s. You breakfast is mostly like liquid these days and then you know, caffeine shows up later.
• 16:20
  Lowtax: Right.
• 16:20
  Propter: Mostly monster. Yes.
• 16:21
  Ed: We understand no protein shakes. And then monster when realizing, oh, I slept five hours again last night.
• 16:28
  Propter: Do they make like protein aided monster? Is that a thing?
• 16:30
  Ed: That would be amazing.
• 16:32
  Propter: That feels inevitable.
• 16:34
  George: Feels like something designed to make me gag.
• 16:36
  Lowtax: Please. Yeah, please don't encourage this. Stop with this protein stuff.
• 16:40
  Propter: I mean that's kind of like, that's kind of like the yogurt monster mix, right?
• 16:43
  George: Like that's maybe not the protein and sodas.
• 16:46
  Propter: Yeah, no, I've had the protein Sodas, they're okay. It feels weird, but they don't taste weird, they just feel weird.
• 16:53
  George: Yeah, it's what I'm really surprised they
• 16:55
  Ed: haven't started doing yet is because, I mean, like, you have like those fiber gummies. You could probably liquefy that. You could probably get that into a stable liquid form and then just fiber up your sodas.
• 17:09
  Propter: Like olipop has like 9 grams of soda in it per can. Yeah, sorry, sorry. Yeah, nine grams of fiber.
• 17:17
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 17:17
  Propter: No, wait, like, like there, there are, there are absolutely high fiber sodas. That is, that is a thing. That is a thing that American ingenuity has already solved for that.
• 17:26
  George: And just remember, folks, if you're eating a probiotic but not eating fiber, you are wasting any money you spend on the probiotics. So the probiotics need the fiber to feed. That's the whole thing. You have to have them both. So, yeah, feed.
• 17:37
  Propter: Feed your microfauna.
• 17:45
  George: This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 17:51
  Propter: I'm George In Charlotte, in D.C. i'm
• 17:53
  Lowtax: Proctor Malone in outer Florida. I'm low tech speedrun enjoyer.
• 17:57
  Ed: And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 18:03
  George: Yeah, okay, Good cuisine chat, all done. Good work, everybody.
• 18:09
  Propter: So I'm recording from Washington, D.C. where the weather sucks. And we are happy about that for a change because it means that the President's birthday party is being at minimum, delayed and, fingers crossed, ruined.
• 18:23
  George: It's 8:30pm on Sunday, June 14th. Proctor, you don't have to literally stick your hand out the window, but how are we looking down there right now?
• 18:30
  Propter: I think it's going to get nasty. We'll see how it goes. You know, it was, it was, it was a pleasant enough day to be. To be outside. It was hot and muggy, but not like exceptionally so.
• 18:41
  Lowtax: Friday was musicology. Duck got some really great photos of the reflecting pool being turned into Gowanus Canal.
• 18:50
  George: It looks so bad and it's not even because they painted it blue. It's like green and black. Like what is growing in there.
• 18:58
  Propter: Yeah, we'll have to link those in the show notes, but it's pretty grody.
• 19:03
  Lowtax: Year and a half on the job and he's already turned the reflecting pool into a super fun site.
• 19:10
  Propter: But yeah, we've been getting like thunderstorm warnings and tornado and hail warnings today, so it's feeling pretty biblical here in the District of Columbia. And they've, I guess, already delayed the start time on the UFC fight by an hour, meaning that it starts at 10:30. We'll see if it actually happens.
• 19:31
  Ed: They're just going to have two guys holding umbrellas over them the entire time.
• 19:36
  George: Right now, I'm looking at the radar, and you look clear for a couple hours here, but there is a big old wall of thunderstorms that stretches from, oh, Ottawa maybe, to Riviere all the way down to Knoxville.
• 19:52
  Propter: So maybe. Maybe no breakup coming. Yeah, good luck with that.
• 19:56
  Lowtax: Fucking Canadian. Names.
• 19:58
  Propter: If you. If you haven't seen the pictures of the setup for the. For America's 250 UFC edition, it's this, like, tall, metal cage right outside of the White House or Lincoln Memorial. Where is it?
• 20:12
  George: No. South Lawn.
• 20:14
  Propter: South Lawn. Okay.
• 20:15
  Lowtax: Yeah. South Lawn of the White House.
• 20:16
  George: So to be clear, we do want to put someone in a cage on the South Lawn of the White House.
• 20:20
  Ed: Just.
• 20:20
  Lowtax: Yes, we do.
• 20:21
  George: Like this.
• 20:24
  Propter: So if I were. If I were a fighter, I would not want to go fight in a giant metal. In a. In a tall, giant metal cage outside in a thunderstorm.
• 20:30
  Ed: Do you think they understand what that implies?
• 20:32
  George: Yeah, I was going to say UFC fighters known for their very, very good understanding of risk to life and limb. So I think, yeah, at this point,
• 20:41
  Propter: you've probably seen the pictures of the dirt bikers jumping outside of the White House. If you haven't, don't. They're memorable. It feels gross. It's spectacle. It's not even July 4th. It's. It's. It's the President's phone, birthday.
• 21:02
  Lowtax: It's. It's white trash.
• 21:04
  Propter: Yeah, it's pretty trashy.
• 21:07
  George: It's as trash as it gets.
• 21:08
  Ed: Yeah.
• 21:11
  George: This whole phenomenon, this whole thing is a giant. We are doing this to show that we can do it and force you to watch it, and that's all it is. It's all a dominance politics thing. The President doesn't want to watch a UFC fight. He doesn't watch ufc. Like, what are we talking about here? He doesn't care about motorcycles.
• 21:31
  Ed: He watches stuff at the theater. Whose name has been restored to its rightful state. Right. Like, he's a theater guy.
• 21:40
  Propter: Yeah. He's a musicals guy.
• 21:41
  Ed: He has never given a shit about dirt bikes in his life.
• 21:45
  Propter: Yep.
• 21:46
  Ed: He might break.
• 21:46
  Lowtax: He really missed his. He missed his calling. If the. If we could have just made him a columnist covering. Doing Page Six for the New York Post and maybe doing, like, Broadway reviews, that kind of thing, because Trump is very Queenie. He would have been, like, if his dad had just let him grow up to be the queenie. Little boy he was always meant to be. The whole world would be such a better place.
• 22:17
  George: Yep, Fred Trump one of his many crimes. Anyhow, the, the root of the word subjugate is sub yugum in Latin. So juven materi was the ritual that the Romans. Actually, it wasn't just the Romans. It was a bunch of the Italic peoples in Lafundia and central Italian peninsula. They would all go to war with each other and they would do this thing at the end where you don't literally kill everyone after you conquer them. You pass them under the yoke in a symbolic ceremony where you literally get paraded two by two. The military age men of the people that have just been conquered get paraded under not even a literal yoke, like as in the thing that goes on oxen, but like, like a three piece thing made out of sticks. Right. To symbolize like we are putting you under the yoke. And that is literally all this is. It's the 21st century equivalent of what these lunatics were doing in the Apennines and areas around roughly 2500 years ago, 3000 years ago. Whatever. It's, it's a tale as old as time. And you know, like until we put these people under the yoke, they're going to keep doing this. So figure out how we should be doing that.
• 23:38
  Lowtax: They do this UFC thing and then, and they're talking about manliness constantly now, you know, with what's his name, Talarico in Texas and all of this. And yet the White House is out here posting like anime gifs and videos like it's. These guys are just the most childish 4chan brained losers I can imagine.
• 24:06
  George: For the record, the person talking smack about anime was low tax Speedrun enjoyer.
• 24:13
  Ed: That's also correct.
• 24:16
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 24:17
  George: That was Ed. Ed was just agreeing with him.
• 24:21
  Ed: No, they've, they're already, they're already very mad at me because I, I said something that was mildly hostile about giant robot anime the other day and I'm still getting messages about that.
• 24:33
  George: Yeah, that was a mistake.
• 24:35
  Ed: Yeah, it was. I should not have tackled with them because the, the, the, the whipped up clouds of Dorito dust have, have not yet stopped oranging.
• 24:45
  George: My house feels like slander against Dorito enjoyers like myself.
• 24:50
  Lowtax: You're going to be like that guy who wrote the column about tool at something awful. Still has people 15 years later going after him.
• 25:03
  Propter: So good.
• 25:06
  Ed: I, I've made mistakes. What can I say?
• 25:12
  Propter: It kind of speaks to the people they have running the Social media operations at the White House now, like.
• 25:16
  Ed: Yes. The fact that they're all like 18 year old irony poisoned freaks. Yes.
• 25:21
  Propter: Yes.
• 25:22
  Ed: Yeah.
• 25:22
  Propter: I mean it's like you mentioned 4chan and that's straight up what it is. It's 4chan recruitment. That's how you get a job in Republican social media circles right now is you either are a guy or you know a guy.
• 25:34
  Ed: Make sure that you are in the Vice President's signal chats.
• 25:41
  George: There was a post today from the rapid response, the I think White House rapid response account getting mad at the Weather Channel for posting a forecast for D.C. this afternoon.
• 25:55
  Propter: Yeah, they called it clickbait.
• 25:58
  George: It was just, it was just a forecast for thunderstorms.
• 26:02
  Ed: The Weather Channel, I mean the Weather Channel is woke to apparently. What are.
• 26:11
  George: Which is more woke enjoying Mexican food or knowing whether it's going to rain this afternoon?
• 26:15
  Ed: Well, I mean they haven't completely destroyed the NOAA yet.
• 26:20
  Propter: They're trying, brother.
• 26:21
  George: I know they're putting in a shift. So I don't know. Don't they? They cannot take the tacos from us. So I'm, I'm secure in that knowledge. They're trying, but that's destroying Weather forecasting is much easier than taking away our tacos.
• 26:36
  Ed: The taco truck on the nearby street corner still is there. They have not yet succeeded. Yep.
• 26:42
  George: And may it be joined by another one on every single street corner in America.
• 26:46
  Ed: They promised. I'm still waiting. Wow.
• 26:50
  Propter: So it was a pretty good week for New York City. The knicks won their first championship in my lifetime. Is that right?
• 27:00
  Lowtax: 52 years, I think.
• 27:02
  Propter: Yeah. My lifetime and change. Last night they were not favored in the series and in fact were down by double digits in every one of the four games that they won.
• 27:14
  George: Three of the five largest comebacks in NBA Finals history. So this is seven games per. Up to seven games per year. It doesn't always go to seven, obviously. This year it only went to five. It's best of seven series. But this is going back decades. Three of the five biggest comebacks, I. E. The team that was down by the most and ended up winning the game came in this series alone and it was all three times the next. That is crazy work.
• 27:40
  Lowtax: Yeah. Somebody, somebody posted yesterday asking if a team had ever won the NBA Finals by winning the same game four times. That's every time it was, you know, the spurs would go up 20 points or whatever and by the third quarter and then the Knicks would come back. Except one night when our big wet boy was there.
• 28:04
  Propter: There was, there was There was game two where the Knicks were up huge, and then the spurs almost came back and failed at the end. But. But yeah, it was. It was a ridiculous series. It was very good basketball. It was compelling to watch.
• 28:17
  Ed: I mean, you can call that good. I wouldn't. I would have called it entertaining basketball.
• 28:24
  George: I didn't watch a single minute of it. But, like, my question is, like, how. How is Wemby a thing? Like, how does that human being exist?
• 28:35
  Ed: So you've heard of infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters. Now apply that to genomics.
• 28:41
  George: Okay. Eight feet tall and 150 pounds as opposed to seven foot, what, five?
• 28:48
  Ed: We have not got that pull out of the infinite Gotcha machine of the universe yet.
• 28:52
  George: We will.
• 28:53
  Propter: He's 7 foot 4, but with an 8 foot wingspan.
• 28:56
  George: Right. And again, he weighs like 150 pounds. Right?
• 29:01
  Propter: I mean, he looks. He looks super skinny.
• 29:03
  George: He looks like I could break his arm in four places just by looking at him a little bit. Like, I mean, I know he doesn't actually. He's not actually that, like.
• 29:11
  Ed: Yeah, no, he's like £250.
• 29:13
  Lowtax: He looks like the. He looks like the orphan of coast from Bloodborne.
• 29:18
  George: Is that a video game reference?
• 29:20
  Propter: That is a video game reference, I'm afraid. Yeah.
• 29:22
  George: Way over my head then, because, I
• 29:24
  Ed: mean, like, like, bear in mind, like, Kevin Garnett was, quote, 611, unquote, and was like 240, right?
• 29:34
  Propter: Yeah.
• 29:34
  Ed: And by 611, we really mean 613.
• 29:38
  Lowtax: Right.
• 29:38
  George: But. But Kevin Garnett, like, he. He had muscle definition. Like, he looked strong. Like, if you.
• 29:45
  Ed: When you looked at Kevin Grenade when he was younger. He did not.
• 29:48
  Propter: Yeah, no, he. He went to like a skilled, like a skinny boy when he was a younger player.
• 29:51
  George: And I'm thinking of Kevin Garnett from the mid-2000s was the last time I was like, an NBA fan. And at that point when he was playing for the Timberwolves and he like, pulling down double doubles every single night, just like a freak. Well, that was a little bit later. But, I mean, the. The dude. But, you know, and I'm Again, I'm not saying Wemby isn't a crazy professional athlete with enormous skills and a lot of strength. I'm just saying how he looks. It's really funny because he looks like he's. I would really lose an arm.
• 30:21
  Lowtax: I would really like to see him, like, try to guard 2001 Shaq.
• 30:26
  Ed: Oh, yeah, it would. It would hurt.
• 30:30
  Lowtax: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he would.
• 30:32
  Ed: Like, Shaq would have to Catch him on the other end.
• 30:35
  Propter: I mean, when he's still so young. It's like it's. It's gonna be interesting to see how he felt. Like, like apparently, like he's still putting on height. Like at least he did between last season and this season. Yeah, so.
• 30:48
  George: So, like that's crazy. I stopped growing in the 10th grade, so that's. That's crazy to me.
• 30:54
  Ed: He.
• 30:54
  Propter: Presumably he's going to fill out some as he. As he gets older, as most of us do, and it'll be interesting to see where.
• 31:02
  Ed: I mean, he's put on 30 pounds already in the NBA. Yeah, like he has. He is. He. He has already bulked up a lot.
• 31:11
  George: Right.
• 31:11
  Lowtax: He's getting them churros down to San Antonio.
• 31:17
  Ed: I have a feeling that. I have a feeling they have like snipers with orders to shoot if he goes nearer churro. That man is like on an all pro diet.
• 31:26
  Lowtax: We'll get him around a big old women.
• 31:33
  Propter: Anyway, congrats. Congrats to the Knicks. Congrats to New York City. Hopefully all of you guys are recovered from your hangovers by tomorrow.
• 31:41
  Ed: I, I literally can't congratulate New York on anything sporting related. It's the law. It. It's actually, it's. It's state law. But one thing that is true is that like this does break an un. A historical tendency. And I noticed it this year and I was like, oh no, that bodes evil. But like when I, When I was younger and involved in certain mathematical pursuits related to sports, the best bet every year, the. The most solid lock was to bet as hard as you could, push the line as far as you could away from the Knicks on opening night. You would always win this because hope springs eternal.
• 32:30
  Lowtax: And then occasionally you get one this May after. After the Cubs win in 2016. Maybe this is the event that finally closes whatever portal to hell we opened that year.
• 32:44
  Ed: In fairness, I'm sorry to. We opened that like 10 years earlier.
• 32:51
  George: The big wet boys showing up and them losing the one game of the series that they lost is a pretty good portent that something. The vibes shifted.
• 33:00
  Propter: Yeah.
• 33:01
  George: I also want to say I can't stand New York sports fans. When I was still working in the office, my bosses would play Mike Francesa every afternoon. This was after Mike and the Mad Dog went their separate ways. And I find New York sports fans subhuman would be kind.
• 33:22
  Ed: But I will say the Mets fans are. Okay. Yeah, I was gonna say the New Jersey fans.
• 33:29
  George: The Knicks, the Mets and the jets having a little Bit of success as a treat is fine by me. Every other New York sports team, I hope they never win another game.
• 33:39
  Ed: Wait, did you put the jets in that list?
• 33:42
  George: I did. They are, they have been so hapless for so long. I just.
• 33:45
  Ed: They're not in New York.
• 33:47
  Propter: They have, they have nothing at nothing.
• 33:49
  Ed: They're the New Jersey Jets.
• 33:52
  Lowtax: They. Yeah, but the jets have been hapless for so long. But they also always bring in a repulsive, washed up quarterback from Green Bay who everybody comes to despise. And so they, they sort of bring it on themselves. I wouldn't put them in the same category as the Knicks or the Mets.
• 34:09
  George: I, they're not. But they're, they're in the conversation. Right? They're, they're in that tier. Whereas Giants, Yankees, net. No, I don't want, I don't want to hear about it. Rangers. No, not. We're not up for that. I'm sorry.
• 34:22
  Ed: And then there are the Islanders who exist.
• 34:26
  Propter: I think, I think there might be some hope. I think there might be some hope in what happened this week because I think that New York is actually a basketball city that they, they, they genuflect towards the Yankees. They care about the Giants and the way that they care about winners. But the soul is with basketball and
• 34:45
  Ed: with exactly one of their basketball teams.
• 34:48
  Propter: Exactly one of the best. Yeah, they don't, they do not care about the Nets.
• 34:51
  Ed: In fairness, if I had to care about a team that went 20 and
• 34:53
  Propter: 62, I mean like okay, so moving, moving the Nets to NYC was a Hail Mary attempt to get quality basketball into New York City while James Dolan owned the Knicks.
• 35:08
  Ed: And yeah, but like you could either trust the brain trust that there or you could trust that eventually Adam Silver would, would by, by pure force of regulation cause the Knicks to be okay.
• 35:25
  Propter: I mean, anyway, I'm, I'm glad they put together this, this scrappy crew of lovable losers and weight round and, and, and wait draft picks and did the thing because optimistic that it will take some of the attention off of the more noxious New York franchises. You know, the Yankees are pretty good this year, but nobody thinks they're the best team in baseball. The Giants are going to be terrible. The jets are going to be worse than terrible. I don't, I don't know what the Rangers are up to. Are the Rangers any good?
• 36:04
  Ed: Yeah, I haven't followed the NHL.
• 36:06
  George: Not compared to the Carolina Hurricanes. They're no good compared to that. The hockey team up.
• 36:11
  Lowtax: Is that series still going?
• 36:12
  Propter: Yeah. 32 Carolina okay.
• 36:16
  Ed: I just don't know how to live in a universe where Mike Brown is a NBA Finals champion coach.
• 36:22
  Propter: I just don't know how to hype.
• 36:24
  Ed: I don't know how.
• 36:31
  George: It was really nice, too. Seeing the outpouring of enthusiasm and community spirit and only a few burning vehicles in the celebrations, that was. It was nice. I mean, like, you know, my. My Arsenal squad won the English Premier League this year, and it was a similar vibe where, like, they're one of the biggest teams in the biggest city and it's the best league in the world for what? You know, like, the English Premier League is like the NBA in the sense that it is the place that is the best soccer in the world week in, week out. And in both instances, Knicks winning and Arsenal winning, you saw these. This, like, incredibly diverse, incredibly bustling, incredibly vibrant city come together around this one thing and just take over everything and celebrate in the street and share joy. And that's like, that's just. It's just really nice to see that, like, I'm, you know, like, on top of the Knicks being terrible. You know, any city getting behind a team like that is. Is going to be fun to watch. And a place like Boston that had so much success for so long across so many sports is just not going to celebrate the same way. And it was the same way with Manchester City. They were dominant in the EPL for a long time, and you just did not see the level of extreme happiness from a huge cross section of society all at once, all out in public that you did when Arsenal won. And it's the same way with the Knicks.
• 38:06
  Ed: Right.
• 38:06
  George: Like, I gotta.
• 38:08
  Propter: I got a generation gap, George, a little bit here, because when the Red Sox won it. Yeah, you absolutely did see that.
• 38:12
  George: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that. No, no, I'm. But that was before Tom Brady started collecting rings for every finger. And you had. I mean, like, the success, that was very different.
• 38:24
  Ed: The secret is that I think a lot of, like, genuinely, I. I am not just talking shit about football here. I kind of think people very quickly tuned out on that. Like, specifically Tom Brady. Right. Because, like, things popped off a lot when the Red Sox won again, like 2013. I think. I forget.
• 38:48
  Propter: But, like, because Boston's a baseball town.
• 38:49
  Ed: Yeah, basically. Like. Like, everyone I know is just sort of like, oh, okay, yeah, the Patriots wanting in. Yeah. Boston is way more of a baseball town, hockey town, even. I think it. The suburbs are more Patriots than anything I think around here. Like, I think Boston itself is much more. The other three teams, I don't I
• 39:12
  George: don't think you saw celebrations and just again people gathered around TVs in the middle of the street like.
• 39:18
  Ed: No, because there's nowhere to do that in Boston because Boston is designed for. By frigging maniacs. Right.
• 39:25
  George: Like we have here and at all.
• 39:27
  Ed: Yeah, yeah. I mean fair, but like we have the World cup here right now. And as. As you gentlemen saw, I took a picture of a bunch of drunk Scots standing on the Holocaust memorial for lack of literally anywhere else near the most ill reputed bar like stretch of bars in downtown. Right? Like they were pushed off of the bars because there's just one walkway in front of all of the shitty bars, including the one where someone almost died. I. My lawyer has advised me not to finish that sentence. And then like you literally are pushed off onto the Holocaust memorial. Boston is not built for this. There is nowhere to go. Whereas like New York City, you have every corner, those in their grid. I want. I. I just want a city with a grid. Don't say a word back.
• 40:16
  George: But me too, but very different reason for not having a grid. Yeah, no, but it just any. Especially in era where our politics are so dark, where the events that we talk about week in, week out are grotesque and horrifying and soul destroying. Seeing any community come together to celebrate something the way New York did to celebrate the Knicks is amazing and good for them. They should celebrate.
• 40:48
  Ed: It's great.
• 40:49
  George: Happy for them.
• 40:50
  Lowtax: Not as, not as funny as the Philly fans though.
• 40:54
  George: You're right. Much less entertaining than the people who are doing baths in dumpsters and throwing batteries at each other for fun.
• 41:01
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 41:02
  Ed: Like at least New York is allowed to sell these cells, right? Like come on.
• 41:08
  George: They don't grease the foam poles in Manhattan, man.
• 41:14
  Propter: It's nice to see some joy in the world and hopefully the World cup will provide some of that. Even if it's New York. Even if it's New York.
• 41:20
  George: I think the World cup has already absolutely been providing some joy in the world. Are you all aware of this Freddie German guy? The video he's live posting his way on this trip across the entire country. He was driving from I believe Atlanta or Flor Florida to Houston.
• 41:39
  Lowtax: I think he landed. He landed in New York and then flew into Atlanta and rented a card there. And then he went up. He went up to Chattanooga and then down south through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
• 41:52
  George: I think presumably he was. I haven't. I've been following it via recaps on Tick Tock because I don't use X. But the website formerly known as Twitter. But he's. He's posting stuff as he drives along or whatever on Twitter. And every single little town he drives through is a revelation. Right. Going to BUC EE's. Having. Watching the Knicks play. I think it was game four. He went with his friends to some Chili's and had literally the best time of his life at a Chili's watching the NBA Finals. I mean, it's just like there's so many people who have never experienced all the good this country has to offer. Because if you're not inside the United States, you're probably going to only see or overwhelmingly see the bad that the United States has to offer, which there is plenty of that. But there are lots of people who are experiencing the good that this country has to offer. And this country offers a lot of good like any other country, right?
• 42:49
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 42:50
  George: And it is really fun to watch. There's a lot of it going on.
• 42:57
  Lowtax: Like, I. I'm amazed you made it out of Auburn alive. I think they played a friendly there. What was it? Iceland and somebody.
• 43:05
  George: I think it was Argentina.
• 43:08
  Lowtax: Yeah, Argentina and Iceland or something.
• 43:10
  George: It was like radio station.
• 43:12
  Lowtax: Craziest.
• 43:13
  George: Yeah.
• 43:13
  Lowtax: This is the craziest stadium I've ever seen in my life. And Auburn Stadium is. Is big. It's not like insanely big.
• 43:22
  George: 80,000, I think, capacity.
• 43:23
  Ed: Oh, only.
• 43:24
  Lowtax: Yeah, something like that.
• 43:25
  Propter: To be clear, that's insanely big. Like, we have insanely big stadiums in the United States. That's.
• 43:30
  Lowtax: That's a. Yeah, but like. But like Texas A and M stadium is, I think, 110.
• 43:34
  Propter: Oh, no, sure, they get. They get even more insanely big. But just to be clear, 80,000 is insanely big.
• 43:39
  Lowtax: Yeah, Real.
• 43:40
  George: The European mind cannot comprehend stuff. I mean, yeah, genuinely, because I think the biggest stadium in Europe is going to be the refurbished Camp Nou. I think it's eight. I think it's about 80. I think the number is Bayern Munich, I think, can do high 70s. And it drops off really fast after that. Like, there's not a ton of 70,000 plus seat stadiums. And here we have like, what, 40 of them. 50 of them.
• 44:02
  Propter: I mean, we've got. We've got like, we've got like 40,000 seat stadiums for high school football in Texas. Like.
• 44:07
  Ed: Like, yeah, like, we doing crazy serious work there, Proctor.
• 44:12
  Lowtax: Yeah, we. So I used to live like a mile from Nottingham Forest Stadium, and I think that's only like 20,000.
• 44:20
  George: Maybe like 16,000. It's.
• 44:22
  Ed: That could fit inside TD Garden.
• 44:25
  George: Now, granted, you're talking about a sport that plays Games, plays. You know, Premier league schedule is 38 games a year. So filling 70,000 plus seat stadium for 19 home games would be. That'd be tough in any sport. Right, but still. Right, still, it's. Yeah. The thing that's different is that we just have so much land and so much wealth that we can build these stadiums that are used for. I don't know. I mean, our stadium downtown in Charlotte does concerts. Now it does Charlotte FC matches, and that does Panther stuff. That's a pretty high utilization rate for an NFL stadium. Most NFL stadiums are doing maybe 20 events a year that really are proper capacity events. Yeah, that's. You need to have some spare change hanging around to find. Yeah, I mean, there's events. Venues like that.
• 45:21
  Lowtax: Well, because like, you have the NFL and maybe, Maybe your city even has a college football team that rents the NFL stadium for their games. But other than that, it's going to be like concerts. And how many artists are filling up a stadium nowadays? Not very many.
• 45:37
  George: Yeah, and when it. When you are. It's like four shows a year kind of thing. Or maybe 10 if you're in a big market. I don't know. You know, there. There are some stadiums that get higher utilization, but not in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
• 45:51
  Ed: Taxpayer money is what you're telling me.
• 45:54
  George: It's less that. It's a good use of taxpayer money and really just a great example of how rich we are in this country. I mean, it's just like, you know, are our priorities, right? No, not gonna argue they are, but we got resources, man.
• 46:13
  Propter: Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna take a bold stand that the Chicago Bears moving to Indiana, which they're apparently doing, is a good and just outcome because Soldier Field is in a prime location and I don't know if they're going to tear it down or anything, but, like, that is real estate that is not doing its highest and best use right now.
• 46:31
  Lowtax: They should tear it down. Isn't it like a huge dump where the players get hurt every time they play on it?
• 46:36
  Propter: Oh, yeah, it's pretty awful. And it's also deeply uncomfortable. Like. Like, it gets. It gets all the. It gets all the lake wind, swirling wind currents. Terrible, terrible stadium to kick in, terrible stadium to play football in, but hallowed in name in history.
• 46:50
  George: So as a pro punts podcast, we have to take account the wind patterns.
• 46:56
  Propter: We care deeply about the wind patterns. It's true.
• 46:58
  Lowtax: Wait, are we a pro punts podcast?
• 47:00
  Propter: Are we not?
• 47:02
  Lowtax: I'm not pro punts.
• 47:04
  George: Oh, get out of here.
• 47:05
  Lowtax: I'M the guy who. I'm the guy who yells at the coach for punting on from opponent territory.
• 47:12
  George: I'm the guy screwed me. Joining the punt, punt, punt chant every time at college football games. You gotta be a real sicko to appreciate a good punt.
• 47:27
  Propter: It feels atavistic, right? Like, like, like it's. It's part of the game of football. That should no longer exist. That should have. That should have been streamlined out of the game of football at some point. But no, you've got this. You've got this weirdly shaped ball that you're gonna drop kick for some reason, and then you're just going to turn people loose to run at each other at full speed. And it's intensely violent, and everyone loves it.
• 47:52
  George: Can y' all read that in this house?
• 47:55
  Propter: George is holding up a sticker right now that says, in this house, we believe the sun belt is the fun belt. Play more bowl games. Never kick a sad field goal. Punting is winning. Great teams cover. Hawaii is the nightcap. Weeknights are for the. That's in very dark blue. I can't read it for the Mac.
• 48:13
  George: Yeah, run the triple.
• 48:15
  Propter: Let the band play neck and all. Football is good football. That is a fantastic sticker.
• 48:20
  George: Sickoscommittee.org all right, anyhow, pro punt podcast.
• 48:32
  Ed: I hate all of you.
• 48:36
  George: We can talk about more soccer if you want. You want to go back to soccer, Ed? Because we got kind of sidetracked.
• 48:41
  Ed: Okay, so I don't like soccer, but I don't think that we should implode every stadium that holds it. So, yes, that's probably a preference. That's probably better.
• 48:54
  George: I don't see how anybody could not like soccer having watched Curacao equalize with Germany today. Now, Curacao did lose seven to one in the end, which is what you would expect. The equalizer was a moment of glory that only the World cup and the soccer associated with it can. Can deliver.
• 49:15
  Lowtax: I was going to say about stadiums. Could you imagine showing, like, a medieval peasant, Jerry World no. Out in Arlington?
• 49:24
  Ed: No.
• 49:24
  Propter: I find Jerry World intimidating, and I'm a child of, you know, the last century.
• 49:29
  George: So just for the record, Curacao has a population of 158,000 people, so two NFL stadiums. They could literally put the entire island into two NFL stadiums. Germany a little bit bigger. So, yeah, level pegging. There's phenomenal. Really good stuff. Or Japan equalizing late against the Netherlands, missing two of their best players. You know, they were gonna be the dark horses, but then they lost two of their best players to injuries and getting some revenge for all the girl skullduggery that the Netherlands got up to in the East Indies. There's a great TikTok where this, this guy who does he, he does like the ACN nations getting together and like talking about stuff and he'll, he'll do like the different perspectives. So it's the same guy but he's like changing the angle of his face and what he's wearing and stuff to create a multi character script. And it's going through and it's different Southeast Asian countries trying to decide whether they're going to support the Netherlands or Japan in this game.
• 50:34
  Propter: And
• 50:36
  George: it ends with I think it was the Philippines going Asia for Asians and everyone going, oh, and if you get that, you read enough history and if you don't, you should read more.
• 50:54
  Propter: 4018 World Cup. How do we feel about that?
• 50:59
  George: Great, great into it. I mean other than for the players hamstrings. But that's
• 51:05
  Lowtax: seems fine.
• 51:08
  George: The thing, here's the thing for the World cup is one of these events where like I don't think there's a plausibly large enough number. Like having every single soccer, national soccer team in the world play in a giant tournament that took two months would be sick. Like that would be amazing. We should do that. The problem is international soccer. High level international soccer players are already playing something like 50 matches a year if they're fit. And that's crazy because high level international soccer is not jogging a little bit, right? Like it is extremely hard on your body. You are running extremely intensely, you are changing direction very fast. Kicking a soccer ball a lot at like high pace. If you haven't kicked a soccer ball in a long time, go kick a soccer ball as hard as you can, like 10, 15 times and you'll be like, oh right. Like this is stuff that the human body isn't really designed to do. And you see it like players that play a lot get injured more and their careers are much less impressive than they would be because they have such huge demands put on them at very young ages. So this ever larger international soccer calendar. Last year it was the Club World Cup. This year we've got the World cup. We'll have the Euros in two years. Like it, you know, this constant flow of summer stuff on top of club football, on top of tournaments like the FA cup in the uk, the Champions League in Europe, which is all the best soccer, professional soccer teams from each country playing each other. Like there is just an incredible load being put on these bodies and it's unsustainable. Like, it's just, it's not, it's not good. Doesn't matter how good the sports science is. Doesn't matter how well these players take care of themselves in terms of nutrition and training and all that stuff. And they do and they have phenomenal care and every movement is tracked and like, you know, they're the, the support staff are doing the best they can but like you, you can't continue to put these loads on these bodies. And so I like the 48 team format but like also it's just total, totally ridiculous that were asking players to play as many games there.
• 53:18
  Lowtax: Yeah, you build like a whole sport out of guys who had to play running back for Saban and they were just completely spent by the time they got to the league.
• 53:26
  George: It sort of depends on the position, but yeah, I mean that's, that's sort of how to think about it.
• 53:30
  Propter: That's what it's about. Eight miles of running a game. Is that a reasonable number?
• 53:35
  George: Depends on the position. But it can be more than that. It can be north of 10. Yeah. And again, it's not 8 miles jogging, it's 8 miles like alternating between jogging and sprinting. It's just, it's just so much drain on these bodies. So, you know, I, I think it's great, but I don't know if it's sustainable. 40, 18 format, that is, or soccer in general. Either way, really.
• 54:04
  Propter: Professional sports in general. It seems like the, the pressure everywhere is for more games and more play, which from the fan side is really appealing. But from the player side that takes a toll.
• 54:15
  Ed: Is it appealing from the fan side though? Because like, I don't like, I don't want more hockey, I don't want more basketball. There's already too many games. Right. Like, and baseball, come on. 120, 162 games plus playoffs.
• 54:28
  Propter: That's crazy, right?
• 54:29
  Ed: Like you need to. Ha. You need to be able to do other things after like 7pm especially because like, and then you get west coast games. Right? Like the human body is. The human body is not prepared to be watching games that start at 11:00pm
• 54:48
  Propter: I would, I would say that I like more competitions. I like, I like the, the. I like international play in baseball. I like, I like it when basketball does international play. I like the 3v3 stuff.
• 55:02
  Ed: I would like way more international play because I'm, I'm small. NBA courts are not fun. But yes.
• 55:10
  Propter: So I think that those kinds of remixes of the teams and format Those, those are, those are a lot of fun for the fan. The longer regular season, not so much. I agree with that. The basketball regular season is clearly too long. We do not need to play 82 games. And the response from the teams is that they basically don't play 82 games
• 55:31
  Ed: and then the front office gets mad and threatens them.
• 55:34
  Propter: Yeah. So like, because like also like a
• 55:37
  Ed: big part of it and like this is. Sorry, it's time to be a kill droid. Like a big part of the more games thing is the fucking gamblers.
• 55:45
  George: I'm not, I'm not actually sure that's the biggest driver.
• 55:48
  Ed: No, but it like so I mean
• 55:51
  George: it doesn't help, but I don't.
• 55:52
  Ed: Right.
• 55:52
  George: This has been a thing for much longer than gambling spend. But it's widely, it's all wrapped up
• 55:56
  Ed: in the same, it's all wrapped up in the same TV media. And now that stuff is all itself like incredibly deep in the gambling stuff.
• 56:06
  Propter: Well, and you've got, you know, you've got more direct revenues from tickets. You've got, you've got more product to put on tv. Like, like whether it's, whether it's the gambling money or whether it's stuff that is maybe one tier better ethically, there's a profit motive that's driving a lot of this, particularly in terms of long regular seasons. Like that's.
• 56:26
  Ed: And it's not like, it's not like it's going to the players union. Right. Like.
• 56:31
  Propter: Right.
• 56:33
  Ed: Well, I mean the, the push for salary caps in every league is harder and harder every time.
• 56:39
  George: In baseball though, baseball is going the other way. Right. Like baseball's gonna significantly increase a lot of payrolls as a result of the negotiated.
• 56:48
  Ed: Sure.
• 56:48
  George: Baseball is, I mean it's going to take the high end. Payroll is down, but it's only impact, impact like three or four teams. Whereas the bottom half of the league essentially is going to have to spend a lot more on payroll. So.
• 56:58
  Lowtax: Okay. I was going to say, although that
• 57:00
  Ed: is kind of more of like an owner fight as I understand it.
• 57:02
  Propter: Yes, it is, sure.
• 57:03
  George: But I'm, I'm just saying like, like a lot of teams there's going to be a. The average salary, I would wager is going to go up or, sorry, the median salary is going to go up pretty dramatically I think as a result of that. Right, right. Because you don't like all the increasing
• 57:17
  Ed: number of players, NHL, NBA, there is a lot of downward pressure and a lot of it. Look, you know, a reasonable person could ask what sort of conversations Are happening.
• 57:28
  George: Yeah. I mean, but in international soccer too, like, the problem is the other way, where there is no ability to manage labor costs and labor is because of promotion. Relegation. If you go down, your TV revenues drop so dramatically. Like in. This is most visible in the uk, but it's true everywhere, right. If you're in the Bundesliga or Ligon or Seria or any of the big European leagues, even the Arizi, that's. That's Dutch professional football. For those keeping track at home, the. They do only asset. Yeah, a lot.
• 58:07
  Ed: What. The only thing I know about European sports leagues is like, if you want, if you want to have a conversation about like circa 2010 German, like club hockey, we can do that. But like everything else you are saying is fascinating to me because I have no idea what you're talking about.
• 58:27
  George: So because you have this, you. Because you have this thing that you could lose a huge amount of your revenue and most teams don't. But like every year it's going to be roughly 10% of a given league. It varies, but roughly. Or roughly 15%, I should say, sorry. You need to invest in assets that you can then sell if you suddenly hit a revenue cliff. And the only asset that you can invest in, I mean, not the only one, but really the only one that you can invest in that is then saleable and not tied to the fortunes or not tied to your team specifically, is players.
• 59:01
  Ed: Right.
• 59:02
  George: So players. And there are other pressures at work here as well. But European soccer hilariously overspends on talent. The addition of Saudi Arabia trying to build a real pro league, which they've failed at. They're pulling back from it now. It's not going to work. But they plowed billions, I think, in transfer fees into it. The outcome of this is that you get totally skewed wage bills relative to the commercial revenue of the team. It looks nothing like American sports in that respect.
• 59:38
  Ed: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 59:40
  George: And they face the exact. Despite that fact, they face the exact same pressure to expand the schedule. I mean, it's worse, honestly, over there, right? And it's, it's driven by the same. And you're trying to make money, right? Like, how do you make money? You built, you do more revenue, how do you do more revenue? You provide more TV product, you sell more tickets. It's that simple. And by the way, because you could get relegated, it's really hard to invest in more capacity for your stadium. Right. If you're a squad like Bournemouth, which has had this great run, and they're consistently in the Premier League now, But they have 14, 15,000 seat stadium if I recall correctly. It's low 10,000 seat stadium. If they were to go out and borrow a bunch of money to build a new stadium. Well, what if they get relegated two years into that process? Right, like they're done. That's the end of the club. Right. Because they've got this massive debt that they have to pay down. They're not gonna be able to generate as much revenue as they did before and they're not gonna be able to sell as many seats as they would have before because they're in the lower division. It's just like it's death spiral stuff. So you know, if any of this is interesting to you, check out the Double Pivot podcast. Mike Haley and Mike Goodman do a really good job on that.
• 1:00:47
  Lowtax: But yeah, that's, I would make nothing about that. What if, what if you had an 80,000 seat stadium and then all of a sudden your team fell off a cliff and couldn't get out of it because they owed the guy $60 million
• 1:01:03
  George: over investing in coaches? Maybe a factor there too.
• 1:01:06
  Lowtax: Yeah, maybe a little bit.
• 1:01:08
  Propter: Yeah. It's going to be interesting times for certain sports leagues because all of a sudden player compensation is floating now. So you're maybe seeing some of the same deal where it makes more sense to invest in the player side. And some of the places that have overinvested in the institutional side, particularly in bricks and mortar, which until recently was the main place that you could by the rules, invest, are sitting there with a lot of exposure. Speaking as a WSU fan, that's not great. Like yeah, it's, it's, it's going to be real bad for Washington State University that, that we have what we thought was a fairly safe assumption of a, of a PAC12 rev of a PAC12 revenue and we, we built facilities to that budget and to be fair, past that budget we made some very stupid mistakes also that we now have to debt service on revenue that hasn't. That has no plausible path towards coming back.
• 1:02:09
  George: Yeah, if you want to see what college football looks like in 10 years, just go ahead and take a look at what European soccer looks like. It's the exact same thing. It's going to be exactly like that because that's where all the incentives are aligning. And by the way, when European soccer, pro soccer players come over to the
• 1:02:27
  Lowtax: U.S. i was also going to say, not to mention Indiana just won the national championship. So you're going to have a bunch of average ass programs across the country who don't understand that they don't have Signetti as their coach spend zillions of dollars on players just to do nothing.
• 1:02:46
  Propter: Yep. I mean, you know, Indiana, Indiana won because Mark Cuban bought him a championship.
• 1:02:51
  Lowtax: Right?
• 1:02:51
  Propter: Like, like that's no.
• 1:02:57
  Lowtax: Of didn't even spend that much.
• 1:02:59
  Propter: Well, they spent wisely and they spent early. But yeah, you're right. That, that, that, that, that it. Terms of the straight. In terms of the straight totals, they, they were not the, the major outliers. This does make me wonder whether or not we should look into transfer fees as a thing for college football. That actually kind of makes sense.
• 1:03:17
  George: It's happening. It's already happening. Buyout clauses and contracts. It's already happening.
• 1:03:20
  Propter: Well, all right.
• 1:03:21
  George: Like our quarterback transferred out mentor or Duke's quarterback transferred out. And it was an amazing outcome for Duke because they got paid. I'm going to forget the numbers, but they got paid half the value of his. Of his nil deal in like, in a transfer fee. I mean, that's what it was. It's the exact same thing as what happens in European soccer. So.
• 1:03:44
  Lowtax: And it was. That was to Miami, right?
• 1:03:47
  George: Yeah.
• 1:03:47
  Lowtax: God, that inevitable scandal is going to be awesome. We're gonna like. I love Miami because like, when Florida State and Florida have scandals, it's like normal college football stuff. Like some kid got paid out of a chick fil a bag or they cheated on a test or something. When Miami has scandals, there's like, like Interpol is involved and there's just all kinds of.
• 1:04:16
  George: Yeah. Latam's biggest city in the United States does not mess around.
• 1:04:21
  Lowtax: Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  Propter: Yeah, I like it. We're just starting from the assumption that Miami will break some. Will break some rules and probably some laws that, oh, significantly relaxed.
• 1:04:32
  Lowtax: Has that ever steered you wrong in the past?
• 1:04:34
  Propter: No, it has never steered me wrong. Whatever is legal in the league, Miami is going to be 45% past that.
• 1:04:41
  Lowtax: Yes, that's just Miami is. Everybody else is going to do 80 and a 70. Miami is going to do 170 in a 70.
• 1:04:52
  George: Red lines right down 95.
• 1:04:55
  Lowtax: That's right.
• 1:04:56
  George: All the way to Bisque Biscuit. What? Keep us gay.
• 1:05:00
  Ed: Whatever.
• 1:05:01
  George: My Miami geography is failing me.
• 1:05:05
  Lowtax: Well, Coral Gables is where Miami is, so. Yeah.
• 1:05:08
  George: There we go. Okay.
• 1:05:09
  Propter: All right.
• 1:05:10
  George: Wrap it up there for the week, folks.
• 1:05:12
  Propter: Yeah. George, George. George is training for a marathon and has been visibly fading for the last five minutes. So we should probably let the poor man go sleep.
• 1:05:18
  George: Yeah. Daddy needs an ice bath and seven hours of sleep before my alarm goes off.
• 1:05:24
  Ed: Great.
• 1:05:24
  George: Love that. For me, that sound you just heard was me hitting the desk. All right, for normal men, in Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:05:32
  Propter: In D.C. i'm Proctor.
• 1:05:34
  Lowtax: In outer Florida, I'm low tech speedrun enjoyer.
• 1:05:37
  George: And in Boston, I'm editing Stay Normal, y'.
• 1:05:40
  Ed: All.