Latest / The Ben Maller Show / The Fifth Hour: No Resolutions

Transcript

The Fifth Hour: No Resolutions · The Ben Maller Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Kutbooms.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: of the old Republic, a soul fashion of fairness. He
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto cutter the same as the
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The Clearinghouse of Hot takes break free for something special.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: The Fifth Hour with Ben Maller starts right now.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: And like that, it begins in the air of Rewhere
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben Maler and Danny g Radio,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: our first podcast of the new year, the first time
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I've cracked a microphone in the new year, which sounds
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: like it's been a long time. But this is the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: second day of January twenty twenty six, as we begin
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: anew another year behind the powerful microphone of the premiere
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Networks and iHeart Fox Sports Radio the whole conglomerate. As
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: we are back at it again here, excited to be back,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and I've got podcasts with you all weekend. Daniel join
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: us here at some point and then we'll have the
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: radio show returns on Sunday night into Monday morning after
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the final regular season NFL games on Sunday, and then
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: it's on to the radio show and the playoffs and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the whole mgilla, the full mcgilla. We'll have the whole
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: thing here on this podcast. We have blast furnace animniacs.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna begin with one of those dopey holidays.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Today is National Buffet Day. That's right, National Buffet Day
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: every January second, an opportunity to enjoy, to indulge, to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: pile high a massive plate of food, a tradition that
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: goes back to the Swedes of the sixteenth century. The
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: early origins of the buffet, and it carried on the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: word buffet actually originated from a type of French siteboard
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: used to serve food was used back in the seventeenth century,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and the modern buffet actually nineteen thirty nine, there were
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: some Swedes who entered the New York World's Fair exhibition
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: back when that was a big thing, and debuted and
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: displayed a Smorgasborg talking about the great foods of Sweden.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And then eventually that led in the nineteen forties, so
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: that was nineteen thirty nine. In the early nineteen forties,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the American buffet began in Viva Las Vegas. The first
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: ever buffet in Vegas, the Bukaroo buffet. That just sounds wonderful,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: doesn't The Buckeroo Buffet, And that came from somebody named
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: HERB McDonald. I don't know much about HERB McDonald, but
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you could eat to your heart's content. And so that
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: was in the mid nineteen forties in the Vegas. By
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, so it took a little while, but
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: by the nineteen sixties almost every casino in Vegas had
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: its own buffet. Now, the thing about this that I love.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: If you've heard this podcast at all over the years,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years back, and I don't
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: know the exact date. Lucky Tony will likely give you
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the exact date, but it was a while ago. I
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: did a deep dive on how buffets make money because
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it seems like they should lose money, right, they should
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: lose a lot of money. You have low prices, unlimited food,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and yet the business model is designed for high volume,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: low margin, and yet they're able to pull it off here.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And the way they do it is trickeration. It's trickeration,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and they do it with inexpensive filler foods and they
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: crunch the numbers and so that I don't want to
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: get too much into the minutia of it. But the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: buffets keep the costs about thirty to forty percent of revenue.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So they use a lot of rices, pastas, potatoes, breads,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: essentially trying to stuff your gut bult purchasing. So they
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: don't spend as much on food, the price per ounce
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: is lower. They reuse a lot of the ingredients across
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: many of the dishes, the same stuffs in the Italian food,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: that's in the American food, that's in the Chinese food,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and the Mexican food, and they just use all the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: same stuff. And then there's also the mental aspect of it,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: where they use psychology to control what one eats. It's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: much like when you go into a casino and there's
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: no clocks in a casino, and they they like the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: penny slots. They make more money in veguas via the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: penny slots, which are not really a penny, but they
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: use the mind hack to get in there. So what
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: do buffets do They place the food they make the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: biggest profit off of, meaning it's the cheap filler food,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the rise to pasta potato, the bread, the filling foods
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: at the very front, the very expensive items, the ones
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: that you actually would get your money's worth at the buffet,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: right the carving station. The expensive seafood, which is not
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: my thing, you might like it. Those things are at
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the very back, and you're going to the buffet. You
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: want to get started, so you're let me get a
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: big plate of rice, of the potatoes, of some of those,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: of some pasta, and then you eat that. You get
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: a little full. Yeah, you might go back to the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: carving station, but you're not going to load up on
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: it the way you would if it was right in front.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: They also have small plates. They limit the portions they'll
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: put on the plates. Lately, in the last couple of years,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: they've added time limits. A lot of the buffets have
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: had time limits. And they also make these exotic displays
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: for food that makes the food look amazing, but it's
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: really low cost food and they'll put that there. And
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: so a buffet on average, they any typical standard buffet
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: will have one hundred and twenty to two hundred customers.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: They will generate profit from forty to one hundred and
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: eighty thousand per month, so it's like five to fifteen
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: percent net profit margin essentially, so the margins are thin
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and all that. I can go on and on, but
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: there you go. So it's National buffet Day. Celebrate appropriately.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: In terms of other stuff, I finally did it. I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: opened my email, Big News here on the Fifth Hour podcast.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Opened the email. That does not mean I wrote back
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: to you. I opened the email. And this is what
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: happens when you hit the pause button over the holidays,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: when the red light goes dark, the microphones cool off,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and the over night the vampire schedule loosens its grip,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and you realize rather suddenly that you have this thing
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: called time on your hands, something that you don't have
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of. It's dangerous time. You have time to think,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: you have time to scroll, you have time to click
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: open your email. And these things have been stacking up
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: like unopened Christmas cards from distant relatives who still think
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: that you live in your parents' house and that whole thing. Now,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: several of you wrote for some odd reason asking about
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: New Year's resolutions, today being the second day of January,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: which tells me no offense, which means offense. You must
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: be relatively new to the radio show, because I know,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: right now Alf and ferg Dog and some of the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: old guard are rolling their eyes right now. They're like,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: what is wrong with these people? Yes, so again no offense,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: but which means I have offense. You've got to be
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: near the show. If you're looking to me yours truly
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: for New Year's resolution inspiration, you have wandered into the
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: wrong aisle at the grocery store. You might want to
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: go to another supermarket somewhere. I've never been a resolution's guy.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I've never trusted them, never needed January first to tell
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: me what to do, like today's January sec. I don't
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: need that. I don't have a fancy explanation. I'm not
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: gonna sit here and give you a ten minute ted
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: talk on that. That's not my deal. This is not
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a self help podcast. I don't have any kind of
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: odd inspirational background music that I'm gonna play, at least
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: not intentionally. Simply put, I like to follow as much
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: as I can the code of the West bunch of
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: old school stuff. Take pride in your work. It's pretty important.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Always finish what you start. That's something that's been lost
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: over time. Do what has to be done. Another thing
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: that doesn't really stand the test of time. And when
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: you make a promise, keep it. You ride for the brand.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And those are not New Year's resolutions, they're not. Those
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: are load bearing beams, is what those are. If you
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: need a calendar reminder to start being serious about your life,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: you're already behind the chains you buy the chase. Think
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: of it like the myth. One of the great myths
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: in sports is halftime adjustments. It's one of these dopey
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: phrases that sportscasters like to say because it sounds really cool. So, coach,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: what adjustments are you going to make at halftime? Said
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the meathead or brainless sideline reporter. What halftime adjustments are
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: you going to make? Coach? It's the great marvel of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the modern NFL and NBA. Of course, it's also poppycock.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I was attracted to the giant metalcock. Many have pointed out,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: whether it's Peyton Manning, Bill Belichick, or endless others, if
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: something is broken in the first quarter, your protection is leaking.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: If you're a basketball team, your shot selections thinks. Your
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: defense if you're an NFL team is like traffic cones
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and a windstorm. You're supposed to sit there and wait
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: until halftime to fix it, because, of course the modern
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: marble is halftime adjustment. Of course, not you make the
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: adjustment right then you rip up whatever game plan you had.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: You grab the grease board, and you start changing things
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: around the what you might call it the think of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: a jigs the dow hickeyes. You change the things around
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: before the problem snowballs, and then by the time you
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: get the halftime it doesn't matter, and then you're just
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: doing a postgame apology tour. Waiting for some kind of
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: arbitrary date to address a problem is like noticing your
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: houses on fire and say, well, let's circle back after
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the holidays. I'll get the hose on it, but I'm
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: gonna wait a little bit after. Well, no, you don't wait.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: There'd be nothing to put the hose on at that point.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Smart people don't wait, they act. And that's always been
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: my approach, not that I'm right, absolutely not smart, but
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: my approach to radio or life or everything in between.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: If something's off, if the out go rhythm is not right,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you don't put it on the vision board. You put
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: your head down and fix it. Stupid and procrastination. Listen,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: we've all been there at one point or another, We've
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: all done the procrastination thing. Procrastination is like a credit card.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun, a lot of fun until
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you realize that the bill's coming at some point. Now,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: on a positive note, procrastination always gives you something to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: look forward to. And I have a lot of people
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: in my circle that are like, hey, I'll get to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: it someday. And I looked and like, today's Friday. Right,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: we're recording this on a Friday. So you have Friday,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: you have Saturday, have Sunday, of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: There is no day called someday that is not it.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: Meanwhile, a few.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Of you also asked about the most memory moments from
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the radio show during the twenty twenty five campaign. Keep
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: in mind that none of these messages were from Terry
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: in England. And am I about to give you a
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: list of the greatest moments? No, I'm not going to
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: give you a list of the greatest moments. No matter
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: how much moving man Matt wants that, I'm not going
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to do it. I wish I had a neat answer
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: with a bow. I don't. I don't have that. And
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I've really been the same year after year. When you're
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of it, you don't stop to take inventory.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: There's no inventory here.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: If you work at Costco or Walmart, you have to
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: do inventory every month. We don't do that. We don't.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: We don't stop to take inventory. You're in the forest.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: That chains saw is buzzings, there's sawdust flying, no idea
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: what the trees even look like from a distance. It's
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the day to day grind. It's the rat race, the
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: industrial complex of the hot sports. Take the overnight shift
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: where the hot takes are forged like steel in a
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: blast furnace on a nightly basis. It puts hair on
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: your chest. It's not for everybody, certainly not for the
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: fan of heart. And still a few moments linger. The
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: monologues always do. The monologues always do. That's the soul
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: of this thing, whatever this thing is, that we have
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the purest form of radio, just a man, a darkened studio,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a microphone, a thought, and no safety net. And I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: say a darkened studio. The show is now recorded, part
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: of it for YouTube. So that is a lie. That
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: is a lie. A lot of lights. There's way too
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: many lights in the studio now The most positive feedback
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I have received all year came from a euge. I
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: can't stand doing eulogies. I despise doing eugees. I want
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to do happy goofy, I want to do ripping people.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do eulogies. And yet here we
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: are again looking back over the last five years or so,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the things that are the most popular are the eulogies.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: When Kobe Bryant was killed in the helicopter crash, that
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: was the most listened to show that we did that year.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: We've done a number of these over the years. When
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: people die in sports, A Hulk Hogan this year did
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: a twenty minute monologue on Hulk Hogan, no gimmicks, no catchphrases,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: just a major tip of the headphone person that impacted
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: my youth growing up as a sports fan. I was
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: a haulk of maniac and I just a bunch of
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: respect for a larger than life figure. As I said
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: in the monologue, it's like a cartoon character on Saturday
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Morning came to life. You'd watch he Man and the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Cartoons on Saturday morning, and then after that they had wrestling,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and here's hal Cogan is like, wait a minute. That's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: that's he man's it's what the characters coming to life.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just for my generation. Haul Cogan loomed
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: over multiple generations. It was like a bright sign on
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the highway there neon sign and so that one clearly
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: struck a nerve and you could feel it through the wires.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: You know there's something there. The biggest download spike came
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: from an NBA story a trade, the Luka Doncik situation.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I want to say, I want to say trade. I'm
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: gonna say a situation. You can't really call it a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: trade between the mav Rex and the historians of purple
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: and gold. It was not. It was a giveaway. It
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: was a clear and sale. It was a garage sale
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: when the homeowner doesn't realize they have a picasso and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: they're selling the picasso for five bucks and a handshake.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Whether this was incompetence, panic, or interference from the shadowy
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: cabal that governs basketball, whatever it was, it was radio
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: catnip is what it was. The phones lit up, everyone
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: was all fired up social media. We just did a
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: lot of traffic, had good sales, good sales on that
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: particular show which happened over the weekend. It happened on
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a Saturday, I believe, and then we came in on
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Sunday and worked our magic. And then you've got the callers.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Like radio does not belong just to the host overnight
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: talk radio. During the day, they don't take calls. They're
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: better than you, they don't like you, they don't want
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: you on their shows. But at night we take calls.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: And radio does not belong just to me. It belongs
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to the weirdos, legends like Lucky, Tony, Jed who Fled,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: the kind of names that you do not forget, that
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: you get only on late night radio. They feel like
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: characters from some kind of dusty paperback novel that you
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: were forced to read when you were in junior high school.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Weed man, hippie, drifting in and out like static on
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the AM radio dial. But it's the human form. The
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: awkward encounters that we have with e Dog from Long
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Island and Steve O in Manhattan, Marcel in Brooklyn, the
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: gambling conversations with a man who happens to have the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: same name as a famous actor, Danny DeVito out of Boston.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Some of this feels like just performance art. You didn't
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: ask for you can't not listen to. And there's some
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: regulars that couldn't handle the grind. It happens, they faded
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: back to the shadows. This year marked the full name guy,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Sir scratch Off in Arkansas. That's the rhythm, the yin
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: and the yang of the overnight radio. People come, people go.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: And I often look at this like graduating classes of
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: a college. Like if you were a football coach, you think,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: remember that team we had in eight that was pretty good.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: We had Pete and Pittsburgh, we had Genie and Medford.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: That was an all time great team. And then there's
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: a new recruiting class and they come in and they
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: make their mark, and so people come, people go. It's
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: like it is like ships passing in the night, except
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the ships are the unhinged, the unstable, many of them
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: with their Obama phones hollering James, people along those lines,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Blind Scott. And you have the social media gumbas, the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: legends like Alf and Fergdog, Late Night Drug Tester, Eke
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and Roseville, Minis, Stevie, Meatball's Mister nice Guy, screwged all
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the regulars, and I'm leaving out a bunch. I'm leaving
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: out of Ohio with the music, all these characters that
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: are part of the show, and through it all, the
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: show keeps moving on, and we have no time to
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: sit there and celebrate, and not a lot of time
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to mourn. The clock does not stop. It rocks the
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Fox box and just another night, another take, another caller
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: waiting on hold with some kind of theory that'll change
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the sporting world forever, or at least at least make
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: it slightly awkward and uncomfortable for ninety seconds to three
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: or four minutes. So when you email me and you
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: ask about resolutions, about reflections, about lists which I loathe,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: or accomplishments, you have to understand going into this, that's
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: not how the sausage gets made. This thing is built,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: whatever this is, is built in real time, call by call,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: monologue by monologue, mistake by mistake, and there are plenty
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: of mallad mistakes.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: They happen.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: It's a live radio show, and there's no January reset button.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: There's no ceremonial fresh start. We're not going to cut
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the ribbon and begin anew. This is not like the
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: NFL or the NBA where they have seasons. Is none
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: of that. We are a year round shop. We are
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: open pretty much all the time, and that's just the work.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And so on Sunday night into Monday morning, the red
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: light will come back on and the blabbing will commence
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: once again, and away we go, off to the races,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: now turning the page, having been away for a minute,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: having been away for a minute, the rare and appropriate
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: end of year tradition, trying to unpluck, trying to unplug
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: for one brief moment. Not only did I open the email,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I made the mistake of going on the interweb. And
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: what did I see? Big bold, self important headline something
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: dot dot dot us soccer growing the Game, one hundred
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: million dollars World Cup, windfall Soccer boom times developing hot
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: dot dot dot. And right there I start laughing, and
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I mean like real laughter, like you just told me
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: that the Jets are one quarterback away from winning in
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: one coach away. It's my favorite genre.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: It's sports propaganda. I can't not notice it once I
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: see it. I love the yell about it. It's triple
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: X rated it is. I call it soccer optimism, porn
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: sop soccer optimism porn, soft lighting, cheesy music, everyone's smiling,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: nobody asking hard questions. So, according to the story, thanks
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: to the upcoming twenty twenty six World Cup, US soccer
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: is expecting about one hundred million bucks. That's going to
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: be their share nine figures. So some CEO you've never
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: heard of, I don't know who this person is comes
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: out and says, the goal is to make soccer the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: most played sport in America. Drop the mic, most played,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: not grow participation, not incremental gains, not close the gap
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: on the other sports. No, no, no, no, right to the moon,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: straight to the moon. It's like me saying my goal
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: is to deliver a hammered dunk by next Tuesday. Well
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: that's great. I'm tall enough, got some weight on me
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: and get a little older here. Now, keep in mind
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I am closer to dunking than soccer. Is the passing football, basketball,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: or baseball buy in terms of popularity in this country.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And let me tell you something. This story gets written
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: every couple of years, every few years, the same font,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: same tone, new names. It's mad libs. Journalism is what
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: it is. Right insert tournament, insert executive's name, all caps,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: insert vague hope about youth participation, global.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Game blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: blah blah blah, publish, repeat. It's the reboote nobody has
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: for It's like a bad superhero movie that keeps getting
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: remade because this time they swear they've figured it out.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Now here's the reality they never want to address. They
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: do not want to address the reality. Soccer in America
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: has a ceiling, and that ceiling is made reinforced concrete.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: It's not made of paper mache. It's made out of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: reinforced concrete. That's the ceiling. Now, keep in mind eye
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: of all people. My fat ass played soccer back in
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the Bronze Age, and today I go drive around on
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a Saturday morning or a Sunday, kids are out playing soccer.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: They've got these club team things. Now, back when I
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: played it with the Ayso, but they've got these club
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: team deals and they're off there playing. It's true. I'm
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: not making it up. Little kids, cute little kids, six
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: seven eight year old kids, shintguards on orange slices. You
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: got dad screaming, you got mom yelling right from their
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: folding chairs off on the side. They got their tent
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: with the team name on it. And then something happens,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: and it happens around the age of twelve or thirteen.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: It's called this thing called puberty. And it's a mix
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: of puberty, video games, social media, highlights on demand, the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: allure of nil money, AAU basketball, seven on seven football,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: and then you've got soccer. So soccer becomes the sport
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: that you used to play, capitol you used to play.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: It's a graduation ceremony. You don't quit soccer. See that's
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the thing.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: You do.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Not quit soccer. I didn't quit soccer. I didn't. You
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: didn't quit soccer. You age out of it. Soccer is
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: America's training wheels sport. It is You're being made. I'm
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: not being made. I'm being real. Nobody keeps the training
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: wheels on forever. You don't. You have them on. They
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: serve a purpose and that's it. And then you move on.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: And here's the part nobody in these glowing think pieces
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: wants to say out loud. Soccer missed its window. There
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: was a window of opportunity there and they blew it.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: If soccer was ever going to take over America, it
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: had to happen before the PlayStation, before YouTube, before TikTok
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: before in endless, endless entertainment options. It's just insane. And
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: now you're competing. It's not just competition with the NFL
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: and basketball and baseball. You're competing with kids who can
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: watch Patrick Mahomes highlights in four K while simultaneously trash
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: talking their friends on a twitch thing thing of a jig.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Good luck, and you're gonna sell these kids. Hey, listen,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I know you're having a great time playing the video games.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Can you please watch a zero zero draw? It's so entertaining. Yeah,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: so you're fighting Fortnite with shin guards. Good luck, good luck.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: It's like showing up to a gunfight with a water gun.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Well you've got a gun technically, but it's a water gun.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: There's no bullets. And listen, In twenty twenty six, soccer
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: will be huge. Let me repeat that for those of
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: you in the back of the room a little slow,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: all right. It's the weekend, the beginning for us here
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: on this Friday. So soccer will be huge. Twenty twenty six.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Bars will be packed, They'll be flags everywhere. People will
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: be wrapping themselves in the flags. People who can't name
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a player suddenly they're experts, right, they're experts in this area.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: A genius is patriotism will carry the load like a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: rented mule. But that's not gross. See, this is the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that is not growth. That's a pop up shop, is
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: what that is. Right, that's a pop up shop, is
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: what that is. It's temporary fandom. It's seasonal interest, like
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: pumpkin spice. Yeah, that's the ticket.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Soccer is the pumpkin spice of the sporting world. It
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: comes around people pretend they love it because you're supposed
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: to love it because it's pumpkin spice, and then it
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: disappears until next time, and then you do the whole
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: charade again, Right, the whole charade again. Just go on
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: and on and on and as far as one hundred
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: million dollars, that's not a cultural revolution. It's a scratch
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: off tickets found money. That's a bonus check that makes
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: you feel good but doesn't change your life. And yeah,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: you can build fields, and you can do this act
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: of charity, and that act of charity. You can fund
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: programs to try to get more kids involved in soccer.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: You can hire some consultants who'll use words like ecosystem
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and stakeholders and big, big words. And however, you cannot
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: force obsession. American culture the way it is does not
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: obsess over soccer, never has and likely never will in
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: my lifetime. And without obsession, you can't win. You won't win.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: You just don't win. Soccer is a guest at the party,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: not the host. It shows up every four years with
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a flag. It's got the Cape flag. Thing, stays for
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, then heads back to the margins.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: And this isn't anti soccer. Like I don't, I'm neutral.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I'll talk about whatever is popular. I don't care whatever
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: is popular.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I'll talk.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I have a talk show to do. I don't care
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: whatever people are into. It's talk rat it's broadcasting, not
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: narrow casting. However, this is reality. Soccer isn't failing. It's
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: exactly where it's always been. It's a niche sport with
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: spikes of patriotism. It puts it. It's a niche. It's
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: a sport that lives on the calendar, not in the bloodstream.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: The same people telling you this time it's different are
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the same ones who said that last time it was
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: going to be different, and the time before that it
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: was going to be different, and the time before that,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: wash rints repeat. I'm convinced that this is the sports
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: version of the Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain plotting world
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: domination every single night, and America just kind of nods
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: politely and changes the channel to do something else or
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: puts on YouTube, and God only knows watches Benny versus
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the Penny, and that's that and then you move on
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: and there you go, and there we go. Have a
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: wonderful rest of your Friday. We will have a brand
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: spankin new edition of this pot podcast on Saturday, and
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: then Sunday that I should have the mail bag back.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: You can send letters in right now Reel fifth Hour
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. Reel fifth Hour at gmail dot com.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: All letters, no numbers, and do that be part of
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the fun there on the mail bag which will be
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: coming up on Sunday. But we'll have another podcast for
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you on Saturday as we hang out with you and
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: for Danny g It's I Big Ben and we'll catch
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you next time. Got a murder?
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: I gotta go