Latest / The Death Of Journalism / Episode Two Hundred Twenty: Too Big To Fail

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Episode Two Hundred Twenty: Too Big To Fail · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred and twenty of the Death
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of Journalism podcast.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: My name is John Zickler. I'm your host on today's show.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Twenty twenty five begins with two apparent terrorist attacks and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the postponement of the Sugar Bowl.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: What we have learned so far.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: About the first college football playoff. CNN's New Year's Eve
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: show gets hijacked and President Biden gives away some absurd
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: presidential Medals of Freedom.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Happy New Year to you. Hope your new year was good.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I can tell you it was probably better than mine.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I've had a disastrous new year so far on a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: couple of different fronts. First of all, right after the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: last episode of twenty twenty four was recorded, I started
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to get rather sick and have not been able to
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: shake off.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Whatever it is that I have.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: In fact, I am doing this particular episode of the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: podcast fairly drugged up and a little bit tentative about
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: how much I can push this before I start into
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: a coughing spree. But hopefully we'll be able to get
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: through it. Speaking of difficulties with regard to production, it
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: did not help my disposition that the last episode of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, the one where we announced a major
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: transition into twenty twenty five with regard to how often
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: we were going to do this podcast had audio quality
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that was substandard for reasons that I am still to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: this moment baffled by which I hope have been corrected.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: So that did not help my New Years at all either,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But hopefully you had a good New Year's And as
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: we go into twenty twenty five, just to be clear,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: just in case you've missed it, this will be a
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: period of time where we'll be transitioning from two episodes
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a week to one episode a week. The pricing will
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: go down in conjunction with that, and so you may
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: have already seen that we will be doing two episodes
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: this week, and we will be doing two episodes later
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: on in this month when President Trump is officially inaugurated
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: for the presidency for the second time, and then whenever
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: else events may warrant, we will do two episodes going forward,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: but generally this will be a one episode a week
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: podcast for as long as it lasts into twenty twenty five,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and there's still a lot of things still to be
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: determined on that front, but that's my plan and that's
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: my pledge that I'll give you one really great episode
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a week moving forward, but right now we're still at
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: least this week in the two episodes a week, assuming
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that my health is able.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: To pull this off.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: This is a really the spot way to begin twenty
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, but that's where we are, and so
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I just want to reiterate and remind people in case
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: they may have missed it during the holidays, that this
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: podcast is changing its schedule, transitioning fairly quickly starting next week,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: one episode per week except when events weren't otherwise. Now,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of events that happened over the
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: last couple of weeks and over the New Year's period
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: of time that I want to get to, even though
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: they may seem like they were kind of distant history
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: at this point, and obviously the biggest among them were
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the New Year's Day terrorist attacks in both New Orleans
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and in Las Vegas, although the two attacks, while they
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: have some similarities, no known connection as of now.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Although there are a lot.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Of conspiracy theories surrounding some of the similarities between what
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: happened with a truck in New Orleans and in Las Vegas,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: there are many conspiracy theories surrounding that, but there's no
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: hard evidence linking the two of them, although again to acknowledge,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: there are some coincidences, like the fact that both of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the perpetrators served at Fort Bragg and some other things
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: that are kind of weird, but the two episodes themselves
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: could not have turned out more different. Cferently, in fact,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, where a Tesla cyber truck was attempted
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: to be used in a terrorist attack against a Trump hotel,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: it almost turned out comical. I mean, if it's possible
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: for there to be a death and there to be
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a comedy involved when the death was self inflicted, I
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: think it still can qualify. And that's what happened here
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: because what was seemingly intended as a symbolic attack on
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Elon Musk turned out to almost be
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: a commercial for Tesla's cyber truck and made Elon Musk
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: somehow look good. And now this person, based upon their writings,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: was a bit nuts. This is normally the case when
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: these things happen. They were all over the map ideologically
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: with regard to what they were thinking and what their
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: motivations might have been. But as far as how this
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: all turned out because of the fact that the cyber
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: truck effectively caused the explosion to go up instead of out,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and there were very little, if any real damage done
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of the cyber truck turned out to come out looking great,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and Elon Musk was praised by the Las Vegas police
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: for having immediately provided all sorts of information I presume,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: you know, via the computer that was on.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Board of the cyber truck.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And I mean, it makes me wonder whether or not
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: there really is only one Elon Musk.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: I'm becoming convinced that there may be more than one
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know how this guy has the time to
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: do everything that he does. I don't even know how
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: he has the time to tweet as often that he's
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: as he does, and it's clearly him doing the tweeting.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And I just don't know how someone who could be
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: this involved in this many things, this busy have you know,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: obviously pronably important positions within his companies and now you know,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: almost literally at the hip with Donald Trump during the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: transition period to become president, and people calling him co president.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: And yet here he has.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: The time, the inclination, the ability to personally make sure
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: that the Las Vegas police have everything they need to
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: be able to figure out what really transpired there. It
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: was kind of a just an amazing set of circumstances,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and weirdly, like I said, I think it ended up
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: making Musk in the very ugly cyber truck looked better
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: than it did before the attempted terrorist attack.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: But the New Orleans situation was much different.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Obviously some similarities, but the result was very, very different.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: It was a massive tragedy early in the morning hours
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of New Year's Day in Las Vegas. At least fourteen young,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: vibrant people were killed, many many others were badly injured
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: in obvious a terrorist truck attack that had a an
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: ISIS flag attached to it. This was a truck driven
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: by a former US military man who had been clearly
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: radicalized by ISIS. And I think that, you know, the
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: for me, the part of this tragedy that really was
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the most newsworthy or the most dramatic, and the part
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that really might be the most significant. Yes, it's very
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: significant that someone who's radicalized by ISIS ended up killing
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: at least fourteen people and destroying New Year's Eve festivities
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: in New Orleans and a lot of other things, which
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: we're going to get to briefly. That's obviously the headline here.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: And by the way, speaking of headlines, somehow the Washington
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Post had the headline truck rams New Orleans crowd, which
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: drives me crazy.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: We've talked about this previously.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: This is one of the most bizarre biases, or I
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: guess you would say, ways that the news media provides
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: or presents their bias in certain situations where they blame
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the vehicle. If they don't like the narrative behind what
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: caused the truck to ram a New Orleans crowd, they
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: just blame it on the truck. Well, obviously, it was
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: not a truck that rammed a New Orleans crowd on
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: its own.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: It was driven by a guy who was radicalized.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: By ISIS and who was doing this as an obvious
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and clear terrorist attack. That's obviously the main headline should
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: be the main headline.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: That's the most significant part of this whole thing.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: But as far as what we can actually do about this,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: and the part that was maybe the most disturbing to
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: me was the dei nature of the entire law enforcement response.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: It was almost comical if it wasn't so serious, just
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: how ridiculously over the top everything related to the response
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: seemed to have With regard to DEI, almost everybody who
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: was speaking on behalf of law enforcement was a woman.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: There were several women of color. The New Orleans.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Police chief is an elderly woman with a terrible background.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: She was fired in Oakland. Among other things, she admitted
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: that she was unaware that the city had barriers made
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: to specifically prevent this type of attack. That there, you know,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: their initial structures were under construction, but they did have
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a backup plan that she was unaware of and they
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: did not use. And she was caught basically admitting this
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: on camera. I mean, she is terrible on camera. She
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: comes off like a middle school principle. I mean, if
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: she was the principal at my daughter's middle school and
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: she was talking about security at the middle school, I
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: would feel uncomfortable.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I would feel uncomfortable just.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: The way she has about her and the way you know,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: she she's one of these people who figured out the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: two plus two equals four, and now she thinks that
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: she's smart enough and qualified enough to do really important jobs,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: but she has to explain it to you because she
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: knows that you're dumber than she is in the way
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: that you're basically.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: A second or third grader.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: That's why I relate her as being very much like
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: a middle school principal. If that wasn't bad enough, She's
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: not a middle school principal.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: She's the police chief of.
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  Speaker 1: A major city, a major city that not only has
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: massive New Year's Eve celebrations and the Sugar Bowl and
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Marty Gras, but also this year, in just about a
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: month or so, has the Super Bowl. And I gotta
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: tell you, I mean, Roger Gonna and the National Football
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: League have to be extremely nervous, extremely nervous by what
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: they saw in the response to the terrorist attack in
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: New Orleans by specifically the New Orleans Police Department and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: the police chief. Because if that's the person that's going
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: to be in charge or even somewhat in charge of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the security surrounding the Super Bowl, that is a potentially major,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: major problem. This woman has no business being where she is.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: She proved that in spades.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't just her.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: The initial FBI spokesperson, who was a black female, indicated
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: that this was not an active terror So the original
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: no messaging here was that this was not an active terror,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: whatever the hell that is. I don't know how this
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: something like this could possibly not be an active terror.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I guess it's whether not you define it as a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: one person nut job, or whether or not you know
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: they're in fired by ISIS or some other terrorist group.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: But that was the original messaging, and then that totally
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: shifted to not only was this in active terror, but
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: we've got multiple people still on the loose, still on
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the run, still unaccounted for, which then caused an entire
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: wave of panic that I think helped create a very
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: poor decision. And that very poor decision was to postpone
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the Sugar Bowl between Notre Dame and Georgia, which was
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: scheduled for fairly late on New Year's Day evening. And
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: you know, oh look, and whenever one of these things happens,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: the first thing that's gonna that's going to occur is
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: that there's going to be misreporting, there's gonna be bad information.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: For instance, you know, the right wing media jumped on
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the idea that this guy was an illegal immigrant. I
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: believe even Donald Trump may have jumped on I think
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: he did jump on the idea that.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: He was an illegal immigrant. He was not.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: He was from Texas, home grown, but clearly radicalized by ISIS.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: So there's always going to be misinformation and misreporting in
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the fog of war, in the chaos of whatever transpires. However,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: you don't make decisions, especially major decisions, that have massive ramifications,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: based upon bad information, based upon what is essentially panic,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and that is what I believe happened when the authorities
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: decided that they had to postpone the Sugar Bowl based
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: upon I guess. And this always drives me crazy because,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: as you know, I'm a big believer that we were
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: heading into what I call cancellation nation, especially post COVID.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: All the standards for what we postpone and what we
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: cancel have been driven to dayangeriously low levels. It's incredibly
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: easy to postpone anything, and we pretend as if there
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: are no ramifications for those postponements, but that is not
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the case. The reality is that there is a lot
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: to be lost. The media won't tell you this, even
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: when it's their own self interest to tell you this,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: but there is a lot to be lost when it
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: comes to the issue of a postponement, and there was a.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Lot that was lost because the Sugar Bowl.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Was postponed a lot, and yet no one ever talks
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: about this. I'm one of the few that does. I
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: get crucified every time I do so. But it seems
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to me as if what happened here was that we
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: had a committee, a committee of people who were extremely
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: risk adverse, extremely risk adverse, everyone trying to cover their backside,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: everyone very concerned that, oh my gosh, what happens if
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: we don't postpone and something bad occurs. We can signal
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: our virtue and we can make it sound as if
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: we're both honoring the victims as well as doing what's
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: best for the safety of the city.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: You know, you can never be.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Safe enough out of an abundance of caution the worst
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: phrase maybe in modern society, out of an abundance of caution.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: We're going to postpone this game, and everyone's going to
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: applaud us, because you know, there there is no traction
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: for people anymore saying, hey, wait a minute, what are
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: we doing? Why are we postponing this? On what basis
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: are we postponing this? This is the part that I
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: would really love to know. Can you please tell me
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: what is the explanation. What is the standard? Because I
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: don't know what it is. I'm totally open minded. Is
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: it because we are honoring those who died? Okay, all right, fine,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: What I'd like to know in that case is, all right,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: how many people have to die to qualify for this?
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: In this case we had at least fourteen killed. That's
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a significant number. It's double digits, which I do think
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: has some sort of bizarre magic to it. So you know,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: you've got double digit deaths. So what has to be different?
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: And what's the time period? Can someone tell me what
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: that is? Because I don't know what would be different
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: or what was different on January second, in what turned
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: out to be the middle of the afternoon when they
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: finally did play the Sugar Bowl. Then what would have
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: been the case that evening? I don't understand it.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I get that psychology is a legitimate factor in all this,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: but just tell me what the standards are. Just tell
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: me how many people have to die and in how
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: many hours have to pass before suddenly it's okay to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: play again. I don't have an answer to that, and
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: no one ever in this particular situation really claimed that
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that was the reason behind the Postponeman.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Nobody said that the implication.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: By those that defended the postponement, and in fact even
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: condemned those who dared question the Postponeman. I saw this
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: on social media a lot, was that this was clearly
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: the right decision because there was just too much uncertainty
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: about whether or not the threat had been eradicated, and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: that to me was ridiculous and absurd, because while the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: initial report from the NBI was not a terrorist attack,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, yes it was a terrorist attack,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: and we might have people who are still on the loose.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: It was not long after that, and it was certainly
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: way way before the game was supposed to be played
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: when NBC report that, yeah, FBI sources are now telling
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: us they believe that the terrorist acted alone, that there
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: is nobody else still accounted for.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Now, I don't even know that the having.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: People accounted for would have necessarily warranted a postponement, but
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I can at least understand that. I mean, this is
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: a tragic event that occurred, a terrorist attack that occurred
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: within a mile of the Superdome in New Orleans. You
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: don't know what you have if there's that much uncertainty.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Are people going to be afraid to come to the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: game anyway? I am open to that, thinking I'd like
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: to have you tell me exactly on what basis the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: game has been postponed, which never, of course happens, because
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: they'd like to be able to throw everything they can
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: against the wall and then you know something will stick.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Or if you don't know what the explanation is, you're
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: just going to accept it.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: And that's what seems to be the case with.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Most people, because it's just remarkable to me how and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: very dangerous to me, how we have just accepted this
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: idea now that this is normal, that this is the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: way things should be done.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: We have a tragedy.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It's somewhat related, although not directly to a major event,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: So we need to postpone that event. And is it
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: because of safety reasons or is it because of respect issues?
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Is it a little bit of both? Somebody tell me.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Nobody ever wants to tell us anything about what's really
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: going on here, But I am convinced, it was convinced
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: at the time that there was no safety issue in
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: going forward with the Sugar Bowl as had been planned.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And I think I've been one hundred percent vindicated in
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: that because, as I said, NBC reported what the FBI
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: is now standing by that this was a lone wolf attack,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that he was killed immediately in a gunfight with police,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: there was no further threat.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: It was a tragedy.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: But you know, in this country, we used to we
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: used to go on with life. That used to be
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: an important premise that you not let the terrorists win,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: that you not give these people what they want, which
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: is to destroy the way that we live. And look,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: is it the most important thing in the world that
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the Sugar Bowl be played on the evening of January first.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: No, but there are costs in not doing so.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And this is another element of this whole thing that
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: drives me nuts that no one ever accepts that there
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: are enormous costs in all sorts of ways to postponing
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a major event like this. And when I posted almost
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: immediately on my Twitter feed that this was a mistake,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I got some support, but mostly I got tortured. I
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: got crucified and in all sorts of different ways, which
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I'm fine with. I'm you know, one of the few
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: that's going to be willing to step forward and say no,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: this is wrong.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: This is a mistake, and here's why.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: And I think I was vindicated, although no one will
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: ever acknowledge that, but a couple of interesting things happen
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: because I made that post. So I post that I
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: think this is wrong, that this has dangerous aspects to it,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it creates a bad precedent, and that there's going to
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: be all sorts of costs, specifically with regard to those
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: that have traveled to New Orleans to attend this game,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: who have purchased tickets, and who now are caught up
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: in a situation where they don't have a hotel room
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: for the following night, which at that point we didn't
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: know exactly what time the game was going to be
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: rescheduled for the following day, And they also don't have
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: any flights out of New Orleans for that following day,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: so everything has to be pushed back a day that
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: requires more expense and an awful lot of aggravation when
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: it comes to hotel and new flights out of New Orleans.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Not to mention, there's all sorts of other aspects regarding
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: the postponement, and I've already referenced the precedent that it sets. Also,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: as it turns out, You're going to diminish the audience
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: for this event, which hurts the players that are playing
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: in it and the schools that are playing in it.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I mean the whole, not to mention the city of
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: New Orleans gets harmed because the Sugar Bowl is diminished
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: with regard to audience. There's all sorts of unintended and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: maybe not even fully understood consequences and costs to this
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: kind of a postponement. So I post that on social media,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: and Fox News Channel actually references fairly prominently what I
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: wrote in a story about the postponement of the Sugar Bowl,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: which is a mild surprise for me, but okay, whatever.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Well, at least one guy appears to be a liberal.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I presume that he's a liberal, a gouyin of Andrewnoldson,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: who runs this thing called the Ordinary Times dot com,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: which appears to be some sort of of a news outlet.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: But it may only.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Be one guy, but it looks fairly legitimate. He wrote
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: an article about the postponement, and he starts it off
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: by referencing the Fox News Channel article that quotes me,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: and he references my quote condemning the postponeman of the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: sugar Bowl, and then he writes, this is right at
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the top of his article for the uninitiated, that would
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: be the John Zigler that was the subject to this
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: excellent David Foster Wallace treatment on talk radio. Meaning what
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: I've referenced many times in the past, this twenty three
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: page profile that was done on me almost twenty years
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: ago by David Foster Wallace, not long before he committed suicide,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a profile piece that's still incredibly famous to this day,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: even though it has at least three or four factual
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: inaccuracies in the very first paragraph. So he's referencing an
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: almost twenty year old profile piece on me. And then
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: he says and more famous for his Jerry Sandanski Joe
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Paterno apologia crusade, in the words, I'm apologizing a bealf
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: of Jerry Sandoski and Joe Patno. And then he uses
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: that as the smoking gun that somehow these are the
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: nut jobs, that these are the types of people that
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: are actually against postponing.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: The sugar Ball, and the entire article is about.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Of course it was proper and right to postpone the
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: sugar Ball, which I don't buy at all.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's completely ridiculous.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: So that because John Zigler a guy who think you
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: can discredit using David Foster Wallace and Jerry Sandoski, which,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of course, if you know the details of EICH, of
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: those situations work in the exact opposite direction. But it
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: is it is your belief that that position is discredited
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: because of me and why I might be known to you.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's absurd, It's not a real argument.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: There is no real argument for postponement other than virtue
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: signaling and this whole idea that we can never be
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: too safe. Well, if you can never be too safe,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: then why ever have the game? Well, I mean, we
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: should cancel almost everything. I just don't know what the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: standard was, what was the trigger mechanism, What was the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: explanation for why the game had to be postponed. I
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: am convinced that there was not one shred of logic
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that that game was safer to be played in the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: middle of the afternoon on January second than it was
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in the evening of January first. Not a shred of
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: evidence indicating it was any safer. Now, could you argue
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: that it gave time for there to be respects paid?
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: I guess, But what exactly happened in that less than
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: twenty four hour period, basically less than twenty hour period
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: when the game was supposed to be played originally to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: when it eventually was played.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know what that is, and I'll tell you something.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: A couple of things occurred that I believe strongly went
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: to my argument which kind of indicated very directly, in
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: my opinion, that this whole argument for postponement was based
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: upon a fraud. The first is I've already alluded to
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: it that the game was moved up about four plus
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: hours from when it was originally supposed to be played
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: on January first to when it actually was played in
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: the afternoon of January second. Now why is that important.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It's important from a couple of different perspectives. To me,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: this is a smoking gun. If this really was about
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: safety and us wanting to make this as save as possible,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna do everything we possibly can, we need,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: we need every minute to make sure that everything about
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: this game is locked down and that everybody is safe.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: And if this really is a situation that because of
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: this terrorist.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Attack, somehow the game might not be as safe as
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: it should be, then why would you cut yourself over
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: four hours of time in preparation.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Why would you do that. Well, the reason why they
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: did it was because they.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Realized that their postponement had created a problem. Now, they
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: should have thought about this before they actually decided to
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: postpone the game. But this is not the way, unfortunately,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: our leaders work. In twenty twenty five. What they realized was,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, if we play this game at eight
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: thirty eight forty five, whatever it was supposed to be,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: and we keep the same time period, the same starting
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: time on January twod, now we've got a major problem
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: because the winner has to go to Miami to play
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the Orange Bowl, to play against Penn State, and they
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: will already be two full days behind. And if the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: game ends at midnight or whatever how, they can't even
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: get They're not gonna go to Miami that night. They're
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: gonna sleep over in New Orleans, and then they're not
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: gonna get to Miami till.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: For three days after Penn State did.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: That's a very significant disadvantage for the next round of
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the playoffs. So they decided. Apparently the teams suggested this,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: which doesn't seem like it's consistent with the idea of safety,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and it's certainly not consistent with the idea of what
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: we need. A period of morning, the team said, look,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: can we play the game earlier and that way we'll
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: have enough time to get the winner, for the winner
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: to get to Miami, and at least it will mitigate
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit the disadvantage that we will have with
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: regard to preparation for the next game in comparison to
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Penn State. And so they said, okay, fine, So they
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: moved the time of the game.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Up over four hours. To me, that was a smoking gun.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Aha, this isn't about safety, this isn't about respect. And
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: then you know ESPN, who, of course I despise for
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: one hundred different reasons. ESPN ends up completely screwing the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: pooch on the whole issue of honor and respect for
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the victims, because when the game actually does finally happen,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: ESPN does not air the national anthem or the moment
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of silence or anything that was related to this unprecedented
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: situation that caused the delay in the postponement to begin with.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: It's really quite extraordinary. I mean, ESPN is the one
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: running the show here. ESPN from the moment that the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: attack occurred, had been virtue signaling constantly that they were
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: on board with whatever postponements the authorities said they needed
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to engage in. There was not one ounce of pushback
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: at ESPN, not even a question about whether or not.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: The game should be postponed.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: And when the decision was made in the middle of
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: the day on January first, to postpone the game, ESPN,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: at least on air, did not object at all.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: They didn't even question it. It was a lot like
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: COVID coverage.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It felt so much like COVID, which I'm sure is
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: partially why it drives me batty, because you know, here
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: we have willy nilly postponements without really telling us what
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the standards are, no thought about the costs of the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: postponement or the precedent of the postponement, and we're not
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: even allowed to question it. We're not even allowed to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: talk about it. And that's the way ESPN went about
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: their business. They're completely on board with the postponeman because
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: this is an unprecedented situation. We've got a postpone. They're
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: not going to tell us why we have to postpone.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Really not gonna be specific about it. It just feels right.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: This feels like we've got to do a Postponeman and
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: we're not even going to discuss whether or not this
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: decision was proper or not at ESPN. And yet when
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the game finally was played, ESPN didn't give a shit
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: enough about all that had transpired to even show the
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: national anthem or the moment of silence for the victims. Now,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: I am not someone who generally defends ESPN, but I'm
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: always trying to figure out the truth.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: And I have to tell you, as.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I was watching the beginning of ESPN's broadcast, it felt
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: like something was off. It felt like something had knocked
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: off the timing of everything, and there were several explanations
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: for why that might have been the case. You had
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, President Biden putting out a video message talking
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: about how great America is and there's nothing America can't
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: do and overcome except apparently play a Sugar Bowl game
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: as already scheduled when there's a very early morning terrorist
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: attack a mile away from the stadium. I guess we're
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: not capable of doing that anymore. But you know, it
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: was fine. Whatever the President makes the statement, I have
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: no problem with that idea, and then they also had
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: this incredibly tone statement from the head of All State Insurance,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: which is sponsoring the All State Sugar Bowl, which was
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: bonkers bad. I mean, I have to believe that the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: content of that message was created based upon bad information
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: about what the nature of the attack was.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I don't have any other explanation and.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: For how All State could be so dumb as to
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: put forward a message that made it sound like the
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: head of All State was scolding us because some terrorists
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: felt the need to attack New Orleans.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's not an exaggeration.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: It was one of the worst statements in that kind
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: of a situation that I could ever recall, and so
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: that was significant in and of itself. But I also
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: think that the Biden message and the All State message,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: plus the fact that obviously the ESPN's broadcast was completely
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: different than what had been planned the next day, I
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: think all of this may have contributed to a mistake
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: in ESPN not airing the national anthem and the moment
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of silence. That's the best explanation I can come up with,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: because as I was watching it, none of it felt right.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: It felt all very.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Disjointed, and I can certainly understand where if you go
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: off in the wrong direction with regard to timing and
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: you've got to worry about the President's address and the
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: All State Sponsors address, and everything's off.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I could certainly see how this happens and it.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Not be a decision being made by ESPN that, hell,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: we're just not going to show the national anthem or
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: the moment of silence. I don't think they actually made
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: that kind of a decision. However, clearly it wasn't that
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: important to them. It was clearly not a situation where
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: everyone felt like, oh my god, we've got to show
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: the national anthem and the moment of silence, because after all,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: that was the whole reason why we postponed this whole
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: deal here. So I'm not going to absolve ESPN from
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: all guilty here. I'm just trying to come up with
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: some explanation for why this happened. But to me, there
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: were a couple of tells as to why we now
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: know for sure that postponing the game was wrong.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: The game time being.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Moved up because of logistical reasons, and ESPN blowing off
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the national anthem and the moment of silence, and in
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: the end, nothing was accomplished other than signaling some virtue.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Nothing was accomplished. Lots was lost.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I've already talked about the incredible inconvenience for the fans,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the increasing costs for the fans that were attending the game.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: The TV audience was way down in comparison to what it.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: Would have been. Now still a good number in the teams.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: As far as millions of people who watched the Sugar
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Bowl game, actually technically it was fifteen point six million
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: or eight million, I guess fifteen point eight million who
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: ended up watching that game on January second in the afternoon.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: But had that game been played as had been scheduled,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: regardless of whether there was a terrorist attack that morning,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: for sure, that game would have had well over twenty
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: million viewers. And we know that because the Rose Bowl
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: game on January first had twenty one point one million viewers.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: By the way, that number way down from the year before,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: way down. I mean, people were celebrating these ratings numbers
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: for the quarter final games of the college football Playoff.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: And as I've told you many times, I knew they
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: would be strong, and they were strong, but they weren't spectacular.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Last year's Rose Bowl, which was a semi final game
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: which had obviously Alabama and Michigan, a great matchup that
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: had well over twenty seven million viewers. This was twenty
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: one point one million for the Rose Bowl with a
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: similar matchup of Ohio State versus Oregon, number one ranked
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: team in the country. Ohio State has a huge following.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: It had an old Rose Bowl type feel to it,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: even though both teams are now bizarrely in the Big
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Ten Conference. But yet it fell way short of the
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: exact same time slot on the exact same day both
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: playoff games, both great matchups. Significantly smaller audience in twenty
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: twenty five than what happened in twenty twenty four with
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: regard to the Rose Ball. But you got to believe
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: that had there been a Sugar Bowl game on January first,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: it would have gotten at least what the Rose Ball
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: did because it would have been in prime time and
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: it would have fed off of the Rose Bowl audience.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: And instead, ESPN and Georgia and Notre Dame all lost
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: at least six or seven million fans, and the Sugar
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Bowl the steven Ne Orleans lost six or seven million
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: fans because that game was postponed and that has cost
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: associated to it. Now, the safety at all costs people
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: out of the abundance of caution. People they never think
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: that there's any costs. They think that postponements are free.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Postponemans are not free, and this is a perfect example
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: of it. Not to mention the precedents that get set
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: in all this situation. Presidents, setting circumstances matter, and every
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: time you do this it becomes easier and easier to
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: do it again. That might be the most important part
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: of this whole deal. Every time you postpone a major event,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it becomes easier to do it again.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: And let's just face it, what happened here.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: One loan nut successfully killed a lot of people, partially.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: It seems, because.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Of inadequate planning by the New Orleans Police Department, run
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: by an elderly female who does not appear to be
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: at all qualified for her position, did so in no
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: direct relationship to the game itself. There was no connection
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: to the game itself other than the proximity that this
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: attack had in relation to the Superdome, many many hours
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: before the game was supposed to be played, and that
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: event successfully postponed the Sugar Bowl for a full day,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: almost a full day, and there was no pushback.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: At all other than by me and maybe a couple
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: other people online. That is scary, That is sad.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: That is not what I used to think this country
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: was about. To me, this is a very dangerous situation
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: where we are creating circumstances. I mean, my gosh, if
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: this really is the new standard, right, and I already
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: mentioned the super Bowl, and I'm sure that this is
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: going to be a warning shot to Roger Goodell in
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: the NFL to make sure that they've got everything under
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: control for the super Bowl. But I do not believe
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: there would be any chance at all you duplicate exactly
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: this circumstance. There's no chance the super Bowl gets postponed
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: from a Sunday to a Monday. There's just no chance
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: that that happens.
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I also believe there's no chance that the super Bowl allows,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: you know, this event to occur as easily as it did.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Certainly not now, certainly not that now that this has
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: all been exposed as a potential major problem when it
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: comes to security in the city of New Orleans. But
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the reality here is we are heading in a very
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: dangerous direction. And I and part of why I'm so
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: agitated about this is nobody push us back at all.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, and I know this because I'm one of
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the few that does, and I just I'm baffled. I mean,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: even conservative sports commentators like Clay Travis, who I I'm
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: always ripping on because he and I agree on a lot,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: but we also disagree on a few things. And he's,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in my view with fraud in a lot of ways,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: and both politically as well as you know, for since
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: his position on the Penn State Joe Paterno Jaysondsky situation
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: will always drive me crazy. But I don't have a
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: lot of respect for Clay Travis because I have a
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: relationship with his boss, and his boss asked him to
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: have a conversation with me, and he refused to even
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: have a conversation with me.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: So whatever.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: But here he was mocking people, calling us total morons.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: It's what he said, You're a total moron if you
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: don't see that this game needs to be postponed.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: Total moron.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: That's a Clay Travis guy who effectively kind of sort
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: of took over for Rush Limbaugh on the radio. That's
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: how crazy this is that even alleged conservatives, not that
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: he's really a conservative, but he.
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Pretends to be one.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Conservatives, Conservatives philosophically ought to be against this entire phenomenon
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: because of the slippery slope, because of the precedent that
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: it sets, if only because of what it says about
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: allowing the terrorists to win in these situations.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: You know, post nine to eleven, we understood this. Now.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: There were some people who tried to make the comparison
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: to what the National Football League did after nine to
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: eleven in canceling that weekend's games and what happened with
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: the Sugar Bowl, And I'm like, are you serious, You're
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: really going to compare this to nine to eleven. This
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: was a bad situation, horrendous, tragic. No one's claiming otherwise,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: but obviously this was not in any way, shape or
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: form nine to eleven. By the way, as an aside,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I was against the NFL even postponing those games that weekend.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: And I don't think I've ever talked about this on
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: the podcast before, but I was on a TV show
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: in Philadelphia at the time, and we did a segment
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: on this just after nine to eleven about whether or
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: not the National Football League should be postponing those games.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: And it was me and Brian Baldinger, former Philadelphia Eagle,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: who's still i believe, a commentator for the NFL network,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: still very much involved in certainly in commentating on NFL games,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: and Brian Baldinger is.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: A huge guy.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: And I made the argument that because at the time,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: people forget this, the explanation being given for why we
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: weren't at least one of the explanations we being given
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: for why the NFL was not going to play games
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the weekend of nine to eleven was that from a
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: security standpoint, we weren't one hundred percent sure that and
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: some players were concerned that we couldn't make sure that
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: all the flights would be secured, and that therefore, you know,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: there was some hesitancy on the part of the players
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: to want to even travel in a post nine to
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: eleven world. And I thought that was ridiculous because it
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: was similar to the New Orleans situation. It was obvious
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: to me that it's not as if the terrorists had
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: fundamentally altered the safety of flight. They all died in
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a one shot deal hijacking that was horrific but could
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: not be duplicated in any way, shape or form, especially
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: now that we knew what their MO was, and you know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: obviously an attack that had taken a very long time
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: to plan. And so I thought the NFL players were
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: being silly in even concerned being concerned about safety when
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: it comes to travel to NFL football games. And Brian
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Baldinger was as pissed at me as anybody I've ever
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: been on television with. And that's saying something. I mean,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I thought he was going to hit me. That video
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: probably doesn't exist anywhere, but he was enraged.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: I mean it was. It felt like a steroid type
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: of situation.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Frankly, but Brian Baldinger was as openly pissed off at
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: me and wanted to wring my neck in a way
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: that I had never experienced it for.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: I was kind of shocked by the whole thing.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I found it was a little bit humorous, although the
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: it was not much that was humorous in that that week.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Of nine to eleven. But you know, the NFL ended
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: up postponing that week, and it was probably the right call.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: I was probably wrong in that situation. I don't think
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I was horrendously wrong. I don't think it would necessarily
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: would have been the worst move of all time to
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: be able to show the world that we could endure
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: a terrorist attack and still go ahead with our our
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Sunday football games that weekend. But there would have been
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: massive problems in doing so, especially in New York and
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: and you know, and and obviously the whole country was
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: in mourning. And it's a completely different level of attack
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: than what happened in New Orleans.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: So I just found it.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Odd that that's how desperate some people were to try
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: to justify the postponement that they were willing to at
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: least somewhat compare this to nine to eleven. And I
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: get I get got asked numerous times, Okay, so were
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: you against the National Football League postponing after nine to eleven?
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: And actually yes, I was just ask Brian Baldegger.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Because I'm pretty sure he remembers this particular episode that
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: occurred on Philadelphia television. But regardless, the bottom line of
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: this is that there was a mistake made, and there
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: will be repercussions for that mistake, but no one will
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: have to be accountable to that mistake, because no one's
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: going to admit that they made a mistake in postponing
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the Sugar Bowl, and that's why we'll keep getting more
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and more postponements, more and more cancelations, and something will
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: have been lost forever. And we're seeing this in sports
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: all the time, but we're seeing this in real life
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: as well, and it drives me crazy. It just absolutely
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: drives me nuts. To the standard for cancelation and postponement
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: now is much much lower than it has ever been before,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: and it got accelerated by COVID in a huge, huge way.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Without COVID, I don't think that the Sugar Bowl gets postponed.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: I mean it's not a conscious thing. It's indirect, but
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: it's real.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm just convinced that we're going to keep heading
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: in that direction, that nothing's going to stop this, and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: the fact that this can happen where the Sugar Bowl
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: can get postponed and nobody admit that they were wrong,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: no one, no one person will admit that they were wrong.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, the game went on with out a hitch.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: The next afternoon, we were able to move up the
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: start time so that the winning team could get to
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Miami that night. And you know, an ESPN doesn't even
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: bother to show the national anthem or the or the
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: moment of silence. And yet even under those circumstances, no
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: one will admit that they were wrong. No one will
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: admit this. I mean, by the way, I would be
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: okay with that if we if we in a panic
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: move postponed something and then we realized, gee, we didn't
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: have to do that. And if someone made a statement saying,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: you know what, in retrospect, in hindsight, we shouldn't have
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: done it. I would have been okay with that, because
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: at least then the precedent doesn't get set quite as
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: firmly as it does now. But no one never does that,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: because we don't live in that world anymore. No one
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: ever admits they were wrong. But that game should not
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: have been postponed, and there were massive human costs to
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: postponing it, and ironically ESPN suffered some of that cost
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: because the audience for the Sugar Bowl was much less
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: than it would have been had it aired as it
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: was supposed to, as it should have on the evening
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: of January first. Now, as far as the playoff itself,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: obviously I have talked a lot about how much I
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: loathe this twelve team playoff system, and how I have
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: told you for many, many months that there are massive
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: issues that are being created by this twelve team playoff.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: But I've also been a realist. I've told you that
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: this whole thing is too big to fail. It's a
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: lot like the COVID response, Folks, I know I say
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: this a lot, but it bears repeating.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: What's happened with the college football playoff is so big
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: it's too big to fail.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: And much like the COVID response, even if it's terrible,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: even if it's totally ineffective, even if it causes massive
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: amounts of damage, it's going to quote unquote succeed or
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: it's not going to fail. It's not allowed to fail
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: because too many powerful entities are deeply invested in it
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: not failing. So, like the COVID response, the college football
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: playoff is simply too big to fail. And I believe
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: that the proof of this is overwhelming because it could
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: not to this point have gone much worse the college
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: football twelve team playoff. And yet even though it could
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: not have gone much worse to this point, it's only
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: getting mild criticism, mild criticism, thus proving how it is
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: too big to fail.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: Let me go.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Through, and I tweeted this so you can find it
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: on my twitter feed if you're so desiring. But here
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: we are through the first eight games of the college
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: football playoffs. In those first eight games out of the eleven,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: so we're now down to the semi finals. But through
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: those first eight games, we had one legit close game
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: one Texas Arizona State, a game that I think was
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: a little bit overrated.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: Frankly, I'm not sure either of those teams are all
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: that great.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Texas ends up pulling it out in double overtime.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: It was exciting, It was interesting.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: There were a couple of non targeting calls that really
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: ended up dictating who ended up winning the game in
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: both directions, which was kind of bizarre since I'm convinced
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: that targeting is going to destroy football. But that was
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: actually good that there were non targeting calls or targeting
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: calls that were not called by officials in that game.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: But okay, I'll give it one good game, no question
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: about it. Texas Arizona State. One legit close, competitive, exciting
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: game one out of eight. One you also had one
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: needlessly postponed game, so so we gave up all that
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: we did for the regular season and the rivalries and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: the traditions and the essence of what made college football
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: what it currently is. And so for the first eight games,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: we have one legit close game in you know, to
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: you know what we got out of all this, you
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: know what's the benefit we got out of it. We
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: got one close game and we had one needlessly postponed game,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: and the teams went oh and four. So you know,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: the buye was what was supposed to be the reward
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: for the top four seeds. Now you can argue about
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: how those four seeds were determined, those top four, but
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: the top four buy teams all lost. They went on
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: four and all four first round home teams made the
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: semi finals. Which is something that I and other people
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: have warned you about from the beginning of this fiasco,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: which is that you have a situation where the best
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: place to be in this playoff is in the five
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: through eight seed. Well, that has been proven in spades.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: I realized you can't prove anything in one iteration of
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: this playoff. But if you were trying to prove something
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: during just the first edition of this deal, you could
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: not have done so more dramatically than happened this go around,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: because all four buy teams lost and all four first
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: round home teams made the semi finals, and conference title
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: winners went oh and five oh and five. If you
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: won your conference title, you went oh and five in
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: this playoff system. So conference championships are completely obliterated as
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: having any meaning whatsoever because the bide didn't matter you had.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: You have two conference championship losers in Texas and Penn
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: State who make the semi finals. Not only did they
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: make the semi finals, they had the easiest path.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: To the semi finals.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: And now Texas is playing effectively at home and Penn
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: State gets a two day preparation advantage because of the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: postponeman of the sugar ball.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: So you could.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Argue that by far, by far, the two best paths
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: towards getting to the championship game or at least of
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: the semi finals were paved for the teams that lost
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: conference championship games.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the teams that won.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Conference championship games got obliterated, and Georgia actually suffered directly
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: because they actually played in a conference championship game and
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: won a conference championship game in overtime.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: They lost their star quarterback, Carson Beck.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: So now who knows whether or not they would have
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: been more competitive against Notre Dame if Carson Beck had
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: not gotten injured. But you can make a direct correlation
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: between Georgia being forced to play in that conference championship
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: game and losing their quarterback and why they're out.
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: Of the playoffs.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: What was the benefit to them in the end for
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: having played in and winning a conference championship.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Nothing. They lost their quarterback.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: So the conference championship games could not have been more
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: destroyed by the results of this playoff to this extent,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: to this moment than if you tried to make that happen.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: If you said, zig create a scenario where title games
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: have been more destroyed, I could not possibly do it.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: And it's not just the conference championship games that have
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: been obliterated. Almost all of the most memorable regular season
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: games have been rendered meaningless by this playoff result. I
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: defy you if you're a college football fan and seriously
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: message me about this. I can't think of one game,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: one really memorable game between two top teams from this
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: regular season, games that people talked a lot about that
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: was not at least somewhat, if not completely diminished by
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: the results so far of this playoff, which is exactly
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: what I've warned about from the beginning, that we're gonna
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: see a twelve team playoff destroy everything that was at
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: once a great part of the college football season, the
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: regular season. And there were those who say, oh no,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: this made the regular season better because it kept teams
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: alive well, and one of the worst arguments I've heard
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: is how great is it that this twelve team playoff
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: allowed us to see Ohio State emerge very very late
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: in the season as a great team, because ordinarily a
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: loss to Michigan would have meant that their season was
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: over and we would not have gotten to see them
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: crush Tennessee or blowout Oregon and now suddenly be the
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: favorite to win the whole thing. I agree that that's
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: what's happened, but do you not understand what you're giving
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: up in exchange for that. You're giving up the idea
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: that the Michigan game meant anything. The Michigan game actually
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: not only meant nothing to Ohio State. You could make
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: a very strong argument that the Michigan game was beneficial
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: for Ohio State to lose that is not an exaggeration,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: if only from a motivational perspective, it gave a kick
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: in the ass, but it also allowed them to avoid
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: playing in the Big Ten Championship game. They ended up
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: playing a home game, so they have no bet, no negative,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: no accountability, no negative elements to having lost to Michigan
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: at all. So they get a buy effectively by missing
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the Big Ten Championship game. They get a home game
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: against Tennessee. They're motivated by having lost to Michigan. They
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: kick the crap out of Tennessee, and now they get
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: to play in the Rose Bowl against Oregon in a rematch,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and they beat the hell out of Oregon and now
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: they're in the semi finals. So I mean, losing to
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Michigan was actually a good thing for Ohio State.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: And that's bad.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: That is horrendous if you care at all about the
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: essence of what made college football college football to begin with,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're gonna at least acknowledge that that's
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: what you've given up, at least acknowledge you have given
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: up something incredibly valuable that made college football what it
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: was to begin with. And no one wants to do
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: that because this system is too big to fail. Everyone
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: is going to look at only the potential positives and
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: not the negatives. Like for instance, I already referenced the
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: Rose Bowl, which you know people were touting as oh see,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: the Rose Bowl did great. Yeah, the Rose Bowl did great,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: not nearly as well as it did last year. You
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: lost several million people from your audience from last year
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: when it was a semi final game. And yeah, it
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: was a beautiful day and the crowd was jam packed
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: into the Rose Bowl because the Rose Bowl got lucky.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: I had referenced that there might be a situation where
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: the Rose Bowl might not be able to fill the stadium,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: but that was before it was Ohio State versus Oregon.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: That's a very good matchup for the Rose Bowl. You
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: got two massive fan bases with a storied history of
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: going to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. They understand the
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: whole history. It still has some you know, shazam factor
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: for them. And it was a beautiful day and you know,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: the stadium was full. That's fantastic, But the TV audience
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: was not nearly as strong as it was the year before,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: and the other three quarterfinal games all had empty seats.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: Now ESPN was very lucky in that.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: You know, if you want a packed house, you're gonna
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: have one packed house. You want it at the rose
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Ball because it's an open air stadium. You can almost
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: see everybody in every shot. You know, the background is
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: a huge part of the whole allure of the rose
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: bul So you're showing the Bowl stadium a heck of
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: a lot more than you are. And then these other games.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: But there were empty seats at the Sugar Bowl. There
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: were empty seats at the other two quarterfinal games. ESPN
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: didn't show them to you, but they existed. They were
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: not sellouts. And for this to be the first iteration
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: of this whole thing with all the hype and excitement
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: arounding it, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sure ESPN is gonna
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: be claiming to be happy with the ratings, even with
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: the disminishment of the Sugar Bowl because of the Postponeman.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: But there's some signs of weaknesses here. They're not going
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: to tell you about it, because again, it's like the
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: COVID response, it's too big to fail. We're just going
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: to pretend those elements don't exist. But that's the reality
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: of this, is that this is not going nearly as
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: well as is being portrayed. That being said, I'm a realist.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: There's no going back now. Unfortunately, there's no going back.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: This will be perceived as a success because it's too
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: big to fail and there are too many powerful entities
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: that are deeply, deeply, deeply invested in this whole situation
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: working now. There was one notable exception that I want
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: to play for you because this was kind of remarkable,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: and this is one of those very rare situations that
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: almost never happens in today's corporate media. This is someone
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: on ESPN attacking ESPN for engaging in a money grab
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: with regard to the twelve team football playoff, and specifically,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I'm referring to Mike Wilbon, who's a very well known, prominent,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: longtime commentator on ESPN does a show with Tony co Hornheiser.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Mike Wilbon is somebody who I got to know a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: little bit many, many many years ago because he was
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post Georgetown basketball reporter when I was covering
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Georgetown basketball.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: As a student there. And you know, Mike's a smart guy.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: He's a bit arrogant, but that's normal for someone who's
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: a Washington Post reporter and has had a very remarkable career,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: mostly in the realm of basketball. But in this particular case,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: I got to give some kudos to Mike Wilbon because
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: he on ESPN effectively attacked ESPN for the money grab
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: of the twelve team playoff and how he thinks that
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: they ought to go from twelve to eight. Now, I'll explain,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: because I've done this in the past, why going to
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: eight just simply will not work. But here was a
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: rather remarkable situation Mike Wilbon with Tony Kornheiser, now Kornheiser,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: he goes off different direction involving the attacks on the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: SEC Conference and their lack of dominance this year, which
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: I will also address. But here is Mike Wilbon doing
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: something really remarkable and attacking his employer on ESPN for
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: their role in this twelve team boondoggle, which he says
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: is not necessary because you only really need eight teams
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: in the playoff system to And I.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: Agree with most everything you said there. I mean, from
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: the top, for me, twelve is too many. Now I'm
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: going to disagree with people who are true experts, many
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: of them colleagues, and many of them friends on this
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: network who've been talking all day and they all bless twelve.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: And I'm sorry, I'm not gonna bless twelve. It needs
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: to be an eighteen tournament. Here's one of the reasons
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: why it needs to be eight. First of all, college
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: kids don't need to play sixteen or seventeen games in
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: the season.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: That's heinous. Now.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: Secondly, if you have eight, you don't have buys.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: You don't need buys.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: The teams that have buys got beat and they were
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: rusty Oregon.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Come on, Oregon doesn't deserve that fate. You don't need buys.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: Get in with eight. You see them one through eight.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: Addressing another one of your issues, I agree with you
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: on Yeah, and you put those eight teams out there.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: You see, let's go the teams that were rusty Tony,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: they're a disadvantage.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: They hadn't played in a month. No, they Dame had
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: played last week.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: Ohio State had played like like ten days earlier, not
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: been off for like twenty six days. So no, that's
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: a disadvantage. If you have a buye, you don't want
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: to have a disadvantage. They can fix the seeding, just
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: fix it. They're not gonna go from twelve to eight
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: because this is a this is a green play. It's
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: a money play for everybody in including this network.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: I don't I don't hate it. I don't hate it.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: I just think it needs adjusting. I think one of
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: the things that we saw is it belies the fact
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: that the SEC is by far the best conference.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: That's not true.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 5: Tennessee went out in their first game, Ward went out
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: in their first game. Texas is in, but they're not
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 5: really an SEC team yet they should be coming in
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 5: the transfer portal, you know, just for this one year Texas, So,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: I mean, and Alabama then lost to Michigan in a
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: Bowl game, so I don't want to hear any more
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: about how they got homes by the committee.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I was pretty shocked when I saw that Mike Wilbon
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: had decided to go in that direction, and once again
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: I got to give him kudos because no one else
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: seems to have the balls to call out ESPN on ESPN.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: But he's exactly right.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I've said this many many times that this really is
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: all about ESPN, and it was the ESPN corporate overlords
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: that made the decision that this is what they thought
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: was in their financial best interest to go to a
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: twelve team playoff. But Mike Wilbon's solution to this is
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: not workable because while those that made the decision to
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: go to twelve are certainly not brilliant and I believe
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: that they did not have the best interest of the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: sport anywhere near their mindset when they came up with it,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: they're not complete idiots either, because eight is not an option.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Now eight should be an option. I mean, if I
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: was in charge of it, I wouldn't hate eight all
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: that much. You could do it in a way that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: made some sense, you know. But the problem becomes, what
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: do you do with the conference title winners. I'm talked
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: about this before. They can't do eight because if they
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: give every conference title winner and automatic bid, then the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: system is absurd. If you go to you know, let's
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: say you give the top five conferences an automatic bid
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: in the top eight, you know, and it's an automatic
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: place in the playoff if you win your conference title.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: If you give that the five conferences, you're going to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: have multiple teams in any year clear better than those
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: fourth or fifth best conference winner, and they're going to
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: be locked out of the playoff, and they're probably going
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: to be coming from the SEC and probably coming from
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: the Big ten, and nobody is going to want that,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: and it's going to just create massive controversy, and it's
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: not going to be consistent with creating a tournament where
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: your goal is to find the best team. It's just
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: not so okay, that's fine. So you might say, zig,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: then let's not do five conference champions let's just do
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: the best eight teams. Well, that's a problem because now
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: the conference championship games mean absolutely nothing, means absolutely nothing.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: In fact, it would be very easy to to to.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Come up with a scenario, in fact, it would happened
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: almost every single year where one of your top teams
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: would be disincentivized to even play in the conference title
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: game because it's not gonna get you an automatic bit
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: in the playoff, and you're probably gonna make the top
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: eight regardless, even if you tank that conference championship game.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: And so now the conference championship games are completely and
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: totally meaningless, which is worse in today's day and age
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: than it would have been even just a couple of
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: years ago. See before radical realignment. That would have been bad,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: but it wouldn't have been catastrophic because then you could
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: have said, Okay, let's eliminate these conference title games, even
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: though they make a lot of money for the conferences.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: We're gonna eliminate the conference title games and we're just
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: gonna have a regular season champion. But there are no
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: regular season champions anymore because the conferences are too large.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: And none of the teams play each other. We saw
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: that this year.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: So you're inherently in an impossible situation. So you can't
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: have a conference champion of any recognizable validity at all.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: But I had a conference championship game. And so now
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: if you have no conference title game and you don't
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: have a regular season champion, now conferences mean nothing and
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: the entire system collapses. I've likened this to the electoral college.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: The whole system of federalism collapses without the electoral college.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: If you don't have conferences, the entire system of college
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: football would collapse as we currently know it in so
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: many different ways. So you can't have eight with five
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: conference champions, because you're gonna have too many teams that are.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: Good to have left out.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: You can't go to no conference champions at all, because
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: then the entire conference system collapses, and you can't go
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle because then you're gonna have a
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: lawsuit from those smaller conferences.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: I've talked about this before, so you can't.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: It's not like in an ideal world you'd have, Okay,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: we're gonna give the SEC the Big ten and the
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: ACC or the ACC sucked ass this year, but you
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: know whatever, pick your top three conferences. They got automatic
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: bids into the top eight and then five at large.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: That would make some sense from a football perspective, but
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: legally you could never get away with it because the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: other conferences would sue for a cabal or a monopoly
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And that's I believe why we got the twelve.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: The twelve is basically designed to avoid a lawsuit from
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the smaller conferences. So while I applaud Will Bilm, Will
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: Bond's attempt and his intent when it comes to criticizing
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: ESPN his employer, his solution does not work. By the way,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I have been negligent about
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: attacking ESPN on and you know, and wilbon is as well,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: is the dirty little secret of this whole playoff money grab,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: as he references, it deals with gambling, and that's the
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: part of this that might be the most nefarious. This
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: is all built on gambling. Now, forget about the idea
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: that gambling used to be something that you understood doesn't
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: belong directly associated with college sports because of the obvious
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: dangers involving point fixing and shaving and all the scandals
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: that have occurred, especially in college basketball over the years.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: When it comes to this issue, but what about the
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: topic of how much damage gambling does to society as
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: a whole. Gambling does enormous damage. I mean, gambling is
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: effectively an insidious tax on people then causes an enoughful
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: lot of societal harm, even causes domestic abuse at times.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: I mean the amount of money that is being lost
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: by people who cannot afford to lose and will always
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: always cause that to happen. I mean, this is just
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: a mathematical equation. There's no ambiguity about this. But gambling
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: is what is driving an enormous amount of the financial
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: engine of what ESPN is doing specifically with regard to
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: this twelve team playoffs. So forget about the philosophical elements
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: of it and the dangers of point shaving. What have you,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: which used to be understood.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: I'm just talking.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: About the societal destruction that has caused because of it.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: You know, recently I talked about how RFK Junior apparently
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: wants to end advertising for pharmaceutical ads, which I'm against
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: the You know, I'm no fan of the pharmaceutical companies,
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: but I think that there's a very dangerous slippery slope
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: and precedent effect there. But if you're going to get
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: rid of pharmaceutical ads, why would you not get rid
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: of gambling ads.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: Gambling ads cause at least.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: As much destruction, if not more so than and than
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: almost anything else. But because it's the lifeblood of sports
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: programming these days, it's really the area where there's the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: last bastion of growth, and growth is everything in corporate America.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: So because gambling is the horse we're riding here, nobody's
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: gonna say anything.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: Bad about it.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: But gambling is right at the essence of this whole thing,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: and no one wants to reference it. No one wants
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: to talk about it, and even I have been negligent
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: in referencing it when it comes to the negative aspects.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: For instance, of this twelve team playoff boondoggle that ESPN
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: has created.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: It's built.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: It is built in large part on the engine of gambling,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: which has enormous social consequences directly related to it. Now,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: one last thing on that clip from Michael Wilbon and
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Tony Kornheiser that I.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: Played for you.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: You know, Tony Kornheiser did something that a lot of
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: sports commentators have done in the last few days, which
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: is to jump on this bandwagon that the SEC is dead,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: it's no longer the dominant conference, and that nil and
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: instant transfers have radically altered the entire landscape. There's a
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: lot of people out there saying, well, my gosh, this
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: must prove that the SEC was paying players, because now
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: that everyone can pay players, the SEC is no longer dominant.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: And there's all sorts of theories out there and a
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: lot of people dancing on the grave of the SEC.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: And my reaction to this as someone who has always
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: said that the SEC in recent in recent times is
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: the best conference by how much is open for debate,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: But to me, it's been very clear the SEC until
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: this year has been the best football conference in college football.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: But you know, I'm open to all these theories as
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: to what's actually happening. I agree that this year the
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Big ten appears to be superior to the SEC. How
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: much so, I'm not one hundred percent sure, because I
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: think it's ridiculous to be able to discern this from
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: bowl games, where you've got, you know, people that are
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: in the transfer portal and opting out to protect their
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: draft status. And I mean, it's really not a very
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: good indicator at all in this day and age to
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: determine which conference is better based upon bull results. And
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: it's not like the SEC had a terrible ball so
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: you's and they still have a team in the final
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: four and they had a winning ball record. But I
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: agree that it certainly looks as if on paper, the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: Big Tennis superior this year to the SEC. Why this
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: is and whether or not this is a one shot wonder,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: a one off it's just one weird year, or whether
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: or not we're going to extrap late and because of
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: NIL and because of instant transfers and radical realignment and
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: everything else, we're now we're just determining forever and ever
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: that somehow the SEC has lost its place of dominance.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: I think that's a bit ridiculous. I think that that's
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: overreacting typical of the sports media morons, and I would
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: like to see some more data before.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: I come to that kind of conclusion.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: But because of all these theories that were being thrown
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: out there, I actually did something that is going to
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: sound radical, I guess in the world of sports media, and.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: That is that I actually did a little bit of research.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: I know this is way beyond what these sports media
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: morons normally do because I've seen them come up with
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: these theories all over the place. I mean, very prominent names,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: oh you know and I oh, and instant transfers, and
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: the SEC has lost so much of their talent base
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: to the to the Big Ten and to other schools
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: because you know, they're they're able to pay their players too,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: and no one wants to sit on the bench in
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: the SEC anymore. Before they were forced to sit on
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: the bench and wait their turn, and now they can
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: transfer instantly to other schools. I said, Okay, that's interesting.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: So we now know who the final four teams are,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: and if these theories are correct, we should be able
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: to discern this from the rosters that these teams have,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: because when you look at a roster, there's this thing
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: on the roster that shows the city and state from
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: where you originated, where you were born, where you grew up,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: where you went to high school, so where you're from.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: So it's all matter of public record. And I did
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: something I doubt any other sports media person has bothered
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: to do while making these pronouncements about how much things
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: have changed. And I looked at the rosters of the
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: final four teams, Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame in Texas,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: and guess what. I couldn't find even a sliver of
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: evidence to back up the very very popular theory that
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: suddenly players that would have been going to the SEC
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: or had been at the SEC are now suddenly at
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Penn State or Ohio State or Notre Dame and Texas
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: and a new team into the SEC. The reality is, frankly,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: much to my surprise and a little bit you know, to.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: The idea that this is good.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: When you look at the rosters of those teams, there's
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: no indication that there has been suddenly a massive rating
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: of SEC schools you do not see. And the easiest
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: way to look at this would be and I looked
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: right at the defensive line. The defensive line has really
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: been where the SEC has had their dominance.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: Over the years.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: So if if this theory was correct, you would all
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: of a sudden see a whole bunch of defensive linemen
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: in at Ohio State or Penn State or Notre Name
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: that were coming from states like Alabama or Georgia or
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: South Carolina or Tennessee or Mississippi or Florida, that type of.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: Thing, and you just don't see it. You do not
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: see it.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: There's no overwhelming evidence that all of a sudden, these
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: schools are getting kids from places that they ordinarily would
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: not have been getting them. Texas is still mostly from Texas.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: Ohio State is still mostly from Ohio. Penn State has
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: a few defensive linemen from what I would call acc
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: Country from Maryland Virginia area, but nothing from the Deep South.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: Notre Name is Notre Name.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: They have almost no geographical bias in you know where
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: their players are coming from to begin with, because they're
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: a national university.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: It's Notre Dame.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: But they certainly don't have any bias now from having players,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: especially defensive linemen from the Deep South, which has been
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: the bread and buttered, almost literally and figuratively, of the
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: SEC dominance over the last couple of decades, so I'm
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: just not buying it. I think this is very much
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: a situation where the sports media morons are jumping on
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: a narrative way too fast without enough information. Could there
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: be something to it, obviously, yes, but you need more
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: than one Bowl season to be able to make that
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: kind of decision and discernmente about where this whole thing
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: is heading. So it could be reality, but it's not
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: based in any evidence as of yet, and we need
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: more than one year to be able to come to
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: such a conclusion. But I will acknowledge that right now,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: it certainly does look like the Big Ten is a
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: better conference this year, for whatever reason, than the SEC is.
• 1:20:45
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• 1:20:48
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• 1:21:01
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