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3 Guys Before The Game - Mike Florio Visits (Episode 459) · 3 Guys Before The Game

• 0:17
  I always get happy when I hear this music bed because it means we're getting
• 0:22
  ready to start another episode of Three Guys Before the Game. But my heart
• 0:27
  gets doubly happy, triply quadrup Lee quinn tuply happy when our boy is here.
• 0:38
  It is three Guys before the Game, and look who it is.
• 0:42
  I'm not supposed to be here until June. I know, how did you
• 0:45
  get me up here in April? I got a busy week? What it
• 0:49
  does? Pick your money? You put your MinC up closer to your there
• 0:53
  you want you want me to be You're not wearing want to build this thing?
• 0:56
  Look a parting budgetary. She's here. I thought the show was successful.
• 1:03
  Yeah that is true. No, listen, it is no no no.
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  To his point, to his point when Brad and I were just talking
• 1:11
  about this before earlier, it is. The show is incredibly successful. It's
• 1:15
  the number one podcast in West Virginia. It continues to grow, and Brad
• 1:21
  and Hoppy and myself are the only three people who aren't making money off of
• 1:26
  it. It sounds like you figured out the podcasting formula. Yeah, so
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  that's that's what we came to the conclusion. If you don't recognize the voice.
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  By chance. Our guest is Mike Florio. Uh six six, don't
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  just don't, don't start six twenty five American out of Wheeling Central Catholic High
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  School. Join. I mean you think I'm six six based on where you
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  had this chair? Seven? I came in, Lord, it was a
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  bit high. My god, who was here? Chamberlain was dead. The
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  seat was a bit high. When you came in, I knew. I
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  knew we had reached too high. When your head hit the ceiling, I
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  knew that was like, well, it might be might not have been adjusted
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  properly. Mike Florio Pro Football Talk dot Com. It's his busiest week of
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  the entire year. He shouldn't be here. He should shouldn't be here.
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  He is not good. I'm gonna get in trouble. You were people.
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  Maybe you're gonna call like what what? What? What? Do you just
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  disappear from your home office? Draft wings on a Monday of drafts A good?
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  You know drafts. You can go head to head on picks, like
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  you can bat on which pick we should do a head to head? Which
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  one takes a call first? Florio or Kerchival, Oh, it'll be it'll
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  be Florio today. You don't think he will. Nah. I mean,
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  here's a ring I'm keeping. I'm keep in mind. How many phones do
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  you have? Off? I just have one? Straight up? Serious?
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  You only have one? Why why do you need to Why do you need
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  to a lot of people too? No, I have one. You guys
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  have to one one. But coaches, you know, coaches use burner phones.
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  Well, because I think that I think that if you need two phones,
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  you need to put both phones down for a little bit. I don't
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  think we should be so connected that we should need two phones. I think
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  all your life can be managed by one. That's just my opinion. But
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  I'll tell you who has two phones is people who are in government have two
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  phones. Politicians have two phones, right, college athletics right. Because you
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  want to keep certain things away from the Freedom of Information Act. I get
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  that. That's smart. That's smart. Just what your lawyer back. I
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  agree with you. I agree with you there. And I have known people
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  over the years who have had connections to the NFL who have also been working
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  for publicly owned institutions, and I've reminded them that these are conversations that are
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  probably better had through a private email because address and because anything that is on
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  that server is subject to the right request. And yeah, so that makes
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  sense. That's a good reason for It's the first good reason I've ever heard
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  for having too well. Yeah, I mean because college athletics coaches all have
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  two phones. Assistant coaches have two phones. Administrators have two phones because anything
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  that they say or text on the US on the company phone can be for
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  it. Yeah, and then you might have a little bit of a city
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  year rotary phone or home count is my second phone. No, you're still
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  good. Do you guys still have home phone lines? Yes, through through
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  my cable company. I take that account. So I'm talking about do I
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  pay Bell? Do I pay Bell Atlantic or School? No phone line?
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  No, I have a digital internet based phone. Do you have a home
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  phone number? I do, yes, never left it same. I have
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  a home phone number, but no home phone. I don't have the actual
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  device. Wait a minute, you have a home phone number but not a
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  home phone. Correct. Understand what I can't get in touch with you.
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  We've got one because our security systems side the same, right, and I
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  have one. Once you buy one, it's cheap to have a secon Can
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  line. So I've got a line in my office that I can do because
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  sometimes, even today, despite how advanced the cell technology is and the calls
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  rarely drop, certain radio producers only want to talk to you on a land
• 5:13
  for that exactly right, exactly right by the way. Three Guys before the
• 5:17
  Game brought to us by the Burdette Camping Center, the only warranty forever RV
• 5:20
  dealer in West Virginia. Visit them at Burdette Camping dot Com. By Gomart.
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  chainsaw. Not confirmed. Three guys also brought to us by Comas Business Systems,
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  keeping West Virginia's business data safe secure and for twenty five years. And
• 6:03
  Mike is one of the great pontoon boat owners in the state. Loue Wendell
• 6:06
  Marine Sales and Saint Albans. They sell family fund lou Wendell Marine Sales dot
• 6:12
  com. Let me just say this, I've been coming here for several years
• 6:15
  now. That's the longest read of sponsors you've ever had. So indeed,
• 6:18
  someone is making money, people making money off. We're in forty seven locations
• 6:26
  across the state with Hoppies beer. Um. We've now hosted two live events
• 6:31
  the things. Thanks to the invitations. By the way, thanks appreciative.
• 6:35
  We give you the website next time you sign up. We'd love to have
• 6:39
  you. You're so weird about public appearances. Don't even pretend but to be
• 6:44
  invited so I can say no. Well, listen, your boy over there,
• 6:48
  he says yes, and then he leaves early. He says yes,
• 6:51
  and then he he's out, He's out. This is this I said,
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  it's your busies. This is the busiest week. It's not. It's not
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  free Agency is second busiest traffic wise. Yes, but of any day this
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  week, Monday is the day where and we spent some time talking about it
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  on our morning show on Peacock Series six m eighty five podcast where your podcast
• 7:14
  PFT Live. Chris Sims and I were talking about this. It's kind of
• 7:16
  a vacuum. You just did it like a NASCAR driver. That was an
• 7:19
  absolute NASCAR driver move. I felt, let's do it again, like do
• 7:24
  it again? Who you know? Where? Who are you talking with today?
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  And where were you six eighty five Peacock Sky Sports Action if you happen
• 7:30
  to be in the UK. So if you have any listeners in the UK,
• 7:33
  they can watch actually and also podcast where we get your podcast, So
• 7:39
  we're kind of in competition our podcast, real podcast. You're getting paid by
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  my podcasting. Yeah. So you were talking about busyness. Yeah, and
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  this week Monday, it's the calm before the calm, before the calm before
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  the storm. There's really nothing happening. I was saying all the way in
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  the biggest indicator of news right now is the betting markets. And that's what's
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  an amazing feature of this legalization of sports wagering, the fact that you get
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  you're lean from where things are going based on what Draft Kings, Fan Duel,
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  bet MGM have the odds at. I mean, that was when it
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  became clear to everyone Bryce Young's gonna be the number one overall pick. When
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  it went to minus two thousand, that Bryce Young is going to be the
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  first pick, and now Will Levis the Kentucky quarterback second overall of the Texans.
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  That's boom. That's become gospel now. So somebody's got a source somewhere
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  that said something. Now, we're not allowed to have the inside information as
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  the betters, right, they have the inside information as the book and we'll
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  see if it's right. But I was fascinated by that because that's all very
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  recent development. And now it's looking like Young Levis and the draft starts at
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  number three with the Cardinals. These numbers are all over the place though.
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  That information is moving fast and big swings each day. Is the hay in
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  the barn for the NFL teams or are they still processing where they're going on
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  save those top five six picks right now? I think that there's still processing
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  and the still factors that come into You can get late information that may cause
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  you to change your mind. You may get a trade offer that causes you
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  to say, instead of taking this player, will move down and someone else
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  will moving into that spot and take a different person. So I don't think
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  any of it's done until the name is on the card. I mean even
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  now, not that it's top five, top six work, but I was
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  talking to a coach to day. We spent the weekend studying film of sixth
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  round safeties. So there's so much, there's so many prospects, so much
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  you can do, so much information to be gathered, and the folks who
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  do it right don't stop watching film, don't stop gathering information, don't stop
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  looking at that board and deciding where do these guys all fit together? You
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  know, Mike. I was watching an ESPN special over the weekend for a
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  little while, and it was the eighty four draft. That was the one
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  with Marino and Kelly and those guys. Was a huge draft and how much
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  it changed. It was just guys in a what do you go in it?
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  You were watching a feature on the eighty four draft. Yeah, it
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  was fascinating because who was drafted? He left our event early. Why wouldn't
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  he have something to do? Yeah, exactly, go ahead. But it
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  was just like in a ballroom and a bunch of people really crowded in and
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  old, you know, telephones and a little son. It's like Green Bay
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  Packers or Detroit Lions and people to like smoking cigarettes and gout like Okay,
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  I got my pick and write it down and they would have to work their
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  way around the tables and around the photographers go up and handed to Pete Rosel
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  and he, I mean how much it's changed, how it became this gigantic
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  deal when and that was just when it was just starting to become people watching
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  it right. Well, for years, nobody wanted to televise it. They
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  didn't think there was any any didn't figure's any value. And now it is
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  something that is completely unnecessary to have the gathering, to have people there,
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  to have fans there. They could do it by phone, They could do
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  it by text message. They don't have to have a draft location. But
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  it's become this traveling road show where they get fifteen twenty players to go to
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  get their bear hug from the commissioner. The fans show up. They expect
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  three hundred thousand over the course of the weekend in Kansas City for what There's
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  nothing there. Nothing is going to happen there. Everything that occurs is going
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  to be electronic. It could be done without the pump a circumstance. All
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  the decision makers are in their draft rooms at their facilities. There's no reason
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  to even be at the draft. If you're covering it, you're better off
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  being home working your sources that way, because nobody's there. The only people
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  there are the players, and they keep them so under lock and key it's
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  hard to get to them, to talk to them anyway. So I quit
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  going ten years ago. There's no value in making the track and spinning your
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  wheels. There's nothing there other than the show, and the show. The
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  show really is about nothing. It could be anywhere, any place, or
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  no place at all and still be the same interest coast to coast, worldwide
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  over who's taking what pick and yet for that whole city that's turned into a
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  huge deal economic boom. That's been a good move to move it out in
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  New York from the host city perspective, From a brand perspective, No,
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  yeah. And they did it at Radio City Music Hall every year for years,
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  and then twenty fifteen was the year they got into some sort of a
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  jam where there was an Eastern show at Radio City or something like that.
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  They got a scheduling conflict. So the NFL said, fine, see you,
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  and they took a Chicago and they did it two years in Chicago,
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  and they were like, hey, this is pretty good. Then they go
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  to Philly and remember those scenes from Philly with the cams, cameras swooping down
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  and all the people, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger than all
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  was just outrageous over the weekend. And it's also something that opens up the
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  process of trying to host the Draft to cities that otherwise would be disqualified from
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  the Super Bowl because it's cold weather any place that hosts NFL football, by
• 12:52
  the time you get to the end of April, it's at least most likely
• 12:54
  going to be the kind of weather where you could pull it off. But
• 12:56
  you know, I'm like, I agree with you. But there's still there's
• 13:01
  an attraction because like with the Oscars with the red carpet, nothing happens on
• 13:05
  the red carpet, but people watch. They want to see how people are
• 13:07
  dressed, they want to see, if they say, you know, what
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  kind of glad handing goes on. So it has an atmosphere that fans are
• 13:15
  drawn to. Oh absolutely, and it's been that way for a long time.
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  Now. I'll give you my red carpet story. Radio City Music Hall,
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  twenty eleven. I'm walking down Sixth Avenue toward Radio City, and they
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  had the red carpet set up and you could see the bodies moving on it.
• 13:31
  And I saw Cam Newton approaching me, and I thought, Oh,
• 13:37
  but they got the red carpet like up on an elevated platform. Nope,
• 13:43
  that's that guy is just a giant sonster. Yeah. You mentioned earlier that
• 13:48
  the players dozen or still players will go and get their bear hug from the
• 13:54
  commissioner. If Roger Goodell had you approach him, would he give you a
• 14:01
  bear hug hug or would he lift his hands up and try to squeeze your
• 14:03
  throat? I guess it would depend on what mood he's in, what I
• 14:09
  may have said or written in the not too distant So is it a mercurial
• 14:13
  relationship that you two have. I lump him in with the league office generally,
• 14:20
  and it comes and goes, sometimes good, sometimes not good. Sometimes
• 14:24
  they understand how to deal with me, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get
• 14:26
  mad at me. Sometimes they're happy with me. And I point this out
• 14:30
  to my bosses. When I write something that I know the NFL should like,
• 14:37
  you probably won't hear from them on this one. Just remember that they're
• 14:41
  gonna like this one. You're not going to hear from him. File that
• 14:45
  away for the time they call to complain about something they don't like. Good
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  word, And that's what you know. People that I and I've started doing
• 14:52
  this. If there's somebody that I know who's in my phone that I rarely
• 14:58
  ever hear from, and the time I hear from him is they're complaining about
• 15:01
  something. The first thing they hear from me is, hey, I don't
• 15:03
  want to hear it now. I mean, I never hear from you.
• 15:05
  We don't talk, you don't call me up when there's something you like.
• 15:09
  This isn't just a complaint line. This is a relationship line. So if
• 15:11
  you're gonna call me up and complain like that and that's the only time I'm
• 15:16
  gonna hear it from you, don't bother. And I've done that before and
• 15:18
  some people I never hear from him again, and some it you know,
• 15:22
  it kind of sparks the relationship. But I mean that's just you know,
• 15:24
  you we've all got friends at the only time we hear from him was when
• 15:28
  they need something. And that's fine because if they're truly your friend, you
• 15:30
  help them out. But the people you know, they're only going to call
• 15:33
  you up and they want to complain, like, get out of my life.
• 15:35
  I'm too busy to worry about like two things. One, do you
• 15:37
  have a pick up because I need to help moving. But I do what
• 15:43
  you do too. With if I write something that I think that will be
• 15:46
  viewed favorably by that individual interesty, I'll let them know that I wrote that,
• 15:50
  and so you see that, and I'll do the same thing. And
• 15:52
  now I'll keep that in mind, and then when it comes on to complain,
• 15:56
  then it's better say, well, you know, remember what I wrote
• 15:58
  this. So I mean, I try to make sure like you do,
• 16:00
  that they see the entirety of what I'm doing, not just picking out the
• 16:04
  bad stuff. I think the problem with the NFL is because they've had their
• 16:07
  own in house media operation for twenty years now, and they are accustomed to
• 16:11
  their broadcast partners having reporters in place who will tread lightly, exercise discretion in
• 16:18
  a certain way, not step in a spot where they're gonna have to deal
• 16:22
  with consternation, agitation whatever. They do get a little upset when somebody says
• 16:27
  something that they don't like. And I mean that's fine. Within the last
• 16:32
  twelve to eighteen months. What is the one topic they've been most upset with
• 16:36
  you about. I can't remember because I just keep moving forward. I can't
• 16:41
  let that drag me down. I can't think. Oh no, I have
• 16:45
  to I have to be careful going forward because I made the mad. The
• 16:49
  maddest they ever got was twenty nineteen when they decided they were going to set
• 16:56
  up that work out for all teams Colin Kaepernick, and the whole thing turned
• 17:02
  into a bleep show. And I was very pointed in my criticism of and
• 17:10
  really everyone had blame both sides. Nobody trusted each other, and they're all
• 17:12
  looking to score points. And of course they cherry picked certain things I said
• 17:17
  about the league that they didn't like, and that ended up being a big
• 17:18
  mess. But NBC has always been great. I know I've sat in this
• 17:22
  chair before and said, NBC has always been very good about supporting me.
• 17:26
  When things go sideways and the league complains, they they explained that, you
• 17:33
  know, this guy's just doing his job, and you know that's that,
• 17:37
  and and they they deal with it. All. Right, here's a guy
• 17:41
  from Bleacher Report ripping you. Oh, here we go. What do you
• 17:45
  got to bring that? Yeah? What do we Where did that come from?
• 17:48
  I can stay home and deal with this. Do you think you're training?
• 17:52
  Do you think you're training? I get ripped off? But you know
• 17:55
  what, you know what in this business, if you're not getting ripped you're
• 17:57
  not doing it right right because you're gonna be saying something that resonates with someone,
• 18:02
  and someone's gonna jump on it to try to push back on what you
• 18:04
  said, whether they're right or whether they're wrong. But people need something to
• 18:07
  argue about, people need something to write about. And how I don't care.
• 18:11
  I mean, I don't care what At this point, I don't care
• 18:12
  what anybody says. As long as the check clears every month, I don't
• 18:17
  care. Right, do you think you're training as an attorney helped you get
• 18:21
  ready for the criticism? Absolutely, because when you practice law, by definition,
• 18:26
  half the people you deal with hate you. They just do the other
• 18:30
  lawyer, the client on the other side. They're always going to be against
• 18:36
  you. They're always going to look at you like a jerk. They're always
• 18:37
  gonna think you're up to something. They're always going to have a negative opinion
• 18:40
  because it's an adversarial process. The whole idea whether it's right or wrong.
• 18:44
  You put two people, two sides against each other, they go head to
• 18:47
  head, and the truth somehow pops out of the whole thing, and it
• 18:48
  rarely ever does. But that's a different story altogether. It's a bastardized version
• 18:52
  of the truth that the jury accepts, even if it isn't actually what happened.
• 18:56
  But regardless, when you're used to dealing with half the people that you
• 19:00
  deal with hating you with a passion all the time, anything less than fifty
• 19:04
  percent is a good day, and so ten percent five that's good. That's
• 19:11
  better than living your life every single day fighting with everyone and by definition having
• 19:17
  half the people you deal with love you and half the people you deal with
• 19:19
  hate you. This has become such a helpful session for Hobby. I mean,
• 19:26
  this has become this has become basically like counseling for Hobby. My man
• 19:30
  takes more crap left and right, just helping you, hoping. You know,
• 19:37
  I have a lot of respect from Mike, and I think that Mike
• 19:41
  is got the right attitude, you know, dealing with what he deals with
• 19:45
  a you know, at that level, I probably am two more sensitive to
• 19:51
  it than I should be, you know, it weighs on me a little
• 19:55
  bit more and more chances are you run into the people that you have to
• 19:59
  talk about right about you see them there, you know, I don't.
• 20:03
  I rarely do I have to interact with them. But it's not like I
• 20:07
  have to go to the store and worry about somebody coming up to me.
• 20:08
  And you know, some of them, but a lot of us it is
• 20:12
  just this. I try to be very accessible, so a lot of us
• 20:17
  just I was just like, I will answer almost every text I get.
• 20:19
  You couldn't possibly do that, you know. I'll get on a show on
• 20:22
  a given day, I'll get you know, seventy texts, you know,
• 20:26
  so I'll respond to like sixty them, the ones that just say you're no
• 20:29
  good? So ob well what no, I'm not, you know, I
• 20:32
  can't there's so there's no But others, you know, I try to respond
• 20:37
  to so um, So I try to have that interaction because I think those
• 20:41
  are still I don't have his audience as big as you, so those those
• 20:44
  are still listeners. Okay, So I feel it's important interact, but you
• 20:47
  know, it wears you down, wears you down. I put my email
• 20:49
  address out there for anybody that wants to send an email, and I will
• 20:53
  scroll through them. I can't answer all for them. But you know,
• 20:57
  sometimes it's just some hating because they want to hate. Somebody's mad because you
• 21:03
  said something about their favorite team and they just want to be upset. But
• 21:06
  every once in a while, there's something there that it's not a bad point,
• 21:10
  you know, And if you're not recepted to that, how are you
• 21:11
  ever going to get any better if you're not constantly looking for the areas where
• 21:15
  you need to improve. And sometimes it's going to be somebody who just wants
• 21:18
  to give you a hard time. But at the core of that complaint,
• 21:22
  there's something there that maybe helps. Yeah, Sometimes when Hoppy needs to get
• 21:26
  himself away from the stress and the mean people, he jumps into his Burdette
• 21:30
  camper. He gets ahold of that. What he did was he also took
• 21:34
  advantage of the Forest River Rockwood Ultra Light fifth wheel now ten thousand dollars off
• 21:38
  at Burdette Camping and it is it's a wonderful vehicle and power awning power awning,
• 21:45
  You're exactly correct, Thanks Brad for bringing that up. It's a twenty
• 21:48
  foot power arning but it takes up three spaces here in our parking lot at
• 21:52
  work, if you'd like to check out that vehicle, and again ten thousand
• 21:55
  dollars off or any of the vehicles available, go to the place where the
• 21:59
  war last forever. You buy it warranty forever on every RV that they sell
• 22:03
  at Perduckcamping dot com. Sure Intel process gathering easier now or more difficult now
• 22:11
  then say the last five, ten, fifteen years ago. It's easier in
• 22:15
  some ways and harder in others. I mean, you always have to be
• 22:18
  on the lookout for somebody who's trying to manipulate you use you get an agenda
• 22:22
  out there, and I think I've made it clear over the years, I'm
• 22:25
  not interested in the pre draft bullcrap that certain people try to spread. Whether
• 22:32
  it and this is the ultimate Machiavellian approach to the draft. And this happens
• 22:37
  if you have let's just say pick fifteen, and I don't know who has
• 22:41
  the fifteenth pick off the top of my head this year. And I'm not
• 22:45
  trying, I'm not trying to suggest doesn't matter what right. But let's say
• 22:52
  there's a player that you really really like, and you know players probably not
• 22:57
  going to be there at fifteen. You don't have to trade up to get
• 23:00
  him. Well, one strategy is you start telling people in the media all
• 23:04
  sorts of bad things about this guy that you love, this guy that you
• 23:07
  covet, this guy that you want no more than to have on your team.
• 23:11
  You start spreading all this crap in the hope that he slides. And
• 23:15
  the flip side of it is, let's say you're at fifteen and there's a
• 23:18
  guy you hate push a bunch of good stuff because you want some sucker who
• 23:23
  drafts in front of you to take that guy pushing down the board the players
• 23:27
  you actually want. I figured that out ten years ago, and more than
• 23:32
  that fifteen years ago, and it changes how your process and how I look
• 23:37
  for stuff. But one thing that's made it easier for me is when I
• 23:41
  definitely need something, now I know who to call. I have in my
• 23:45
  phone who I need to get in touch with, and if it's not an
• 23:48
  immediate call to the person, I know one or two steps that I can
• 23:55
  get what I need. And it comes in handy on Sundays when we're getting
• 23:57
  ready for an eight minute pregame show and you know, the producer says,
• 24:03
  we didn't know what's up with this guy. We didn't know what happened with
• 24:04
  that injury. We didn't know what's going on here. We need what's going
• 24:07
  on there. I got to mobilize and get the information. So that's become
• 24:11
  a lot easier. Is the first part of that happening with a quarterback right
• 24:15
  now that maybe from this general region we sej stroudu Yeah, I thought so
• 24:21
  at first, But I talked to somebody recently who I believe is not trying
• 24:26
  to manipulate the board based upon where that team drafts and what that team currently
• 24:30
  has and doesn't have, and some of the stuff that's out there came right
• 24:36
  out of this person's mouth, and it really made me. It really made
• 24:40
  me wonder whether it's just a situation where it's starting to coalesce. It's starting
• 24:45
  to reach a critical mass where there are concerns from a leadership standpoint that may
• 24:48
  be a factor. And it's unfortunate and I look at it this way,
• 24:53
  to be in the conversation for one of the first picks in the draft,
• 24:56
  you still have something really good, and there's going to be asked specs of
• 25:00
  the candidate that will be polarizing and cause some to say not for me.
• 25:04
  But still, all in all, you're among the very best that we'll be
• 25:10
  entering the NFL. Or you wouldn't even be in the position to draw from
• 25:12
  number one to number fifteen or whatever the slide would be. You're still one
• 25:17
  of the very best prospects. But the caveat is, you know some teams
• 25:22
  won't justify using that high pick. And one of the one of the dynamics
• 25:26
  too, is the team. What's the team looking for by way of risk
• 25:30
  tolerance? Do they want someone with a high floor or do they want someone
• 25:33
  with a high ceiling and maybe a low floor. Are you willing to roll
• 25:37
  the dice on a guy that may be a superstar and tolerate the possibility is
• 25:41
  going to be a bust. Now, coaches and gms may be less likely
• 25:44
  to do it, but owners get involved in the process. They like to
• 25:45
  act like they aren't. They get involved. Their attitude is, hey,
• 25:48
  we get a bust, we'll be back here again. Coach and GM their
• 25:52
  attitude, maybe you get a bust, it's gonna be somebody else who's in
• 25:56
  this job. The next time that you're in a position to take a quarterback
• 25:59
  this high so that's fast two. But that's you take thirty two different teams
• 26:02
  with thirty two different agendas, thirty two different mindsets, thirty two different approaches,
• 26:06
  and you throw them into the same bucket and they start making picks.
• 26:07
  That's why it's impossible for these mock drafts to even be remotely accurate, and
• 26:11
  they go completely off the rails over the first three or four picks. You
• 26:15
  were supposed to be with us last Thursday, but you had a Bryce Young
• 26:19
  interview that came in, So when you conversated with him, were takeaways Well,
• 26:27
  I mean, he seems like a great kid, and the problem and
• 26:30
  the challenges to really pierce through whatever he's been taught, training, whatever he's
• 26:37
  been trained to do. But look, he's going to be the first overall
• 26:41
  pick, and he's on the wrong side of six feet. He's five ten
• 26:45
  and an eighth. He waited into the combine at two h five, but
• 26:51
  didn't work out at his pro day workout, he didn't weigh in. So
• 26:56
  the thinking is this guy was eating twinkies and drinking milkshakes to get north a
• 27:00
  two hundred, so the red flags don't go off, and then when it's
• 27:03
  time to work out he's south a two hundred, but that's going to be
• 27:07
  a big part of it. Height and weight. Very rarely is there a
• 27:10
  quarterback under two hundred pounds. And when you look at the struggles that two
• 27:12
  a Tonga Bloa has had where he gets knocked to the ground, helmet strikes
• 27:18
  the turf, concussion. Every concussion last year two three, even though officially
• 27:26
  the first one was a back injury. Anybody with common sense knows that he
• 27:30
  had a concussion against the Bills, four nights later against the Bengals, Christmas
• 27:33
  Day against the Packers, all from his head striking the turf, and now
• 27:37
  he's doing jiu jitsu to try to manage that. I hope it works for
• 27:41
  him. I asked Bryce Young about that, and he said, he's learning
• 27:44
  how to slide. He's learning how to do the baseball slide. And look,
• 27:47
  I didn't have time to quibble with him about it. It's like,
• 27:48
  that's fine, you're learning how to do the baseball slides so you don't get
• 27:51
  blown up in the open field. I'm talking about, you're in the pocket,
• 27:53
  guy comes in and pushes you. What is your strategy for winning a
• 28:00
  physics formula that is not on your side. That's so true. And that's
• 28:04
  what happened to tah and that's what's gonna happen to Bryce Young. And it's
• 28:07
  one thing to be at Alabama, where you've got these giant oak trees that
• 28:12
  are protecting you against any and all assault. You get to the NFL,
• 28:17
  somebody's slipping through. Some guy. And Peter King made this point in his
• 28:21
  column Football Morning in America, which is available at Pro Football Talk dot com
• 28:23
  every Monday mornings. Again, you guys on serious series six eighty five.
• 28:27
  Thanks, But Peter made the point that Ryce Young's gonna go to Carolina and
• 28:33
  he's gonna look across the line at Calais Campbell, who is ten inches taller
• 28:37
  and one hundred and ten pounds heavier. That's what he's going to see the
• 28:41
  first time the Panthers playing the Falcons this year. That's just one example the
• 28:45
  giants out there. I was writing a story or to day about Lamar Jackson.
• 28:49
  Lamar Jackson is on a little guy, and he was standing next to
• 28:52
  Morgan Moses and it looked like Morgan Moses was standing on a box eighteen inches
• 28:59
  high. So there are some big guys. I remember you know, my
• 29:02
  kid played high school football and he thought he was you know, he's biggest
• 29:03
  kid in school, so he thinks he's pretty big. We went to that
• 29:07
  Baylor game twenty twelve. What was the score, one hundred and fifteen to
• 29:10
  one hundred and nine. We were down on the sideline for that game,
• 29:15
  and it was so funny. That was his That was his moment that he
• 29:17
  realized his football career ends at high school because he's down there doing this looking
• 29:22
  up at those guys. I mean, they're just huge. The offensive lineman
• 29:26
  and defensive lineman in the NFL are huge. They're huge in college and the
• 29:29
  biggest of the big end up playing in the NFL. Yeah, why doesn't
• 29:33
  Lamar Jackson somewhere else? Variety of reasons, a stew of factors, from
• 29:41
  collusion to you know, the one thing that gets overlooked because there's been so
• 29:45
  much talk about contract once a fully guaranteed contract, because Deshaun Watson got one
• 29:49
  last year. Now, DeShawn Watson had everything fall just perfectly for the Cleveland
• 29:53
  Browns to get desperate and do a deal that you're just not going to give
• 30:00
  to a guy. You have to have a process that results in a team
• 30:03
  becoming sufficiently desperate to do what they did. Just in a nutshell, Deshaun
• 30:06
  Watson and the Texans set up a competition with four teams Saints, Panthers,
• 30:10
  Falcons, Browns for Deshaun Watson, and the Browns were the first ones kicked
• 30:15
  out, and they'd already alienated Baker Mayfield and they were stuck. So they
• 30:21
  swung back around with a fully guaranteed contract. But that's how he got it.
• 30:23
  Lamar Jackson thinks it's enough to just say to the Ravens give it to
• 30:26
  me, or to somebody else, just give it to me. They're not
• 30:29
  going to do it. But the other side of it is the Browns give
• 30:32
  up three first round picks and then some to get DeShawn Watson on top of
• 30:36
  the money, so to get somebody else to give Lamar Jackson the contract the
• 30:41
  Ravens won't give him, and to give up all that other stuff to do
• 30:45
  it. It's just it's not gonna happen. It's gonna come down to Lamar
• 30:48
  and the Ravens, And as I've said time and again, at some point,
• 30:51
  he's got to say yes. He's got to say yes to something.
• 30:52
  The example I used last week. If you've got a car you're trying to
• 30:55
  sell for fifty grand and the only offer you're getting forward is thirty, and
• 30:57
  anybody that looks at it says it's thirty, it's thirty, it's thirty.
• 31:00
  At some point you got to take thirty or you don't sell a car.
• 31:03
  At some point, he's got to say yes to what the Ravens are offering
• 31:06
  or even't playing football. It's that simple, and I think it may go
• 31:11
  all the way up to week one. I thought when they signed Odell Beckham
• 31:14
  junior it would help break the ice a little bit, but there's no sign
• 31:17
  of it yet. But at some point he's got to accept an offer or
• 31:19
  his career doesn't continue, and he could he could possibly not play it all
• 31:22
  this year. Does Rogers movement have anything to do with that or it's two
• 31:25
  separate issues. It's two separate issues. Now if somehow, some way the
• 31:30
  Rodgers thing would completely fall apart, and some folks like to speculate on that
• 31:33
  because it's kind of slow right now, So all right, la, maybe
• 31:37
  the forty nine ers all get involved for Aaron Rodgers. Well, Aaron Rodgers
• 31:40
  has said his intention is to play for the Jets until that changes. He's
• 31:42
  going to the Jets. At some point between now and week one, he's
• 31:45
  going to the Jets. I think it's gonna happen Friday night during Round two.
• 31:48
  I think that's when they land the plane. No pun intended, but
• 31:51
  maybe it was. Then the Jets end up getting him. If that would
• 31:55
  all fall apart, then I think part of the desperation that we're talking about
• 31:59
  earlier with the Browns, that mindset that forces you. We got to do
• 32:01
  something. We got to do something to cause the Jets to say, we
• 32:05
  gotta go get Lamar Jackson. We got to give the Ravens what they want.
• 32:07
  We got to get this guy what he wants. We got to do
• 32:09
  something because we look stupid now because we spent all these weeks thinking we were
• 32:14
  getting Aaron Rodgers and it blew up in our faces. We've been recording for
• 32:16
  over thirty minutes and we haven't yet touched upon the fact. Why this is
• 32:21
  one of the busiest weeks of the year for you, in addition to the
• 32:23
  National Football League Draft, your novel will be released as we record tomorrow.
• 32:34
  Yeah, why did I pick this week? Well? I picked this week
• 32:36
  because you're supposed to do it last week. I know I was supposed to
• 32:37
  be but the book is out this week. I understand my point. We
• 32:42
  were previewing, We're gonna tease. We were gonna tease. This is a
• 32:45
  this is get me all riled up, and then you expect me to calm
• 32:49
  down when you try to slip into your NPR voice. Mike Florio is with
• 32:53
  us. I always wanted to be one of those NPR people. I just
• 32:58
  kind of I don't know how they do it. They just no matter what,
• 33:00
  they just kind of talk like this and is that nice? It's very
• 33:04
  special. So Mike's got a new book called Father of Mine and it will
• 33:07
  be released on Amazon tomorrow and of course on Sirius XM eighty five. Ye
• 33:14
  Peacock. Now we're gonna actually read the book on SIS M eighty five reading,
• 33:17
  so we're um. So this is a whole if two things here.
• 33:22
  If you're not aware of who Mike is and what he does, you'll miss
• 33:27
  out here on the absolute paradox of what this is. So he was one
• 33:32
  of the very first people in the space to create his own media company and
• 33:38
  created Pro Football Talk dot Com and has since had that going on. Does
• 33:45
  everything out of his palatial studio in a state in Bridgepound, probably the compound.
• 33:52
  Compound and Bridge Board does that on a regular basis, but just for
• 33:54
  the hell of it, since nothing else is going on. He's an author
• 33:58
  with plans to write over twenty books, with the thought being, as he
• 34:01
  says himself, if I write twenty of them, at one point one of
• 34:07
  them will be good enough to read. Basically, that's basically the infinite monkey
• 34:12
  theorem. Are you aware of the infinite monkey theory? Do you put the
• 34:15
  monkeys in the room and after whatever whatever, they'll write to Shakespeare Eventually,
• 34:19
  eventually, if you have enough monkeys, enough typewriters randomly typing, eventually they
• 34:24
  will create Shakespeare. So so I don't have infinity, and I'm fresh out
• 34:30
  of monkeys, so I just have to do it myself. So and as
• 34:37
  I tell my wife, quality could be the issue. Quantity is not the
• 34:40
  issue. No, No, that's true. You're kind of like our buddy
• 34:45
  Greg Hunter that Blue Gold News. He just he just writes until his fingers
• 34:50
  just fall off. That's what they do. But the book is based it's
• 34:55
  a fictional novel talking organized crime in Wheeling West Virginia where you were raised,
• 35:04
  nineteen seventy three. Here's this read it in sure go ahead is nineteen seventy
• 35:08
  three. The Mob is everywhere. The Mob rules the cities. It also
• 35:13
  controls small towns like Wheeling, West Virginia, where it runs rampant, unchecked
• 35:16
  and unlimited. Johnny Massani masangis Johnny Johnny, and that's part of the mystery.
• 35:25
  That's a good last name. Sagn E m a s s agn E
• 35:32
  Missagne. Johnny was Like many Italian names, it gets pronounced all sorts of
• 35:37
  different ways. Is Tony and I both know Johnny Missagni exited the life short
• 35:42
  of six years earlier. He's a strange son. J. J. Jenkins
• 35:45
  becomes intrigued by the work his father once did. JJ eventually falls for the
• 35:49
  mistress of the Boss, a man whose local authority is absolute father of mine.
• 35:55
  By Mike Foy. Damn, you know I'm gonna do the audio book.
• 35:58
  Maybe I need to see if Hoppy wants to read it. He's available.
• 36:00
  Problem is, uh, The whole thing with the audiobook is a painting,
• 36:08
  a major paint in the as you can do for playmakers. Major paint
• 36:13
  in the ass just you gotta sit and read, and you gotta do it
• 36:19
  right, and you gotta be within a certain range of sound, and you
• 36:22
  gotta be careful about every noise that you make, and you gotta go back
• 36:25
  and do it again. You gotta go back and do it again. And
• 36:29
  I don't know. It takes a level of patience I don't have. I
• 36:31
  can't sit still for that long and read words on a page out loud.
• 36:37
  I just can't do it. So your father was a bookie, yes,
• 36:42
  butch yep, you know it's funny. It used to be something that I
• 36:45
  didn't lead with, that's for damn sure. But the world changed five years
• 36:50
  ago. It's like, hey, everybody's a bookie now, right, Yeah,
• 36:54
  publicly traded companies are all bookies now. The house is everywhere. So
• 37:00
  he was part of the Hankish crew and wheeling. And I'm so concerned at
• 37:05
  some level that I'm gonna get whacked for writing this book. But I think
• 37:07
  all those people are dead now. I think they've done and they're gone.
• 37:09
  And what happened was I would assume that the mob was prevalent in all small
• 37:14
  towns coast coast in the seventies and then Rico came along, and as the
• 37:17
  prosecutors realized what a powerful tool that was to shut these operations down, they
• 37:23
  shut those operations down. And I think anything that's happening now in the smaller
• 37:29
  towns and communities is a shell of what it once was. If even that,
• 37:34
  yeah, why why would it even exist unless you think you can get
• 37:37
  better odds? The gambling part, the gambling parts probably meant right, yeah,
• 37:45
  the whole thing, the whole organized crime thing. But I remember at
• 37:49
  some point in the mid seventies because for me, look, I mean,
• 37:52
  it was normal because it was all I knew. So everybody else was living
• 37:55
  an abnormal life, and I'm living a normal life where dad's a bookie and
• 37:59
  twice a week he's out working a floating craps game and he gets home at
• 38:02
  three am Wednesday night and Sunday night. Now, it was just normal.
• 38:07
  But I remember there was a time when my mom and dad were concerned about
• 38:13
  gambling being legalized in West Virginia. Mid seventies. Oh this is good,
• 38:17
  And I'm thinking, what, well, what what's the problem. This is
• 38:21
  good, this is good. If it's legalized, then we'dn't have to worry
• 38:22
  about you know the police that never show up anyway because they don't care.
• 38:27
  It was all out in the open. But then it's like, well,
• 38:28
  yeah, but if it's ever legalized, then Dad gets shut down because they're
• 38:31
  competing with the state and they're not gonna let that happen. And so and
• 38:37
  I remember, like the contingency plan, it's like vague. There was a
• 38:38
  vague period of time where the idea was we'd moved into New Jersey and he'd
• 38:43
  get a job at one of the casinos in Atlantic City. I mean,
• 38:45
  so they were ready, they were ready, And I can't remember who was
• 38:47
  running for governor at the time. They've been Jay Rockefeller. I don't know.
• 38:50
  It was seventies, that might have been. That's before. That's before
• 38:53
  Rockefeller. Let me check Archmore. I don't know somebody was running for governor
• 38:58
  that if that person won, they putsially, we're gonna legalize gambling. And
• 39:00
  that was sending up alarms at Jim Sprouse. Maybe so was you say that
• 39:07
  the police knew but didn't care. So were they care? Were they getting
• 39:10
  their share? Though? Are they getting their share? Well? Dad kicks
• 39:15
  sixty percent upstream best I could tell, And upstream was to the Pittsburgh No
• 39:21
  no, no, upstream to Hankish. Oh, Hankish ran the operation.
• 39:24
  Hankish had all the bookies in town and other things. So Dad was the
• 39:28
  bookie and sixty percent of the handle got sent upstream. You know, when
• 39:31
  you just keep your mouth shutting your ears open, you hear a lot of
• 39:35
  things when you're eight nine ten household. And that paid for a lot of
• 39:38
  things, including not having a cop wandering off the street and say what's going
• 39:44
  on in here and shutting it all down? So um and and look one
• 39:50
  of the and there's no scene in the book that's based on this, But
• 39:52
  for me, when I was old enough to start being curious and snooping around.
• 39:58
  At the bottom of dad It's closet was a box of envelopes that were
• 40:05
  made out by hand to all the movers and shakers and lawyers and doctors and
• 40:12
  judges and politicians with the weekly sheet that had the lines on it and the
• 40:15
  over unders for the NFL game. So he'd send him out on Monday and
• 40:19
  he'd wait for the phone to run, but it was everybody. He just
• 40:22
  put an envelope, put a stamp on it, send it to the house.
• 40:23
  That's how out in the open it was. Did he handle then he
• 40:27
  handled collections too. No, that's part of what you paid the sixty percent
• 40:30
  for that. If anybody stiff shoe, can anybody stiff shoe, then they
• 40:35
  have to deal with, you know, the people who are paid to make
• 40:37
  sure that. That's another part of the division, another division called the Enforcement
• 40:43
  Division. Enforcement Division. Dad, Dad wasn't going to enforce anything, although
• 40:46
  there was one time. I mean my dad was very meek and very quiet
• 40:50
  and very humble, and he would be beside himself if he knew I was
• 40:55
  talking about this right now, and part of me thinks he is. And
• 40:59
  sorry, Dad, they're in anything you can do about it, but uh,
• 41:04
  this is this is I don't know, it's a funny story to me.
• 41:06
  You may not think it's funny. They used to do those, and
• 41:08
  they probably still do them at high school where they have the stupid spirit days
• 41:12
  where you gotta dress up is something different than that. I hated doing that.
• 41:15
  I hated that. I hated that so and I can't remember what it
• 41:20
  was. It's homecoming week. I'm a sophomore in high school, and you
• 41:22
  gotta dress up is something you know, Life's hard enough without having to worry
• 41:24
  about finding a freaking costume. Like what am I? Where am I gonna
• 41:27
  get a freaking costume? You know? Um? So I decided I'm gonna
• 41:30
  be a mobster. So I decided I'm gonna be a mobster, and I
• 41:34
  raid Dad's closet. Get get the sport coat, get the fedora, get
• 41:37
  the sunglasses. Right, I'm walking home from school that day from the bus
• 41:40
  stop. Now i'm walking home. You know I got the sun. You
• 41:44
  know, No, you don't wear many sport coats when you're fifteen years old.
• 41:46
  I'm walking home and dad sport coat, feeling pretty good about myself.
• 41:49
  And I reached in one of the pockets out It's like, oh boy,
• 41:52
  what is this? Oh boy, piece of rectangular metal? What is that?
• 41:58
  Is that? Bullets in there? There's a clip and it was missing
• 42:01
  a couple of bullets. So I get home and my mom did ceramics for
• 42:07
  years, and so she'd sit in the basement in her housecoat, and she
• 42:10
  smoked cigarette and paint her ceramics. And I walked in and I said,
• 42:14
  I found this in Dad's coat. And she looked at it, twisted around
• 42:16
  a little bit, stuck it in her pocket and just kept going and there
• 42:21
  was never any never, any further discussion ever about that incident. Hey tell
• 42:25
  me this, how do you write? Do you just start like chapter one?
• 42:30
  Or do you define the characters and then build from that? How do
• 42:31
  you do it? And then what's your what's your schedule for writing? I
• 42:37
  can only write at night. I can only write. I can't say only
• 42:43
  I write well in my barn. It's hard for me to get into the
• 42:45
  flow and into the groove anywhere butt in my barn. And what I do
• 42:52
  is and I just finished one this past weekend now, and so now I
• 42:57
  gonna come up with an idea. And I got some ideas, but like
• 43:00
  it's just a thread. It's a thread you start pulling, you know.
• 43:01
  And I sit down with a general idea and I just let it take me
• 43:06
  wherever it takes me. And so you don't know, you don't know.
• 43:08
  I don't know specifically at first, for the first twenty to forty thousand words,
• 43:14
  I don't know where it's going to go. And then I get to
• 43:16
  a point where okay, based on what I've done, where am I going
• 43:22
  from there? Okay? And then I outlined the back end, so I
• 43:23
  don't outline the whole thing. I let the first forty thousand words flow and
• 43:28
  then I figure out the rest of the story from there. And I don't
• 43:30
  know if that's good or bad. I don't know. It's just what works
• 43:32
  for me. Yeah, okay, So on this one, how how much
• 43:36
  of the early stuff did you have to go back in and totally wipe and
• 43:39
  we start this one? What I did was I wrote it in two months
• 43:47
  from June to August of twenty twenty, during the pandemic, once everything slowed
• 43:51
  down in the NFL. I, you know, I just sit down and
• 43:54
  start going, and you have it done. But over time, I went
• 43:59
  back and the initial draft was written in the basic third person narrative. You
• 44:06
  know, he said this, she said this, He did that. I
• 44:08
  went back and I took four of the main characters, and I have chapters
• 44:14
  and sections of chapters where it's first person for that character, unique voice to
• 44:17
  that character, unique outlook to that character, unique view of the major dilemmas
• 44:22
  in the story. Some characters think it's not a big deal. Another character
• 44:28
  thinks it is a big deal, and that's part of what has to be
• 44:30
  resolved. And I thought that made it a more compelling and it was more
• 44:32
  fun for me to go back and take the story and retell eighty percent of
• 44:37
  it eighty five percent of it from the perspective of the four main characters in
• 44:42
  the book. So that and I hope to not have to do that again,
• 44:45
  because I don't like the idea of going back and rewriting. I'd rather
• 44:47
  write something new. I resisted going back and rewriting, but I thought that
• 44:51
  was really the only way that I was going to make it better was to
• 44:52
  kind of reimagine what I'd already done, and it did make it better.
• 44:55
  Was that advice you'd got from somebody or you just came to that on your
• 44:59
  own. My agent, who handled Playmakers, the nonfiction book from last year,
• 45:04
  he looked at father of mine and he was nudging, nudging, nudging,
• 45:08
  you know, you need to do more. You need to do more.
• 45:10
  It's good start, you need to do more. And I just kind
• 45:14
  of had that that bolt of lightning. I think it was last March last
• 45:17
  April that I read The Lincoln Highway, which uses that technique. And it's
• 45:22
  not a new technique, but it makes it more engaging for the reader to
• 45:27
  have to pivot from character to character, and I actually what I do I
• 45:30
  name at the start of each chapter who the character is. I didn't want
• 45:35
  to do that. I wanted to put put it on the reader to figure
• 45:37
  out who it is, make it part of the fun. But I thought,
• 45:39
  I don't want to put too much of a burden on the reader because
• 45:43
  it can get it can get frustrating. You're like, I'm you know,
• 45:45
  I'm a page into this chapter and I have no idea who it is that's
• 45:49
  saying these words. Do you? I would think, isn't it isn't it
• 45:54
  hard to end it? To know when to stop or to bring it to
• 46:00
  a logical conclusion, or do you bring it to a logical conclusion so that
• 46:05
  so that things are tied up. You get to the point where you just
• 46:07
  accept the fact that that there's no amount of time that you're going to put
• 46:12
  into this now that's going to make it any better. It is what it
• 46:15
  is, and off it goes. And the challenge is when you first have
• 46:21
  that feeling pushing through it, and when you have that feeling again push through
• 46:25
  it. There's one point though, where you just have to accept this is
• 46:30
  it. This is all it's ever going to be I'm at the point where
• 46:35
  the returns are diminishing. I've got to finish it and I got to move
• 46:37
  on to the next one. Within that process, which is the most enjoyable
• 46:45
  part for you, The best part is when you got a keyboard here,
• 46:51
  I'm gonna take this keyboard. When you're sitting there with your fingers at the
• 46:54
  asdf jk il semicolon right, it's semicalon right right, So when you're sitting
• 47:01
  there and he'll put the semical in there. I never have writer's block.
• 47:07
  I never have that because once I sit there and lock in, it just
• 47:10
  goes and the feeling of the story is revealing itself to me through this process.
• 47:17
  It has just kind of become It's it's the remember the Wegia board where
• 47:21
  you're kids, Like, how much money did Milton Bradley make off of this
• 47:25
  stupid ass game that was, at best a channeling of the dark arts and
• 47:34
  unleashing of demons throughout you know, wreck rooms, And that would the appeal
• 47:38
  of it. Hey, maybe this maybe there will be some evil spirit that
• 47:43
  manifests in the room. Wouldn't that be fun? Jimmy um, But it
• 47:46
  feels like that, like a wegia board that actually works where it just goes,
• 47:51
  and I'm a witness to this just happening. The words just come to
• 47:55
  me and it just goes. So if you were above your self looking down
• 48:00
  at you, it would almost be like you could almost see this ray from
• 48:07
  keyboard to head. That is the flow you see if so, they answer
• 48:10
  your question, it's the flow that you enjoy the most. Yeah, and
• 48:15
  it feels like I'm reading the book as it's being written, not that I'm
• 48:21
  writing it. If that makes any sense at all, totally makes sense.
• 48:22
  And that's that that part is fun well, and that's what frustrates me about
• 48:28
  having one done because I like that feeling and I got to come up with
• 48:30
  another idea and sit down and start and hope it works, and then that
• 48:31
  feeling comes back again. But that's that's a very addictive feeling, and it
• 48:37
  balances out everything else I do. Sims and I were making fun earlier today
• 48:44
  on you know how you balance working on football versus doing other things, and
• 48:47
  he gave me a hard time, Oh, where you're you know, you're
• 48:50
  writing these books when you could be working even harder on the website. A
• 48:52
  second, but this is the thing that it balances out all the time and
• 48:55
  all that and all it's a different type of creation, and it's just it's
• 49:00
  a fun hobby. And that's how I tripped into this business in the first
• 49:02
  place twenty three years ago. It's just a hobby and it's a hobby now
• 49:06
  and I have fun doing it. And you know, I hope people read
• 49:09
  and maybe they'll like it, and maybe they won't. And part of it
• 49:13
  too is I don't want anybody to keep reading if they don't like it.
• 49:15
  Like I sent you a copy, feel free to share it with these guys.
• 49:17
  You start reading it and you think this is horrible. Stop It's on
• 49:22
  the writer to make it interesting to the reader to keep going. The worst
• 49:28
  feeling in the world is being stuck in the middle of a book that you
• 49:30
  hate. I have several of him I read on my phone exclusively now because
• 49:36
  it's nice. It lights up, and it's you know, you can make
• 49:37
  the print as big as you want it to be, not even an ipatterning.
• 49:40
  I decided to choose right on here, and there was I'm a big
• 49:45
  Cormack McCarthy fan. No country for old man the Road. He went the
• 49:49
  Pulitzer for the road, great stuff. He's in his late eighties and he's
• 49:52
  still going. But he wrote a book called Blood Meridian thirty years ago and
• 49:55
  I don't know what the hell is going on. I can't follow it.
• 49:59
  There's nothing about it that's enjoyable to me. And I got halfway through it
• 50:01
  and I said, I'm done out out. And that's fine. If you
• 50:05
  get to that point with one of my books, tap out, don't keep
• 50:07
  going, because that's a horrible feeling. And it's on the writer to create
• 50:10
  a feeling that the reader wants to keep going. Whatever's on this page has
• 50:15
  to make you want to go to the next page. Whatever's on the next
• 50:16
  page has to carry to the next page. You can't just meander, you
• 50:20
  know, we've all seen those books where it's just meanders. If it meanders,
• 50:22
  the reader doesn't care. The reader wants to be captured and engrossed and
• 50:29
  taken along for a ride. Mike's book officially drops on the twenty fifth of
• 50:34
  April, which is tomorrow. As we record, he didn't want that up
• 50:37
  publicly at all before, and so he uses the service of Comas Business Systems.
• 50:43
  They are West Virginia's data security experts, right right, now all my
• 50:47
  data is secured by Comax absolutely, so they're not just a local copyer guy.
• 50:52
  If you're a business owner, they can protect your data, manage your
• 50:55
  it remotely. They've got it done for it. Comax digital phone stems competitively
• 51:00
  priced from one line to a thousand. Check them out of Comax, wuv
• 51:06
  dot com. So the book is only like four dollars and ninety nine cents
• 51:12
  on Kindle. It's a little under fifteen bucks if you get the actual in
• 51:15
  your hand book. I wasn't even gonna do the print, but so many
• 51:19
  people wanted it. It's like, that's fine. I tried to make it
• 51:21
  as cheap as I could four ninety nine. I was I was gonna go
• 51:25
  too ninety nine and my wife said, you know, there's a point where
• 51:30
  it's so cheap. The message is this isn't worth your time Harlequin romance type.
• 51:35
  Yeah, because I just want maximum readership. It's the same attitude I
• 51:38
  had. But the website when we got started. Get it in front of
• 51:43
  as many people as possible. Maximize the audience, and I about two ninety
• 51:45
  nine, but maximize because I'm really not doing it. I know when they
• 51:49
  say they're not doing it for the money. They're doing it for the money.
• 51:50
  I'm really not doing Remember they remember Moneyball. It's not the money,
• 51:53
  it's what the money says. So you know, right, But but but
• 51:58
  yeah, fourteen ninety nine because the paperback printing costs and shipping and handling and
• 52:02
  all that. But fourteen ninety nine and four books have you written? I've
• 52:08
  I've, Well, if Playmakers counts, but it doesn't really count because nonfiction
• 52:12
  is just you know, it's the same stuff that I write all the time.
• 52:15
  So I was seven. Yeah, I uh, but it wasn't the
• 52:20
  same. It felt more like work, like it was still a book the
• 52:24
  enjoyment that I get from the fiction writing. I've finished seven manuscripts, but
• 52:32
  five of them still need a decent amount of work. So jeez, I
• 52:38
  had. I did a Christmas story that amount sixty eight thousand words, so
• 52:44
  some people have called it a novella. I just posted it last year on
• 52:45
  the website like an advent calendar, one chapter a day, and I'm gonna
• 52:51
  get that ready and sell it this year because I go over that. How'd
• 52:54
  that go over? Did people enjoy it? People enjoyed it? Some of
• 52:57
  the emails I got and this is why I really want to keep doing it,
• 53:00
  because when you get an email from someone who says, for example,
• 53:07
  I have had for decades work related PTSD and I have been incapable of feeling
• 53:15
  anything for years, and your book made me feel something feeling. Yeah,
• 53:27
  absolutely, so absolutely, And that's what this we because we just sit here
• 53:34
  and do this all the time. That's the one thing that we certainly don't
• 53:40
  respect enough is the fact that people become accustomed to you being with them,
• 53:46
  either by reading you or your voice. So when they come and meet you,
• 53:52
  it's like there's this relationship that they have that you don't even have any
• 53:55
  concept whatsoever that's been going on, but in their mind they know you really
• 54:00
  well, and it's brought than that. You know, what you guys do,
• 54:05
  what I do, What we do in this business, it's very easy
• 54:07
  to question what is the value? What do we what do we really?
• 54:12
  Like? I said that to my wife, We're like, what in the
• 54:14
  hell am I doing? Right? It is helping anyone? Right? What
• 54:17
  am I contributing to society? And that's one of the reasons I wanted to
• 54:21
  write longer form because whatever I write today at Pro football Talk dot Com by
• 54:27
  tomorrow nobody cares exactly, and by Wednesday nobody cares about what I wrote Tuesday.
• 54:30
  You have to constantly feed the beast. You have to constantly shovel call
• 54:36
  into the into the engine to keep the train go on or or everybody's gonna
• 54:38
  scatter. Mike, you know what happens if you don't feed the beast,
• 54:42
  The beast will feed on you. Well that's that's that's uh, the beast
• 54:45
  feeds on me anyway, even as I try to feed the beast. But
• 54:49
  when I get emails from people who a guy over the weekend who watches our
• 54:53
  show every morning on Peacocks Series Sex M eighty five, Sky Sports Action or
• 54:57
  from the UK and Ireland and wherever you get your podcasts. He fought Pancrew
• 55:00
  out of cancer and one that's hard, that's a tone and one of the
• 55:05
  things he did every day watched our show and that was his anchor part of
• 55:12
  I mean, he had other anchors, but he reached out to explain that,
• 55:15
  and I mean, how do you not feel touched by that? And
• 55:16
  at least it makes you feel like what you're doing means something to somebody,
• 55:21
  even if it's just one person. But I get those all the time.
• 55:22
  I send him to my wife just so she understands that that this thing I'm
• 55:27
  doing that seems so frivolous and meaningless to me, and it does. It's
• 55:30
  kind of it's kind of funny when you think about what we all do,
• 55:34
  like we're part of and the valuable service that we have is for so many
• 55:38
  people, it is a diversion from the challenges and the issues and the realities
• 55:45
  of the world, whether it's their own personal life, whether it's the broader
• 55:50
  issues that cause stress for people in today's world. We give him that escape
• 55:54
  and I like that part of it. And that's what I wanted to do
• 55:58
  with writing longer form. I would like to write something that, you know,
• 56:02
  I don't need to have my name on a building. I don't need
• 56:05
  to have, you know, the interchange out on I seventy nine that doesn't
• 56:08
  have a name. I don't need my name now. I want something that
• 56:12
  fifty years from now, some kid's going to trip across it and read it
• 56:15
  and say, you know, I was pretty good. I kind of like
• 56:17
  that, and that that becomes kind of your thing because I know, none
• 56:21
  of the stuff I write every day anybody's gonna see fifty years from now as
• 56:25
  well soon. Ye. Hey, you know what, Mike talks Real good,
• 56:30
  aren't your thing? Mike talks? You know. I'm blown away by
• 56:35
  your by your writing process. I write a commentary, you know, five
• 56:37
  days a week, and sometimes it is just like extracting teeth. I mean,
• 56:42
  really, it just is. And I was just reading I knew there
• 56:44
  was a quote and I rechecked it by Red Smith, the former longtime columnists
• 56:47
  for The New York and he said, writing is easy. You just sit
• 56:52
  down by the typewriter and you start to sweat blood. I mean, And
• 56:54
  but it just seems it seems like it's so effortless for you. And um,
• 56:59
  these are weird, but putting effort into it, I just mean,
• 57:05
  but it is. But it is. Look, I remember when I got
• 57:07
  into this business, when it was a hobby, when I was just doing
• 57:10
  it for fun, and I realized I was pretty good at it. One
• 57:14
  of the reasons I realized I was good at it is because I just sat
• 57:15
  down and went I mean, and it was a It was a building block
• 57:19
  from when you practice law, you write all the time and you don't have
• 57:22
  the luxury of sitting there wondering what I'm gonna write next. You just have
• 57:25
  to get it done. And when we started PFT, same idea. I
• 57:30
  gotta keep we gotta feed the beast. Don't have time to sit and think,
• 57:34
  just have to go with what comes to me. I can't stare at
• 57:36
  a blank screen. I don't have time to do it. It's not an
• 57:38
  option. And I take that into when it's time to sit down and write,
• 57:43
  I don't have time to sit there and wonder what I'm gonna write next.
• 57:45
  That's why I really do have ankst now that I finished the latest project
• 57:50
  and I don't know what I'm gonna do next. And the sooner I know
• 57:52
  what I'm going to do next and get started on it, I'll feel even
• 57:55
  keeled again. I want to have that thing where because once I know where
• 57:59
  I'm going, I sit down and off it goes. But I just think
• 58:01
  it's repetition. It's repetition. It's repetition. It's the Malcolm Gladwell ten thousand
• 58:06
  hours thing. I mean, when I look at all the writing I've done
• 58:07
  over the last thirty years, I mean, it's gotta be fifty thousand hours.
• 58:10
  It's gotta be one hundred thousand hours. I mean, it's hours.
• 58:12
  I don't want to know about that. I've been sitting there. I'm amazed
• 58:15
  my fingers still work of all the all the times i've you know, bashed
• 58:17
  into a keyboard the past thirty years. Were you a prodigious writer in high
• 58:22
  school? No? No, I didn't like it because I didn't understand.
• 58:27
  You know. I was more math and science. Things were clear and black
• 58:30
  and white, and when you wrote, there were too many different ways you
• 58:34
  could go. And I wanted to be able to take the numbers and plug
• 58:37
  them into the equation and get the answer and know that's it. It's clear,
• 58:40
  there's no gray area. And over time, I think once I once
• 58:45
  I started law school, and then you realize there still can be a formula
• 58:52
  to writing, but it can also be something that's very open ended. And
• 58:54
  I embraced that instead of being fearful of yeah, the fact that there's no
• 59:00
  right or wrong answer. It's all very subjective. You can't work through a
• 59:02
  formula and get to a final answer. You just have to do whatever sounds
• 59:07
  good, whatever makes sense. And I think the best way to become a
• 59:10
  decent writer is to just read a lot. You understand what you like,
• 59:15
  understand what you don't like, and then you just emulate the things that you
• 59:17
  read that you like, and to write and to write, to do the
• 59:21
  reps and and yeah, that's right, it's got to be the reps.
• 59:22
  But you also have to have that basic understanding of what communication, what good
• 59:29
  communication feels like, what it sounds like, what it looks like, and
• 59:31
  then you just go. So you were a black and white person coming out
• 59:36
  of high school. So that's why engineering was like a perfect fit. It
• 59:39
  was either this or that. There's not a whole lot of wiggle room and
• 59:43
  engineering I gave no consideration to any other field of study that would require writing,
• 59:50
  that would require anything other than plugging in numbers to formulas and memorizing the
• 59:53
  formulas and figuring out, you know, whether it's physics or chemistry or whatever.
• 59:58
  And then I got overwhelmed by that and started looking for a way out,
• 1:00:00
  and that's when I found law school. Yeah, because the formulas get
• 1:00:05
  harder, the formulas get more difficult, the concepts become much harder from my
• 1:00:10
  impaired brain to understand. So that's when I deviated towards But you didn't,
• 1:00:15
  but you still finished the engineering degree. You didn't go transfer portal and run
• 1:00:19
  away earlier. I've wanted to. Mom wouldn't let me. Good more credit
• 1:00:22
  to mom. I wanted to get the hell out of there. Oh,
• 1:00:24
  college was College was not easy, especially because you know, you're eighteen nineteen
• 1:00:30
  years old. You're wired to do the things that are natural to an eighteen
• 1:00:36
  or nineteen year old studying hard at Carnegie Mellon, study out the social hard
• 1:00:40
  world, you know, a little bit, a little bit different nightlife hoppy
• 1:00:45
  Carnegie Mellon and West Virginia University, Yeah, a little bit, but uh
• 1:00:49
  yeah, it was just not a good age to be, to be as
• 1:00:52
  diligent as I and once. But you know what, it made law school
• 1:00:54
  a lot easier, that's for damn sure. Law school was a lot easier
• 1:00:58
  after going through that. So anyway, so the Redskins, who ends up
• 1:01:06
  buying them done? Due what's going to happen? The Washington football team.
• 1:01:09
  It's only been three years, that's okay, excuse me, rerac reque at
• 1:01:15
  it. Yeah, the the Washington football club, you know what, like
• 1:01:20
  what what a story? Washingtonst had a big story about it. Kind of
• 1:01:22
  of course they've been on it forever. To take a franchise that was one
• 1:01:28
  of the most valued and and beloved franchises in the National Football League and to
• 1:01:34
  take it to the depths that it's gotten to. It's incredible. That's your
• 1:01:38
  team, not anymore. Was growing up? Yeah, growing up it was.
• 1:01:44
  It was just like you couldn't you know, twenty year weight for season
• 1:01:46
  tickets and and you know, having then having Super Bowl victories with Gibbs and
• 1:01:52
  with what Dan Snyder did that to that franchise. Of course they increased the
• 1:01:55
  value eight times, or the value increased eight times. That's what an incredible
• 1:02:00
  story that is. Yeah, he didn't do anything to increase the value.
• 1:02:02
  The value in it just increased. It's going to keep increasing. The average
• 1:02:07
  running the middle team is going to be worth eight to ten billion soon.
• 1:02:09
  If it's not all I mean, it's getting there. When you go from
• 1:02:12
  four point six five to six and eight months the Broncos sold for four point
• 1:02:15
  six five, the Commanders are going to sell for six It's a thirty percent
• 1:02:19
  bump in eight months. It's going to keep going up and up and up.
• 1:02:22
  But yeah, the reality there is Josh Harris's group seems to be seems
• 1:02:28
  to be the likely group to prevail with Magic Johnson involved. Magic Johnson's in
• 1:02:34
  for four percent at the six point zero five billion price tag. That's two
• 1:02:37
  hundred and forty million. Jerry Jones bought all of the Cowboys for one hundred
• 1:02:42
  and fifty million, and Magic Johnson's going to get four percent of the Commanders
• 1:02:45
  for two hundred and forty million. But it's going to be a good investment
• 1:02:47
  for him now. Steve Apostelopolis, the Canadian billionaire who's on CNBC this morning,
• 1:02:52
  I don't think that he's a real contender. The door is open for
• 1:02:57
  someone else to swoop in because it's a non exclusive deal between Josh Harris and
• 1:03:00
  Daniel Snyder. People thought Jeff Bezos was maybe going to get in. I
• 1:03:04
  think Bezos looks at it very pragmatically, as I can wait for the next
• 1:03:09
  one. Why do I want to buy the one that has to be gutted
• 1:03:14
  and rebuilt with this horrible stadium and the goodwill of the organization shot and I
• 1:03:21
  may have to rebrand it again. I think he's gonna buy the Seahawks next
• 1:03:24
  year because the Seahawks and Paul Allen's estate held by his sister Jody she's in
• 1:03:30
  the process of selling off like she sold out billions in art and under the
• 1:03:35
  deal that built the stadium that the Seahawks play in now, as of May
• 1:03:39
  twenty twenty four, the obligation evaporates to give the state ten percent of the
• 1:03:46
  sale proceeds. So once we get to May of twenty four, lets to
• 1:03:50
  think about that ten cents on the dollar. If they would sell to Bezos
• 1:03:52
  for eight billion, that's eight hundred million that goes straight to the state,
• 1:03:55
  which was like twice what the stadium cost. I think as of May twenty
• 1:03:59
  twenty where that's when it's for sale, and I think that's the team that
• 1:04:02
  Bezos sends up buying, because then you don't have to go in and build
• 1:04:05
  a new stadium, you don't have to rebuild the loyalty the fans, you
• 1:04:09
  don't have this because I think there's going to be a hell of a honeymoon
• 1:04:12
  period for the new owners demand just because it's not dancing right. But reality
• 1:04:16
  is going to set in at some point and the people are going to expect
• 1:04:19
  something and along the way, you're gonna be busting your ass to get this
• 1:04:21
  team to where it needs to be. And why do that if you can
• 1:04:24
  just wait for the next team that has all the problems already solved. We
• 1:04:29
  mentioned earlier on in the program about how gambling has become accepted and embraced by
• 1:04:35
  professional sports leagues now all across the nation and for that matter, now a
• 1:04:40
  many places across the world. What's the next iteration? The last time we
• 1:04:44
  had you in here, that was a main topic, even for your involvement
• 1:04:50
  and for what you do on a regular basis, what's the next shiny squirrel
• 1:04:58
  for gambling? What are going to see? I think that in the past
• 1:05:01
  year or so, there's been a recognition that at some point they just have
• 1:05:04
  to make money. Then you can set up the infrastructure, you can go
• 1:05:08
  out and do a bunch of bad deals, which I think a bunch of
• 1:05:10
  these companies did, and then reality sets in. You've got shareholders you ultimately
• 1:05:15
  have to answer to. You have to make money, and until they can
• 1:05:16
  break into California, Texas and or Florida, the current cap on the total
• 1:05:23
  learnings is going to be maybe lower than they thought it was going to be.
• 1:05:27
  And we're only five years into this, but I'm just kind of along
• 1:05:31
  for the ride wherever it goes. It goes signed up with NBC in definitely
• 1:05:38
  into the future several more years at a minimum, and hope to continue it
• 1:05:41
  even longer than that. And the gambling side of it, it's just hard
• 1:05:44
  to figure out. And I think it's gonna fluctuate, it's going to flutter
• 1:05:46
  a little bit, it's gonna do different things. But ultimately, these companies
• 1:05:51
  have to find a way to make money. The house always wins, we
• 1:05:55
  know that, but they have to find a sweet spot where they're spending enough
• 1:06:01
  money to bring in enough customers and that those customers are generating enough revenue to
• 1:06:06
  justify the expenditures to keep trying to bring in more customers. What about this
• 1:06:12
  latest news from last week, the players and staff in the NFL that got
• 1:06:15
  hit with this big deal not a big deal, more of it coming.
• 1:06:19
  I think it's a huge deal, and I'm told that there have been plenty
• 1:06:24
  of league and team employees over the recent months that have quietly been fired for
• 1:06:30
  violating the gambling policy. It's very broad. It applies to everyone employed by
• 1:06:33
  every team employed by the league office. My concern is that the NFL is
• 1:06:39
  content to periodically have one of the sportsbook partners serve up the evidence because these
• 1:06:46
  kids just don't realize you use your phone, They're going to triangulate, They're
• 1:06:50
  going to figure it out. You use the draft king app in your name
• 1:06:54
  on your phone, they're gonna know you did it. But that allows the
• 1:06:59
  NFL to create the impression that we're doing what we have to do to enforce
• 1:07:01
  this policy. But what are they doing to affirmatively investigate all the potential violations?
• 1:07:05
  What are their violations are out there? And are they truly ahead of
• 1:07:09
  the curve as it relates to the use of inside information especially you know these
• 1:07:15
  draft boards, right who knows what a given team thinks about a given guy
• 1:07:20
  and you could take that information, you could slip at somebody and that person
• 1:07:25
  goes to Vegas and drops a huge bet on who whichever team is going to
• 1:07:29
  take in round one and makes a bunch of money. How are they controlling
• 1:07:31
  that material non public information as they call it in the corporate world? Are
• 1:07:35
  they? Or is it just the books are giving you such low limits And
• 1:07:40
  that's why some books won't put it up until just this week when the books
• 1:07:43
  are reacting to that clearly right now, well, the books are reacting to
• 1:07:45
  it but you know, I've read stories about there was an ESPN host that
• 1:07:48
  within the past couple of years, I think it was two years ago in
• 1:07:50
  the draft, there was a corner who was mischaracterized as a safety or vice
• 1:07:55
  versa, and he made like three grand betting that he would be the first
• 1:07:59
  safe off the board and he was actually a corner, and he wasn't the
• 1:08:02
  first corner, but he technically was the first safety. Was on a kiosk,
• 1:08:06
  and he went multiple times yea three hundred and fifty grand later you win.
• 1:08:12
  So I think it's a real concern, and whether it's who knows what
• 1:08:15
  the game plan is for a given game. You know, a lot of
• 1:08:18
  coaches will script the first fifteen plays. I had a coach explained to me
• 1:08:21
  once, what happens if I've got up on the board the plays we're gonna
• 1:08:26
  run to start the game and somebody comes into empty the trash cans and they
• 1:08:30
  see it, How do I know that person didn't take it information? Call
• 1:08:34
  somebody sure and use it absolutely. So they need to be concerned about that.
• 1:08:39
  They need to be concerned about Tim donnay type situation where an official goes
• 1:08:44
  rogue. There's there's just a lot of things that I think they need to
• 1:08:46
  be concerned about, and I've yet to see the conclusive evidence that they properly
• 1:08:51
  are ready to prevent it, because all it takes is one scandal. You
• 1:08:57
  know, the Security Singe Change Commission didn't come around until five years after the
• 1:09:00
  stock market crash of twenty nine. There was nothing before that, no agency
• 1:09:04
  in place to regulate the information that was traded, and all the stuff that
• 1:09:09
  we take for granted now you just can't do, can't talk about it,
• 1:09:12
  can't talk about it, but didn't even exist. So it's going to take
• 1:09:15
  something like that. And if something like that does happen, there'll be an
• 1:09:17
  agency eventually that's got oversight of all professional sports, maybe college sports too.
• 1:09:24
  And then you have red tape bureaucracy. You've got all sorts of different realities
• 1:09:28
  that are responsible for governing these sports, like the NFL that desperately want to
• 1:09:33
  govern themselves. One last thing here, we'll let you slide. Give me
• 1:09:38
  your perspective on the season that Geno Smith had. I think it was fantastic,
• 1:09:43
  It was unexpected, It was a great story. People always ask me,
• 1:09:46
  what are you root for? Root for a great story? And there's
• 1:09:48
  no greater story than a guy who got drafted into a difficult spot, had
• 1:09:57
  that weird incident where he got punched in the faced by Ik and then Paully
• 1:10:00
  over something about coming to my youth football camp. Didn't refund the I don't
• 1:10:08
  it was weird. Got sucker punches him and that derails him for I think
• 1:10:11
  it was the twenty fifteen season, and I got to give him credit for
• 1:10:15
  sticking with it, staying in the game, going wherever he had an opportunity.
• 1:10:20
  You know, he was putting that weird spot with the Giants when they
• 1:10:23
  benched Elion Manning for him, and in hindsight, you know, there were
• 1:10:28
  people who think that that was the right move, but the fan base was
• 1:10:30
  so enamored with Eli Manning. It just wasn't given a chance to work.
• 1:10:34
  But to finally rise back to a starting role, comeback player of the year,
• 1:10:39
  get the big contract. Now now, oh his contract three years,
• 1:10:45
  one hundred and five million. Oh well, they're committed to him for three
• 1:10:46
  years. And this is one of the things we pride ourselves on. The
• 1:10:50
  reporters will put out whatever numbers the agents will tell them, without scrutiny,
• 1:10:56
  without question I wait until the contract gets filed. I have somebody send me
• 1:11:00
  the numbers. I break it all down, I explain it. It's like,
• 1:11:01
  wow, you know what this deal one year, twenty eight million.
• 1:11:05
  After that, they can cut the cord, no further obligation, see you
• 1:11:09
  later, Geno. And that's relevant because they're holding pick number five in the
• 1:11:12
  draft, and somebody I know is convinced that they're taking Anthony Richardson at number
• 1:11:18
  five. Now, that would be a hell of a shock if the Seahawks
• 1:11:21
  took him at number five. But they're one of those teams we were talking
• 1:11:26
  earlier about ceilings and floors. Think about the possibility that team is going to
• 1:11:29
  be sold. What better way to ensure that the current football structure stays in
• 1:11:33
  place than to roll the dice on somebody who's got superstar potential, and next
• 1:11:39
  year, next season, as the teams in the process are being sold,
• 1:11:42
  they unveil Anthony Richardson and he truly is a superstar. Beat Carroll, John
• 1:11:47
  Schneider coach and GM respectively. They got that job as long as they want,
• 1:11:50
  no matter who the owner is. If they find, you know,
• 1:11:54
  a guy who has a Patrick Mahomes type effect, on the NFL. So
• 1:11:58
  that's what makes me not completely say it's ridiculous. But the point is the
• 1:12:02
  Geno Smith contract, it does have that opening where it could be as little
• 1:12:06
  as a one year deal and hey, if it's one year, twenty eight
• 1:12:09
  million for him, who make twenty eight million for one year, and then
• 1:12:13
  somebody else will signed him and he'll get a chance to compete and keep playing
• 1:12:15
  and be a backup if he if he doesn't win a starting job. But
• 1:12:17
  it's just a it's a great story and it just shows you when when a
• 1:12:23
  guy ends up being a bust. And I'm very passionate about this, we
• 1:12:27
  assume it's the guy. Sometimes it is, but a lot of times it's
• 1:12:32
  the circumstance. It's the coaching staff, it's the supporting cast, it's the
• 1:12:38
  owner. It's the decision that was made to put him on the field before
• 1:12:42
  he was ready to go. You know, Zach Wilson. Maybe if he
• 1:12:44
  didn't play right away, maybe Zach Wilson would have been better in year two.
• 1:12:47
  We don't know. Look at how bad Trevor Lawrence was first year with
• 1:12:50
  Urban Meyer as the head coach, and what a disaster and how he turned
• 1:12:54
  it around on the fly in his second year. You have limited opportunities to
• 1:12:58
  really get traction in the NFL as a player, and a lot of these
• 1:13:01
  guys who end up being busts. Yes, part of it is them,
• 1:13:05
  but part of it is the people around them not realizing they're not mature enough,
• 1:13:10
  They're not ready. We're expecting too much, we don't have enough help.
• 1:13:13
  I mean, you know, we have a horrible left tackle and the
• 1:13:15
  guy didn't have a chance to set up and throw. Ever. The stats
• 1:13:18
  go on him, but the reality is it's not his fault. I just
• 1:13:23
  Geno Smith is a great example of Hey, you know what, maybe there's
• 1:13:27
  an alternate reality out there where he gets drafted in twenty thirteen and he becomes
• 1:13:30
  a starter right away and he becomes one of the better quarterbacks in the NFL.
• 1:13:33
  And it's just a shame it worked out the way it did for Yeah,
• 1:13:36
  one last last question. Since it's draft week, you get to draft
• 1:13:43
  one current NFL coach. You're you're starting a team. You just bought a
• 1:13:46
  team. It's now the Fighting Florios are gonna operate. They're gonna operate out
• 1:13:51
  of Flatwood Flatwoods NFL franchise probably be sponsored by gomart Go for good times,
• 1:13:57
  go from going what coach are you high? Any available coach? Head coach
• 1:14:02
  or a current assistant coach? Who's your hire? First pick? And I'm
• 1:14:05
  trying to win over the long term. I'm trying to build something to see.
• 1:14:10
  All the guys that I would want to hire are one pony, are
• 1:14:14
  a little older. They're a little older like me. Who do you want
• 1:14:17
  a little great ghost out there? I see all the best coaches in the
• 1:14:26
  NFL are older, and I think there's a reason for that. It's years
• 1:14:28
  and years and years of doing it and thriving yourself to learn how to do
• 1:14:32
  it. You know, these young guys I don't know to clock is winding
• 1:14:36
  right. With the first pick of the Mike Florio NFL head coaching draft,
• 1:14:42
  Mike Florio selects, I probably take Sean Payton, probably West Virginia connection.
• 1:14:48
  I'd air on the offensive side of the ball because and I say this every
• 1:14:53
  year, and I'm sure there are defensive coaches out there would just like to
• 1:14:56
  slam me into the wall for a variety of reasons. But if you have
• 1:14:59
  a defensive head coach and everything goes well with your quarterback, what happens.
• 1:15:03
  Offensive coordinator ends up being somebody else's head coach, and you gotta find another
• 1:15:06
  offensive coordinator come in and work with the quarterback, and then it happens again.
• 1:15:11
  It keeps happening until you get an offensive coordinator can't get the job done
• 1:15:14
  and the team stinks, and then it's your butt that's on the line.
• 1:15:16
  I want a guy that is going to be joined at the hip with the
• 1:15:19
  quarterback and be there for fifteen years. And I think Peyton right now fifty
• 1:15:25
  eight fifty nine, maybe I'd get ten or fifteen years out of him.
• 1:15:29
  So because like Bellatah, how much longer does Belichick really have I don't know.
• 1:15:32
  I don't know. George hallis coach until he was seventy five. He
• 1:15:35
  stopped because he could no longer get up and down the field to yell at
• 1:15:40
  the officials. And he realized at that point I just a seriously, he
• 1:15:43
  said that he couldn't. He had a bad hip. I can't move,
• 1:15:45
  I can't get down, I can't get down to yell at the officials.
• 1:15:47
  I just can't do it anymore. But Belichick still moves as well as he
• 1:15:50
  needs to. But I think that i'd probably go Hey, I'm just I'm
• 1:15:54
  trying to think of like a younger guy, like, you know, get
• 1:15:57
  a guy in his early forties, late thirties. Maybe Kevin Connell becomes that
• 1:16:00
  guy. I like what he did last year with the Vikings offense. The
• 1:16:03
  defense was horrible, but that's really not his fault. The cupboard was bare.
• 1:16:06
  But I'd be intrigued by O'Connell. But or Matt Lafleur. I like,
• 1:16:12
  what Matt, Matt, you know you're changing. I'm changing. I'm
• 1:16:15
  changing. I'm changing. I'm changing, and I haven't taken my hand off
• 1:16:19
  the checker yet. I'm going to Matt Lafloor because I know I'm gonna have
• 1:16:24
  him longer than I'm alive to own the team. Because he found a way
• 1:16:29
  to make it work with the delicate genius that is Aaron Rodgers, and they
• 1:16:32
  won thirteen games for three straight years each year. Last year it kind of
• 1:16:36
  fell off. But for him to be caught in the middle of that awkward,
• 1:16:40
  dysfunctional relationship between Rogers in the front office to find a way to steer
• 1:16:44
  Rogers in the right direction and get the best out of him at a time
• 1:16:46
  when it could have gone either way, I think Lafleur is dramatically underrated and
• 1:16:53
  it's going to be fascinating to see what he does with a different quarterback and
• 1:16:56
  whether that team can keep winning games. Because they've done well even though they
• 1:16:59
  don't have a roster that cries out one of the best in the NFL.
• 1:17:03
  They still went thirteen and three, thirteen and three, thirteen and four until
• 1:17:06
  last year, and last year they were in a game of making it to
• 1:17:09
  the playoffs six years from now. Is the XFL still playing six years from
• 1:17:15
  now? I'd have to bet the under on that, just because when has
• 1:17:18
  any of these well, I know the one I don't know. I mean,
• 1:17:23
  the TV numbers went down this year. Now you've got the XFL and
• 1:17:26
  the USFL. Do they merge at some point? I think that the gambling
• 1:17:31
  realities, you know, we just want more stuff to bet on, right,
• 1:17:35
  we need to have something to bet on. I think that whenever they
• 1:17:39
  get to the point in the AF from ever, the AF from four years
• 1:17:43
  ago they had that his son was was a corresponsible was lead corresponding for three
• 1:17:47
  weeks. By the way, we should point out this is the guy that
• 1:17:50
  got Ben Kirchiville in the football business, of which he's made his livelihood off.
• 1:17:57
  Reached out to you, you reached out to Mike. He was a
• 1:18:00
  college football Talk dot Com. Thank you Mike, because he's working today for
• 1:18:02
  CBS. No, it's great. It's great that it's worked out for him
• 1:18:04
  and with the a F During that three weeks that they were in business,
• 1:18:08
  they had the great app that had the real time feedback of where all the
• 1:18:12
  players were on the field. And once we get to the point where you
• 1:18:16
  can watch a game on the TV at your house and you can make bets
• 1:18:20
  on your phone, what's the next play going to be? What's the outcome
• 1:18:25
  of the next play gonna be? Is it gonna be a first down?
• 1:18:27
  Is it gonna be a pass? Is it gonna be a touchdown? Is
• 1:18:29
  it going to this guy? Is it going to that guy? Once it
• 1:18:30
  becomes like this real time casino that you can sit down and lock in and
• 1:18:34
  bet one play at a time, that's I think the next to answer your
• 1:18:39
  question from fifteen minutes ago, that's the next frontier in game betting. That
• 1:18:44
  group better that Jake Paul and Joey Levy are in charge of and I think
• 1:18:47
  they're gonna they're gonna I think ideally be in West Virginia coming up here later
• 1:18:51
  this year. They're at the cutting edge of that real time betting. I
• 1:18:55
  think that is the thing that could save the XFL and and you know,
• 1:19:00
  make football a twelve month a year thing because people are always going to be
• 1:19:01
  looking for that, that action, that stuff to bet on. It's gonna
• 1:19:04
  help to you when you can hear the quarterback and the coach will call the
• 1:19:08
  play that's true. That helps. I'm done with my five last questions.
• 1:19:14
  The music's on. You're always a delight to have in you know, the
• 1:19:16
  door is always open for you. That's not sarcastic the way you delivered it,
• 1:19:20
  but that was a real delight. That's just a real really No,
• 1:19:23
  Actually, I do a lot of sarcastic. We know that was actually true,
• 1:19:27
  and I think it was. I'll come next to you when the next
• 1:19:29
  books out, how about that? Yeah? Wow, you might want to
• 1:19:31
  bring some bread book a year next time you want. The little teams are
• 1:19:34
  on, what the next one's gonna be. Yeah, you're already got the
• 1:19:36
  music playing. So where there they're playing a song right, Look like Jim
• 1:19:40
  Ban, it's a past not live. The book and I'm polishing it up
• 1:19:46
  now. It is based on the Big Prison Break from nineteen seventy nine.
• 1:19:51
  November of seventy nine, Ron Wilson remember that. Yeah, Yeah, it's
• 1:19:56
  a complete reimagining of that with you different characters, different names. But but
• 1:20:02
  the of the fourteen that that break out of the prison, four of them
• 1:20:08
  end up breaking into a house in the neighborhood where I grew up, and
• 1:20:11
  me and three composites of my friends end up getting caught up with the group
• 1:20:16
  of prisoners that have broken into the house. And it's basically remember the movie
• 1:20:19
  stand by Me yea with the Stephen King. It was called the Body and
• 1:20:24
  they made it into the movie with River Phoenix, etc. It's stand by
• 1:20:28
  Me on steroids in meth. That's so that one, I think is going
• 1:20:32
  to be targeted for next year. So I'll come up when I'm trying to
• 1:20:35
  get people to work to not buy that one thirty America Avenue. Thirty America
• 1:20:42
  Avenue, which is actually an empty lot on America Avenue, which was right
• 1:20:47
  around the corner from where I grew up, so no one can say it's
• 1:20:50
  my house. He's basing it on my house. He's based on my family.
• 1:20:54
  It's an empty lot that has always been empty. I mean for fifty
• 1:20:58
  years, thirty America Avenue has been an empty lott What's what, I don't
• 1:21:02
  know when we moved in nineteen sixty nine, that lot has always been empty.
• 1:21:06
  So that's the one I picked. It's great to have the Google maps
• 1:21:09
  that you can pull up and you start searching us like, hey, they's
• 1:21:12
  a empty lot. What's the address? Thirty America Avenue Boomed Salt. So
• 1:21:15
  that's kind of like if the thing really gets big and kind of becomes field
• 1:21:18
  of dreams ish, like somebody buys thirty maybe I should said it edit.
• 1:21:23
  This house of people will make their summer vacation trek to see thirty America.
• 1:21:30
  Might take our kerch of al beer money and go get out in front of
• 1:21:31
  Floria, go down to Ogleby. Go down to Ogleby after them playing trading
• 1:21:35
  thirty America Lot getting on that three guys before the game. Brought to us
• 1:21:39
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• 1:21:43
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• 1:21:57
  years and keeping Mike's book idols and all of his content safe and secure.
• 1:22:02
  He uses Comax and if he does any will Comax Business Systems by Gomart.
• 1:22:08
  I'll be going through tonight. I'm either either stopping when I go through or
• 1:22:13
  stopping when I come back up the road. And might even you know,
• 1:22:16
  I was thinking, you guys always take pictures when you get in there.
• 1:22:18
  You might shoot a video. It'd be great while I've been there and post
• 1:22:21
  it. Show the selection of slim gems and find the recy eggs selection.
• 1:22:26
  Might do that, they'll be pretty good. And by the Burdette Camping Center,
• 1:22:30
  the only warranty forever RV dealer in all of West Virginia. Mike Florio
• 1:22:34
  is so busy. He's got he's working right now, trying to find trying
• 1:22:40
  to get some stuff, trying to find out pick sixteen is pick seventeen,
• 1:22:44
  Pick eighteen. Thanks so much for being with us, all right, great
• 1:22:46
  to be with you. Dripping with sincerity there. This is a real This
• 1:22:51
  is a real treat. This is a real treat. Best damn Right up
• 1:22:59
  there next to my marriage is a really really really good day. All Right,
• 1:23:03
  he's got to go home and write an encyclopedia. It sounded like the
• 1:23:06
  closing line of Rocky Too, other than the night my kids day in my
• 1:23:12
  life. See Hey, yeah, we're back. We're gonna do the spring
• 1:23:15
  football recap in our live event recap on Thursday. See y'all be good.