Latest / Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More / Episode 11 | WNBA CBA Deadline Day, NWSL Is Back, PWHL Playoff Push, March Madness

Transcript

Episode 11 | WNBA CBA Deadline Day, NWSL Is Back, PWHL Playoff Push, March Madness · Raising the Game: Covering WNBA, NWSL, PWHL & More

• 0:00
  I think the why, why it's unusual, right, frankly, is
• 0:04
  because the league underestimated seriously the
• 0:08
  resolve of the players and what they sought to achieve.
• 0:22
  Hi, I'm Caitlin. Hi, I'm Alex.
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  And this is Raising the Game women's sports podcast covering
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  primetime performers, the business behind the athletes in
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  the leagues, and what the growth of women's sports means for the
• 0:34
  next generation of women's athletes.
• 0:36
  We're back again. Here we are.
• 0:38
  We have a lot to get to so much and WS LS back.
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  It's back, baby. PWH LS heating up?
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  Playoffs right around the corner.
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  Yeah, and can the WNBA get out of its own way?
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  And believe it or not, we still don't have.
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  ACP, it is 8:30 PM on Monday night, we thought on the
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  deadline day, official deadline day.
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  We thought we might last week. And we didn't.
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  And we didn't. We're going to get into all of
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  that. Yeah, we're going to talk about
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  it, all of that. But before we do, we have a
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  couple of announcements and then we'll do a favorite thing.
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  So a few of those announcements, we have women's college
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  basketball brackets are out there, We are planning to fill
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  one out and we will be posting our brackets, maybe having a
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  little competition here on the pod before Wednesday 'cause
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  that's when games start for the women's tournament.
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  So we've. Got some play in games.
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  The first four games start on Wednesday and then we'll really
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  get into the the meat of the tournament.
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  I think we'll comment a little bit on it at the end here, but
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  without really knowing like how those games play out, it's hard
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  to tell y'all which ones to go watch right now.
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  Just go watch them all. This is like one of my favorite
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  weekends of NCAA Tournament 'cause there's just basketball
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  on. All the time.
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  Right. Another announcement we launched
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  hard launched. We did.
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  Last week our official website which the URL is.
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  RTG pod calm. RTG pod calm.
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  So right now pretty simplistic. We've got some BIOS for both of
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  us as well as sort of summarize show notes.
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  So if you wanted to go back and reference or if you just prefer
• 2:27
  to read to digest some of your women's Sports News, you can
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  feel free to do that on our website.
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  Yep. Hope to have more things there
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  in the future. Yeah, hopefully.
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  And then final thing that we have for you coming here at the
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  end of the month, we will be releasing on our normal release
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  day, but a special episode focused on the history of
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  women's sports. So we chose, you know, couple
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  pioneers that we wanted to focus on.
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  We're going to take you through a little bit of that journey,
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  really talk about the impact and influence that these seven or
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  eight women had on where we are now.
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  And then we hope to actually do a deeper dive on each of them in
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  coming episodes. Yeah, absolutely.
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  All right. Let's do it.
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  Favorite thing? We didn't.
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  Forget it. This week we didn't.
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  We got it. We got.
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  It our favorite thing is that we actually got in a favorite thing
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  without forgetting it. Yeah, for me it was.
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  We had soccer on on the weekend. It was really fun.
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  I think the notes I wrote down were fire fans and flair.
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  Fire mostly from the perspective of like, you could tell the
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  players were like excited to be back on the pitch.
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  Fans, we're going to talk about the attendance that happened
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  games, but fans were pumped up. You could tell people were
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  interested. I'd be interested to see
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  viewership numbers too, given that the NWSL has like a
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  stronger sort of broadcast media rights network than like the
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  PWHL, for instance, which is also in season right now.
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  And then flair. There were some really awesome
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  goals. There were some really awesome
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  saves. There was some like it was, it
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  was just, it was amazing. Yeah, there was a lot of goal
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  scoring. So happy to see those.
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  Games. Yeah.
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  I mean, my favorite thing was going to be NWSL 2.
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  I think it was really fun to watch Sophia Wilson come back
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  and get in off the bench. Yeah.
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  And that that was what my favorite thing was, is that they
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  kept calling her Gigi's mom. Like Gigi's Gigi's mom playing
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  now. Like we're going to Gigi.
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  'S mom's in. Yeah, so I thought that was
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  really fun. I love it.
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  It's so and I, and we're going to talk a little later about
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  kind of what the season looked like just after the first
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  weekend and some of the stuff that we're excited as the season
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  goes on. But NWSL is back, baby.
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  All right, should we dive into these headlines?
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  Let's hit em. And just so viewers are clear,
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  we're skipping over some of the things that we'll end up talking
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  about in deeper depth after we get through top headlines.
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  Right PWHL lands national broadcast on ION of the March
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  28th Takeover Tour game between New York Sirens and Montreal
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  Victoire in Detroit, MI. We're we're going to talk a
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  little bit more about this later, but just the momentum
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  here since the Olympics has been off the charts.
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  We're going to talk about Detroit later, too.
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  In our PWH. ESPN reports a record 3.9
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  billion minutes of NCAA women's basketball viewed this season,
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  making it the most viewed season in almost 20 years.
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  And another like fun fact from that was that there were 20
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  games with over half a million average viewers too, which was a
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  record for for women's college basketball.
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  Denver Summit announces over 50,000 tickets have been sold
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  for March 28th home opener. So they don't, the fans don't
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  stop there. So in Power Field at Mile High
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  Stadium in Denver, I think has a seating capacity of about
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  76,000. And now they're like, can we
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  fill? It can we fill it?
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  Can we fill it? That would be amazing.
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  We will see. We're what, 2?
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  About two? Weeks away, yeah.
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  So we'll keep our eyes on that. In US women's national team
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  soccer abroad, Alyssa Thompson wins League Leagues Cup with
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  Chelsea, Lindsay Heaps and Lily Johannes lift French Cup with
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  Olympic Leone. Yeah, so national team stars
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  Poland abroad. I've got to add one other thing
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  here. I think it was a late ad for me,
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  But in addition to Poland trophies, U.S.
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  National team stars who are abroad are pulling bags cause
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  Katarina Makari, forward for the US Women's national team, just
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  signed an $8 million five year contract with the NWS LS San
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  Diego Way today, making her now the highest paid women's
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  footballer in the world. So what's great about this, and
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  we'll talk about it, is like as these deals keep getting bigger,
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  like, yeah, they have to keep. The.
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  Talent, right? And so Trinity's deal that we
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  talked a lot about how raises the stock of other players like
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  Ocario, like others who are coming back.
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  So super exciting news. We knew that Kat was looking to
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  find kind of her home and knew that it was likely she'd come
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  back home. I'm really excited to see her.
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  Land Yeah, that'll be fun. World #1 Arena Sabalenka outlast
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  #2 Elena Rivakina to capture elusive Indian Wells
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  Championship, her second title of 2026 and 10th WTA 1000
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  trophy. Oh yeah.
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  Oksana Masters earns 4 gold medals and 1 bronze at 2026
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  Paralympic Games, adding to her impressive 24 total Paralympic
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  medals. I wish we could go into her
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  whole back story that you were telling me earlier this week.
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  It's just wild. We're not going to, but if you
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  have a chance to go, like learn about her story, do it.
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  It's, it's both heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time.
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  But she is got to be the for sure the best Paralympian
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  Olympian ever, if not one of the top medal earners of all
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  athletes, right? What's interesting, just kind of
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  doing a little bit of a wrap up on the Paralympics.
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  If we go back to Oxana Masters, 14 of her 24 total medals are
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  gold, by the way. So over half of her medals are
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  gold medals. She's, you know, hands down the
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  most decorated US Paralympian. She would have ranked 6th
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  amongst countries. Oh wow, in this last Olympics
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  for gold medals. That's wild.
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  Yes. And then just rounding it out, a
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  little overview on the overall Paralympic kind of medal totals.
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  So China, I was looking this up in China like stomped the
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  competition. They had 44 medals, 15 of those
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  were gold. the US was a distant but solid second with 24 medals,
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  thirteen of which were gold. So proportionately the the
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  Americans did better from a gold medal perspective, but China
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  just. They really ran away with it.
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  Ran away with it from a from a medal perspective, so.
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  All right, Team USA has dominated competition so far in
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  the feeble Women's World Cup qualifiers in Puerto Rico, going
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  four and O with one game to go. Yeah, I think by the time you
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  hear this episode, they'll have played Spain, which is one of
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  the the the other highest ranked team in their pool.
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  So I'm I'm interested to see how that goes tomorrow.
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  It's been kind of embarrassing. They're averaging 98 points per
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  game and winning by an average of 49 points per game.
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  So it's hard to say like, you know, assess their play and
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  whatnot. It's they're obviously much
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  better than their competition. And I mean, you look across the
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  lineup and you're like. Yeah, of course.
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  Yeah, like, I saw a post online over the weekend of just a
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  picture of Caitlin Clark, Page Beckers and Angel Reese getting
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  ready to check into the game, and it was like.
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  Imagine being on the bench. You look over and you see this
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  trio about to check into the game while you're playing, while
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  you're playing, Chelsea Gray, Ryan Howard and, you know,
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  maybe. We'll get a break.
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  You can't, you can't, you just there's nothing you can do.
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  So they're bunch of the players are leading in in some of the
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  statistics there, but I think they've more or less they're the
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  team to beat come World Cup time in September. 100% NCAA women's
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  ice hockey. Frozen 4 is set to feature Ohio
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  State versus Northeastern and Wisconsin versus Penn State on
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  Friday evening, and Northeastern upset the Minnesota Golden
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  Gopher. Little shocking.
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  Yeah, very shocking there. I predict that we are going to
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  see a WCHA championship rematch for the national title between
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  Wisconsin and Ohio State. That's my prediction.
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  I think Penn State's the dark horse.
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  I do think Penn State's the dark horse because they are playing
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  kind of a. They yeah, they're playing like
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  a, it's almost like a home series for them.
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  And I also want to call out that Alex talked about them like 5
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  episodes ago and was like. They're sneaky in fourth place.
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  In fourth place, 'cause they're not in the in the main
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  conference with all the ranked teams, the WCHA.
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  So I agree, but I still think I think the Badgers are probably
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  pissed that they lost OSU and they're going to take care of
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  business. Against.
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  Yeah, 100%. So.
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  College gymnastics heads into conference tournament weekend
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  with four teams from the SEC ranked in the top five
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  nationally, with UCLA sitting in 5th.
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  OK, so 2 incredible performances here.
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  Like if you have the means to go watch these meets, we'll talk
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  about them and what to watch. But conference meets are this
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  coming weekend. Do it.
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  So first, we've talked about her on the pod many times.
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  Jordan Chiles, US Olympian, right?
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  She entered her final weekend, so this is before she posted any
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  scores in her final meet, right? Averaging 9.92 across all
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  disciplines. That's.
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  Out of 10. That's out of 10 with six 10's
• 12:28
  and 59.97 fives on the season. That's crazy.
• 12:34
  Is that a record? It's got to be close, but if
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  that's it, so UCLA is in the Big 10.
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  The other top four teams in the top five ranked teams are in the
• 12:45
  SEC. So if you want to go watch one
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  tournament, I would go watch the SEC tournament.
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  I saw that over the weekend. LS us Caitlin Chio.
• 12:53
  Chio I think posted she did 3 events.
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  She posted 10s on all three in one meet and I saw her a couple
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  weekends ago score a 10 on beam. She's like, it's unreal.
• 13:08
  That's crazy. So good.
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  So you get a chance to watch. I'm getting a little ahead of
• 13:11
  ourselves and. What to watch But.
• 13:14
  I'm excited. It's like end of season time for
• 13:16
  college. You're getting a playoff pushes
• 13:19
  and. Yeah, we have a ton of kind of
• 13:20
  end of season things happening right away here.
• 13:22
  Right. Sephora announced as top sponsor
• 13:25
  for F1 Academy, the women's racing circuit.
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  Yeah. So this is cool.
• 13:30
  This adds to their partnership portfolio already containing
• 13:34
  Unrivalled. We saw a lot of Sephora.
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  Well, we watched Unrivalled, the WNBA is Toronto Tempo and the
• 13:41
  Golden State Valkyries are also teams that Sephora sponsors as
• 13:44
  well as Athletes Unlimited Softball League.
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  So I think it's cool to continue to see these sponsorship or
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  these brands, excuse me, build sponsorship and like, like
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  women's sports fans, it's agnostic across sport, right?
• 13:59
  They they know that there's reach across many, many
• 14:03
  disciplines. Absolutely.
• 14:04
  Love to see it. All right, before we start this
• 14:07
  WNBACBA update, I think we have to let out a long sigh because
• 14:15
  what is happening? Oh, well, we're going to get
• 14:18
  into it. We're going to get into it.
• 14:19
  OK, nothing. Or a lot, a lot.
• 14:26
  But no result. So we're going to we're going to
• 14:30
  grind ourselves just in a little bit of an update on the last two
• 14:33
  weeks. We did.
• 14:34
  We chose not to go deep on this last week because we thought
• 14:37
  maybe there'd be a deal. Silly us.
• 14:40
  Yeah. So two weeks ago, the unrivaled
• 14:43
  playoffs were happening. There was the semifinals on
• 14:47
  Monday, the final on Wednesday. And in the midst of that, you
• 14:53
  have players from the executive committee for the Players
• 14:58
  Association playing in that tournament, right?
• 15:02
  You've got Brianna Stewart, you've got Kelsey Plum, you've
• 15:05
  got Nafisa Collier, right? Who's there?
• 15:08
  And we're in the middle of unrivaled.
• 15:13
  It's super fun. It happens to be that Kelsey
• 15:15
  Plum and Brianna Stewart's team end up playing for the
• 15:17
  championship. And the day before the
• 15:19
  championship, a letter that the two of them apparently authored
• 15:24
  together is leaked, saying that they have serious concerns with
• 15:29
  how the union leadership is handling the negotiations.
• 15:33
  They want to see a bunch of they feel like it hasn't been
• 15:35
  transparent. This came a week after we had a
• 15:41
  letter sent by players agents to the union saying you're not
• 15:45
  being transparent, blah blah blah.
• 15:47
  And so all of a sudden you're like way.
• 15:49
  Yeah, what is what is this? And then this followed on the
• 15:54
  heels of or what followed on the heels of that letter, first of
• 15:59
  all, which was leaked, so it was reported initially like.
• 16:04
  It was like a public. Letter and then all of a sudden
• 16:06
  it was like. No, it's.
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  Not they. No one was supposed to see that.
• 16:10
  Which then makes you also wonder like what was the point?
• 16:13
  Yeah, yeah. And the other part of that
• 16:16
  that's really strange is Stewie and KP are on the executive
• 16:20
  committee. So I, I've read a quote from
• 16:25
  someone, I, I forget the attribution, I apologize, but
• 16:29
  there's somebody who was sane from the from kind of the union
• 16:32
  like leadership, not the players side, but like the union
• 16:35
  leadership saying this kind of feels a little bit like players
• 16:40
  who maybe haven't been super engaged.
• 16:43
  They've just kind of been like a long for the ride and now
• 16:47
  they're like trying to play catch up in their panic.
• 16:49
  Yeah, yeah. And I was like I maybe that they
• 16:53
  were playing an unrivaled for the most part, the rest of the
• 16:58
  executive committee for the from the player representation side
• 17:02
  are not playing and unrivalled fees obviously involved as an
• 17:07
  owner but and player. So who knows.
• 17:13
  But then what was weird was the union then reissued a poll
• 17:20
  immediately after this letter asking if players were OK with
• 17:24
  what the league was proposing from a revenue share
• 17:26
  perspective. What was extra weird was that
• 17:30
  they phrased it as are you OK with 50% of net revenues the
• 17:37
  league has been. Offering 70%.
• 17:40
  So first of all, very strange. And then it was like a flow down
• 17:44
  kind of like if you choose yes on that top question or no,
• 17:47
  you're going to get a different set of questions.
• 17:50
  And then it was kind of like, you know, asking things like,
• 17:53
  OK, if you are OK with that, Are there other things that you're
• 17:57
  concerned about? If you're not OK with that, what
• 17:59
  amount do you want? Like things like that.
• 18:01
  So like, and, and I read a couple quotes from players, they
• 18:04
  were like, it was fine. Like I get it.
• 18:05
  And I think what they were trying to get at was, is there
• 18:10
  concern and do we want to keep going?
• 18:12
  Yeah. Are we truly like, oh, yeah,
• 18:15
  we're good. What?
• 18:16
  What are we quoted Kelsey Plum as being like, I'm about to
• 18:19
  gain, not the gap. Like, are we really there?
• 18:21
  Yeah, Yeah. Turns out most of the players
• 18:24
  were like, don't keep going. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:26
  Who voted? And you got to vote if you want
• 18:29
  to participate. So like, if you didn't vote,
• 18:31
  that's on you. So then we get to this arbitrary
• 18:37
  March 10th, deadly and last. Last month.
• 18:40
  Last month Sunday, Tuesday, Tuesday, yeah, Then begins the
• 18:46
  marathon negotiation sessions. And we're going to talk about
• 18:50
  this a little more in a second, but like, why are we only
• 18:53
  starting this? Yeah.
• 18:55
  Well, and when I was prepping for this, I was like, didn't,
• 18:58
  wasn't there like 6 weeks where the league was just like, yes,
• 19:01
  we're not going to propose anything because we're not
• 19:02
  taking you seriously? Yes.
• 19:04
  And now they're like, well, we have to get this done now.
• 19:06
  Yeah, I want to come back to that.
• 19:08
  I want to keep framing here a little bit.
• 19:10
  So primary hang ups continue to be and continue to be revenue
• 19:14
  sharing and housing. Yeah, those are the 2 main ones.
• 19:17
  They've they've worked out a couple other kinks in the, in
• 19:20
  the, you know, agreements on some other details.
• 19:23
  But like those two consistently over the last week, you kind of
• 19:28
  heard both sides saying like, we're getting closer.
• 19:31
  It's feeling like it's getting close.
• 19:33
  But it has been over 72 hours of meetings.
• 19:38
  Many going into like early morning.
• 19:40
  Early morning, yeah, 14/15/16 hour days.
• 19:45
  Over 16 offers have been passed back and forth in this time that
• 19:49
  I know of that's been reported last so latest terms and we're
• 19:54
  going to lay these out and then we're going to talk a little bit
• 19:56
  about this, right. The league is still offering 70%
• 20:01
  of net revenues from a revenue share perspective.
• 20:04
  They have not moved on that figure and we're going to talk.
• 20:08
  I can't wait to talk about that. Salary cap for year one 6.2
• 20:13
  million. This will raise over the course
• 20:15
  of the agreement, which is estimated to be about an 8 year
• 20:18
  deal, which is also important. Average salary 570K rising to
• 20:24
  about 800 K over the eight-year term and the Max salary of 1.3
• 20:29
  million rising to about 2 million over the eight-year
• 20:32
  term. OK, so they put a lot of detail
• 20:35
  in there around the numbers the union is asking for now roughly
• 20:40
  26% of gross revenue. I actually think it's come down
• 20:45
  even more. I think it's. 2425 now.
• 20:49
  With a salary cap of 9.5 million or maybe a little bit less than
• 20:53
  that. So you've got, you know,
• 20:55
  3,000,000 delta between the two salary caps.
• 20:58
  And then housing is really big for the union.
• 21:00
  You'll notice that the union actually does not stipulate and
• 21:04
  has not stipulated this entire time Max salaries or average
• 21:08
  salaries, because what they want is they want the salary cap to
• 21:12
  be high enough to make it so that you can you can then work
• 21:17
  those details in. Yeah.
• 21:18
  And it'd be a it would be appropriate.
• 21:20
  Yeah. So the two questions we have
• 21:23
  that we're going to discuss why? Why did it take so long for the
• 21:28
  league to be like have a sense of?
• 21:31
  Urgency around this all of a sudden, it's needs to happen
• 21:33
  now. And then the second question
• 21:34
  we're going to discuss is why are they so insistent on the 70%
• 21:41
  of net revenues that has seemed very, that's like befuddled us
• 21:44
  the entire time because they've conceded on a ton of other stuff
• 21:50
  and the and the Union has conceded on every single one of
• 21:53
  their things. Yep, absolutely.
• 21:55
  They were at 40% of gross revenues when this began.
• 21:58
  Believe it or. Not I, I thought there was 30
• 22:01
  when they started. And then I was looking back, I
• 22:02
  was like, Oh no, it was 40, right?
• 22:05
  And so let's get into it because I'm really excited about this
• 22:08
  discussion. So let's talk about the urgency
• 22:10
  piece first. They're pressing for this
• 22:13
  handshake deal today. Basically, Kathy Engelbert, last
• 22:16
  Friday, the commissioner of the WNBA was like, if we don't have
• 22:19
  a deal by Monday. Things are going to get.
• 22:22
  Things are probably going to get pushed, right?
• 22:24
  And so, and it's like, OK, Alex mentioned this already, but
• 22:30
  there was a period of time back at the end of 2025 where the
• 22:33
  union put forth an offer that the West sat on for six weeks
• 22:42
  and did not, didn't respond to, didn't, didn't respond at all,
• 22:45
  right. And then they finally had that
• 22:48
  meeting. I think it was early February at
• 22:50
  some at some point in there and they showed up with nothing in
• 22:55
  hand. Yeah, 'cause they didn't think
• 22:56
  it was a serious. The first offer was serious.
• 22:59
  Well, I don't think they thought any of it was serious.
• 23:03
  I think what I really am thinking is they think they
• 23:06
  thought if they just sat on things for a while that the
• 23:08
  players would eventually like capitulate or something, but
• 23:12
  they didn't realize that it would also possibly hurt them in
• 23:17
  the long run too. So I have this really great
• 23:20
  quote. This was reported by Jessica
• 23:23
  Powell, who has become one of our gurus of watching the news
• 23:27
  on this. She's one of the Jackie Powell.
• 23:29
  Oh, Jackie Powell. Excuse me, camped out like
• 23:32
  outside headquarters, her. And Alexa Phillipu for ESPN is
• 23:36
  also there. She.
• 23:39
  Jackie Powell is the host of the 9 Sports podcast.
• 23:42
  She's written for women's basketball for a variety of
• 23:45
  sports outlets, but she said that the players association's
• 23:50
  outside counsel, Deb Willig, who's done like union labour.
• 23:54
  Negotiations for. 50 years she said that this has been a highly
• 23:59
  unusual negotiation was the word she used and the quote goes like
• 24:03
  this y'all. I think the why, why it's
• 24:07
  unusual, right, frankly is because the league
• 24:10
  underestimated. Seriously, the resolve of the
• 24:14
  players and what they sought to achieve.
• 24:17
  Yeah, yeah, I saw that too. And I was like, I think they
• 24:20
  did. I don't really think they did.
• 24:21
  I think they did too. And to to add to that, I've seen
• 24:26
  a few interviews of like I saw one of a lawyer who kind of
• 24:33
  broke down some of the fine, like the contracting pieces of
• 24:36
  this. But there's been some other, you
• 24:39
  know, funded social media of heads who whatever saying that
• 24:46
  that eight-year time frame is actually really critical in
• 24:51
  this. And you you've been talking
• 24:52
  about this and it's saying like, could we cut a short, maybe a
• 24:55
  smaller deal and see how it goes?
• 24:57
  But that eight years is huge when it comes to these
• 25:04
  negotiations because because a, these women right now are now
• 25:11
  negotiating contracts for for young women who are currently in
• 25:16
  high school, right? One of the big sticking points
• 25:18
  was rookie contracts and how those are structured and things
• 25:21
  like that cause rookies get paid Jack WNBA.
• 25:26
  The other thing that's really important is they are looking to
• 25:31
  the monumental CBA and pay equity deals signed by the US
• 25:35
  women's national team and the NWSL, and they're saying we've
• 25:40
  got to continue that charge for women's sports as a whole,
• 25:44
  right? The third thing that is mind
• 25:49
  blowing to me is we've talked to y'all before about how the WNBA
• 25:54
  ownership group is comprised of 42 percent NBA owners, 42% WNBA
• 26:01
  owners, and 16% of an outside investment, which sometimes
• 26:07
  y'all, they are sitting in all three of those, there can be 1
• 26:11
  owner that is an owner of an NBA team and AWNB A-Team and is part
• 26:16
  of the private equity capital raise that they had to do back
• 26:19
  in 2022. And so I just saw today that the
• 26:24
  NBA is planning to announce. The NBA now is planning to
• 26:27
  announce to expand. I saw that.
• 26:30
  The buy in bid for those teams 7 to 10 billion each each.
• 26:41
  So you cannot tell me that these people are not raking in.
• 26:46
  A DOE 100%. And so for the players to stand
• 26:50
  on business as they like to say 10 toes down and say pay us what
• 26:55
  you owe us feels very legit. Now, and we we go back to when
• 27:01
  we started talking about all this, they're seeing the growth
• 27:05
  and the thing they want to protect against the most besides
• 27:08
  obviously these extremely rich people who are sitting in all
• 27:11
  three of those, whatever. That's a big point of it.
• 27:13
  But like they're seeing this explosive growth.
• 27:15
  They don't want to be left behind and saying like we could
• 27:19
  double our attendance next year and see no extra money from that
• 27:23
  if we go with what what the WNBA is proposing here.
• 27:29
  One other thing that I, I learned that was really
• 27:31
  interesting is we talked last week or two weeks ago, I think
• 27:35
  about how revenue share was finally unlocked under the old
• 27:39
  CBA rules. And if you remember, maybe you
• 27:41
  don't, but it's it was very complicated to unlock revenue
• 27:45
  sharing, but a big part of unlocking that revenue share was
• 27:49
  the fact that you had this like compounding revenue amount.
• 27:55
  That you had a requirement every.
• 27:57
  Year, but it had to be a multiplier basically on top, not
• 28:02
  a multiplier, but like you had to show this growth over like
• 28:06
  multiple years to unpack it. OK, they unlocked revenue
• 28:10
  sharing, which means that they had to have shown the growth
• 28:12
  over multiple years. OK, the curveball that I learned
• 28:17
  about or that I realized to put together is that COVID crushed
• 28:22
  the growth trajectory that the league was on.
• 28:25
  But but so they went way negative, but that means that
• 28:30
  every year since COVID. They've crushed.
• 28:32
  They have crushed their revenue. Target because they've had to be
• 28:36
  able to show over that time block certain amount of revenue
• 28:40
  increase each year and so the players again 10 toes down
• 28:46
  ladies, you can do it. Yes, absolutely and.
• 28:49
  We actually have found and we have uncovered evidence that
• 28:52
  this is true because they were they create, there was a huge
• 28:57
  hole created by COVID and in order to dig out of that hole,
• 29:01
  they had to have repeated years of of growth of over 20% growth,
• 29:09
  mind you, based on how that was structured in order to unlock
• 29:12
  the revenue share that they finally unlocked last year.
• 29:15
  So it's likely that had COVID not happened, that revenue share
• 29:19
  actually would have gotten unlocked.
• 29:20
  A couple years ago. Yeah, maybe in 2021, right, so.
• 29:27
  Yeah, that. 10 toes down. Yeah, that's I, I didn't even
• 29:32
  think about that, how that would have compressed that and then.
• 29:35
  It hit me in the head today. Which means their last year
• 29:37
  numbers had to be massive in order for that to happen.
• 29:40
  Yeah, I really want to talk about we had a drive to your
• 29:45
  parents and a drive back about an hour where we discussed this
• 29:50
  the entire time and we tried to give a lot of like let's
• 29:57
  consider the league as having positive intent here of some
• 30:02
  sort. Why are they so stuck on net
• 30:06
  revenue? We.
• 30:07
  Really tried. We, we tried to give the benefit
• 30:10
  of the doubt so many times and what we really came down to is
• 30:16
  it's, it's about control. They get to control the
• 30:19
  definition of that number and they get to say, Oh yeah, we had
• 30:26
  all these expenses. Oh, and there's some
• 30:27
  miscellaneous stuff over here we had to pay for, which could have
• 30:31
  been this or we're paying double the rent.
• 30:35
  An NBA team might be playing. It's a made-up number.
• 30:37
  Don't quote me on that, but because these team owners sit in
• 30:42
  the arena ownership sometimes and things like that, like you
• 30:45
  said, there's all these little expenses that they can kind of
• 30:48
  pull levers on and and totally skew that net revenue number
• 30:52
  versus the gross is just always the gross, right?
• 30:55
  And it's just all about control essentially that we came up
• 30:58
  with. I think you said like the the
• 31:01
  players are basically saying we get to the the revenue, the
• 31:05
  gross revenue number and you're going to pay us first right
• 31:10
  before you go down the line and the league is saying you're an
• 31:16
  expense. Yeah.
• 31:19
  And and like I am a business operator in my pay job, I run
• 31:24
  APNL like that is part of what I do for work.
• 31:27
  So I understand how this works. But I even ran through an
• 31:31
  example with Alex of like what my PNL looks like now it's
• 31:34
  different. I work in a different industry.
• 31:37
  But the only thing that we could really come up with is you're,
• 31:42
  you're a, there's some cushion that's created by not letting
• 31:49
  them in on gross revenue And you, and again, we now know like
• 31:53
  you cannot tell me that they are not generating growth on the top
• 31:58
  line. So if depending on how you're
• 32:01
  managing your business really poorly, if your expenses are
• 32:06
  continuing to outstrip significant growth like that,
• 32:10
  you're, you should get fired like anybody else would get
• 32:14
  fired if your expenses were exceeding and if you were
• 32:19
  walking away where you're worried about protecting.
• 32:21
  So I, I find it like just really fascinating that they are just
• 32:28
  so fixated on that. And I do think that the moment
• 32:34
  they concede, the other thing that we've talked about too is
• 32:37
  like, why not give a? So there's been calculations
• 32:41
  done that the 70% on net is about 15% on gross.
• 32:46
  OK, well, why not concede so that it's more than 15% on
• 32:50
  gross, right? But at the same time, I talk
• 32:53
  myself out of that argument because of what I just said.
• 32:56
  I think players should be looked at.
• 32:59
  They do it in the NBA. It's called basketball related.
• 33:01
  Income like that gets distributed across the players
• 33:06
  before the owners take their cut.
• 33:10
  Right, Because they're the product.
• 33:12
  You don't have the ref. Yeah, you don't have it if you
• 33:14
  don't have the. Players.
• 33:15
  So we just want to see a deal. Yeah, I, I going back to the
• 33:21
  conversation we had this weekend is it was so ridiculous to me
• 33:24
  that every time we tried to give benefit of the doubt, it just
• 33:27
  came back to like, this is just about control and it's just
• 33:30
  about. It's about power.
• 33:32
  How can they continue to hold on power?
• 33:34
  I think what they had to be careful for, there was a a small
• 33:36
  flip in the research that I looked at that said, I think in
• 33:39
  the 70s, maybe it was the early I 70s, early 2000s, there was at
• 33:45
  some point where the NBA actually had to open up their
• 33:47
  book to a third party. Oh, it was an audit, an audit
• 33:50
  audited by like the FCC or SEC, excuse me.
• 33:54
  And. So you would think that the WNBA
• 33:57
  might be worried about that. But on the other side, I could
• 33:59
  see where like we're a business, we're going to wait until the
• 34:01
  audit comes until we have to change what we're doing, right?
• 34:03
  Like get as much as we can out of it now and then we'll go from
• 34:06
  there. Right.
• 34:08
  Yeah. As we've said and as I think
• 34:10
  we've seen a lot of players say too, like if you open the books
• 34:15
  and we are completely wrong, we're willing to own that.
• 34:18
  So anyways, we'll see potentially and we've said this
• 34:23
  before on this podcast, but by the time you hear this there.
• 34:27
  Is CBA there might be a deal? We just don't.
• 34:31
  Know all right, Should we move on from that?
• 34:35
  We. Maybe you won't be talking CBA
• 34:38
  much longer. I said that last week too, I
• 34:40
  think. I don't know.
• 34:42
  All right, let's get to your favorite NWSL opening weekend is
• 34:48
  back. All right, we promised we're not
• 34:51
  going to do this every week, but I am going to run through kind
• 34:53
  of the results from the weekend, Exciting sets the stage.
• 34:57
  We can talk about some of our favorite games or plays or
• 35:00
  whatever. So what's really cool is we have
• 35:04
  competitive games across the whole weekend.
• 35:06
  So all but one game was a one goal game.
• 35:10
  We started on Friday night season opener between the
• 35:13
  Portland Thorns and the Washington Spirit, 2 of the
• 35:16
  marquee clubs in the NWSL. The Thorns upset the Spirit at
• 35:21
  home, one to zero behind Olivia Moultrie's goal, which was
• 35:27
  beautiful. I saw a video of Abby Wambach,
• 35:31
  former US Men's National Team legend, and she was like that
• 35:36
  touch. Oh yeah, that.
• 35:38
  First touch that Moultrie had before she scored.
• 35:41
  And these are the things that I love to nerd out of.
• 35:43
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 35:44
  So thank you, Abby, for pointing out the touch because it was
• 35:47
  incredible. Yeah.
• 35:49
  Boston Legacy, one of our new expansion teams, lost in their
• 35:54
  home opener to defending champs Gotham FC.
• 35:58
  Goal scored by Esther Gonzalez of the Spanish national team.
• 36:03
  She is. She is also coming off of
• 36:05
  Parental. Oh, amazing.
• 36:06
  And. Actually, I'm going to talk
• 36:08
  about that in a little bit. Bay FC beats debutante's Denver
• 36:12
  Summit 2 to one in San Francisco Worth noting that both Boston
• 36:17
  and Denver had players sent off on Reds inaugural games, so the
• 36:23
  fact that they both only lost by 1 is actually.
• 36:25
  Passionate. And pretty passionate.
• 36:29
  Fired. Yeah, yeah, you said fire.
• 36:32
  That Kansas City current looked strong in A-21 win over Utah,
• 36:35
  goals from their recent signings of Croy Bethune and Ally
• 36:40
  Centnor. Yep, we've gushed about.
• 36:42
  On last week or two weeks ago. North Carolina Courage Top
• 36:45
  Racing Louisville 2 to one behind a brace from Ashley
• 36:49
  Sanchez, a name we have not talked.
• 36:51
  Much. Or heard about much lately.
• 36:53
  She used to be in the national team rotation.
• 36:56
  I think my original note on this was question mark question and
• 37:00
  who is this? Yeah, she's got a little bit of
• 37:03
  flair. She actually had.
• 37:04
  If you go, you can go look it up.
• 37:06
  She had like a really cool, like lobbed shot goal that just beat
• 37:11
  the keeper over the fingertips right under the crossbar.
• 37:14
  I don't know if she meant to do it, but you just.
• 37:16
  Need to count it it's. Like a bank shot in basketball,
• 37:19
  CN Diego Wave drops their home opener one to zero to the
• 37:23
  Houston Dash. They will love having Kat
• 37:26
  McCarthy. Yes, yes they will with.
• 37:27
  Their ranks cuz they are very depleted folks.
• 37:30
  They lost a lot of people. And they were, I mean, they were
• 37:32
  kind of depleted last year, weren't they?
• 37:34
  A little bit so. Yeah, they're struggling, but
• 37:38
  they did have Ludmila. Lujnila, right, joined their
• 37:43
  ranks and we saw one of the most epic saves by Jane Campbell,
• 37:47
  like Houston Downs on Ludmila. It was unreal.
• 37:53
  I think I remember Ludmila was like walking away.
• 37:55
  Like Campbell just like shot a hand out and you didn't think
• 38:00
  she was going to get there. So that was pretty cool to see.
• 38:04
  Barbara Banda returns from the short term injury list.
• 38:09
  And she scored a goal, but it was not enough for Orlando to
• 38:13
  top the Seattle Rain, who won two to one and then wrapping out
• 38:17
  the weekend. Angel City FC Nets goals from 4
• 38:23
  different players in A-40 shutout victory over the Chicago
• 38:26
  Red Stars. And I saw so one of my favorite
• 38:29
  players y'all is Alyssa Nair. She's the goalkeeper.
• 38:31
  He was not happy she was. I saw this video.
• 38:34
  You see the video where she just got hands on hips?
• 38:36
  I think it's only two zero at this point.
• 38:38
  But we watched the beginning of that and she had faced so many
• 38:42
  shots already. And the caption was like, so her
• 38:45
  nickname is Uncle. Oh, yeah.
• 38:47
  And so the caption was like uncle about to go hang up the.
• 38:50
  Boots. Hunk's not happy about this one.
• 38:52
  Ready. To go.
• 38:54
  So as you can tell, really fun. We watched a lot of soccer over
• 38:58
  the weekend. It was it was good to have it
• 39:00
  back, but we've got some highlights I think we gotta talk
• 39:05
  about as far as attendance goes. Summing it up at the top, they
• 39:10
  just released the overall attendance numbers, which was
• 39:13
  reported 129,000 people went to across these open opening
• 39:20
  matches, which is about an average of 16,000 fans per game.
• 39:24
  It's pretty good. Over the last three seasons,
• 39:27
  we'll remind you they've averaged about 10,000 fans per
• 39:30
  game, so little over their average as of right now.
• 39:35
  Some of these just notable ones, 19,000 at the Spirit home opener
• 39:39
  on Friday. Actually the only game that was
• 39:43
  below 10,000 from a tenants perspective was North Carolina
• 39:47
  Courage, but that was a capacity crowd venue.
• 39:50
  So that was almost 8200. And then Boston legacy plays in
• 39:55
  Gillette Stadium where the Patriots play.
• 39:58
  They had 30,000 Wild at their home opener.
• 40:02
  And then we've obviously talked about how.
• 40:04
  Denver is selling a ton. You know, selling a ton.
• 40:08
  So that is super cool to see. It'll be really interesting.
• 40:12
  I feel like overall this is the sense I get.
• 40:17
  I'm curious your thoughts on this.
• 40:19
  Women's sports writ large. I feel like right now is just
• 40:22
  like having a moment. Yeah.
• 40:24
  And maybe it's just 'cause we pay a lot of attention to
• 40:26
  because of this podcast. Yeah, women's sports podcast.
• 40:29
  But I also find that women's, fans of women's things often are
• 40:36
  like competitive about these kind of things.
• 40:39
  Yeah, totally. Fans like we'll want.
• 40:40
  Yeah, yeah. There's like we're setting
• 40:42
  records. We're breaking records going.
• 40:45
  I think people are flying into Denver to be a part of the.
• 40:49
  Oh yeah, the. Record setting crowd like.
• 40:52
  They I read an article that they traveled there were like more
• 40:55
  Denver fans in San Francisco for this home or amazing the season
• 41:00
  opener for them. Yeah.
• 41:02
  And than Bay FC fans. Yeah, that's wild.
• 41:04
  So yes, super exciting. So also interesting, ahead of
• 41:10
  opening weekend, NWSL unveiled brand new headquarters in New
• 41:15
  York City. And then I mentioned this
• 41:17
  before, but I have to point it out, 26 new moms are returning
• 41:23
  to play in the league this season.
• 41:25
  So these are either, you know, birthing partners or partners
• 41:30
  who are were on permanent leave for their partners having having
• 41:36
  kids. What's really cool about this, I
• 41:38
  was reading some of the updates and we're going to talk about
• 41:40
  some of the rule changes soon. But in 2025, the NWSL had
• 41:45
  written into their players rules.
• 41:49
  They would either get a childcare stipend or they could
• 41:53
  have expenses covered for a caretaker to come and their kids
• 41:59
  to travel with them. Kid, let me be clear, it was one
• 42:02
  kid. You can have one of your
• 42:04
  children come with who's your favorite 5 and under?
• 42:08
  Now this has expanded so in 2026, players can now access
• 42:12
  both benefits. So they get a stipend for child
• 42:15
  care and they can also have a caretaker come with their
• 42:19
  children all if they want up to 14.
• 42:24
  And I think that is such an awesome thing to see, especially
• 42:28
  as you see all of these new models coming back to play.
• 42:32
  I mean, this was like unfathomable as an option when I
• 42:38
  was growing up or, or what have you, right?
• 42:41
  Like it's, it's insane a that these women are so incredible
• 42:45
  that they are even coming back seeing so on the field.
• 42:49
  Gigi's mom, excuse me on the field.
• 42:51
  How many months app like not not even that many.
• 42:54
  We had Gigi in six months. Yeah, six months postpartum.
• 43:03
  I could talk a lot about what happens to the body, right?
• 43:07
  I assume many of our listeners are also maybe women and
• 43:10
  probably have kids Maybe so they know the fact that they're
• 43:14
  coming back. Like women are amazing.
• 43:17
  And then you also like layer in the fact that you have so many
• 43:22
  of them who have partners who do want to start families.
• 43:26
  Maybe they're not going to be the birthing partner, but like
• 43:28
  they're allowed to have that time and have that support and
• 43:30
  have their kids with them. It's incredible.
• 43:32
  So. I, I mean, I was sitting there
• 43:34
  thinking you, you're, you're a player in the WNBA and you're
• 43:38
  looking at what the NWSL has and they've been around less, less
• 43:43
  of half, Half is long, half is long.
• 43:45
  You're like, we want that. We want it to be just like that.
• 43:48
  Like, and I hope people like the PWHL are also taking notes like
• 43:53
  this is what we need to to strive for in the future.
• 43:56
  Yeah, I I do think and I think they had some interviews with
• 44:00
  NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman over the weekend and I do think
• 44:05
  she aims, she was just re signed to a three-year deal last fall.
• 44:10
  And so I think she really aims for wanting to be that president
• 44:16
  of the league, not only in football but across sports.
• 44:22
  And frankly, right now, I think they have the right formula to
• 44:25
  be doing that. This is a maybe a hot take.
• 44:29
  It feels like she is someone who wants to see soccer grow,
• 44:31
  whereas Kathy Engelbert is potentially paying it for the
• 44:35
  money. Yep, I disagree on that.
• 44:42
  Yep. All right.
• 44:43
  So one thing that we're going to be looking out for are some of
• 44:46
  the rule changes that have been announced.
• 44:49
  And these are we're talking in game rules.
• 44:51
  We're not going to talk about how their CBA adjusts this year
• 44:54
  or anything like that right now. We've had enough of CBS, too.
• 44:57
  So one really big one that's coming out that's effective
• 45:00
  immediately in this season is the this concept called
• 45:04
  goalkeeper timeouts. Yeah, essentially when
• 45:07
  goalkeepers get hurt because they are a unique position,
• 45:12
  right? And you can't, you can't restart
• 45:15
  play without the goalkeeper in the game.
• 45:17
  Yep. They have essentially started to
• 45:19
  function as timeouts. Yeah.
• 45:21
  And so there's a rule now where the teams are not allowed to
• 45:24
  congregate by the touchline. Yeah, the technical area with
• 45:28
  their teams while goalkeeper is hurt.
• 45:31
  Yeah, they are allowed to gather together on the field, but they
• 45:35
  have to stay in the middle of the field on their side of the
• 45:39
  half. OK.
• 45:41
  And so this is just one way, and we're going to, I'm going to go
• 45:45
  into some of the changes that'll go into effect in July ahead of
• 45:50
  the men's World Cup to mitigate time wasting, which is not as
• 45:56
  big of an issue in the women's game as the men's game.
• 46:00
  The men's game, it's like 80 minutes plus the goalkeeper's
• 46:04
  gonna get hurt like he's kind of given.
• 46:07
  Yes, if you get like tapped and falling down type of thing.
• 46:12
  And so they're really trying to emphasize and I know as a coach
• 46:18
  talking with some of my other coach friends, like they're
• 46:20
  really excited about these changes even to trickle down to
• 46:23
  the the high school level, the youth level competitive,
• 46:27
  obviously. So couple of those other changes
• 46:32
  as we. So the goal here, first of all,
• 46:35
  let's zoom out is for us to watch more soccer, right?
• 46:39
  For us to be able to see more football happening and to take
• 46:43
  out some of the gamesmanship that happens.
• 46:46
  Now, you can make the argument that like sometimes that's what
• 46:48
  makes it fun. But if you have ever watched a
• 46:52
  soccer match and like there's so many stoppages because players
• 46:57
  are just flopping for injury or they're, you know, whatever, it
• 47:00
  gets frustrating. So starting on July 1st on throw
• 47:06
  insurance and on goal kicks, there is a 5 second countdown.
• 47:11
  So what that means is as soon as you the ball goes out of bounds,
• 47:16
  you have 5 seconds to get that ball back into play or it's a
• 47:20
  turnover and so on. A throw that would mean that the
• 47:22
  other team gets to throw the ball in on a goal kick becomes a
• 47:26
  corner kick. So.
• 47:29
  Goalkeepers are also speaking as one, right?
• 47:32
  Notorious for killing time. I'm gonna adjust my shin guards,
• 47:35
  right? Let me restrap my gloves like.
• 47:38
  You can't do that. I'm assuming this is kind of
• 47:40
  like like they do in basketball where the referees are given
• 47:42
  like a visual signal of. They're supposed to yes, and I
• 47:47
  think we'll see that more as we watch 'cause there's there's
• 47:50
  some other rules around like when a goalie makes a save they
• 47:53
  have I think it's 8 seconds to get the call off their hands,
• 47:57
  right. Another one that's going to
• 48:00
  change. Substitutes must leave the pitch
• 48:03
  within 10 seconds. If they take longer, the
• 48:06
  substitute, the player coming in for the substituted player
• 48:10
  cannot enter the game until the 1st stoppage of play after a
• 48:15
  minute has passed. So if you've also watched
• 48:19
  soccer, you know that it can take a while for the.
• 48:21
  Ball to go on. Bounce and so it really
• 48:24
  impresses upon these players, right to get off the field.
• 48:27
  I like this one cuz you always I mean we go back to like the
• 48:30
  men's game. They take their sweet time, clap
• 48:33
  longest longest route clap to every all the other players and
• 48:37
  the other team as I go off to exactly yeah.
• 48:39
  Like, keep the game moving, all right?
• 48:42
  Another one here, when play is stopped for injury assessment on
• 48:45
  an outfield player, so not a goalkeeper, the injured player
• 48:49
  must leave and remain off the pitch for at least one minute
• 48:53
  once play restarts. So that helps us kind of make
• 48:57
  sure that players aren't just going.
• 48:58
  Down. No go down.
• 49:00
  And then the final one here is VAR which is.
• 49:05
  Video assisted referee. Thank you, can now check
• 49:09
  incorrect yellows Reds card. Excuse me?
• 49:12
  Yellows cards given to the wrong player and wrong corner
• 49:15
  decisions. Interesting.
• 49:18
  I think that's great. I think they expansive like
• 49:21
  expanding the use of that is helpful 'cause I do think there
• 49:24
  are some critical things. I mean, if you think about a
• 49:27
  wrong card, like that's how a person could be has to adjust
• 49:31
  their place or could get kicked out of the game, right.
• 49:35
  So it'll be interesting to watch how these impact the game.
• 49:40
  I'd again, as we're viewers of both men's and women's soccer, I
• 49:44
  don't think we're going to notice it as much on the side as
• 49:48
  we do on the men's, but. Have they started like because I
• 49:51
  thought I heard in one game that one of the announcements said
• 49:55
  the ref was going to start the countdown.
• 49:57
  That was on the goalkeeper. That was on the goalkeeper.
• 49:59
  On a save. So that is a rule that's already
• 50:03
  in effect that you they're supposed to visually show to the
• 50:08
  goalkeeper that they are counting, so the goalkeeper
• 50:11
  doesn't hold on to the ball for too long.
• 50:15
  All right, wrapping up our NWSL segment here.
• 50:21
  What are we? We're going to talk about the
• 50:22
  momentum. Yeah, the momentum we, I mean,
• 50:26
  this was kind of my big thing this week is just seeing all of,
• 50:29
  like we talked about earlier, all of the games that we're
• 50:33
  seeing, you know, 30,000 in Boston, Boston, we have the
• 50:38
  50,000 in Denver, we had no game under 10,000.
• 50:44
  It is just it's it's kind of crazy seeing all of this energy,
• 50:48
  especially in a game I think that Americans haven't really
• 50:53
  hooked onto until I think recently.
• 50:55
  Yeah. So I think, I think the biggest
• 51:01
  thing here is it really feels like the NWSL did their
• 51:05
  homework, kind of like how we talked about with the PWHL is
• 51:08
  doing this takeover series. They've they've really done
• 51:11
  their homework and found the right cities to break into.
• 51:15
  And I think it's their homework, like the work they've put into
• 51:18
  that has really shown. Yeah, yeah.
• 51:21
  I mean, we already know about some of their expansion plans,
• 51:24
  right? Adding Denver and Boston this
• 51:26
  year brings them to 16 teams, but they've got plans to add the
• 51:30
  team in Atlanta starting in 2028.
• 51:33
  It's everything I'm reading. It's very likely that they're
• 51:36
  going to be announcing that Columbus is also going to be
• 51:38
  part of 2028. Something else that I read today
• 51:41
  is that they've moved to a like an ongoing assessment approach
• 51:48
  to expansion. So there's not a window people
• 51:51
  have to, like, fall into to apply.
• 51:54
  They'll just assess. And Jessica Berman, again the
• 51:57
  commissioner of the NWSL, was quoted as saying.
• 51:59
  We've got dozens of people who are interested right now.
• 52:04
  And I'm like, must be nice to like be.
• 52:06
  Able to choose. But yeah, Columbus, Columbus
• 52:09
  consistently, I think you said, they seem to always host
• 52:12
  national team games. And I want to go back to our
• 52:15
  history of the NWSL last week. And we talked about how a lot of
• 52:20
  the league's success to this point came from two things.
• 52:24
  As it started, it was the MLS affiliation.
• 52:27
  So again, having that infrastructure, potentially
• 52:30
  having some, you know, shared expenses and things like that,
• 52:34
  right? And then it was the subsidies
• 52:36
  from the federations, which they don't do that anymore.
• 52:39
  But the Columbus and Atlanta both have men's teams currently.
• 52:45
  And so it got me looking like, where are their men's teams
• 52:48
  where there aren't women's teams?
• 52:50
  And I was like, Philly, I think Philly is a great sports town.
• 52:56
  I think they're looking at probably bringing a WNB A-Team
• 52:59
  there in the next couple years to Nashville.
• 53:02
  I could see. And then I put Canada question
• 53:05
  mark because there are quite a few men's teams in Canada, but
• 53:08
  we don't have any Canadian like NWSL teams, yeah.
• 53:14
  You could be tapping a whole other market.
• 53:15
  Now what's interesting about that is Canada has their own
• 53:19
  women's. Soccer League.
• 53:21
  Do they merge? Oh, that would be interesting,
• 53:24
  right? Yeah.
• 53:25
  Like that could be something worth exploring.
• 53:28
  And like, does it become this like broader entity?
• 53:30
  Yeah, You know, we've got the PHL, the WNBA, men's leagues on
• 53:35
  both sides, MLB, all of them. They're all inclusive of Canada.
• 53:42
  And so I think it could be an interesting.
• 53:43
  Thing that would be interesting, when you said Canada question
• 53:46
  mark, I was like, does she mean Minnesota 'cause we're pretty
• 53:49
  close to Canada? I would love for Minnesota to be
• 53:53
  in the mix and I think we are, I think we are probably one of
• 53:56
  those dozen, right. But I, I feel unless somebody is
• 54:00
  about to fork over, yeah, what's the buy in fee now like
• 54:04
  165,000,000, right was for the Atlanta team.
• 54:07
  So like, I don't know who's doing that.
• 54:10
  Maybe a rod? A rod might maybe?
• 54:12
  Yeah. One other thing I want to point
• 54:15
  out is I was reading about the momentum here and sort of the
• 54:20
  timing of all of this. And Jessica Berman, again
• 54:23
  resigned to her contract. She really sees 2026 as like a
• 54:28
  really pivotal moment for the WSL, and here's why.
• 54:33
  So we talked, we've talked in past episodes about how the NWSL
• 54:40
  in particular gained momentum after World Cups, right,
• 54:43
  20/15/2019, when the US women's national team won.
• 54:47
  We've also talked about how Olympics create momentum.
• 54:51
  And we've talked about how women's sports fans are kind of
• 54:54
  agnostic. They just like supporting women.
• 54:56
  We're feeling that, right? Let me run this down for you.
• 55:01
  In 2027, we have the Women's World Cup in Brazil.
• 55:07
  In 2028, we have Olympics in LA. So NWSL has to be looking at
• 55:15
  that going, oh, we are going to have the world's eyes on us for
• 55:21
  soccer, right? We also talked about how the
• 55:23
  women's field is expanding in that Olympics to 16 teams, while
• 55:27
  the men's side contracts, right? Then if you look way out ahead,
• 55:33
  well, actually, excuse me, still in 2028, they will renegotiate
• 55:37
  their media rights broadcast deal so that the one that
• 55:40
  they're under right now will expire 240 million or six years
• 55:44
  or whatever it was. And then in 2031, do you know
• 55:49
  who's hosting the FIFA Women's World Cup?
• 55:52
  Are we the? United States with Mexico.
• 55:57
  And so I think she's looking at that time horizon and saying
• 56:02
  what a time to be alive and we can capitalize on these periods
• 56:07
  of momentum from these other tournaments that are going to
• 56:10
  happen in those time. Frames.
• 56:12
  I was also wondering if I think there's probably a little bit to
• 56:15
  be said too about the women's Olympic hockey team 100% and
• 56:19
  that momentum 100%. I mean, straight out of out of
• 56:22
  the Olympics, right into the NWSL scene, like, well, hockey's
• 56:26
  half over. What are some other things we
• 56:28
  can get into for the summer? And like here we are with NW.
• 56:30
  SLI think you're going to continue to see like that, that
• 56:33
  cycle so exciting. Yes, very exciting.
• 56:38
  So much going on we'll. Keep watching.
• 56:41
  We got a, we got a quick hit here on some PWHL standings and
• 56:46
  and some games to watch. I think we're going to kind of
• 56:50
  level set here on what the standings are right now.
• 56:52
  We have Boston, Minnesota, this is an order, Montreal, Ottawa,
• 56:59
  Toronto, New York, Vancouver and Seattle.
• 57:03
  We recently had just the other day had Minnesota pull into
• 57:07
  second place, tied with Montreal.
• 57:10
  I think they have a tie break on them.
• 57:12
  Tie break. We have a tie break on them.
• 57:14
  Actually, we're in second place. Oh, fun.
• 57:16
  So the top four teams there that that I just called out, we have
• 57:19
  Boston at 39 points, Minnesota at 36, Montreal at 36 and Ottawa
• 57:24
  at 28. And while we have those those
• 57:29
  really good teams at the top there, I think the most
• 57:31
  interesting storyline here is at 4-5 and six, because you have
• 57:35
  Ottawa at 28, Toronto at 28 and New York at 27.
• 57:40
  And they're all right around the same amount of games played.
• 57:43
  So there's going to be this kind of push from all of them.
• 57:48
  Every single game for them is going to matter.
• 57:52
  Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, they're kind of OK.
• 57:56
  They don't want to lose a lot of games, but these 4-5 and six
• 57:59
  teams are going to be pushing hard.
• 58:01
  Just take that four spot. Sorry, I'll I'll remind top four
• 58:04
  teams get into the playoffs. And so that's why this is going
• 58:08
  to be a big push. Yeah, I think so too.
• 58:10
  And another another thing to add and and remind our listeners
• 58:14
  about is the golden draft rule in the.
• 58:16
  PWHL sorry, that's no you still your Thunder.
• 58:20
  No, you got the. Thunder.
• 58:22
  And so that makes everyone competitive.
• 58:26
  And if we know a little bit about who's coming out in this
• 58:29
  next draft, you're talking Caroline Harvey from Wisconsin
• 58:34
  Olympics MVP, right? You're talking Abby Murphy from
• 58:37
  Minnesota. And so you've got a slew of of
• 58:42
  teams at the bottom there that are wanting to compete because
• 58:46
  the golden draft rule requires that you continue to win games
• 58:50
  in order to increase your positioning in the draft, which
• 58:54
  is a really cool mechanism and keeps teams from from taking.
• 58:58
  Basically, as soon as you are mathematically eliminated, you
• 59:00
  start gaining points for or wins, right?
• 59:04
  And the more you get, the higher your draft orders.
• 59:06
  Or you can actually outright win the first draft spot.
• 59:08
  Yeah, so that is gonna make that end of season push really
• 59:13
  intense. Every game matters, it feels
• 59:16
  like. If you're an Ottawa playing
• 59:18
  Seattle, who's eliminated that game's not in hand anymore.
• 59:22
  You have to play all the way on that.
• 59:25
  Plus there's like, there's just pride.
• 59:28
  Yeah. Like, Seattle's had some of the
• 59:30
  best. Like, if we look at them,
• 59:31
  they've, they've struggled mightily, I would say, like,
• 59:35
  they've had some of the best fans, the best showings for
• 59:38
  their team. Hillary Knight is part of that
• 59:39
  team. She's been injured since the
• 59:41
  Olympics. Alex Carpenter's on that team.
• 59:44
  Like, they have a whole host of players who, like are now really
• 59:48
  well known because of the Olympics.
• 59:50
  And frankly, their roster names don't like translate into the
• 59:54
  results they've had. But they're going to be looking
• 59:56
  to like, increase that stock, right?
• 59:58
  Absolutely so. Yeah.
• 1:00:01
  All right. I mean, so moving on out of the
• 1:00:03
  standings here, hey, let's talk expansion again because why not?
• 1:00:11
  I think the the biggest thing here is that we've talked in the
• 1:00:15
  past that the PWHL likely wants to add 2 teams, if not 4 all in
• 1:00:23
  one go. I think I saw a quote or a story
• 1:00:26
  that by 20302031 they want to have 12 teams.
• 1:00:31
  Two would put them at 10-4, would put them at 12.
• 1:00:34
  And so I think what's really interesting is kind of that
• 1:00:38
  homework we talk about the takeover tour that they are kind
• 1:00:42
  of using as market research. So we have 5 cities getting 2
• 1:00:48
  stops this year. That's going to be Detroit,
• 1:00:50
  Denver, Chicago, Edmonton and Halifax.
• 1:00:54
  And I want to talk about a couple of the teams, cities that
• 1:00:56
  I think are probably the top contenders for getting a team.
• 1:01:02
  So Detroit, which we talked about earlier, they had 14,000
• 1:01:06
  fans last year, only 9 K this year.
• 1:01:09
  But the infrastructure is there. Detroit, one of the most hockey
• 1:01:15
  towns. Yeah, so.
• 1:01:17
  You'll ever know. I think Original 6 potentially
• 1:01:19
  in the NHL. The Red Wings, yeah, I'll point
• 1:01:23
  out though, too, they had lower attendance at their first
• 1:01:26
  Takeover tour game. Their second one is coming up
• 1:01:30
  and we've already talked about it is the nationally televised
• 1:01:33
  game that's coming up on the 28th.
• 1:01:36
  And again, I think fans are. Fans are going to try to.
• 1:01:39
  They want that to be full, they want it to show well.
• 1:01:42
  So like I expect that to, you know, if they hit 14,000 last
• 1:01:47
  year when they they played there, I expect it to exceed
• 1:01:50
  that as well as capacities there.
• 1:01:51
  Absolutely. The other city from the US at
• 1:01:54
  least is Denver. Denver had 14,000 in attendance
• 1:01:58
  last year, 11 1/2 thousand earlier this season, and just
• 1:02:02
  yesterday they had 15 1/2 thousand.
• 1:02:05
  And that 11 1/2 thousand was competing directly with the AFC
• 1:02:11
  champions. League.
• 1:02:12
  Yeah, yeah. Yep.
• 1:02:13
  At Mile High Stadium, just down the road from Ballerina so and
• 1:02:17
  it was bad weather because if you watch the football game, no
• 1:02:19
  one could see anything because of the snow.
• 1:02:21
  And and they still pulled. They still.
• 1:02:22
  Pulled and they still pulled. Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  So my point is, they still pulled.
• 1:02:25
  And like we talked about earlier, women's sports fans,
• 1:02:30
  they just like sports. They just like sports.
• 1:02:32
  They like supporting women. Denver Summit has sold 50,000
• 1:02:35
  tickets, yeah, to their NWSL game.
• 1:02:38
  So I think you look at that as a PWHL league and you just go,
• 1:02:43
  yeah, this has got to be one of our next spots.
• 1:02:45
  Yeah, so. I think that that's probably
• 1:02:47
  right. The other thing that it has
• 1:02:50
  there is it's a nice solve for the the Mountain time zone.
• 1:02:53
  You have a gap between Vancouver and Minnesota for your central
• 1:02:56
  and West Coast. You can kind of slot someone in
• 1:02:58
  right there and have totally another time zone in the
• 1:03:00
  evenings. Yeah, that's really nice.
• 1:03:03
  Quickly, Canadian teams, if you're trying to add four, you
• 1:03:08
  probably want to add a couple of Canadian teams just for that
• 1:03:10
  balance, the ones that are likely Edmonton, Halifax, Quebec
• 1:03:18
  City and Hamilton. Edmonton would also solve for
• 1:03:22
  that time slot out of that mountain time zone, but you have
• 1:03:27
  places like Halifax who have sold out games already, Quebec
• 1:03:31
  City who has sold out games already, and then Hamilton that
• 1:03:35
  has a new arena with no tenant, so they're wide open.
• 1:03:40
  They're looking for something, yeah.
• 1:03:41
  Interesting. And I also just saw it today,
• 1:03:46
  not related to a new city, but there's some shuffling going on
• 1:03:49
  with the Ottawa charge and the sends and they might actually go
• 1:03:54
  into kind of a building partnership because we're the
• 1:03:57
  charge right now. There's going to be some
• 1:04:00
  renovations that are going to remove 2000 seats.
• 1:04:03
  We don't want to do that. And so the charger like, hey, we
• 1:04:06
  regularly sell this place out like we need to go somewhere
• 1:04:10
  more. And I think the point is, is
• 1:04:11
  that Canadians are feral for hockey.
• 1:04:15
  I think that that's a surprise. And so it would make sense that
• 1:04:21
  if they were going to expand and they were going to kind of make
• 1:04:23
  this pole for four, that they're going to balance it with at
• 1:04:27
  least one Canadian team, if not 2.
• 1:04:31
  And then the other thing that I'll point out before we we move
• 1:04:34
  on to our last point on PWHL is the timing of all of this and
• 1:04:39
  actually segue into my, my, my point around broadcast deals,
• 1:04:45
  the 2034 Winter Olympics are in Salt Lake City.
• 1:04:51
  Utah, Utah. And so again, you have to
• 1:04:54
  imagine that these executives who are making these expansion
• 1:04:57
  decisions, making these media rights decisions, are looking at
• 1:05:01
  this going, how do we continue to build the momentum in the
• 1:05:05
  pipeline to like mutually benefit off of one another,
• 1:05:10
  Right. And so I, I was really intrigued
• 1:05:13
  by the fact that we're getting our first national broadcast.
• 1:05:15
  I think it was because we lamented on this podcast.
• 1:05:19
  They heard us, they heard us. About how there's no nationally
• 1:05:23
  televised PWHL, it's all local networks.
• 1:05:26
  YouTube. View it all for free on YouTube.
• 1:05:29
  But Canada has their shit together and they because
• 1:05:33
  they're feral for hockey and they they nationally televised
• 1:05:39
  all of their PWHL games, right? And so I think it's an
• 1:05:42
  interesting move. And I was reading an interview
• 1:05:45
  with the guy from Scripps Sports who's, you know, that game is
• 1:05:48
  going to be on Ion. And he was kind of like, he was
• 1:05:53
  holding cards close to that. So he's kind of like, it's
• 1:05:55
  intriguing. And you know where the decision
• 1:05:58
  to do this national broadcast was made?
• 1:06:01
  Milan, in Milan. So they were looking at what was
• 1:06:05
  going on with the Olympics and they said.
• 1:06:09
  Sounds like a good idea. People want to watch this
• 1:06:10
  because everyone watches women, right?
• 1:06:13
  So we're looking forward to that playoff push.
• 1:06:18
  We'll definitely keep our ear to the ground.
• 1:06:19
  I think it's around these next couple weeks where they
• 1:06:22
  typically announce those expansions.
• 1:06:24
  Yeah, yeah. I was actually wondering.
• 1:06:25
  I didn't get that in my notes here.
• 1:06:26
  So there could be some crazy news going on PWHL here in the
• 1:06:30
  next few weeks. That would be awesome.
• 1:06:34
  All right, moving on to what to watch.
• 1:06:41
  What's that? There's just so much.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah, there's just so much. I was laughing.
• 1:06:45
  I thought I messed up. I was like what did I do wrong?
• 1:06:47
  There's just so many things. All right, NCAA women's
• 1:06:50
  basketball tournament. March Madness.
• 1:06:54
  Oh man, we are. Like we said, we're going to do
• 1:06:57
  some brackets. We'll put those up probably
• 1:06:59
  tomorrow. I, I listed out like some
• 1:07:03
  potential trap games. Honestly, as I was looking
• 1:07:06
  through the bracket, my thoughts are this.
• 1:07:08
  If you're in the pocket with the four and the five seed, so like
• 1:07:13
  I think 4 plays like 11 and 5 plays 12 or something like that.
• 1:07:16
  So maybe vice versa. I don't want to be in any of
• 1:07:19
  those pockets. They all looked horribly
• 1:07:22
  competitive, like any two teams could come out of those those
• 1:07:25
  two kind of branches of the bracket.
• 1:07:27
  Now, once you do that, whoever comes out of that, if the one
• 1:07:31
  advances, you end up playing the one.
• 1:07:33
  So like you're not earning yourself any fun.
• 1:07:36
  But they all looked horrible. Dukes in one of those UN CS in
• 1:07:41
  one of those. It's just that's going to be
• 1:07:43
  really interesting to watch and I think has the highest upset
• 1:07:46
  potential outside of that. Like I as I look at the bracket,
• 1:07:53
  like I don't think the one seeds are going to have an issue
• 1:07:56
  advancing to the Sweet 16. I'd be really shocked if any of
• 1:08:00
  them lost before they get into the Sweet 16 and potentially the
• 1:08:04
  8:00. That's when it starts to get
• 1:08:06
  really interesting for those teams.
• 1:08:08
  There are some 2 seeds though that I was like Iowa and
• 1:08:12
  Michigan, frankly, the two like Big 10, two seeds.
• 1:08:16
  I was like, I don't know, I don't know.
• 1:08:18
  You guys could have some spoiler spoiler alerts written all over
• 1:08:22
  your your bracket. So I think LSU will be fine
• 1:08:25
  there another two. I think Vanderbilt will be fine
• 1:08:28
  there another two. But I just that was something
• 1:08:32
  that stood out to me for sure. What I would love is I would
• 1:08:36
  love to see there's a potential crash course between Vanderbilt
• 1:08:41
  with Michaela Blake's and Hannah Hidalgo with in.
• 1:08:46
  I think what would end up being the Sweet 16 And like, I think
• 1:08:49
  that they're just two of the top scorers in the game right now.
• 1:08:52
  Really, really good all around players.
• 1:08:54
  That'd be fun to watch. And then I do have to shout out
• 1:08:58
  our Minnesota Gophers are hosting around here this
• 1:09:01
  weekend. They earned the four seed.
• 1:09:05
  I am scared for them because they have to play Green Bay and
• 1:09:09
  Green Bay. I I swear to goodness, y'all, I
• 1:09:12
  feel like for the last four years I turn on this tournament
• 1:09:15
  and Green Bay is whooping somebody's rear end in the first
• 1:09:19
  round of the tournament and it's the Gophers this time and I'm
• 1:09:22
  just nervous. Probably not.
• 1:09:23
  Not this time, hopefully. Not so.
• 1:09:26
  Check out our brackets. Once we get them posted, we will
• 1:09:28
  check in on those week over week until the tournament's.
• 1:09:31
  Done. We've got Wednesday and Thursday
• 1:09:32
  are the play in games and then we're hitting every weekend
• 1:09:36
  until like April 5th, so it just goes from there.
• 1:09:40
  Just goes from there. Moving on, we have NCAA women's
• 1:09:44
  hockey Frozen 4 semifinals. Like we discussed earlier, we'll
• 1:09:48
  just go through these kind of quickly here.
• 1:09:50
  Ohio State versus Northeastern Friday at 3:00 PM, Wisconsin
• 1:09:55
  versus Penn State Friday at 6:30 PM and then the final on Sunday
• 1:10:01
  at 3:00 PM on ESPN Plus. Nice.
• 1:10:05
  Real quick, before we move on, we should mention that all the
• 1:10:07
  women's college basketball games are on the ESPN.
• 1:10:10
  Speed of networks PWHL My bias is going to seem like it's
• 1:10:16
  showing here. I've highlighted a couple of
• 1:10:18
  games over the next week. First one, Ottawa at Minnesota.
• 1:10:22
  This. Is a big game.
• 1:10:24
  Wednesday at 6:00 PM. This is a bigger game for Ottawa
• 1:10:28
  than it is for Minnesota. It's still important for
• 1:10:30
  Minnesota, but Ottawa, like we said, is in that fourth spot
• 1:10:34
  right now. They need these points in
• 1:10:37
  Minnesota. It needs to protect that home
• 1:10:40
  ice advantage throughout the play offs.
• 1:10:41
  Well, yeah, home ice advantage. What we should talk about too is
• 1:10:44
  if you do get to the one seed, you get to pick your opponent.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah, so like, they're still playing.
• 1:10:51
  For yeah, yeah, they yeah they are.
• 1:10:54
  Minnesota at Vancouver on Saturday.
• 1:10:57
  You might think Vancouver, they're not very good.
• 1:11:00
  Could be a trap game. It's late in the season, you
• 1:11:02
  don't want to give up points. Did you see the goal that Sarah
• 1:11:06
  Nurse scored over the? Weekend I did not.
• 1:11:08
  She plays for the Golden Eyes and go look her up.
• 1:11:11
  Look up Sarah Nurse, Vancouver Golden Eyes.
• 1:11:14
  Goal from the weekend. I don't even know what they call
• 1:11:18
  it in hockey anymore. Some kind of dangle.
• 1:11:20
  Yeah, it's sick. OK, we'll check it out.
• 1:11:24
  And then one more on Saturday at 3:00 PM, Seattle at Boston,
• 1:11:28
  another trap game, potential best versus the worst, but I
• 1:11:33
  don't want to leave those points out there.
• 1:11:35
  Love it. All right, NWSL again, this is
• 1:11:39
  an all weekend. All weekend fair so Friday,
• 1:11:42
  Saturday, Sunday. Turn it on TV and they're going
• 1:11:44
  to be on Friday night. We have Portland thorns versus
• 1:11:48
  the Seattle rain. The Cascadia battle.
• 1:11:51
  Yeah, this is a Pacific Northwest rivalry.
• 1:11:54
  Both won their opening weekend games and another chance to see
• 1:11:58
  Sofia Wilson, Gigi's mom, Gigi's mom, come in maybe a little bit
• 1:12:02
  earlier, play a few more minutes.
• 1:12:03
  That would be great. Saturday we have Bay City versus
• 1:12:06
  Angel City, another in state kind of rival reaction going on
• 1:12:10
  here. So Angel City, like we said,
• 1:12:13
  scored four last week. Bay City also scored two.
• 1:12:16
  So this is on national TV on ION.
• 1:12:20
  And then on Sunday we've got Chicago Stars versus Kansas City
• 1:12:23
  Current on ESPN 2 at 1:00 PM Amazing.
• 1:12:26
  We talked about earlier Chicago F linked find city they're going
• 1:12:31
  to be looking to recoup recoup that, although they're.
• 1:12:34
  Not facing an. Easier test in Kansas City, KS
• 1:12:37
  city looks pretty sharp so you've.
• 1:12:38
  Got, you know, 10 Wash Winga, you've got Alley Centenori,
• 1:12:41
  you've got Kroy Bethune, Michelle Cooper, like.
• 1:12:44
  We'll see what they can do. All right.
• 1:12:46
  Well, that's the battle of the Midwest.
• 1:12:48
  Yes, it is. So and we'll also be keeping our
• 1:12:51
  eye on the Chicago Red Stars for Mel Swanson's return.
• 1:12:55
  Speaking of mom's returning to play one other one.
• 1:12:59
  I just want to add in there, I mentioned it in the headlines,
• 1:13:02
  but NCAA gymnastics conference are this weekend.
• 1:13:07
  They're all streaming on their kind of like respective
• 1:13:09
  conference network. So they're not nationally.
• 1:13:12
  Televised. SEC Network, I would definitely
• 1:13:15
  check out the SEC tournament if you have time.
• 1:13:17
  The Big 10, likely UCLA is going to run away with it.
• 1:13:21
  They've dominated that league or that conference, excuse me, so
• 1:13:26
  far this year. That begins Friday night and
• 1:13:28
  then the Big 12 and SEC start on Saturday.
• 1:13:33
  So you have no excuse to not watch women's sports.
• 1:13:35
  This. Weekend, a lot of things
• 1:13:37
  happening. There's so many things you could
• 1:13:38
  be watching, all right. We made it.
• 1:13:41
  We are at the end here, winners and losers.
• 1:13:47
  Losers are first. Do you want to go first or do
• 1:13:52
  you want me to? I can only imagine what I'm
• 1:13:55
  going to say. Go. 1st.
• 1:13:57
  How many times can I say some sort of combination of the WNBA,
• 1:14:02
  it's fans, it's players, the 100 plus free agents that are trying
• 1:14:07
  to figure out what they're going to be doing next season stuff?
• 1:14:10
  That has to happen before the season starts.
• 1:14:14
  That's, that's mine. I I really hope we get off this
• 1:14:18
  recording and they've figured something out, or at least wake
• 1:14:21
  up and figure it has some figured out.
• 1:14:23
  Yeah, that feels like it feels like a a Gimme.
• 1:14:26
  And I know we sound redundant, but like, it does seem upsetting
• 1:14:31
  that it's dragged on the way it has.
• 1:14:32
  We've highlighted a lot of our grievances here today and in
• 1:14:36
  past episodes, so I think that's my loser too.
• 1:14:39
  Just because I can't. Everywhere else feels good.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah, I think it's feeling pretty good.
• 1:14:45
  Yeah, there's some, you know, there's some things out there,
• 1:14:48
  but like I think that is probably the biggest sticking
• 1:14:52
  point and I agree with you. I hope we, I hope we see
• 1:14:55
  something the next couple days. I want to be able to respond to
• 1:15:00
  Kate who keeps calling me from the links saying can you buy
• 1:15:03
  season tickets and. Say.
• 1:15:05
  I can't buy them until you have a season that is actually going
• 1:15:09
  to get played, Kate. I keep putting her off and I'm
• 1:15:11
  like, we will. I just, I need to know that
• 1:15:13
  there's going to be a season, right?
• 1:15:15
  All right, winners, what do you got?
• 1:15:17
  Man, I think my winner. I think my winner really is
• 1:15:28
  like, I loved hearing that little stat about all the moms
• 1:15:32
  coming back to play soccer. I think that's so incredible.
• 1:15:36
  I think it's so inspiring, you know, that they have the support
• 1:15:41
  to make that choice. They are doing it the right way.
• 1:15:44
  They're supported by the league with policies that actually
• 1:15:47
  allow them to, you know, keep their families close.
• 1:15:53
  And I it just like it makes me so happy as a mom.
• 1:16:00
  Again, like I said earlier in the episode, like that was an
• 1:16:04
  having a kid essentially meant your career was over not that
• 1:16:08
  long ago. So it's incredible to see these
• 1:16:12
  women do that and to be in a place where they're supported
• 1:16:17
  and doing it. Plus, I am never going to get
• 1:16:19
  tired of saying Gigi's mom. On this podcast.
• 1:16:22
  I'm going to learn all the babies.
• 1:16:23
  We'll put a counter up next time, All right?
• 1:16:27
  Mine. Well, so I think #1 is the PWH.
• 1:16:31
  I'm so excited just for where that league's going and the
• 1:16:35
  excitement they're having with that game in Denver the other
• 1:16:38
  day. And I.
• 1:16:38
  Just that was so fun. Oh my gosh, that was an intense.
• 1:16:42
  You missed it. But the third period was.
• 1:16:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am. I mean, it's just, it's so much.
• 1:16:49
  It's so fun. I love hockey so much and I
• 1:16:52
  just, I love seeing just how they're going to expand.
• 1:16:55
  They've got all these fans. It's just continues to grow.
• 1:16:58
  So I'm happy with that. I have a second winner and I
• 1:17:02
  want to make sure I get this right.
• 1:17:04
  Savvy King, Angel City defender I forgot this, Returned to the
• 1:17:09
  pitch after an incident last May where she collapsed in the
• 1:17:13
  field. They had to do chest
• 1:17:14
  compressions, removed her via cart and oxygen masks,
• 1:17:18
  transported to a hospital, later had heart surgery and came back
• 1:17:22
  this past weekend. It was so emotional, like if you
• 1:17:25
  go see that video when she comes out, like, again, fans knew what
• 1:17:29
  to do, like honour her and returning to the pitch.
• 1:17:32
  And then I saw her make one of the best timed sliding tackles I
• 1:17:38
  think I've ever seen, like sprinting full tilt back towards
• 1:17:42
  her own goal beat by the forward Jordan Heitama, who is has legs
• 1:17:47
  like for days. By the way, Sami King is not
• 1:17:49
  that tall. And she just timed it up
• 1:17:52
  perfectly, slid across, got that touch, and like, it was just
• 1:17:56
  kind of one of those moments where you're like, perfect, love
• 1:17:59
  this. I love these moments.
• 1:18:01
  Perfect story. Thank you for calling that out.
• 1:18:03
  That's a really incredible story.
• 1:18:06
  All right. I think that's that's all we
• 1:18:08
  got. I mean, could we?
• 1:18:09
  I don't think we could have fit more.
• 1:18:10
  No, I don't think we could. I think that's.
• 1:18:12
  A lot. All right, well, we hope that
• 1:18:15
  you will join us again next week or more.
• 1:18:20
  Where can folks find us in between?
• 1:18:22
  Rtgpod.com or RTG under Score Pod on Threads, Instagram and
• 1:18:28
  YouTube. Leave us comments Yeah likes and
• 1:18:31
  shares. All those things.
• 1:18:32
  All the good stuff. Appreciate you guys being here
• 1:18:35
  till next week. Bye bye.