Latest / The Mark Belling Podcast / Mark Belling Podcast #172: Financial illiteracy of young people is worse than ever; no wonder they are embracing Marxism when they don't even understand compound interest. The latest Marquette Law poll shows Tiffany gaining on Crowley (just as Mark predicted). And, our weekly football preview and point spread picks plus a look at Brewers-Padres
Transcript
- 0:09Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by Uline. For quality
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- 0:26Speaker 2: People have a very hard time understanding the words likely
- 0:31Speaker 2: and will are different. When people think something is going
- 0:36Speaker 2: to happen... They just turn it into, it is going
- 0:39Speaker 2: to happen. Of course, those are two completely different things.
- 0:43Speaker 2: Surprises and shocking things occur all the time. We certainly
- 0:48Speaker 2: know it from the world of sports, but some sports fans,
- 0:50Speaker 2: they just can't wrap their arms around the fact that
- 0:52Speaker 2: there might be an upset, or a team that they
- 0:54Speaker 2: thought was going to be really terrible turns out to
- 0:56Speaker 2: be pretty good, etc. In American political life, some people,
- 1:01Speaker 2: this candidate's going to lose, he's going to lose, he's
- 1:03Speaker 2: going to lose, we have no chance. This defeatism and
- 1:07Speaker 2: I might grant you, well, yeah, he probably is going
- 1:09Speaker 2: to lose. So what's the point of voting if he's
- 1:11Speaker 2: probably going to lose? Well, you don't know that he's
- 1:13Speaker 2: going to lose. Surprises happen. If ever you wanted to
- 1:17Speaker 2: prove this point. What were the chances yesterday that Chris
- 1:22Speaker 2: the Pike would be alive today? I mean, seriously. This
- 1:29Speaker 2: story is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with government. No,
- 1:34Speaker 2: I'll grant you. I would have assumed that if somebody
- 1:37Speaker 2: was going to be executed, they'd actually be able to
- 1:39Speaker 2: kill them. The fact that they couldn't, for those of
- 1:42Speaker 2: you not aware, she's this woman in Tennessee on death row.
- 1:45Speaker 2: The Supreme Court cleared the way for her execution. They
- 1:47Speaker 2: gave her the shot, didn't kill her, gave her another shot.
- 1:51Speaker 2: And the next thing you know, like she's snoring. So
- 1:54Speaker 2: they decided to give up and back in her cell.
- 1:58Speaker 2: Now think about this. Everybody, I think everybody kind of
- 2:02Speaker 2: thinks about what would it be like to be condemned
- 2:05Speaker 2: to death and go into, like, the executioner's room. I mean,
- 2:08Speaker 2: think about they give you the last meal, and what
- 2:11Speaker 2: are your thoughts on your mind? If you ask me,
- 2:15Speaker 2: of all the ways of executing someone, which way would
- 2:17Speaker 2: you rather take? You know, they use the firing squad. See,
- 2:22Speaker 2: I'm thinking the way they do it, from my perspective,
- 2:25Speaker 2: the lethal injection is the best one because, you know,
- 2:28Speaker 2: when they've given me anesthesia at the hospital, you just
- 2:31Speaker 2: kind of don't feel anything. But from the perspective of
- 2:35Speaker 2: actually trying to kill the person, evidently this isn't the
- 2:39Speaker 2: best way. You know, we went to lethal injection because
- 2:42Speaker 2: the lefties all said everything else is barbaric. Well, first
- 2:45Speaker 2: of all, killing someone is barbaric. It doesn't mean that
- 2:49Speaker 2: it's bad policy. I'm, as you may know now, an
- 2:52Speaker 2: agnostic on the death penalty. I supported it for many years.
- 2:59Speaker 2: But I grant you It does not function as a deterrent.
- 3:05Speaker 2: The reason it doesn't function as a deterrent is hardly
- 3:09Speaker 2: anybody who's sentenced to death gets it. And when they do,
- 3:13Speaker 2: it's decades later. In the case of Krista Pike, it
- 3:15Speaker 2: was 1995 that she killed her classmate. In college, she
- 3:18Speaker 2: was 18. She's 50. So how is that a deterrent?
- 3:24Speaker 2: If the deterrent is, y'all, we're going to kill you
- 3:26Speaker 2: 30 years from now, it's no more of a deterrent
- 3:29Speaker 2: than life in prison. So since it's not a deterrent,
- 3:32Speaker 2: If they stopped doing it, would I be really upset? No.
- 3:36Speaker 2: If you wanted the death penalty to work, people would
- 3:38Speaker 2: be executed within two years of their conviction. You go
- 3:41Speaker 2: through the appeal trial and the appeal process in an
- 3:44Speaker 2: orderly fashion. You know, back in the old West when,
- 3:46Speaker 2: you know, they'd hold the trial in the afternoon and
- 3:48Speaker 2: the next morning, usually it was like noon always. At
- 3:51Speaker 2: least in the movies, it was noon. It was like
- 3:54Speaker 2: at high noon. They'd hang them, hang them high. Well,
- 3:59Speaker 2: I mean, I think that was a deterrent. Guy'd be arrested.
- 4:02Speaker 2: The next day, they'd have a trumped-up trial. They'd find
- 4:05Speaker 2: him guilty, and a day after that, they'd be hanging him. Now, that,
- 4:08Speaker 2: I think, was a deterrent. What were you saying, Dave? Well,
- 4:12Speaker 2: you said they'd drag him out of the courtroom, but
- 4:13Speaker 2: he was always, like, high noon, wasn't it? I think
- 4:17Speaker 2: that was just in the movies, because then they could
- 4:18Speaker 2: show the sun straight up in the sky, and the
- 4:22Speaker 2: guy would... I remember there was a Twilight Zone. It
- 4:26Speaker 2: might have been a Hitchcock or an Alfred Outer Limits.
- 4:31Speaker 2: where they hung the guy and like he fell and
- 4:35Speaker 2: he fell into a river and then he swam away
- 4:37Speaker 2: and he lived. I don't remember anything else about that.
- 4:39Speaker 2: I don't know if he was actually dead and this
- 4:41Speaker 2: was a dream or not. But if you want to
- 4:44Speaker 2: get this, anyway, this barbarism is the reason that, well,
- 4:47Speaker 2: you know, it's just firing squad is barbaric. Hanging is barbaric.
- 4:54Speaker 2: The guillotine. I don't think we ever did the guillotine
- 4:57Speaker 2: in the United States. That was a European kind of thing, right?
- 5:00Speaker 2: Chopping their head off, you know, sticking their head in
- 5:02Speaker 2: there and chopping it off. I mean, clearly, any of
- 5:06Speaker 2: them can fail. The guillotine blade might not be sharp enough,
- 5:10Speaker 2: but it just, like, cuts you. I mean, look at
- 5:12Speaker 2: the firing squad. They could miss a couple of times,
- 5:14Speaker 2: or you could be wounded, I suppose, four or five
- 5:16Speaker 2: times and live. Hanging. It doesn't snap the neck, and
- 5:20Speaker 2: you're just swinging around on there and so on. But
- 5:24Speaker 2: I would think if you thought about all of them
- 5:26Speaker 2: that might fail, I'm thinking lethal injection is the one–
- 5:30Speaker 2: And again, I don't think any of them have ever
- 5:31Speaker 2: failed prior to this, but lethal injection. And I know
- 5:34Speaker 2: how this happened. I've got Dave Michaels in here and not.
- 5:38Speaker 2: This new producer I have seems to be AWOL more
- 5:40Speaker 2: than Paul was. I mean, part of it is I
- 5:43Speaker 2: think I inherited. What? Paul trained him. Part of it
- 5:47Speaker 2: was I inherited him. You know, he started working full
- 5:51Speaker 2: time here in January and I inherited him as my
- 5:54Speaker 2: producer when I returned from when the season two of
- 5:57Speaker 2: the podcast started May 1st. And he hadn't taken any
- 5:59Speaker 2: vacation those first four months. And generally, you know, if
- 6:01Speaker 2: you're on the air, you wouldn't take vacation right away. Anyway,
- 6:04Speaker 2: the audience has to get used to and so on.
- 6:06Speaker 2: So he's put off his vacation until now. So we
- 6:09Speaker 2: have Dave Michaels, who evidently never takes vacation and is
- 6:11Speaker 2: just always, always here. I mean, I know how, do
- 6:15Speaker 2: you know how this happened? Do you know why this
- 6:18Speaker 2: happened is a better thing. That's right. Not enough of
- 6:22Speaker 2: the band. Why didn't they have enough of the best,
- 6:24Speaker 2: the good, bad stuff in there? Here's why. This government
- 6:28Speaker 2: can't do anything. I'm sure there's a doctor that oversees this, right?
- 6:33Speaker 2: Can you imagine a lower level of incompetent doctor than
- 6:36Speaker 2: the guy that's hired by the prison to do the
- 6:38Speaker 2: lethal injection? This isn't some heart surgeon. This isn't the
- 6:43Speaker 2: person that you take your kids to. This is a
- 6:45Speaker 2: hack who can't get a job at any of the
- 6:47Speaker 2: good hospital systems down there in Tennessee. I mean, Tennessee's
- 6:50Speaker 2: where St. Jude is, isn't it?
- 6:52Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 6:53Speaker 2: So, I mean, I'm sure they have good hospitals now.
- 6:54Speaker 2: I know Vanderbilt has a really good hospital. He's not
- 6:57Speaker 2: hired at any of that. He's the prison doctor, which
- 6:59Speaker 2: means he's probably the doctor that when the prisoners are
- 7:02Speaker 2: malingering and claiming that they have this, that, or the
- 7:04Speaker 2: other thing so that they can sit in sickbay, he
- 7:06Speaker 2: goes to see them, and he's the guy that sizes
- 7:08Speaker 2: up how much to put in there. And he either
- 7:11Speaker 2: didn't put in enough, or it was like expired because
- 7:14Speaker 2: they hardly ever death-pedal somebody, or.
- 7:18Speaker 2: Because she's a woman, they probably, well, you know, this
- 7:20Speaker 2: is how much of a dose you use for a big, fat,
- 7:23Speaker 2: 320-pound gangbanger in here, and for a 130-pound woman, you
- 7:27Speaker 2: only use this. I don't know why you would err
- 7:30Speaker 2: on the side of not just using too much, right?
- 7:33Speaker 2: I mean, even if you're talking about humane, you want
- 7:35Speaker 2: the person to go right away, don't you? So now
- 7:41Speaker 2: here's the next. So I just think this is just
- 7:43Speaker 2: general incompetence. You've got some... Doctor from the governor's office,
- 7:48Speaker 2: overseen by some hacks who run the state prison system. So, okay,
- 7:52Speaker 2: here it is. Now, they give her these two shots,
- 7:54Speaker 2: and she still, they said that the witnesses heard her snoring.
- 7:59Speaker 2: I mean, she wasn't writhing in agony or anything because
- 8:02Speaker 2: the thing's supposed to knock you out, and she's just snoring.
- 8:06Speaker 2: Maybe they took the wrong stuff. Maybe they actually took
- 8:08Speaker 2: the anesthesia here. So she's sentenced to death, right? Why
- 8:15Speaker 2: didn't they just shoot her then? All right, they gave
- 8:18Speaker 2: her the two shots. It didn't work. They're supposed to
- 8:20Speaker 2: kill her. Okay, kill her. She's sleeping. She's snoring. You
- 8:24Speaker 2: must have some way of killing her. So, I mean,
- 8:28Speaker 2: now she's alive. Imagine this. Okay, so you're emotionally preparing.
- 8:33Speaker 2: You've thought about this, haven't you? Being sent to death
- 8:37Speaker 2: row and they're going to give you the thing and
- 8:39Speaker 2: they sit you down on the chair and what's going
- 8:40Speaker 2: through your mind and all of this. Okay, she sits down.
- 8:43Speaker 2: She does this. They give her the shot. Then she
- 8:46Speaker 2: apparently fell asleep. So they take her back to her room.
- 8:52Speaker 2: I think about what's going through her head. She wakes
- 8:54Speaker 2: up now. I mean, she wakes up and she's thinking.
- 8:59Speaker 2: She's still in the prison. She's thinking, this can't be heaven.
- 9:02Speaker 2: I didn't make heaven. Because if I made heaven, heaven's
- 9:06Speaker 2: not a prison. But then she's probably also thinking, gee,
- 9:10Speaker 2: this is hell. It's a lot better than I thought.
- 9:13Speaker 2: If hell is just the same prison that I've been in,
- 9:16Speaker 2: I was fearful of fires and pitchforks and all of
- 9:19Speaker 2: this stuff. If she's Catholic, maybe she figures it's purgatory.
- 9:22Speaker 2: And I would think that's kind of what purgatory would
- 9:24Speaker 2: be like, right?
- 9:25Speaker 3: Prison.
- 9:25Speaker 2: Prison. Yeah, the Tennessee prison system. We know that purgatory
- 9:30Speaker 2: is bad, but it's not as bad as hell. So
- 9:34Speaker 2: I would think a Tennessee prison in purgatory would be similar.
- 9:37Speaker 2: So I think she woke up and she thought that
- 9:38Speaker 2: she's in purgatory, unless she's not a Catholic. Now, you
- 9:45Speaker 2: know that the lefty lawyers, they're going to now claim
- 9:49Speaker 2: that you don't get to try to do it again,
- 9:51Speaker 2: that once again it would be inhumane. I looked up,
- 9:54Speaker 2: I don't have any details and she killed a college
- 9:57Speaker 2: roommate or a college friend and it was apparently brutal
- 10:00Speaker 2: or something or another and it took him 31 years
- 10:02Speaker 2: to finally get the go ahead to go and kill
- 10:04Speaker 2: her and now she there's a uh There are all
- 10:14Speaker 2: these groups and they put out all these press releases
- 10:16Speaker 2: and they say how your state is doing in this
- 10:18Speaker 2: and your state is doing in that. And there's this
- 10:21Speaker 2: group that evaluates the financial literacy of young people across
- 10:26Speaker 2: the United States. And they gave Wisconsin a grade of
- 10:30Speaker 2: C for how like our high school kids, high school
- 10:34Speaker 2: kids and elementary kids are with regard to financial literacy. Now,
- 10:42Speaker 2: I don't know what their grading standard is, but anybody
- 10:46Speaker 2: who's done any observation of young people at all is
- 10:51Speaker 2: struck by how little understanding they have of simply basic
- 10:57Speaker 2: financial stuff. There have been these pushes to have a
- 11:01Speaker 2: year of financial education courses in school and make it mandatory,
- 11:06Speaker 2: and there's public support for this, and Wisconsin's apparently going
- 11:08Speaker 2: to start it in a couple of years. The problem,
- 11:10Speaker 2: of course, with that is you still have the same
- 11:12Speaker 2: hacks in the public school system that are going to
- 11:15Speaker 2: do the teaching. And you know what their version of
- 11:17Speaker 2: it is. They're just going to somehow use this as
- 11:19Speaker 2: an income inequality. People are screwed. You need to go
- 11:22Speaker 2: to Marxism. They're not going to teach you how to
- 11:24Speaker 2: balance a checkbook and so on. But I think that
- 11:27Speaker 2: there's a consequence to this, and I'm going to get
- 11:28Speaker 2: into that here in just a moment after I.
- 11:31Speaker 1: I.
- 11:35Speaker 2: Did the Uline read, didn't I?
- 11:37Speaker 3: I did not.
- 11:38Speaker 2: No. I have to introduce the program here. I got
- 11:43Speaker 2: so excited with regard to the woman who survived the.
- 11:49Speaker 2: See, some people say they should show executions, that that
- 11:52Speaker 2: would be a real deterrent rather than be behind the curtain.
- 11:55Speaker 2: What do you think about that? It's the injection. Well, this,
- 12:00Speaker 2: not this. I mean, can you imagine these doctors? They're
- 12:03Speaker 2: checking the pulse of the child. Okay, we got to
- 12:06Speaker 2: give her another one, and it still doesn't work. I
- 12:12Speaker 2: admit I would find this funny because I don't have
- 12:14Speaker 2: any sympathy for the killers or anything. I keep going
- 12:20Speaker 2: on this. I still can't remember if I saw the
- 12:22Speaker 2: Ceausescus get killed in Romania. I keep bringing this up
- 12:26Speaker 2: because of Iran and Russia. Both of those wars I
- 12:32Speaker 2: think are only going to end when there's internal pressure
- 12:34Speaker 2: and that would mean killing the leadership. The military decides
- 12:37Speaker 2: to side with the people and kill the leadership in there,
- 12:39Speaker 2: which is what happened in Romania with Ceausescu. You know,
- 12:43Speaker 2: this is when communism was falling all over Eastern Europe,
- 12:46Speaker 2: and they started protesting in the streets of Romania, and
- 12:49Speaker 2: the military went out and killed everybody, and then they
- 12:51Speaker 2: came out the next day, and finally the military said,
- 12:53Speaker 2: we're not going to kill anybody anymore. We're going to
- 12:55Speaker 2: kill you, Ceausescu. So they had a coup. They held
- 12:58Speaker 2: a trial, and then like a day later, they shot
- 13:01Speaker 2: the two of them, him and his wife. I still...
- 13:04Speaker 2: I mean, I remember that story vividly, but I can't
- 13:06Speaker 2: remember if they showed his execution or not. I just
- 13:09Speaker 2: can't remember that. I know they like him. I just
- 13:12Speaker 2: vaguely kind of think I saw the Ceausescus get killed.
- 13:14Speaker 2: But I think if I did see it, I would
- 13:16Speaker 2: have remembered it rather than be uncertain as to whether
- 13:19Speaker 2: or not I remember it. Let me finally tell you
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- 13:25Speaker 2: and equipment, many suppliers offer endless aisles of product. Uline
- 13:29Speaker 2: knows what you can't do with endless aisles of product.
- 13:32Speaker 2: Test the quality of each product, ensure everything is in
- 13:34Speaker 2: stock and ready to ship the same day, and have
- 13:36Speaker 2: a team available 24-7 to answer your product questions. Uline
- 13:40Speaker 2: only carries supplies and equipment they have tested, tried, and
- 13:43Speaker 2: often use in their own business. Experience the Uline difference today.
- 13:48Speaker 2: Visit Uline.com. Well, but I mean, I didn't say live necessarily,
- 13:56Speaker 2: but any kind of video? Yeah, so I'm thinking I
- 14:00Speaker 2: did see video of I mean, I don't mean after
- 14:05Speaker 2: the fact, but actually when they pulled the gunfire and all. Yeah,
- 14:11Speaker 2: I mean, I just had vague recollection of it. So
- 14:16Speaker 2: you're saying it's still out there now on YouTube, but
- 14:18Speaker 2: if I have any doubt, I can go watch the
- 14:20Speaker 2: Ceausescu get killed again? I'm thinking like YouTube, but YouTube
- 14:26Speaker 2: has the goofiest standards. They don't let you swear on YouTube.
- 14:30Speaker 2: And like, you can't even say the word sex on YouTube.
- 14:33Speaker 2: When they're doing these crime things on child porn, they
- 14:35Speaker 2: can't say child porn. They bleep that out. YouTube, I mean,
- 14:39Speaker 2: YouTube is behind even like radio. There's things you can
- 14:41Speaker 2: say on radio that you can't say on YouTube. So
- 14:48Speaker 2: anybody who's dealt with young people at all, I mean,
- 14:51Speaker 2: I just think the conclusion that almost everybody draws is
- 14:53Speaker 2: other than those handful of kids that have been raised
- 14:57Speaker 2: by parents who make sure that they learn this stuff,
- 15:01Speaker 2: They don't have even the most simple basic knowledge of,
- 15:05Speaker 2: never mind high finance or economics, simple personal finance. And
- 15:11Speaker 2: I think that this is one of the reasons that
- 15:15Speaker 2: so many of them are biting on socialism and Marxism.
- 15:19Speaker 2: If they don't know how checking accounts work, if they
- 15:23Speaker 2: don't know what a savings account is, Of course they're
- 15:28Speaker 2: going to be prone to falling for socialism or Marxism.
- 15:31Speaker 2: They don't have any understanding at all of anything having
- 15:35Speaker 2: to do with finance or the economy or even what
- 15:39Speaker 2: interest rates mean. If they don't know any of that,
- 15:43Speaker 2: they can be sucked in to fall for something on
- 15:45Speaker 2: a grand or some big, large thing because they don't
- 15:48Speaker 2: have any basis for figuring it out. For example, and
- 15:53Speaker 2: this goes back even to when I was a kid,
- 15:56Speaker 2: When I first learned about compounding of interest, it still
- 16:00Speaker 2: seems to be to be miraculous. And you'll tell people,
- 16:05Speaker 2: I mean, every time you explain it to somebody for
- 16:07Speaker 2: the first time, they think that you're lying. If you
- 16:10Speaker 2: make 10% of your money one year and 10% the
- 16:13Speaker 2: next year and 10% the next year, how much have
- 16:15Speaker 2: you gained? And most people will say 30%. No, it's
- 16:17Speaker 2: actually 34%. Because the 10% on the second year includes
- 16:23Speaker 2: the amount that you gained in the first year. So
- 16:25Speaker 2: it's actually a little bit more than 10% of the
- 16:28Speaker 2: original amount. And each year that it goes on, the
- 16:33Speaker 2: gain actually becomes higher. You can keep making 10% each
- 16:36Speaker 2: of those years, but the cumulative amount is more than
- 16:39Speaker 2: adding up 10, 10 for each of the years that
- 16:41Speaker 2: are in there, which of course is a tremendous argument.
- 16:48Speaker 2: for young people to start a personal savings as early
- 16:50Speaker 2: as they possibly can. If you get a 10 year
- 16:54Speaker 2: head start, you're likely to be about two and a
- 16:56Speaker 2: half times higher than somebody who starts in their early
- 16:59Speaker 2: thirties because you have those extra 12 years on the start.
- 17:03Speaker 2: So when you're getting whatever your percentage is, six, 7%
- 17:06Speaker 2: down the line, say in your 38th year, that's off
- 17:10Speaker 2: of a very large number that you're pumping into it again. Likewise,
- 17:15Speaker 2: if you don't understand compounding of interest, you really don't
- 17:18Speaker 2: understand how absolutely devastating it is to carry huge credit
- 17:22Speaker 2: card debt. These people that have this debt of 18, 20%,
- 17:25Speaker 2: they end up paying way, way more in interest charges
- 17:32Speaker 2: than they ever paid for the original product because they're
- 17:36Speaker 2: paying interest for years. And if they're only making the
- 17:40Speaker 2: minimum payment, often the minimum payment is just at the
- 17:43Speaker 2: level of covering the nut and sometimes not even that.
- 17:47Speaker 2: Some of the credit card companies will set the minimum
- 17:50Speaker 2: payments so low that that debt keeps rolling over and
- 17:54Speaker 2: it then compounds. My point on this is if you
- 17:56Speaker 2: don't know even that stuff, you're going to be making
- 18:00Speaker 2: terrible decisions with your own money and you're not going
- 18:07Speaker 2: to have any feel for economic policy in a society.
- 18:15Speaker 2: The not understanding personal finance is a separate issue than
- 18:19Speaker 2: not making good decisions. For instance, I think for a
- 18:22Speaker 2: young person who has a fair amount of money, renting
- 18:24Speaker 2: is just insanity. It's insanity. Unless you're an extremely disciplined
- 18:29Speaker 2: person and you've managed to figure out a way to
- 18:31Speaker 2: make your rent less than your housing payment would be
- 18:34Speaker 2: and less than the property taxes would be and so on,
- 18:37Speaker 2: and set the savings that you're coming up with aside
- 18:40Speaker 2: and investing it. If you're able to be disciplined like that,
- 18:43Speaker 2: then renting is a good decision. I just think that
- 18:45Speaker 2: that's like 5% of us. Most people, if they have
- 18:48Speaker 2: the cash available, they're going to spend it. Whereas if
- 18:51Speaker 2: you're forced to invest the money into your house payment,
- 18:56Speaker 2: you're having an asset that's going to build, and once again,
- 18:58Speaker 2: the power of compounding interest. The value of your house
- 19:01Speaker 2: can go up 6% every year, but after 10 years,
- 19:03Speaker 2: that's not 60%. I think it's over 100, isn't it?
- 19:08Speaker 2: I used to remember what those factories were. So I
- 19:13Speaker 2: think that this is a big part of the reason
- 19:14Speaker 2: that people are falling for socialism. They don't understand anything
- 19:18Speaker 2: about basic numbers, much less personal finance. And if you
- 19:21Speaker 2: don't understand personal finance, how can you make economic decisions?
- 19:25Speaker 2: You can't. After the first Marquette University Law School poll
- 19:30Speaker 2: came out of the governor's race several weeks ago, which
- 19:34Speaker 2: showed Crowley four points ahead of Tiffany, and five points
- 19:41Speaker 2: ahead of him, I think it was four points and
- 19:42Speaker 2: five points among likely voters, I said, my prediction is
- 19:47Speaker 2: these numbers will narrow. As long as I've been following
- 19:50Speaker 2: politics in Wisconsin, the Marquette poll that comes out of
- 19:52Speaker 2: the summer always is loaded with, it's always better for Democrats.
- 19:57Speaker 2: It's just always like that. Part of it has to
- 20:00Speaker 2: do with people becoming exposed to the candidate as time
- 20:03Speaker 2: goes along. Part of it has to do with how
- 20:05Speaker 2: biased the media coverage is of the Democratic candidate. But
- 20:09Speaker 2: you can go back to Scott Walker's elections. You can
- 20:11Speaker 2: go back to the presidential elections. The Republican always starts
- 20:14Speaker 2: to do better as you draw close into the election.
- 20:17Speaker 2: And with regard to the Marquette poll, Republicans in this
- 20:20Speaker 2: state have won despite trailing in the last Marquette poll.
- 20:24Speaker 2: So in this most recent poll, Crowley is up by
- 20:27Speaker 2: only one over Tiffany. I predicted several weeks ago that
- 20:32Speaker 2: this gap would close in the next poll. And I
- 20:34Speaker 2: have also predicted by the final poll, they're going to
- 20:37Speaker 2: be even or maybe Tiffany even ahead. And the history
- 20:41Speaker 2: is that Republicans in the Marquette poll are undercounted by
- 20:43Speaker 2: about three points. There is only one warning sign that
- 20:49Speaker 2: I see in this poll for Tiffany. The Marquette Law
- 20:52Speaker 2: Poll polls registered voters and likely voters. And among registered voters,
- 20:58Speaker 2: Crowley leads by only one. Among likely voters, it's three.
- 21:05Speaker 2: That's the red flag. The biggest, and I stress this
- 21:10Speaker 2: is biggest, the biggest problem Republicans in Wisconsin have, biggest,
- 21:16Speaker 2: is voter turnout. The Democrats have become, ever since COVID,
- 21:21Speaker 2: masters at turning out every last one of their people.
- 21:25Speaker 2: They turn them out by essentially having them mail in
- 21:27Speaker 2: a ballot after they mark it for them. Or they
- 21:30Speaker 2: take them down to the early voting place and tell
- 21:33Speaker 2: them how to vote. They find and identify every last person.
- 21:37Speaker 2: Other than the 2024 election where the Republican voter turnout
- 21:41Speaker 2: operation was outstanding, in part because of the work of
- 21:45Speaker 2: Elon Musk and Turning Point, Republicans just aren't as good
- 21:51Speaker 2: at turning out low propensity voters or registering voters who,
- 21:55Speaker 2: if they ever did register to vote, would probably be conservative.
- 22:00Speaker 2: We lose more people because we don't have enough people
- 22:03Speaker 2: willing to be rude and obnoxious and just bully their
- 22:06Speaker 2: friends and relatives who they know would vote the right
- 22:09Speaker 2: way into voting. The lefties don't have that shyness and sensibility.
- 22:14Speaker 2: So in a year in which Trump is unpopular and
- 22:17Speaker 2: gas prices are high, I just worry that we're going
- 22:22Speaker 2: to have a higher percentage of slackers who don't get
- 22:26Speaker 2: out there and vote. The biggest motivator for them is
- 22:34Speaker 2: the fact that the Democrats are becoming Marxist. Unfortunately, the
- 22:39Speaker 2: fact that Crowley is an empty suit isn't as huge
- 22:42Speaker 2: a motivator because we've gone through eight years of an
- 22:45Speaker 2: empty suit in Tony Evers. So people aren't as alarmed
- 22:50Speaker 2: by having a governor who isn't all that bright because
- 22:53Speaker 2: they went through the last eight years of a governor
- 22:55Speaker 2: that wasn't all that bright. Crowley, however, of course, is
- 23:00Speaker 2: clearly more dangerous. The Democratic Party that is backing Crowley
- 23:04Speaker 2: is far more radical than the one that elected Tony
- 23:07Speaker 2: Evers eight years ago. And secondly, Crowley has shown a
- 23:11Speaker 2: total inability to think at all on his own. He
- 23:13Speaker 2: always does what he's told. Anyway, I think the Marquette
- 23:18Speaker 2: poll is better news for Tiffany than it is for Crowley,
- 23:23Speaker 2: particularly given the inherent bias that seems to be built
- 23:26Speaker 2: recently into the Marquette polls of overcounting Democrats, but it
- 23:29Speaker 2: does show what it with the little movement that there
- 23:31Speaker 2: was in the poll has been for Tiffany. How many
- 23:37Speaker 2: of you know what Muse is? Dave, do you know
- 23:39Speaker 2: what Muse is? The band Muse. Is that some dorky
- 23:44Speaker 2: like 90s band or something? Late 90s, early 2000s. That
- 23:49Speaker 2: was like the last vestige of rock and roll, right?
- 23:53Speaker 2: They headlined Summerfest this year. I mean, just the name
- 23:57Speaker 2: itself tells me that they don't rock hard enough, right? See,
- 24:02Speaker 2: I kind of like alternative, but they probably don't even
- 24:04Speaker 2: rock as hard as the Killers, right? Comparable, but the
- 24:09Speaker 2: Killers are better. I mean, the Killers are the last
- 24:12Speaker 2: great American rock and roll band. In fact, they might
- 24:14Speaker 2: be the last great American rock and roll band ever. Anyway. No,
- 24:18Speaker 2: not that Muse. The other Muse. You know about the
- 24:20Speaker 2: different Muse? You don't. Muse is the AI app created
- 24:26Speaker 2: by Meta. Meta is Facebook and Instagram. Elon Musk has Grok.
- 24:40Speaker 2: Anthropic has Claude. Each of these tech companies that are
- 24:44Speaker 2: creating an AI personal assistant, they put a name on them.
- 24:50Speaker 2: And you use it. These things are able to do
- 24:53Speaker 2: far more things than they were able to do even
- 24:55Speaker 2: a year ago. I certainly believe within the next three
- 24:59Speaker 2: years that your AI personal assistant is, if you just
- 25:02Speaker 2: tell it, pay my utility bill. It'll pay your utility bill.
- 25:05Speaker 2: All of these things are going to be far more
- 25:07Speaker 2: complicated tasks than that. In fact, it probably already can
- 25:09Speaker 2: pay your utility bill. Anyway, I'm struck by this. Muse
- 25:14Speaker 2: was introduced by Meta September 8th. I'm doing this podcast
- 25:20Speaker 2: on the 1st of October. That's 23 days ago. It
- 25:25Speaker 2: has 5 million downloads. If AI works the same as
- 25:36Speaker 2: the other revolutions that have occurred in tech, whoever gets
- 25:40Speaker 2: their first and biggest... will last and be dominant. I
- 25:47Speaker 2: learned my mistake in assessing Amazon in the late nineties
- 25:51Speaker 2: and early zeros is I didn't think Amazon would last
- 25:54Speaker 2: because I didn't understand why you needed Amazon to buy
- 25:57Speaker 2: this stuff. Why wouldn't every retailer just set up their
- 26:00Speaker 2: own online thing rather than, you know, sell the stuff
- 26:04Speaker 2: to Amazon. Why wouldn't Walmart have its stuff? Or for
- 26:06Speaker 2: that matter, why wouldn't corporations just sell directly to the consumer?
- 26:09Speaker 2: Amazon is a middleman. They don't make a damn thing.
- 26:13Speaker 2: They're just buying brand name products from everybody else and
- 26:16Speaker 2: serving as a middleman. So I thought, why wouldn't all
- 26:18Speaker 2: the other retailers that we all know simply do that?
- 26:21Speaker 2: What I didn't figure out, obvious as it now is
- 26:24Speaker 2: in retrospect, nobody wants to have 19,000 accounts. If Amazon
- 26:29Speaker 2: has everything, you don't need to go through all of
- 26:31Speaker 2: those other places that sell stuff. Just as I said,
- 26:37Speaker 2: Whichever tech company developed the first search engine that actually worked,
- 26:42Speaker 2: which turned out to be Google. I mean, remember Yahoo
- 26:45Speaker 2: had its, and there were all these search engines. They
- 26:47Speaker 2: all kind of sucked. And then Google's is outstanding. And
- 26:50Speaker 2: I said, they're going to rule the world. And Google,
- 26:53Speaker 2: which turned into Alphabet, has indeed ruled the world, one
- 26:55Speaker 2: of the largest companies in the world. And it all
- 26:57Speaker 2: started because their search engine became their point of entry.
- 27:01Speaker 2: I think the same thing is going to be true
- 27:05Speaker 2: with regard to AI applications, whichever becomes the first one
- 27:09Speaker 2: that gets everybody to sign up, once people sign up,
- 27:12Speaker 2: they're not going to be that likely to switch over.
- 27:15Speaker 2: For Meta to get, in just 23 days, 5 million
- 27:21Speaker 2: people to sign up for that app. Now, again, I
- 27:25Speaker 2: haven't used Muse myself. Maybe I ought to do it
- 27:29Speaker 2: so I can speak more intelligently on the subject to
- 27:31Speaker 2: see how well it works and see what its capabilities are.
- 27:34Speaker 2: I just don't think that people are going to have
- 27:37Speaker 2: like seven of these, even with regard to ride sharing.
- 27:42Speaker 2: There are only two companies out there that do ride
- 27:44Speaker 2: sharing at any number at all, Uber and Lyft. Why
- 27:46Speaker 2: isn't there a third company? Because think how hard it
- 27:49Speaker 2: would be for a third company to start. They'd have
- 27:51Speaker 2: to recruit all these drivers, plus everybody already has Uber
- 27:54Speaker 2: or they have Lyft. And everybody does it the same
- 27:58Speaker 2: way that I do. They have one that they use
- 28:02Speaker 2: almost all the time and the other is their backup.
- 28:06Speaker 2: Uber is my number one. If I check Uber and
- 28:09Speaker 2: the rates are extremely high and I can't get a
- 28:11Speaker 2: driver for 11 minutes, I will go and look at
- 28:13Speaker 2: Lyft to see if it's cheaper or quicker. That's how
- 28:17Speaker 2: everybody does it. But you certainly don't need six, so
- 28:20Speaker 2: there aren't going to be six. There's just going to
- 28:21Speaker 2: be the two ride-sharing companies and likely with regard to
- 28:25Speaker 2: Which company is going to have the AI program that
- 28:28Speaker 2: runs your life? Whoever gets there first with the biggest number.
- 28:32Speaker 2: I'm not saying it will be Muse. Musk is hell-bent
- 28:36Speaker 2: that Grok is going to be it. Anthropic is still
- 28:40Speaker 2: probably in the lead with Claude. But I think this
- 28:45Speaker 2: is one of the explanations as to why Meta's stock
- 28:48Speaker 2: has done really well the last three months. It stunk
- 28:50Speaker 2: the first half of the year and it's been exploding
- 28:53Speaker 2: and I will admit to you that there's another company
- 28:57Speaker 2: I was wrong on. I remember when Facebook, so I
- 28:59Speaker 2: watched the social network like three times because I wanted
- 29:02Speaker 2: to learn from how I missed this, that I didn't
- 29:04Speaker 2: understand how huge Facebook was going to be. I mean,
- 29:07Speaker 2: in the early infancy of it, when the company first
- 29:10Speaker 2: went public in 16 or 17 or 18, or whenever
- 29:13Speaker 2: Zuckerberg took it public, why didn't I buy that stock?
- 29:16Speaker 2: And I just, I guess I again thought, this is
- 29:19Speaker 2: a phase. People are going to be tired of it.
- 29:21Speaker 2: People are going to end up just being nauseated by
- 29:24Speaker 2: all the crap of it, and somebody's going to come
- 29:26Speaker 2: up with a better version of Facebook than Facebook. Well,
- 29:31Speaker 2: Facebook remained huge, and they either created or bought Instagram.
- 29:36Speaker 2: So they got all their bases covered over there. Anyway,
- 29:37Speaker 2: I bought stock in Meta. today based on these staggering
- 29:41Speaker 2: numbers with regard to their application, Muse. And finally, on
- 29:46Speaker 2: the economy. I've made comments in about two or three
- 29:50Speaker 2: programs that I'm very concerned about the stock market. I'm
- 29:55Speaker 2: concerned about what's been happening with bond yields. I'm really
- 29:59Speaker 2: freaked by this whole notion that if the yen rises
- 30:02Speaker 2: in value, that there's going to be an abandonment of
- 30:05Speaker 2: the dollar as a currency, and it's going to cause
- 30:08Speaker 2: bond yields to explode even more, which would drag down
- 30:12Speaker 2: the stock market. And I just look at the numbers
- 30:17Speaker 2: that we've produced over the last seven years, and I
- 30:20Speaker 2: think that we're extremely overvalued, that there's incredible speculation on
- 30:25Speaker 2: AI and any number of other things, and My vital
- 30:29Speaker 2: concern is the only way I've ever seen that you're
- 30:31Speaker 2: able to kill inflation is with a recession. And at
- 30:33Speaker 2: some point, we're going to have to throw the economy
- 30:35Speaker 2: into a recession to get rid of the inflation that
- 30:37Speaker 2: Joe Biden and the Democrats gave us. I, however, require
- 30:42Speaker 2: myself to have an open mind. Two stories in the
- 30:48Speaker 2: news that make me wonder if maybe I'm wrong and
- 30:50Speaker 2: maybe we're better off than I thought we were. I've
- 30:54Speaker 2: tried to explain this a million times. I'm going to
- 30:56Speaker 2: do it again. We have two measures of inflation in
- 31:00Speaker 2: the United States. And I think it's proper that we
- 31:03Speaker 2: have two. People always mix this up. We have the
- 31:07Speaker 2: consumer price index and we have the core rate. People
- 31:14Speaker 2: keep thinking that food and energy are not in the
- 31:20Speaker 2: consumer price index. They are. They're not in the core rate.
- 31:25Speaker 2: The reason that we have the two numbers is sometimes
- 31:29Speaker 2: food and energy can go up or down without regard
- 31:33Speaker 2: to overall inflation. For instance, right now you have the
- 31:36Speaker 2: war in the Middle East, and for that matter, the
- 31:41Speaker 2: war between Russia and Ukraine, both of which are upsetting
- 31:45Speaker 2: energy supplies. Energy can go up even if there isn't
- 31:49Speaker 2: general inflation in the economy. It can also crash even
- 31:52Speaker 2: if There is big inflation going on in the economy.
- 31:56Speaker 2: They're volatile unto themselves. On the other hand, to not
- 32:00Speaker 2: count them in the CPI would be completely inaccurate because, obviously,
- 32:07Speaker 2: food and energy are two huge costs for the American
- 32:10Speaker 2: consumer and for business, especially the consumer. So to say, well,
- 32:14Speaker 2: they're off on their own and we're not going to
- 32:16Speaker 2: look at it, then we're ignoring the reality of what
- 32:18Speaker 2: people are actually paying. So I think you need to
- 32:21Speaker 2: have both numbers and you evaluate both numbers. The number
- 32:25Speaker 2: for the core rate for August just came out. And
- 32:29Speaker 2: it went up less than analysts expected. The core rate
- 32:33Speaker 2: rose at an annualized rate only 3%. Now, again, that's
- 32:38Speaker 2: not the CPI. The core rate doesn't have food, which
- 32:41Speaker 2: is going up really high, and energy, which of course
- 32:44Speaker 2: has been really high. But the core rate went up less,
- 32:47Speaker 2: which indicates that overall inflation might be slowing. But then
- 32:53Speaker 2: you still have the problem with the consumer price index.
- 32:55Speaker 2: But again, if the core rate is starting to ease...
- 32:57Speaker 2: Maybe inflation is easing off without a recession. I'm not
- 33:00Speaker 2: saying it is. My mind is open to that possibility. Secondly,
- 33:05Speaker 2: there's an economic figure called gross output. The guy that
- 33:09Speaker 2: invented it is an economist that I follow. His name
- 33:11Speaker 2: is Mark Skousen. Gross output is being accepted now by
- 33:16Speaker 2: all sorts of academics as the primary standard of what's
- 33:20Speaker 2: going on with regard to the economy. Growth output is
- 33:27Speaker 2: measures what's happening with regard to corporate buying and corporate
- 33:31Speaker 2: production in addition to all of the other measures that
- 33:35Speaker 2: are in place. He contends that growth output is a
- 33:38Speaker 2: more accurate read in what's going on with the economy.
- 33:43Speaker 2: Growth output for the most recent quarter has roared forward.
- 33:48Speaker 2: Growth output is usually a leading indicator. and will lead
- 33:53Speaker 2: and be ahead of what's happening with the overall growth
- 33:56Speaker 2: rate in the economy. The growth output, and one of
- 34:02Speaker 2: the reasons growth output is soaring, of course, is because
- 34:04Speaker 2: of the massive spending that's going on in tech right now,
- 34:08Speaker 2: in AI. This amount of money that's pouring into that, well,
- 34:10Speaker 2: that's economic activity, obviously. I'm of the opinion that we
- 34:19Speaker 2: are not headed to a recession. despite the fact that
- 34:23Speaker 2: inflation is causing people to scale back on many of
- 34:26Speaker 2: their purchases because their buying power is less. If we
- 34:33Speaker 2: have inflation easing and economic activity increasing, I said if,
- 34:38Speaker 2: I didn't say we are, it would be an indication
- 34:41Speaker 2: that we're headed toward a very good economic 2025, especially
- 34:45Speaker 2: if these infernal wars, what? 2027, I should say. Yes,
- 34:49Speaker 2: I'm living in the past. 2025. See, these are the
- 34:57Speaker 2: signs of senility. You know, 30 years ago, those would
- 35:00Speaker 2: be the mistakes that Biden was making. And then he
- 35:02Speaker 2: becomes president and he's walking around with his fly down
- 35:05Speaker 2: and not knowing who his vice president is and so on.
- 35:08Speaker 2: I think I'm still decades away from that, right? Plus,
- 35:12Speaker 2: I actually think doing a podcast senile might be entertaining,
- 35:15Speaker 2: don't you? Yeah. You could like use it as a
- 35:19Speaker 2: marketing thing. Biden's problem was he not only went senile,
- 35:23Speaker 2: he started to mumble. You couldn't even hear him when
- 35:25Speaker 2: he was... Yeah. All right. So we might economically be
- 35:33Speaker 2: headed toward a good 2027. And I think the key
- 35:36Speaker 2: to getting energy prices down is not just the war
- 35:38Speaker 2: that we have control of, but the other one. Russia
- 35:42Speaker 2: is the thing that's driving diesel. So much diesel fuel
- 35:45Speaker 2: comes from Russia. And Russia's unable to get the stuff out,
- 35:49Speaker 2: plus they're using so much in that stupid war with Ukraine,
- 35:52Speaker 2: the most childish war of all time, Ukraine and Russia.
- 35:55Speaker 2: It's a war in which neither side is getting anything
- 35:58Speaker 2: other than mass destruction and incredible loss of life. If
- 36:02Speaker 2: that war ends and we resolve the situation in the
- 36:05Speaker 2: Middle East, you get the free flow of oil through
- 36:06Speaker 2: the Strait of Hormuz again, I believe that oil prices
- 36:09Speaker 2: will crash. So if we have the core rate declining,
- 36:14Speaker 2: the CPI will come down as well. And if you
- 36:16Speaker 2: have good economic growth, we might be headed to a
- 36:19Speaker 2: better economy than the one that I feared. If the
- 36:22Speaker 2: stock market does crash, that drags down the entire economy
- 36:26Speaker 2: because when people see that their net worth has crashed
- 36:29Speaker 2: because the market crashed, they really rein in their spending.
- 36:32Speaker 2: And as you know, I've been very worried about a
- 36:35Speaker 2: major downturn in the stock market. And I've been personally very,
- 36:39Speaker 2: also it's a function of age. When you're 35, you
- 36:42Speaker 2: don't worry about the law. When you're my age, you
- 36:44Speaker 2: don't want to have all your money. You don't want
- 36:45Speaker 2: to lose 60% of your assets at this stage. But
- 36:48Speaker 2: I'm now open to the notion that I've been overly pessimistic.
- 36:52Speaker 2: So I'm still thinking these things through. You're listening to
- 36:56Speaker 2: the Mark Belling Podcast. This is the Mark Belling Podcast.
- 37:01Speaker 2: You may remember this story. I did it 16 months ago.
- 37:05Speaker 2: I also got a lot of attention when I posted
- 37:07Speaker 2: it on X. It deals with a fellow named Wimmer
- 37:10Speaker 2: who works for Generac. Spencer Wimmer is the guy's name
- 37:15Speaker 2: and he's a hero. Generac, I'm not sure why their
- 37:22Speaker 2: stock price has been in the tank for as long
- 37:24Speaker 2: as it is because I think they're really going to,
- 37:27Speaker 2: if we start building data centers right and left, that's
- 37:31Speaker 2: right in their alley. They're in the power supply business,
- 37:35Speaker 2: both as principal supply, but also backup. And imagine if
- 37:39Speaker 2: A data center needs to turn to backup power. I mean,
- 37:41Speaker 2: I just think that, and we're already seeing that Generac
- 37:43Speaker 2: is aggressively moving in that area. The other thing that
- 37:46Speaker 2: they do is they sell, you know, sell direct to consumer,
- 37:48Speaker 2: all these portable generators into businesses, generators, and so on, Generac.
- 37:53Speaker 2: Given that they're in that business, you'd think that they
- 37:55Speaker 2: wouldn't be a woke politically correct company, but under the
- 37:57Speaker 2: CEO over there, they are as woke as can be.
- 38:01Speaker 2: So of course, during the four years of Biden, when
- 38:05Speaker 2: we went crazy with regard to gender and all of
- 38:08Speaker 2: this crap, Generac adopted a policy requiring employees to use
- 38:14Speaker 2: the pronouns of the people that they deal with of
- 38:18Speaker 2: their choice. So if you've got some guy claiming that
- 38:20Speaker 2: he's a woman, you have to refer to her as she.
- 38:22Speaker 2: It's corporate policy. Well, this guy, Spencer Wimmer, cited his
- 38:27Speaker 2: religious beliefs, which firmly state that God created man and woman.
- 38:34Speaker 2: And he didn't want to do it. And they told
- 38:36Speaker 2: him that he had to. He asked for a religious accommodation.
- 38:41Speaker 2: And they denied it. Now, these religious accommodations were a
- 38:45Speaker 2: big thing during COVID. The courts, even in the liberal area,
- 38:50Speaker 2: have generally allowed people to have religious accommodations to get
- 38:54Speaker 2: out of doing certain things that violate their religion. It
- 38:57Speaker 2: doesn't mean you can kill someone while my religion allows
- 38:59Speaker 2: for personal sacrifice. But Generac denied his religious accommodation on
- 39:04Speaker 2: this issue of the pronouns. All right, that was 16
- 39:07Speaker 2: months ago. He contacted the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty,
- 39:11Speaker 2: which is a conservative legal organization based in Milwaukee that
- 39:14Speaker 2: just keeps winning and winning and winning and winning and
- 39:16Speaker 2: winning and winning and winning. They go after governments and
- 39:19Speaker 2: employers that are abusing generally the individual and in some
- 39:23Speaker 2: cases religious liberties of individuals. It's the same organization that
- 39:27Speaker 2: went after Arrowhead for not letting a student in her
- 39:30Speaker 2: graduation slideshow mention how her Christian faith was so important
- 39:33Speaker 2: to her. They got them to cave in and apologize
- 39:38Speaker 2: for the unbelievable bullying and goon-like behavior of the superintendent
- 39:42Speaker 2: at school board over there. Well, Spencer Wimmer... contacted Will,
- 39:46Speaker 2: which represented him in his fight against Generac, and they
- 39:49Speaker 2: filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and
- 39:52Speaker 2: the EEOC was clearly siding with Wimmer, and Generac has
- 39:57Speaker 2: agreed to give him, they don't disclose what the amount is,
- 40:01Speaker 2: a cash settlement and an apology. So Generac is backing
- 40:05Speaker 2: down here because they didn't have a legal leg to
- 40:07Speaker 2: stand on. The one caution on this is the EEOC
- 40:11Speaker 2: is a federal agency, members appointed by the presidential administration.
- 40:16Speaker 2: They have staggered terms. And obviously there are no Trump
- 40:20Speaker 2: appointees that are in there. When this goes back, if
- 40:23Speaker 2: the next president is a Democrat, these gains that we
- 40:25Speaker 2: are having in terms of religious freedom and individual rights
- 40:29Speaker 2: and sanity on issues of gender, we're going to go
- 40:32Speaker 2: right back in the opposite direction. Some brief comments on
- 40:38Speaker 2: the fly-to-buy situation. The co-pilot stabbed the pilot to try
- 40:45Speaker 2: to take the plane and commit an act of terror
- 40:50Speaker 2: by crashing it. There have been a lot of details
- 40:52Speaker 2: that have been released, and the story's been widely covered everywhere,
- 40:55Speaker 2: so I'm not going to offer a lot on this
- 40:57Speaker 2: other than, have you noticed it's never a Jewish pilot
- 41:02Speaker 2: that tries to fly into, say, Palestine and smash it
- 41:05Speaker 2: all up? Why are they always Muslims? In this case,
- 41:10Speaker 2: and it was the co-pilot that did the stabbing, the
- 41:12Speaker 2: pilot who tried to fight him off after being stabbed
- 41:16Speaker 2: and actually hit like the button that opened the cockpit door,
- 41:19Speaker 2: which allowed the other flight crew members to charge in
- 41:22Speaker 2: and subdue the guy so they could safely land the plane.
- 41:25Speaker 2: The pilot was Indian, as in from India. And Benjamin Netanyahu,
- 41:31Speaker 2: the prime minister of Israel, is praising him As a hero,
- 41:36Speaker 2: just two thoughts on this. Obviously, using jet aircraft for
- 41:43Speaker 2: terror got a lot harder after 9-11 because of all
- 41:46Speaker 2: the crackdowns and safety regulations. Before 9-11, you could just
- 41:49Speaker 2: walk to the gate. Now you can't have this, you
- 41:51Speaker 2: can't have that. Your liquids have to be under a
- 41:54Speaker 2: certain amount. You got to go through scanners, et cetera.
- 41:59Speaker 2: Certain things you can't take on a plane that you
- 42:00Speaker 2: were able to take on a plane before. One of
- 42:04Speaker 2: the gaps, however, is what if the pilot wants to
- 42:09Speaker 2: commit the act of terror on his own? He doesn't
- 42:14Speaker 2: need any equipment to do it. In this instance, it
- 42:17Speaker 2: was a co-pilot, and he apparently had a knife. Now,
- 42:20Speaker 2: I think, did the flight originate in Dubai? I'm not sure.
- 42:23Speaker 2: I believe it did. I've heard that the Dubai airport
- 42:27Speaker 2: is one of the most secure in the world, just
- 42:29Speaker 2: given where it is in the Middle East, and It's
- 42:32Speaker 2: one of the most– Dubai Airport is– I think it
- 42:36Speaker 2: battles with Atlanta for busiest in the world. I mean,
- 42:38Speaker 2: and where it is, it's just the crossroads between Asia, Europe, Africa,
- 42:42Speaker 2: and so on. There are so many flights that go
- 42:44Speaker 2: out of there. FlyDubai is the more discount-oriented– one of
- 42:46Speaker 2: the more discounted of the airlines that are there. The
- 42:49Speaker 2: big one is called Emirates. So I don't know what
- 42:51Speaker 2: the security is there, but I'm guessing that even a
- 42:54Speaker 2: pilot isn't allowed to take a sharp object onto– the flight,
- 42:58Speaker 2: but maybe those involved in the flight crew have greater
- 43:02Speaker 2: latitude than a passenger, not sure. The one thing that
- 43:07Speaker 2: you can't stop is, in this case, the co-pilot was
- 43:09Speaker 2: trying to kill the pilot so that the co-pilot commit
- 43:12Speaker 2: the act of terror. If you ever had a situation
- 43:14Speaker 2: where both pilots were in on it together, you know
- 43:16Speaker 2: you're doomed. So you can put in place all the
- 43:19Speaker 2: rules you want, but if you have two pilots up
- 43:21Speaker 2: there that are terrorists, and, you know, a terrorist can
- 43:24Speaker 2: be in any profession out there, If you're recruiting terrorists,
- 43:30Speaker 2: what better than to get somebody who flies a jet
- 43:31Speaker 2: airliner out there? So anyway, they did subdue the guy.
- 43:36Speaker 2: The story, of course, is reminiscent of the 9-11 plane
- 43:39Speaker 2: that crashed in Pennsylvania where the passengers charged the cockpit
- 43:45Speaker 2: and attacked the hijackers, resulting in the plane crashing, everybody
- 43:49Speaker 2: dying on the ground in Pennsylvania. That was the plane
- 43:52Speaker 2: that was headed to the capitals. Had that not occurred,
- 43:56Speaker 2: you might have wiped out a huge segment of the
- 43:58Speaker 2: United States government. What we don't know is what went
- 44:02Speaker 2: on inside the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Was
- 44:08Speaker 2: there an attempt to subdue them and it failed? We
- 44:11Speaker 2: just don't know because everybody died so there was nobody
- 44:14Speaker 2: to tell you what happened after the fact. You'll recall
- 44:17Speaker 2: in the Pennsylvania flight, a couple of people got on
- 44:19Speaker 2: their cell phones and made calls from the plane. One
- 44:22Speaker 2: of them was the wife of, was it Bush's attorney
- 44:28Speaker 2: general or secretary of defense? Does remember the Bush cabinet
- 44:31Speaker 2: whose wife was on the plane? And she called him
- 44:37Speaker 2: and reported what was going on and said that there
- 44:39Speaker 2: are some guys on here that are going to try
- 44:41Speaker 2: to attack. And the message got out about who the
- 44:44Speaker 2: fellas were that were on the plane that, I forget
- 44:47Speaker 2: the guy's name 25 years ago, but the hero who
- 44:50Speaker 2: led the charge in which they charged the cockpit. What
- 44:52Speaker 2: was his name? Todd Beamer, I mix it up with, unfortunately,
- 44:58Speaker 2: the hero in President Trump's situation in Pennsylvania. His name
- 45:02Speaker 2: was Corey, though, wasn't it? Yeah, Todd Beamer. So we
- 45:09Speaker 2: don't know what happened in the others. But, boy, you
- 45:11Speaker 2: always kind of think about that, especially now. You see
- 45:13Speaker 2: all these YouTube videos of just not terrorists, but just
- 45:16Speaker 2: people acting up and acting crazy on a plane and
- 45:19Speaker 2: passengers having to help out the flight crew and trying
- 45:21Speaker 2: to subdue these wackos. who are either on drugs or
- 45:26Speaker 2: nuts or drugs and alcohol and just start acting like
- 45:31Speaker 2: completely crazed lunatics. I don't know that this story is
- 45:36Speaker 2: necessarily related, but I'm going to bring it up. The
- 45:39Speaker 2: TSA is putting in place a new policy effective immediately
- 45:44Speaker 2: that says that the TSA employees who check your ID
- 45:47Speaker 2: can no longer sit. I don't know how much any
- 45:51Speaker 2: of you fly. But most of the airports that I
- 45:54Speaker 2: go to, when you show up at the TSA thing,
- 45:57Speaker 2: before you get to the point where you put your
- 45:59Speaker 2: bags and all that stuff onto the conveyor belt, you've
- 46:02Speaker 2: got to show your boarding pass or your ID or
- 46:04Speaker 2: whatever it is that you show to the TSA agent.
- 46:06Speaker 2: And they're usually sitting like on a stool behind a
- 46:09Speaker 2: desk and you look into the camera and it reads
- 46:11Speaker 2: your picture. The TSA is taking away the chairs. They
- 46:16Speaker 2: say that it is not a professional look for TSA
- 46:20Speaker 2: agents to be sitting on their asses when they're doing this.
- 46:24Speaker 2: I have an opinion on this. I'm all for professionalism
- 46:30Speaker 2: and I'm all for not allowing TSA to be a
- 46:32Speaker 2: bunch of slackers. And I certainly agree with the Trump
- 46:36Speaker 2: administration trying to get a more professional attitude out of
- 46:40Speaker 2: the federal workforce, especially airline security. And the notion that
- 46:44Speaker 2: you're sitting in your butt when you're doing security seems
- 46:46Speaker 2: to be an apply that you're not on the top
- 46:48Speaker 2: of your game. I get all of that. I just
- 46:50Speaker 2: don't think that guy's going to do any better job
- 46:53Speaker 2: looking at your idea, looking at your picture standing up
- 46:55Speaker 2: than he is sitting down. In fact, I think the opposite.
- 46:58Speaker 2: I think if they're completely tired, they may not be
- 47:00Speaker 2: paying as much attention and they're better off sitting down.
- 47:03Speaker 2: So I'm for the guys being all the other screeners
- 47:06Speaker 2: that are going through this. They have to stand up
- 47:08Speaker 2: and you're putting your thing in the bucket and it's
- 47:10Speaker 2: going through. Or the person that's standing there as you
- 47:12Speaker 2: walk through the thing and they wave you on through.
- 47:14Speaker 2: And then the ones that are having to go through
- 47:16Speaker 2: the bags. And clearly the easiest job at TSA is
- 47:19Speaker 2: the one who's checking the IDs because they get to
- 47:22Speaker 2: sit down. I don't know if they rotate them. Do
- 47:25Speaker 2: you know that? I mean... Because clearly the cush job
- 47:30Speaker 2: is the sit-down job, and the worst one is the
- 47:32Speaker 2: one that's got to open up the suitcase as it
- 47:34Speaker 2: goes through some goof's dirty crap to see why these
- 47:38Speaker 2: certain things are, you know, what bottle of water they
- 47:40Speaker 2: have in there or so on. You know, people give
- 47:44Speaker 2: crap to the TSA people. I think they have a
- 47:47Speaker 2: very difficult job. They're looking for the rare case, the
- 47:50Speaker 2: needle in a haystack, where somebody actually has a weapon
- 47:52Speaker 2: or something bad that's on there. But I let them.
- 47:56Speaker 2: You agree with me, don't you? Let them. Let him
- 47:59Speaker 2: sit down. Let's try to get Trump on this. This
- 48:02Speaker 2: is some guy below Trump but above, like, TSA is
- 48:07Speaker 2: in Homeland Security, isn't it? Homeland Security now is Mark
- 48:15Speaker 2: Juan Mullen, right? He's a hard guy. This might be him.
- 48:22Speaker 2: Or it's somebody below him. I think Trump would let
- 48:25Speaker 2: these guys sit down, though, don't you? Plus, I know
- 48:28Speaker 2: if Trump had that job, he'd want to sit down.
- 48:31Speaker 2: Trump sits down as much as anybody else out there.
- 48:42Speaker 2: Talked about this on the podcast yesterday. Most Brewer fans,
- 48:46Speaker 2: including me, wanted the Cubs to lose to San Diego.
- 48:49Speaker 2: Dave Michaels made the persuasive case that he's right. Of
- 48:52Speaker 2: course you want the Cubs to win. San Diego is
- 48:55Speaker 2: 16 times better than the Cubs. The Brewers play the
- 48:57Speaker 2: winner of that series. You would much rather play the Cubs,
- 49:00Speaker 2: whose number the Brewers have had for the last two years,
- 49:03Speaker 2: and the Brewers are clearly a better team than the
- 49:06Speaker 2: Cubs and keep beating them, whereas San Diego ended the
- 49:09Speaker 2: season as hot as anybody in baseball. San Diego's hitting
- 49:12Speaker 2: is as good as the Cubs, and the pitching is way, way,
- 49:14Speaker 2: way better. Well, San Diego won that series 12-1, two
- 49:18Speaker 2: games to nothing. but they won one game 8-0, the
- 49:21Speaker 2: other game 4-1. The Cubs are done. It is San Diego,
- 49:25Speaker 2: I think. San Diego is unfortunately going to be very
- 49:31Speaker 2: tough for the Brewers to beat. I think San Diego
- 49:33Speaker 2: can win the World Series. The winner of this series
- 49:36Speaker 2: will play the winner of the Dodgers versus Atlanta or Philadelphia.
- 49:39Speaker 2: And as they do this podcast, that series has not
- 49:41Speaker 2: yet been decided. The Dodgers got off to that big
- 49:45Speaker 2: lead in the National League West. But from the middle
- 49:48Speaker 2: of the season on, the Padres were as good as them.
- 49:50Speaker 2: And I think this is a tough out for the Brewers.
- 49:54Speaker 2: And I think the Padres have a legitimate chance of
- 49:57Speaker 2: winning the World Series. You know, for the longest time,
- 49:59Speaker 2: whoever knocked the Brewers out was the team that would
- 50:01Speaker 2: go on to win the World Series, and it happened
- 50:03Speaker 2: again last year when the Dodgers took the Brewers out.
- 50:06Speaker 2: The Brewers last year did the same situation as this year.
- 50:10Speaker 2: They got a bye. They went to the NLDS, and
- 50:12Speaker 2: they knocked out the Cubs in the Divisional Series and
- 50:14Speaker 2: then lost in the League Championship Series to the Dodgers.
- 50:19Speaker 2: As for the biggest pain in the ass in American sports,
- 50:22Speaker 2: Pete Crowe Armstrong. See, the problem with being a superstar...
- 50:27Speaker 2: is if you're a superstar and you're a petulant brat
- 50:30Speaker 2: about the whole thing, you're not able to turn that
- 50:34Speaker 2: superstardom into the kind of fan support. You know, Michael
- 50:38Speaker 2: Jordan was never a pussy. Michael Jordan was never a crybaby.
- 50:43Speaker 2: LeBron James is often a crybaby. It's one of the
- 50:45Speaker 2: reasons that LeBron has never had the kind of endorsements
- 50:47Speaker 2: that Michael Jordan did. Pete Crowe Armstrong has just I mean,
- 50:52Speaker 2: he's one of these guys that will call for an
- 50:55Speaker 2: umpire appeal and a ball and a strike. The pitch
- 50:57Speaker 2: is right down the middle for strike three. He'll appeal it.
- 50:59Speaker 2: They do the review, and then it comes right down
- 51:01Speaker 2: the middle. Well, plus, the guy just annoys me. He
- 51:05Speaker 2: annoys you, doesn't he? Pete Crow Armstrong. I posted this
- 51:13Speaker 2: on X. I'll give you Pete Crow Armstrong's stat line
- 51:18Speaker 2: for the Cub Padres series. Seven at-bats. No hits, four strikeouts,
- 51:25Speaker 2: two petulant arguments with umpires. So that was PCA's stat
- 51:30Speaker 2: line end. The Cubs once again go home. For the
- 51:35Speaker 2: third year in a row, the Brewers have had a
- 51:37Speaker 2: better record than the Cubs. Despite the fact that the
- 51:40Speaker 2: Cubs have a top 10 payroll in all of baseball,
- 51:42Speaker 2: for the third year in a row, the manager that
- 51:44Speaker 2: the Cubs are paying $ 8 million a year to steal
- 51:47Speaker 2: away from Milwaukee ended up doing a poorer job. then
- 51:50Speaker 2: his assistant who stayed behind here in Milwaukee and has
- 51:53Speaker 2: taken over the Brewers. And for the third year in
- 51:56Speaker 2: a row, the Cubs are going to be done in
- 51:57Speaker 2: the playoffs before the Brewers are. This does not say,
- 52:00Speaker 2: and again, I made my joke about can't crow too
- 52:03Speaker 2: much about this. He crows his guy's name. I think,
- 52:10Speaker 2: I just think this Padres series is going to be very,
- 52:13Speaker 2: very difficult. Also, It would have been helpful if the
- 52:16Speaker 2: damn Cubs could have forced it to a third game
- 52:18Speaker 2: because that would have meant San Diego would have had
- 52:21Speaker 2: to use their number four starter in game one. Now
- 52:24Speaker 2: they'll be able to cycle this around and what's the
- 52:26Speaker 2: guy's name? The guy that pitched game one in the
- 52:29Speaker 2: Cubs series will be able to pitch game two in
- 52:31Speaker 2: Milwaukee still in the normal four days rest. So we
- 52:34Speaker 2: didn't even get to drive through and use up their
- 52:36Speaker 2: pitching staff and their entire bullpen will now have two
- 52:38Speaker 2: days off before the series begins on Saturday. The Brewer
- 52:41Speaker 2: Cubs game Saturday will be 730. Is it 7 or 7.30?
- 52:47Speaker 3: 7.30.
- 52:48Speaker 2: 7.30 at American Family Field. Game two Sunday will be
- 52:50Speaker 2: at 3 p.m. And as for me, I am heading
- 52:56Speaker 2: to New York tomorrow. My horse USS Valor, who is
- 53:00Speaker 2: 32 years of thoroughbred horse ownership. Clearly the most talented
- 53:05Speaker 2: horse I've ever had. Not the most accomplished. He's only
- 53:08Speaker 2: run twice. He hasn't had a chance to accomplish grade
- 53:11Speaker 2: one victories over all of those things. He runs in
- 53:13Speaker 2: a grade one on his third career start on Saturday.
- 53:16Speaker 2: He's incredibly talented, but that also means it's very, very
- 53:20Speaker 2: frightening because the ones that are freakishly talented are also
- 53:23Speaker 2: the ones that are vulnerable to things going wrong. The
- 53:27Speaker 2: biggest concern is that his last race was so damn
- 53:30Speaker 2: fast that he will regress, and you just don't know
- 53:33Speaker 2: until they run. We also have a very tough horse
- 53:36Speaker 2: to beat. In our horse's first race, he didn't win.
- 53:40Speaker 2: He was beaten by a horse named Gaudreau, and that
- 53:42Speaker 2: horse is in the race Saturday called the Champagne. That
- 53:46Speaker 2: horse has not raced since the August 8th race in
- 53:50Speaker 2: which it beat us. Our horse ran since and ran
- 53:53Speaker 2: that spectacular race at Saratoga that got the horse racing
- 53:56Speaker 2: world buzzing. So their horse is more rested. On the
- 53:59Speaker 2: other hand, he's coming off of a two-month layoff, and
- 54:04Speaker 2: we may have a fitness edge, and our horse might
- 54:05Speaker 2: be a little bit more talented, but I think Just
- 54:08Speaker 2: as the Brewers are going to have our hands full
- 54:10Speaker 2: with San Diego, USS Fowler will have his hands full
- 54:12Speaker 2: with Gaudreau. If you'd like to watch that race, it's
- 54:15Speaker 2: going to be on FS1, Fox Sports 1, and the
- 54:20Speaker 2: race time is 2.50 our time. They go to baseball,
- 54:24Speaker 2: I think, at 3. So it'll be right before the
- 54:27Speaker 2: coverage ends on FS1, Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park, and
- 54:31Speaker 2: that's 2.50 or so our time. Okay, never mind horse racing,
- 54:35Speaker 2: never mind baseball. We're going to turn our attention to
- 54:36Speaker 2: football with our regular... With our weekly football preview and
- 54:39Speaker 2: point spread picks, as I'm joined by Mike Merlet of
- 54:41Speaker 2: American Sports Analysts in Madison, that's next on the Mark
- 54:44Speaker 2: Belling Podcast. This is the Mark Belling Podcast, and as
- 54:48Speaker 2: is always the case on our final segment on Thursday,
- 54:51Speaker 2: it's time for our weekly Mark Belling football preview and
- 54:54Speaker 2: some point spread picks. I'm joined by Mike Merlet of
- 54:56Speaker 2: American Sports Analysts in Madison, which is a sports handicapping service.
- 55:01Speaker 2: Their website is asawins.com. Mike, I know that you said
- 55:09Speaker 2: last week that ASA has been off to an excellent
- 55:11Speaker 2: start in the football season. How did last weekend go?
- 55:15Speaker 3: Good in college. We were 4-1 in college and won
- 55:17Speaker 3: our big play with LSU last weekend. And then in
- 55:20Speaker 3: the pros, we were 1-3, so we gave some back
- 55:22Speaker 3: in the pros. But for the season, we are 15-10
- 55:25Speaker 3: in college overall and 12-5 in the NFL, so 27-15
- 55:30Speaker 3: overall for the season. So still a solid season thus far.
- 55:33Speaker 2: Sounds very good. All right, we're going to start a
- 55:35Speaker 2: discussion with college football, and we're going to start with
- 55:38Speaker 2: the Badgers. I am of the opinion that the Wisconsin
- 55:42Speaker 2: football program turned around in the fourth quarter last week
- 55:49Speaker 2: against Penn State. I think that the significance of this
- 55:52Speaker 2: victory and the way in which it was accomplished cannot
- 55:58Speaker 2: be overstated. I think that the Wisconsin defense showed that
- 56:03Speaker 2: it is as good as any in the country. And
- 56:07Speaker 2: the offense, for really the first time in the Fickle era,
- 56:10Speaker 2: in the fourth quarter showed that it had the ability
- 56:13Speaker 2: to move the football when it needed to. I think
- 56:16Speaker 2: that Wisconsin has gone from really terrible the first two
- 56:20Speaker 2: years of Fickle, especially year two, to bad the first
- 56:24Speaker 2: part of last year and fair the second half of
- 56:27Speaker 2: last year. And they have returned to a quality football program.
- 56:31Speaker 2: I think they're on the verge of being ranked. I
- 56:34Speaker 2: think that they're going to have a very good season,
- 56:36Speaker 2: and I think that coming back from being down 17
- 56:40Speaker 2: to nothing against a high-quality ranked opponent on the road,
- 56:43Speaker 2: not only not quitting, but to have totally dominated the
- 56:47Speaker 2: game really from the beginning of the second half on
- 56:50Speaker 2: was an extraordinary performance, and I think that the Wisconsin
- 56:53Speaker 2: team looked very, very good almost on all levels, including
- 56:58Speaker 2: the quarterback who played terribly in the first half, but somehow...
- 57:03Speaker 2: regained his confidence and made great throws and great decisions
- 57:07Speaker 2: in the second half. Now, for people not aware, Mike
- 57:10Speaker 2: is based in Madison, very close to the Badger program,
- 57:13Speaker 2: and we've been chronicling how far the Badgers have fallen
- 57:15Speaker 2: in football the last few years. Am I overstating what
- 57:19Speaker 2: it was that we saw last weekend?
- 57:24Speaker 3: No, I think you're right, Mark. I think the way
- 57:26Speaker 3: they won the game getting behind the past few years
- 57:29Speaker 3: that they got behind 17, forget about it. They don't,
- 57:31Speaker 3: they didn't have the offense to come back in that
- 57:33Speaker 3: no matter how good their defense was. So their offense
- 57:37Speaker 3: has vastly improved. As you mentioned their defense last week,
- 57:40Speaker 3: they held Penn state to 3.6 yards per play. Penn
- 57:45Speaker 3: state was top 10 in that category coming in averaging
- 57:47Speaker 3: 7.3 yards per play. So they played outstanding. And I
- 57:51Speaker 3: think this turnaround, if you look back to the end
- 57:54Speaker 3: of last year, it started last year. Wisconsin is now beaten. One,
- 57:59Speaker 3: three of the last five times they've been an underdog,
- 58:01Speaker 3: they've won outright, all ranked teams. They beat Washington last
- 58:04Speaker 3: year at the end of the year, Illinois, and now
- 58:06Speaker 3: Penn State. They lost to Notre Dame in Indiana this year.
- 58:09Speaker 3: So three of the last five times they've played a
- 58:13Speaker 3: ranked team, they've actually won the game outright. So I
- 58:15Speaker 3: think they're absolutely heading in the right direction. Don't need
- 58:18Speaker 3: a letdown this week. That's my only fear. You win
- 58:20Speaker 3: a big game, sometimes there's a letdown. I don't think
- 58:22Speaker 3: there will be with Wisconsin this week.
- 58:25Speaker 2: Just a couple of indicators. First of all, on the
- 58:27Speaker 2: Wisconsin team, defense whenever you blow a big lead like
- 58:31Speaker 2: this everybody's crying about the new coach over there matt
- 58:33Speaker 2: campbell the guy who came from iowa state that they
- 58:36Speaker 2: played it too conservatively i don't think what they called
- 58:39Speaker 2: was going to work i just you just had a
- 58:41Speaker 2: sense watching the game and watching it on peacock of
- 58:44Speaker 2: all places that when was after wisconsin scored the touchdown
- 58:48Speaker 2: to make it 20 to 17 there was no chance
- 58:51Speaker 2: the defense was going to give up first out the
- 58:52Speaker 2: wisconsin defense was just stifling and it didn't matter what
- 58:56Speaker 2: the play call was in fact after the Badgers scored
- 59:00Speaker 2: to make it 20-17, when Penn State did pass, it
- 59:04Speaker 2: almost became a pick six. Cooper Catalano jumped around and
- 59:08Speaker 2: had he not dropped the ball, he would have scored
- 59:10Speaker 2: the touchdown to go ahead 24 to 20. So Penn
- 59:12Speaker 2: State did try to throw and the throw turned out
- 59:15Speaker 2: to be disastrous. The defense was to me just outstanding.
- 59:19Speaker 2: Another note on this, the Badgers lost one of their
- 59:22Speaker 2: linebackers to Ohio State. A kid who's now a starter
- 59:24Speaker 2: at Ohio State And some people cited that as an
- 59:27Speaker 2: indication that the Badgers were not able to compete in NIL.
- 59:30Speaker 2: The reason that guy went to Ohio State is Wisconsin
- 59:33Speaker 2: didn't offer him money because they had linebackers here who
- 59:36Speaker 2: are better. With Catalano, Mason Poza, and Heiberger, who doesn't
- 59:41Speaker 2: even start, those are three of, I think, the most
- 59:44Speaker 2: elite linebackers in the country. And they had players leave
- 59:48Speaker 2: the program because they couldn't beat those guys out. As
- 59:51Speaker 2: for the offense, clearly it's gotten better. The offensive line
- 59:54Speaker 2: is still a work in progress. The quarterback's not bad.
- 59:57Speaker 2: The receivers are a lot better. But I think that
- 59:59Speaker 2: they can score enough given how strong their defense is.
- 1:00:04Speaker 2: And I think it's taken four years, but Fickle has
- 1:00:07Speaker 2: figured out what the formula is, and the athletic department
- 1:00:10Speaker 2: is now coming up with enough NIL money in order
- 1:00:13Speaker 2: to be competitive. They're not trying to run an air
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: raid offense. They're back to a regular old Wisconsin offense.
- 1:00:19Speaker 2: And he and the defensive coordinator have built really a
- 1:00:22Speaker 2: world-class defense. So I think that The Badgers are back
- 1:00:26Speaker 2: to what the Badger program was for so long until
- 1:00:28Speaker 2: it started to slide kind of in the second half
- 1:00:31Speaker 2: of Paul Crist. I hope I'm not overreacting to the
- 1:00:33Speaker 2: one game, but as you pointed out, they did pull
- 1:00:36Speaker 2: off a couple of upsets at the end of last year,
- 1:00:38Speaker 2: which leads to this week. They play Michigan State. One
- 1:00:41Speaker 2: of the weird things about this game is even though
- 1:00:44Speaker 2: the season is only four weeks old, Wisconsin and Michigan
- 1:00:47Speaker 2: State have two common opponents. I mean, the chances of that,
- 1:00:51Speaker 2: they both played, I believe, Notre Dame, and they both,
- 1:00:54Speaker 2: did they also both play Eastern Michigan? Yes. So, and
- 1:01:00Speaker 2: in the case, you know, Wisconsin beat Eastern Michigan decisively,
- 1:01:03Speaker 2: Michigan State not as much. Notre Dame killed Wisconsin. They
- 1:01:08Speaker 2: beat Michigan State decisively. If you look just at scores
- 1:01:11Speaker 2: and how the two teams have played so far, In
- 1:01:13Speaker 2: the four games, I'm just looking at scores. It would
- 1:01:15Speaker 2: look like an even matchup. I think Wisconsin, though, is
- 1:01:19Speaker 2: better than Michigan State. Michigan State's doing pretty good under
- 1:01:22Speaker 2: their new coach, Pat Fitzgerald, the guy who got run
- 1:01:24Speaker 2: out of Northwestern for non-football-related reasons a few years ago.
- 1:01:28Speaker 2: But I think Wisconsin coming home is the better team.
- 1:01:32Speaker 2: You raised the question of a letdown. It's so hard
- 1:01:35Speaker 2: to predict emotions, to me, of players. But you can
- 1:01:37Speaker 2: also look at this, that Wisconsin now comes in with
- 1:01:40Speaker 2: maximum confidence that players who really needed an emotional lift
- 1:01:45Speaker 2: got one, and they come home and the momentum from
- 1:01:48Speaker 2: the second half could be a carryover. But at least
- 1:01:51Speaker 2: in terms of talent, Wisconsin's favored by 10. I think
- 1:01:54Speaker 2: they're the better team. What do you think?
- 1:01:57Speaker 3: Yeah, I think definitely Wisconsin's the better team. If you
- 1:01:59Speaker 3: throw out the scores, as you mentioned, they both beat
- 1:02:02Speaker 3: Eastern Michigan bad. They both lost Notre Dame bad. But
- 1:02:04Speaker 3: if you look, dig into the stats and figure out
- 1:02:07Speaker 3: how they played each of those teams, I mean, Michigan
- 1:02:11Speaker 3: State got outgained by 230 yards against Notre Dame. Wisconsin
- 1:02:15Speaker 3: got outgained by 65 yards. Against Eastern Michigan, Spartans outgained
- 1:02:22Speaker 3: Eastern Michigan by about two and a half yards per play,
- 1:02:24Speaker 3: and Wisconsin outgained Eastern Michigan by over four yards per play.
- 1:02:27Speaker 3: So Wisconsin looks much better in the stats in that game.
- 1:02:31Speaker 3: Michigan State is two and two. But they've been outgained
- 1:02:34Speaker 3: by at least one yard per play in three of
- 1:02:36Speaker 3: their four games this year, which is a lot. I mean,
- 1:02:38Speaker 3: getting outgained by one yard per play is pretty, is
- 1:02:43Speaker 3: not good. And they've done it in three of their
- 1:02:45Speaker 3: four games, and somehow they're 2-2. They just lost their
- 1:02:47Speaker 3: best offensive player last week. Their running back, Cam Edwards,
- 1:02:50Speaker 3: who's their best offensive player, is out for the season now.
- 1:02:54Speaker 3: Hopefully Wisconsin get their running game going, right, Mark? They're
- 1:02:57Speaker 3: 104th and rushing. They're 125th in rushing attempts per game
- 1:03:02Speaker 3: this year and 60th in passing attempts. And I know
- 1:03:05Speaker 3: they came into the season not wanting to be like,
- 1:03:07Speaker 3: they wanted to be able to run the ball and
- 1:03:09Speaker 3: then use the pass as they need. So I think
- 1:03:12Speaker 3: if they can get that running game going, their offense
- 1:03:15Speaker 3: can turn out to be really decent.
- 1:03:17Speaker 2: I think the weakness on the team is the offensive line,
- 1:03:20Speaker 2: which isn't terrible, but it's not that good. They also,
- 1:03:23Speaker 2: their star running back that they brought in, Abu Sama,
- 1:03:26Speaker 2: keeps getting hurt. Dupree made some pretty good runs and
- 1:03:30Speaker 2: runs after pass catches in the game last week. But
- 1:03:33Speaker 2: you're right, they've had a little bit of difficulty running
- 1:03:36Speaker 2: the ball. Some of those numbers, though, they were behind
- 1:03:38Speaker 2: by 17 points to Penn State, so they had to
- 1:03:41Speaker 2: start throwing the ball some. But it is kind of
- 1:03:44Speaker 2: fun that for once they can actually, without having an
- 1:03:46Speaker 2: overt passing offense, move the ball through the air. Wisconsin's favorite,
- 1:03:52Speaker 2: as I said, by 10. If you force me to pick,
- 1:03:54Speaker 2: I think the Badgers can cover that spread. and have
- 1:03:56Speaker 2: another decisive win. And I believe they have a buy
- 1:04:00Speaker 2: after that. And it would be a buy, I think
- 1:04:01Speaker 2: at a good time and prepare for USC after that.
- 1:04:04Speaker 2: So I would lean toward taking Wisconsin and laying the
- 1:04:07Speaker 2: points there.
- 1:04:10Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a tough game for me. I don't think
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: we'll use it either way. It's up to, if it's
- 1:04:16Speaker 3: 10 and a half, we definitely probably won't use it.
- 1:04:18Speaker 3: And I see some 10 and a half right now,
- 1:04:20Speaker 3: but definitely Badgers look like they're turning the corner.
- 1:04:23Speaker 2: All right, let's turn our attention to one other college
- 1:04:25Speaker 2: football game. It's in the Big Ten. A lot of
- 1:04:28Speaker 2: interesting games this week, but this is the one I
- 1:04:30Speaker 2: found most interesting. Ohio State plays Iowa. Iowa managed to
- 1:04:35Speaker 2: get a schedule this year where they had to play
- 1:04:38Speaker 2: Michigan and Ohio State back to back. Well, they went
- 1:04:41Speaker 2: to Michigan last week and won on the road on
- 1:04:44Speaker 2: the last play of the game. Not totally dissimilar to
- 1:04:47Speaker 2: the way Wisconsin played the game against Penn State, but
- 1:04:51Speaker 2: Michigan isn't the Michigan of years past. Iowa looks to
- 1:04:56Speaker 2: be the Iowa of years past. Great defense, only okay offense. Iowa, though,
- 1:05:01Speaker 2: does get to come home. And under Ferentz, they've pulled
- 1:05:05Speaker 2: a fair number of upsets against strong teams, especially when
- 1:05:07Speaker 2: they play them at home. And I still don't know
- 1:05:12Speaker 2: if Ohio State's a top two or three team in
- 1:05:14Speaker 2: the country or not. Do you give Iowa any chance
- 1:05:17Speaker 2: here against Ohio State, or does Ohio State make a
- 1:05:20Speaker 2: statement and go into Iowa City and crush Iowa?
- 1:05:24Speaker 3: Well, I don't think Iowa has much of a chance
- 1:05:27Speaker 3: in this game, I'll be honest. I don't think Iowa's
- 1:05:29Speaker 3: very good this year, I'll be frank. They're 4-0. Their
- 1:05:34Speaker 3: wins have come against Northern Illinois, who's one of the
- 1:05:37Speaker 3: bottom 10 teams in the country, Northern Iowa, FCS team,
- 1:05:41Speaker 3: and they struggled to beat Iowa State, who's not good.
- 1:05:44Speaker 3: Iowa State turned around and got creamed at home by
- 1:05:47Speaker 3: Utah last week. And if you look closer at the
- 1:05:52Speaker 3: game last week, Michigan dominated Iowa. That shouldn't even have
- 1:05:56Speaker 3: been a close game. Michigan had 430 yards to 285.
- 1:05:59Speaker 3: They all gained about a yard and a half per play.
- 1:06:03Speaker 3: And the thing that worries me about Iowa is Michigan
- 1:06:05Speaker 3: had 430 yards, and Michigan's offense is not good this year.
- 1:06:09Speaker 3: Michigan was only averaging 320 yards coming into the game,
- 1:06:12Speaker 3: and they put up 430. And now they face one
- 1:06:15Speaker 3: of the best offense. If Michigan puts up 430 yards,
- 1:06:20Speaker 3: what's Ohio State going to put up on Iowa this week?
- 1:06:24Speaker 2: So you're saying the narrow win at Michigan is far
- 1:06:27Speaker 2: less impressive because Michigan itself isn't very good. Is that
- 1:06:30Speaker 2: what you're saying?
- 1:06:32Speaker 3: I'm saying that, and Michigan dominated Iowa last week. Michigan's
- 1:06:35Speaker 3: not very good, and they dominated Iowa last week, if
- 1:06:37Speaker 3: you look at the stats and how that game played out.
- 1:06:40Speaker 3: In fact, an analytics guy that we follow that we
- 1:06:42Speaker 3: know quite well said that was one of the most
- 1:06:45Speaker 3: improbable wins for any college football team this year, based
- 1:06:48Speaker 3: on the stats and the success rates, the analytics, and
- 1:06:51Speaker 3: the way the game played out, it was one of
- 1:06:52Speaker 3: the most improbable wins this year for a team. I
- 1:06:57Speaker 3: think Iowa has a chance. They've been very good as
- 1:06:59Speaker 3: a home underdog. And, Mark, here's another one for you.
- 1:07:02Speaker 3: Last time Ohio State went to Iowa was in 2017.
- 1:07:06Speaker 3: Ohio State was a 21-point favorite in that game, and
- 1:07:10Speaker 3: Iowa won by 31 points. That was a 52-point.
- 1:07:13Speaker 2: I was saying, I mean, the history of Ferentz is
- 1:07:15Speaker 2: that occasionally they'll pull off the big upset, especially– when
- 1:07:18Speaker 2: they're at home, what we haven't talked about at all.
- 1:07:20Speaker 2: And I'll give you just a few seconds on this.
- 1:07:22Speaker 2: How good is Ohio state? We've talked mostly about Iowa here.
- 1:07:25Speaker 2: Give me your, is Ohio state the best team in
- 1:07:28Speaker 2: America close to it or not?
- 1:07:30Speaker 3: Well, I think they're close. Texas supposedly is the best
- 1:07:34Speaker 3: team in America and Ohio state went into Texas and
- 1:07:36Speaker 3: dominated Texas. Ohio state had that game one in the
- 1:07:40Speaker 3: fourth quarter and Texas, Had a few plays and ended
- 1:07:43Speaker 3: up coming back and winning a tight game. And Ohio
- 1:07:45Speaker 3: State dominated the stats in that game as well. I
- 1:07:47Speaker 3: think Ohio State's a top three or four team for
- 1:07:50Speaker 3: sure this year. The one thing that worries me about
- 1:07:53Speaker 3: Ohio State, their defense doesn't look great. I mean, they
- 1:07:55Speaker 3: gave up six and a half yards for a play
- 1:07:57Speaker 3: to Illinois last week. So their defense doesn't look great.
- 1:08:00Speaker 3: But I don't think Iowa has the offense to take
- 1:08:02Speaker 3: advantage of that. I think this could be a fairly
- 1:08:06Speaker 3: easy win for Ohio State, even though Iowa's good at
- 1:08:08Speaker 3: these home underdog type games.
- 1:08:11Speaker 2: Let's turn our attention to the NFL. Kind of an
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: interesting juxtaposition. The week that the Badgers seemed to turn
- 1:08:18Speaker 2: their program around is the same week that it appeared
- 1:08:22Speaker 2: as though the Packers just made a turn for the
- 1:08:26Speaker 2: abyss and are just crashing to the bottom. Is this
- 1:08:31Speaker 2: an overreaction? Some believe, including me, the Packers' season is
- 1:08:35Speaker 2: essentially over. I believe they have no offensive line, and
- 1:08:38Speaker 2: you can't win with no offensive line. You can do
- 1:08:40Speaker 2: okay with a poor one. Wisconsin's terrible on offensive line,
- 1:08:45Speaker 2: and I just think that the whole thing has turned
- 1:08:49Speaker 2: really ugly and is bad, and they're headed for a
- 1:08:52Speaker 2: long season. Certainly you can overreact in the NFL the
- 1:08:55Speaker 2: one week. Am I overreacting?
- 1:08:58Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think, you know, we used
- 1:09:02Speaker 3: Atlanta last week as a 5.5 under. Green Bay shouldn't
- 1:09:06Speaker 3: be that big of a favorite against anyone with the
- 1:09:08Speaker 3: offensive line they have. Now, they obviously know that because
- 1:09:12Speaker 3: they went out and signed three guys this week. who
- 1:09:15Speaker 3: are veterans that had good careers, but they were all–
- 1:09:18Speaker 3: could have been signed by anyone.
- 1:09:19Speaker 2: Well, they're all on the streets, so they can't be
- 1:09:20Speaker 2: that good. If they were any good, they would have
- 1:09:22Speaker 2: been on an NFL roster. And secondly, where was Brian
- 1:09:26Speaker 2: Goodikens during the offseason? Why weren't we picking offensive linemen then?
- 1:09:31Speaker 2: How was their talent assessment that they didn't– now I
- 1:09:33Speaker 2: understand they never– I can't think of Zach's last name now,
- 1:09:36Speaker 2: the former Zach Tom. How did they– other than him,
- 1:09:39Speaker 2: how could he not assess that the offensive line was
- 1:09:41Speaker 2: as terrible– As it was, I keep going back to,
- 1:09:44Speaker 2: and it's kind of this thing that I'm on, that
- 1:09:46Speaker 2: when you're looking at a sports operation, you never really
- 1:09:49Speaker 2: know who is doing what. Was the loss of John
- 1:09:53Speaker 2: Eric Sullivan, his number two, who's now the GM at Miami,
- 1:09:56Speaker 2: maybe he was the brains. I look at the Brewers and,
- 1:09:59Speaker 2: you know, Pat Murphy was the dugout coach for Craig Council.
- 1:10:02Speaker 2: Maybe he was the brains behind Council. With regard to
- 1:10:05Speaker 2: the Brewers, David Stearns was the GM and president of
- 1:10:08Speaker 2: Baseball Operations. He was given all of this credit. He
- 1:10:11Speaker 2: went to the Mets and he's fallen on his face.
- 1:10:12Speaker 2: Matt Arnold was his number two. Maybe Matt was the
- 1:10:16Speaker 2: driving point behind all of it. Maybe John Eric Sullivan
- 1:10:19Speaker 2: was more important to Gutekunst than were necessarily Orvin. I
- 1:10:23Speaker 2: don't know that that's the case because we just don't
- 1:10:25Speaker 2: know what's going on within the internals there. To me,
- 1:10:28Speaker 2: the thing that's just so disturbing about the Packers is
- 1:10:31Speaker 2: they could not see the problems they were facing with
- 1:10:34Speaker 2: the offensive line. Now, admittedly, Banks, the guy they signed
- 1:10:37Speaker 2: for the 49ers, he's hurt. They think Jordan Morgan can
- 1:10:41Speaker 2: handle left tackle. There's a lot of ifs in there, though.
- 1:10:44Speaker 2: I just wonder how you could have been going to
- 1:10:47Speaker 2: a season like this with hopes of winning a Super
- 1:10:49Speaker 2: Bowl with your pants so far down to your ankles
- 1:10:52Speaker 2: on the offensive line. It's just bad management of the team.
- 1:10:57Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree. We talked about this last week,
- 1:10:59Speaker 3: maybe the week before. You've got one of the better–
- 1:11:01Speaker 3: a lot of people– Don't think Jordan Love is one
- 1:11:04Speaker 3: of the better quarterbacks in the NFL. I think he's
- 1:11:06Speaker 3: one of the best quarterbacks. I do.
- 1:11:07Speaker 2: I think that if he had a great offensive line
- 1:11:09Speaker 2: behind him, he's right at the top.
- 1:11:12Speaker 3: I agree. I agree 100%. And I don't know how
- 1:11:14Speaker 3: they put that offensive line in front of him to
- 1:11:16Speaker 3: start the season. Even going into the season, you know,
- 1:11:20Speaker 3: we had that offensive line along with many other people
- 1:11:22Speaker 3: that followed us close toward the bottom of the NFL,
- 1:11:24Speaker 3: even with Banks in there. And now he's hurt, obviously,
- 1:11:27Speaker 3: and with Tom or whatever his name is now. They
- 1:11:30Speaker 3: average 48 yards per game rushing mark, and the second
- 1:11:33Speaker 3: worst is 81 yards per game. Love has been hit
- 1:11:37Speaker 3: 30 times this year. The next most quarterback is Goff
- 1:11:40Speaker 3: has been hit 18 times. I mean, it's all offensive
- 1:11:42Speaker 3: line for the offense, and they're just not good. They
- 1:11:45Speaker 3: do catch a break this week with Mayfield out and
- 1:11:48Speaker 3: a rookie starting for Tampa Bay, and it's a must
- 1:11:51Speaker 3: win for them this week for sure.
- 1:11:52Speaker 2: Let's talk about the game. Packers at Tampa. Green Bay
- 1:11:55Speaker 2: is favored by three and a half. It's at Tampa.
- 1:11:57Speaker 2: Baker Mayfield, the Buccaneers quarterback, is hurt. Now, you talk
- 1:12:01Speaker 2: a lot about how teams that are 0-2 are really
- 1:12:04Speaker 2: hard to beat because they're desperate to win. Tampa Bay
- 1:12:08Speaker 2: was favored by many to win the NFC South. They're 0-3.
- 1:12:12Speaker 2: So this is, I mean, at 0-3, it's even more
- 1:12:15Speaker 2: of a must win. But at this point, are you
- 1:12:17Speaker 2: just 0-3 because you're a bad team? Or situationally, is
- 1:12:20Speaker 2: this an impressionable indicate that you're going to get a
- 1:12:24Speaker 2: maximum effort out of Tampa to try to salvage a season?
- 1:12:28Speaker 3: Well, just historically, 0-3 teams, you'd think that they'd feel,
- 1:12:33Speaker 3: you know, the season's done. Your chance of making the
- 1:12:35Speaker 3: playoffs when you're 0-3 is like 3% historically, something like that.
- 1:12:41Speaker 3: But 0-3 teams in week four who are playing a
- 1:12:45Speaker 3: team that's not 0-3, that has at least one win,
- 1:12:47Speaker 3: are like 47-25 against the spread since 2005. So they
- 1:12:49Speaker 3: normally come to play I loved Tampa Bay last week.
- 1:12:54Speaker 3: That was one of my favorite plays of the season
- 1:12:56Speaker 3: in the NFL. They played Minnesota even yardage-wise, but made
- 1:13:01Speaker 3: some mistakes and lost the game. I thought that was
- 1:13:03Speaker 3: a great play. I thought Tampa Bay was going to
- 1:13:05Speaker 3: win that game.
- 1:13:05Speaker 2: Yeah, and the quarterback went down. You cited that on
- 1:13:10Speaker 2: the air here. In fact, Jason, who's done a really
- 1:13:12Speaker 2: good job, not with us today, but he emailed in
- 1:13:14Speaker 2: a pic from me, he thought the same thing, and
- 1:13:16Speaker 2: I agreed with that. I think we all thought Tampa
- 1:13:18Speaker 2: Bay would beat Minnesota. And they did outplay him, even
- 1:13:21Speaker 2: though the quarterback went down during the game. It was
- 1:13:24Speaker 2: another one of those circumstantial games. The Vikings are what
- 1:13:28Speaker 2: the Bears were last year. All these games are not
- 1:13:31Speaker 2: supposed to win. They're 3-0, and they ought to be 0-3,
- 1:13:33Speaker 2: the Vikings are. And last week was one of them.
- 1:13:36Speaker 3: Yeah, the Vikings are getting outgained by like 100 yards
- 1:13:39Speaker 3: per game, and they're 3-0 on the season. I don't
- 1:13:42Speaker 3: know how that happened, but they're the most overrated team
- 1:13:45Speaker 3: based on record in the NFL easily this season going into–
- 1:13:49Speaker 3: going into this week. Here's one last thing on the
- 1:13:51Speaker 3: Buccaneers-Packers stats. So the Buccaneers are 0-12 now, their last
- 1:13:55Speaker 3: 12 games against the spread, dating back to last year.
- 1:14:00Speaker 3: The Packers are 0-8, their last eight games against the spread.
- 1:14:03Speaker 3: If you combine these two teams, since week three of
- 1:14:07Speaker 3: last year, combine these two teams, they're 7-30 against the spread,
- 1:14:12Speaker 3: the Buccaneers and the Packers.
- 1:14:14Speaker 2: Well, something's got to give.
- 1:14:15Speaker 3: Someone's got to win. Yeah, someone's got to cover this week.
- 1:14:19Speaker 2: All right, let's turn our attention to one other game.
- 1:14:21Speaker 2: I think an interesting game is the Rams and the Eagles.
- 1:14:24Speaker 2: I mean, the entire world picked the Rams to win
- 1:14:27Speaker 2: the Super Bowl this year. They had all the free
- 1:14:29Speaker 2: agent signings. Everybody was back. Guys were healthy again. The
- 1:14:33Speaker 2: Rams are 1-2. They're playing the Eagles, who are 2-1.
- 1:14:37Speaker 2: But the Eagles last week against the Bears looked absolutely horrible.
- 1:14:42Speaker 2: And Los Angeles seems to be a misleading 1-2 game.
- 1:14:46Speaker 2: Is the 1-2 team better than the 2-1 team? I
- 1:14:49Speaker 2: think so, and I think that they prove it by
- 1:14:50Speaker 2: beating the Eagles. What about you?
- 1:14:53Speaker 3: Yeah, I think definitely the Rams are better than the Eagles.
- 1:14:55Speaker 3: That's why they're favored by three on the road in
- 1:14:57Speaker 3: this game. The Eagles are 2-1, but how good are they?
- 1:15:00Speaker 3: Like you mentioned, they beat Washington, a bad team, by
- 1:15:03Speaker 3: two points. They beat Tennessee, a bad team, by four points.
- 1:15:06Speaker 3: And they got creamed by the Bears with their backup quarterback.
- 1:15:08Speaker 3: So how good are the Eagles? They don't look that great. Meanwhile,
- 1:15:14Speaker 3: you've got the Rams 1-2. The Rams have the third-best
- 1:15:18Speaker 3: yards-per-play margin in the NFL. The top two, Seattle and
- 1:15:23Speaker 3: San Francisco. So the three best teams' yards-per-play margin, which
- 1:15:26Speaker 3: is a very good indicator of how good a team is,
- 1:15:28Speaker 3: are all in the same division, which is crazy. So
- 1:15:32Speaker 3: the Rams, coming off a loss, are 30-16 against the spread.
- 1:15:36Speaker 3: This is a huge game for them. Teams that start
- 1:15:37Speaker 3: 1-3 in the NFL, only about 14% of them make
- 1:15:39Speaker 3: the playoffs.
- 1:15:44Speaker 2: And they're in a tough division, too, because they've got
- 1:15:46Speaker 2: Seattle and San Francisco in there. So, you know, as
- 1:15:49Speaker 2: we've seen in baseball this year, you could have a...
- 1:15:52Speaker 2: I mean, I just think it's insane that the Cleveland
- 1:15:54Speaker 2: Guardians got a bye in Major League Baseball. But they
- 1:15:58Speaker 2: had three... You know, you have to be a division winner,
- 1:16:02Speaker 2: and because the West was so atrocious, Cleveland's goofy record
- 1:16:06Speaker 2: was enough for them to get a bye. And we've
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: seen this in football. The NFC South's been terrible forever,
- 1:16:11Speaker 2: but The West is really good, so the 49ers can't
- 1:16:15Speaker 2: afford to have a bad record there because they still
- 1:16:17Speaker 2: have several games against those quality opponents.
- 1:16:22Speaker 3: Yeah, and normally I'd be, this is a game I'd
- 1:16:24Speaker 3: normally look on the Rams, got a really good team
- 1:16:27Speaker 3: coming off a loss, kind of a skewed record. But
- 1:16:30Speaker 3: the thing I don't like about this game is the Rams,
- 1:16:32Speaker 3: this is the toughest scheduling situation I've ever seen in
- 1:16:35Speaker 3: the first four weeks. The Rams were in Australia, came
- 1:16:38Speaker 3: home and played the Giants at Denver at the Eagles.
- 1:16:41Speaker 3: After this week, they will have traveled 22,000 miles in
- 1:16:44Speaker 3: the first four weeks of the season, which is the
- 1:16:46Speaker 3: most in the history of the NFL, which is understandable
- 1:16:49Speaker 3: because Australia is such a long travel. That's the only
- 1:16:52Speaker 3: thing I don't like about this game.
- 1:16:53Speaker 2: And the Denver game was a collapse. The Rams were
- 1:16:56Speaker 2: up 16 to nothing and lost the game.
- 1:16:59Speaker 3: Yeah, and the Rams outplayed them pretty drastically, too, in
- 1:17:03Speaker 3: that game. And Broncos got lucky in that game. But
- 1:17:06Speaker 3: just the travel situation out there to the East Coast,
- 1:17:08Speaker 3: it's Not ideal, let's put it that way.
- 1:17:10Speaker 2: All right, let's get to point spread picks. Last week,
- 1:17:13Speaker 2: as we mentioned before, both Mike and my producer Jason
- 1:17:16Speaker 2: took Tampa Bay a 1.5-point underdog against the Vikings, and
- 1:17:19Speaker 2: Minnesota won that game. For the second week in a row,
- 1:17:22Speaker 2: I went against the Dolphins with a double-digit favor, taking
- 1:17:26Speaker 2: Kansas City to win by more than 10.5. It took
- 1:17:29Speaker 2: a while, but they grinded it out and got there
- 1:17:32Speaker 2: by 14. Unfortunately, I can't, for the third week in
- 1:17:37Speaker 2: a row... lay double digits against the Dolphins because it's
- 1:17:40Speaker 2: the Vikings. And as we just discussed, I don't trust
- 1:17:43Speaker 2: the Vikings at all. I still think that the Dolphins
- 1:17:46Speaker 2: are a play-against team all year. They're not only not
- 1:17:50Speaker 2: going to win many games, if any, they're not going
- 1:17:52Speaker 2: to cover the spread much, but I just can't lay
- 1:17:55Speaker 2: double digits with Minnesota against anybody, including the putrid Vikings. Jason,
- 1:18:02Speaker 2: my producer, who's now 3-1, last week was his first loss.
- 1:18:06Speaker 2: He Um, here is, he said in my pick, he's
- 1:18:11Speaker 2: looking at the game between Missouri and Florida and you
- 1:18:16Speaker 2: would have thought I would have done this before, but
- 1:18:17Speaker 2: I forgot to look up the line. Let me do that. Mike,
- 1:18:23Speaker 2: do you know if that's game is high or low
- 1:18:25Speaker 2: on the rotation?
- 1:18:27Speaker 3: Um, let me see if I can find it for you. Uh, Missouri, Florida.
- 1:18:33Speaker 2: Well, it's in here somewhere.
- 1:18:34Speaker 3: Uh, I'll give you the number.
- 1:18:36Speaker 2: Usually the marquee games are farther down.
- 1:18:40Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's way near Florida. Oh, it's number.
- 1:18:45Speaker 1: 195, 196.
- 1:18:45Speaker 2: Here it is. Yeah, and in that game, five and
- 1:18:48Speaker 2: a half, Florida on the road. is favored by five
- 1:18:51Speaker 2: and a half at Missouri, and Jason is taking Missouri,
- 1:18:55Speaker 2: and I'll read his reasoning. Huge letdown spot for Florida
- 1:18:58Speaker 2: after they had a big home win over Ole Miss
- 1:19:01Speaker 2: last week. Very similar spot to what Mississippi was facing
- 1:19:04Speaker 2: the week before, before playing at Florida after a huge
- 1:19:08Speaker 2: home win over LSU. Missouri will keep this game close
- 1:19:11Speaker 2: at Ford Field with a jacked-up home crowd taking the
- 1:19:14Speaker 2: Tigers plus the points. That's Jason's pick. Mike, do you
- 1:19:17Speaker 2: have any thoughts on that game?
- 1:19:19Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with Jason. Plus, you have Missouri
- 1:19:22Speaker 3: coming off a loss at Mississippi State. Mississippi State's a
- 1:19:25Speaker 3: really good team this year, and Missouri played them toe-to-toe.
- 1:19:28Speaker 3: I think they lost by seven in that game. The
- 1:19:30Speaker 3: stats were about pretty close to even, so Missouri... is
- 1:19:33Speaker 3: a decent team at home. Florida's offense is really, really good.
- 1:19:37Speaker 3: Probably the best offense in the country, but it is
- 1:19:39Speaker 3: a definite letdown spot to lay points on the road
- 1:19:42Speaker 3: like that.
- 1:19:43Speaker 2: Okay, time to get a pick from Mike. Which game
- 1:19:45Speaker 2: or games would you like to hear the points spread on?
- 1:19:46Speaker 3: I'm going to look at college. First line, number 131, 132,
- 1:19:53Speaker 3: Miami of Florida at Clemson.
- 1:19:56Speaker 2: Interesting game. Miami of Florida is favored by 16.5 on
- 1:19:59Speaker 2: the road. at Clemson. Clemson, it's a pretty good defense
- 1:20:05Speaker 2: this year, not much of an offense.
- 1:20:09Speaker 3: I'll stick with that. I'm taking Miami in that game.
- 1:20:11Speaker 2: You're going to take Miami to win by 17 or
- 1:20:13Speaker 2: more at Clemson. Curious game to me. I mean, Clemson's
- 1:20:18Speaker 2: a fascinating team, obviously, for a lot of reasons. Used
- 1:20:20Speaker 2: to be a great team. Isn't anymore, but they're not terrible.
- 1:20:25Speaker 2: Why do you want to lay all these points against Clemson?
- 1:20:27Speaker 3: First of all, I don't think Clemson's good at all
- 1:20:29Speaker 3: this year. They're 3-1. They've been out gained yards for
- 1:20:33Speaker 3: playing yards per game. The one good team they played,
- 1:20:36Speaker 3: which is very comparable Miami is LSU. And they lost
- 1:20:39Speaker 3: that game 51 to 10. Miami's every bet as good
- 1:20:42Speaker 3: as LSU is. And they lost that game by 41 points.
- 1:20:46Speaker 3: If you look at their three wins for Clemson, they
- 1:20:49Speaker 3: beat Georgia Southern. That game was 16 to seven in the,
- 1:20:53Speaker 3: with six minutes left in the game, close game. They
- 1:20:56Speaker 3: beat North Carolina. They were losing by two touchdowns in
- 1:20:59Speaker 3: North Carolina. Then if you remember in that game, there
- 1:21:01Speaker 3: was a long rain delay, like two, three hours, and
- 1:21:04Speaker 3: it changed the momentum. They came back and won that.
- 1:21:06Speaker 3: Then last week they beat a Cal team that can't
- 1:21:09Speaker 3: score points at all. I think it's a horrible matchup
- 1:21:12Speaker 3: for Clemson's offense. Clemson's offense is bad. They're 128th in
- 1:21:15Speaker 3: total offense, 124th in yards from play. They can't throw
- 1:21:19Speaker 3: the ball, Mark. Their quarterback is a true freshman. that's
- 1:21:24Speaker 3: still learning the ropes, and he hasn't done well at all.
- 1:21:27Speaker 2: Because Dabo Sweeney will just not go out and buy
- 1:21:29Speaker 2: a veteran quarterback. He won't. It's a stubbornness that is
- 1:21:34Speaker 2: talked about a lot in college football, and I think
- 1:21:37Speaker 2: if they don't have a good season, he's going to
- 1:21:39Speaker 2: be fired. He's a multiple national championship winner, and he's
- 1:21:43Speaker 2: been able to ride that out for such a long
- 1:21:45Speaker 2: period of time. But Clemson fans, especially if they get
- 1:21:47Speaker 2: blown out at home by a conference rival, Miami, I mean,
- 1:21:51Speaker 2: the dogs are going to be out for him there.
- 1:21:53Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I don't disagree, and that would be crazy
- 1:21:56Speaker 3: with a guy that made the playoffs like seven of
- 1:21:58Speaker 3: the first 11 years and won some national championships, and
- 1:22:02Speaker 3: I think he's definitely in the hot seat. I think
- 1:22:04Speaker 3: they might get whipped in this game. I mean, they
- 1:22:07Speaker 3: need to run the ball. Like I said, they can't
- 1:22:08Speaker 3: pass the ball, and they're facing a Miami team that's
- 1:22:11Speaker 3: giving up 39 yards per game rushing this year, number
- 1:22:14Speaker 3: one in the country, and I think offensively Miami will
- 1:22:18Speaker 3: be able to score. Miami's averaging over 50 points per game,
- 1:22:20Speaker 3: and even if you take out their FCS opponent, where
- 1:22:23Speaker 3: they scored 77 points. Miami's still averaging 43 points a game.
- 1:22:28Speaker 3: I think they'll be able to score points, and I
- 1:22:30Speaker 3: don't think Clemson can keep up in this game. And
- 1:22:33Speaker 3: Miami's a team, Mark, they have a letdown every once
- 1:22:36Speaker 3: in a while against teams that they're not focused on.
- 1:22:38Speaker 3: They're ultra-talented. They're going to be focused on this.
- 1:22:41Speaker 2: Yeah, the ACC's terrible. So Clemson's, by the standards of
- 1:22:45Speaker 2: the ACC, they're a team that you really have to
- 1:22:47Speaker 2: beat because the ACC's so awful.
- 1:22:50Speaker 3: Exactly. They don't have a lot of primetime games. And
- 1:22:53Speaker 3: they know that LSU beat Clemson by 41 points, and
- 1:22:58Speaker 3: Miami's the type of team that will do everything they
- 1:22:59Speaker 3: can to match that. I think this one could get ugly.
- 1:23:03Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of games. I want to take the
- 1:23:08Speaker 2: game tonight, the Steelers at the Browns. Unfortunately, we use
- 1:23:12Speaker 2: a point spread service called scores and odds, and their
- 1:23:14Speaker 2: line is two and a half, not three. If the
- 1:23:17Speaker 2: Browns were getting three, I would certainly take them. against Pittsburgh.
- 1:23:21Speaker 2: I think they're going to win the game straight up.
- 1:23:23Speaker 2: People just get stubborn. Cleveland's terrible. Cleveland's terrible. Cleveland's terrible.
- 1:23:27Speaker 2: They can't get past the fact that maybe Cleveland's not terrible.
- 1:23:30Speaker 2: I think Aaron Rodgers, after a game, the Cincinnati game
- 1:23:34Speaker 2: that they won, 30 to 27, very physical game, short rest.
- 1:23:38Speaker 2: He's got to go to Cleveland, which has a good
- 1:23:40Speaker 2: defense and is just better. Watson's finally playing good at
- 1:23:43Speaker 2: quarterback I think the Browns win. I throw that game
- 1:23:45Speaker 2: out there, but I wanted to get full three points
- 1:23:47Speaker 2: because I think there's a more attractive game, and sadly
- 1:23:49Speaker 2: it's the one we talked about. Green Bay at Tampa Bay,
- 1:23:51Speaker 2: the Buccaneers getting three and a half. I hope I'm
- 1:23:55Speaker 2: wrong about this, but I think Tampa's going to win
- 1:23:58Speaker 2: the game straight up, and I'm not getting just three,
- 1:24:01Speaker 2: but three and a half. I know that Mayfield is out,
- 1:24:04Speaker 2: and I know that the Packer defense is still pretty good,
- 1:24:06Speaker 2: although they didn't play that well last week. Until the
- 1:24:10Speaker 2: Packer offensive line shows that it can do something... I
- 1:24:14Speaker 2: think Tampa Bay is going to win the game straight up.
- 1:24:16Speaker 2: And then you add in that if they had beaten
- 1:24:18Speaker 2: Minnesota last week and were 1-2, I wouldn't be adamant
- 1:24:21Speaker 2: on this. This is make or break for the season
- 1:24:24Speaker 2: for the Buccaneers. And I just like bad vibes with
- 1:24:28Speaker 2: the Packers. Jason, who's not with us today, said to
- 1:24:31Speaker 2: me last week, and he's not a Packer fan, he's
- 1:24:33Speaker 2: a Bear fan, he said he thought the Packers quit
- 1:24:35Speaker 2: last week in the second half against Atlanta. And there
- 1:24:39Speaker 2: may be bad vibes in which the coaching staff's been
- 1:24:41Speaker 2: tuned out. and so on. But this is a game
- 1:24:44Speaker 2: that is critical for Green Bay. If they want to
- 1:24:47Speaker 2: prove all of us wrong, they go down to Florida
- 1:24:49Speaker 2: and win the game on the road against Tampa. I
- 1:24:51Speaker 2: just don't think they will, plus I'm getting a pad
- 1:24:53Speaker 2: of three and a half. So I'll take the Buccaneers.
- 1:24:55Speaker 2: We don't need a reaction from Mike because we just
- 1:24:57Speaker 2: talked about that game in some depth. Oh, I forgot
- 1:25:01Speaker 2: to ask you, anything special you'd like to share with
- 1:25:02Speaker 2: the audience about ASA's offerings this weekend?
- 1:25:06Speaker 3: Yeah, nothing until Friday. Have them check on Friday. Last
- 1:25:09Speaker 3: week we had a special weekend package. Again, we did
- 1:25:11Speaker 3: well in college and Didn't do well in the NFL,
- 1:25:14Speaker 3: but I think there's some good spots this week. Another
- 1:25:17Speaker 3: big college game. We won with LSU last week. I'd
- 1:25:19Speaker 3: look for that on Friday.
- 1:25:21Speaker 2: Okay, asawins.com is their site, and that's it for this week.
- 1:25:25Speaker 2: Next podcast will be released on Monday.
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