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Why sports matter in shaping American culture · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

0:04
We are faith and fury.
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Love and fire.
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This is the human equation where every voice counts and every truth cuts deep.
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With your host, Joseph Pancaro.
0:20
Hey everybody, welcome aboard another fantastic episode of The Human Equation.
0:26
I'm your host, Joe Pangaro.
0:28
So what do we talk about?
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What are some things that bring us all together?
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What what are the things that people do that really can unite us?
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Well, uh, we know that uh there's battle, right?
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When our country is at war.
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Look at 9-11.
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The day after 9-11 was everyone was united.
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We stuck together because we all had a stake in what was going on.
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Uh we have uh you stay with your family.
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Family has a problem, the whole family comes together if somebody's injured or somebody gets sick.
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So there's things that bring us together as human beings.
1:02
Well, when I think about what else there is that brings us together as human beings, I think of sport.
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Now, the concept of sports is excellence, right?
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Uh I heard George Will, the the uh the talking head, George Will one time said that sports are a vivid example of excellence.
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There's really no politics in sports.
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There's no there's no politics in what goes on.
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There's just really the best athletes versus the best athletes.
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There is a a goal, a game.
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There are fundamental skills, and whether it's big time or whether it's small, you know, like when your kids are playing, it can be just as exciting.
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We love our teams, right?
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Don't we root for our teams?
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We root for this, the players that we really like, and it can bring us all together or can tear us apart.
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All right.
1:58
So I want to talk about sport and how sport brings us together and what it is there a bigger meaning to sport than simply a game that's played.
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Uh so I brought the panel in to discuss this because I needed brilliant minds.
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See, this is like we're like a team here.
2:14
We're playing a team.
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I got Jack.
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Jack, how are you?
2:17
Hey, Joe, doing well.
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And Barry's here.
2:20
Hi, Joe.
2:20
How are you?
2:21
Very good.
2:21
That's the panel, right?
2:22
The panel is here to help us through this.
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So I'll tell you a quick funny story.
2:27
You know, we're we're Giants fans here in my house.
2:30
You know, we we were Giants fans, and I've loved football since I'm a kid.
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I played football, I played in Pee-We Leagues, I played in midgets, I played in high school ball, and it was it it became it became an essence of who I was, the competition of playing in sports.
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And when I actually found a sport that I I took off on, football, and I was skilled at it, and I had a great time.
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It was thrilling to go out on that field.
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You know, people talk about it, you know, going out there in the morning on a way game and uh, you know, doing the morning calisthenics and getting ready for the game in the cool air.
3:03
It was just it was enthralling.
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I I had such a great time.
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And my youngest son, uh he he learned about football around the house because we all watched football here on Sundays, that was our big thing.
3:14
And his older brother, uh Alex was in on a high school player, and he was an amazing high school player, and we we went to the games every Friday night.
3:22
And I remember Jack catching on to the Giants.
3:25
He loved the Giants, and he became a Giants fan at just the right moment in time when the Giants were en route to a Super Bowl.
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Now, as all of you know, the Giants have been to, I think, four Super Bowls, and uh they've they've done fairly well when they've gotten there, you know, it's okay.
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But the problem is they can't get there every year.
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They're not you think a market like New York sports would have the greatest of teams.
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Like we have the Yankees, the Yankees were the inevitables, they're constantly uh in the World Series, but the Giants and the Jets not so much.
3:56
Well, Jack saw this Super Bowl, and it was he saw the rise of the team, he saw the win every single week, right to the Super Bowl, and then they won.
4:04
And it was so enthralling for the kid, it locked him in as a Giants fan, as a football fan.
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It was amazing.
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And then the next year, they didn't repeat.
4:13
And then the year after that they didn't repeat, and they got worse and worse and worse, and until it got to the point where it kind of is now where, you know, they can they can snatch defeat out of the jaws of a victory very easily.
4:23
Uh, you know, fourth quarter, I think they've lost four major games in the fourth quarter when they had a lead and they they blew it each and every time.
4:30
Uh we had excitement this year as a Giants fan.
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And I know for you people in the rest of the cities that you have your own teams.
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I'm talking about the Giants about sports, so hang with me.
4:39
We had this exciting new quarterback.
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He got injured.
4:42
We had an amazing new running back, um, this guy Scattaboo.
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I just like saying his name, Cam Scadaboo, Skedaboo.
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What a unbelievable ball player this kid was.
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And he's out, he may his career might even be over.
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I hope not, but it took a vicious injury.
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But I remember, you know, what what happens here?
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And Jack says to me, Dad, after all these years, how come, you know, it's I love the Giants, but man, they're never they're never in it anymore.
5:06
And I said, Well, Jack, let me let me let you in on a secret.
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It's a secret about the Giants, uh, but it has a bigger picture to it.
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He says, What's that, Dad?
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I said, you know, the greatest moment for every Giants fan in the world, do you know the greatest moment is every year?
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And he says, No, what is it?
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I said, Well, it's the minute right before opening day kickoff.
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In that minute before they start the season and kick off the ball and start the games, the Giants can be world champions.
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They can dominate on the field.
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They can have an oppressive offense and defense and smother their opponents and give us tremendous victories that we're all cheering about and loving going and watching every game.
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And then they kick the ball, and it's pretty much over after that for the rest of the season.
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That's unfortunate.
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That's unfortunate for for my Giants right now.
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Maybe they'll come back in the future, but it's uh it's not easy to be a fan when your team is constantly suffering.
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So good thing I happen to like uh the Chiefs, you know, they're having trouble, they were great for a while, and I like the Bills, they're amazing, lots of different things.
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But sports in general.
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What is it about sports that brings us together?
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It what is it about it's uh it's a multi-billion dollar industry.
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So, Barry, are you sports guy?
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I am.
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Die Hard Yankee fan and die hard giant fan.
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And what's when you say die hard, what does that mean?
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So, ever since I could hold a football or hold a baseball, uh, they were always my favorite team.
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Uh probably because my parents, my father, my grandfather, um indoctrinated me into baseball and football.
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So it kind of was a social and cultural thing in my family growing up.
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Um and I've just I've just been a fan ever since.
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Yep, it is amazing.
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How about you, Jack?
6:57
Uh I I'm a little bit different because I'm a motorsports fan.
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It's a totally different thing.
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Whereas I played football, I played little league when I was a kid.
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It never really enthralled me so much as motorsports did.
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I started out mini-bike, mini motorcycle racing when I was nine years old, and the thrill of the individual victory.
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No one was there with me on that motorcycle.
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I had no team.
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I was there by myself, and when I won, I won.
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The team didn't win, which there's nothing wrong with that.
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But on a personal level, the excitement that you feel go through your body when you have an individual win that you did by yourself.
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It's quite different than a team victory.
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And and that's what drove you.
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That drives me to this day.
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It drives me to this day.
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Uh I have a motorcycle race coming up this Saturday, and I cannot wait for that feeling when I line up on that line right before it begins, because I could still be a winner, as you said, and much like the Giants.
7:59
I could still be a winner, and as soon as that gate drops, usually it goes a little haywire for me at my age, but uh I try to keep it together.
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I've had some victories this season, last season I finished second in my age group.
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This season, not so much.
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But uh I always look forward to it.
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I look forward to the individual victories.
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I enjoyed my team sports.
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I enjoyed putting my boy in team sports also.
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My son played team sports.
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And uh it's a building block.
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It's more of I think it's more of a social than it is uh uh learning for personal.
8:36
He raced go-karts with me, and he had some personal victories, and I think he enjoyed them much better because although there was nobody there necessarily except for me to share it with, he was proud of himself.
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And and there's a big difference.
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Now I find that interesting because you shared that with your son, right?
8:56
And and one of the things that we do as parents is we share these sports, like I was telling the story with Jack.
9:01
All my boys and my daughter.
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We we all enjoyed sports in a different way.
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And it does bring us together with our kids.
9:08
Uh but I gotta tell you, I gotta be honest with you.
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Uh, you know, I'm down the road.
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I raised my family, and I loved my children more than anything in the whole world.
9:16
But I gotta tell you, if I had to go back and do T-ball all over again, I think I would jump out a window.
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I mean, you know, the the whole idea of, you know, the these little kids, they're adorable.
9:26
And I coached, uh, and I did all of that.
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But T-ball is tough.
9:30
I was assistant coach for nine years for my son's soccer.
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And now when the boys get together, of course, they're all 30 years old now.
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But when they do see each other and they see the and I see them, they talk about who spilled the pizza and what place did we get ice cream from?
9:49
And I'm like, wait a minute, man, you guys went to the regionals and you guys were fantastic, and do you remember this play and that play?
9:56
No, but when Frankie's pizza fell off the table and then
10:00
John came by and stepped in it, slipped and hit Homero.
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It was insane.
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We loved it.
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And I was like, oh my God, nine years of coaching soccer, and we're going to talk about the pizza party.
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Well, I find that interesting because, you know, like I said, I did coach.
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That's where the social comes in.
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That's the social part of it.
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The connection, right?
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To the kids, to the sport, to each other, to the teams.
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Yeah.
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When my my kids got into soccer.
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Now, soccer for me as a young person.
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I was football, and I love football.
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I played football all the time.
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Baseball, I tried it.
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I wasn't that good at baseball.
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And I found that it was too slow for me.
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So then I tried basketball.
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I signed up for basketball.
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And I remember we I was at the church league over here, and I'm out there, and believe it or not, uh it's not football.
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You know, it there's a lot of activity and a lot of physicalness in basketball.
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It's not the same as football.
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You don't tackle people.
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Well, I didn't really quite understand that.
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And uh I got fouled out before the game even started one time because I got into an argument with the other team.
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It started, you know, it was it was stupid.
11:01
But the closest sport I could find that I could actually enjoy was hockey.
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Because hockey is a little bit like football.
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Unfortunately, it is ridiculously expensive, and you have to really be able to skate well.
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And I could skate okay, but I couldn't skate like some of these kids.
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So that that was tough.
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Uh so soccer was like at the very end of my kid sports career, and I played it for a season or two.
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And again, I wasn't that good at it, and it wasn't that exciting to me.
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But my kids all played it.
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It became a very popular sport soccer.
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Uh, you know, I think there was this whole movement that parents didn't want kids playing football uh because you could get really hurt seriously for life, you can get concussions.
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Hockey, again, it cuts a lot of people out because it's so expensive.
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Soccer, you go out there, you run around chase chase a ball.
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And they needed a coach.
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So I said, you know what?
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I'll coach my kid.
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I don't know much about it.
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So I got a book.
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I learned a little bit about soccer.
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And these boys were, I don't know, 11 years old, and we go out there, and I uh my my goal as being a coach was to say to everybody, including the parents, hey, listen, um, I understand if you think your kid's a superstar and you want your kid to do a certain thing.
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That's not how we're gonna do this.
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Everyone's gonna play every position.
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You know, everyone's gonna have fun, and at the end of our 10 weeks, we're gonna have a great pizza party, and hopefully nobody slips in it, uh, you know, Jack.
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Um but we're gonna know a little bit more about soccer than we know now, but we're gonna have a good time together.
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And I was shocked when one of these parents came up to me and said, uh, hey coach, man, that was that's great, man.
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I'm so glad it's refreshing to see somebody want to coach like that.
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But my son Johnny, oh, this kid's an unbelievable foot right forward, and you know, he's gonna get a soccer goal.
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He's gonna be in college, you know, he really should.
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If you put him there, you win every game.
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I said, Wow, you know, that's awesome.
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I'm sure he'll he's gonna play that position, especially if he's that good, you know.
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I said, but uh, he's also gonna play goalie.
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He's gonna play defense, and he's gonna play Yeah, but he's he's a right forward, and that's that's it.
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I know.
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Uh and then I announced to all the parents, I will not be offended if you want to take your kid off my team.
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But I'm telling you, the kid who can't run very well, he's gonna be a forward.
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And the kid who's uncoordinated, he's gonna be a goalie.
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And everyone's gonna play every position.
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And the parents all appreciated that guy actually left and went to another team, and I didn't mind.
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I told him, go go take your kid where you're gonna go.
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But the last part of that story with soccer is I I wanted the voice to have ownership.
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And we were to we had yellow shirts, right?
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We had these yellow golden shirts.
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And I said, hey, we need a name.
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We can't just be the gold team.
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You know, that's that's not what you what do you guys want to call yourself?
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I said, You go over there, you guys talk it out, come back and tell me.
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And they come back and say, we have a problem.
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Uh half the guys want to be the golden sailors, and half the other guys want to be the cranky fieldmen.
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And I'm like, cranky fieldman, what the hell is that?
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And we like it, it sounds like and gold, go back over there and figure something.
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They come back and they go, All right, we got a name.
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We're all set now.
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I said, What's the name?
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The golden cranky sailors.
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That was their name.
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The golden cranky sailors.
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I think we won three games out of the ten.
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But those boys, Jack, they still see each other now, and they're in their mid-30s, and they see each other and they remember the golden cranky sailors.
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At the end of that year, every one of those kids wanted to come back to the team, and I'm like, oh, I thought someone else will be the coach.
14:21
Well, okay, I'll be the coach again.
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The golden cranky sailors.
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The problem with that, not to get off on a tangent, but the problem with nine years of coaching soccer was you couldn't believe how many parents were there to get their kid a college scholarship when they were 12.
14:36
Yes, absolutely.
14:37
Yeah, I I I played sports uh when I was younger through high school.
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Um baseball, football, I was involved in martial arts for over 15 years.
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Uh and yeah, I I actually coached my daughters for four years playing soccer, and Joe, like you said, uh the key is to get the kids involved.
15:00
I got them at the age of five years old.
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I started with them with my daughters and uh the town I was living in, needed a soccer coach.
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So I said, Well, I played.
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I I I've got some skills, I can teach these kids.
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Uh, and I had the same issue.
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Parents came out, and I told them first day of practice.
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I said, your kids will play every position.
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If you have a position that you feel they're good at, let me know.
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We'll give them a try out there as well, too.
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But the key was getting them out on the field and getting them to play.
15:31
I I'll never forget I had one little girl.
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Uh her mother came up to me during our first game, or before our first game, when I had them out on the field doing some drills, and she said, My daughter's afraid to come on the field.
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I said, It's not just your daughter.
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I said, There's probably five other kids on this team that are afraid to come on the field.
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I said, but that's half the battle.
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If she comes out on the field for two minutes, that's all I need.
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I don't care if she just stands there.
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I'll get her involved.
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And sure enough, halfway through the season, she was probably one of my best players.
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I ended up coaching her for four years.
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That's great.
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That's really awesome.
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You know, when I look back and I think I think we've all mentioned it, you know, parents being involved.
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And uh my wife Kathleen used to have a uh a name that she gave these coaches because we all have seen these coaches that treat these nine, 10, 11, 12, 13-year-olds like this is the end of the world.
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You gotta be the best.
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You're gonna be the she's just called them the Satin Jacket Squad.
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These were the guys that just wanted to win a championship, and they were living vicariously through the kids, and they push the kids and they push them and they're yelling and screaming at these kids that you know, nine and ten years old.
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Teach them fundamentals, right?
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Sports is supposed to be fun.
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When you get to high school, you have to make the team.
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I get it, college, you have to make the team pros, of course.
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The best of the best should be out there playing.
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But when they're little, I I just was shocked by some of these parents the way they behaved and the things that they did.
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But uh it was interesting.
16:57
Now, I'll tell you, my daughter, difference between boys and girls.
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And guess what?
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There is a difference between boys and girls.
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Um, my daughter, she wanted to play soccer because her brothers played, so I said, okay, I'll coach.
17:06
And I think six years old, maybe they were six or seven little little girls, absolutely adorable.
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Nothing more adorable in the world than a little girl.
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She's just wonderful, these kids.
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And they're out there, and I'm trying to teach them, and they're at the age when they all follow the ball, no matter how much you tell them.
17:22
Wherever the ball goes, you know, how many, what many people are out there, Barry?
17:25
10?
17:25
10.
17:25
10.
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So 20 kids all following the ball all over the field.
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You know, nobody's playing their positions or whatever.
17:31
And I did find it adorable.
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But it's one game they're playing, and the one girl kicks the ball pretty far, and here they go.
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Boom, 20 of them go running after the ball, and then they all stop.
17:40
They all stop out in the middle of the field as the game is playing, and they're huddled around.
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And I'm thinking somebody must have felt one of the girls must have felt down, got hurt, stepped in a gopher hole or something.
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So I'm going running, and I here's my daughter standing going, Dad, come out of here, come out of here, and go, Coach Joe, coach Joe, come here.
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And I'm running thinking, and I get there, and I don't see anybody laying down.
17:59
They're like, look at the butterflies.
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There was three butterflies in the field, and they were sitting on the ground, and these girls were mesmerized.
18:08
It was pretty beautiful.
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It really was pretty beautiful butterflies.
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But these girls, I said, girls, there's a game going on.
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Go find the ball.
18:15
Well, don't let the butterflies get hurt.
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I guess it was it was absolutely adorable.
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But it did.
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It got them involved in things, doing something more.
18:22
They learned teamwork.
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They learned how to work as a team, they learned fundamentals.
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And as we we have this this conversation about sports and its value, we start to see, aren't these the lessons of of life?
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Aren't they taught in sports?
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Don't we see that in our sports?
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That, you know, you have to work together, right?
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You have to know everybody else's value.
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How do you help someone be better?
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Are you a satin jacket coach?
18:50
Would you yell and you think people are gonna get better?
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You are the worst I ever seen.
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You're never gonna play, you're never gonna do it.
18:56
Right?
18:56
Is that really gonna have someone go, you know, I'm gonna play better now, or does that really slow somebody down?
19:02
What do you think, Barry?
19:03
Yeah, so I I agree with that.
19:05
I you know, it's more than the score, the game, the trophies at the end of the season.
19:11
You're learning, especially at those those younger years, like you said, with the fundamentals, developing the fundamentals.
19:18
You're learning life skills, and you don't even realize it.
19:22
You are getting involved in in learning number one discipline, um, work ethic, showing up to practice, putting in the the energy to to make it through practice, learning the drills so that you can do them in the game.
19:37
Um you learn resilience, you learn how to how to handle failure.
19:42
If you're not good, you you you work on getting better.
19:46
So uh and you become stronger through it.
19:50
Um there's so many different things.
19:52
I I mean I could probably name about 20 of them if you want.
19:55
Right.
19:55
Uh but it's also social, too.
19:58
You learn how to be a
20:00
A leader.
20:00
Uh, you may be an elected leader, captain of the team, you may be elected captain because you're good, or you may not be elected the captain, but you may be a leader on the team just because of your presence and the way you're lifting everybody up around you.
20:14
These are skills that we need later on in life.
20:17
Right.
20:17
And I think that, and that's where sports starts to blend over into life.
20:22
You're right.
20:23
People do learn to be a leader.
20:24
You learn to get along with people that you don't know.
20:27
Uh, you learn to get along with, you know, the kid who's on the team that you don't really know in school.
20:31
Maybe the kid is shy or kids goofy, but now he's on your team, and you can either rise as a leader and be a good leader and help that kid to be better.
20:40
He's on your team.
20:41
You know, you get that that unity of the team.
20:43
I think of the movie The Sand Lot all the time.
20:46
Right.
20:46
Really funny movie.
20:47
Uh, all the kids, you know, all this disparate group of kids, and then they all get together and they become a team.
20:53
Or the bad news bears.
20:54
Bad news bears.
20:55
Now all of these kids were Waltham Athletic movie.
20:59
They were all these different kinds of kids, cool kids, not kids, fat kids, skinny kids, uh, all different races, and they came together as a team, right?
21:07
And they learn those life skills.
21:10
I played sports, as probably you guys did before everybody got a trophy.
21:16
I played sports in a time where you either won first place or second place.
21:20
And in some sports, maybe third place.
21:22
And that's it.
21:23
And you got a trophy, commiserate with where you finished and and how you finished, how good you were.
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And if you lost, you lost.
21:30
You didn't get a trophy just so that everyone feels good.
21:33
No, you worked hard to get that trophy.
21:35
And if you got it, it felt great.
21:36
If you didn't, you either said, Well, I'm not gonna play no more, or you said, next year I'm gonna get a trophy.
21:42
Especially in in motor sports, uh, good example.
21:46
Go-kart racing.
21:48
Now, the boys and the girls will make friends in the pits before and after the races, or they'll talk about what happened during the race.
21:56
And you know what?
21:57
They're always going to pick out somebody who doesn't drive well, drives evil, is the bad guy.
22:02
You gotta have a bad guy, gotta have a good guy.
22:05
And uh, you know, I saw my son get behind this kid Sam.
22:11
Uh, my son had a bad corner coming out.
22:14
The checkered flag was out.
22:15
So instead of trying to get around Sam, which you didn't think was going to happen, which was correct, he got behind Sam, rammed his bumper, kept it floored, and pushed Sam so Ron didn't win.
22:27
And Ron was a bad kid.
22:29
And he cheated like mad and he drove like garbage.
22:33
And you know what?
22:34
The social skills came on a personal to personal level, person to person, instead of, you know, 15 guys on a team.
22:44
It was, hey man, I'm not gonna forget that.
22:47
And if I get a chance to help you out, if somebody's trying to spin you, I'm on them.
22:52
If you need to get across the finish line, I'm behind you.
22:55
I won't spin you out, I won't take you out, I won't forget.
22:59
And you know what?
23:00
Uh for individuals in this world, as we all know as adults, somebody's gotta have your back.
23:05
And in no place other than motorsports are you gonna get that one-on-one.
23:11
I got your back.
23:12
And you know, that's really amazing.
23:13
When I think about those kind of things, we've all seen these videos of these runners, these long distance runners, or maybe they're in uh, you know, I don't know all the distance, but you got marathons, which is miles, and you got other races where they go around the track 50 times or whatever.
23:29
And we've all seen where there's uh heavy competition, right?
23:32
There's heavy competition here, and then almost at the end, the leader has some kind of problem.
23:37
The guy or the girl who's been leading the race the whole way, their muscles just give out in that last, you know, 300 yards, they go to the finish line and they they they fall down, their legs just can't take it anymore.
23:49
And you watch, and in some instances you'll see people who were behind that person catch up and go right past them.
23:56
And then you see, I don't know what you would call them, real heroes.
24:00
You see someone run up to them that was in a position, could have won, and they stop, help this person up to get across the finish line.
24:09
Isn't that a life lesson?
24:10
And you know what?
24:11
Absolutely in those particular races, and we've all seen them in marathons and what have you, local or national.
24:18
Uh a lot of times we don't remember the winner's name.
24:21
But we do remember those two people who came along and carry that person across the finish line because they deserved to finish.
24:28
Absolutely.
24:28
And you know, I I just real quick before we get off the subject or or run out of time here.
24:34
I got a little test for everybody.
24:36
I give it to everyone when they wonder about different sports.
24:39
Uh I keep saying everybody wants the Coliseum back.
24:43
So I'll give you a little test.
24:44
Downtown, your town, our town, wherever.
24:48
There's going to be a $20 ticket.
24:50
One for one fella and one for another fella.
24:53
The fella number one is going to be going between two buildings in your downtown.
24:56
And he's going to be five stories off the ground.
24:58
He's going to walk walk a tight wire with no net.
25:01
It's $20 to go see him.
25:04
About an hour later, there's going to be another person walking a tight wire between the two same buildings, five feet off the ground with a net.
25:10
Who are you going to pay 20 bucks to see?
25:13
Think about it.
25:14
Did you know that about yourself?
25:16
That's why we want the Coliseum back.
25:18
That's why bare knuckle fighting is coming back.
25:20
That's why the UFC is more popular in boxing.
25:23
Think about that.
25:24
As far along the evolutionary chain as we believe ourselves to be, we'll still be enthralled by that bare knuckle fight.
25:32
We'll still be enthralled by that guy walking the tight wire who could lose his life with one little slip.
25:37
Rather than waste our time watching somebody walk on a tight wire with a net under them.
25:42
Think about that.
25:43
Did you know that about yourself?
25:44
Well, I'm telling you, as you're giving those examples, I'm sitting here going, is this a trick question?
25:49
Because I think I would watch the guy, you know, 20 feet off the ground, because if he falls, he has a lot to lose.
25:55
There's a lot more tension, a lot more dynamics in that than someone who's really balanced good, really good balance, five feet off the game.
26:04
Yeah, it absolutely is.
26:05
And I and again, this goes this dovetails.
26:07
Thank you for making the host's point is that sports is this universal thing that we feel and we see as a people.
26:16
And when you say the Coliseum, I I went there a couple of years ago, and I was there in the tunnels where the uh where the gladiators were, and I learned all the truth about the gladiators.
26:25
You know, it wasn't as you know, thumbs up and thumbs down as we think it was.
26:28
Uh, but there was some of that.
26:30
But the reality, Jack, is you're right.
26:31
What would we do as a person?
26:33
And to you, the audience, what would you do?
26:35
I would pick the guy who could put himself in danger.
26:37
What about you, Barry?
26:38
Absolutely.
26:39
I I think it's just the way we are wired uh to uh you go back to Roman times in the Coliseum.
26:48
That's what we wanted to see, and that's still what we want to say.
26:50
You mentioned UFC, Jack.
26:51
Yeah.
26:52
So And all the and all the posters that we used to see in the 50s or 60s, uh regardless of how old you are.
26:59
The older posters always used to say thrills, chills, and death defying.
27:04
Even when it came to NASCAR races, when it came to motorcycle races, they were defying death.
27:09
And you know what?
27:10
And we're gonna we have to jump off here for uh for a couple of seconds here, take a little break.
27:14
But I'm gonna say a name that's gonna rekindle a lot of good spirits just when you think about that.
27:19
And it's in your world, Jack.
27:21
Evil can evil.
27:23
Didn't we want to see him jump those 40 buses?
27:26
I love him.
27:27
And didn't we also wonder was he gonna live through this jump that was always part of why did you watch?
27:34
Think about yourself.
27:35
Of course, I know.
27:36
I get it.
27:36
All right, everybody, we'll be back in a minute.
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30:24
Hey everybody, welcome back to the human equation.
30:27
I'm here with my good buddy Jack and Barry, the panel, as we call them.
30:31
So we're talking about sports, and you know, uh on the break, you know, we talk about stuff that goes on, and sometimes the conversations are fun.
30:39
Like I started out the whole idea of this this episode to talk about where sports are in our life and and what does it mean and why do we go?
30:46
And I think Jack ended it excellently by talking about the gladiators and showing up at the at the stadium.
30:52
Why do we do that?
30:53
Why do we like evil canival?
30:55
Uh why do these things happen?
30:57
And I think that is a connection directly to the whole idea of it, it's a visual sport.
31:04
It's these sports are visual, and we were talking about, you know, injuries and what can happen.
31:09
I remember, and you guys probably do too.
31:11
I came from a time before there was, you know, participation trophies, but I also came from a time when we were playing football and we were in a Pee-Wee League, and I remember the coach, they would teach us to a tackling a tackling uh technique was to put the center of your forehead into the chest of the guy in front of you and grab him.
31:32
Well, you know how many neck injuries that resulted in to finally they had to teach you put your head on one side or the other.
31:38
And then we we're starting to get all even in the NFL.
31:40
We have all these different rules to protect.
31:42
Somebody jumps up to catch a ball, and they are, what do they call them?
31:45
Uh they're helpless, defenseless.
31:47
They're defenseless when they're up there and you go head to head, or hitting the quarterback, head to head, the quarterback.
31:52
Used to be you could you could sp uh splash the quarterback and he would drop the ball.
31:56
Now, if he slides, you can't touch him for safety.
31:59
Um all of these things because serious injuries have come out of it.
32:04
Uh and we all know somebody who got injured back in the day.
32:07
I remember there was a kid in was it high school or eighth grade football I was in.
32:12
And this kid was like uh he was the big time quarterback for the other team, and we were scrimmaging together, and I didn't like this kid, you know, but I never took that I didn't like him to hurt him.
32:22
I would never consider hurting somebody on a sports field.
32:25
But he he broke away, and I was a linebacker and I swung around and I had a shot at this kid, and I took the best shot I could, broke his collarbone.
32:35
I mean, it was a great hit.
32:36
It sounded great, it looked great, everybody, and but then the kid couldn't get up, and his collarbone was broken.
32:42
And I felt bad.
32:43
Like I didn't mean to break his, even if I didn't like him.
32:46
I didn't mean to break his collarbone.
32:47
It was just, and that's why we have all these things in sports to try and try and keep us safe.
32:52
So uh I I know, you know, now Jack, because you like motor sports, you know, somebody might call you rock and roll race car, Jack, but I don't know.
33:00
I've heard that name come out once in a while.
33:02
I remember Jack uh was into all these motorcycles and dirt bikes.
33:06
And when I was a kid, I was into motorcycles and dirt bikes.
33:09
Um and I uh as I got older and I started having a family, I said, you know what?
33:13
Jack goes riding with with his buddies, man, all the time.
33:16
As as a hobby, maybe I'll get a bike.
33:18
So I found a used bike, and I I hook up with Jack and he takes me out to all these crazy places, and we were having fun.
33:25
Well, uh one time, and I'll tell you this is crazy, it was this huge field.
33:30
We came out of the woods and it was this huge sand field.
33:33
And this guy over here, Jack, is just a madman.
33:37
He goes a hundred miles an hour with his hair on fire, and he doesn't he doesn't flinch.
33:42
Well, he's ahead of me, and we are going as fast as these bikes could take us.
33:46
And you know, he had a 600, I had a 400.
33:48
I had the uh desert dueler, the uh KT or 465 IT.
33:52
Yes, the IT, the indoor the Yamaha uh IT killer.
33:56
And I am blasting as fast as this thing can take me, but I can't see a thing in front of me because there's so much dust coming up from Jack's bike, who's ahead of me, and I'm saying, you know what?
34:06
I saw the field before we got out of here, I'm just blasting, I'll catch up to him.
34:10
Well, at some point, I didn't realize all of a sudden it starts to clear because Jack had been going straight, and then he got to the 150-foot drop and he went left around the rim of the crater, so to speak, and as that dust cleared, I was about 40 feet from the rim of the clerk crater, and I saw Jack going left and I saw that drop, and I don't know how I made that turn, but it was to save my life.
34:33
I just turned and I almost went over it, and I'm telling you, when I say 150 feet, it was 150 feet to the bottom of this thing.
34:40
Uh I would have been very severely injured if not killed.
34:43
And Jack says, hey, you took a good turn.
34:47
That was a good turn.
34:48
You're really alive now, my friend.
34:51
Well, I tell you, it was thrilling.
34:52
It really was.
34:54
Um, but you've been injured a lot of times with your sports, right?
34:57
Yeah.
34:58
Uh I carrying steel.
35:00
Um, carrying a lot of uh a lot of bone matter that shouldn't be in my body, carrying some pieces of steel holding me together.
35:09
But uh it's it's a habit I can't break.
35:11
It's a it's a thrill I can't live, uh, can't live without.
35:14
Right.
35:15
And uh Yeah, uh unfortunately I've seen a lot of people get hurt very badly, and uh it's part of the game, it's part of the deal.
35:23
I guess.
35:24
And it's part of the payment.
35:25
Now, Barry, are you a street bike guy at all?
35:27
No.
35:28
I thought I my father was a street bike guy, and I thought I'd be a street bike guy, but I never got around to buying one, and then I got married and started having kids, and I didn't have time for a street bike.
35:38
I mean, you know, when you have kids, you know, uh I'm I'm I was not that kind of guy that had like 87 hobbies and on a weekend I I spent time with my kids uh with my wife, and I knew other people like, hey, I golf, so they golf all weekend.
35:51
Well, you're supposed to be with your kids, I guess, you know, but whatever.
35:54
I never did that.
35:55
But Jack, again, he was a street bike guy, and he comes in one day.
35:58
I'm gonna take your I got this V Max.
36:00
I get this thing, it's 9,000 horsepowers, it has a rocket engine on it.
36:04
You want to go for a ride?
36:05
And I'm like, sure, sure, Jack.
36:07
I get on the back of this thing, and it had been raining and with the roads were wet.
36:12
And I think, I trust my friend Jack implicitly.
36:15
Well, he takes off on this thing like it had the rocket blasting a thousand mile.
36:19
We're going up on the road, and we're here, and he goes, hang on, he pulls it next to the front wheel, comes up off the ground, and I'm on the back going, I have a career, I have a family.
36:27
It was absolutely it's just what I couldn't hear you at that time.
36:30
I'm sorry, I couldn't.
36:32
I know.
36:32
It was either my screaming or the lightness of the bike.
36:35
So one of the things I mentioned, and I guess inevitably we have to get around to this.
36:39
And I think it's I said there's no politics in sports.
36:43
Is that true anymore?
36:44
No, not necessarily.
36:45
I can tell you in the racing world, um, even though I'm a racer myself, I'm not a Nash car guy.
36:51
Uh due to the fact that the uh well, you know what?
36:54
For for lack of a better terminology, the good old boy days are over where they settled things in the pits, man to man, and they took care of business.
37:03
Um it is totally politicized within itself.
37:09
Uh there's so many rules, and there's so there's so much repression in the sport as far as back in the day.
37:19
If a guy was very, very intelligent when it came to engineering, he could do something to the car that was in the gray area of the rule book.
37:27
And you know what?
37:29
Those people are revered to this day for exploring those gray areas and for being intelligent enough to come up with ways to cheat that was not yet cheating.
37:40
To be an innovator.
37:41
To be an innovator, to be an engineer, to be on the sly, to give their man the advantage.
37:47
Uh, you know, and that's a thing that's gone by the wayside because the rule book is written in such a way, and the inspections are done in such a way that there is just very, very, very little room for any innovation whatsoever.
38:01
And the sport was built on innovation, and it was built on personalities, and it was built on different types of cars doing different things, and now of course, the name of the game is to equalize all of the vehicles so that only the driver would would stand out.
38:18
Uh, and of course the pit crews who do uh uh a fast turnaround on the car when it comes in to get new tires and gasoline and what have you.
38:25
But uh it is so heavily politicized right now.
38:28
Uh they're actually being sued by one of the major car owners at this time, RCR Racing has instituted a lawsuit against NASCAR, and I just say, you know, this is no longer a bunch of people, men and women getting together to enjoy themselves to race cars.
38:46
It's big business and big politics internally, and it just has ruined the sport.
38:51
And and I think like anything that that's probably true.
38:53
Now, as a quick aside, for people don't know that NASCAR actually started by moonshine runners back in the day.
38:58
That's where they would run away from the revenuers uh and they turned it into a sport.
39:02
The politics I'm talking about, and Barry, I would I want you to uh to to think about this for a second.
39:07
When I say politics, I'm talking not within itself.
39:11
I'm talking in the bigger world.
39:12
Has the bigger world found its way into sports?
39:16
I think it absolutely has.
39:18
The whole controversy over having trans athletes having biological men compete against women has become, for a period of time, it became if you didn't believe that that was okay, you were somehow bigoted.
39:33
You were somehow had a of a hate a hater.
39:35
You were some kind of a person that just uh should be shunned.
39:39
And I think the pendulum's going the other way, saying, listen, I get it.
39:42
Uh I understand, you know, there are people that are there are men that think they're women and they really believe that, and that's how they want to live their life, but that doesn't mean that they should be competing with biological females.
39:53
You're gonna hurt them.
39:54
You're gonna take a we've seen it.
39:56
They take away the trophies, they take away the opportunities, they take away everything.
40:00
Because the male body is built different than the female body.
40:04
And the men, even if they they feel they're a woman, have an advantage that is not about being the best.
40:10
It's about having a better body mechanically, speed-wise, muscle-wise, to win the sport.
40:17
Do you find that out there?
40:20
Yes, absolutely.
40:21
When you had said the first question about sports being coming pol uh political, that's the first thing I thought of transgendered athletes now.
40:31
You know, you look at Bruce Jenner when he won the decathlon now, Kylie Jenner, uh what what would you do back then in the 1970s when that was occurring.
40:45
And he would he, if he said, Well, I feel like I'm a woman and I want to compete in women's sports, that would have never been allowed.
40:52
Would have seen it's been an absurdity.
40:54
Uh I uh just want to interject one more uh into the fire.
40:59
I believe it became very, very politicized and very, of course, polarized, should should I should say, uh, when Koepernik took a knee.
41:09
I mean, we became for it and against it, and nothing in between.
41:14
And it really was a, I think, a big social and mental downturn for sports in general.
41:21
Well, you'd have to look, and that was where I was going next.
41:24
Uh, you know, when we look at this uh the whole thing with the NFL.
41:28
The NFL, you know, change it, putting on the back of their helmets.
41:31
Hey, I get it.
41:32
They want to say inspirational things, and racism is bad.
41:35
I get it.
41:36
But to come out and and turn the whole league where the the players wouldn't they wouldn't stand for the national anthem.
41:44
Now all of a sudden it became totally politicized.
41:47
America is bad, America is racist, and we're going to basically thumb our nose at America.
41:52
And again, if you didn't think that was good, well then you must be a racist.
41:57
And we we kind of lost our minds here for a while.
42:00
Common sense is is not that common, and we were overtaken by the politics of all of this.
42:06
And it is starting to come back down.
42:07
Every once in a while you'll see on in an end zone somewhere, you know, it it takes a village or you know, one of the slogans that were on everybody's helmets.
42:15
But you don't see them on the helmets anymore.
42:17
They've kind of disappeared.
42:18
You'll see an everyone stand up for their country.
42:21
Uh if you don't like the way something's going, then we change it, right?
42:25
But we we don't have to go against the country, and that's what happened for a long time.
42:29
I think aside from being politicized, these a lot of these sports have also become commercialized.
42:35
Uh you look at soccer.
42:36
Soccer has been commercialized from the beginning.
42:39
They always had sponsors on their shirts.
42:42
Now, let's take the New York Yankees, go back to the beginning of the podcast, bring this full circle.
42:47
Would George Steinbrenner had ever allowed a Nike logo or an insurance uh logo on their uniforms?
42:55
Absolutely not.
42:57
But they're getting big money from these companies for this stuff now.
43:00
Even with the even with the sports gambling now.
43:03
It's so not only is it politicized, but it's also become commercialized as well.
43:08
Much in in my realm, uh once again, NASCAR, which I no longer watch, multi-car teams.
43:15
They do what is necessary for that team to win the race.
43:18
Racing is not a team sport, sorry, not a team sport.
43:22
We don't we don't push the other driver's car across the finish line because uh he's on our team.
43:28
And I it's another thing that's really taken a shot for for NASCAR.
43:34
It's really with NASCAR, though, too, and these teams that you're talking about now, they do do that stuff.
43:40
They even block for their teammates now so that no other vehicles can examine.
43:44
Exactly, exactly.
43:45
And it and it takes from the sport.
43:47
I mean, it just takes from the sport.
43:49
If you've got a team playing soccer, and you've got a team within the team of three guys on the field that are going to do what's right for the three guys on the field, so the three guys on the field may score the goals or stop the goals, then you're no longer playing soccer.
44:04
You're no longer playing individual soccer players on the field.
44:07
Right.
44:07
Same thing with racing.
44:09
Now now wouldn't wouldn't the converse to that argument be the sport is evolving.
44:14
Uh we did they didn't throw the ball in football when it started.
44:17
There was no such thing as the pass until someday came up with it, and then they said, wait a minute, we allowed to do that.
44:22
And they said, it's the most thrilling part of the game now, the passing game.
44:26
So could it be that it's evolving from a single seat sport into a a bigger team sport?
44:33
No, because racing isn't individual sport.
44:36
It always has been, and it or should always be.
44:40
Uh motorcycle racing, you won't see that.
44:42
You won't see that.
44:43
You might see motor uh uh multiple motorcycles but from the same owner being fielded.
44:48
But the individuals on those motorcycles will pass you, will give you the bar, as they say, as they're going past you.
44:56
Uh but just as fast as anybody else would, because they're individual riders, they're out there for their individual goals for their motorcycle owner for their team owner, not for their team.
45:10
Interesting.
45:11
I I think back and I and I watch uh those motorcycle races.
45:14
You mentioned motorcycles, right?
45:15
I like the ones where they're going so fast and they get down on their knee when they go around the edge.
45:19
You wonder how the heck do people do that.
45:20
So they're dragging their shoulders now.
45:22
They drag a solid plastic puck that is mounted on their elbow and one mounted on their shoulder.
45:29
The lean angles have become so severe with the new tire technology that the Formula One motorcycles are actually dragging elbows and shoulders.
45:37
For me to drag an elbow or shoulder on my motorcycle, that's part of the crash.
45:42
Well, it it's it's funny that you say that, because everybody I know that's uh an adult motorcycle rider that maybe doesn't have your skills, regular rider, you know, my guy across the street's got a motorcycle.
45:53
Everybody I know that has one of the street bikes has dumped the street bike, been cut off, hit by a car, uh, and you know, I I know a couple people who died that way.
46:02
Uh but uh and other people just got injured, and you know, one of the things you see the response is, oh well, you know, I didn't get hurt that bad, I'll fix the bike, and other people they sell the bike immediately and say, that's it.
46:12
I I mean I almost got killed in this.
46:14
I was just trying to ride to the boardwalk and almost got wiped out by uh, you know, a guy in a Buick, and they they get off the bike.
46:21
Um it's it's a reality to, I guess, to the sport.
46:24
Like you said, it is part of the sport.
46:26
And it has many different reactions, just real quick.
46:29
Uh everybody's familiar with Queen Latifah, the rap star, movie star, what have you.
46:34
Her brother, that they're all from Newark, New Jersey, and her brother was killed in a in a vehicle accident.
46:39
He was on a motorcycle, belongs to a club called the Redliners, and the response to his death was the biggest ride the state of the state of New Jersey ever had in support of him.
46:51
So everybody rallied around him with the motorcycle instead of getting off the motorcycle.
46:56
So when when we look at, again, in the angle here of of sports in politics, um, and I I guess there's no way to get around the transgender issue.
47:05
We're seeing that this Riley Gaines, the swimmer.
47:07
Uh she she was hated when she first came out, but the the tide seems to have turned for her now, and we're seeing all these organizations uh come back to a little common sense.
47:17
And you know, for all you people sitting in your underwear taking notes about what I say, and you're trying to prove that I'm this or that.
47:24
I I have nothing against someone who who's transgendered, I could care less, you know, love who you're gonna love, doesn't bother me, do what you're gonna do.
47:31
Uh but the reality is, you know, I I I understand these pe these people must be very much in turmoil.
47:39
And I don't want anybody to be in turmoil.
47:41
But the reality is uh having women play in men's sports, you you see all the the men who are in there for the most part, they win all the first places.
47:49
There was just one the other day.
47:50
It was a transgendered woman, a guy, 300 and something pounds, won the woman's weight lifting championship by 200 pounds, you know.
47:59
No woman is ever going to be able to match that record because i it it's it's just not gonna happen, and that's unfair to to women and girls who were trying to play in sports.
48:08
You know, the whole thing about Title IX was to equalize women's sports and men's sports, so that colleges, you know, uh couldn't spend 40 million dollars on the on the football team and spend nothing uh on the girls lacrosse team.
48:22
That wasn't fair within the school.
48:24
Everyone's paying, you know, the tuition, and they want to make sure that it the girls had a fair shot at sports.
48:30
So they said you gotta do the right thing.
48:32
Well by allowing men to play in women's sports is destroying women's sports.
48:40
And and and I can see I could see the tide turning, and I understand I heard the other day the the Olympic committee came out and said they are no longer going to allow transgendered people of either side.
48:52
But you don't always see a lot of women who who think they're men going into the men's sport and dominating it.
48:58
You just don't see it.
48:59
It's really a one-way road is what we see.
49:01
But the Olympic committee set came out and said they're no longer going to do it, but they are considering having a um a third group of athletes compete, and that would be as uh and uh Riley Gaines was talking about it, and I think it would be uh transgenders could be in it, non-binary people, furries, you know, all these different groups that have these thoughts about who they are, they could all compete in that group.
49:25
And I think that's fair.
49:26
And if that's an opportunity for them to compete, I think that's great.
49:30
Absolutely.
49:30
You know, it we can be accommodating to people without changing everything else that's going on around us.
49:37
So it it's very interesting.
49:39
Politics has a way to to to bleed into everything, and it really it can destroy stuff.
49:44
Now, Barry, you brought up an interesting point.
49:47
There's a there's a saying out there, the slippery slope.
49:51
Now we talk about the slippery slope.
49:53
So the reason the slippery slope destroys things is because we usually have a set of rules, Jack, as you're talking about, rules for race.
50:00
This is how it goes.
50:01
And then as the rules change, sometimes when we mitigate our rules in any organization, but keeping it to sports, we mitigate our rules and we change uh the reason.
50:12
Now you see the new kickoff rule.
50:14
We're not kicking it off, running down the field and crushing the guy.
50:16
You have to wait until he catches the ball, all for safety.
50:20
And we see those kind of things happening.
50:22
But when we're seeing the changes in these in these sports, is that really for the good overall, or does it change the dynamic of it?
50:31
What do you think, Barry?
50:32
I believe it changes the dynamic of it.
50:35
I looking at football now, I still enjoy it.
50:38
But the rules from when I played to now have gotten so much, I guess, for lack of a better term, safer for the players where somebody watching football for the first time back in the 1960s and the 1970s versus somebody else watching it for the first time now.
51:01
If you transport them in the time machine, they'd be like that That's not the game I I I know.
51:05
Not the game I played, not the game I played either.
51:08
Exactly.
51:08
So it's it's changed, it's evolved.
51:11
Um I get it.
51:14
It's for the safety of the participants.
51:16
But listen, you played football, I played football, Jack races and raced where rules were not as strict as they were.
51:27
We were injured.
51:28
Uh we were talking before at the break.
51:31
I don't know how many concussions I probably had from martial arts or from football, uh, where you know you got hit and you're gonna be able to get the big bell was ringing in your head, right?
51:40
You got up and you I either continued in the in the bout or I got up and I was in the huddle next way, and you know, as long as my fingers worked and my toes were wiggling, we were good.
51:49
Imagine that they walk and wiggle your toes.
51:51
We can you see me?
51:53
How many fingers do you say?
51:54
Okay, get back in there.
51:55
Right, but now it's it's uh it's a lot safer.
51:57
Like you were saying before, you know, you you can't hit anybody with your helmet either in the head or or directly in the chest, where we always learn.
52:06
Keep your head up, and yeah, first hit them with the crown of the helmet, and then oh, you don't want to break your neck, go to the side.
52:12
Right.
52:12
Well, that that brings me to my my point, I guess, about the slippery slope when we change rules.
52:19
The idea of gambling on sports was something that now we've always had gambling.
52:24
We had illicit gambling.
52:26
That's been with us forever, and then we saw the rise after many, many years of the casinos.
52:31
You know, Las Vegas was always a separate world.
52:34
You had gambling in Las Vegas.
52:36
You also had legalized prostitution there.
52:38
Another uh another of the vices of humanity, uh, but it was legal there.
52:43
There was places you could go there that which it was it was regulated, but you had legal prostitution, you had legal gambling.
52:49
Then Atlantic City opened.
52:51
Now I just heard the other day in New York, in Queens, New York, they're gonna open two hard rock casino casinos in New York.
52:58
And now we have sports betting everywhere.
53:01
And what did we just see recently?
53:03
A scandal in was it basketball?
53:06
Basketball.
53:06
That a couple of the players were, I don't know, were they fixing games so that they come out a certain way, and now that's going into baseball.
53:13
Now they're looking at baseball.
53:15
So what you've done, you've taken, you've combined a couple of things.
53:18
You combined humanity, and you've combined the lure of money.
53:23
And hey, I'm involved in this, and if I do certain things or don't do certain things, I can end up with a lot of money.
53:31
So you start to look at the sport then, and that's when you say, okay, they allowed that because why did they allow it?
53:38
Because there was so much money going outside of the government that they said, you know what, we we have to uh we have to allow this because there's so much revenue.
53:47
So I it's funny you're saying that because as you were talking, I was thinking, I'm gonna slide into the into Jim Gio for a minute.
53:54
And if he was here today with us, he would probably say, Joe, you're absolutely right.
53:59
It's the government, they saw the money, they want the money, they're taking the money.
54:03
That's why they legalized it.
54:05
Well, yeah, you have to figure it has to be, it has to be a part of it.
54:09
Uh the conversation, what do we hear all the time about prostitution?
54:12
And and I mentioned that because they go hand in hand.
54:14
They're two vices that people are going to do anyway.
54:17
Uh, but they're but for morality reasons for the good of society, so we don't go down the slippery slope.
54:24
We regulate, we maintain, we don't allow certain things.
54:27
We allowed gambling on all these sports, and down the slippery slope we go, and next thing you know, there's a there's a uh scandal in so far two of our major sports.
54:37
Well, you know what?
54:37
Where there's smoke, there's fire.
54:39
The same things, uh, hockey players are just human beings, uh football players, uh lacrosse, but even the people that push the thing in the Olympics with the thing, uh the curling when they're curling.
54:49
They're sweeping the ice, right?
54:50
Who pushed it hard enough?
54:51
Did you push it hard enough, Jack?
54:53
Or did you just not so hard, Jack?
54:54
I got a bet on the other team.
54:56
You just push it a little less, I'll give you a little bit, right?
54:58
That's the slippery slope that, which I think really relates to human nature, right?
55:04
And what we're all about as people.
55:07
Will some people never ever cheat?
55:11
Yeah, there are some people that would never ever cheat, no matter what.
55:14
Um I could lose money on the game, but I'd rather the game be pure.
55:19
And I think that's what the whole idea of keeping gambling at was to keep the game pure.
55:23
College players that made millions of dollars for their universities, now they're semi-professional.
55:29
Now, is that correct?
55:31
Should it be correct?
55:32
Should those players who are making such millions of dollars for their school be compensated in some way?
55:38
Well, I I I'm kind of betwixt in between that because that's not gambling.
55:42
That's saying, hey, you're a really talented high school player.
55:45
If you come to our school, we're gonna give you a car, we're gonna give you money, which they've always done anyway.
55:51
They just put the car in mom's name, they put the cash in the brother-in-law's name, and the player got the money.
55:56
That this is this is the way of the world.
55:59
Uh, you know, we saw that even in high school sports around here.
56:02
We got somebody who is an amazing football player, and but the town they were in didn't have a talented football team.
56:08
So suddenly that kid gets transferred to a town that really needs an ace running back, and then our kids playing for that uh that town.
56:17
They allowed him to move and live out of district and come there.
56:20
Now now that's not fair to the to the kids that are playing the game, but it just goes to show that part of human nature.
56:26
People will always go down the slippery slope if there's some kind of value to them, and that's where I saw the gambling uh in the sports as being a problem.
56:35
Jack, is it a problem?
56:37
I think it's definitely a problem.
56:38
I mean but I I don't know the use of uh of speaking about it.
56:43
I mean, once again, the genie's out of the bottle.
56:46
Uh, this is something that Pete Rose was slapped down for hard and fast and not allowed rightfully in the Hall of Fame.
56:54
Uh and now it's going to be very, very prevalent.
56:57
And are they going to slap all these people down?
56:59
Is there not going to be anyone allowed in the Hall of Fame?
57:02
It's interesting you mentioned Pete Rose, because they did re-release that.
57:05
And they they're now they're gonna let him in.
57:06
But they they humiliated this man for something that I think lots of the lots of them did.
57:11
And he said he never bet.
57:13
Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.
57:14
But the reality is we see that um that sport really is a part of our human nature.
57:21
It's a part of who we are and what we're all what we are.
57:24
Uh it it it speaks to our uh our our animalistic self.
57:28
It ex it speaks to our getting together, it it speaks to us about teaching other people, and it is an amazing part of life.
57:38
And I wanted to bring up sports, and I want to thank the panel for being here.
57:42
Um we have more interesting things to talk about.
57:44
We'll be back soon.
57:46
Remember, be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.