The volume.
All right, hire everybody, welcome in. About once a month, my buddy Nick Wright stops by. We're going to talk about everything, including UFOs, where there are multiple reports that non human, non biological elements were captured. But first, my first job out of college was doing baseball play by play, So I used to read Baseball America. That was like a bible for me, and I spent a couple of years doing minor league baseball. Sport is now more international,
which is good. So is basketball, so is soccer in America. But you can lose track very quickly with global sports. If I stop covering the NBA within three years, you know, there'd be a third of the league that I didn't know. It's such a young league's so transitional, and baseball is like that. So whereas the NFL's a domestic product. If you watch college football, you could just drop in occasionally
to the NFL and keep track. And so that's one of the challenges of a global sport of you know, hockey, baseball, basketball, they're global. There's a lot of movement a lot out of the country. We don't watch the minor league system of those sports like we do college football to the NFL. The second big challenge with baseball is there's no urgency that regular season game simply on a nightly basis don't matter. And go to a restaurant and look around. People are
on their phones. Go to a store and look around. Go anywhere and look around. People are on their phones. They're distracted. We have a very distracted population. So you have to create urgency to get people's attention. NFL and college football World Cup Final four, this is where baseball really loses out. There's no urgency. I'll give you a
great example. Even though you think of the NFL as a seventeen game schedule from sixteen used to be fourteen, then sixteen, now seventeen, just think of how important Week one is in the NFL Buffalo and the Jets. Aaron Rodgers goes down and the Jets kind of get thumped. You have a different story now. Game two for the Jets, if you look at their first six games, is must win. Oh to two reduces your playoff chances significantly in the NFL.
Oh and three you're done. Owen four, it's impossible, basically, or if Buffalo loses based on last year's anemic ending against the Bengals, the Stefan Diggs drama and the Jets clobberum Buffalo. Sean McDermott. There's real heat in that building.
You know.
Another game, Cowboys at Giants. Mike McCarthy is the play caller. What if the Giants defense, already top ten in the league, hammers Dallas for three hours. They can't get anything going. Giants win ugly twenty seventeen. Dak doesn't have a good day, a lot of pressure, can't run the football. Kellen Moore's gone, Mike McCarthy is getting hammered. Many believe he's already on
the hot seat. So those I think one of the upsets in Week one potentially is Philadelphia going to Foxborough Shane Stike and the brilliant offensive coach left to take the Colt's job. We think Philadelphia is going to be great, but Bill O'Brien and Mack Jones, we don't know exactly what it's going to look like. One of the great defensive coordinators probably ever Bill Belichick against a new young offensive coordinator for Philadelphia. You just don't know. And suddenly
you look at Philadelphia from a different lens. Right, So I think one of the things that I really appreciated about the NFL, and I worried when they added a game. Do the game still matter? Week one is so big for the Jets and Bills, so big for Dallas and the New York Giants. So go back to last year, Russell Wilson in Denver, poor Seattle, Geno Smith, Nathaniel Hackett can't figure out the clock, utter chaos for the Broncos. Hackett from that point forward is hammered Seattle and Geno Smith.
Week one the victors in the trade. It never changed Seattle, Pete Carroll, Carol been clobbered by everybody, including myself in the media. Looks like a genius. All of a sudden, this young team with four or five great young draft picks is playing over their skis, and they rode that emotion to a great season. And the Broncos never recovered
and got massive heat starting in Week two. So you know, the truth is, when you have a sport as popular as the English Premier League or the NFL, narratives can add pressure to a building. Owen one Aaron Rodgers. Let's say, you know, we already question the Jets offensive line. The Bills have a great front seven tons of pressure. Aaron gets sacked three times, hurried twelve times, throws a pick under duress. I mean, now you've got Robert Sala. Aaron's
gonna get a little snippy. Potentially. O line was already the issue. You know, if New England and Buffalo win in Miami win, now you're in the cellar. It's what baseball so desperately needs. I've said this. I love that they added a pitch clock. I love they got rid of the defensive shift. Until you chop off thirty to forty games and create urgency, baseball will struggle with this. Regular season games don't matter in a very distracted population
in twenty twenty three. You've got to create urgency. If you don't, people don't watch. All right, we bring on Nick Wright. First things first is podcast What's Right with Nick Wright? So first of all, first of all.
I'm interrupting you. First of all, since you keep making fun of my hair, I pulled it back. I'm where I got a ponytail just for you, because you keep making fun of my hair on television. It's very hurtful. And I listened back to our previous podcast, which was the first one I had done with you while I was drinking. I drank a couple of glasses of wine while we were talking. I thought it was outstanding. So now I've upped it to a nice glass of Lobos tequila.
Shout out to our friends at Lobos. You're always drinking during these pods. I know that I know what a little sauce collin sounds like, so I figure this should be dynamite. But now go ahead.
Hey, I saw Oppenheim on Sunday night. Have you seen it yet?
So I have not. I'm I was trying to get someone in my family to go with me, but it's three hours long. No one will go with me, so I'm just gonna have to go by myself. But I want to see So I want to see Oppenheimer. And you know, my favorite movie trilogy multi series is Mission Impossible, the same. I haven't seen Mission Impossible yet either, because
I'm such a nerd. When I knew it was coming out, I had to rewatch the whole six leading up to it to really fully prepare until I finished that this weekend. So I know everyone was about doing a Barbie Oppenheimer double feature. I want to do a Mission Impossible Oppenheimer double feature and just be blacked out for seven hours be amazing.
Yeah, no, I'm the same way.
You know.
Tom Cruise is fascinating that he basically has saved theaters and now, I mean for about seven years. He's the last great movie star. And because of the scientology, a lot of people, my wife included, are just out just will not even consider talking about him. But he is really really interesting in that he's been very real about his beliefs on psychology and scientology, and that authentic belief has not at all hurt him in the theater. So
it's interesting. It's not hurting him at all. It hurts his reputation, but people could easily cancel or protest him, and many hate him. And my takeaway is if this is how popular he is with scientology, how popular would he be or is scientology like Twitter that story that it's like one percent of people that actually care about it?
Well, I think it also he this is going to sound I don't know, this might be bad. He was almost grandfathered in as call him an odd guy or four. People started getting really under the microscope for stuff, and so it would have it feels like if he would have come out with all of the things that we learned about him twenty years ago, eighteen months ago, and maybe could have gone really bad for him. But we've known this about Tom Cruise for so long nobody people
cared briefly and then didn't. And he is a such
a dynamite talent, and that I think people. I think people typically can separate the art from the artists to a degree like that, and then it's some there's different lines for different people and then there So for for a long time, I would have told you my favorite musician ever was Kanye Kanye, and there was a no you know, for a long time Kanye was odd or a little annoying or whatever, and then at some point he went to me six steps beyond the pale and
the art to me, the music got considerably worse, and I'm like, not, you know what I mean, I'm not worth it. Tom Cruise is still awesome in every movie he makes and has been like the same level of weird guy since I was a kid. It feels like, you know what I mean, for how long ago was he jumping on Oprah's couch twenty five years ago?
Yeah?
Uh? And so yeah, there I mean, there aren't very many movie stars like you know, Will Smith and Tom Cruise probably two biggest movie stars. Will Smith not exactly a normal fella up there punching people at the oscars like so, I don't know.
Well, it does prove that mostly the noise doesn't matter Cruise, and Cruise is the most criticized actor in Hollywood for his personal views has zero impact. And that and that you and I have discussed this. It really doesn't matter what people say about you on social media. You either create a show that's entertaining or you don't. Nobody cares it just they don't care.
So and this, I think where it matters is if the people let it affect them. I think that I think it becomes somewhat almost circular in that I think the folks who get criticized by the anonymous masses and then it changes how they act or what they do, then it does matter because then they're not You're not getting the same person. Really. Like for instance, we talked about Anon Rodgers on your show and on my show today.
Where I will give him credit is he for a guy who historically I think was quite thin skinned, he has not He has leaned into some of the non football things that he has been heavily criticized for and not run from it at all and simply said, yeah, I think my biggest critics are the people who could benefit the most from the things I do. Like I said that to Peter King, he was like one of his favorite lines. And again, I'll give him credit for this. It's a smart line, and I think there is some
wisdom to it. He says, I I wish people were less judgmental and more curious. And you know, so I don't judge him for the ayahuasca or the Darkness retreat. I think some of his views on modern medicine are potentially dangerous and I'm not a big fan of that, but he does not run from that. And because he doesn't run from it, like, how much can it actually affect him? And the answer is not really much at all.
So you know, it's interesting when I was talking about if you go anywhere in America, we're a very distracted society. People are watching their phones all the time, and because of that, you have to create urgency as a talk show host, as a league, NFL college football, March Madness, World Cup, Olympics, if you watch what people watch. They'll watch March Madness Women's Final four this year did very well. Is that increasingly you have to create urgency. We all
have sports takes that are out there. My sports take has been for years that the time of baseball, the time of a baseball game is overrated. Ratings have gone up slightly, attendance slightly with a shorter game, a significantly shorter game like thirty minutes less, and the attendance is up six percent, ratings nine.
I can.
This is my sports take, and I'll never stop saying it. Baseball should lop off forty games twenty per owner and August. First two reasons. It creates more urgency, though not ideal urgency. But there's an opportunity here. Sean McVay ruined the NFL preseason by not playing starters and going eight to er the following year, half the league's coaches, and within two years virtually all of them that aren't named Belichick or
Tomlin stop playing starters in the preseason. August is now completely uneventful and uninteresting.
It is the typically he's done by then. The NBA, like this year, Dame might get traded, but the NBA is more June July, and then there's nothing going on.
August is wide open and baseball could own it instead, they'll start the playoffs in October. When college football goes and the King's happening, it's over. It's over. So that is my and I know I'm putting you on the spot. That is my sports take. That one of the great gifts I'm gonna ask for years. One of the great gifts of the NFL has been the willingness to constantly evolve. They moved their free agency period, they extended the draft,
they moved draft to cities. Like they're constantly evolving. They're a TV show. So my big sports take, and we're in that business, is baseball can really rebound. Numbers go significantly up by taking forty games out of the schedule. So now I say to you, give me a sports take that maybe out there, but you absolutely I've.
Got to one. I'll give you the NFL one that is not so far out there, and then the NBA one that's truly far out there, the NFL one that's not so far out there. I debuted for the first time ever, one of the very first times I filled in for you, so it's like six years ago or seven years ago on FS one, which is the NFL was this was before they had added the seventeenth game, obviously, and they were trying to negotiate you we'd add seventeen
go to seventeen games. Eighteen games, and this international schedule that the NFL the week of the week that college football ends should have the college football regular season, you know what I So that week before the bowls begin should have NFL International Week. Every team has eight home games, eight road games. You extend the season by two weeks because well now we're already at seventeen games. Would follow me.
Every team gets two buys, your regular random bye, and then a bye that's either on the front end or the back end of your international game. And here is the key to it. The International week. There are games in sixteen different cities around the world Monday through Sunday throughout the day. So Monday afternoon, there is a game in Jakarta, or you know, I'm making it up in Monday night for the time zones to work. There is a game in Cape Town. Tuesday afternoon, there is a
game in Tokyo. Tuesday night, there is a game in i guess we'd have to go in the other direction. Maybe I forget the time zones for a moment, but Barcelona and that for a full week, from the time you get out of work to the time you go to bed, there's a football game on and then Sunday there's three games, big games. There is no competitive disadvantage because everyone has eight home, eight road, one international game.
If your international week game is on the Monday Tuesday Wednesday side, your extra buy is the week before, so you can acclimate. If your international week game is on the Thursday, Friday Saturday side, your international your buye is on the back end, so you can recuperate in that regard. And you have a full week where there is professional football on every day and you touch basically every continent.
You do it at these soccer stadiums are already there, and I think you could sell each game to a different network for a few hundred million bucks, and I think it's and if you extend the season by two weeks instead of one, super Bowl Sunday comes the Sunday before President's Day, so we already have a three day weekend. It built in for all of us that following Monday, so that's the added benefit. That's my NFL idea. I
still think they should do it. I think if you're trying to really go international, just focusing on London and Europe is a missed opportunity. Like you can do game, you know what I mean, There are major suit you can do games elsewhere. The NBA one is you want
to add urgency. You have one G League team that is essentially your G League All Stars, that is an awesome team, and you only really need that one team for one year, and the team that finishes dead last in the league is relegated to the G League league for a year. It is the European soccer model of relegation that if you have the worst record in the NBA, the next season, you are not in the NBA. You are in the G League and that G League team,
everybody moves up. They all get minimum contracts and they see how they do now they almost assuredly would then be the team that finishes last. So really every other year though, but at a minimum every other year, there would be an NBA team that gets sent down for a year. You know, more of this throwing seasons away.
You are getting relegated, You are getting banged down a league if you finished dead last, that would make the end of the NBA regular season as captivating as the conference finals, because if you were if it was like holy shit next to Houston, well yeah, I mean think about it. It's like, wait, the Spurs might get when or they might get sent to the G League and be out of the league for a year, you know what?
And so what it would mean as far as teams trying to compete, and you could maybe tweak it to where that it only happens if a team, you know, you have to finish last and not win twenty two games or something, you know what I mean, Like, hey, if everyone wins at least, if everyone goes at least twenty four and fifty eight, then nobody gets relegated. But
if you're truly awful, you're banged down a league. That's not like, you know, I didn't create that idea that you know, the what do you The Premier League sends down four teams a year, Four teams go down, four teams go up, and it's you know, it's a pretty successful popular league. I think that would create massive urgency and I think would be unbelievable theater.
Uh, you are puzzled or dismayed by the lack of UFO coverage, And yeah, yeah, so I first of all, do not believe in UFOs. I think what happens is much like cell phone technology, where like Norway was ahead of us. We don't always have the best ideas. That's first of all. There are people that have like this whole thing about no exhaust. If there was exhaust with any of these Pentagon pieces of video, then we would
know it's not outside the galaxy. Is it possible that some other country, by the way, like China doesn't treat its citizens well, they spend every penny on weaponry. Is it possible that a Russia or a China, a non ally went out and created.
It ahead of us.
Yeah, that's the first thing. Second of all, there are so many satellites in the air now, many of them Elon Musk created. There's just more in the sky, more moving, more blinking, and it's very easy for something like even a plane going overhead in Los Angeles. I will sit there and have a cigar and show my wife and be like, what is that? And then she's like after ten minutes, she's like, oh, oh, it's a helicopter. So I think there's two things. People could be ahead of us,
and there's just more crap in the sky. It would also help if one legitimate person, you know, like Bill Clinton, came out and said, yeah, we got UFOs. It's always like a whistleblower who heard from another whistle blower. So that's my take. Now I want you to take from there. You do believe in UFOs? Apparently, no hold on old wait. I want to be very clear about what I believe in.
I if I am not a deeply religious person, and I feel like it's almost man, if you're not a religious person, then it is just almost logically impossible that we are the only intelligent life for him in a universe that the expanse of it is, it's beyond our own mental comprehension. There are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on every beach in the world. So there are trillions of stars in the sky. Our sun is just one of them, so the expanse
of it. So I do I believe there's intelligent life for them out there past us? Of course I do. It's impossible to not believe that. Now that is a giant leap from there to they have visited US, and they've stopped by, and there's you know, they uposa landed. I don't know that I believe that. What was so concerning to me was not that I'm convinced aliens are here. What was concerning to me is the United States Congress had a hearing. The people testifying were from the Navy,
from other branches of the military. They were not some wacka, do you know what I mean, coming out of off a bench. They seemed to be like reputable people. They clearly believed that they had either seen or had some contact. Again, they could be wrong. Their testimony didn't didn't concern me. What concerned me was no one cared. What concerned me was I went the next day to the New York Times homepage. It was not I scrolled to the bottom column.
There wasn't a fucking store. It wasn't there. They had a long thing about the Appalachian Trail. They had three articles on Trump, two on Ukraine. They had they had they had two. They had columns about diversity, equity and inclusion programs. All of this nothing on our Congress. People interviewed our military, They said we have the UFOs or UAPs as they called them, didn't have an article on their front page. I went to the Washington Post. It's like,
all right, maybe the Times is late. I don't know. Wasn't Post had one article. The headline was Congress hears that UAPs have visited Earth. Americans react men, And I'm like, this is not I'm not saying the movies in real life. But I watched it in Pendance Day as a kid, and you know what was reassuring about that was not that Will Smith was going to kick the alien's ass, but it was the aliens showed up and everybody came together, was like, this is an existential threat. We all need
to set everything aside and unite. So what scared me was it seemed to be a bit of a Canarian the coal mine for do we as a general public have the capability anymore if something major were to happen to set everything down, to turn off, like to get off our apps, to stop yelling at each other and be like, oh, we all need to pay attention and pull together for a common good, and I don't know that we can't. I saw it was the same thing that the Times I think it was The Times this morning.
It might not have been The Times rather than Wall Street Journal, I don't know, but one of their polling one of the major reputable polling things, ask the question is it hotter than normal this summer? And the answer, whether you said yes or no, lined up directly with your political affiliation, and I'm like, oh, we might just be fucked here. Like even it's like, hey, what's the weather like? And the answer is, well, how do you vote? Because it's saying it's hot seems awful liberal and saying
that it feels the same is awful conservative. And that's and so people. So that's what It wasn't so much that I'm convinced aliens are here. It was if we get the you know, the alarms go off, and all of a sudden, the President of the United States is on TV and is like, there's an asteroid. It's seventy two days away from hitting us. Would we all be like, all right, everybody stop, how are we gonna fit? How are we going to fix this?
Yeah?
Or would we spend the first sixty eight days being like that's base full of it. No, he's not full of it and just yelling at each other. That's what concerned me about the thing. Do we still have the capability to pay attention to important things and come together? And I don't. I'm not convinced we do.
I don't know, so I am and I think one of the testimonies that were a great country is that we don't have real problem. So I give you an example.
I love this stake. Look here the yeah yeah.
When the biggest controversy right now in America is a president's son, Like, tell me the last president who didn't have an idiot somewhere in the family. They all do, Trump, Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan. That's not a real controversy. It doesn't affect me. If I was running for president, There's three things I would be concerned about. The biggest problem is guns. Secondly, crime rates are much lower than the eighties.
Los Angeles crime is constantly discussed, much lower than the eighties. Homelessness is an issue in major cities, but not moderate sized cities or small towns, so those get a lot of play. The gun issue is the number one issue in America. Assault rifles should not be around. Nobody's got any courage to go after it. I'm not saying that's not an issue, but crime is elevatedgment of the media's absolutely homeless, and that is largely a big city issue.
Nobody I know gives a shit about Hunter Biden. It's just just a weird, disruptive, chronically troubled family member.
Also, can I say something real quick on that? And I don't me interrupt you because I want you to be able to finish. I don't think you can believe Biden is incompetent. You can believe he's you know, too old. You can believe he's you know, his social welfare programs are you There's a lot of fair bangs on Biden. I like the guy a lot, but I totally get the criticism. I don't think anyone actually believes the guy's corrupt.
I don't think they believe it. I don't think they're like, you know, Joe Biden, he's been on the take for twenty years like that. I just don't think they believe it. And that's why the Hunter thing doesn't hit him, because I think if people actually thought Joe Biden's got too hundred million in you know what I mean, stashed away in the Caymans, this could be a big thing like the corrupts son. But I think people look at Joe
Biden and there's a lot of fair criticisms. I don't think they think this guy has been you know, while he was vice president was cutting a billion dollar deals. I just don't think people actually believe it. But go ahead. So you were saying about what the real we don't have real problems.
Sorry, So go to Venezuela, go to Russia, go to Europe, go to Mexico. You can go to a lot of places.
In the world.
There's two hundred and ten countries. There are real problems. Our problems are overwhelmingly heavy media saturation and discussion around things that get attention but are overstated. Crime things that we are grappling within California. A humanity issue, what to do with the homeless. It's not easy. It feels better today in LA than six months ago. I think the mayor, Karen bass is done pretty good job. But they spent twenty billion dollars and it got worse. It's a real issue.
It is a big city issue more than an ann Arbor, Michigan, Austin, Texas issue, or a small town issue. Is that I do think that we avoid trouble. We thought we had a banking crisis, it lasted two weeks. We thought we had a housing crisis, it lasted three weeks. The stock market's up, Unemployment's the lowest had spent in my life, inflation, gas prices. We're actually the only two things that worry me are guns and what the hell is up with
our debt. It's like a trillion dollars. If I had one hundred million dollars debt, I could not sleep at night. I don't understand the debt. But my point being is I'm not saying all these discussions are manufactured, but the truth is that we really hum along. We survived four years of weaponizing social media. Trump this this is a formidable country that overcame a corrupt president.
So I think that listen, I think your general, I like the optimism, and I think your general you know the truth of the matter that, hey man, there are a lot of places that are in way worse shape. And that part I tend to agree with. We are in lockstep that the guns thing is, it's it's a crisis in two regards. One is just the raw numbers of people we lose to gun violence versus every other
it's it's about staggering in the world. It is staggering, but it touches all of us, even if we've never been around a gun in our lives, because it does hurt. When you went to maybe it didn't happen for you,
it does happen for me. When I go to Oppenheimer, there will be a moment before the movie starts where I scope out the exits and my surroundings because the movie theater is on the list of places in my head where I'm like, Eh, there could be an incident here, and I think that does have a real tangible effect on quality of life. Sorr, I'm with you on guns. I do think there is a housing affordability I don't call it crisis, but major issue which manifests itself in homelessness. Yes, right,
so those are real major issues. My concern for the United States not like the well being of the country. My concern is our biggest issues are too long of a runway for us to truly address, which is I don't think the majority of people my age are going to have no chance of retiring because they're not like people used to be able to make a decent living and at the very least you buy a house and you've paid it off by the time it's your retirement age.
And if your house is paid off and you have so security coming in, you're not going to be able to like go on European vacations. But you don't have a lot of expenses. You have a little bit of money put away, and then when you're sixty five or seventy, if you want to retire, you can. Nobody. My age
is not you shouldn't say nobody. Very few people are buying homes and pensions don't exist anymore, and so I do think we are approaching, but we won't feel it for thirty years a generation of seventy year olds where it is either we have to really expand the welfare state, which people hate doing, or are we okay with people just work a lot. You know, the majority of Americans working till they're dead, And so that to me is
like a real concern. That is a that is a tentacle of the housing issue, you know what I mean of the fact that it's very difficult. I also think I don't know your take on this, and I know we are off the board here, so I apologize. I wish that junior college was not stigmatized, and I wish it was pushed. I want to say pushed, but talk
to a kid. It was told to kids that this is a great option if you're not trying to be a doctor or a lawyer, and you're undecided on what you want to do, having your first two years of college be essentially free while you figure out what you want to do, and then after that there is no shame in a state school at all. Is like I'll use my son as a as an example. My son, who you know, he worked with us at Fox. It's a great kid, does not have a college degree. And
there was a time he played. He went to junior college to play basketball, didn't end up getting a D one scholarship, and I obviously would have paid for his college, but he was he was never really into school as much as he was basketball, and there was a time in his life. And I hope he doesn't get mad at me for, you know, saying his business or I think he was down on himself a bit because he didn't have you know what I mean, He didn't have that and I told him before he moved to la.
I'm like, buddy, you're twenty four. I was like, you don't have a degree, But so many of your peers who do have one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of debt that is going to hang around their neck until they're thirty five or older and won't necessarily even
use their degree. And I think for a lot of young people, junior college to a state school and then having the freedom of movement and mobility that comes along with not having you know, high five figures or six figures in debt is the way better return on investment option. But I feel like junior college is like thought of as like, oh, something went wrong for you, you know what I mean, Like, oh, you're not that bright and I'm the student. Debt things a huge problem for young people
in this country. Like you got one hundred grand where that colin. If I had one hundred thousand dollars worth a debt when I came out of Syracuse, could I have taken an eight dollars an hour radio job. Of course not, but I could because I didn't, and that was the best job for me. Like, there's a lot of kids that can't even do really what they want to do because they got to start working on that debt immediately, because they were pushed to go to the
best college possible, which is, you know, exorbitantly expensive. I think that's a huge issue, huge isshu.
Okay, back to sports, but I like that whole thing. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, for the record, the elitism of college. I think people are now acknowledging that college is a lot, not that it's superficial, but so much of it has been glamorized as essential. And increasingly I think people realize that vocational school, your own path, entrepreneurship
is fine. I think in the last three years, I've really sensed that people are kind of like East Coast people who are more tradition driven, are really into the prep school stuff. I've spent my life out West very entrepreneurial. I've never once asked a person where they went to college. I could care less of the volume. Are you good or not?
Well? So, before we get sports, this is I'm going to throw this at you. This is my favorite. I hope in my lifetime someone conducts this social experiment. You are a very well to do person, and you have twins and they are identical twins, so the same DNA and one twin. We'll call him Ryan. Ryan, you are going to from first grade on go to the single best private school available to us, the single best college available to you, and we're paying for all of it.
You're going to graduate with no debt at all. Your brother, Brian is going to go to the local public school, then the local junior college, then the local state school. And when you both graduate college, Ryan you get all the connections, the prestige of the Ivy League degree, all of it, and Brian you get all the money we spent on his education. Go Ryan, you have all the prep school everything League degree. Brian, you went to state university in public school. Here is let me do the math.
Fifty grand a year for sixteen years. Here's eight hundred thousand dollars cash to start your life. I think there is a strong argument to be made that the kid with the eight hundred grand and still a degree is probably has a head start on the kid who went to all the you know, did all of that, and
see who does better. Because I do think that I do think there's an argument to be made that families with money that are sending their kids to these prep schools or whatever would be better off holding that money and giving it to their kids when they graduate. But okay, now to sports, go ahead.
Yeah, the advantage for the kid that goes to school isn't the school. The greatest advantage where I would lean to the kid going to school are is connections.
The people you meet exactly right, the network that you yes at that and the people you meet out one hundred percent. That's exactly what I believed.
So I sent my daughter to a very rigorous private junior high when I thought I could live in Connecticut, you know, forever. And we didn't do it for the academic She's a great student. We did it for the connections. Everybody in our town that was connected sent their kids there Kingswood, Oxford in West Hartford, Connecticut. We didn't care about the education. It was sixth grade, it was forty
three thousand a year. We did it for connections. We're like, if we live here for the next thirty years, she's going to know everybody in town and we'll go to college at Cornell was some she you know. We were like, I've said this about Stanford. It's Stanford. It's hard to flunk out. They don't want you to. They always say that Col's easier to get into. They try to flunk you out. Stanford's impossible to get into. Nobody flunks out. They don't want you to. But it's the connections of
Stanford that are truly better than COL. Stanford's got no not that Cal lacks for gravitas, but I tend to believe. I'll give you an example. Years ago, they did a study. A guy out of the University of Chicago did a study, and he was concerned that it was sort of pithy and insignificant. It was a study on luck. So what he did is he went out and he wanted to find one hundred lucky people and one hundred unlucky people.
They viewed themselves as LUCKI or unlucky. And he found them and so for a year he tested them, he called them, he followed them, and what he found was this luck didn't exist. But the unlucky people were introverts. They didn't create inertia or manufacture relationships. And the one hundred lucky people were simply extroverts, talkers, social lubricators, and over the course of a lifetime, you're in a bank line, a grocery line, a parking lot, a party, a restaurant. Hey,
let me take your number. I want to show you. Oh my god, my cousin did this. Hey, let's connect an over the course of a lifetime. Extroverts create momentum that introuy that do not. And so I tell my kids. I tell my kids talk, ask questions, be social, do things. You will create a snowball effect of your life. I went last night out to a little club that I a member of. I got into the greatest discussion with a kid that lives in London. We exchange numbers. He
was in the financial sector. He gave me some great advice on something. He gave me a great travel destination. I gave him a guy he needs to call in regards to his career over cocktails and he texts me today. I text him back. So I think the opportunity for wealthy people to get their kids in the right social circle.
In the in the right rooms one hundred percent that I one hundred percent agree with that. No, and by the way, I am not, I mean I'm a if my whole little rant there made it sound like the you know that, Oh we let me be clear. If It makes it sound like I'm saying you're crazy if you spend a bunch of money on sending kids private school. You know, I live in New York City. I send my kids private school, you know what I mean. So it feels like it's almost because I can, it's almost obligatory.
But I do what I do. Just second guess myself, you know what I mean. I do wonder what it would you know, what if you if the moment you get out of college, it's like, hey, you can buy yourself a house cash and have money left over to start a you know, a small business. What that does. But now we've been talking forty five minutes. I haven't let you ask me anything about sports, so I'll shut up. Go ahead, Sorry, the cocktail, Okay, this is what I'm saying, man, cocktails of Colin.
Big sports topic here, Okay, it's I noticed this on vacation that everybody's basically has figured out who's going to win their division and finish last. We're just arguing about second and third Chargers, Broncos, Jets, Dolphins, Raven Steelers. You know, everybody knows what's interesting because the league has become such a quarterback centric league, the best quarterback wins the division. Chaos at quarterback Sport, and then we argued to a
Rogers Pickett, Lamar Russell Wilson, Justin Herbert. So there's a lot of de predictability in the predictions. So I'm going to ask you, but there's going to be an up seven week one that is just shocker. I'm gonna tell you mine, and then there's going to be a team that's a shocker. So I'm going to give you my upset. Shane Steiken goes to Indy. We don't know what the hell that offense is going to look like in Anthony Richardson. Jacksonville has got some new pieces, Calvin Ridley. They I'm
in very confident as a heavy favorite. It's a division rival game on the road, and we have no idea with Shane Steichen, who with Justin Herbert and Jalen Hurts turned him into superstars, is that the Colts are going to upset the Jags in week one. Cults are not a good team, but you can be good for three hours in week one when the locker room is still convinced you're a really good team. Bad teams have a lot of fight for about five weeks until they're zero
to five or one and four. So my upset of the week, I'm going to go with it Colts shock the world and beat Jacksonville.
What's yours? Okay? So I don't think that's terrible. I obviously love the Jags this year and Trevor Lawrence if I were to pick a major Week one upset again, even though I do not believe in this team or this quarterback at all, with a whole off season to prepare with the real thing that is a Super Bowl hangover, is it impossible to believe Bill Belichick and the Patriots at home beat Philadelphia. That's not impossible to believe that, and people freak out and Philly will be fine. They
have too much talent, you know. And I don't think New England's gonna be any good, Like I shouldn't say any good. They're not going to be a really good team. But that's that. I certainly like, here's the thing, that's the Patriots getting five at home, and that to me feels like that there's real value there in the Patriots money line because if that, maybe they lose by twenty one and it's like, oh, Mac is not going to be good the Patriots, you know whatever, But if that's close,
they can win that game. One thousand percent they can win that game. And for Philadelphia there is the the I think the real hurdle of everything is going to feel a little slow motioning until later in the year and you might eat which wouldn't exist if they were in the AFC. There is, as you were talking earlier, in a different way, the sense of urgency of there's too many good, goddamn quarterbacks, like we better not screw around here, because there's gonna be some great quarterbacks that
are on our heels or ahead of us. In the NFC, the Eagles got to be like, Okay, there's US, there's San Francisco, there's Dallas, and then who are we talking about a Vikings team who we annihilated last year and then fell? You know, so I think I think that that would be a Week one upset. Again, I haven't really dove into this entirely. I'm trying to look at the other ones that would make sense go ahead.
So I think we both picked one because that was my second choice, by the way, that was my really yeah, oh okay, now you have to have a Wow, prediction on a team, Okay, like somebody's gonna shock us. I'm gonna argue Carolina. So I think Frank Reich is really good. They built an excellent staff. It's a bad division. I don't trust the coach to the Saints. They have an excellent front seven. The corners are good but beat up that are now healthy. They ran the ball effectively last year.
The O line is young and emerging, and Bryce Young is really smart and capable. He may have a lower ceiling, but he'll be good in week one. I think week one, Week two, week three, you're gonna look at Carolina and you forget last year that defense was nasty. I think Carolina has a chance to win their division. That is my wild pick.
Okay, So I my only antie on that is I don't like tiny football players, and Bryce Young is tiny. That's my concern. It just a general belief of just so. I'm not going to tell you the team, but if I were to tell you, a team's first handful of games are against the Bears, Falcons, Saints, Lions, Raiders, Broncos. That is their first what was that five to six games?
Green Bay?
Could they get out to a great start. I think the answer is yes. Do I think that that team is there is going to be a bit of a deep breath sigh of relief that the Aaron Rodgers stuff is just done with. Do I think there is going to be a real chip on their shoulder of man,
this guy sure love. It's almost the the the person who's you know, spouse left them and then you see that the spouse and you know is giving interviews some about how in love they are with their new person, like hey, I was great to you, like and like a little bit of oh really. I think Lafour is a good coach. I think that division is open in this regard. I think the Vikings are good. I think
the Lions are good. I don't think there's a great team and the Lions, you know, everyone gassed to the to the floor on the Lions concerns me a bit. So I think green Bay being you know, a nine win, ten win team and maybe finding a way into the playoffs because in the NFC finding seven playoff teams is not easy. So I think green Bay is a viable thing. I want to kind of turn it on its head because everybody I shouldn't say everybody. People talk a lot about who's going to be the team that jumps up
and shocks people. It's like, oh man, they're good. We rarely put out there who's the team everyone thinks is going to be good that is going to fall flat on its face. I think it's going to be the Jets. I think that people have and the Jets it's the exact, by the way, same reason. The Broncos were my pick for that last year, and I was right. But it's a lot of the same recipe. A wide receiver corps
that is wildly being all of a sudden overrated. People last year we're talking about the broncxs are like, oh my god, all these weapons, and I'm like, I like Jerry ju fine, but in the wide receiver position has never been better than it is right now. He's not even close to one of the ten best in the league. And then I and then it was like, oh no, all these guys, the people are talking about the Jets
weapons like they're great. Garrett Wilson had an awesome rookie year. Okay, Alan Lazard was a below average number two with Green Bay last year. Hardman's their three, and so if we're talking about weapons. Just in the AFC, Cincinnati's is better, The Chargers are better, the Dolphins are better. I would argue the Raiders are better. The Bills are right in line with them, so we're so they're running backs coming off in ACL, they're two. They have two left tackles.
One has barely played in two years because of injury. The other is thirty eight years old. Literally thirty eight years old. And Dwayne Brown. I don't think the coach is great the Jets. And also the other thing for the Jets is, while the end of the year is very soft, how are the Jets, who are, keep in mind, on a six game losing streak from last year, going to react if they start? What are they going to start? When it is Bills, Cowboys, Patriots, Chiefs and all of
a sudden, big game against the Broncos, then Eagles. That first six games, you have the Bills, the Cowboys, the Chiefs, and the Eagles, and your easy games are the Patriots who have beaten you for seven years in a row, every single time. And then the Broncos that all of a sudden is a blood feud because your dear friend Sean Payton went to scortch Earth on him. Yeah, that is not an easy opening six. So I think the Jets are the team that is not going to meet expectations. This was fun.
We did an hour almost we did fifty to think.
About which team's gonna sometime, either on the volume or on the show. You don't have to tell me now.
I think Philadelphia is gonna be good, but nine win good, not thirteen win good. I think they're gonna be in a dog fight with Dallas for the title. I think they're pulling back. And by the way Shane Steiken leaves, they lost multiple linebackers O lines. Yeah, they Oh line's old. Still good, but it's older. They faced a conveyor belt of awful quarterbacks, I mean awful, terrible, and then they got a pretty break in the playoffs.
It's like, and every good quarterback after Week two lit them up, every single one.
My takeaway is Philadelphia is really good, but they don't feel like the Bully, you know, the broad Street Bully, that former Flyers team. They don't like Last year they were beating teams like a college team, beating teams by thirty.
Yeah, I think.
They're going to be in a lot of close games. I think Dallas can line up with them. I think there's a lot of teams that can line up with them. And I think Jalen Hurts is terrific, but I think he'll pull back and I think he'll have to play from behind occasionally. I mean, I love Jalen, but good God, when you play with a twenty point lead in the second quarter, it's just a different environment than trailing late
in the third. It's a different position. So I think Philadelphia is good but doesn't look nearly as good as last year.
I think that's the I buy the way. I by the way, I agree with that. I I am. I'm gonna say this, hold on. You can keep this in, but don't have your people put this specific thing on social This is a special thing for you, for me, to you, for the people that made it. At the end of the podcast, I am ninety percent sure. I'm obviously picking the Chiefs in the AFC. It's going to be hard to pick against a team that's literally going to go win three straight Super Bowls, So I'm gonna
go ahead and go with them. In the NFC. I I really think I'm picking Dallas, like I don't think the Niners. Like I just I don't think the Niners can. You can't just have nobody's at quarterback for every year and just have it worked. At some point, it's gotta just bite you. And the fact that your guy Mike Silver's like, hey, Trey Lance, he's throwing one hundred and twenty passes. They might cut him. I'm like, are you what's and man? And and Shanahan's like, hey, I'll turn
Sam Darnold into Steve Young. I'm like, okay, I picked the Niners who go to the Super Bowl last year. I'm not doing it this year. So I'm doing the Niners. And the Eagles I thought were a good but not great team last year that got hot. Had you know they had more saxon Ay teams since eighty five Bears? They going to duplicate that, I don't think. So the quarterback thing is real. So if it's not Niners Eagles, who is it? Like, literally, am My picking Gino Smith
to go to the Super Bowl? No? Am I picking Jared Golf to go to the Super Bowl? No Am I picking Kirk Cousins. No. I know It's become very in vogue to say Justin Field's one of the five best quarterbacks in football. I'd like to see him play five great quarters before I'm ready to say that. So,
so we're running out of teams. I think I'm gonna pick the Cowboys, which is so weird because I'm not the corner of people in sports media that are either I feel like eighty five percent of sports media is well established pro or anti Cowboys, and then there's a handful of you me a couple others that's like, ah, I you know, I find them interesting, but I don't love them or hate them. But I think I'm going to pick them to go to the Super Bowl. I just think I am. I just I'm running out of
teams in the NFC. So I think Chiefs Cowboys super Bowl, highest rated ever, Mahomes going for back to back Cowboys and for the first it would be Dan Chiefs going for twenty and oher versus the Cowboys.
Oh boy, Oh that's a little hyperbolic.
But oh, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Last but last time the Chiefs were the defending champs, they lost one game all year that moment they lost well, they lost two because Mahomes rested in the final week of the year, but they were fourteen and one and then rolled into the super Bowl and they had to play the first ever road super Bowl against Tom Brady and shit went awry. But I mean, they almost did it a few years ago. We should
do this again soon. I loved it. Good seeing you, buddy, you too. I almost finished my drink. I love you. I hope you enjoyed. I'm thinking about pulling this out on TV because I said I'm not cutting my hair till the Chiefs lose. So it's gonna be years, so I'm gonna have to be able to pull it back or something. I'll see you later. New house looks great. The volume