The volume.
Nick Wright is about ready to stop on by. We got a million things to talk about. Go chop it up for about an hour before he does. Download the game Time app. It'll take you ninety seconds. Put in the code. Grab your smartphone. Game Time app, take you ninety seconds. Put in the code Colin. That's the redeem code. That's me Coli in twenty bucks off your first purchase. What's great about game Time is the prices go down the closer you get to tip off or first pitch
or kickoff. A lot of times you get these killer deals and you want to go to a game, and you don't make up your mind until, like I've done this ninety minutes before a game.
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up in a small town. Blah blah blah. I don't have a lot of hobbies. I've told you before. I like real estate because my wife's a designer. I like design. I like architecture, like I like aviation and architecture. Things are fascinating. I can watch stuff on you know, true crime, aeroplanes, architecture. Those are like weird hobbies, right like you, You are very Matthew.
You love poker.
I got it, I interrupted you. But because of the Euros the soccer tournament, I have no show Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday night, flying to Vegas, playing in a couple of World series because World Series Poker's going. So I'm playing and playing in a couple of World series of Pope. No this one. These I don't need a loan. These are not the biggest tournamental playing costs like five grand. This isn't the fifty thousand against Helmuth. But I'm playing
in a couple of tournaments. Uh, thank you for the offer. Uh this weekend, so yeah, I'm Matthew, I'm You're You're out here being like, all right, if I buy this house and renovate it and flip it, I can make a million dollars. And I'm like no, and okay, well sorry, I didn't mean that bad. And I'm like, if I buy into this poker tournament and win it, I can make a million dollars. Like it's just different types of ideas, but go ahead.
Right, we're trying to land in the same way, land in the same.
Spot, doing something as a hobby that we're kind of passionate about. That's what I meant. I didn't even mean it as a shot. Like you like real estate, you like the idea, your wife likes the beauty of it. And if at the end of it, you can also make some money out of it, that's a bonus. That's great.
Yeah, And I also pitched a series to a company recently and they they accepted it. Oh, so I'm not going to get too much into that. It's pretty fascinating. So I tend to what I like is storytelling. I like true crime. I think real estate storytelling. I buy beat up places, we create an image, we kind of create a house that's a story in me. That's how I view it. So I tend to like journeys. I like building stuff. I like journeys. That's I would say,
that's one of my weird, idiosyncratic like things. So, but I was thinking about this about summer plans, is that this is this is strange. Everybody's got a weird habit. But I honestly think, obviously I love spending time with my kids, my wife and animals.
But one of the joys is I get older.
Tell me if I'm weird, definitely is going.
On two hour walks by myself on the beach, nothing nobody and talking to myself and working out my problems. And when I go to watch Hill in the summer, I go on that beach and I don't even take a phone, and I go on these two hour walks and it's therapy. I think about my kids, I talk to myself, and I have found in later in life, and I'd like to encourage the rest of America to do it. Not only talk to yourself, have conversations, do it regularly. Nick, I am going there. I'm taking the
first time in my career. I'm taking two weeks off during my show. I've never done that. I've never done that, but I believe as college football is exploding this year with a big ten explosion that I'm when I work Saturdays, and so I think I've talked to my bosses at Fox and I said, I think we have to kind of revisit the way we do this business. That July and August do not matter anymore. Fox is very much a fall company, and now with a UFL.
A spring company.
I'm going to take two weeks off and I'm going to go and just go to the beach and just.
Go on what beach? Hold on? You said, a beach, but I don't. Is that in I have an island private beach by where I live. Yeah, in Rhode Island.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, go ahead.
So, so as I tell you this story, I think to myself, I'm giving something of myself. And it's really weird. And when you're a public figure to any level, you don't want to be weird. It's off putting to the audience. The audience doesn't want to hear your weird, odd behavior. I will go walk every day for two hours and talk to myself and work myself through my problems and I've seen people look at me talking to myself on the beach.
Well, let me I can still move away. I can. So I have a lot of thoughts. So I want you you want me to share my weird thing is is that you want me to do it?
Would you use No, I want you to share. I want to That's fine.
I love this. First, let me respond to what you were saying. The first point is this, if you just put an AirPod in, people will just think you're on the phone. They won't think you're weird. So I just solved tap your problem, all right, So don't worry. Is it's a way I have an airput it. That's first part. Second part is walking on the beach being therapeutic, not a unique Colin cowhard thing. So nobody thinks you're weird for that. That's pretty That's kind of why people love
the beach. Like going walking on the beach, talking to you yourself for two hours probably weird for ninety nine percent of the country. However, not weird for Colin Cowherd. Sounds that you're like, oh, you're going to beat Colin. Here's the deal. You you talk to yourself for three hours every day.
Like like, like what you're what you're I mean, you're just you're taking a break from the show to do a version of the show that's just based on self improvement instead of on a studio on a beach.
It makes sense. I don't think anyone's freaked out by it. I think it's I think it's great. If you're asking me what my what my weirdest thing is, I don't know, you just my weird Like. So, I mean there's so there's.
What you have to nick you have to have something. Oh yeah, I definitely to create what how you think there's got to be a process that you go through that the milkman doesn't that the you know, I mean like there's got to be something.
There's a process too.
By the way, these people that can, to me, it's fascinating. My wife paints people that can go to a canvas and paint. Yeah, and it I'm okay.
So the thing with me infa So the thing with me in that regard used to and I think I've told you this for it was I built those nanoblocks and I so so everybody knows what legos are. Nano blocks are legos, except there they're called nanoblocks, because the pieces are literally one centimeter by one centimeter and they are all so like the whole things like this this big, and they are but it might be six hundred pieces,
and they are all replicas of historic buildings. And I created every single one that existed and then did like a deep dive on the ones that weren't available to purchase anymore and bought them like on eBay after market for a few hundred dollars and built the whole set. And it was because so what is what I find therapeutic is creating something that when I'm done, exists, because what we do is so a femeral. We do a show and the moment it ends, it's just in the ether.
It's just gone. And I think part of this probably is for me based on the fact that I just did talk radio for ten years in the kind of early stages of social media where there weren't even clips that lived on. It would just be I would do a four hour solo radio show. It would be over, and there's no podcast, there are no clips. If you heard it live, you heard it. If not, it was
a tree falling in the woods. And the next day I'd do it again, and that was very It's a very weird thing about our specific job, which is if you build a house, at the end of it, there's a fucking house standing there. You do a great show. At the end of it, it's like, all right, see you here tomorrow. We're just you know, there's no finished product. And yeah, I get so. I like jigsaw puzzles, I like crossword puzzles. I like legos a lot. I had a skill for If I had an actual skill for building,
I think I would like to build things. But I don't know any you know, I don't know how to like build a table or something. But I like something that when I'm finished with it, I can put it on a shelf, you know what I mean, And it's like, oh, that's there. I did it enough. So so this is the weird thing. My daughter, my youngest daughter, and I the other day did a seven hundred piece like Disney puzzle and we had done it before years ago, and
then we was in the box. We did it again, and then I came home and was sitting on like our table in the living room. And then I came home one day and it was gone. And I said to my wife I was like, what happened to the puzzle? She was like, well, I put it. I put it in the box. I'm like you, what do you mean you put in the box? She was like what did you think? Like that was just going to stay on our dark puzzle of Mickey and Minnie Mouse like It's like,
I was like, like, what do you mean? I was like I was going to She was like I told her. I was like, I was going to keep it. And she looked at me like I was insane. She's like, what does that even mean? She's like, how are you going to keep a four foot long puzzle? Like what do you mean? And I and I probably wasn't going to do this, but in the moment I thought it was. I was like, I was gonna get a piece of poster board with like glue and get it on there
and and preserve it so it's there. And she looked at me again like I have three edges. She's like, and then do what with it? And I was like, I don't know, probably put it under a better and a closet, but it would be there. I would have it. I finished this thing, and I want the documentation of it. It's why I think we are doing real introspection. I think I would enjoy being a writer. I don't think I have the skill for it necessarily, but I because a writer is similar skill set, not a skill set,
but creativity of what we do. But at the end of it, there's a there's a thing, you know what I mean, like, oh, I wrote this article or I wrote this book, there's a completion. I really do struggle with the fact that what I do for a living every day it just evaporates kind of And so yeah, so I don't I do also, like walking on the beach, I don talk to myself. I just smoked cigarettes heighten from my family. I just I just you just smoke a black and mild or a cigarette.
So you know, I was thinking about this is the Lakers still haven't named a coach and they're just any You could.
Argue, would you let Rob Blinka run the volume?
Well, no, because it's a different business.
I would not know. He's one of those guys that no.
But he's one of those guys that's really a good looking guy with a lot of confidence and bright and I get you a long way in life.
And great relationships and that that great that's the good looking, smart and friends, you know, good with good at cocktail parties, social that it is that those are a lot of skeleton keys to life. That is true. That that is true.
Go ahead, and I think, and it's not a knock on Rob, but he's good looking, social relationships and and and bright enough and it just works. And then, in a weird way, the worst thing that could have happened to the Lakers is Lebron coming, because Lebron has done this for franchises his whole career except Miami. Remember that thing you used to use when we used typewriters called white out. Yeah, that you make a mistake and you could wipe it out. Lebron's like that for basketball franchises,
shitty gms, average coaches. Lebron just wins championships like he just even more than Michael, who needed Pippin, who needed Phil. Lebron got every coach to the finals. It doesn't matter. And so he's the great eraser. Is that people forget how bad the Lakers were for a long stretch pre Lebron six years and yeah, and then Lebron comes. They went in the bubble, which was a weird year and people forget how mostly bad they've been with Lebron. Take
the Bubble year out. I mean, that's the year Harbaugh's team was terrible and Belichick's was terrible.
Like that year was.
Well because I have to to defend the bubble. Before any of us had ever heard the word coronavirus, the Lakers had the best record in the NBA. So so I think that team was. It was the last year we ever had Lebron before he suffered his first significant injury of his career, the Solomon Hill thing with his ankle. Anthony Davis the best we ever saw him. So I do think that was the best team in basketball under
any circumstances. But that doesn't change your point. The point is that they've ten years, ten years, won one fifty win season, and they will go into this season. Then on any night where Lebron or ad and this will happen often in the regular season, take a night off.
Austin Reeves is your second best player. He does not start for Boston, nor do I think he starts for Denver, and I'm not sure he starts for Oklahoma City.
That or Minnesota.
Coming to the Lakers, Yeah, Lebron coming to the Lakers got you a COVID bubble title for a franchise with twelve who gives a shit in the end, it has masked a like twelve year eleven to twelve year run of large incompetency or suboptimal guidance well upstairs.
So again, I I think they I think that title's as legitimate as anyone. But I don't think it changes your point, which is they have in both the Tatum and Brown drafts, they had the pick before Tatum and Brown. They had the number two pick both years. It took Lonzo and Ingram. And by the way, I have tweets out they're saying I liked Lonzo more than I like Tatum. I miss that and people here's the thing on that people people often say, oh, well, you had that wrong too, Guys.
It's not my own my I have a lot of things I'm looking at. Figuring out the single best draft pick for the Lakers is not literally my only job. So to compare my how I would have done as Lakers GM win in that by that same metric, I am the GM of thirty NBA teams, thirty two NFL teams, a couple baseball teams, and doing other things. It's nonsense. Yes, I would have gotten it wrong to the Lakers got to get it right. There's that. There is the fact
that they did. They either were too cheap or incompetent to keep Alex Caruso. They ever, Lebron wanted, no question, Lebron wanted Russell Westbrook, but Lebron wanted Kyrie Irving, and they found a way to say no to that. Lebron wanted Tyleru, they found a way to say no to that. They said yes to Russell Westbrook because they wanted him to because they're about stars. And then they mortified themselves
with this coaching search. This is horrifying, man, horrifying. Danny Hurley told you he was to the point where he's talking to Lebron and the Lake. The Detroit Pistons are willing to pay Monny Williams more money to not coach them, then the Lakers were willing to offer Danny Hurley to
coach them. It's not They're not as serious. They are a family business that is being run by Linda Rambis, Kurt Rambis, Kobe's former agent, rob Boalnka, and Genie Buss And the only this is what frustrates me so much about because there's still a contingent of Laker fans that are really Kobe fans that are hostile towards Lebron. The only reason this team has not been in the wilderness since yeah, the yeah, first term of the Obama administration.
That's right, that's right.
Is Lebron this idea he wanted to live in La not even oh, you had built a fun team that made since Nope, I want to live in Los Angeles. Find the cap space, all do the rest. I will get us Anthony Davis and we'll instantly win a title. And then so I just I don't I don't think you could squander a situation more readily than the Lakers have as an organization. And they man, they Darvinham seven weeks ago, seven weeks ago.
And they didn't have an answer. Why would you ever fire somebody? If a company fired me, I can assure you they'd have a plan. Lakers have no plan, no plan.
And the the Danny Hurley thing was e like this is where I've said this to you four I'll say it again. One of my favorite lines from an all time movie, Casino, when de Niro is on the casino floor with the state assemblyman's nephew or whatever, the cowboy that had the job they didn't deserve, and there had been three slot jackpots in a row, and de Niro's losing his mind because it was a scam. He says to him, he says, you're fired. And the guy's like,
I'm fired. He's like, you're effin fired. He's like, I'm fired. He's like, yeah, you're fired. Because either you were in on it or you were too dumb to know you were being scammed. Either way, you gotta go. That's how I feel about the Danny Hurley situation. There are two doors you can walk through on that. Either you never actually intended to hire him and you thought having that story out there would be good pr and soften the
blow of eventually hiring JJ Reddick. Or you really did want to hire him and you thought eleven million dollars a year was gonna get it done. So either you were trying to run a scam on your fan base or you were too incompetent to get your guy. Either way, you're unqualified. You are unqualified, and I don't This is why I brought up Blinka. That is in a lot of industries. Man, that is a fire ruble offense. If somebody, if you have let's say the I'm not going to
compare you to Darbnham, that's unfair. But if if you if someone, if you get if you get fired and the company's like trust us, and then publicly, very publicly, goes after someone that everybody thinks, oh well that would be great. Oh they're getting costas.
I don't know.
I'm just making whatever it is. And then that person says, nah, don't want it, and the next day does seven radio shows telling everyone about why he didn't take the job and makes a fool of you. That person who screwed that up usually is held to account, and instead we're just left with they had a good meeting with JJ Reddick, Like, give me a break. You're the Los Angeles Lakers. It's mortifying. It's mortified, man. So I want to go back to
something we talked about earlier. I think you know this. I like structural things. I like building stuff. I like structural things. I think it's an amazing time. I think something is happening in television, in media, in sports that's really really fascinating. Is that because basically television now. The platform of television may be shrinking, but it's all sports.
I've told you this before. If TikTok banned everything except cooking and culinary stuff on TikTok and it lost seventy percent of its audience, be great for culinary because it would be the only thing on TikTok. You don't have to own a platform. If you're the only thing on the platform, it's powerful. And I think a lot of media critics say, oh, cable TV is losing its audience. The only thing that works on TV today. The only
thing is sports. In every four years politics, So television now is just Fox has said on Fridays we're doing sports. Weekends were sports, We're going to Fridays. In fact, if they had the Amazon Thursday Games, I think Fox would say Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. We're a sports network, three days a primetime nonsports. And so I think what's one of the things that's interesting.
Is that the explosion Caitlin Clark is clearly a catalyst for a business that was and let's be honest. Whereas Tiger and Connor McGregor elevated their sports, no Caitlin to some degree. Caitlin to some degree financially saved the WNBA. It was hemorrhaging money for years.
That So let me can I just before you get to your point. So I think that people have a hard time saying that or accepting that both of these things can be true. It is good and I think worthwhile, and I'm glad that pre Caitlin Clark, there was a women's professional basketball league in America that was treated as a big time league and deserve to be. Okay, that's act. That is true.
What is all it was improving in terms of basketball annually.
Absolutely. Here's what's also true. There is proof of concept overseas that women's basketball can be profitable. That's why poor Britney Griner, you know, ended up in prison, was because a lot of these women go overseas make a lot more money. And that's not charity. They're not getting paid out of charity. They're because those those leagues in the those countries had found ways to monetize it in a
way the WNBA hadn't. The WNBA was not well run flatly, they they had a product that could be monetized in a way that it was not. I'm not saying the teams weren't well run. I'm saying the league, as far as whoever was in charge of generating revenue, there was. But the fact of the matter is who whosever fault it was? It was a league that as a business was not a highly successful one at all. It's why you could get a I think you could get a franchise for fifty million. Well you know the is the
franchise fee like it? So it is It can be true that it was. It had the potential, as being proven right now, to potentially be a super valuable business, but was not being true or run as such. And I think that was an oversight maybe by the upper echelon of leadership. And now with Haitlin, they have no choice but to adapt and evolve because there's gonna be money pouring in because there's so many more eyeballs on it now.
But as I was.
Thinking about this, is that there's always been this gap. I tend to think of my show are shows in terms of you know, like almost color coded, like red hot is Labor Day until February twenty third, yep, right, and then it cools down. It's an orange a Hue for NFL free agency. March madness was pretty good. I thought that college basketball had a good year, women helping with that, and then the draft and that's like orange, and then it goes back to a little stronger orange for the NBA playoffs.
Then it's blue. It's cool, like we got two months of cool.
And I will say that, you know, every four years, World Cups, the Copas, Euros, those are very good for Fox. Those getting numbers, they're fascinating. But I will say this selfishly, is that the WNBA has become on a fairly regular basis. It will fill a segment every day on my show. And I'm not doing it because I don't talk hockey much. I'm not doing it as a reach. And I was thinking about this, how people get famous. Some people get
famous on art. Mister Rogers got famous on decency. Some people get famous or infamous on controversy accidental or as a LA law provocateur. And that not only is Caitlin Clark a catalyst, but the racial component and the underdog being picked on as a component. And it's a little like golf, where a very insular country club, predominantly white, wealthy sport had this profoundly popular, historically fantastic player, and that was part of the Tiger story. He was new
on many levels. And I do think, and I'm not saying there is a racial component to the WNBA, but every business needs a catalyst, and every business their explosion is different. Some it's controversy, some it's all use go ahead.
Sorry. Yeah.
So I think the Caitlin and the physicality, I look at it and I think, hey, just look at the WNBA as an American business. It is an American business, and their catalyst is an underdog from Middle America. And there's a racial component. That is a story one hundred years old in America. It could be there's a million businesses where that has been the case. The sports one that there's a little core is Tiger, although Tiger was profoundly dominant very early.
So the yeah, I don't the only part of that is I don't necessarily I think the media some media is treating Caitlin as more of an underdog than she actually is. I don't view her as an underdog as much as I view her as just a rookie who is going through, you know, rookie growing pains, ebbs and flows I but is a really good play. But he
is a really good player. You were talking about the way it doesn't I'm going to use a maybe unfortunate example to use it as far as it doesn't really matter why you get famous, it matters what you do with it. And I think maybe the perfect example of that is Kim Kardashian. So, Kim Kardashian was semi famous, a little famous, and then became uber famous momentarily because of a sex tape latly no, and what did she do with it? Created a multi billion dollar business based
off her skill, talent and beauty. Flat late, she has one of the longest running hit television shows. She has you know more, I don't you know a clothing line or makeup line. I'm not all the way up to date on everything the Kardashians are doing. But she took that spark and turned it into a forest fire. And that is what I'm hoping the WNBA can do with this. You have Caitlin is the spark. The rivalry which dates back to college with Angel Reese, is real gas on
that spark. The times absurd media attention is turning it into a real fire that at times the wrong things are being focused on, and it's and to go back to our bad actors on the internet stuff. There's a lot of grossness surrounded with it. But even if it's just by accident, there are a lot more eyeballs on this league enough so everyone in the sports world today was aware. Oh Man, Cameron Brink tore acel yesterday. That sucks.
Think about that. Two years ago there was not if the number if the third most famous WNBA rookie got hurt mid season, it's not like one of the biggest things that happened. I'm in the sports world that day. From an attention standpoint, people now care, And that sounded wrong. I know a lot some people cared already. It has a relevance that it's a zeitgeist effect that it didn't before.
There are, it is a bigger tint there are. It's the same sized tent, and more people are crowding in, and some of those people are real assholes, and I kind of wish they would leave, but they're here too come and so I so I agree with you. It's how I forever because I love tennis. I was hoping, like man, can someone in the Big three tennis become like controversial or where America cares, because I would love to have some Nadal Federer Djokovic seven years ago discussions,
but my audience didn't care enough. So on the podcast, I do Nick's tennis corner during the Majors, and that's it because I respect what the audience wants. But Colin, I was on your TV show for twenty minutes on the Tuesday after the NBA Finals rapped, and we spent as much time on Caitlin Clark and Angel Reaches as we did on game five of the Fine And it was a smart programming decision because people have takes and
people are invested. And I also think, by the way, the other important thing what was a bummer for golf was nobody was able to carry on from Tiger. There wasn't there were you know, like, there wasn't a It was. It was purely Tiger dependent, and the people like it was like, oh, is it gonna be rory? Is it gonna be this? It was? It was. It wasn't really anybuff with the w n b A. The hope is you have this rook you have all the stars are already
there and you have this rookie class. Next year, you're gonna have page from Yukon coming in Paige who was supposed to be Caitlin before Caitlin. As far as like Transcendent Star and the young woman at USC Juju might be the best of everybody, and yes, and then you then you're not just relying on you know, oh, this person's out for the year. Sell.
America likes football and basketball. We like our basketball. I mean hell, I mean we watch women's basketball in college. We like men's college basketball. We like the NBA. So this this country, there's been experimental leagues, you know, the the Ice Cube League. So the truth is there is no experimental baseball league that works, but there's experimental football and basketball leagues. UFL was getting a million three, So like this is I think basketball and football. If you
really break down what America likes. Europe likes soccer, they just love it, and we love in America, we like our basketball and our football. You can you can develop stuff off both, and I think so I do think there's a very good chance that Caitlyn will create She is the cab list, and we will start. Now we may never have quite a quite a Tiger, but Rory's not Tiger either, either as Deshamba or Brooks.
But they're captivating, the captivating and they and they and there are and there is a level of there's there's a level of introduction that the catalyst creates introduction, which is there are now going to be people who are like, oh, man, Asia Wilson is awesome. I like I like her style, I like her the way she plays. I think she's the best that weren't watching before, didn't know, but now they're fans of Hearts because they came to the party for you, because they're like, oh, I got to see
what this Caitlin Clark things all about. And the other thing that I do think people that didn't watch the w NBA, like James Jones made this port on your show, is because it's there's less flying, it's more physical, and uh, there is There is also the I'm just gonna be totally honest, the added dynamic of like occasionally you get a game where it's like, oh, those two used to date and they broke up and they don't like, no, there is but there I mean that did happen recently.
There is also the added element of real bad blood that the NBA has There's a lot of the stuff people said they wanted from the NBA, physicality and not so much. Buddy, Buddy, you're getting that from the w n b A. You arend percent getting it. And if you can, if you can get over the fact that if you don't have some preconceived bias of all, I don't want to watch women's sports. It's good it and the storylines are interesting, and I like there is a
everybody likes that. Nobody believed in US teams, and everybody likes chip on your shoulder. Yeah, and in a league where everyone feels a little underpaid, probably fairly, everyone feels a little disrespected because of the attention one rookie is getting. There's a lot of chip on your shoulder. There's a lot of nobody believes in US, and it creates real captivating content in my opinion.
Nick, we went an hour fifteen.
It was great. I loved it. You finished your cocktail. I finished my glass of wine a long time ago. It is Yeah, it's great. It is juneteenth and Harlem. There is a big event going on right in front of my wife's store, and so I'm gonna leave here and go down there and kind of be with the be with the city, so it'll be great. Congratulations, man, I mean honestly your two favorite people to talk to in the world today. You got to talk to it,
I know me and Tom is that grandy? It tuck to you later called bye.
All right, buddy the volume. Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, take a moment rate and review