On a Friday time now for our Friday staple. Porter.
I don't even need to ask you whether or not that was your choice or CK's choice. That was clearly Chris, that's our guy, Christopher Camaradie. Happy Friday, sir, How are you great?
Great job picking the musical theme of the day. I must say it was probably the most difficult decision I've had to make in a very long time.
Okay, well, then if I can confuse you, Christopher, I know that I've.
Done my job. Happy Friday, buddy.
How are you doing doing well? Man? How are you?
I'm good, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm glad. It's Friday.
It's been a busy week, but time for the weekend, obviously.
What is the I don't know that I've ever even asked you this.
What's your level of interest in pro football?
NFL football? Will you be dialed in on Sunday?
I will be dialed in tangentially, meaning like I will be playing with toys and cooking dinner and paying attention every once in a while. The brilliance of YouTube TV and I don't know if you're subscribers fence, but you can put it on basically any black mirror that you have, so it doesn't need to occupy your television. It could occupy your phone or your laptop, which often it does while I'm you know, researching ways to cook meals. So
long winded way of saying, I'll be paying attention. But it's a lot of football, man, so I don't know how much. How I wouldn't say I'll be.
Locked in fair enough, fair enough because you don't do much. Have you ever covered the NFL? I mean mostly you're kind of a college football guy based off of your writing, Yes.
Yeah, never covered the NFL. Most of my I mean, my entire professional career has been here, and I don't think we'll ever have an NFL team here. So the only time I've set foot in a NFL press box was covering Utah's lost to Oregon in the twenty nineteen packs full title game, because that was at Levi's, and of course covering RSL Sounders matches at the clink.
Indeed, indeed, you know, ultimately, the closest thing I think we'll get to an NFL team in our market is if Utah and BYU are in the right group on the right side of the line of delineation. When college football moves into this potential pro model. That's probably the closest thing. Yate to never say never, but as far as something that might be on the horizon, because this new model Chris as everybody has written about and talked about, and who knows when it's going to happen, it does
feel like it is inevitable. And one thing that it will do, for better or for worse, is, you know, pit the best teams in college football against each other, against each other week in and week out. I mean, that television deal is going to be crazy, and that's why a lot of private equity guys are interested in buying sex and college football teams. That's probably the closest thing we'll ever have to pro football.
Here we call a transition for the kids listening at home, because our guy just took CK's RSL sounders in the press box and wove it into a will Utah and or BYU be left in the cold. Great, great, stunning stuff.
Thank you, sir. I appreciate that I.
Agree with you, but I'm going to be a little bit of a I don't want to say naive. I don't want to be naive here, But like, I don't even know what the plan is. I don't even know if there's a plan, Like I think there is a concept of a plan, as a guy once said recently, But like otherwise, there's just lots of theories that are floating around and being reported, but nothing close to concrete.
So while the likelihood of this so called super conference could potentially come to fruition, I don't know when we'll get there, if we'll get there, what the what the rights would look like, who gets involved, who doesn't. All I know is that the sharks at the top are going to keep feeding, and you know, as they should, because they're benefiting from being able to eat the most.
Speaking of a concept of a plan, the Department of Education came out this week with some Title nine guidance as it applies to the payments to athletes. Now the Trump administration. His nominated takeover is Vince McMahon's a strange wife. I don't know much about her, but you know, nothing's real, and so what I've been reading is they could roll it back, but you know, we are moving into this
reality coming up. I think it's June or July twenty point five, million in direct payments to athletes via NIL deals per school and according to the Department of Education. And the reason why this is important is the important is they are in charge of making sure that schools are staying compliant with Title nine guidelines. They're in charge of making sure these things are above board, or they're
the ones that will come after you. You know, the easiest way to explain this is if fifty percent of the athletes at your school are male and fifty percent are female, then fifty percent of the revenue has to go to males and fifty percent has to go to females. And we've heard several athletic directors publicly say we're going to allocate about eighty seventy five eighty percent of that twenty point five mal the football players, and according to this,
they would be in violation of Title nine. What are your thoughts on this? Do you think it stands or do you think it's going to be rolled back? When Vince McMahon's a strange wife runs the US Department of Education, the sentence I never thought I'd be able to say.
So, are we going to tap into the vein of I enjoy ninety percent of the content. The show gets too woke for me about one fourth of the time. Are we going to are we ready to tap into the one fourth?
Yeah, we haven't been woke very much as of late, ck, so bring the wokeness.
Well. As you were presenting me with that question, I got on the laptop, and of course, Linda McMahon is former wife of Vince McMahon, who I think Lindo had a huge part in the success of the WWF now the WWEH. It's a chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, and I'm gonna read you their their mission statement. The America First Policy Institute is a five O one C three blah blah blah. It exists
to advance policies that put the American people first. Our guiding principles are liberty, free enterprise, national greatness, American military support, foreign policy, engagement in the American interests, and the primary primacy of American workers, families, and communities. And all we do so the mission statement is clearly about equity amongst you know, college athletes in this new fangled world. To get back to your question again, how how is this
going to be deployed? How is it going to be you know, who's going to police this thing? What is the policy officially going to look like? I think it
makes sense. I know there's going to be pushed back about like should the school should the programs that bring in the most money to be able to have the most But listen, man, we can't, as we saw early on in COVID, like we can't utilize the strengths of a program at a certain school to be able to use that and contextualize getting rid of other sports and potentially getting rid of other athletes, which would be which are often titled nine decisions that obviously come off looking
very bad. So again, going back, I'm not pleading the fifth man, but like, all this stuff is just way too smart for me. And you know, I'm not a smart person. Like I can't. I can pontificate on who deserves what and why they deserve it, but I don't matter. I'm just a regular on the drive man, Like it's
Friday and I'm just chilling with my guys. So until we get some sort of concrete evidence like what the plan will be and what you know, miss McMahon wants to do, and really in terms of executing policy, it's all just going to be kind of conjecture.
Well, first of all, I disagree.
You are a smart guy, and you know, we'll do one more somewhat weighty question then we'll move on to Diego Luna's colt status with US many national team fans. But ready, So let let's and I asked Amy this question, and I knew that I was about to get my head taken off, so I asked her and I ducked.
But there are most people would say, okay, the sports that generate the most revenue should have the bulk of the revenue invested into you know, that product, whether it's the athletes, whether it's the coaches, And the fact of the matter is the bulk of the money does go to those programs. The highest paid public employee in most states is either a football coach.
In my home state, Connecticut's a.
Basketball coach because Ucon's a basketball school. Is there flaw in that logic when most people look at this and say, okay, the way the world works is the football team generates the most revenue, so the football team deserves the bulk of the money to go towards them.
I think there are two trains of thought one. Obviously, Yes, Secondarily, I think you will come to a model. Let's hope that gives these student athletes and these sports that historically have been underfunded and aren't represented well on the you know, fiscal plane. I hope they'll get more than they previously had. I'm just looking at this from a totally logical point of view. I have a really hard time thinking that it will end up being a fifty fifth split, fifty
to fifty split. And I'm not saying what's right, wrong, or indifferent, because that's I'm not I'm not judge, jury and executioner, But like, ultimately a lot of these athletes also deserve to be compensated. Who's gonna who is going to be the judge? Who is going to bang the gabble? Like I do think basketball and football will be king and at some schools, like you know, women's basketball will have a say, schools like you know, South Carolina, Baylor, Tennessee,
so on and so forth. But ultimately, I think that this is the society we live in. I mean, it's it's not too hard to read the tea leaves, man. I think everybody knows which way this will go. My hope is that programs and people that have historically been underfunded are given their piece of pie as well.
So I was having this debate a couple of weeks ago imced an event up in Park City. Rick new Heisl was on the panel, and we were talking about the role of simply private equity in sports, you know, venture capitalists. A lot of very rich, powerful people were there that live in a world that I just don't they can't even relate to.
And we opened up the debate.
As far as the recent trend of women's sports and valuations of NWSL teams and WNBA team sky high and WNBA ratings not just improving like quadrupling, And yes, you do have to draw a line to Kaitlin Clark. Okay, I know we're supposed to say, well, the women that came before and all of that certainly is true, but.
You know, golf needed Tiger, soccer needed Messy.
It's not uncommon that one figure literally changed the landscape of a sport, and Kaitlin has done that for the WNBA. My question, as we continue to tap into your expertise whether or not you like it, is have we reached a bubble or is this trend of money being invested in women's sports and clear attention being directed towards women's sports.
Does it continue to trend up?
I think it continues to trend up. I think it's too early to say whether or not there was a bubble and if it did exist, if it's burst or not. I mean, Kaitlin is going into her second year as a professional athlete in the WNBA, and granted there really isn't anybody who has been able will have been able to captivate a national audience the way Caitlyn did during her time at Iowa. I mean, shoot, dude, she was in the she was in the box with with Taylor
at the Chiefs game. She's she's yeah. I mean, she's the real deal. And I agree with you, it does.
It does sound kind of, as my guy would say, reductive, but like stars matter, and you know, like they will take you places, and Caitlin's definitely in that group, especially if you're talking about a sport that needs more star power and more star representation to be able to reach the fringe folk, the periphery, the folks who aren't even sports fans, you know, people like my wife who will like, you know, during her time my Iowa, she'd be like, oh,
look at this Instagram reel of Kaitlyn Clark, Like that stuff goes a long way. And I think to your point, the pe guys as you like to call them, like they see that as a massive investment opportunity. I would hope,
and maybe this is a to glass half full. I would hope that folks don't necessarily feel compelled to have to wait for the next Caitlin Clark in that sense, because it's hard, man, Like we had Michael, we waited how I mean, I guess that the overlap between Michael and Kobe and MJ wasn't that long, like or Michael, Kobe and Lebron wasn't that long. But like, it's hard, man. I we get into this comparison game that I feel like is very dangerous and again reductive and really belittles
what so many people have to offer. And all you have to do is turn on the TV and pay attention. Like it's not that hard, Like you don't need you don't need to watch you know, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. It's great, you know, I love it, but you know I can I can tune into other things. There are other there are other sports to watch, them to be invigorated by.
If I'm in the mood for a coach shot pep talk, I'm turning it on.
Man, I don't care what you say, I'm turning it on.
Is that, well, there's there's been there's been a lack of those in the last couple of years.
Well, I only saw I think the first four episodes of season one because my honest, sincere hope and I'm not being facetious.
I'm putting on my serious cap here.
I thought, okay, cool, like this show will expose the cool parts of our city and our market to a very large audience. I think they get like ten million view ten million viewers per episode.
That was my hope.
And then within a few episodes, I'm like, they're not doing any of that, So I just stopped watching.
I guess I would counter and since the sports sports talk radio we can banter like what what would what were you hoping they would be able to showcase to the outside.
World, I don't know, just a shot at trap and Nate benchcrack and a FURDA juniors, you know, just the real people here, you know, just just to just to keep it real.
I mean our guy Trey Camberling, who is back in his home state of Iowa. He he coined a phrase that I always laugh at and I always repeat to him every single time. He joked about his small Hope hometown in Iowa as the epicenter of culture. And you can, if you're talking about Salt Lake City and the you know, huge scale of the US and view it through the lens of you know, the real Housewives of Salt Lake City,
we can be an epicenter of culture for people. People love it still, man, I'm telling you my sister's in California. If they're obsessed with it, they think it's the best one. So we have something going for us in that sense. But I do agree with you. It is a fairly uh not sanitized version. It's just kind of a it feels like a very Sandy Draper version of of who we are.
Are you watching it?
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I'm locked in bro.
Is Dave Rose's like brothers still married to that one?
Correct? Yeah?
Oh yeah? Ok? Yeah, Well shout out to that guy.
Seems like that's a tough ask in my opinion, But I'll you know, I'm not judging. Let's let's move away from this quickly. We were talking about this early had I had your guy Andy on. I had a guy B Larson on and he caught up with Lowry, Mark and In and Colin Sexton and to his credit, asked him point blank like, how is this tanking stuff affecting you? And I think it's a really slippery slope when you have an awesome player in his prime to kind of
take this route. Although I understand and agree with what the Jazz are doing, it it sucks, but I mean this sincerely. Prior to two thousand and four, I probably could have counted on one hand how many soccer matches I watched. Usually it was like a World Cup final or whatever. And whenever any soccer goop would be like we should do promotion relegation in American sports, or of like communists go away in the corner, because I didn't
know anything about it. And now you know, twenty one years later, since we rought the club here, and I've very much come to a space of enjoying the game, respecting the game, understanding the game, and promotion relegation is awesome, like I think it should be in college football. I think it should be in pro basketball. I don't know that the NFL has the infrastructure to do it. Do you think there's any way that any sport over across
the pond here adopts this format promotion relegation. Do you think it's ever gonna gonna happen or even be considered?
Never ever, in a billion, trillion, gazillion infinity years. It is not part of our culture. We are a top heavy obsessed with winning at all costs. Culture and context be damned, we are not capable of it. I agree with you wholeheartedly. You see what it means to players and staffers and fans when a team gets relegated, and what happens when a team gets bumped up, and it is the epicenter of bummer and bliss. Man, I'm telling you it is. It is like the ultimate human experience
watching in real time. We don't have that here. Like here we have, you know, people arguing about Taylor and Travis kelcey like that's what we are, That's who we are, And it's unfortunate, but it would be cool. It would make the stakes higher and make every single night that much more intense and meaningful and frankly, I mean, I
can only imagine. I'm of the opinion that I think it would help media ratings because I think for a sport like basketball, people tune out for several months on end because they know that there are there are teams that are going to be doing load managements, and nobody cares to watch the Raptors play the Kings and Sacramento on a Wednesday night, Whereas like, if there was a bigger picture ramification on the line, you bet your ass
people would be into it. So I don't know, that's that's me on my soapbox, but I never think it will happen here, but it would be really cool if it did.
RSL played today, they played a match I didn't really know that they were even doing that scrimmage preseason match. Eleven comes out, the starting eleven comes out. I knew like four players. Trey pop Town earlier gave us the rundown of where we're at, and I think they need to sign a striker. They're gonna rely on like five players they brought in, none of which have this really awesome pedigree. Diego Luna kind of announced his arrival to
the dorks that love the US men's national team. What do they call that group, the Sam's Army or whatever?
Those goobs. So now he's like this cult hero over there.
So some fun things happening with RSL, but a lot of unknown c K.
What's your expectations for the club this year?
Great pull man, great pull on Sam's Army in a weird way, like I think they had a terrible offseason, but at the same time, like one signing I think could really change the landscape of how this season specifically goes. I am not under the assumption that any of these guys they have at the night position right now will pan out to be anything remotely productive. I've been proven wrong before. But if you're thinking about the exoskeleton of what you need to be a good team, RSL, oh
they have it. They got to figure out how to let teams stop scoring three or four times every match like they did for much of last year. But you have maybe one of the best midfield tandems in a Mecca and Allen Brian o'hada Diego Luna is obviously continuing
to shoot up. You know, the the rankings of most talented young players in the league, but you're counting on guys that came in last year that you know, I think Dominic mark Suit had a decent run of form, But like you're counting on guys like him and Diego Diego Gunzalves to come in and be you know, you need them to be at the level of a Diego Luna for an entire season and if not better, especially
for Gunslves. That's a guy who was one of the best players you know in FC Copenhagen, you know, one of the one of the top teams in Europe for a long time. They lose an alpha and Chico Arongo. They need an alpha in the attack and I just don't know. Obviously Luna has that, as you know, Mauricio Pacheccino said the other night, Big Balls. He just said it to Denny on the broadcast, straight up big balls with with the broken nose and playing. So Diego has it.
I just don't know does he. Is he capable of carrying an entire attack on his shoulders for the length of the season. I don't think so. So you just need to put better players around him, and you need to have other players rise to the occasion. But this nine by committee thing, I'm extremely skeptical about because these are the types of guys that sometimes they pan out, but sometimes they're guys that end up playing at like Rio Grand Valley in the USL and you never really hear from again.
Since you brought up needing an alpha on the pitch, should we take this opportunity to offer thoughts and prayers to the family of the bowl.
Somebody somebody posted like that alpha con poster on Twitter and was like, three out of the nine people on this poster are now facing federal like criminal charges in just like a year two years later. So listen, man, I mean, if they have another one, God willing, we got to go because we have to. We have to go in from the alphas, man, because that's the only way you're going to succeed in life.
No, if they have another one, I'm going to post if a series of videos painting myself is an alpha, to see if I can speak to see if they'll.
I like it, man, they'll take your kind. I don't think it would work for me. I think they would look at me and they I think they I think they would pick up and call the phone, you know, call a number on the phone.
So I don't know that was the meanest thing you've ever said to me. They'll take your kind if you.
Lean into the character. Man. You know that, that's why you said it.
Come on, all right, fair enough, last thing, then I'll set you loose. I wanted to get your thoughts on a topic that we discussed. I think it was Tuesday. I got an email. There's this guy who emails me every day. He runs this service where he does a bunch of surveying across the country to see, like which state wants which team to win which game? You know, who's American chain for the super Bowl? And nearly you know, over two thirds of the country anti Chiefs. They want
the bills. And we do this thing Chris and sports, and we've it happened recently here. All of these things need to be analyzed separately, but just generally speaking, the dynamic is we tend to love you until we don't. Like Donovan Mitchell is the example I used where that dude walked down water here then suddenly it felt like a lot of people just wanted him gone. And is it Taylor Swift? Is it winning? Is it all of it?
Why do we do this thing in sports where we seem to love you until we very much do not.
We are we looking at this through the lens of the mahomes and the officiating. Is this where you're kind kind of going.
That's probably partially.
Partially, that's probably, you know, the one piece of the reasoning, but a lot of it's probably the attention.
A lot of it's probably the winning.
It's just like whatever it is, Yankees, Lakers, Patriots, individual players, just as sports fans. I don't know if it's lack of attention span or whatever it is, but we just seem to love you and tell me very much do not.
Well one I agree. I have a personal anecdote. My cousin, who is one of my best friends, grew up a Lakers fan, and he's been texting me throughout the season saying, the Chiefs are getting calls, the Chiefs are getting calls, and man, obviously that the way that the Texans playoff game went. He was like, see, I told you, And I was like, man, you got to root for Kobe
Bryant for twenty years. Can you imagine how other people felt every time Kobe, who was one of the best smartest players in the league, did his little pump fake or whatever and got to the line twenty times a game. It's the same thing, man. People just want to find something to be upset about. And it's weird that in this culture that's so obsessed with winning that we do manage to find a way to be very, very angry
at sustained success in sports. Like the Chiefs are like fifteen and two or sixteen and two now, and you can make an argument they haven't played one good game this year, which is insane. So maybe like they're turning it on at the right time. They probably are, But like that means that this team, if they can win a third straight Super Bowl, that's never been done. Like,
what are we mad about? Man? Like, are we mad that Patrick Mahomes is smart enough to like, you know, bend the rules for himself and do fake slides and do drop downs. Yeah, we can be mad about that, but they'll fix it in the off season. They always change things every year. In the meantime, just sit there and enjoy it. But my caveat is, if you are a human being with feelings and empathy, you should be
cheering for the team playing the Chiefs. Why because a lot of people don't know that the Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls at one point in the nineties, which is like the saddest thing in the world for like, which was I think you could make an argument the smallest market team in the NFL, and probably still is
to this day. It's them or Green Bay, Like, they lost four straight Super Bowl spence like that is insane, man Like, for a team of that stature to get there four straight times, which is probably unheard of anyways, and then to come on short so many times is so sad. So if you're hoping for some sort of like fairy tale ending for a fan base that by all accounts really loves its team, you can. You should cheer for the Bills because they have a history of
being very sad. But you shouldn't cheer for the Bills because you're tired of Patrick.
Mahomes Well said, are you gonna get on Blue Sky?
I got on it, and I was. I realized that it made It was just not working for me, so I deleted it. I can't have too many of those things, man, there's no point.
I know there's some point.
I know. I just fired mine up. I've been on it for a couple of months, I just fired it up. I don't need more either, but I just can't get on the other thing anymore.
It's just like exhausting.
Well, all you have to do, Spence, is you just have to mute and block and mute and mute and mute. All you have to do is take like three to four hours and mute keywords and just make sure that you can just get the type of information that you want. And always always always avoid the for you. Always avoid the for you, and you'll be okay.
Good advice.
If you saw my list of accounts that are muted or blocked, you'd be stunned. It's most everybody. But anyway, anyway, Christopher, I appreciate your time. High five de Lio and we will chat soon.
Thanks buddy, Yes, sir, thank you.
Chris cam Roddie, senior staff writer at The Athletic Friday Staple on the program