Episode 170 - Why Is the XFL-USFL Merger Taking So LONG?

Well, happy Mark cast Friday here live episode today Black Friday. I thought I had eliminated going before, you know, the New York Jets game and trying to all the competition today, you know, get people getting up, get their shopping, and forgot we're actually going up against the feasts of football here, the XFLS thing. So we'll see, hopefully, hopefully we could do whatever. But this was fun today. I felt like we needed to

do something. I had been talking with Max about this listener Max producer. Max been knee deep in CFL content for about a month, and Max, you know, I'm trying to get away from like, okay, is it four and eight and four? Okay, now it's five and five. Okay, now it's eight, trying to get through all that making videos every week. But now we need to stop down at Max, how are you doing.

I'm doing great. It feels kind of weird following spring football right now, because this kind of feels like a whole lot of enoughing, really, but at least now, for the first time in months, really we have something more substantial than hearsay. That's nice. Yeah, it's been it's been tough, and I know and and God bless Brandon and everyone trying to kind of do these videos. Like I said, we you know, doing the

Great Cup Show had a great success for that. I appreciate, you know, sixty six thousand people checking that out, which was pretty cool, the biggest thing that we've seen, so you know, obviously on our channel. So excited for that. But Max said, there's enough now with the government. You know we have I got the photos, all this kind of stuff, Mike Mitchell's recent reporting. There's enough to talk about. We need to

stop down. I asked the professor Andrew Murray, who being busy with family obligations, ask Greg Parks, and I said, Max, it's important to that. We'll get Max. Now, we'll run down all this questions everything else today. Philip checking in Max. First off, you know, what is the welfare check right now? Because I know there's been a lot of animosity online and a lot of like now we've parlayed the xfl usfl stuff and okay, well who's gonna win with the numbers and kind of all that stuff.

We're sitting here, it's Black Friday, November twenty fourth. How are you feeling. I'm just looking around, like you know, remember last year when the USFL was all putting their commercials on TV and during NFL games. I mean, I haven't been watching whole of NFL football. I don't think that's been happening lately. I sure haven't seen many people posting about it if it has been happening, or anyone really And the XFL is like, we'll

just re air stuff we already did on YouTube all off season. Even now it's just more of the same stuff. It really feels like they're just biting their time hoping them gets improved in time to launch a merge twenty twenty four season. And I'm a little concerned what's going to happen. If they can't do it then, are they going to have separate seasons or twenty twenty four? Are they just going to cancel it all entirely and start over in twenty

twenty five as a merged league. That's kind of my fear is, you know, we went through this last year. We had the Vegas Vipers and the Cashman Field. You feel the dreams at all? And we have a question here from random we'll talk about the Vegas Vipers. Do you have any questions anything? Post them and I'll tag them here and we'll get to him in the second. You know, we went through all that last year really delayed. It doesn't feel like either of these leagues have a lot of juice

right now. I do think the USFLA is doing more. Hey, watch our guys play on Thursday night. Watch our guys play on Sunday. Kind of watch that suff XFL. Like you said, we're doing this feast of Friday. But it doesn't feel like, you know, this is a league with players reporting in the month and a half. No, it certainly does not feel like this is going to be playing football in February. And honestly, I'm not even sure the USFL was going to be playing football in April

at this point separately either. It just kind of all feels like a bit of a mirage in terms of the back and forth, where it felt like at the beginning the reports were actuel reaching out to the USFL kind of being

absorbed that way. Now at least reports I had heard and flying in even this latest Thursday night to Canada and they're at the reporter suite getting the messages like hey, now we're feeling here and it's going to be more XFLI like, what if we stumble where it's kind because it feels like every week kind of they need to kind of bounces one way or another. The main stumbling

has just been that they can't get it done. Really, they can't get this sorted out, even though it's taken months upon months, and also that it took them this long to start on this process in the first place. They should have figured out that they wanted to do this if this was something entering their mind in like March of this year instead of July. Man, Instead we wait so long and now the regulators are going to delay it through probub. I mean, we're hoping for the mid December, but I'm I

don't know if this makes it through by the end of the year. I mean, I just I just don't see it, honestly. Well, and there's always the kind of the at the end of the year shutdown stuff too,

where everyone kind of yeah, it's taken off. I remember following with all of the uh the when we were going through COVID and all of the small business loans and unemployment and all that stuff, and I remember tracking a lot of like government processes of Okay, when is this stuff getting to get approved, Like, okay, now we're taking the next four weeks off, we'll be back right. Wait, wait a minute here, what's going on?

So? Yeah, we had John Lewis here, who was on a couple of weeks ago, I think the last kind of proper episode talking about the big government meet up. That's kind of what we have in the most you know, most juice here to kind of get into today. And then we have some questions Mike reporting that let me get the photo up, and then what do you make of kind of the reports coming out of you do I need the rock we're meeting in DC? Who do we have here in

this photo? Max? Kind of because Mike did the big breakdown, I mean Mark had the article, but might kind of put in this workout. Yeah, I was snooping around trying to figure out who the guy in the middle was and I so I did an AI photo recognition search. Came back like eighty seven percent score Burt magnus I was like, oh, well, I'll ask and see if people who are actually reporting on this can find out

it's him. In turn, enough, they did find out it was him in the middle there, so everyone else seriously, we have Dwayne and Danny on the ends, then we have Jerry and Russ of Brandon next to each of them, and then we got Shanks and Mark Dally, who was like one of the heads of Redbird. He's like one of the partners, I

think, and they were in DC. And it seems to be the biggest sticking point right now is at least from what I can understand, the XFL wanting eight teams total, whether that's four and four, I've heard five and three, which with you is again there's kind of this like measuring the stick measuring contest here going on, which I don't like, right, I don't like celebrating victories of any kind of like, wow, the more USFL team

survives whatever. But it seems to be that the I guess right, the government concerned that with the losing of jobs, layoffs, kind of all that stuff, they want more ten tel teas. Am I understanding this correctly?

Yeah? Personally, in my opinion, I think all the hearsay at this point about like which league has more teams is really all about how many home sides, so they want to have enough and everything else has nothing to do with which league is preferred and Honestly, the people who are saying, oh, we think it's gonna be more teams from this league or the other league are probably just a lot of them. I better coaches and players who are

just talking trash, honestly. But I'm definitely concerned about the layoffs two as well, and I think they need to come up with some sort of compromise. And I've got a couple of ideas. Listen out. Uh yeah, I mean, because that's that's the thing, right is, and it's never been people always think like, Okay, this merger is going to come together. You know, we're going to have this sixteen and Mike mitchelline that we talk a lot in the group chat and this Megapower League and eight and eight

and all that stuff. Clearly, this merger is a coming together of we, you know, we can't compete against this. We need to consolidate a little bit. Whether are some ideas, I know you have your I know you have your Google doc here going through. What are some of the things

that you're concerned about it that you want to talk through. Well, the regulators are obviously are we're about layoffs, but the league is like, hey, we're not going to be able to run this if we have twelve to fourteen teams because we have too many players, too much overhead, whatever. And also on top of that, they're trying to move to the USFL model of cutting off all the full time pay for all these assistants that aren't coordinators,

which is only three of them. So on the on the bigger problem on the layoffs end for the large organization, if you can find a way to say, hey, let's meet in the middle of the number of teams, but then all the teams or all of them but one or two maybe have home sites, and so that way you can say, hey, we have we've retained all this staff for selling tickets. We might move them around

to markets, or at least we retain the numbers of staff. We might have to fire and rehire or whatever, But that way you'd be selling tickets and markets, you'll have ticketing staff, stadium staff, vendors. All that you're still paying those people. That part of the economy is still set. And on top of that, you're you're still you're not taking away eight teams,

you're taking away six teams. So still a little bit of a compromise there for the player's sake, and the coach is sick, and the executives of teams I guess, which there aren't really that many. I don't even

think the USFL has much scouting infrastructure at all for teams. And then in terms of how to make each coaching staff more efficient in terms of because they currently they don't want everybody full time, if they could find a set up like how the Renegades and some of the how the Guardians did it, where they gave multiple different people like co offensive and defensive coordinator roles, and then

also an assistant head coach role and a special teams head coach role. All those guys also coach their own position group, and then you have like six position groups covered six assistants center full time between your co offensive and defensive coordinators, special teams co assistant head coach, and then you have a core that can you can maintain a culture every year in your assistance group, and then you can rotate some of the other guys in and out, like a running

back coach or whatever. In that way, it'll be easier to build a team every year. But does this seem like these conversations of this magnitude in terms of kind of this. It feels very late to be having here in November. Do you anticipate that they thought they would have an easier time getting this pushed through? I know when we remember when the original reports came out and it said that we're all, yeah, three, like they're not going

to have any problems with this, like this is some small potatoes. But it does seem like they're getting really caught in the weeds here. Yeah. It kind of feels like they just assumed, because the alternative was that they would go bankrupt, that the government would just give them the thumbs up.

But they have to realize that the government has to look out for the long term effects of something like this sticking around while still taking away layoffs instead of as a warning as to say, hey, this just doesn't work if you try to mess with this and we're not. We're not going to allow you to just take away jobs and keep going. They like they have to.

I guess they need to maintain their enforcement muscle. Really, it seems to me, and we've talked about this a lot with the you know, the XFL the sixty million and kind of all of that stuff in the USFL, Like at some point, we're gonna need to be okay, taken the sustained

loss for a couple of years here on this. And the problem to me is we're trying to figure out how can we penny pinch and Okay, let's let's go consolidate, get you offensive and we don't need this many And it's like the CFL model, Like, Okay, Chris Jones gonna be the GM and the head coach and he's calling the defensive plays and we're doing this like it feels to me at some point you're gonna need to jump in. And I don't know, We've lived through this with the UFL, USFL, with

the HUB model, now with the XFL. He just doesn't feel like either of these entities is willing. And I get it. I mean, I don't you know, I have one hundreds of million dollars dollars to lose either. It seems like this isn't It seems like we're just trendy water here. We're trying to shed access weight versus trying to get a life jacket on here. Yeah, and also it really feels like they're not even committing to trying to get people in the door. It just kind of feels like, let's

just put football out there and we'll see what happens. And I mean, we wrote I wrote up the whole fans Bill of Rights thing, and they did not care at all about that, even though that was one of your most popular videos. And people, just like the people in the leagues, just don't care about actually trying to get fans. They just care about how if they can get some minimal profits off the back end by reducing costs to the smallest possible amount. Are you concerned? And I was here when we

had John Lewis's episode on and when we had Greg Parks on it. I guess it was like a month ago now that the public perception of all this not only kind of in the in the the casual market. Right, Okay,

we're hearing about all this stuff. But if I'm a fan of either of these leagues, here we have Chris her Aviation Junction talking, you know, taking away the dragons, like I'll tell you my friends here in Seattle, like we're at you know, they're just waiting to get their money refunded at this point, they have no you know, I said, I don't doesn't feel like Seattle is going to be involved in this, but they said it doesn't matter, like we're out you know this, it's been too many

hurky jerky and we've been part of this since twenty eighteen. I mean, that's what I think some of these power ups don't get is, you know, I understand the people working for the league and the team reps and horrendous and this is jobs lost and I don't want to see all this, But like some of these fans that this is six seven years going on to this, it's just a huge askt now of like, well, let's sit tight

here or ain't through all this? And you know, was it the Renegade's selling the sweets and the BattleHawks selling sweets like okay, but what's this going to look like here? Is it going to be a February kickoff? Is it going to be March April? It seems like they're still too much in the air even as far as that goes. Yeah, I mean, I mean obviously, I mean I think the West Coast teams are out the door. I mean, I just think there's no way right but an April kickoff,

February kickoff, March kickoff, whatever month kickoff. I mean, God forbid a July kickoff, right Like, there's no way. I don't. I just don't think anybody. I think everyone who isn't the most die hard desperate to have spring football survive fan just cannot possibly remain attached to this right now because there's just no security in this team. If you get invested in

your team is gonna go away in six months. The league might go away in a year you like, and there's no reason to believe it won't because the people who are running it are making it seem like it might go away this year. So like, what's it's really hard to see the point if you're if you don't believe in the vision, and even if you do believe in the vision, can you trust these people? I don't know if you can anymore. I'm just gonna be honest, Well you can't, you know.

And the sentiments came in. I mean again, I've said this before.

You know a lot of these people that have been involved in all of this, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like this is a baby that's been passed on. It's been passed on, it's been passed on, and it's gone through so many hands and so many families and foster care, and it was in the court system and it was got adopted by the government and then it got adopted out, and so like, it feels like it's gone through so many different iterations at this point, it's really hard

for me to hold on to we have here from PIP talking. If they plan to run Separate in twenty twenty four, it would be disaster attendance wise. It basically a lame duck season. That's kind of I feel like we're the weird sticky point right now where all of this came out and then we had the actual US reporting all of that back. But in terms of it feels like it's a lose lose situation right now, where either we roll forward, Hey, don't you pay no attention to the pressure lease in September we're

working on in this state. But then how possibly do you get invested in that? Or like you said that we do we delay, do we do everybody? What do you make of that? If we just continue this doesn't happen, we go forward in twenty twenty for our business as usual. I mean, it's like danged if you do dinged if you don't right like you. If you run the season twenty twenty four, everyone knows this is completely meaningless. And if you do not run the season and you just go to

twenty twenty five, then people are going to forget you even exist. Like all the TV on j are gonna be like, oh, spring football is gone, they went bankrupt again. I'm not even gonna They're not gonna it's not even gonna be on the radar that emerge league in twenty twenty five is coming, because these people are doing such a bad job of raising awareness about their football leagues that I just don't see how people would realize that it's coming

back. Well, and I thought it was interesting too, because we've talked a lot on here about you know, coaching and staff and competition. Right with the CFL, we're trying to get all this talent whatever. It was funny to me. We were up in Hamilton for the Great Cup and Dave Naylor was on our stream, but we had it was that morning that he had just tweeted out because someone was asking about coaching competition and they're like, he goes, well, you know, there's so much uncertainty right now with

the spring leagues in America. I'm like, you know, perception changes really quick, and here just six nine months ago, I'm talking with CFL agents and yeah, you know, we're telling people go play in the USFL, go play in the XFL. And then here you go, like, we know the way they made Blue Bombers are going to be here in twenty twenty

eight. We know, you know, we think we know the Edmonton Elks are going to be They might be under private ownership, but you know, there's just a lot of I guess again shifting watershare from what was just even six months ago, in terms of how these leagues are viewed. I just think, yeah, if it just kind of feels like they don't care. Really, they're gonna do whatever. The ownership is going to do whatever they want, and if the league fails, whatever, it's a rounding error to

them whatever. You know, they don't want to put in the real commitment to make this work, because if they did, they would put in even the same level of commitment that they put into some of their other properties, Like they put all this care and effort into making sure they can get people

out to a soccer game. But then when you buy an entire football league, and you just do not reach out to the fans until like two months before the season, and then the second time around you don't really reach out to them at all because you don't even know if you're going to have a season. I mean, how are people supposed to take you? Seriously? I just don't understand. I want to talk here, we have some notes, we'll have some questions. We get to as well. Yeah, it

fell, and I get that. That's why we're not telling anyone. I totally get that, right, better off be silent business usually, But it's hard. I mean I tweeted out right after everything came out and the USFL was talking about their you know, their fire free agency. I'm like, man, this is really hard to kind of separate these two things. Like, Okay, we know this is going on in the background, but you

know, it's like your parents are squabbling. It's like, well, dads still got to take me to practice, but I know that when I get home it's going to be awkward, Like you know, there's just a lot of whatever with that. But you know, we've seen the trademarks. We've seen the NFL are they was it the National Football League trademark. We've seen the UFL trademark now hearing it could be the XFL or the USFL brand name, which has always made more sense to me just because of the time the

money put into that. In terms of it being the XFL, I think the USFL, I would ride with that. I would ride it with the USFL absorbing the XFL. Moving on, where do you make it currently? How you feel on that? All I'm going to say is that the XFL is a larger online footprint and has a younger audience and also managed to draw slightly more with way less exposure, and also, quite frankly, I don't think the USFL brand really connects to anyone who's under the age of fifty.

And I just don't really get why you would have all these massive six hundred and seven hundred thousand follower accounts and then pick the one that has like one hundred and thirty five thousand followers. I don't know. To me and I have this hanging. I always have this from our good friend the rash mcgonni got that at Great Cup and the Great Couple of the way, Uh, you know, twice failed now you're going in is a thrice fail. I think there's baggage on that as well. That's why I kind of go back

and forth. I think I don't care which one it is. I think we need to maintain one and before it, I think, yeah, and in the USFEL, I mean, the XFL might be a thrice failed league. In the USFL might be a twice failed league. At this point, both they both leags are failing pretty hard right now. I mean, there's no there's no way about it. So I think you have to pick the

one that has a larger connection to most of society. And I don't think that's the one that died forty years ago and they're trying to revive and that people under the age of fifty just don't care about. But that's just me. But whatever, they'll they'll pick one because the alternative is to bring a whole new name about that doesn't make any sense and try to make that connect with people. Whenever you've already put so much effort into building these other brands

that just just does not make any sense to do any of it. Let me and let me know. In the comments we had here, you know, Foosball usfls are saying, I guess I'm the one saying I would just keep with the US developed Fox to put a ton of money into that. I think it's clean. I understand what Max is saying, the residents residents of all of that, But you know, I don't want to be too Homer Reagan to be like it's got to be the UXFL or bust like I

don't know. I guess it depends kind of how the actual you know, league management is going to end up being. But I'm looking here at the comments, uh pat here saying I would stay with the USFL with the ownership of the Xcel franchise USFL and XL wants to see it appears that's kind of where I'm at. You know, bringing the battle Hawks bring up, like you said, marketed is an acquisition the USFL bringing in you call it the

merger or whatever. But to me, yeah, branding and acquiring all these new trademarks is going to be a lot interesting and regard I just to me, it always baffled me that they would go down that course of like, well, we we sued Steve Earhart and all of this, and we got all these trademarks and Ryan Woods bought all this in and now we're gonna dump it. I think it probably costs the XFL more to buy the league than it did for them to go through all those lawsuits and those trademarks. So

you tell me, honestly and whatever, they'll pick one. It doesn't really matter. We can find we can decide which one you want, but at the end of the day, it's not up to us. I will say this, there's only one USFL representative in that picture in DC. There's everyone else is basically associated with the XFL or ESPN, which is directly tied to the XFL. John, don't feel like you're too old, I said fifty plus. Don't don't. I'm not. I'm not pushing too hard on it.

You're you're not, You're not that old. Uh yeah, How did we get out of some of these stadium leases? Well, you know you got you got loomin Field and all of that. I don't know. I think are these one year offs at this point? Can we duck at the point. I'm sure some of them are two or three year leases. They'll pay the whatever it takes to get out, and I mean the alternative is they lose even more money staying there. So well, you're gonna end up

having to give refunds anyway for a lot of this stuff. I mean in terms of like Seattle, like we're all paid up. I mean it's not a lot, but I mean it's what three eighty five times four. I mean we're in for you know, forty whatever that is for the Underbucks or whatever. So, uh, you know they're gonna have to do that at that point. You had to know that on here. With that, with losing an NBC presence, not having an NBC presence here, what do you

in terms of kind of the merged League movie. It's just hard to say. All I know is there's nobody from NBC in that picture, And partially that's probably because they sub Fox only sub licenses games to NBC. It's not like NBC is directually involved in the league in any way. But the ESPN is technically not directly involved in the ownership of the XFL either, and they're

right there in the middle of the photo, uh with Burke maintenance. Yeah, I'm a little concerned that NBC is not gonna stick around for this new iteration because they can see that the interest in the overall field is kind of doting out and they can see that these leads are not being well run at

all. Elaborate on that not being well run. Well, they can see that their audience numbers, right, I mean, they were expecting huge numbers in twenty twenty three for you the USFL, and it just was not there. So you know, it's just kind of hard to say what or what sort of other stuff would you would you really hope for? Right, It's kind of why would you stick around in terms of the I guess the time to strike on this. Have we missed this window in terms of the competing

last year? And I just checked where we're currently out drying the feast of football on the XFL channel. So that's exciting just as a personal picture. Not that it's a low bar, but I'll take that as a win here, Black Priday. You know, we had said we would beat the Sharks. Evan won the crack at the other night. In this stance, he's a little victorious in life. But uh, you know, because like I said, now there's so much uncertainty with this. We're dragging this out.

We're going through the same things last year. I mean, it has this window already passed if that makes sense. Well, for twenty twenty four. I just mean in general right now, I mean for the short term, like you know, I'm talking within the next ten years here. I mean we had was it John Lewis on a I you know, I don't see this happen here? Was it? Paul res When did they? Like this

is kind of the last chance of this for the next decade plus. Maybe it just kind of I feel like if you if someone else who was smarter came in and started over and tried to build up from the ground up and didn't try to feel as big, and it said started at the roots, they would be able to do a lot better. But they don't. They all want to they all want to go big, but then not commit to going big, and it just kind of feels like get rich quick scheme and

it's like, no, those never work. This is not cryptocurrency, y'all. And that didn't work either in the long run. Well if and that was that's always been and I've been pretty public about, you know, vocal about my usfl of you know, this is more football, please watch. And I called it, you know, back when it was the Brian Woods and it was more Caveman football versus the XFL, which was like, this is a matrix and we're going to be cross connecting and all these platforms and

you know, scaling up and the multi layer and all this stuff. I don't know, did you feel and that were you that much more inspired from the XFL's product last year? To me, it felt, you know, there was lip service, and I know the broadcast had a different flare to it, but fundamentally, how did you feel that looking back at those The main thing I appreciated about the XFL more than the USFL would be they did a bit better of a job earlier and connecting compared to when the USFL started.

And also they didn't let themselves get weighed down by having literally zero fans at games, which was something that I think that perception hurt the USFL so much that even though they brought themselves out to more markets, that it was too late. The first impression had already been made, and people just didn't want to watch the USFL more because they thought no one's going to be there. There's no energy. If you're a casual fan who doesn't even really care

that much about the football game, you just want to be entertained. The crowd is part of the entertainment. Whether people who are actual football fans like Emory Hunt want to say that people don't care about the crowd, people absolutely

do care about the crowd. That's why they watch college football. College people don't watch college football for the football unless it's the very best teams, like you will watch out of Arkansas, Florida because because of the environment, because it's exciting, right Fageantry, Whereas that USFL brand's been so tarnished by these anti stadiums. That's another reason I don't think you want to keep that USFL name because people are going to be watching see the name of like, oh,

that's the game with literally zero fans in the building. What's the point of me watching that? That's like watching like some people on YouTube. What's the point? It's hard. It's hard to me, and I don't know. I kind of go back and forth with those of it to me and I know it's been badgered to death, this kind of hub thing. But I do agree with you, at least in terms of the long term effects of it. I think it's something where if you need to argue it repeatedly,

it's obviously it's a thing and so that to me is challenging. And we have John Lewis here, you had so many casual fans ever say they went back because of those empty state of audus. You know, it's like if you're in an argument with someone that, yah, it's fine, it's fine, Like, don't worry. At some point, at some point it's going to be you know, it's something that needs to be taken account. You know, the minimal more than the XMFL had in some and I want

to get we had a question here about the Vegas Mipers Stadium. But I do agree with you. I think long term effects of that it's hard. I think USFL fans champion, hubs champion. You know, the the no he's saying, the no fans is fine because of that business model made sense to me. Merely outlasting your competition does not make a successful business model. It means that you were able to survive longer, right with it, with the funds that you had. You're not You're not proving growth on that.

Last thing longer is not going to make people want to watch. Last thing longer is just going to be a slow death. Do you want it faster? Do you want it slow? I don't really want either. I want these people to actually understand how to connect with the fans. That's what I want. Well, and then you know, I've had conversations and talking like because people think like I've all butt hurt because Seattle called reads like I really don't care. I mean it was cool, and when we went to the

games and all of that, I don't. I go the one BC Lions game a year. I covered the CFL line. But to me, this promise that like, well, no, we're going to take a step back and then in two three years, like you're going to figure it, We'll get to that point. You haven't proven that yet, So to me, it's it's it's problem. I've seen something down the road, but I don't have anything right now to prove that that's something that's going to actually pan out

in the future. And as they've ramped up their commitment to more markets and more fans again, the broader national interest has already turned away. It's already declining, and that perception has not changed, and it did not increase. Over the course of the seasons. People realized that there were more there was more interest around the league in the places they played it declined because people already gave up, and that's going to be a really hard mounted to climb.

And I think that same problem is going to hit the XFL now, because if they cancel their season in twenty twenty four, their toast. And if they don't cancel their season, outside of maybe Saint Louis probably still despite it all, and DC will probably still show up. But I mean, there might not be more than five thousand fans in any other XFL market. Maybe you'll get ten thousand in San Antonio, you know, And I mean, sure people will see that at least somebody cares, right, but they're going

to see that nobody else really does. And how long are people going to be willing to watch that? Whenever? It just kind of feels like it doesn't matter unless you really care about the sport. We had a question here from Pat. I think that the low I think at this point it might be better to like twenty playout. I think it would be better to see that possibly delete the teams from there. Usually the opinion of guys who were move on to the NFL, et cetera. Yah, Yeah, I don't

know. I've gone back and forth because I had said originally, and I'll hide this because we can't see your beautiful face if we if if this merger doesn't happen, at least in my perception, I see much more happening with the USFL right now. Am I reading that wrong because you've said that you've been unimpressed with that? Because to me, the USFL is right like we're doing Birmingham events, like we're ready to flip the switch and go if we need to. I mean, I think they'll have a season. I'll put

it out. I think you will have a season if this merger doesn't happen. Do I think people will really care? Nah, I don't think they're doing anything to actually make people care, so sure there will be a USFL twenty twenty four season. Do I think the audience numbers are going down despite them trying to ramp up exposure even more on TV? Yes? I do. Do I think that their online following is going to really increase? No, I don't really think it's going to improve, So it'll just be a

lost season from the USFL. Honestly, if you were, if it was up to me, I would, If I would, I would hope the merger goes through, they cancel twenty twenty four, and then they put their foot down on twenty twenty four and they actually commit to connecting the local markets like these should have done all along, and then at least people will know that they're coming in twenty twenty five, and on top of that, they'll

feel like this time the league actually cares, because currently I don't think either fan base, if they were really honest with themselves, feels like these leaks really care. I I've thought about this, and I've talked with Dorothy, and not that anyone cares what I think. And you're certainly with the CFL and everything. I mean, I think they tolerated let me come up.

But I do wish at some point anybody would have a conversation with anybody in terms of the fan bases with these leagues of like uh not not coming in with that. We know exactly what we need to do, and like many of the mistakes that have been made over the last two three years I think could have been course corrected by some conversations and like, well, we've seen this work before, we haven't seen this work before, this is what you need to do. It just baffles me. There we're at this point now,

and it feels like it's kind of the same. Uh. It's like it's like you're the soldier kind of a ballet of your wid Like I've been through this, Like I've already kind of seen all of this stuff and could have saved a lot of these casualties along the way. Yeah, if you literally like looked into the history of spring football at all, they would just obviously realize that it would The way they were doing this is just not going

to work. And now you at a point where if you have a season, people are not gonna be able to connect that to whatever the new league is, even if you maintain the name, because you're gonna be bringing leagues with totally different teams together, totally different markets. Some markets are going away,

and also people don't really have any idea it's happening. And if you don't have the season, then the only way you're gonna be able to get people to know you is if you actually get out there in the markets and you say, hey, we're coming, we're coming, we have all this

together. There's a reason we cancel this because we're going to come back better and stronger and offer you something serious this time, instead of just halfway committing there, I would rather almost throw away the twenty twenty four history connection and just pretend we're starting a brand new league with the same name, just to maintain a brand and push and push and push and say this time, we're for real, we mean this, We're serious, we care about you now.

But you know, maybe they don't. But I think they might not care, so I have way to go. I think it's it puts it in a challenging situation we have. I put it up already, but Dynamite gamings and no season twenty twenty before we'd kill any interest, no trust that league can even play, I will say, and John here that said this well about that. I do not talk to nearly as many players as I know, like Mike does, and I know Evan has connections and Pat and

kind of everybody else in our circle. But I had a couple of players reach out here over the last week because I think, just like probably CFL stuff and where our stuff's getting shared more and like, hey, what's you know, Hey, what do you think about all this stuff? And you know, they have no idea what's going on, Like they're totally left out

in the dark. And to me, that's a challenging place as well, if you're a coach or a player and you're at this point, if you're a you know, social media people for the XFL or the USFL, if you're selling tickets, like it just puts everybody in this hard situation. And and to me, it's it's hard now to whether it's this year or next year. Okay, well, now we're serious about this, Like, I know, we kind of strung you out for a little bit, but now

you know the alcoholic father. Now I'm ready to come to your game's ability. Like now I'm going to be here. Yeah. And if they if they, if they communicate with I can't imagine how the union feels right now. Well I want to get to that. Yeah. So wait wait, I mean, because that's the other question about that, right is the the UFLPA. Why didn't they post like Evans shared, they posted some like timeline of everything coming up that they need to figure out their steps. Well,

I mean, how does that even interact with all this? I mean, there's no way to really know. I know what they probably I mean, i'd imagine they hope they could get more communication, more clarity, and they need to know the timing because people got to know whether they're moving out to Arlington or Detroit or Memphis or whatever. But honestly, if they do end up playing the season, they do communicate with all these guys and they sort

it out and then oh yeah, they play it. They get similar, maybe slightly worse numbers than last year, and then people have no idea the new league is coming. Now. Maybe maybe what they do, maybe the only way you could you could make a twenty twenty four season work is if you use is say hey, literally the entire time you say hey, twenty

twenty five, new league coming, new new combination of teams. Maybe then it's worth it, because then it's just a three hour infomercial for next season, and maybe then it's worth it. But otherwise, I don't think the impact on the new league is going to be held much by having a twenty twenty four season. I mean, we've had the CFL cancel seasons and still come back, and obviously it's different for them because they've had committed fan bases.

But I think as long as you work to connect to the local markets, people will come out because once they see that commitment. What you get in, what you put in, you get out right. But I will say the CFL canceled COVID year this year now three years later, I think was the first both from a quality of play standpoint and from a you know, fan buy an attendant standpoint. We just had a great cup rating,

so I think it took three years to bounce back from that. So I agree with you, but I wouldn't so quickly say hey, let's just take time off or whatever. We it took a long time to rebuild that both intern of Yep, it takes a long time to build it either way. Yeah, for this, I mean it might take a decade. Are they going to be that committed? Who knows? We have a comment here,

Shadan as an actual equipment manager. We've been left in the dark, and I think it's going to be hard to even feel stafts for the team if no twenty twenty four season. Yeah, I mean I can't in my condolences as well that like, I just can't imagine. Uh we you know, we see XFL people and I've seen LinkedIn profiles change and people getting different jobs. It's huge to you know, I'm blessed here in this world where you know, I work from home and I'm able to kind of do all of

this stuff. You know, I could not imagine if this was my sole revenue, if I was trying to work for one of these leagues, how to kind of navigate all of this. I think it's I think you're asking a lot of those people as well. I can't imagine trying to navigate getting ready for a twenty twenty four season if you only get two weeks notice because the merger doesn't get approved until late January. I mean there, it's going to be a nightmare for you if you do have a season at this point

as well. It's just which which nightmare do you want to have? Make sure you get live a couple questions. We're good to make sure you get your questions comments in here. We'll go to the bottom of the hour, and then I know the Jets are coming on here and we can go watch the is it Tim Boyle? Now we're really living through all this stuff. But you can watch the Jets and the Dolphins. I'm gonna watch two lane

utsa role wave. I need them to play se me you next week and as meanings to beat them, so we had a question here talking about the Vegas Vipers thing. I saw this, I don't. I don't know the week I have a hard time we live through this with some of the job hirings with LinkedIn as well, it's really hard to store us that Wikipedia and LinkedIn articles for things. I don't feel the Vipers are playing in the Vegas Ballpark. I think they would have done that before. I don't see the

Vipers sticking around in any iteration along with the Dragons. I don't even think they're playing in twenty twenty four. I think they'll If they do, they'll put them in Arlington and then today I don't think that they're gone. They're gone. It's hard, so, you know, to go through the different current macamations. You know, I had heard, Okay, we're gonna have the eight teams and you know, do the Arlington and then play whatever here. But if we need to do more teams and we're like, then we

need to hub up. I guess what's the recent I don't want to get too deep down in the different number of variations, but if we expand from eight, it feels very difficult to replicate the XTFL twenty twenty three model of Arlington and then flying out right. It feels like we're gonna need to hub people if we got more than that. Dallas is a pretty Arlington's a pretty big city. I don't feel like you'd have any issue. Fine. I mean, I've said, you've seen my DMS before about all the quality football

facilities in North Texas. If you're gonna put a hub anywhere for ten twelve football teams, you're gonna pick North Texas because they will have the facilities for however many teams you need. They will have the hotels for how many teams you need. They'll have the size of airport needed to get you anywhere you need in the country. The real question is is it going to be too difficult to plan and like do the logistics for all all that having them all

from that one place. I tend to feel like the answer is no. I feel like you could still do it with ten teams and maybe eight of them are teams still based in real markets and the other two or just the permanent road teams or whatever. But it definitely will get more complicated and you will have the nightmare trying to figure out how are we moving the UFLPA Union

stuff from that one district of the country to the Texas district whatever. There will be problems, obviously, but there will be problems no matter what. So I think you have to have that reduced cost of being in the hub in one hub and flying out or doing I mean, I guess you could do multiple hubs, but then you don't get some of the benefits you get from having the same consistent quality of facilities and care and travel. Biggest what

would you say the biggest hurdle is right now? I mean obviously government approval, but in terms of figuring out logistically here and getting the teams ready to go, getting the team's marketed, getting I mean, what would be if the government if we wake up on Monday and it's like, Okay, this is all approved and we're doing whatever. What's the next biggest hurdle step movie for? Are we assuming a season is happening with the Merge League in twenty

twenty four, Yeah, I think you have it. I think you can't. I don't think either way. I don't think you can play separately or if you have to play together. So I think it's approved in the seasons happening twenty twenty four. First off, when when in twenty twenty four? Right? Second off, whose season tickets are you canceling? Who's are you keeping? You need to inform those season ticket holders that, hey, your

season is going to be not whatever you thought it was. You might have more or less home games than you would expect, probably more because they're probably gonna have a couple teams with no real market, and those teams will just if in my opinion, it would be more sustainable just to have a couple extra teams that are always playing away because they're flying. Everyone's flying anyway, so you might as well have a couple extra teams just to increase your game

inventory if nothing else. And then so you're gonna have you're gonna have that problem figuring out who's staying, who's going who, Who were keeping in our customer base, who's who we're kicking out. You're gonna have the problem of vendor contracts. Who are you cutting off? Who are you keeping. You're gonna have the problem of who are we keeping full time on coaching staffs. Who we're gonna have to tell that, hey, we have to let you go if you don't want to be full if you want to be full time,

because that's just not gonna happen. You're gonna have the issue of roster size. It's heck, obviously, I mean, the football is from the business perspective, is the least important thing. But at the same time, you do have to decide how are you gonna play this football game in this merged league. At the end of the day, you're gonna have to pick one rule set, and I will say, seeing Rus Brandon there makes me think it will probably be the XFL's rule set, but maybe not. Who

knows. Uh, Well, I hate this this publicly. I hate the USFL kickoff. I mean, I really, I'm I'm I'm biased towards the x rules set. But I think I have good reason to be biased towards the XFL rules says. I'll say, in terms of, you know, keeping more teams and potentially doing that, right, why don't we hub? Why don't we Okay, let's move the breakers, Let's hug them with the you know, uh, the Orlando team, right, let's move the vipers down, Like, can you keep more teams? But is it we're needing

to shed these costs? We know we're more concerned if we're the xml USL, we're more concerned with keeping costs down than we are in terms of keeping

teams alive. Yeah, I mean there they all they care about is can they find a way to be even less expensive than they already are and find a way to actually make money, because otherwise they wouldn't be merging right now, because it's not like it's not like one league is clearly out doing the other in terms of any sort of financial advantage outside of the ones that the USFL invents on paper by doing Ahaha, you know, totally, the money

we're making by selling ads on this USFL game is just so much more than the amount of money that we'd be selling for Fox any other content. Totally right. To me, it always felt like we're selling these ads, but

we're not counting the costs of the league. That to me is always how I've read more of that as we're moving the books where that like the mark Cast is profitable because all the equipment is owned and operated by best made videos, like the mark Cast in and of itself is not a profitable like I think there's to me that feels a very little bit. But also there's the same for their income. The income would be coming in at least partially to

Fox anyway. In fact, a significant their primary source of income would be coming to Fox regardless, just maybe a bit less. So it's all sorts of shotting bookkeeping that's making it allow them to say that they're making a profit. It's not reality, it's a fiction. It's the same way that it was a four percent increase in viewership from season what was in two the USFL where we took the entire and the average of the entire viewership of season one

and based it on the season two kickoff, which was down. Yeah, you know, and the XFL does it too. I mean, I see their digital numbers they posted kind of all this stuff. But at least that is it's puffs, it's of hot air, right, but at least it's real, tangible hot air instead of complete fiction. It's it's the difference between making something out of nothing and then turning nothing into a lie. So it's just two different kinds of manipulation. Really. If so, we we represent

the hard you know, the hardcore and the hardcore in here. We got all these people watching Black Friday kind of all this different stuff. Casual audience how are they going to react to this? How are they? You know, there there's a non zero number of Seattle s Dragon fans that do not know any of this is going on at all. Right, the Vegas viper stands, I mean, yeah, they're gonna kind of know. Like,

how is the public gonna gonna respond to? Yeah, four, six, eight teams are going the way here like famos than those that That might be a good thumbnail for that episode that we know the famous like we're it's cut the universe in half. If they kept like if they kept five of the XFL markets and then three of the USFL markets plus two permanent road teams. However you want to arrange those permanent road teams, uh, I think you

would keep enough of the primary stadium audience to be fine. And I don't think the TV audience is all that connected to the stadium audience. I think the TV audience just wants to watch football on a Saturday that has some intrigue. And as long as you prove that you're still around and you market hard, they'll you'll keep them. But what I'm worried about is I don't think

that's gonna happen. I think They're gonna do a terrible job of promoting this new league, and people are gonna they're not even gonna realize that football is coming on on Saturday, and they're not gonna watch it because they gonna have no idea it's there. I saw comment earlier. They were talking, I

guess Fox is running the USFL ads during during NFL games or whatever. I to me, you know, and we joke about the real football and all that stuff in the Super Bowl that that is one percent of the marketing that needs to be done on this I mean running the ten second of TV ad bumper. Like I said back in twenty twenty, you know, I was sponsoring boosts at event shows for we were doing you know, we do weddings

and corporate events and kind of stuff. Like we had XFL staff members that are running you know, they were any any sort of thing that you could be at promoting with either a booth or a table. They were outside the games. They were doing that. Like it's so much more I think than just flipping the switch and running an AD, and that to me has never resonated. I know certain fan bases, I know the Brahmas did a good job, right locally, right, I know, Orlando and Corey, they

did a good job locally. You obviously Seattle like there was certain teams that rose above it, but overall as a league, it felt like none of that, none of those lessons were taken from twenty twenty, where Vince was a wrestling promoter and got that on the ground needed to be done. It never felt like they always aview it more as a TV product. Some of the markets did a really good job with the people who were hired, but all of them were hired late. So all the people on the ground who

were there when they were there, did what they could. I really don't doubt that. My beef is with the people running the leagues up top, way up top, who just don't have the vision to realize you can't just show up a couple months before no matter what you do, and expect people to care. I mean, in the twenty twenty XFLC, I mean we had we had events like in like the summer before the season saying like hey you we this is coming. We have they rolled out bob' stoops and they're

like, this is coming Football twenty twenty, national television. This is serious and all over lux in town. He's going on tours, he's on press radio tours, he's at super Bowl Radio, he's everywhere. The people are everywhere. They're there early the they're often they were, they're responsive, they're making content, they're appeering on podcasts, read they're appearing on podcasts, they're

promoting what they're building from the ground up. That's not happening, and it's not because the people don't want to do those things who are at the at the floor. The people on the floor aren't being given those opportunities because the people up top are only caring about how can we make this as cheap as possible. Well, even like they would they would do the Facebook announcements like Okay, here's going to be the new head coach or here's going to be

whatever. Like I remember watching and like I was very casual at that point, like I don't even know who this guy is, but it seems to be a big deal. You know, let me go Google now and figure out. And I mean they did these for all the markets. I remember they were doing those Facebook lives and everything. You know, it's to me like, uh, you know, we did our CFL show and I was

like telling Dorothy about this because obviously it was exciting. You know, it's a ton of work to go into even that, right, we need the thing and we're posting and we're telling every one they were sharing they would do the thing, Like I said, if we just went to show that up and flipped on the switch and went live the morning of the Gray Cup, Like you don't get and that's like you said, they've never gotten that you can't just show up and put the game on and say here you go,

like a channel channel surf your life. What the twenty twenty league had Winston Moss and Heather Brooks carrots getting announced at the same time in the parking lot

of the stadium with the with the like police cars driving by. But the media came out because they put in the commitment to say hey, we're coming, and they were like, hey, this is interesting and there's clear amount of commitment behind this, whereas now it's just like, uh, you know, we'll do a we'll do a zoom call, you know, we'll do a press release. You know, maybe the coach will show up like a couple of months before the season, but like we're only post about it like

three days before the event's actually happening. Maybe we'll have a season ticket holder event, but we're only going to give you twelve hours of public notice for anyone who doesn't already have a season ticket to want to come and visit. It's just like, what's the point, Like, what's the point of hiding all of this. You're not helping anybody, You're only It's like the rake meme where the guy steps on a rake and it hits him in the face.

That's kind of what happened to the USFL, and then the XFL is the one where they like they're riding the rake and it flips in mid air

and then they step on say land and hits them in the face. It's the same outcome, just different ways, and it's just so disturbing that none of them get it yet, especially on the XFL side, when you have an owner who has done all these things I'm talking about overseas and built something there with some of the soccer teams they own, and they just don't understand that a lot of those principles apply whenever you're not working with major league sports

fans in the US, because they aren't just going to come. You have to build it. I remember, this feels like a fever dream ago, applying to Arlington with Danny and Russ and all that. Then they had the Arlington Hub and I remember, you know, it was funny because everyone wanted to talk to Danny and the Rock and then they left and it was like me and one local person talking to Rush branded and I'm like, this is sweet. Like I thought, I was super excited right now. And I

know, like Pat got to talk with the rest. I think it was in the showcase here a few months ago. But talking back then, and uh, you know, what are you gonna do? We've see in the USL. Yeah, the quote, you know we're going to be at first one in, last one out, We're gonna do all this stuff. And it never And I don't know if that was lip service or if they thought that this was an honest effort going in, but uh, it never. I never saw that the dream that was promised. They think they can get

away with marketing the XFL like marketing Black at them. Oh you know, we'll just go on a tour a little bit before the move the show comes out. You know, we'll have the Rock roll up. Everyone will go crazy for him and then you know he'll hold some babies. But you know, it just doesn't work like that. This isn't this isn't big ticket stuff. This is the grassroots. This is the This is the people on the ground who are just love football or people who just want to watch football on

Saturday and chill, and you have to give them some motivation. You have to give them something to get attached to. They're not going to get attached to just a name or a brand. That's just not going to happen. It's it's all so regrettable. So before we before we move on anything else, I just want to do you want to talk about the hilarity over people continually trying to predict everything that's going to happen and just continually not knowing anything

at all and looking very silly. Sure, okay, can we talk like what is going on when we're having people who are not involved in reporting on the x like we'll talk about these people first not reporting on the XFL at all for like at all, or the USFL at all or that Howard guy

Howard Howard, Yeah, but he Howard. Yes. But also there was like Dennis Dodd, who reports on college football, was involved like, there's so many people trying to get in on this, and I just don't understand why would you want to get in on this when you have you seen how much disinterest there is in this right now? Why are you trying to get

involved in our land? Get away to me when it speaks to more And I uh, back when we spoke had conversations with Mark about this, like when when we I'm a proponent of any of our media and if whoever want, you know, Brandon wants support stuff and Stefan wants like I'm I'm a proponent of any of the people that put in the time and effort to do

this. And what kills me is when it's anyone that's got at ESPN and their handle or this is some reporter that whatever, like oh oh, when they talked about us, like now, let's Mike Mitchell's been reporting this for six months, We've done this for whatever it was when all the teams were going to come out and Mike had been talking in the cities and oh my god, someone else like it's okay to to you know, perpetuate all that.

So I don't like that just because it's more of that. And I just don't like that it's because of someone that's not previously in our circle talking about it that somehow makes it more connected or locked in than anything else.

That's my problem with that. It's almost like they just want to cover like the whole this league is going to go away things so that they can be the guy that broke the story about the death of spring football again, and then they get they get clicks for that, like the what the Sports Illustrated writer who wrote about the death of the AAF a couple of years ago, he got huge publicity for that. That's kind of what it feels like.

And then on top of that, the people who are involved in the weeds in the XFL and the USFL, who are they getting these reports from? That? Are like hey, And even the people like Neil, Like Neil Stratton, I'm like, oh, he's getting the number of teams. I know it's going to happen in like two weeks and we might get an announced.

So I'm like, did you who were you? Are you getting that from your player personnel friends, because there's no way that you that this is that you actually talk to someone in ownership who told you the regulators are going to have it ready for us in two weeks. Like it was kind of like the Howard thing. It was kind of like he was hearing in retrospect, like we had heard like Neil had put out whatever, and then it had turned into something else and turned into something else, and then it was

like a week later. Howard's like, hey, did you hear it was gonna be something that's like, buddy, like that was a month ago, like you gotta you got Like that to me was always funny about I'm like, they're here and I will say even this and this was funny. Uh, we'll wrap this out here pretty soon if we want to know. You got give we got a good viewership right now. It's fun it was. It was so funny to me. We were at the we were after our

live show. We were back at the BC Lions Dad and Naylor was there. We hadn't got to talk a lot with Naylor during the week as he was doing hits with Farhad and all the TSN stuff. And we're sitting there having a beer and he's like, hey, do you want to know what

I heard about the merger? And I'm like tell me, like I'm ready to hear with him and it was the same kind of thing, like it was whatever they had come out through and no dist I mean, I know, Dave's talking to right people and all like know this respect, but I'm like, yeah, he said, well I heard like the you know, the the exfl is reaching out to the usfl over you know. I was like, Okay, it just was interesting. But there's all these people hearing

it. It's like you're playing telephone and you're hearing it person three or four. They're all talking to the same player personnel, coach people and the players and whatever. I'm just like, none of those people have any idea what's

going on. And then on top of that, they're getting like all these numbers, all these dates, and I'm like, why are we doing this because there's no way you actually know that it is a sleep Anyway, I have another hour before this game kicks off, so I have nowhere to be. So we'll see what people want to do here, people want to hang out for a minute, and then we'll get we'll get going here. I just and I love Gregory. Gregory is a longtime listener comment on this.

While you guys really say about the merger, the executives at Fox from the obligated to call you up and tell you what's going on. This will happen when it happens. Gregory told, like, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. The funny thing is I never, like, all I do is come on here and share my opinion and ask other people's opinions. I never tell, but I get a lot of like, well, you, like you are wrong with this or you And this isn't just a shot just at

Gregory. I get it's like, that's fine you if you're like that's awesome, if you're cool with it, if you're ready to go on. I just know I get a lot of d ms from, like I said, from players, from staff, from other fans. So it's not and you were not alone in this thinking to that thing, and that everyone has the varied opinions here and everyone's able to kind of have different ways they feel about this. So I respect Gregory if he's cool, you know, yeah,

go for it. Okay, Okay, here's my thing, right, This is not the NFL, this is not Major League Baseball, this is not the SEC, this is not the Big Ten, this is not even the CFL. There is no established fan base. Every every single league at the start, the fans are gonna be entitled to demand whatever they want to make

the league work, because otherwise they just won't show up. Like do you think if the NFL didn't appeal to the fans they had that they that the people who were willing to show up early, that they would still be here right now. No, those teams died out. That's why the NFL and the NBA and all these teams had teams going in and out within five to ten years in the first two decades of their existence because they didn't understand how

to build up fans or because of some other economic reason. Like we should be entitled, We absolutely should be entitled as fans to demand that these leagues do better because otherwise they won't last. And I don't care that I shouldn't take for that, that I shouldn't take for granted that Spring football is here.

I should demand these leagues do whatever it takes to last and be successful, because otherwise I know that what's going to happen in these players is they're just gonna get hurt, and the fans are gonna get hurt, and we're gonna have to start all over all over again with some other ownership group who doesn't get it either, most likely. So yeah, we're all going to be demanding, and you know what we should be. I appreciate that because

I don't know it's I agree with you that it's it's this. It's a different it's a different world, it's a different landscape. And it's never resonated with me that they you know, I think that they get it in the collective of like, okay, we're I don't think they get how niche a lot of this stuff is. And now I think surprise alert when I think when they turned on, like their social media is back a couple of years ago, and like, oh my god, what are these cms? What

are these comments or one of these whatever? I mean, I think that

there's a lot of I don't know. To me, I never got it like you you do, Black Adam, you know DC, like you know that fan base like this is very a very similar mindset of that in terms of like you have a super group of hardcore fans wanting to make this work and going to be upset when certain things happened, and this time around the problem is that they, the hardcore fans, are not enough to keep this around, Whereas you could probably keep DC around on their hardcore fans alone and

at least have something, whereas this it's just not gonna be enough to have hardcore fans because it's too early. You need to get the casuals in the door. You need to get people to become hardcore, and you need to get the people who aren't in the door at all to become casuals. Keep building and building. It's and they just don't care. They think that this is American sports and we can just pretend like we've been around for fifty years

and we aren't established league. And you know, you know this league got over one and a half million views in twenty twenty three years ago when before pandemic, and so we can just roll out the rock and everything will be fine. You know, come on, let's be real. Oh, I absolutely it was. You know, XFL was whatever, XFL plus the rock equals this. Well, you know this exponential growth on that I just I

showed this year. I just like this comment that I call the roomor real guys haven't had reports for a few weeks, yeah, because they were like even Neil and his newsletters, Like I think news is coming at some point, like I'm like, yeah, he really is, Like I'm getting off this train right now, and he's like actually officially partnered with the league. I know, but I think he was even it was crazy because it can

change. And that's what kills me too, is like get we get a lot of this online of like reporting and something, and then when something else happens, like well that that was incorrect, like it could have been correct along the way, and then that changed. Like that also happens. Right.

It's the same thing with like players going to get signed with whoever, and then you get signed with someone else like Deshaun Watson was probably talking to was in a Lancer or whatever, and then the Browns came in, Like that can all be accurate with it, you know, with the final outcome not being what was initially reported, although I think in this case it's more what people believed was going to happen than ever what was actually going to happen,

because I don't think anybody who was talking to these roommel guys actually knew what was going to happen. They just made they made something up off of one thing they heard once because there's just no way you legitimately know what's going on with the regulators, because if you are someone actually talking to the regulators, you know that if you leak out any information of the public, it's only going to make the process take longer. Yeah. No, I know.

So in terms of moving forward here and I have to have this be too much but people are viewing here not to have this be too much of a complaint session. But moving forward, these leagues come together. Are you concerned about the economy of these fan bases or do you think that this is a little world we live in and that they'll be able to move past this and it doesn't matter. I think there will be fights online. I think

there will be fights. I mean, I don't think they'll be I think the number of people who actually are involved in the war are not the people going to the stadiums. Yeah, I think it'll mostly be online. There might be a tailgate parking lot fight here. Yeah, you know Bill's style, you know, I'm sure there'll be a few, but I don't think

there'll be anything spilling over in that respect. I think there will be like a very small percentage of people who are xfl or I even if they keep the name or USFL or die, even if they keep that name, who are just gonna be anti merger completely and drop off. I think that number is not even more than four digits, so and I think everyone else is gonna everyone else who isn't Somebody who lost a team will stick around and watch,

and people who wanted to go to games will go to games. And the main pre problem will be the casuals who don't actually have attachments to any league other than oh, this is the league that has fans in the door, and this is the one that doesn't. Outside of that, they they're they're they're gonna be like, uh, I don't even know what this is? Should I watch this? I had no idea who these teams are. Because now you've brought in teams from another league, it's just gonna be weird.

And they'll be like, oh, what happened to the Houston Roughnecks because we want to have the Gamblers now or whatever you're it's it's gonna be confusing and weird, and it's gonna be hard to maintain those casuals. And that's

what I'm most worried about. Uh yeah, I to me, the dream scenario of the eighteen conference against each other is tremendously exciting, you know, with it with the Birmingham Stallions, and that I'm serious about all that because I took a dream though, right well, I know, I know, And so what's your realistically, how are you feeling right now about where we're gonna land out? Okay, I'm gonna sort us into two categories. I'm gonna sort us where I want to end up and where we're going to end

up. Where I want to end up. They market, whether they have two seasons or not, They market the Merge League coming. They say, Hey, this is a this is a build up to something bigger. This

is the start of something huge, a start of something special. And build and push and market and get attached to whoever sticking around, and do your best to console whoever you're leaving and try to to make them say, hey, at least we're still gonna have football on TV if you would like to enjoy that, And we will do whatever we can to see about coming back sometime in the future. We won't entirely go away. We might have some tryouts in your market so you can see some of our players or whatever.

What I think is actually going to happen, regardless of when this merger gets approved, seasons happening or not. In twenty twenty four, what I expect is going to happen is they're going to absolutely fall on their flat in their face marketing these leagues. I marketing this merge league and leagues are in the leagues. If they're separate for twenty twenty four, they're gonna keep failing. They'll retain some level of audience, but they're not gonna have any real attachment

outside of who was already there. Some people will drop off because they're gonna realize that it's a lame duck season, and then in twenty twenty five they're gonna be like, I don't even this doesn't feel feels completely foreign to me. They're they're we're gonna have some level of audience twenty twenty five. You know some people watch, you know'll be maybe you know, it might be a little bit better than it wasn't twenty twenty four, just because you're merging

some demographics together. If you can pull some teams together and have fans like Memphis or Birmingham or Detroit, and it's just going to be more of the same struggles unless they've they've a switch flips in their brain. It says, hey, we need to actually truly attach ourselves these local fans. Otherwise it'll be a slow, slow burn until they run out of gas and they just give up. It's hard. And again I don't want to be too negative. And here, you know, we've done this a really long time.

I think this is technically episode one seventy today of this. So it's been going I will say, you know, save for the CFL here the last couple of weeks really kind of giving life to this channel. Uh it's hard. It's hard, like and we'll see and whatever ends up going with this. But you know, this, this two hour, two and a half hour weekly Friday show, you know, we kind of kind of got to

wait out and see if you know, nothing comes next week. Like, it's hard, it's it's hard to maintain interest in this when, like you said, it feels like this is a side project for a lot of the people involved. They're you know, they're working on whatever. And like I think at this point, like we kind of got it, you know,

like I'm doing the CFL, we got work on other stuff. I think it's hard to have, uh, to feel ownership of this or pride in this in terms of the leagues when it doesn't feel like even the people involved in that have that have a similar way in that. Yeah, I think this is the last shot for this group of people to make spring football work.

And if they don't put their foot down and try to build something serious and try to market locally and try to build a serious attachment, I think we're starting over with a new ownership sometime next decade and hopefully they figure it out. Uh. Yeah, let's see here. I like this Gothan has Let's hear some predictions, and when we hear something about the merger, I've heard, I've heard next week, I've heard mid December, I've or what ever. I mean to me, it's kind of it's a waiting game at

this point. That's why I want to do at least stop down today and do this. See we talked off the top where I've tried to avoid this week to week of like, okay, what's what's the rumor combination this week? But it's been long enough that I think it's fine to get people on here today and no one else says anything, Yo, do it? Do it Black Friday, But do you think we're gonna be here another I'm not a government expert, but you know what, I really don't understand how it

could still be happening longer than the end of January. I really, I mean, I'm not saying I can say for sure it will still still be waiting or not, because I don't know how the government works, right, I'm not a political science expert or whatever, but I really don't understand what could possibly take them so long that it would take them past January. Like, at the end of the day, you need to come to some sort of agreement otherwise it just isn't gonna happen, like you can only stall for

so long. Well, to me, it feels like and I'm like stupid metaphors, but it's like you got two kids that don't want to clean their room and they're like, well, we don't want to do like they don't the XFL and the USL like they don't want to have X number of teams, right, and it's a government concerned with it. Like you know, I how how hard do you dig your heels in here? How hard do you are are you fighting with this? Because because It's like they are fighting

to shed dead wade at this point. Right they're the XFL and the Isabel are not there. It'd be different if they were the ones fighting for more teams or fighting for but it feels like it's very much the opposite. Yeah, so I feel like predicting how many teams? That's funny, Philip uh, predicting how many teams? Predicting when I think all that is is it just feels pointless. At this point, I feel like I just want it to be over, you know whatever, make Here's just just I want them

to make me believe again. I want to be like how I was in Fall twenty eighteen February twenty nineteen, where I was seeing Sam and them make content about the rules, and I was seeing all over Luck doing interviews and I really believe in something and I held on to that believe too long for

this iteration, and now I've completely lost it. And they need to get us back because I don't know how any of anybody who is contemplating this seriously and not just based on optimism can have hope right now, make us give us a reason. I like here, Pat has the comment, Pat will let me retire from the channel when we hit a thousand episodes, so they

had anywhere episodes to go. I will tell you it's so funny. And whatever happens this year in terms of a pushback or lay whatever, I remember when Paul and I started, and then it was like three weeks after he started, you know, they pushed it back, and then they pushed it back again. I remember sitting there and thinking, like, man, it's like seventy episodes we got to get through before the act or whatever was never was before we got to kick off, and uh, it's it's nuts.

Yeah, I agree with you. I've never felt the same as I did that that first season, and uh, you know, I we went to d C and I wept. I wept at the kickoff. And I don't know if it was the bottomless mimosas at brunched beforehand that led to that, But I've never you know, sitting here watching the games, watching the Battle of Texas, all that kind of stuff. It never never felt the same as it did. And and not a lot that's been done my current regime

is helped in still any of those feelings of joy. Yeah, I mean, I love the players, you know, I love the coaches, most of them. Some of them I don't like. But uh, the coaches, I mean of the players, there's no player. I really think there's some coaches that I don't like. That's not my business. Uh, speaking of players I don't like. Didn't that Ben Holmes just get signed in ELF? Wasn't that it isn't going to like Van there or something? Yeah,

he's he's, he's. You gotta speak German, buddy, Germany, Bud. Yeah, trying to get ready to Yeah, Adam whatever adds over it? Yeah, in German. And uh also, well they're in like a bunch of different countries, but like it's mainly Germany, right, I don't think I don't like that much. I should have invested in ELF back. I should never have done any of you might have better luck with the AFL at this point, although even like I don't know what broadcast deal they have,

and they're all of their organizations seems so sketchy. I just can't even try to get attached to the new AFL right now, Tim, Yeah, Tim's invested that. Let's let's get here at the top of the hour. We'll get out here ten more minutes or so. Anything else, any other talking points. We want to make sure is anyone else have any comments? And then we had the Vipers one or the question about that? Uh oh yeah, pat One, are you okay with Drew Pult getting into an NFL

contract? He can enjoy sitting on those practice reps while he does absolutely nothing else other than show the playbook to whoever else is in the quarterback room because he can't contribute on the fields. So have fun reading a playbook in Cincinnati. I'm sure the pay is quite good. I'll tell you. The Bengals say, what the season for that? Oh yeah, forget I think Kevin got another duy. I think I saw as well. I was Sexty and

Paul about that Maryland. Yeah, that was interesting. Leagues will play separate If we have to wait until late January, it's it's I mean, this is sticking point at this point. I mean, what would be the XFL

training camp would be what January? Like they'd have to delay the XFL season by at least two weeks, right, Like they'd have to start in like late February or March one and then, which in my opinion, might be better anyway, because then you can get that one season that won the first weekend where you have that huge audience because there's always a bit more in week one and later on, and you get that audience, and then you come

back in like week six after March madness, and you have an entire half of the season left to build your audience back up towards the playoffs, instead of what happened this time where we were like week three, week four. Your audience gets knee cated for like the meat of the season, and then you have to come back. We had it here. We have a question from Gotamber I like, we're here. We'll do this first. I like, how, Chris, why are they running this feast of football on YouTube

right now? It's had but I have no interest right now. It feels in limbo. I am glad, like I said, glad that we at least beat the viewership today on this. I know that that's not a lot a low bar, but I'm glad that MAXI and Ize been in here talking. It's like when we I just sorry, but just proud of the CFL staff. But we can go in with a ring light and the cell phone and draw sixty thousand viewers, Like maybe let's embrace some of these people that

are building an audience here. I think that they, you know, something could be said for that. I saw Bill mcconnor, what's his name, the content guy, Bill retweeting the feast of football and stuff like maybe let's get on board the seventies, Max and I sitting here on a Friday morning. I mean, let's be the reason they're doing stuff like this is because they don't have anything else they can do. I mean, they don't have anybody at that content house in Arlington, right, I mean, do they

even still have the content house in Arlington? Read? Who knows? They barely did anything with it. They shot like a couple one minute videos and that's it. I don't know how much money do you think it costs to rent out that house. I don't even want to know. I don't I don't want to know. We have a comment here as Zach long time listeners. Zach haven't talked to Zach for a while with the lack of you know, hey to be negative, but in this rate's gonna seem my idea they

need to cancel twenty twenty four. I come back in twenty twenty five as the Big League or goes separately, this whole thing will probably die. He says, this is his usual, is not okay? Max? Right? Sorry, Zach, I you know, and Zach because Zach's a die hard Saint Louis Balahawk's fan from the beginning. Yeah. I mean, like I

said, danged if you do, danged if you don't. Right, But if they completely change the way they operate and they actually try to make a real attachment during this lame duck season and at least say, hey, we this lame duck is not going to nothing. It's going to something bigger, and you really make people believe that, and you make that through your commitment, not through advertising, through real on the ground work, people's opinions will

change. The problem is that they don't want to do that. And so that's just why I think, I don't know how you can believe in it. We had, yeah, we had a question here got them. Do you guys think it'll be a fifty to fifty splitter or not. I've heard every such combination of all the the whatever. I think we can I think they concretely, I think we know that they merged League with ideally like eight

and the government does not want that. So whether it's four and four or five and three, I think that that is at least where I am understanding right now. Yeah, And I mean it doesn't really matter in terms of the business side, which lead you pull teams from X other than stadium contracts,

stadiums and where the other than that, it doesn't really matter. So I don't know, man, In my opinion, you hang on to as many stadium markets as you can, especially east of the Pacific time zone, because I think it'll just be easier to cut to put everybody consolidate in that one region than trying to have two island teams out on an island, or even one out on an island way out there, even though they're not actually

living there. It just feels like it'd be harder for them to connect everywhere else with that one market in Seattle, which is unfortunate because they completely wasted that place. They completely did those people wrong. Oh, Seattle is horrendous in terms of scheduling and time, and even bigger than that, like like the league did Seattle wrong, just beyond the football itself, beyond the scheduling belong to, beyond the league. They did the people Seattle wrong. They

completely threw that fan base away. Expand on that because, like think about it, like DC and Saint Louis had earlier events, Seattle came around later. First off, Second off, they Seattle was less connected to those to the league than Saint Louis was or d C was because of how bad the the commanders are. In DC, It's almost like they didn't really have an

NFL team for a while. But whereas in Seattle you have all these different professional sports and a lot of them are pretty good in the crack and arks siding, and so they just let that fan base drift away by not committing to them, whereas they committed a little earlier to those other places. And

it just it's just a shame. But it's not the people in the ground fall, it's the league execs, right well, I think that they I think they thought it was a really weird spot in twenty twenty where the Mariners were still kind of on the rebuild, Like you said, the kracking weren't there. I think it was really right, but then they thought back and Mariners are hot, and I know it's it's different, you know, time of year for that, but you know, in terms of what I'm spending

time and money on. And then the Crack. I mean when you're going literally at the same time, back to back with the Crack and they're playing sold out a mile down the road, that's really hard. And now you have Geno Smith, he's good kind of now, and and you know you have the soccer is hot, both leagues, both teams for soccer are really

hot in Seattle. So you just have a lot going for you in Seattle, and you have this team that went away for three years and people just kind of don't care as much anymore because you didn't make that commitment to show

why they should care. So it's it's just a shame. Yeah, Zach has a question this where you try to explain why would the government have any say because the government needs to process, they need to regulate all this, so they need the XFL and the USFL can't come in and say we want to cut half of our players, coaching staff, all those other things they need to be that's uh, the government is stepping in and saying like, well, we can't, we don't want to approve this by outsizing too much.

It's something to do with the size of the company and also think about it, there aren't that many professional football leagues in the United States. There's the USFL and XFL, and then there's the semi pro indoor leagues and whatever other semi pro outdoor leagues you have. None of these are very serious really for being honest in terms of actual financial pay. So they're like a they're like a leader, and they're they're like a leader in their industry almost.

So when you're merging two people who take up a large market share of of that very small industry, which really is just the NFL and other uh, that that's a significant title shift in the economy of that industry. And so that's why the the government is getting involved. Yeah, and you know, it was just a number of VIA players and everything that it's it's it's a shame to me and I there's no better way to handle it, but I could. I can think of any worse ways that this all kind of planned

out right now, if that makes sense. I mean, it would be worse if they The only way it could be worse is if they just decided to kill one league and then they just What would happen instead is that they just killed the XFL, or they killed the USFL and Fox just bought into the other league and then they just continued on with eight teams that I mean,

theoretically they could do that without merging. So imagine if the CFL talks had to happen and Fox wouldn't have been incentivised to go to the USFL a year early, and then they do the HUD thing and then the XFL find out. I mean, just imagine, like sliding doors here where we could have been at this point. Yeah, I mean, there's so many what ifs. What if the league's actually cared. I am taking those shots because those shots are deserved, I know, and Max is Max is the diehard

of the diehard. I mean, it's interesting today because we haven't talked a lot lately just because of all the CFL staff to be you know, and they find being negative. I mean I think that they earned it. They earned it. Why should I not be negative? Why should I not be after everything that's happened. Why should I believe in you? I believe in the people on the floor. I believe in the social media people. I believe I believe in the people were getting paid part time, getting having to

work overtime, getting paid part time money. I believe in the coaches mostly. I believe in the players entirely. I believe in the stadium staff. I believe in Honestly, I believe in Bill McCulloch and those kinds of people because they know what they're doing. They're just not being allowed to reach their potential by the broader by the broader structure of the league. I don't believe in Russ Brandon. I don't believe in Jerry Carnell. I don't believe in

the Rock. I don't believe in Danny Garcia. Right now, I don't believe in I definitely don't believe in the USFL SID I thinks. I don't believe in Eric Shanks. I don't believe in Joe Johnson. I don't believe in this entire people who govern the structure. I don't believe in those people. And why should I after everything that's happened, Why should anyone believe in

those people? Right now? It's hard, it's a big ask. And that's what we said and again, and people I know say, we're basically I think it was when Anthony Miller was on and people were saying, like, oh, we're so negative and everything, but it's there was a lot of big words used in a lot of grandiose and a lot of promises, and it's hard. And I understand that this isn't where anyone wanted to be, but it's the very nature of kind of what you've led people through here

the last two three years. And I thought it was a big ask going in when the XMFL kicked off, and after all the delays and everything in the CFL talks and pushing back, like I thought that was a big enough already. And now here we are, Okay, this uncertainty of the last three months, I think it's just almost been a nail in the coffin on a lot of this. Just prove us wrong, Yeah, please prove me wrong, prove all the doubters wrong. I want you to prove me wrong.

You have all the tools it takes to make this work. You are titans of your industries, and you're just kind of going along like this doesn't matter to you, and you're just wasting this money. And all the while these players and fans are caught in the middle of it, and they just if they really committed to this, I'm not even talking about putting in a

tons of money. I'm talking about just putting in the effort, because that doesn't actually cost it really, I mean, how much money does it really cost to do these tiny little events in these markets and get some freelancers out, I mean, how much money does that really cost? Well, I had said, I had said from the beginning that if you if you founut the street team in each market, people have people apply, give them free season tickets and give them merch and say you gotta do once a month and

the fan event and find the bar. And like, I don't think it's I don't even think it's a it's a paying thing. I think you could find people that would be happy to do it to help grow. I mean, we have people, you know, doing shows and everything already. Like, I don't think it's that big of an ass to get the people involved. And yet they just don't. They just don't care. I really don't see why I should believe they care. I just don't. They don't care.

They want to make their own little fantasy world where they barely do anything and it all just works out and they can go work on their other stuff. Philip has the last question. We'll put this to bed here, I can spring football ever exist and be successful? Yes, undisputedly yes. There is no way you can watch what happened in twenty twenty with all of the investment that was put in and how immediately that paid off despite plenty of hiccups,

and not think that spring football can't work. The problem is that people don't see the long term vision. Number one. Number two, something really unfortunate happened with that league that no one could have predicted unless you were an expert in foreign diseases in like December twenty nineteen, and even then, most sports league, like the only sports league who was prepared for the pandemic was

like the Wimbledon tennis Championships because they had pandemic construments. That was it So like if not for that, maybe we would still have the XFL right now and it would be flourishing and flying. And that's not me saying, oh, the twenty twenty is the best thing ever. They had plenty of mistakes,

but they actually committed. No one else since then has committed. All it takes is commitment, patience and listening and understanding and continuing to try to grow and willing to lose money for like five years, and you will have

a league that works. It won't be MLS yet, it won't be It definitely won't be a major sports league, but you will have a committed customer fan base and people will care and it will matter, and players will come between that league and the NFL L and people will watch it because it's an interesting to watch during the spring when there's no college football on, there's no NFL on, and the only other option is baseball, hockey, MLS,

UH and basketball. But I agree, no commitment, no reward. You only get it get out what you put in, and they have not put in the work. Uh and the infamous words of the New radicals you only get what you give. So I never, never, never forget that. Uh, Max, this was good today. A little you know, we've got a little negative, but that's okay. I appreciated that, maxim it's earned earned negativity. And again this was enough today. We haven't done this

every week. I think that this had been week four of coming on and the bitching and complaining about this, but it was a good spot today, doing our Friday show, coming off the CFL and all that, So I appreciate Max coming on, Like I said, kind of stand by, we'll figure out episodes here. CFL season done, you know, depending on news next week, but keep a fallout, you keep an eye out for that.

But we'll figure it out. But we obviously we're done with our money recaps, now done with all that stuff, so uh, stay tuned. I assume everyone's subscribed to this point, but give it. Give a thumbs up to the video here. I think we're still up over the XFL Fast Year or whatever at this point, but appreciate Max stepping up today. Like I said, we needed the guests. You're going to go through all this. I hope everyone else is good with their families and stuff anything else.

Max. Before we get out of here, I'm gonna you know how Andy's the professor? Can I be the substitute teacher? You want to be in the scessity? You you're you're you're producer, Max, you don't like produ I'm producer. Well, when I'm off the show, I'm when I'm on the show, I'm the substitute teacher. So I'm both I'm producer, I have I have altered egos, so good. Yeah, and then secondarily some

part in the back of my head just wants to have hope again. I I I really there's a part of in the back of my head that that is an optimism that's like, hey, believe, believe, Make make all of us have that belief again. Please please cry for help. Let's all. We need to find a way to like get the fans to cry for help. We need to make them believe in us. I don't know how

you make that happen. We've got to activate the fans. Also really proud of how well the great coverage when your CFL coverage, and how well your channel's growing. You're You're of the people who are like actually podcasts and not larger brands beyond just being a podcast. Here the number one alternative football podcast now on YouTube, which I think is impressive, and every single metrics toscarvers all that. I'm it's impressive. I'm happy for you. Well, I

appreciate that. Like I said, I you know, we've waivered and I'm here right like this has been long and doing that. We've done weekly recaps since February and oh year round football. It's been a lot. The XFL staff and I appreciate Andy and everyone coming on that, and then Pat carrying through the USFL, and then Evan being involved in a lot of that, and then him and Jason with the CFL. You know, I going up to Great Cup was great, connecting, meeting all those people, like I'm

here a part of this world. Kind of whatever happens, right, But I feel like I'm a hired gun at this point, and I think I just wish that, like you said, get us excited in this, get whatever. I think we have a very passionate audience about all this. I appreciate everyone taking the time today on Black Friday to spend time and sharing their comments and concerns as well. So I think there's a place we'll see what

that looks like. But you know the same with the CFL, like let's embrace you know, cell phone and the ring light and outdrew every other piece of coverage that they put out over the weekend. So I appreciate Max, appreciate the listeners, appreciate the viewers. Today. We'll post this on the podcast channel as well. See if you want to listen to it later. Thanks has always been subscribe like and all that stuff. Go enjoy the Jets now the Zombie Jets well, wave a wave, go too late against.

That's my game. All enjoy all that go crack and everything else, all right,