In the fall of 2014, a group of hackers pulled off the biggest Hollywood heist of all time. They broke into computer servers belonging to Sony Pictures and released hundreds of thousands of top secret documents. The attack would cause an international incident, upend thousands of lives, and changed the movie industry forever. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast Network, I'm Brian Raftering, and this is the Hollywood Hack. Listen on the Big Picture feed starting August 19th. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network, where we're getting you ready for the NFL season. You can listen to the Ringer NFL show. You can listen to the Ringer Gambling show. You can listen to the Ringer fantasy football show, which is kicking in a high gear because everyone has their draughts. Coming up really starting in about a week, I've been doing a ton of homework. I was just on vacation. I was back east. I was on the Cape with my dad's family. We have been getting together in the Cape since my dad and six brothers and sisters, and I hadn't gone a long time. So I brought my family. It was super fun. Had some Dunkin' Donuts, had some old-school ice cream, played a lot of tennis.

We had some arguments on the tennis court. It was just like old times. Great to see everybody, especially my aunt Louise. So there you go. I had a great rested vacation. I'm ready to throw myself into football season. If you want to watch clips from this podcast, go to the Bill Simmons channel on the YouTube's. We also have the Ringer Movies channel that the Rewatchables is on along with the big picture. We have a new Rewatchables episode. It's not coming until Wednesday this week. We usually do Mondays, but we are not doing the one this week until Wednesday. You can just go back. We have 350 movies in the library. If you really need a rewatchables on Monday night, go back. We have seven years worth of content. That's coming Wednesday. The podcast we're doing right now, Chuck Closterman, BS podcast Hall of Famer. He hasn't been on in a while. We do a big little summer rehash of all the stuff we've been fascinated by over the summer. That's next. First, our friends from ProJip. All right, we're taping this on late Sunday morning Pacific Time. Chuck Closter, we say we've been doing a podcast together.

I don't know. Late 2000s, '07? When do you think our first podcast was?

I would have been right in the beginning. So whenever he started.

Yeah. You like to finly know where the topics are, but then let me move them all over the place. I do.

I prefer you to be in control. I like to seed control to you.

But it's almost like Adlib. You're like a jazz musician. You're like, I'll just go on stage, I'll play whatever.

Very much. I'm very much completely extemporaneous. No pre-planned ideas.

Olympics, which you've been hit or miss on over the years since I've known you. This last Olympics was a big hit, and I watched way more of it than I thought I would. I was at the point of my life where I just thought I was going to care about the basketball and the 100-yard dash and two or three things. I ended up watching a ton of it. I know it was in France, so the time zones lined up better with America, but I was still really into it. Where were you on it and what was different about 2024?

Well, this is probably the most I have watched the Olympics since 1988. Wow. I did not have any intention to do so. Now, part of it, like you say, is the way it lined up time-wise. It was perfect. If you really cared about track or whatever, I could watch during the day when the event was on, or if you missed everything, you could watch it at night. But there was something else about these Olympics, because a lot of people seem to be into these Olympics, more so than I remember in a while. I have a small theory about why that is. I'm always nervous to say this or reluctant because a lot of times I'm saying it's a theory about society when it's actually just describing my response. But I thought it was disarming, almost charming, surprising, to see people so happy about finishing second or third. I'm starting to wonder if this is one thing. In America now, we are so... American sports, particularly, we're so geared toward only the end. Don't play in a bowl game unless it's part of the playoff. Load management in basketball. The idea that if you go to the Super Bowl three years in a row and you lose every time, you got to fire the coach or whatever.

We're really myopic about this, just the end. And you watch the Olympics, and I'd be watching track, and it'd be a real close finish. My natural inclination would be to think, Oh, that guy's going to be devastated. Then he would be ecstatic that he got the silver or the bronze. I think a lot of people maybe were like, Oh, it's interesting. These people actually seem to just be happy about doing pretty well as opposed to the top. And maybe we've really become... It made me think maybe we'd become more distanced from that idea than I realized, that we're so now interested in only the final winner, that we've lost the grasp, that that's not really how it's supposed to be. And when you watch the Olympics, you see these people very happy to take third sometimes. I thought that was really nice.

So you're saying we went from trophy culture to first-place culture, and now we're back to, you know what's really fun is competing and potentially just winning one of the three because we were having the same conversations in my house. We were arguing about if you win the silver or the bronze, It doesn't really matter at that point. You either win the gold or you meddled. But if your buddy came home and he's like, I won the silver or I won the bronze, you'd be like, Wow, that's so cool. You got a medal. I don't know. You could feel... I always felt bad for the fourth-place people, especially in those races where the guy would get past. It was like, Oh, he didn't get anything. And those were the worst ones.

There's a pretty big drop off between the gold and the silver, I guess. It's like there's a big difference in terms of how your life changes if you win the gold as opposed to getting the silver. But it was just surprising to me to realize. Or when I saw the guys from Serbia after they got the Bronze and Joker seemed happier winning the Bronze, he did winning the NBA title. Now, there could be a lot of reasons for this. My growing theory is that he actually hates living in America. I think he just thinks America is crazy. I think he thinks the way we treat sports is crazy, and he just He can't get over it, but he has to do it because it's the top league. But that was his phone as happy as I've ever seen him be, I thought, on that bus when he was celebrating.

I'm so glad you brought that up. I've had multiple conversations about this with people, and that seems to be the prevailing theory that he's basically on a work visa playing in the NBA, doesn't really love the league that much, but loves playing basketball. But it's really like as soon as he can make enough money and get out of here, he's probably gone. I think that's a real fear with Denver is that he might just be out of the NBA at age 34, at some crazy age that we don't see anymore. I noticed the same thing, though. He was so ecstatic on the bus, and they were parting for two straight days. I was there when he beat the Lakers to make the finals, and he couldn't have gotten off the court fast enough. Same thing for the finals. It was like, Okay, I'll take my finals MVP. Thanks. There's something with the country piece of that, especially with Serbia, with all the stuff that country has gone through and all the wars. It just felt like it was so meaningful for those guys to medal and how close they came to beating America. It was probably the most profound basketball experience of his life.

I can't even blame him on it.

Oh, there's nothing to blame. I think it's just a legitimate reaction. It would be interesting. What if you had the job you have now, you? What if for whatever reason you had to do that in Spain? Every year, you had to go to Spain seven months. I wonder if you would eventually become someone who identifies as someone living there or it would always be, this is where I have to be to do this job. And as soon as I'm done with it for this period, I can go back to the US. I think I would probably be in the second category. When I lived in Germany for four months, and it was, I guess, a good experience, but every day I wanted to go home.

Well, the closest I probably came to that was when I covered the Olympics in 2012 and everything about the writing process to get used to your routines. And then everything about being in every single thing is different, even the coffee. And it was cool. It was definitely energizing. But after two and a half weeks, you want to go back to the routine.

But even two and a half weeks is a short time compared to- I couldn't imagine I've been doing seven, eight months, something like that.

It did make me think, though, and I really love Olympic basketball, and I've probably been on the highest end of being the most excited about it over the years. And I wrote a bunch of pieces about it way back when. I really love the connections these guys build over the years. And the fact that Jokuj has been playing with Bogdanovic for I don't know how long. And I probably overrate the impact of that stuff, but I always wonder why the NBA teams don't want to... The NBA teams, why they don't want to put these guys on the same team. Because it feels like a completely different connection. Anyone who's actually really played basketball seriously or played all the time, when you play with somebody over and over again, you develop this shorthand. It's almost like doing podcasts or playing music with them or something. You really understand everything they're doing. I always wondered why the NBA didn't take advantage of that and really try to put these dudes together.

Are you saying the NBA or specific teams trying to win? Because I thought it was very interesting the thing Schroeder said, did you see this conference? After Germany, I think, I don't know, they got beat or something, were eliminated, said, Okay, I'm going to be careful how I say this, but Olympic basketball is real basketball. It's not entertainment. Basically, what he was saying is that the basketball that's being played in this tournament is maybe more distant from NBA basketball than we're willing to admit. I think if you're trying to put a team together, it would be very difficult for me to not almost exclusively draft foreign players. I don't know why. It just seems to be like that if the idea is to build the best basketball team, unless it's such an obvious talent that you cannot get around it, I don't know why anybody would not move for European players because you watch these teams, it In some respects, didn't you feel like the outcome, even though the Americans won the goal, that this is a foreboding sign for American basketball?

Yeah, we went through this from '02 to '06. That was the first real reckoning. It's funny. I went back and I watched the Puerto Rico game. I forget what year that was, but they beat them, I'm thinking. Puerto Rico beat us, Greece beat us. There was a Puerto Rico year with Carlos Aureo.

That was our first professional interaction, was writing back and forth about those Olympics, I think. I don't think it was a podcast yet.

But the Greece one is incredible because you go back, that '06 US team, Dwyane Wade coming off winning the NBA title when it felt like he was the alpha dog of the week or was developing in that. You had LeBron, who was second MVP that year. Carmelo was on that team. It was a really good team of guys at decent points of their career, and they got beat by Greece. And Greece had nobody. I remember They had that guy Baby Shaq.

It's hard for me to remember.

If you watched it, you would remember one guy on the team, and I'm watching it, and the way we were playing offense, and you just see it right away. You're like, Wow, I can't believe we thought this was going to work. It was basically like guys pounding the ball and then just trying to attack. The guy who actually was best suited was Kirk Heinrich for some reason on the US team. I think by that loss, that was when they realized, We got to start emulating some of this stuff. But then that stuff trickled in the NBA, and the slash and kick is, I think, a decent part of the game now. But what's different about international versus NBA is, and you could see it with Embiid, with LeBron, some of the guys who are just used to colliding in this, somebody and flailing and getting a call, you just don't get them. And I think that's what Schroeder meant. You have to earn the fouls in this version of basketball, and there's no star system. And there's no like, I'm going to put my head down and go to the basket and I'll get a call.

And it made me mad that the NBA does it that way. As I was watching, I was like, Why do we do it this way? Nobody likes it.

See, what I thought he was talking about more was that unlike American pro basketball, it was like, every possession matters in these games. He kept mentioning that it was more of a... It was coaching. It was more coaching, which I don't know if that was Is that in some way an attempt to undermine Kerr? I don't know. I mean, the reputation of Kerr in the Olympics, I found interesting. It does seem like everyone agrees he should probably be the coach. He has earned There's going to be a lot of criticism of him during the tournament. And then he said something very true at the end. It's like they're in a very strange position where it's like anything but winning the gold is a failure. And not only do they have to win the gold, they have to be undefeated. If they lose a game in pool play and then win the gold, it's like, well, they came back to do it. I don't know if there's any other situation like that that happens every time the Olympics are on. That One Nation is a high-profile sport that they're assumed to win. And anything but complete success, it's like, we got to blow the whole thing up.

That would be a hard job.

I was wondering what's more pressure. And LeBron's been in every basketball scenario at this point. But the two worst forms of basketball pressure, and they can come in Fever, or they can come in the NBA play-ups, is, I thought we were going to win this, and now things are falling apart. So they had that. The 2011 Finals is a really good example of that, where they're about to take a 2-0 lead against Dallas. And then Dirk stages the big comeback, and all of a sudden, Miami slowly unravels over the course of the next week and a half, and you can feel it. You could feel it again in the 2013 Finals against San Antonio, right for the Ray Allen shot, where it just was unraveling. You could feel it in 2016, the flip side with Golden State against Cleveland when they had the 3-1 lead. Then that game seven and you watch Golden State, they're just so bad. They're missing everything. So there's that pressure of like, oh, shit, we might blow the title. But this gold medal pressure the US had was in a way more pressure because if you lose this, you're like, oh, my God, we just put together If they lost a Serbia game with 12 of the best 13 players in the game, that's one of the worst basketball losses of all time.

It's completely inexcusable.

It would have been, except Serbia played great. And I think maybe it was Kirk compared it to Georgetown, Villanova or whatever. They were playing perfectly. I think that there were probably a lot of people watching that who found themselves waiting for Serbia in that situation because in a way, it was very hard not to. I mean, it was It's just it. It depends on what do you care about more, America or basketball. And it's the concept of America for a lot of people, I think, is a very hard to deal with in a way. They're not sure how they're supposed to about it. They're often told you're supposed to feel bad about it. Whereas basketball is more this pure thing. So you're watching that game and you love basketball. It was... I don't know. Let's say, because if that guy hits that three, I think it was a minute nine left. The guy from Serbia, they would have went up five if he makes that. Right. Okay. And then Serbia would have won. So let's say that happens. I don't think that the feeling would be so much, LeBron has has failed us, Curry has failed us.

I think it would be more, well, this proves Joker is the best player in the world. There's no question about it. I feel like it wouldn't have been so much on America as it would have been an adoration of Serbia. I think if Greece had won, or not Greece, if France had won in the title game, I think it would be... I think the emphasis would have been on Momenyana and the idea that this is like his presence has already changed this. The future is now or whatever. I don't think that people hold Olympic failures against these basketball guys the same way that they hold NDA title failures against them.

I think people would have been really mad at how the team was set up and how it was built around three older players. That would have been the legacy if they had lost to serve it again. It was like, well, you decided to steer this team around Curry and Durant and LeBron run, and this is what happened. You decided to basically make this like an Olympic swan song for all these dudes, and we just lost the gold medal. Why do we do it that way?

But if you don't put them on the team and they lose, then the most high-profile guys, the guys people are most familiar with, aren't there, aren't playing, then people would question that. I mean, if the women's team would have lost in the title, there would be all this Caitlin Clarke discussion.

It would be- By the way, they almost did.

They almost did. I think that would have been a real troubling week of discourse if they would have lost. It would have, not troubling to me, but troubling to Clark. It would have been like somehow she would have then somehow been pulled into, again, this situation that she's not really saying anything about, but everybody else is talking about. That's a strange deal.

We seem to do this all the time where we do these teams, and I think they know the right way to do it, but there's so many egos and relationships that they end up just putting the 12 best or 11 of the 12 best however they do it. And what they really should do is just pick the nine best and then two people that are totally fine being able to play if somebody got hurt. And then you put a 12 person who's basically the late in their dream team spot. It's like, you're just here. You're not playing.

Or let's say at some point the US is going to lose in basketball again. Every time we've got this mentality that we cannot lose this. So when they lost in '88, it's like, now we got to go to the pros. And I think if they... And when they lost in 2000, it was '04 or six. I can't.

Well, '02, '04, '06, they lost all three.

'06, yeah. Then it was like, well, we got to get Cheshevski in and revamp the whole thing. I suppose if they lost again, there would be some talk of like, well, if the Celtics won the title, they should be the team that represents us in the Olympics. They can add one or two guys. It's how babe with baseball It works. If a Baybrooth baseball team advances, they can take the best guy that they beat in the playoffs like that. That's maybe how it would be. Or if you're like the Nuggets and they do it and you're losing guys, well, you can just sub in dudes who you want. Basically have an actual roster with that coach plus one or two extra guys. I can see people wanting that if the US would lose because like I say, there's this idea that we cannot lose this.

Well, that idea is about to go out the window because you look at the '28 situation. We're going to have a situation with the All-MBA teams, at least in 2028. Half of the best guys in the world will be foreign at that point. You're going to have this a little bit of a transition. They're going to need somebody in that Anthony Edwards age range to mature into somebody who could potentially be the alpha dog of the team. But by the time we get to '28, Wemby might be easily the best part in the league, in the league and in the world. Jokuj will still be heard from. Yannis will still be around. There's probably more guys coming. Who knows what country Embiid will play for in four years. But it's going to be way more problematic. The good news is it's in LA, but I can't believe when you think back, because we're- Why is that good news?

What's the good news about it being in LA?

Well, I think from a home court advantage, that's going to help us, just like it helped France. I suppose. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of people. But it's funny to think because we're around the same age, how far ahead we were in '92, how inconceivable it was that this moment would have ever happened. It was just like, here's a sport that we're going to own forever. Nobody's going to touch us on this. And now you go in '24, and they barely beat Serbia, and they barely beat France with an All-Star team.

I'll tell you, if the goal of that was to globalize basketball, has any endeavor ever worked more successfully? I mean, it's unbelievable how that '92 team, what that has led to in terms of how the world plays basketball and is interested in basketball. I can't imagine anything that would... If the goal was just me to send guys to win the gold, I guess that's the seed. But if the goal was this will be good for the sport in a global perspective, it absolutely was in a way that I just don't even know what's close to it, what comes close to it.

So do you think that's what's actually happened? Because I feel like that's one of those things that has... The narrative of what happened has veered into a completely different narrative of what happened, where they're like, David Stern, he wanted to grow the game abroad and send his guys. Because my memory of it was losing in 1988 was the most shocking, awful loss with that team that John Thompson put together. And at that point, we were like, We're never losing this again. We're sending the pros next time. These other countries have 30-year-olds and 35-year-olds. It's like, Fuck this. We're sending our real guys next time. And I feel like all the other stuff that came out of it was It's like an unexpected bonus.

It was interesting, though. I was looking at the 1988 roster because at the time, I thought that he had done this horrible job. But now, he did a pretty good job of the guys he picked. I remember thinking it was like, why they wouldn't take Rex Chapman, but they took Dan Marley. Dan Marley was a better player. Just because I wasn't as familiar with him at the time. When I look at that team, it was... They had Robinson, so he should have been able to match as a bonus in a way.

Somebody got hurt. I think one of the best guys got hurt. Maybe it was Danny Manning. But the big mistake he made was he had Bimbo Coals and Charles Smith as the point cards. I think Steve Kerr wasn't on that team. I think he still pissed about it. Tim Hardaway was the big one. They had below average point cards. When you watch international basketball now, that's the number one thing you need somebody who can play slasher kick.

It would have been fascinating if the Russians would have been at the '84 Olympics because that was an extremely good American team, but Sabonis would have really been at his absolute peak.

Right.

And that would have been very interesting because we dominated everybody that year, but the teams that we really cared about weren't there. I always wonder what would have happened that year because Jordan would have been involved. It's just hard to imagine Jordan losing in the Olympics, but that might just be mythology in my mind. Maybe anyone can lose to anyone.

Yeah, it's so funny thinking because it's 40 years ago from that summer, and that was the most patriotic summer we've all ever had. It was like the height of Reagan, I think, I don't remember if Rambo was that year or the year after, but that was when the testosterone and action heroes were coming and was born in the USA with Bruce Springsteen. And just from a culture standpoint, it felt like America was driving everything. And then we had this Olympics that the best country didn't show up in. And we just dominated everybody and crushed everybody. It was the birth of Jordan. It was all these things. And you think like, man, if Russia had been there, that would have been unbelievable. I think that was the year the Red Dawn came out, wasn't it?

I'm not sure exactly.

Red Dawn is right around there.

But we skipped '80, and they were like, we're going to ruin your Olympics, too. I mean, it's like...

That's a tough one. The skipping '80 I hate skipping Olympics because you think these guys, they have basically one chance, maybe two. Ideally, you're piquing for two Olympics, but most people are probably peaking for one. And to just take that and remove it from somebody's life. It's a purely symbolic act, too.

It's not like any country is going to be like, oh, well, boy, we invaded Afghanistan. I guess we're going to pull out now because they didn't come to the Olympics. It's something that I feel like world leaders feel of what they have to do to make a point, but it really is using athletes as ponds then because there's no Olympic involvement is going to change. It's not as though Hitler stopped because Jesse Owens was so impressive. He wasn't like, I guess I was totally wrong about who's inferior. It doesn't happen. Time for plan B.

It doesn't really happen.

Yeah, it's exactly.

Yeah, it's too bad because I was telling somebody about One of my kids was asking me, actually, my first Olympics that I remember, and I was saying how I was '76, which was Sugar Leonard, Bruce Jenner, and all this Nadia Comanici. It was in Montreal, and just everything was on, and it was amazing. Then I was so fired up for '80, and then we just no-showed it. But the Winter Olympics were, I think, five, six months before, and they were so awesome. It carried us through the summer. But I thought the biggest reason it came back this year, other than the time zone, some of the actual events were incredible. Like the 1,500. Some of them were just really fun to watch. I thought the high jump, the women's basketball. Over and over again, it just seemed like there was really dramatic stuff happening. It was.

The two biggest things are either it's a credit to MBC how it was presented, even though it didn't seem to be presented any differently. Maybe they did a better job. And then it's the performances themselves. I mean, I'm even saying this. It's not like I was glued to my screen. I just watched it more because I usually don't really care at all.

I love the Peacock on demand part of it was the part I wasn't fully prepared for because the Olympics had hit this point maybe 12 years ago when it was that, do we tape away this and pretend nobody knows the results? Do we show this live? And they were in no man's land. I forget that there was one Olympics, maybe 2000. It was the first one where they were really holding stuff, but the internet had rounded in the shape enough that you knew who won before you watched it. And everybody was so mad about it. And now they were just like, fuck it. We're just showing everything live. See it when you can see it. If you can't see it, go to Peacock, queue it up. It's right there. I thought it worked. I thought it was great.

And I think, generationally, I think people, I think it bothers them less. It's still very hard for me to record a sporting event and watch it knowing that it's still over, knowing that I could just find out who wanted it. But I think that it might be because I'm still in a world where I think television is dictated by the television. Things are on when the television says it's on, whereas younger people now assume things are on whenever I want to see it. So therefore, the idea that something happened, it's like they control it anyway. I still feel like I'm controlled by television. My television decides when I watch this. I don't think younger people feel That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, I was telling my kids about the mid '90s with the Thursday at NBC, how important that schedule was and how people all watched it. They just stood it and they were like, they don't even know what channel things are on anymore. They just go to the apps. They couldn't even conceive of like, Oh, it's eight o'clock. We have to now sit in front of our TV and watch this thing. I was like, It's like how sports work now. That's what I said to my son. It's like when you have the main event of UFC is on and you're watching it live, that's what it was like just to watch an episode of Friends, but he couldn't conceive of it.

Well, I suppose they might be able to conceive of it in a way. I guess if they just think it's crazy. Because Certainly, if the way things are now would have been described to us, then we would have said, I want that. If somebody would have said, You can watch whatever show you want, whatever you want. It's your choice. It's nothing to do with that. Also, you can listen to any record you want anytime. You don't have to You don't have to look. It's just there it is. All these things, I would have been like, That's better. And yet in practice, it doesn't seem that way. It actually seems like what has ended up happening is the value of these things because there's scarcity is just gone. Is you can just have whatever you want. They feel less valuable. So it's a strange thing. It's like we got all the things that we wanted, and it made things worse. And that just like a constantly It definitely happens. Now, I was thinking about this. I was flying back from San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. When was the first time you rode an airplane?

You took a flight. What year was it?

Probably sometime in the mid '70s. I don't remember where we were.

Okay. Because the first time I took a... I was on a plane, it was 1990. It was after my senior year in high school. I was thinking, though, about the experience of going to the airport, Getting on your plane, doing all those things. We start these things before these... Not way before the Internet, it's before even the idea for you before of network computing. It's like everything was... How different is the experience from then till now. Is it more similar than it should be? It seems like it hasn't changed that much in a lot of ways, considering the insane technological advances we made. It doesn't seem to have made flying and going to the airport doing this. In fact, in some ways, it seems slightly harder now. And that's very strange when you think about it. Every possible thing should have been true.

Remember how easy it was to get on planes?

Yes, absolutely. But it shouldn't even... It's not just the 9/11 stuff. It seems like the whole thing, we still go to the airport at roughly the same time we used to to get to a flight. The process of going through everything isn't that different. If things go wrong, they go wrong in the same way they always did. Does this seem as though this technology should have improved flying more than it has?

This is a great segue to our next segment, but we have to take a break. We've got a new segment brought to you by our friends at Yahoo! Fantasy Football that is all about winning. Why do we play fantasy football? For fun? Absolutely. But we also played a win. And with Yahoo! Fantasy football, you can win in your league, and someone will win $1 million. All you have to do is play in a private Yahoo! Fantasy league. Enter the sweepstakes by September fifth. It's coming up. Enter now at yahoo-sports. Com/simmons. I love Yahoo! Fantasy football, and especially love a new app. Go check it out. Easy to use, easy to set up, lets you focus on the game itself. Yahoo! Fantasy football. They're bringing us this segment to help you win your league. So to kick off our Yahoo! Play to Win segment, let's talk drafting. They wanted me to talk about new players in good homes. Aaron Jones in Minnesota, I keep looking at him, and people are a little bit off the Minnesota set now because McCarthy got hurt. I'm not even sure McCarthy was going to be the starting QB. Aaron Jones on Green Bay, I think Green Bay is going to miss him.

But I love the upgrade. Madison, who was barely a starting running back last year, and you jumped Aaron Jones. I like him on that team. I like him in a dome. Derek Henry in Baltimore is the obvious new home fit. We'll see how he does, but he's going to get all the inside the five carries. I like Mike Williams on the Jets as a late round stash pick. He's coming off in ACL, but I feel like as the year goes long, we're going to hear from him. The one I would say Be careful of Kirk Cousins in Atlanta coming off the Achilles. They shelved Pennex after one exhibition game, and they're just like, No, we've seen enough. And it's like, Are you worried he looks better than Kirk Cousins? That one made me suspicious. Anyway, put these tips to use for yourself. Create or join And Yahoo! Fantasy football league today at yahoosupports. Com/simmons. And remember, someone will win $1 million just playing a private Yahoo! Fantasy league. Enter the sweepstakes by September fifth. Enter now at yahoosupports. Com/simmons. No purchase necessary. Open in all 50 US states and DC for ages 18 plus. End September fifth, 2024.

See official rules at yahooesports. Com/simmons. So you mentioned being upset that flying wasn't better after all these years?

Not really upset, more or less just surprised. But you think that it should be an easier process because every aspect of the technology has advanced by many, many times. And we understand things better. Communication is improved. It doesn't seem that different, though. The experience for the actual consumer seems much the same.

I had a segment called Things I thought We'd be Better At by 2024.

Okay.

I'm going to say the flying is better. I have a very recent example of this. My son and I flew back from Boston last night. And we timed the flight because we're on Jet Blue and there's Wi-Fi. We timed the flight hoping to see the UFC 305, the latest pay-per-view. We were on a nine o'clock flight back and the thing came on at 10:00. We were able to get the fight on wireless, but I also had direct TV on the seat, and I was I'm able to watch ESPN's boxing thing, and I was watching boxing on the whatever seat, and then the UFC on my iPad, I was watching my son at the same time. And I was like, This is great. We've done it, guys. I would be doing this at home, but But then on the other hand, the same thing where it's delayed, people brought too many bags. It was all the same stuff that would have happened in 1975. We had to stop because people had to check their bags. So some of it's better. I think the app stuff is better with flying, but I think the Wi-Fi is the biggest thing.

Think how boring planes were. It felt like, Oh, I forgot a book. I'm just going to have to sit here and stare at the seat for six hours. I'm going to read this airplane magazine. Now, we have phones and things to do, right?

But part of it has to do with expectation, because now I can expect when I get on to a flight that I'm going to be able to watch live television or whatever. You walk into a flight, you see the seats don't have the little TV screen. You're like, Oh. It My expectation now is that I should be able to watch television when I fly. I think when I flew in 1990, I had the expectation as, Well, I need to bring a book to read and no one will interrupt me or whatever. Although I guess when I was at the time, I'm worried about that. That's something you worry about later in life, that people are going to interrupt you. But I think the expectation was not based around how entertaining the flight would be. And all that, by adding that aspect, I think it has only... I You're totally right. There's nothing. It's great if you're on a flight, and it turns out it's a four-hour flight and it happens to exactly coincide with a college football game or something. That's perfect, right? It's like you get to really, really watch it. The time Almost seems to disappear, all that.

That's true. But it is odd to me that that's what now I think is what a perfect flight is as opposed to efficiently getting somewhere else. I almost look at flying on an airplane now as something that's supposed to be fun. I think that expectation has probably fed into why the process does not seem... For some reason, I just feel like it should be more efficient to get from place to place than it was in 1998. It doesn't really seem like that is the case. That's the principle reason I'm on this plane.

Well, the airport traffic situation seems like it's gotten way worse, not better. You would think there would be less cars, better infrastructure, easier way to get in and out. It's never been worse in every single city.

It's a disaster. I think what has happened is that there are probably are things about air travel that have dramatically improved, but they've immediately compensated by adding more passengers. It's like they've added more flights. It's like instead of having the efficiency work to make the experience better, it's just been a way of like, how can we pull every last dollar out of this? And as a consequence, the flight seems worse now. And you see these situations where people are stuck in places for six and eight days, which I think used to happen in the past.

Yeah, that's crazy.

But for some reason, it seems like it shouldn't be happening now. What are some other things you think that we should have been better at that we are not?

I have one last flying thing, and then I'll get to that. It struck me last night. I think Seinfeld is the greatest airplane show of all time. And Law and Order is probably second. I think it's like a Jordan LeBron thing. Because Seinfeld, basically, even if it's commercials, it's 28 minutes. So it's like, I have 43 minutes left on my flight and you're flicking, whatever, or maybe they're on demand. It's like, I can get a Seinfeld and then we'll land. But I think Law and order would be the other one because you just go into this law and order world for 45 minutes. But with Seinfeld, we've all seen all of them. They're fun to rewatch, but you don't really have to pay attention. And they just work. Law and order, same thing. It's like, I I don't remember if I've seen this one. I'll watch it anyway. It's like you don't want to be challenged too much mentally, but you need enough to keep you a little focused. I think those are the two goats. What do you have?

Well, I like to watch Veep on the airplane.

Veep That's a good one.

I ended up rewatching Seasons 5, 6, and 7, the last three seasons. I guess I have now come to the conclusion that purely the writing, I think that's the best written show that there's ever been. Wow. Well, for the amount of really high-quality jokes, like real high-quality. Well, a thing that in a lot of shows would be the best joke in the entire program, and so often and has miraculously not aged that much. The stuff that was in these last three seasons seemed more pertinent to what's going on now than I would have ever possibly imagined. Every character is good. The acting is always good. Plus, it was the last period where people could talk like that on television. It's crazy to hear some of this stuff sometimes. But at the same time, because you have an understanding of where it's coming from, it never seems uncomfortable. It actually seems pretty insightful, really pressing it. A lot of the stuff that they talk about seems very much... I almost wish I could get back to when I watched it originally and like, Where did I think of that then? Because a lot of things to think about now.

The Law and Order thing- Kerb Curb is up there, too, I think for that. That would be good. Kerb, same thing. It's like 25, 27 minutes. You're in and out. Fun to watch. You might be able to watch eight. You could watch two, whatever. What were you going to say about Law and Order?

I find its collective reputation mind-blowing. That show is so beloved and so often noted by people as the most addictive, satisfying thing. I mean, I've watched it, I guess. I understand why it's a procedural that really, really goes to the procedure. They're really in it. But I'm surprised still how often people will mention it as like, oh, they were in some situation, they had mononucleosis or whatever. It's like, Oh, I watched Law and Order nonstop. It was perfect. It's like the highest approval rating of something that's actual substance seems to be workmanlike. No, I'm with you.

I was never a huge law and order guy. But yeah, you're right. But it's just serviceable to the most amount of people.

I'm not saying it's bad in any way. I'm not saying it's a bad show. It's just people use... It's almost like the go-to example people use when they're trying to describe television that the experience of watching it is more satisfying and more comforting than anything else. I find it very interesting that that has happened because I would... And every status of society. It's not something that... It's not like a working class show, but working class people like it. People who are snobs about everything will still like that show. It's very interesting.

It's been funny watching my daughter hit the cycles of just getting addicted to different shows that you and I have always known about. Right now, she's watching This is Us, and she's in season 5, and she thinks it's incredible. She'd never watched it. She banged out Sex in the City five, six months ago. It's just funny. These shows that hit in whatever way when they happen, which ones end up having a tale and which ones don't, and then which ones resonate with this younger generation and other ones don't. I have no idea. Is my daughter going to watch The Sopranos? Probably not. But Sex in the City and This is Us made total sense. I wonder as the years pass, you mentioned Veep, Curb, which those madmen, those type of shows, which ones will have a tale and then which ones will disappear. Because you think about the shows When we were growing up or we were in college, there were shows that were massive shows that just disappeared. La Law felt like it was the best drama for three years. I haven't heard anybody mention 20 years, but it felt like it was the most important show.

We've talked about R. E. M. Was like this, too. I think R. E. M. Felt like they might have been the biggest band in the world for four years. I don't know if they have the tale that some of the other bands that hit that level is now, and I don't really understand why.

Well, I think what it might be is this. It's like, look back, think back to your friends you had at college. If a person is at college, your daughter is at college now, right? Yeah. You have this You have this huge net of friends. When you're 20 or 21 or 22, you think to yourself, which of these friends am I going to know the rest of my life? Who's going to stay in my life? What I have found in my life is that I am quite surprised by the ones who have remained in my life and the ones who have not. In some ways, what I recognize is a lot of people I was friends with because of what we were doing at the time. We were parting together at the time. And that they There were people who I had a different relationship with that didn't seem as interesting at the time or as deep at the time. But it turns out that those things are things that go on forever. It might be the same with these TV shows to a degree. That some of these, especially at It's a prestige shows, for instance, Breaking Bad.

I feel like Breaking Bad is going to disappear from people's memory. Even though at the time, that seemed like of the four prestige show I even wrote about this, I thought maybe it was the best of those four shows for all these different reasons, all these moral reasons, all these things. But maybe what was happening is that show had to be happening then. But whatever was going on culturally and the things we were thinking about, it was tied to that program. If you were around when that program was happening, it had a lot more meaning. Then some shows, maybe because they don't have any of that, they're not really tied to anything. They're not attempting to comment on what's going on in the world right now. You can cut and paste them anywhere. There was a time when I was in high school, I was really into Barney Miller. I used to love watching Barney Miller, which was a show that had been from the past or whatever. I wonder if part of the word I liked about it was that there was a timeless nature to it. It didn't seem tied to anything going on in the world ever.

These shows that you're talking about with your daughter, it might be the shows that in some ways are, we would classify as a little less sophisticated, but they have a no longer tail because you don't need to know what's going on in reality to understand what's happening in this fake world. Maybe.

I don't know. Well, Grey's Anatomy is another show like that that I think has a long tail. I think it comes down to one-word things that always work. Family, sad family or complicated family, that always works. Hospitals always works. Police stations, procedurals. There's just certain things that work. Cheers is an interesting one to me Because I do think that was the most important half-hour show of the '80s. I don't even think it's debatable. I don't know what legacy it has now because when you watch it, it feels like it came out a million years ago. You look at the outfits, you're like, Wow, that show seems super old. It has a shelf life almost from the look of the show. But if you watch the first few seasons, that show is still... It's way, way, way up there all the time.

Well, I think watching Cheers now, it almost feels like I'm at a play. Like I'm watching a play.

Because the set is very esthetic.

They rarely leave that. They sometimes go in the back room, they sometimes go somewhere else, but not much. The writing is really good. The characters, sometimes it's real joke-based. It's not so much plot-based as much as it is joke-based. I actually think that it's still easy to watch that show, but I just don't watch it the way. I don't think of it the way I think of other television shows. It was to a degree serialized, but it didn't feel that way at the time.

Oh, yeah.

They were doing- Not as much as we expected.

Cliffhangers and all kinds of stuff. All right, I got off track. Things I thought would be better at it by 2024. I texted you about this. This is my number one. Solving old murder cases. I just thought by 2024, we would have been able to figure every single thing out that ever happened. The Zodiac killer, it's a wrap. We know who did it. I was My daughter had never seen Zodiac, and we watched it a couple of weeks ago. It's an amazing movie, and it's held up really nicely, and there's a lot of great actors in it, some good dark guys. She didn't know the story, and then it ended. She's like, Wait, we're not going to find out who the murderer was? I was like, Yeah, that's why this movie is so fucking cool. She's like, Well, how haven't they solved it now? We have all this stuff. I'm like, I don't know. I just thought we'd be better at that. That's I'm going to lead with that.

Well, okay. First of all, I think we probably are a little better at that. That does happen now sometimes. I feel like it was a zodiac. Sometimes. They have a sense of who they believe that they know who did it or whatever. I hate saying this because it's so annoying when people say this, but some people would claim that our inability to do that is a manifestation of capitalism. They would say that there is no financial motive to use this technology to solve things from the past. And if there was some situation where it was like, you could become a billionaire by figuring out who the Zodiac killer is and by figuring out all these things, then it would all of a sudden happen. But one of the problems people would say with capitalism is that it completely amplifies the importance of things that have a financial reward. And if there's no reward, it just becomes something that's maddening. Why can't we do this? Because we should have the technology to almost recreate that world, but why create that world? It's almost as though it's something we wanted to really absolutely solve an old serial killer case.

It would almost have to be built in to a television series that's going to come out that's going to show how this happens. Nobody would just do it. The only people who are still just doing it are the people who always did, the person who's just like, I'm very interested in this. They go on Reddit and they read about the thing. Maybe they a little research themselves. Good little library. But they don't have access to the ability to take this DNA testing. They can't get fragments from the crime scene.

It's like the Mary McNamara. Remember Mary McNamara solved that murder case and She just beat through her whole life around it for years. Yes. And that's how it does. I like your theory. I think you're right.

But if there was some situation where, I don't know how this would happen, but someone would be like, We're to give $10 million to anybody who solves these following crimes.

That sounds like a Netflix idea. Netflix should do that. They could, I guess. They're running out of a documentary. It's like they might as well just be like, We now challenge somebody $10 million. All right, That's my first one. Boxing. Boxing has been just lawless and crazy and ridiculous the entire time we've been alive. There's no oversight. It takes years to get people to fight. Promotors steal money from everybody. There's a million titles. Nobody can keep track. It's been at the point college football is at right now for 50 years, and it's somehow still going. It's interesting. All this Saudi money that came in has fixed boxing a little bit, and nobody wants to talk about it. But there's so much money at stake, and these guys are like, Here's money. You two fight each other. And Those two people that normally wouldn't fight are now like, All right, you're paying me how much? And now the boxing matchups have just gotten way better over the last two, three years. And this is basically what's been happening with UFC for the past 20, where it's like, Hey, you want to hold a belt? You want to get paid?

You have to keep showing up. You have to fight people, blah, blah, blah. It made me think like, it feels like we're getting closer to fixing boxing, but we're still really far away. This goes back to how we needed a sports hour and all this stuff. But I just wish we had a better feel for how to actually fix this because now we're getting closer.

Okay. This is off topic, but it's interesting you bring this up. So what's something that we always hear about whenever we talk about the 1920s or the 1930s? What were the three biggest sports in America?

It was boxing, baseball, and horse racing. Horsesrace. Horsesrace, yeah. Okay.

Those are Always the three we hear. I think certain things happened that changed these sports. I think that there are cultural things. I think horse racing. I think the reason it disappeared is because we started moving into the 20th century and people no longer had any relationship to horses, which in the past they did. They may have already owned a car, but their father had a horse or their This is interesting. My dad was born in 1929. The greatest memories of his earliest life was this fucking horse. He shows a picture of his horse. Love this horse. Wrote a horse in a bar once. This is the story. They were telling me about my dad. He's dead now. But horses were part of the world. They were part of... You talk people who describe what it was like to live in Chicago during that period. They're like, It was the city of horses, horses everywhere. And then that disappeared. And I think as a consequence, the interest in horse racing changed. It only became something the gambler was interested in. The average person who just liked Seabiscuit or whatever, just like horses, had no relationship.

Boxing, I think, followed a somewhat similar trajectory in the sense that... Remember in that, okay, remember in You mentioned Mad Men earlier. It was an episode of Mad Men where they go to watch the Listen, Ali fight in the theater. It was like, you know what I'm saying? It's all these guys in suits, business guys doing it. People who not... The upper echelon of society, all these things, white collar guys, we're still interested in this. I think that is because that was still part of an era When it was not uncommon for men to have experienced fights, that they have gotten in fights in their life, that it wasn't a crazy thing to think that if you went out, you might have a fistfighter. Most people now, particularly if they're financially secure, they can go their whole life and have no relationship to fight it, except seeing it, other people doing it or whatever. Now, there's things that are popular, like MMA and stuff like that, but it doesn't have... That has taken on a low-brawal peel. In the '90s, for example, do you remember Hoi's Gracie, and Kent Shamrock, and those guys when they were fighting the octagon?

Hoi's Gracie was this Brazilian street fighter and his whole family were these great street fighters. You'd watch those things. It would always be like, there's only four states we can do this in. They're all having to move the event or whatever. It was seen as like a... It was almost like a pornographic nature to it or whatever. Now, it's not that way anymore. It has become something that you watch with your son or whatever. But it doesn't have, I feel like the umbrella of society, the way boxing is. Whereas people just watched boxing on Friday for a long time and they could relate to it. It's a weird thing to say they can relate to it. I'm talking about people born before me. What the fuck do I know I'm talking about? I could be totally wrong on this. But I do think that maybe our lack of relationship to horses and our lack of relationship to fighting made both of those sports become these fringe things that only really appealed to the degenerates. And that's what those sports are now in a way. Not that everybody likes them to degenerate, but it It took on this idea that it's for people wagering money.

It's for people, especially boxing. Boxing is a rip off sometimes for the consumer. You pay all this money for a boat. I remember when Tyson came back and fought McNeely or something in a few seconds or whatever, and it costs all this money to get the paper. That would happen. You almost expected it. I don't know. And then baseball. So baseball was able to come out of that and exist. But now, baseball has had a different experience where it has fated a bit. But that happened, I think, because every little kid used to play a little league baseball, and now it's understood to be a bad sport for your kid to play. It's like he stands around a lot. If he strikes out, everyone's going to see.

Oh, my God. I was so happy when my son stopped playing baseball. It was great. It was like, wow.

I've heard that from so many... I've heard that from so many people. My kid doesn't play baseball, and in some ways, it would be like, I would hate it today. I had to go out and watch. But in some ways, I wish he would, too. It's just because it was I don't know. It seemed like that was the sport you start or whatever.

Wait, hold on. So your theory is that society pushes the love of these sports one way or the other based on the actual behavior of the people watching. So now that gambling is becoming more and more common, that's really good for UFC and boxing because those are probably the most fun sports to bet on other than basketball. I mean, I'm sorry, other than football.

But it's not good for horse racing. You could always bet on horses. That's not going to change that at all.

But horse racing, I've never, as you know, I love gambling. I've never bet on horses. To me, it just seems like a giant crapshoot. And the people who actually understand how to bet on it are people that are like, they're studying all the horses and they go to the track. I'm just like, I'm not.

But you feel like you're doing that for football.

Yeah, but it's actually fun in football.

If you like, I guarantee you, if your dad had grown up with horses, you would fucking love horses. You would talk about horses all the time on your podcast.

Yeah, I'm trying to think what scenario that would be. We'd probably live in upstate New York, near Saratoga.

Lexington, Kentucky. Yes, I'm Are you just really into the Kentucky Derby. I'm like the- No, you were really into your backyard, which was up against a fence, and you watched the thoroughbreds galloping about every morning in every dust. They would come over and you would touch them on the nose.

I've done a six-hour Secretariat documentary.

Yes. Can I ask you? I feel like this could be a controversial thing, but I want to ask you this because... Okay, so I watched that Pete Rose documentary, the one that was on HBO. Okay, Charlie Hustle, it's called. Yeah. I was thinking, okay, so Pete Rose, he was like, he's just super competitive, right? Super competitive guy. He'll do what it takes to succeed. Also interested in statistics, his own statistics in a way. Belved by Cincinnati, by his hometown, in a way that to this day, apparently, according to this documentary, you still see people wearing Pete Rose jerseys all over the place. Had this super intense relationship with his father and saw his life in a way like, I'm doing this in a way to fulfill the thing that my dad gave me, this potential he gave me, love to gamble, can't stop gambling. In any way, do you relate to Pete Rose? No. I feel like he has a lot of qualities that are similar. I feel like all these things, not all But in a lot of ways, there's a lot of qualities that I would think you would say, I can understand that.

All those things I just said could also be said about you, every one of them.

And they're not negative. His gambling was deranged, though. He was managing the Reds and betting on the game. That's insane.

Okay, well, I've never known what your real gambling is. No one does. No one knows how much money you actually gamble. No one knows when you talk about this constant gambling, if you're gambling 50 bucks on these games or if you're losing thousands or winning thousands of dollars a week. No one knows. How much do you gamble?

Well, definitely not nearly as much as Pete Rose. Now, I just bet on football and basketball and some Olympics, but not- That's what Michael Jordan said when he got in trouble. No, but Michael Jordan is a good example, though. He's playing these $200,000 Skins games against these shady dudes in the early '90s. He loved gambling. Loved it. To the point that he was willing to risk his whole career to continue to gamble a golf.

What is the most money you've ever won on one event?

See, I'm a bad person for this because I don't have fun if there's a lot of... I'm like this, even playing blackjack at casinos. When the stakes get high, I just get nervous. I don't enjoy it.

So you never won a $1,000 in an event?

Oh, I've definitely won $1,000 in an event, but I've never won... The biggest bet The biggest bet I ever won was Sal and I bet on the Warriors to win the 2015 title, and they were 30 to 1 odds. We did really well on that, but it was like we won $100,000.

Yeah, why did you put in?

I don't remember. But I remember that was the biggest call.

These are personal questions I realized even by asking them, you're not supposed to do these things. You're not supposed to ask people. When I was watching this Pete Rose thing, because In some ways- No, but there's a whole other level, though.

Because the real ones, if you listen to Sal's pod, like some of his friends, they're betting on Asian tennis tournaments and they're betting on... I don't bet on any sport that I don't really follow. I just bet on basketball and football stuff.

I think that actually probably is a key difference.

Because if you're betting every week and you don't know whatever it is, it's like, oh, it's the freaking FedEx whatever tournament in Tennessee, I'm betting on that. That's a whole other level.

Yeah, you mentioned rewatching Seinfeld. There's that episode of Seinfeld where he's betting with a guy from Texas on flights coming in at the airport. They're looking at the board of flights. I have a friend that I know if I was with her in an airport and I was like, Hey, so do you think that? I know she'd be like, Yes, let's do it. She likes to gamble on literally anything. If I was flipping a coin, I'd be like, You want to issue? Do it. I think that there's a huge difference. You say that you only gamble if you're already in… You don't gamble on college football at all.

No, I like gambling on stuff where I feel like I have an educated opinion, and that's it. Either I really have a strong feeling or it's something that... Like yesterday in UFC, I think I did one parlay because I was in Boston, and you could bet there. But it was like, I bet on a knockout for the first one. Then, ironically, I bet on Izzy to win in the main and he got choked out. But it wasn't like I bet a lot of money on it. I was just like, Oh, it'll be fun to put a parlay in on this. There's three other levels that you can go. If you're betting on anything, if you're betting on stuff, weird golf tournaments, you're betting... To me, the people that bet on baseball, I think that's like, you really have to follow that pretty hard to bet on baseball with the way the shifts and the pitching. I don't know, the odds aren't great. I don't get the betting soccer. I don't even really understand how to bet on soccer because it has to end at 90 minutes. I'm like, I'm out.

I don't do that at all. Every match comes down to one goal or two goals.

I'll do some series bets. I had the Panthers in a parlay with the Celtics to win the Stanley Cup. That was fun, but I don't think I would have bet game to game on it. So yeah, I'm pretty low. Pete Rose was a degenerate. Pete Rose would go when he had dead times, he would go to the horse track, and his friends were all degenerate gamblers, and he was at a whole other level.

Oh, yeah. There's a... Rick Reilly, I interviewed one time about going in to see... Interview Pete Rose for something. He walks in the Pete Rose house He has three TVs up. And Pete Rose is just sitting there before this interview going like, Oh, the fucking Canox. Oh, jeez. Now, Dallas is just like, That's all he's doing. Although in your pool house, you have the same TV set up. So that doesn't like Pete Rose's.

Yeah, but that helps me for the football and the basketball. That helps me for my job, especially the ability to be able to watch... One of the big things when we moved, we had the bigger TV and then the two TVs next to it. I I put basketball on those other TVs, so I know what's going on, but we can also watch a movie or a TV show or whatever. I have a general sense of what's happening, but it's more to keep up with the lead because I feel like it's just there's so much sports on at all times. It's tough to keep track and keep up with everything.

Okay, which of these statements would you say you agree with more? That A, you understand Pete Rose's gambling addiction, or B, Pete Rose's gambling addiction confusing to me. Don't get it. Like to gamble, but don't understand why it'd be that way.

What would you say? Yeah, I'm in the confusing camp with it. Interesting. But on the other hand, I do think there's a certain profile of these dudes that are these ultra competitive dudes that they just can't shut it off. I think Jordan fit that, too, to a great. I think he wanted to compete in everything at all times. He couldn't shut the faucet off.

I follow this gambling stuff pretty closely, but I don't gamble because I've done a lot of things in my life that are addictive and didn't seem to be fine. I was able to handle it, no problem. But gambling, I always wonder because especially now that it's all on phones, if the The imaginary nature of money would lead me down to a path of destruction. Because if you're in Las Vegas and you're actually betting, you're going up and you're giving them money. That's one thing. It's a difference between credit cards and cash. When you're dealing in cash, somehow I understand it. But I feel like I would be nervous that it seems like it could be something that I could get into too much thoughtlessly and then be in too deep. But I love looking at the lines. That's why if you were a college football guy. To me, there's nothing more interesting than trying to figure out if is Ohio State going to beat Marshall by more than 39 and a half points? It's so crazy. It's like, how do you even... And it gets to so I'm so amazing at this. I've told you this many times.

There's one story I could really do or one documentary or some question I could answer. It would be, how do they manage to do this so well? How do they manage to get the lines correct on things that there's absolutely Absolutely no context for it. Two teams that are completely different. One is an elite, one is nobody. They're playing for the first time. They say it's going to be 39 and a half. Inevitably, the game ends up either 41 or 47 point difference. It's just amazing.

Yeah. One of the things that's amazing off of what you just said is how they can completely miss it sometimes. There was a whole... When the first COVID season with the NFL, when there was no home field advantage because there were no crowds, and the game started going over, and it took them four weeks to adjust, and there were some smart people that just killed the books on that. There's some people like Rahim, who hosts the Ringer Gambley show for us. He thinks there's potentially going to be an inefficiency with the new kickoff returns that points might be up. And he's been talking about that on the podcast, that because the field position, there might be a countdown or there might be somebody starting at 50, whereas in the days, which were last year, all the kickoffs were basically just kneel down, you start the ball at the 25. Now there's going to be more variants with it, which might be better for- How do you feel about the new kick-off rules esthetically? I watched them preseason. It's just weird. It just doesn't seem right. I don't know how many weeks it's going to take to get used to it, but it feels like it's going to be at least two months.

What do you think?

Well, my natural inclination is to always be against anything like this. I'm extremely conservative when it comes to any changes in sports. This one, I thought, well, I don't know, I'm going to try to stay open-minded about it. It does seem actually like it's going to make the play a little more watchable. I really dislike the fact, though, that you cannot onside kick in a surprising way. I think that's really a bummer, because it's just like, not Not that it happened that often, but it's weird to remove that completely. And I don't know. We're going to have to see because I watched, I think it is the USFL now, right? The USFL again.

It's changed identities another time.

Yes. I can't remember if it was the SFL. But I think it was during the pandemic, I watched the Championship game, and it was a really good game. And it came down to a situation where a team had to go Their onside kick was the fourth or 15 situation. I will say, to me, it feels easier than onside kicking by quite a bit.

fourth and 15 isn't far enough. To me, that has to be like fourth and 20, at least. Fourth and 15 is conceivable, you can get that. Fourth and 20 now becomes hard.

The problem is the frequency in which they call pass interference. That's the thing. Is that it seems possible to under throw guys on purpose in that situation and then just see if you get the call. Maybe in that situation, a referee will be less willing to call pass interference.

Also, the goal for getting rid of the onside kicks is allegedly safety. But if it's a fourth and 20 play, one of the plays is you're going to send the receiver over the middle and just get nailed by two safeties at the same time. That guy's probably getting hurt. I don't know how much you've solved the safety piece of That has become this thing now where any time you make any change for anything, as long as you say it's for safety, you can do it.

No one can push back. If you're doing it for caution or for safety, it's like, Well, is it really safer? And it was like, we're doing it for safety. And it was like, okay, we're not going to... You can no longer be in a position where it seems like you're advocating for anything that would make anyone a fraction less safe than they were before.

You're seeing it with soccer now because they're basically changing the headers. There's a lot of different states, I think, where you can't head the ball until, I don't know what age, but if you're 10, you're not doing headers in games. And so what happens when those kids become adults and they've never done headers? Wait, I have a couple more things that I thought would be better at by 2024. Just quickly, I thought we'd be better at recycling by now. It feels like we're getting worse. You read these stories about how all these... It's like 20%. I don't even know what the numbers are, but it just felt like we had a really good plan for recycling, and now it feels like there's more plastic bottles than ever. I don't know what we're doing with that. Flying cars- Wasn't there this American Life episode about how it turns out all the separation of recycling and garbage? It's terrible. Yeah, it's a disaster.

They're just all throwing it together. We're all trying to recycle aluminum cans. Aluminum, we got to get these cans. I might be wrong about this, but isn't aluminum one of the most present elements on Earth? It's 6% of the Earth's crust or something. It's like, Aluminum. I realized we don't want to have this garbage pilling up or whatever, but I don't put a lot of thought into recycling. I'm not a big I'm not a recycling buff. I mean, I do it. You got to do it, especially in Portland. Who knows it'll happen if I don't? But it's like, I'm annoyed by it every time. People hate when you say that. They're like, That's terrible. But it's not like littering. Recycling is something different.

I I thought we'd be better at it. I talked about this with Derek a few weeks ago, but I thought we'd have some flying cars by now, and I'm disappointed by that. 2024, I thought we'd have it. Here's the big thing. I really want your take on this. I don't feel like we're good at football stadiums still in 2024. We built all these new ones. I was on a text ride with people the other day, a couple of friends, trying to figure out who's the GOAT football stadium right now for pros. Because there's college ones that's great. There's iconic ones that you can't change. But we would also never build football stadiums like some of the iconic college ones. But for the pro ones, we were like, Is Dallas the best football stadium? Is it SoFi, the one in LA? I think part of the reason we do football stadiums wrong is because we keep making the same mistakes with them, which is why I'm so interested by what they're doing in Tennessee. I don't know. Have you read about the new football stadium they're building?

I have not.

The one they They have now, I think is 70,000 seats, maybe it's 69,000. The one they're building has 60. The theory was, All right, yeah, we could have built an 80,000 seat stadium, but that's 7,000 more cars. That's 20,000 more people coming in and out. A lot of times, those are the worst seats in there, so you can create more demand, have a smaller stadium, 60,000, easier to get in and out, and just better. But I don't know anybody who's like, It's so much fun to go to my football stadium. Really, the only one I've been to where it made sense was Indianapolis because it was downtown. But in general, we had that era that we had in the '70s and '80s, those big concrete stadiums they would make for baseball and football. And then in the late '90s, they were like, We're going to do this better. We got better ideas for football stadiums. And that's where you have the Pats Gillette Stadium and some of the ones they built in the early 2000s. Culminating in the giant stadium one, which is, I think, 2010 range, which is an incredible pain in the ass to get to, is way too big.

You go there. If you're in the top floor, it takes you 20 minutes to get up there. And this is a recent thing that they put real thought into. The San Francisco one, which I've been to, it's in the middle of... It's an hour outside of San Francisco. It's in where all the tech companies are, and it's really hard to get to. It's hard to get out. It's a huge monolith. And we're just not doing this well yet. I can't believe in 2024, we haven't figured it out because it seems like Balmer figured out the basketball thing. I don't know if he figured out the traffic, but I actually think he figured out a new way to do a basketball stadium that's going to be a thing. So the first one where somebody figured it out in some way, some new motto was Jerry Jones in Dallas, right? But that was late 2000s. That was 16, 17 years ago. I wonder, what does the ultimate football stadium look for the future?

I have a semi long answer to this, so I'm going to be as fast as I can. Okay. I'm not sure how much I'm going to say about this because... So I'm writing a book right now, and this is what you're talking about is a part of it, because what I'm writing about is how the rise of football and incredible dominance in American society is due to many things. But the principal reason is this relationship to television. That the experience of watching football on television accidentally is the best television experience there is in terms of how the game is paced. These plays that stop people write these stories like, in a football game, there's actually only 11 minutes of actual action. That's actually good. It's like we get to sensitize to nonstop movement. There's a way football works on television that has made it completely different from every other experience. This is the big part of it. Now, here's the other thing. I think football is so interlocked with the television experience that we are always watching the game on television, even if we are there. This is what I mean by this. I mean, let's just say you're sitting in the corner of the end zone for USA, UCLA.

You're watching this game. You're in the corner of the end zone. Occasionally, there's going to be a play. Someone runs a fade to the back flag where you have the optimal seat that's right in front of you. You're seeing something that no one else is seeing. But in every other situation, I believe Unconsciously, we are seeing what we are seeing from the seat where we are at and transposing it in our mind to the shot we see on television. The shot from the press box at the 50, looking down, not the most optimal shot. The most optimal shot is the sky zone behind the quarterback. But we don't think of football in that way. We think of it as the way that we always see it. So when you're in a football state, hockey is a better sport live. Everyone understands that. Basketball, it depends on where you sit. You got to be close. Otherwise, it could be worse than TV. Base can be good just because of the weather and all these things. But there is no one in the world who says, I really want to see this football game. I better go do it.

Everyone knows if you actually want to see a football game, you watch it on television. There is no place you can sit in a football stadium that lets you see the game and comprehend the game the way the television experience does. So when you talk about making better football stadiums, here's the only purpose football stadiums provide: crowd noise ambiance for television. It doesn't matter what the game looks like. The people that are there to really see the game, they are an extension of the game. They are there, particularly in college football, to make it feel as though there's a degree of intensity and that you're seeing this thing that is almost like a Roman Colossium or whatever. But in terms of actually experiencing the game, it is completely meaningless because there is no good seat at a football stadium. I mean, it's amazing to me. The head coach came Can't see what the fuck is going on. You need the offensive coordinator to be upstairs watching the game from above and looking at a monitor. Like the guy who's running things, even the quarterback, the guy on the field, he's in the game, does not see the game as clearly as I do on television.

That's an extremely unique situation, and it's the reason football is so successful. So to answer your question, you're like, We haven't figured out a way to make a good football stadium. It can't be done. You can't a football stadium that's actually designed well for watching football. That's not the purpose of stadiums for that sport.

Okay, here's my zag on that. This is the only sport we have where college has figured out a better version than the pros. Because everyone would agree, college stadiums are much better and much cooler than NFL stadiums in every aspect, where they're located, what it's like to go to them.

You know what I mean? Not the seating. The seating is often more comfortable than pros.

But nobody cares about that in college because they're just going to be part of this big loud throng and the whole day is an event.

So you're not talking about the stadium. Now you're talking about the people there. That's different, right?

No, but some of it is about a 102,000 seat stadium only makes sense in college football. You wouldn't want to have that if you were the Chiefs. Why would you want 102,000 people at a Chiefs game? But you would want it if you're Auburn.

Yeah, because Because you go to an Auburn game or whatever, you might be sitting in the student section watching the game. You might need to watch it on your phone. You might not be able to really see what's going on. It's like you're going there for an experience that there's this event happening in the middle of the stadium. There's this essentially collective party happening all around it on these stands, and you want to go to that party as well. But if you really want to see that game, if it's the iron goal, and it's so important to you to see Auburn beat Alabama or whatever, you would be better served to watch it on television. It makes you seem like... I think some people feel like, Well, I'm a fan of this team. It's my obligation to go. And that's a different thing. It's like going to a political rally to hold a sign and jump up and down for four hours. It doesn't really make you more engaged with politics. It's just that you want to be there. So this idea of... I don't think that football as a live experience can be done in a way that That serves the principal purpose of watching the game.

I just don't think it works. I don't think it's possible.

Yeah, because I was trying to think if the crafts decided we want to actually build a football soccer stadium in Boston, downtown Boston, we're make it smaller. And I was trying to think, could they build something that would be beloved to go to the same way like Fenway Park is? And I think it would have to be... You'd almost have to do a 50,000-seat stadium. That would have to be a dome. That would have to be souped in the football version of what Balmer did. Because the bomber thing, I can't wait the first games in, I think, two months. Everything they're saying in principle makes total sense to me. It's like they're going to have this whole wall behind one of the baskets. So the theory is in the second half, the warriors are shooting against this basket. And instead of the way arenas normally are, it's just this whole wall of fans who are just going to be trying to fuck with them make noise. It's like, all right, that's pretty interesting. The way that the accessibility getting in and out of there and the way you can be able to buy food. Everything is like you just walk into a thing, grab it and leave.

Everything is designed to like, they want people to spend money and stay in their seat as much as possible. It's like, All right, that's really cool. None of it's going to matter if the team sucks. If Kawhi Leonard is on one leg and James Harden is 20 pounds overweight and they're the third worst team in the West, I'm not going to care how cool the stadium is. But in college football, it's like, Oh, what are you doing Saturday? Oh, man, I'm going to Auburn. I'm going to see an Auburn game. I'm like, Whoa, you're going to Auburn? That's going to be amazing. I just don't know if there's a way to replicate that with pro sports. We've only really seen it with baseball. Like, baseball parks are the only ones. And Lambo, weirdly, Lambo is the other one. Yes.

When you talk about beloved stadiums or whatever, could they build Could the crafts fill the football stadium as the love to spend away park? I mean, possibly if it stood there for a hundred years, I mean, these things got to be old. Things become... You can't build something and have it be beloved. It will not... There's The word beloved and the word new do not really go together. It's always like, well, what you love about this is the stadium itself, and then also the memories you had there that you then injected in the stadium get back out. This idea that somehow it's part of your community in this way that defines your community. I mean, this actually leads into the other thing you wanted to talk about to me, which is, I think, a very interesting question.

Let's take a break. So I texted you about the concept of crown jewel franchises because the Celtics are for sale. And I happen to have a bunch of Information on this because this is a huge, huge topic right now in the circles of people that would want to buy a team. And there's a bunch of stuff going on. I don't care about being aggregated on this because I'm right. The league wants six billion for the team, for the Celtics. Six billion. They don't own their arena. It's a crazy price, but they're probably going to get it. So there's that. They want the six billion because they want expansion teams in Seattle and Vegas. And then Mexico City is looming as a third team, but they want to get six billion a piece for the two franchises for expansion, which would mean a check of $400 million to every NBA owner, all 30. So they're trying to establish a price with the Celtics team. And the Celtics themselves, the Grossback family, because the dad of the majority owner, Wick, is driving the sale. And there's no favorites. He's like 90, right? He's 90. He's a legend.

He's going to 25 times what he paid for the team. And he just wants the highest price. He's not like, oh, these local guys, let's cut him. He doesn't care. He wants the biggest price he could possibly get. And in the last few days, there's been some, I think, legitimate buzz about Jeff Bezos buying the Celtics. And I think it's real. I think he's going to be one of the suiters. Which got me thinking, why would Jeff Bezos, when he's looking at the Celtics, what is he seeing? What does he want? And I think the only way it makes sense, granted, he has a cajillion dollars, but it's one of the crown jewel franchises, right? That's why you get it. To him, it would be no different than if he bought this famous, gigantic $300 million yacht. But I think it's real that he's potentially in the mix for this. So my question to you is, how many Crown jewel franchises are there? And then what are the rankings?

Well, because when you texted me that, you were like, Is the number less than 15? So I was thinking about it. And my feeling on this is that the The number is either very small or almost too big. The number has to be very small because if you start moving beyond these true elite franchises, you then start being like, Well, what about this? If you're going to include that team, you also got to include that team, and all of a sudden, it balloons up. So I think there are four. I had five in my first tier, so I'll be interested to see which one you left out. Okay. So I think that the principal one is the Dallas Cowboys.

I had them number one as well.

Yeah. I think number two is the Yankees.

I had them number two.

And I think that the two that I would say are connected and ancillary to that are the Lakers and the Celtics, and they're dependent on the existence of each. But the way I was thinking about this is a little different, I think, than you might be. I was wondering if maybe you would really skew toward the actual value, like the cash value in a way, like the worth of it.

To me, these are things- No, because you can't. The Broncos went for seven billion. Sure. I wouldn't call them one of the all-time Crown jewels. To me, that's more like situation, market. It's a team that's available. It's a famous name, but I wouldn't say they were a top 10 Crown jewel franchise.

Who was your fifth one?

I had the same list you had, Cowboys, Yankees, Lakers, Celtics, like 3A, 3B. But then I had the Dodgers in there as well because- They were cool.

They would be close. Yeah. Okay.

For a few reasons. One is, I think it's the second most famous baseball franchise. They still have some New York fans from when they're Brooklyn, but then also the LAPs. But really, I think the reason they moved in there was because of this Ohtani signing and having him and having that connection they have now in the Far East with how much money they make. That they're really the... There's only two global baseball teams. So I think they have to be in there. And then I think after that, I looked at it as like, yeah, you're right. You could have 25 teams in this list. But I was working backwards. I was like, Who has to be on the list? And I started there.

If you put the Dodgers in, then suddenly it's like, Well, what about the Knicks? I mean, New York is essentially a real basketball town. They play in the most famous arena. It's obviously is like a media-driven market, but this is a media-driven question in the sense that- No, but think about it this way.

I think the city really matters if it's one of the biggest markets in America. I think the history of the franchise and how long they've been and how many generations of fans they have matters. I think you have to think about if somebody hears the name, whether they're here, whether they're in Germany or New Zealand, feel like the Knicks. I'm like, Oh, I know the Knicks. Then you have to think, if they won the title, how big and impactful and important would that be? So I had for my next four, I had the 49ers, the New York football Giants, the Golden State Warriors, and the Knicks as the next four for different reasons. Because I think the 49ers and the Giants are the next two big football teams, and they have the history. They've won titles. They have generations of fans. They're in big cities.

You don't put the packers in that group or the stealers?

I had the packers and stealers right after.

This is what's complicated, though, when you start opening the window just a little bit, then all of a sudden it seems like, well, how can you have them but not those? See, my thinking was this. The reason I picked those four franchises was this idea that if one of these teams collapsed and went bankrupt, it would suggest to me the league is collapsing and going bankrupt.

Wow. That's a good way to think about it.

I The convoys are a particularly interesting example to me. They're the top of this. The idea of America's team, that is something that everyone seems to disagree with and everyone accepts. That any time you discuss this, people give you reasons why Dallas is not America's team, and yet the conversation never disappears. And that's when you know something is really important. When the fact that people consistently try to explain to you why it isn't And it goes on for years. That decades pass, and there are people still trying to say, Dallas really isn't America's team. But of course, if that was really the case, you wouldn't constantly bring it up. I think he bought the Cowboys, Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys for $140 million. Now, they're 9.2 billion. Football has become more popular since 1989, but not to the extent that that has appreciated value. It hasn't changed that much, which is troubling. It's troubling in a It's like all the value of... I do think that the ascending value of these franchises and the ascending value of salaries is going to cause a real problem in about 20 to 30 years in a way that I think that the American sports landscape is going to completely be reinvented, maybe almost gone.

But the reason I picked those four franchises... Yes, yes, yes. Well, I do. I think it's a problem. I think it's going to be... Because what's going to happen is at some point, there is going to be an understanding or a collective realization by companies and corporations that advertising is not worth what we're putting into it, that the value we're getting from it is not worth this cost. And all of these leads are dependent on the fact that they're the live events that people watch because that's the only place that people can see ever these commercials. They know that people will watch them because they can't fast forward if they're watching live. I noticed this with Super Bowl ads. If you notice with the Super Bowl ads, it It's like they're not as innovative as... There was that period in the '80s and '90s where it was the big deal. It's like, oh, we have the 1984-based commercial now. Now it's more like just actually having the slot, just getting the slot. Use a commercial. It doesn't even seem that different from the other commercials. Just put it into the time frame because it's not worth putting all this money in.

All we're trying to do is get people to notice it. I do think over time, there's going to be a realization that that is not actually what sells things. Certainly not the cost advertising is going to have to go in order to to pay for all these things. And I think there's going to be major work stoppages because I think what will happen is that the league will suddenly not have the money to pay athletes what the salaries have escalated to. And it's not like the athletes are going to go like, I understand. They're going to be like, no way. Pay me. And there's going to be these big stoppages, and people are not going to mind the work stoppages as much as they had in the past. The idea of baseball disappearing for a summer or basketball disappearing for a winner is not going to impact people the way they did in the past. And that could be the end. That's the way it's done.

Oh, my God. I mean, that baseball lockout in '81, that felt just like an absolute catastrophe.

It did.

We didn't have that much to do. It's like they removed one of the basics. I worry about what you just said the most with the NBA because they just have the least number of people per team in the amount of money that's being poured into it and guys making 80, 85 million a year plus whatever they make off the court. It's this It's a factor that I just don't know how it plays out. Well, I mean, it's totally fine.

It might be fine. The revenue keeps coming in, but at some point, I think it's going to stop. I suspect that there's going to be a complete reevaluation of the value of advertising within the next 20 to 40 years. But getting back to what we were saying for them. So the Cowboys, to me, it seems like if the Cowboys franchise was in trouble, this franchise who... If the Cowboys go, if they start the year 2 and 6, it's one of the main things people are talking about. They are part of the discussion regardless of how they're playing. They can play good, bad. If they're good, of course, people are talking about it. If they're playing bad, people are saying what's wrong. If they're average, people are like, do they need to blow it up? They're the only team that seems to be viewed as everything is news. Literally everything that happens is news.

What you're describing. Basically, there's a bunch of different bearers being due for this, but really the Cowboys and the Lakers are the two most omnipresent franchises we have. You can tell by the ESPN and I went through it, too, when I did TV for them. Anyone who does TV for ESPN knows. It doesn't matter if the Cowboys and Lakers are good or not, what season. It's like, Here we go. Welcome to NBA today. The Lakers are 18 and 19. Zack Lo, what's going on with them? Can they still make the playoffs. That is a more important topic than what's going on with the Grizzles. It just is.

It is, probably, except that if LeBron were not on the franchise and LeBron were to leave, I don't know if it keeps going, where with Dallas, it doesn't seem to make you different. It's like Quincy Carter can be the quarterback. People are like, What's going on? The Lakers need LeBron to be there. And they had Kobe before that. Before that, they have been exceptionally good at always having- But they're always going to have somebody because they're the Lakers.

People always are going to want to play with them. We'll see. I had my last six teams because I had 15 total: Packers, Stealers, Cubs, Red Sox, Chicago Bears, New York Rangers. I only had one hockey team. The baseball It's weird to put the baseball in context because we were talking about the Pete Rose documentary and just Pete Rose in general and how important he was. I texted you a couple of weeks ago about how in 1978, the World Series, which was the Dodgers and the Yankees, was 44.2 million viewers for that World Series. Last year was 9.8. Now, that was the peak World Series ever. It was when people cared about baseball, probably the most than the modern television. Well, not just that.

The population of America, I think, what, was 190 million? And now it's 335 million. So you look at that, that there were 195 million people in 40 48 million of them, you said? That's what they was watching that game?

44.2. And now last year was 9.8. And you're like, well, there's more to do. Well, the Super Bowl in 1978 was 79 million, and now it's 125 million. So football has unquestionably gotten bigger, and baseball is just at a completely different place. And the Pete Rose piece of it is interesting to me because when I was growing up, he felt like one of the biggest stars in It's like sports, movies, TV. It felt like Pete Rose is one of the 10 biggest stars in the world. I just don't know if a baseball player that would ever happen again. It would basically have to be, I don't know, a scenario because Right now, Ohtani has a chance to have 50 homers and 50 steals, any pitches, which if I had said to you 20 years ago, there's this guy, he's going to come in. He's basically going to be Babe Ruth in 1918. You'd be like, Well, that guy is going to the biggest star in the world. It's like, he's just not. Now, you could say there's a bunch of other reasons for that, including the fact that people don't care about regular season baseball in the same way.

But in 1978, that guy would have been a bigger deal. Sure.

But you say, You'd have told me this 20 years ago. Actually, Bill, I think if we went back to our podcast 20 years ago, I feel we were talking about this. Which piece?

I feel like this- Which piece?

No, that baseball has fated. I feel like we've been talking about this for a long enough time now that we can almost can see, well, it's happened, so we don't really need to... Because it seems like we keep thinking about this idea. It's like...

It has been a long time. Yeah, it's in the past, almost.

Well, because 20 years ago, that's when the Yankees and the Red Sox had all that. It was exciting and stuff. People were watching those games. It felt like a big deal. We'd go to the bar and they would be on and stuff like that. But there was already a sense that somehow it didn't seem as... It seemed as though people were still, already then, very clearly, more interested in what was happening in football in October and what was happening in baseball in October, which I did not even- That was...

Well, because for this crown jewel conversation, I think we did it 20 years ago. I think the Red Sox would have been in the top five or six. And now it's like they barely made the cut. So, yeah, I think it's somewhere between 15 and 20, but really it's four or five that are the big ones. I do think if the 49ers went for sale, That would be a massive deal if the New York football Giants, any of those, they get giant prices. What about the St.

Louis Cardinals? I feel like that has a lot... St. Louis is one of the few towns in America, I would say, is absolutely a baseball town among major cities. It seems as though the identity, that whole St. Louis needs the Cardinals in a way that other places don't need their team. Does that factor into your consideration at all?

I don't think it totally does because I just don't think the price would be nearly the same. If the Celtics go for six billion, that's territory that is really only NFL teams, and that's it. I think the Warriors would go for more than that. The Lakers would obviously go for way more. The Knicks would go for more. But if you buy the Celtics, you're buying this famous franchise that has all this history and resonates in a certain way with the city. Let's say you're Bezos, because I'm really trying to figure out If this is really for real, he's going to be the owner of the Celtics. What is that going to look like?

But how will it look differently? Explain to me how it will look differently. What will happen?

No, I'm I'm trying. I'm just saying for him, what's the win for him to own? Because he kicked the tires with the Washington football team, too, which is not, I don't think, as high in the Crown jewel rankings. If you're in the Celtics, Boston is pretty rabid sports city. You're going to have to spend money on tickets seriously. So why would you do it? And then I was thinking, well, their arena, their lease is like eight, nine more years. Is the play for him some Amazon stadium? We're already seeing this with Balmer and some of these other, these touchless stadiums where you just go in and grab things and walk out. Is the ultimate play for this to build some state-of-the-art stadium that's never been done before for concerts and for basketball, and it's like the Amazon Dome. And you put it in downtown Boston, and then that just becomes another thing he did?

It's an interesting question. I know you love the Rolling Stones, right? We talk about the Rolling Stones sometimes.

Yeah.

And a lot of times when the Rolling Stones come up in conversation, there is a fairly obvious question asked. It's like, why are they still doing this? What is the purpose of them to still tour? Why are their tickets still that expensive? Why are they trying to... And the The idea, initially, a lot of people were asking that question. They see it totally as a question of greed. Why are Mickey Keith so greedy that they're still trying to make all this money at the end of their life. I mean, Mick Jagger said he doesn't want to give his money to his kids. So what's he doing? Well, I suppose it might have something to do with almost like a video game mentality. It's just the number itself. There's nothing Mick Jagger can't buy now. There's nothing that's outside of his... I would think even if he If he wanted to have political power or whatever, he would have achieved enough to do that. So with Bezos buying the Celtics, it's like, what else is he supposed to do with his money? I mean, once you have $70 billion or you're valued at $75 billion, and you're not even really spending that money.

People are giving you that money to pay for something that you're not... It's like they're just using your wealth as collateral. It's a completely fictional world. I don't know if we can You're, I guess, expressing that you think that he has a motive for doing this?

No, I don't really know. I have a thought on Jagger, and then I can answer the Bezos thing. I don't think it's about money for the Rolling Stones anymore.

I think- But definitely not.

It would make no sense at all. I think people like him and Springsteen, they feel like this is what keeps them alive. And the moment they stop doing this, they're just going to drop dead. So they keep doing because the energy they get from the concerts is what keeps them going. I don't- Well, I'm sure it feels great. I don't think it's a financial thing at all.

It feels like you give a speech in front of 150 people and you do a great job and they really laugh. It feels great. I can't imagine what that must feel like for them. There must also be, though, a weird cognitive dissonance with him recognizing that what people are cheering and clapping for in a way has nothing to do with what he's doing that night. It has to do with his career, his life, what they think it means to be a Rolling Stone fan, what they think it means to be a fan in a public event. All of that, in some ways, that could be just to satisfy.

Maybe he Think about, let's say, John Lennon never gets shot. Would the Beatles have had reunion concerts?

I think that there is a sense that they would have reunited at Live Aid. I think that there's a lot of people who believe that because of the cause of Live Aid, there would have been a real push from George to want to do it. A lot of times when George wanted to do something like go to India, they did it, even though he was not... He was the third most important guy, and yet they seemed to agree with a lot of his ideas sometimes on things we should do. I think that they probably would have Reunited at Live Aid. It's a fun thought process, fun thought experiment. The bands who did Reunited Live Aid, like Zeppelin and Black Sabots and stuff, that did eventually lead them to reuniting. So if he had lived, it probably does happen, I think. I think that there probably would have been a Beatles 3. Because it's like Paul disappeared in the '80s. Wings ended and he wasn't really touring a lot.

It was some Michael Jackson stuff.

Yeah. Yes. I know. When it lost, then talk to Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson buys all the songs. Probably real frustrating. But so there was this period where I think that the Beatles would have been like, Well, Who are we now? Are we just guys who used to be in the Beatles? I think that it probably could have... I definitely don't think... Because the amount of animosity among the Beatles peaked in 1970 and decreased from that point. I mean, it's like Lenin wrote How Can You Sleep and all those songs. They were criticizing each other back and forth. But then it would be like George and Ringo would play on those songs. It's hard to tell how much those guys actually had animosity toward each other. That wasn't just like, I'm sick of being with these people, being associated with them and everything. It's all a business problem. I think they probably would have reunited, if I had to guess.

Well, they definitely still hung out a little bit because there's that famous SNL story about Leonard and McCartner just watching an SNL episode and almost just doing a cold walk-in. On your Bezos question, I think I have the answer. I mean, there's two possibilities, right? One is this could be the forefront of some new business venture he's been thinking about with the next version of the all-time state-of-the-art stadium. Maybe that's a piece of it anyway. If you're Jeff Bezos, nobody's rooting for you at this point. There's no Bezos fans. There's nobody who's like, fucking love Jeff Bezos. So you're at dinner and somebody's like, You know how I'm fucking love? I've been reading everything about it. I just think he's a genius. I would love to meet him and hang out with him, Jeff Bezos. In fact, those super billionaires have just moved into this different realm. You buy the Celtics. What happens when you buy a famous sports team? You become a celebrity in that town. If the team does well, you're beloved. You can even see what happened with Wick, the Celtics owner. He became the face of the Celtics. He vowed that they were going to win another title.

They won it. He was like, euphoric at the end. It is absolutely humanized Mark Cuban. He is involved in that. It is like Joe makeup. Who knew who Joe Laker was? The Warriors owner. You're going down the line. And then, conversely, if somebody's a terrible owner or a vialed owner, it actually makes things way worse for them, somebody like Daniel Snyder. So with Bezos, it was It's a little bit of a heat check where it's like, if I own the Celtics and I spend money and we do a great job and we pop in, and all of a sudden there's some subtle shift, you become more human. Yeah. Maybe that's the other piece.

And it's just this, you spend a huge chunk of your life acquiring this wealth. And I would guess you'd be like, well, I want to do something that is interesting to somebody who doesn't write for Fortune magazine or whatever. Certainly, I think if I was as wealthy as him, I probably would attempt to buy a sports franchise, simply because I don't know what else I would do. I'm not sure what else I would spend this money on. Part of what makes a rich guy a rich guy is that their main enjoyment is not spending money, but watching it accrue. And maybe I would be that way. I would just want to see it accrue. When I talk about the Stones, I think that's part of it. I think that they're not interested in spending their money, but amazed. It was like, look at this, how much money we have.

Look at what we made from playing.

We played these simple songs that are great. People love them so much and we didn't stop. Now, we have like, look at that number. But I had this thing about Bezos. I had not heard that at all. This is news to me, but it doesn't shock me.

I guess I'm.

Does he like sports?

Do we know anything about that? I don't know. I don't know that much. I'm actually going to probably read some Bezos stuff because it does seem like it's a possibility. It's interesting because I thought the minority owner was going to get it. Steve Pagluca, he put this group together. He already owns a big chunk of the team. But if somebody comes in and makes some crazy offer, who the hell knows? And that's what happens over and over again with these sports franchises. It's what happened with the Clippers. Everyone thought Rick Caruso was going to get it. The guy could build all the malls around there, the outdoor malls. And then Balmer is just like, Oh, I want it. And all of a sudden, he's paying $2 billion for it. But it's all connected with what they want from the expansion teams. And all this six billion dollar price, they want to get to that price and above. That's what Irv Grossback, the 90-year-old guy who owns the biggest stake of the Celtics who started this process, he wants the biggest price. So we'll see what a big crown jewel of the Celtics are. We're about to find out.

Yeah.

When you were 21, what did you classify as extreme wealth? How much money would you have had to have?

Oh, my God. We probably thought the same way. I was... So extreme wealth, like billionaire wealth?

I guess that's a hard way. Maybe we... But it was just strange. I do like a I remember at one point when I was 21, insisting that the most money anyone needed was $205,000 a year. Because my thinking at the time was $100,000 is the right amount. You double that now. You have twice as much money as you need. Then you have $5,000 to waste on a double neck guitar every year. I feel like he'd waste it. It's just odd. Now, It's like, now is that number not seem that massive. But it was strange how when you're a younger person, what you think is the maximum amount of money that you could spend your average.

Well, the numbers were way lower. Yeah, the numbers were way lower back then, too. I remember one of my friends right after college got a job and he was making 55,000 a year. We were like, oh, my God. He's going to be able to get his own apartment. It's going to be nice.

No, it was. My first job, I was making 17,000 dollars or 17,500. But a lot of my friends were still in college, right? So it seemed like I had... That's why we've often mentioned that episode of Friends from the first season with the Hoodie and the Blowfish concert.

Oh, it's a classic one.

That actually was a very smart piece of television because when you're that age, a small gap in wealth is a completely transformative thing in a way that's much greater than... The difference between you and Jeff Bezos is massive, right? And yet, how different do you think your day-to-day life is than his? It's probably not that different. It probably isn't.

I would say it's hugely different.

How? What is he eating? Like a $2 million breakfast? He's probably eating a breakfast pretty similar to yours. He's probably walking in the same way you do. He probably watches a lot of the same entertainment.

I don't think... He definitely doesn't walk. He's probably walking on a treadmill. He's probably walking on a fancy space-age treadmill with two bodyguards next to him.

There's actually probably a higher likelihood that you would be recognized walking than Jeff Bezos. You're a public figure. No. Yes.

Why would- People know what Jeff Jeff Bezos looks like?

Some people do, but I think more people would recognize someone who was on television and who was on a podcast several times a week. I know Jeff Bezos is bald. I don't know if... I got to say, I don't know if I would necessarily, if I saw him at a Starbucks, would know who he is. But there are tons of middling personalities on ESPN that I would immediately recognize just because you... So what I'm saying is that the difference between me making $17,500 a year and my friends having $4,000 total was probably, in some ways, almost as great as the difference between you and Jeff Bezos.

Well, what was the first number you made that you were like, I can't believe I'm making this much money to succeed in my wildest dreams.

I was working in Fargo, and after four years there, my salary went up to 21.5. And then I went to the Akron Beacon Journal who had a union. It was an amount that I had to start at, and I think it was $45,000 or $46,000. It was doubling my salary. I was able to buy a computer, which I had never before had in my house. It did seem like it was a life-efficient amount of money because my life, I guess, did literally change. But now, every year you live and every year you make money or whatever this thing changes in your mind.

When I got hired by ESPN, I remember it was 75k to rent a sports comp for them. I thought I just couldn't believe it, especially I was in my early 30s at that point, but I was like, Oh, my God. We're going to have money to go out to dinner on a Saturday. I just couldn't believe it worked out to the point that I got to that number. It was like, I did It took nine years. Now making $75,000 a year.

I was so fucking excited. It's such a complicated deal because, okay, you have kids, right? And you want them to not believe that money can buy happiness because we all know that it can't. The richest people we know are very times miserable. And yet at the same time, when anybody, you, me, anyone tells the story of their career, there's always these moments where they're like, I was so excited. My mind was blown. I was now making X amount of dollars. I now have the secure I remember one of the big things was that I was like, well, now if my car breaks down, I can fix it. Where before I was like, I don't know what I'll do if my car breaks down. I will just have you off again. The security, all these things. So to tell someone that money has no impact on your happiness is totally lying. It's a totally lie. But you also don't want someone to believe that that is a guarantee or the catalyst to it. It's a really... I don't know. It's like, I saw it with my son this summer because he did this internship and he got paid for it.

He brought home his first paycheck, and he was holding it like it was like a deer head. It's like, Dad, it's my paycheck. He made it. I'm going to spend this. He was all excited about it. I don't know if that feeling goes away for anybody. We'll see if Jeff Bezos will be like, What's his wife's name? Lauren? Lauren, I bought the Celtics. I'm now the Celtics owner. And he gets invigorated by that. I think it's in play. All right. We went long enough, I think. I think so. That was good. We hit almost everything. We didn't talk about the George Clooney, Brad Pitt interview. I wanted your thoughts on that, but whatever.

I didn't see that. I saw that it ran, but I haven't seen it yet.

Let's end on this. Here's my last question for you. Travis, Kelsey, marrying Taylor Swift. Will that be the biggest, most attention-filled wedding since Princess got married to Prince Charles?

Oh, yes, definitely, I think.

So that would be the biggest wedding in 44 years.

There may have been some royal weddings in there that mattered. I don't know. But it will be certainly in the United States, that will be a huge deal in a way that... It's like a- Could they pay-per-view it? It's something. I You never want to say, Oh, this is a transactional relationship. There's some element of transaction. There are two pre-existing famous people who are now in this relationship, and they seem to be preconscious over how that relationship is received and understood by people. So it would be pretty mind-blowing if they had a private wedding. That would really be crazy. I think that it would be, in some the smartest thing they could do. But I don't think that's what would happen.

Go private? Yeah. Is the Princess Di wedding the biggest wedding that you could remember since you've been alive?

Yes. That was the first time I think it ever dawned on me that it was like that people were that interested in other people getting married. It was for me, too.

Here's the question, though. What's number two? Who's the silver medalist?

Wasn't there some huge marriage on It's not a fucking soap opera? Like on Dates of Our Lives or something?

Oh, Luke and Laura?

Yeah. I feel like that one was talked about almost as much.

Can I throw out this candidate? Sean Penn and Madonna. I felt not obviously on the Princess Di or the Luke and Laura level. But the Sean Penn-Medonna wedding, I remember feeling that was a big deal because there was the helicopters and it opened up this whole paparazzi conversation. I knew they were together.

I don't remember anything about their wedding. A lot of times, it shows you the difference that we're got. Because to me, Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson's marriage was a big deal because I remember seeing them. That's a good one. Because I saw photographs of them. Somebody was wearing a space helmet there, and it was on the beach or whatever. But I was also interested in, still was interested in Motley Crue then or whatever. I wasn't as interested in or Madonna at that time. I was like, Well, I probably did get married. The way you always tell how big these things are, it's like you know about them, you don't care at all. You have no interest, and you still hear the information. That's And then this soap opera marriage I mentioned, I wasn't watching that show. I couldn't remember the names, but I do know people care. I do remember people being interested in that.

That was the apex mountain for soap operas. All right, Chuck Closter, anything to plug?

No, not right now. Nothing going on. Just me, I'm just writing away, working away.

Say hi to everybody and pour them for us. Good to see you. You bet. Thanks again to Chuck. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing. As always, don't forget, New Rewatchables is coming Wednesday night, not Monday night this week. As for this podcast, I'm definitely doing one Thursday, and I'm a game time decision for Tuesday. I will see you one of those two days. Enjoy the rest of the day..