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This is The Dan Levator Show with.

The Stu Guts podcast.

I mean this as no offense to Joy Taylor, whose brother was a hall of Fame Miami Dolphin, but I am in the presence right now of Miami radio royalty joy Taylor and Jorge Sedano. It's a pathetic kind of royalty.

It's the lowest rung of royalty. It is.

I mean, Stugats is the court jester in this kingdom. It's not a great royalty, but these two people in their adult lives have not really seen the Miami Dolphins be anything other than a regional sports team. Really. They have now become a national sports team. They play the Eagles in the big game of Sunday. Sunday night, they play the Eagles. And I'm confused by what it is that I'm seeing in these uniforms, because average yard per play the Dolphin offense, the difference between number one and number two in the league is larger than the difference between number two in the league and number 32 in the league. They are the most overwhelming offense through six games that we've ever seen in the NFL. And I want to ask the both of you you first, Sedano. Is it real? Because their victories are against opponents that are combined four and 22.

Right.

But they are so much more overwhelming than everyone else. They're not winning games 14 to nine like Buffalo does. Everything I keep seeing is suggesting to me if it's healthy, this offense is going to be good against everybody.

Yeah. I don't have any questions about the offense. I don't know if you guys do. My question is the defense and whether it's Fangio and the guys still getting used to the system or whatnot. I mean, they've been pretty bad, I think, on defense, certainly more than I expected. I expected some growing pains, but I didn't expect this. And the offense has carried them. So to me, it's health. It's Tua's health, really, because I don't trust anyone else to be able to perform the way he performs in that particular offense. Mike McDaniel saved Tua Tungavailoa's career because if Brian Flores would have still been the coach of this team, they would have run this New England More style of offense that they were running that didn't suit him. This get the ball out quick. West coast offense is exactly what he needed because he doesn't have the and I know people are going to get mad when I say this, but he doesn't have the physical traits of a Josh Allen or a Patrick Mahomes. But this is perfect for him. I'll give you a quick story. So on college football, on ESPN, I worked with a guy named Orlando Franklin who played for the Canes, played for the Broncos for seven years.

He was a like, I don't want to say intern, but he was thinking about should I go into coaching? So he was on the Niners staff. Okay. For a very brief amount of time. And he told me he worked with McDaniel very closely, and he has told me straight up, he is a freaking genius, like a mad scientist. He has never talked ball with a guy like he talked ball with this dude. So, yes, it is real. The schedule will get harder. They'll lose games. It's the NFL. But I'm more worried about the defense. I'm not worried about the offense if they're healthy.

Yeah, I have to echo all of that. My concern is the defense. And know, as you mentioned, my natural trauma.

I was going to say, you must mistrust.

Like the last massive mistrust.

I've actually gotten into it with Dolphins fans because I'm here. I just want to make sure that they're not playing in my face again for the millionth time. And I get pushback because obviously everyone wants to believe. It's more fun to believe. But, yeah, to me, this entire thing hinges on, is the defense going to get right? Because at the end of the day, a lot of what we're seeing in the NFL right now is the product of really, really great defenses. The Steelers are three and two because their defense is incredible. They're winning games off of their defense. The Browns, the jets, the Eagles go down the list, the Niners, these really, really great defenses are having unbelievable performances. The Cowboys won because of their defense. So you have to fix it. Like, that part has to get fixed if they're truly going to contend, in my opinion, even with that.

But I want to talk to you guys about the trauma of trust.

Well, can I tell you about that? It's my group chat, right? My Miami boys. The guys I went to Pace High School with in Opalaka. Right? The group chat. It's split. It's guys who are like, I don't know, man. And I'm one of I'm like, joy. I'm a skeptic. I'm like, I got to see it to believe it a little more. Right? I want to see the schedule. What is it going to look like in December? What is it going to look like in January? Because I've seen a lot of Dolphin seasons die in December and January. And then my boys old joke will be, don of my boys said, oh, maybe one day Sedana will call some NFL games. He can call dolphins games. And then my buddies are like, no, Kevin Harlan's a bigger fan of the Dolphins than Sedano is. They think I'm just like one of these guys who's just going to pee on their parade the entire time. But it's that I've seen too many failures. I saw them have a home game in 1992 against the Buffalo Bills and get blasted in that stadium. So I just have way too much PTSD when it comes to football fandom with that team.

Yeah, I feel the same on a very, very personal level. I cried tears that game. That they won against the Ravens to keep them from having a winless season. It was like winning the Super Bowl. I wept.

Wept to get to one in 15?

Yes.

Wept.

You and Wayne Heisenga.

Yes.

May he rest in peace.

Cleo Lemon. Great camarillo to cleo lemon. This is in our bones. But I'm excited for them, though, and I'm excited that nationally it is a conversation as well. And I think Tua has a lot to do with that and the turnaround that Mike McDaniel has performed with Tua. And I'm glad that happened because Tua has had one of the strangest entrances into the NFL. And I hate being hyperbolic like that I've ever seen. But it's really weird. This is a team that wanted you, that took you very high. You came from a massive school that were playing in national championships like you were highly touted in college. It's not like somebody snuck around and found you. He's a guy. It was a thing. And it was like he never had the opportunity to actually be the quarterback until Mike McDaniel got there, and not just because of the coach. Everything was set up against him. So it's really nice to see that he's in his groove now. And it's also very scary because all of this hinges on him.

I don't think, though, that it's prisoner of the moment for her to say. I mean, you guys know South Florida. In the history of our market, there have been very few athletes that are that kind of polarizing on getting people to take sides about how they feel about whether he's good or not. Just this week, Stephen A. Smith is still on ESPN saying that all he does is throw two yard passes to Tyreek Hill, as the highlights behind him are showing 50 yard passes to Tyreek Hill. The assessment of him has been confusing the people around him. Tuanon have been very vocal in protecting him against people thinking that he's not any good or that he's Brock Purdy, that he's just system related, that if I took him and put him in the Steelers offense that he would look like Kenny Pickett.

Look, no, he's in between, that he's not the physical stud that Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes may be. He doesn't have that kind of canon. Yeah, occasionally he'll throw a ball and Tyreek has to wait for it, but so what? Who cares? I've seen Lamar Jackson do that too. You know what mean? Like, I just think let him be him and the system. Like, I don't think that doesn't know everyone's crapping on Belichick right now. And I get it. But that worked because he had Brady, but Brady was a game manager to start like Brady was Brock Purdy to start his career. Tua is not that he's better than that starting point. I'm not going to say he's Brady or he's going to be Brady, but he had a better starting point to joy's point than Brock Purdy and Tom Brady did at the beginning of their career.

He had obviously first round, top five skill set that gets perpetually doubted. But do you believe oh, are you deon now? Are you willing to believe that the Dolphins are going into Philadelphia and you're willing to risk the idea of, I'm going to feel good, I'm going to feel hope. I'm not going to expect to be betrayed by this because I've got 20 years of Sedano experiences in my life and the lasting image of the Dolphins for a decade. Joy for me is your brother, who cares more than anybody about in that locker room, about winning in front of his locker with his bald head in his hands, because again, they've lost another game when we expected them to win.

I'm not afraid of them losing. Like George said, we're going to lose more games. I think that this weekend will be a great test for them because I think the Eagles are a very good team. I think they're amongst the top, if not the best, in the NFC. Still, even without this past loss and the way that Jalen played, I think they're a great team and they have a great defense. So I think this will be a good test for them. I expect them to win. I won't be heartbroken if they lose. But for me, this is all about the postseason. I believe this is a good enough team to get to the postseason. What can you do when it matters? And to me, that will be what will put them in the space that they've earned as a organization, as an offense, as a player in Tua and as a coach in Mike McDaniel. Because we've seen a lot of teams have nice little moments and make it to the postseason and have these things that are written into their story. But are you able to get to the postseason and actually make some noise?

But anybody can lose a game in the postseason. I think what's different about this Dolphin team than this entire century? I think I have this right, George. I think as we sit here, whether they lose tonight or not, we all know they're good. They might have the worst team, the worst defense in the division that is possible. But we know that if they get down 14 to nothing against Carolina, we know that they have the firepower because they're good, period. Like good hard stop if they're healthy. They're one of the best teams in the league.

No disrespect to those Ricky Williams teams that your brother was on, which obviously were good teams, but just didn't make it to the playoffs. Even in some cases, this is the best the offense has looked since Marino was in his prime. I guess the last year, Marino's prime was like 95.

So, like George, it's the best any offenses looked.

No six games agreed through six games but now this Dolphins, but now.

Any offense ever but now.

Agreed. I know that. But now the schedule gets tougher. To your point. Right. And I think that we're going to really see to Joy's point what they're made of. Philly coming off a loss to Stu, Gotz's jets and little Zackie Wilson over like that, to me, is what's going to prove to me if they win that game. Philly's coming off an embarrassing loss to the jets, then I think that to me, shows, hey, this team may be built for the postseason.

Yeah, I agree.

I think this will be a great test for them. And I do think getting to the postseason and winning some games and validating not just what we feel and what we're excited about, but what everyone else is excited about with that offense as well.

Will, I can't believe that Joy is suggesting that noises are going to be made in the playoffs, that this team is going to make some noise. I am so used to fart noises in the playoffs. I'm used to they're eleven and five against Baltimore and Chad Pennington is there and poor Chad. The noise is not going to be a good noise.

No, the noises were like fart noises back then, offense. It was like a pop gun.

Steve Martin was a prop comic.

Yes, he was.

I just did the fart noise joke. You can't do the fart noise joke after I've done the fart noise joke.

Yes.

I believe that there is hope in this room. I believe that you two aren't so scarred by this, that I believe that you are going into a Sunday night game believing that the football team that you have given your heart to, because you've both given your heart over to this team sports cynicism.

20 years, though, has made it cold. The heart has become cold. Frosty, I would call it, but it's.

Thawed a little bit thawing because you believe in the genius of a coach and you believe in a quarterback.

I'm willing to be lied to again. I'll fall on that again.

But you believe that it is the truth.

Yes.

You're not scared by the four and 20? I'm scared. Their opponents that they've beaten are four and 22. It's so bad.

But, Dan, let's say they go I looked at their schedule and I'm not going to do the that's a win. That's a loss like Mike and the mad dog. But I've kind of already done it. And I feel like the worst case scenario is like eleven and six. And I feel like 13 and four is like a real deal for them. That's a real possibility. And if they're 13 and four, they could be hosting games throughout the entire playoffs.

Look at that. Oh, my God, look at him. It's gleaming. His face is radiant.

They need to play here. I mean, not here.

We're not here would be bad.

Yes. No, they need to play at home because I don't trust them. And I know people say, well, they played really well in Buffalo with Skyler Thompson last year. I don't trust them in Buffalo or Kansas City in January. I don't. So it needs to be in Miami.

The scars run deep.

They do.

Don Levitard I don't think in 2021 I can get away with Michael Irvin radio show impression.

No, probably not.

Stogats. Papa.

Give. I think that's still okay. Give.

This is The Dan Levatar Show with The Stukats.

I am a bit horrified by my immediate surroundings where I have two Miami guys, Mike Ryan and Jorge Sedano, who have gone full California Sedano first with his Kale smoothies, but Mike Ryan now with a whole bunch of meetings at the Chateau Marmont with John Wick directors and because he's gone fully Hollywood. George, you can see perhaps right next to me, literally from head to toe, mike Ryan is a hurricane. He's got his Final Four green and orange hat on. He's got his green and orange sneakers, and he has demanded, even though I am allegedly the boss, he has bullied and demanded that we have a University of Miami football preview segment.

I'm just happy for the second big Sedano sit down here for this week.

Yes, it's a football Friday.

Yes, it's Football Friday and we are previewing games on a Friday.

Right. And by the way, Stu Gotts, he booked me, then canceled me. By the way, I got a text from Cynthia yesterday. Hey, we're not going to be able to do it. I'm like, does that mean I'm not doing no, no. You're still with Dan? Just Stu Gotts is too busy for.

No, that what happened was he was trying to execute the joke of doing.

The guests before you stealing all of.

Our guests and making it neutering before we got to Hollywood where he had the guests first. But bully Mike Ryan ended up nixing all of that torpedoing it because it's all gone to his head.

Can bully Mike Ryan. Get the canes. Some more wins this season.

I would love on Saturday I'm flying back for this. And so it's just going to add to the depression. I'm not really so much interested in previewing the Clemson game even though I.

Think they can win.

I hope so because I think they can win. He's been the coach now for a season and a half and I haven't seen an ACC home conference win yet, which I would love to see in Clemson being the opponent. But I'd like to talk about the season as a whole because I was there in Chapel Hill and I think like anything, the reaction to any result is a little bit disproportionate. And to me there is no shame in losing a Drake May on the road to a very good North Carolina team that's got several years into their program with Mac Brown. You can even spin it into maybe some levels of encouragement. Right. And just tip your hat, because I think to a degree, miami kind of wrecked what North Carolina was trying to do, and Drake May overcame and just owned them, especially Tez Walker destroyed. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

They're not going to see another Tez Walker, by the way, as good as Keon.

They're going to see maybe two of them in FSU.

Well, no. As good as Keon Coleman is, they're different players. Yeah. Wilson's pretty good, too, I think. Tez Walker more straight line, bigger.

He's great.

Stronger. Keon Coleman more after the catch, can take it and run 75 yards.

Mike Ryan's been afraid, though, before the season even started. He's been afraid of that secondary and the way they play defense, not good. Getting scorched by 60 and 70 yard touchdown.

Yeah, I think that's going to happen. You have to play man on in college football, we very clearly don't have the horses that Mario would like to get in the secondary. I think there's a big difference between this year and last year in that if you're going to beat us and your guy is better, we'll live with that. What we couldn't live with was what happened against Middle Tennessee State, where there's just defensive breakdown after defensive breakdown in the secondary. But what I was getting at is treetop view on this season. I was kind of reliving the loss to Georgia Tech as I was there in Chapel Hill, because in a vacuum, if you survived the game because they turned a win into a loss and several factors, including the head official that had to switch his Facebook avatar from a Georgia Tech player lighting up a Miami hurricane, which is I have all sorts of questions as to how that's allowed in the ACC. But, look, they lost the game because of it came down to one decision that didn't go their way. That being said, that result against North Carolina feels totally different because of what happened against Georgia Tech and now Miami's being laughed at.

When you look at their season as a whole, entering this season, I was hopeful for eight wins. I think they're kind of on track, but that's what makes Saturday so big.

Right. But here's the get. Miami's always going to get laughed at because the fan base is loud. The fan base desires to be loud. And for a second, they felt the hope of, oh, my God, maybe this is coming back, because even some of the national pundits were like, hey, this Miami team is better than you may think it is. But there are ways away still people don't realize, and they're going to say, oh, you're in the tank because you had Cafecito with him. Crystal ball. This thing is a complete teardown. Manny Diaz ran the complete polar opposite style of team than Mario Cristobal. Mario Cristobal wants to run the Nick Saban. We're going to bludgeon you on both sides of the ball type of team, and that's the type of franchise or program he wants to have. Manny Diaz wanted to run a more up, know, play fast kind of thing. And it's not that Miami can't switch between those things. That's why Shannon Dawson, I think, was a good hire. I also think Lance Guidry was a good hire because those two guys, they look at Miami like, whoa, this is a destination.

They're coming from smaller schools where they've also had to teach guys and develop guys, which has been a problem, I think, at Miami. But Miami was never more than a seven or eight win team this season, and anyone who thought more than that was really just fooling themselves. There's a lot of holes on this.

Damn six, though, at home. No, that's terrible conference indictment, and he.

Needs to fix that.

Sure.

And if he does, I think we can once again rest easy and look at everything and say, okay, this is an eight win team.

Right.

They lost a dumb one. You enter every football season, especially with, look, I love coach Christopher and I believe in the program, but he's known for losing the dumb one. In fact, most college football teams lose a dumb one, and when we expand the football playoffs, it's going to be fine to lose the occasional dumb one. I was really encouraged by Texas A m, and I think what's really hurt Miami and the general vibes around that victory is Texas A M lost their quarterback and then started losing some one score games that were pretty tough. But that was a big win.

Yes, agreed. And here's the thing about Christoval. People can say, oh, whatever you know, they're going to say about him.

You're in the tank because he's Cuban. You're in the tank.

We go way back.

You go way back.

Way back. Way back to when he was on Al golden staff for six weeks and got ripped to shreds in Miami. And I was on the radio back then defending him because I had the opinion that he and I eventually spoke about, and that's why we really connected then, because I was like, if Nick Saban comes calling the best coach in the sport, and you can learn from that guy, you leave in 2.7 seconds. You don't sit around for Al golden and worry about your career moving forward because you don't know what's going to happen. He needed to go to Alabama to do that. So we do go way back. But he won two pac twelve championships, and I know people looked at the pac twelve like, pac twelve, look at it now, okay? The pac twelve has been good for a while, and it's this notion that only the SEC was great. No, there's a lot of good teams around college football. There's been more parity over the last several years than people wanted to give it credit for. We're now just coming to that conclusion because now the SEC was getting beat early in the season by other conferences.

So we're seeing that now.

Mike, how have you felt? Because the analysis this week, if people have been listening to our show coast to coast from Miami to Hollywood, the analysis of our show back in Miami of, um, football has been brutally cruel, lazy and uninformed. You have heard what they've been saying back in Miami, just crushing everything Miami related and thought, what?

That's just my Miami persecution complex. I like that Miami is this lightning rod and reactions to what they do are disproportionate. And when they have a big win, it'll be disproportionate. For me, I think, although over the last few years and being more involved in the program, knowing what the plan is, knowing what the vision is, I'm more resigned to a plan. That doesn't mean in my heart of hearts, I want to go out there and beat the shit out of North Carolina. I would love to see this program be a year ahead of schedule, but I think I'm taking the right perspective on everything.

And like Jorge said, you always feel that. You always feel that's a blanket that's going to say on your tombstone took the right perspective on everything.

Yeah, well, I feel like I have to keep saying it because I guess my reputation precedes me when it comes to how excited I got when Mark Rick was here. And unfortunately he got sick. And I think for a season, you saw what it could be over here. I have to remind people that Miami were number two in the nation headed into the final week of the season with total control in their hands to be number one. They were nardoozi.

The damn narduzi.

And Kenny Pickett. Yes, that's a long Kenny pickett.

Chris Whittingham loves that narduzzi, wherever he's at these days.

Yeah, but I think people forget that Mario Chris ball and I'm happy that George mentioned it is that he is proven commodity. Although he is making in this season, he made a rookie head coach mistake, no question, that you were looking to avoid.

That's not a rookie head coach mistake. That's a mistake. Never mind. That's something no coach makes.

Kneeling is for cowboys. Actually, you need to come around.

Kevin Steele, who was the defensive coordinator last season, made that mistake, I believe. Was he the coach at TCU at one point? And I think he did that in a game and he didn't kneel and there was a fumble. They were on the 1 YD line and they ran it back 99 yards. I forget that the teams that I don't remember who he was coaching for and who he was playing against, but I remember reading that afterwards and then I looked it up and I'm like, oh my God. Yes, that did happen to a guy who was on Mario Chris.

It happened in the North Carolina against Miami in the Dallas Crawford game, by.

The way, that same night, okay, as I was flying back, watching this game from Charlotesville, Virginia, and I'm watching this unfold, and I asked for a stiffer drink after that happened. I'm watching USC and Lincoln Riley. I know it's late at night, people aren't noticing this, but they're down near the goal line and they could have just knelt it and kicked the field goal and gone away and won in regulation. He dropped back to throw it, almost intercepted, incomplete. They fumbled the ball. Caleb Williams after that, they tried to run it after all that had transpired, instead of just saying, let's just kick the field goal to win, and then they missed the field goal and had to win in double overtime. So what I'm saying is, Lincoln Riley, who is propped up as this genius coach, also made almost as big a bumbling mistake as anyone we've seen, including Mario Cristobal, but he ended up winning the game, so we don't rip him. And it was, know, two in the morning when it happened, right?

And if the call's right, we don't do any of these two weeks because I came around on Dan's original perspective, which was, this is one of the most embarrassing losses in program history, if.

Not the most in there.

I've been talking about it for two weeks like it's something bigger than what it is. I don't think the shape of this program is going to change based on that one isolated play.

This will be a footnote, I guarantee you, okay? I'm going to do the talk radio thing right now. I guarantee you, LeBatard, within Crystal Ball's first four years, they will make the playoff.

Okay?

But let me, with the 90 seconds that we have left here, just take the macro on the conference and ask both of you, yes, North Carolina is better than Clemson, correct? Yes. Clemson has now fallen in a way that suggests that Miami's climb to where Clemson was is shorter than it has been, just because Clemson is no longer what it was.

Here's Clemson's issues in a nutshell, and I wish I had more time to discuss this, they have suffered from the lack of good skill position players, particularly wide receivers, which they used to have a ton of back in the day. They have great defense, still the best defense maybe certainly in the conference, arguably in the country. And Dabo is getting criticized constantly by the Clemson fans about not going into the portal enough. So I think those are things that have created this slippage with Clemson.

But it's a big gap that they've closed, Mike, because Clemson was beat, seeing them 50 to nothing.

Well, we need to see it play out on Saturday, but a lot of that is Clemson sliding a little bit in the modern age of college football. But the improvements have been there, whether people want to admit it or. Not especially during a two game slide. It's not the popular opinion to do it, but Texas A and M at that time was a special win for the program. Now, what you're worried about against Clemson here as we wrap up is can Georgia Tech beat you a third consecutive time? Because if they lose this one, I'm really concerned.

More importantly, make sure you're watching me at 330 Eastern on ACC Network. Pitt and wake Forest. Don Lebotard.

Lou Holt number one.

Tripping my ball self. Play a little Ketchup gray.

You cannot give me enough. Fake Lou Holt saying any number.

You.

Can'T give me enough. Still got Drool on the microphone. I'm not sure what pacifier to avoid.

Eating my own face.

This is the Don Levitar show with the stugats.

I am legitimately embarrassed for metal. Arc intern Mike Schur. He is a big and legitimate Hollywood power broker. But now Mike Ryan has gotten into town and Mike Ryan is pushing him around and says, intern, we've got the end of the week here. We need a stat of the day. Where you been? So Mike sure, who's fairly busy, just resolved a strike, is back to work. Running a number of different shows. Has Scurried in here after taking his children to work through La.

Traffic children are working for you. That was collectively bargained.

It's like a weird detail of a strike is how child labor is legal in La.

Forgive me. After taking his children to school, he has rushed in before going to his real job, his other job with a stat of the day. Is it a good stat of the day? Are we going toward the best stat of the day? Because I heard you say that you and Pablo are now working on the best ever stat of the day, and I don't want Pablo stealing our good.

We have a plan, a long term plan to do a search for the greatest stat ever recorded, but it's going to take a while. Don't pressure me on that one. It's going to be a few months, but I have two stats of the day. One of them is just a fun it's Stat Classic, and one of them is in honor of you all being here. There's a Miami based stat of the day, so I can give you either one or both. It doesn't matter.

Okay. Either way, it's brought to you by Venmo. Your money, your move.

Start of the day. Start of the day it is. Start of the day. Start of the day. Start of the day. It is the start of the day.

I don't feel like start of the day.

Start of the day it is. Start of the day. Start of the day. Start of the day. It is the start of the day.

We have twelve buttons. We brought twelve buttons from Miami to Los Angeles.

Button is $10,000.

All right. Do you want Stat Classic or do you want Miami.

I want the stat classic.

All right, here's your stat classic. If Barry Bonds hadn't gotten a single hit in the year 2004, he would have had a 390 on base percentage, which would be top ten in the league.

Yeah, because he was on base more than half the time that season, right?

Yeah, like, 60% of the time. I'll give you Miami as a bonus. Here's Miami. Ready? Tua tongo violoa. You know him? He's the quarterback of the Dolphins. He has 9891 yards passing so far in his career. In only 42 games, he would be the Bears 8th highest career passer, and he'd be about 60 yards out of 7th place, and by the end of this year, he would be, in all likelihood, third all time as the Bears franchise leader.

We haven't seen a whole lot of quarterback evaluations that have been as weird as that one. Correct. Where I don't know if he's any good. I'm not sure if he's any good. Oh, my God. The statistics are all better than anyone who's ever thrown a football.

I would say, admittedly, I was sure he wasn't good. I was like, this is a mistake. This guy, he got so much hype because he came into that national championship game at halftime, and he won that national championship game for Alabama. But I was always like, there's no way. He's not big enough. His arm isn't strong enough. And then it just goes to show you, like, you put seven of the fastest guys in the league on the offense, and no, it turns out he's fine. He's very accurate, and he throws the ball to one of the five fastest guys in the league, and they run forever.

I want to talk to Mike and switch gears now because I'm shoehorning him into our Friday offering about something that I was reading. The trades and Jimmy Ivine.

Which trade?

Mike?

Trades.

Trades plural?

Yes.

All of them.

Okay?

All of them.

Don't try to put me in a box, Charlote.

I was blinded by your John Wick sweatshirt.

Oh, this thing? I picked it up on the set.

What are the ranks?

They're still shooting. It came out years ago.

I'm not at liberty to say what we're shooting. And DA. You know how it goes, babe.

Anyways, the Hollywood Reporter is one of the trades. What are the trades now?

Variety. Hollywood Reporter the Ankler.

Deadline.

Deadline.

Hollywood you were reading all of them?

All of them at the exact same time? I was listening to them on Audio Magazine, so I can get all of it while I was busy closing deals. But Jimmy Ivine said something that I think could he say to you personally, or did he?

Just over lunch on the set of.

John McFar, over lunch, Jimmy Ivine said something that I'd been kind of seeing play out in sports with the big pay per views that happened last weekend, and I'm curious to know your thoughts.

On it and the one that's coming up with Fury and Ganu.

Yeah, although in their own respective places, they're good. Let me get to the headline, which is Jimmy Ivine said that fame has replaced Good. And I think it was just applying to his industry, the music industry, where you're seeing a lot of TikTok stars. I know that's a buzzword, but it's a real thing move into music because they have these massive audiences, and the hard part is done by just gravitating their audiences there. And you see the Paul brothers do the biggest boxing pay per views of the year, celebrities, not actual boxers, even though they're skilled, and they do bring something to the table. I'm curious to know if that's started creeping into your world, because LeBron James has a production company and he gets into a lot of rooms and a lot of people want to make deals with LeBron James. But if you look at the stuff that they've produced, maybe that Via Meritocracy. It's not necessarily worth all the hype that comes with agreeing to a deal with LeBron James. And I'm curious.

That was real cushioned criticism of well.

You'Ve just flat out said he's done nothing good, but really put that on me. I'm trying not to close the door.

They haven't made exceptional things. They're getting all the Hollywood meetings because all the Hollywood executives mike, I've seen that this week, matt Barnes walks in here and everybody passes out. Like, these Hollywood executives love meeting the and so LeBron gets all of his content people into all of the big rooms.

Don't make it uncomfortable for me and MAV.

Well, I would say a couple things about this. Number one, fame and quality have always edged each other out in Hollywood, in the music industry, everywhere. It's not been the case that before the modern era, we only did good things. It was like fame has always been a replacement for good. The thing that worries me, though, in my corner of the show business world, is that the new sort of programming ethos is so algorithm reliant that there have been executives at major companies who, on the record, have said, we don't care if the stuff we make is good. We only care if people watch it. And that is very scary. The old adage was and this came from someone a million years ago, I think it was like Brandon Tardikov or someone's one of those legendary programmers said, first be good, then be first. And the idea was, if you just make high quality shows and theoretically, movies, the audience will naturally follow. Right. And first be good, then be first, has been replaced by, we don't care if it's good as long as people watch it. And that is not a recipe for long term happiness, either for people who make stuff or, frankly, people who watch it.

That's what worries me.

I think the people who watch it I think a lot of people don't trust their audience. I think a lot of execs think people who watch these things are dumber than they are. And I think you can get to a certain point with stuff that isn't good, and people are like, okay, I'll give it a try. And then it becomes like, well, fool me three times, fool me five times. And I think that people do care about good quality stuff. I know so many people who are like, I wish there were, like, a big, great comedy again. When was the last time there was, like, some stupid comedy that you were like, this is Barbie was very smart.

Yeah, the box office smash prior to Barbie for ten years had a dry spell. There wasn't this big pop culture event.

Isn't it now Righteous Gemstones, isn't it something that comes out as not a movie?

No one watches Righteous Gemstones, though, as good as it is, nobody watches it. And the problem is, I think it's a little bit of not trusting the audience, I think is like a sort of half right or something. Because what's happened is these companies have been taken over by Tech Bros. And Tech Bros. Are obsessed with efficiency. That's all that matters. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Hollywood is, by its nature, an inefficient business. You have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of things, and most of them don't work. It's just that for years, it was subsidized by the things that did. So you would lose a bunch of money making a bunch of pilots that didn't go anywhere, but it was R D to get to the one that was seinfeld or Friends or whatever, right? But now the idea is we're going to eliminate the waste and the inefficiencies and we are going to gather data on what people watch and we're going to reverse engineer shows that might not be amazing or innovative or interesting, but will kind of like, scratch the itch of the most number of people who just want to be entertained in a certain way.

So what happens is you're filing down the edges, you're filing down the rough, interesting outer regions of what is possible to be made. And that's where all the good stuff is. That's where the sopranos is. And Mad Men in Breaking Bad and whatever else. So you're losing out potentially on those Black Swan shows that are just like the work of a singular creative entity and genius who has a really weird idea that ends up becoming a thing that is legendary. So you're not getting that stuff. You're just getting this kind of soft middle of stuff that appeals widely in our tiny world.

Is that what just happened with the University of Florida documentary on Netflix where not a lot of documentaries are being bought in exchange for the access to Urban Meyer? They make an urban Meyer puff piece. It is roundly criticized by the media as not tackling any of the good stuff, but Netflix waves it around as, hey, people really watch this. They watched it anyway. They watched it even though the media is saying, this wasn't very good, very critical. It was diluted. We got numbers on this thing. Is that what you're talking about?

That's why real sports is going off the air, right? It's like the people who make these things are not interested in any way, shape or form in doing something that is scintillating or powerful or captivating. They're interested in making the thing that the most people watch and thus continue to pay $15 a month to subscribe to.

But if they're making all their decisions based on an algorithm, and if they're changing all the data points that go into the algorithm, then there's no real way to break the cycle.

Correct. That's very scary. Their feedback has led them to this point, and now they're generating stuff based on the feedback, and the feedback that they get from that stuff will be it's a self fulfilling prophecy they could just continue to make. At least. This is the fear, right? This is the fear is that we're past the point in time when really weird, interesting, rough around the edges, cool stuff could float around and have people notice it.

Are there no lessons to be taken by what happened at the box office this summer where Oppenheimer and Barbie original movies that weren't retreads became huge sensations? Or is the lesson that Hollywood takes is let's just buy up all the mattel properties.

The fear is that they take the wrong lessons from it. The fear is that they're like, oh, the formula is famous piece of toy IP plus Margot Robbie plus Ryan Gosling, right? Instead of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are singular talents and singular sorts of writers. Let's give them a bunch of clay and let them mold something that can turn into a huge success.

We need a really weird billionaire who really wants to see some weird stuff. Green light. A bunch of if you're a weird billionaire. DMs are open.

Now's your time.

DMs are open.

I can't believe Mike is the answer. Mike I honestly can't believe that. Mike sure gets no credit for being five months ahead of fearing the Miami Heat last year and knowing that the Miami Heat were going to take out his Celtics and he sucked all the.

Fun out of it.

He gets no credit either for knowing years ago, I would say he was having panic attacks because he feared what Netflix would do to the industry. And those panic attacks are being realized like it's actually happened. Hollywood is being devoured by all the things that Mike sure fears.

I'm way prouder of being right about the Heat, though.

The panic attacks were real and earned it's happened.

Stop saying that name.