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Welcome to The Big Suie, presented by DraftKings. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Levitard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys? I've done it. And now here's The marching man to nowhere, Fatface, and The Habitual Liar.

Welcome back to another edition of The College Football Show that now Lucy has a name.

And we can't tell you quite yet.

But we'll tell you next week. We have a tentative name. We're working on artwork. It is not the name that you heard teased last week. In fact, we finally agreed on the name, I think, to nip that bit in the bud. And-footgirls is dead. Move forward. Yeah. We never were the footgirls, and we never will be the footgirls. So we're going to try out a new name next week.

Absolutely. Not for footgirls. There's going to be no feat involved. We don't have to worry about that. We're good. It was Championship weekend.

It was Championship weekend. That was sad. It's a weird... The end of the college football season, everything happened so fast. There's conference champions, coaches are getting fired and hired, people are entering the portal. It's recruiting season again. Everything happened so fast at the last two weeks of college football season. So we have a lot to talk about. But where do you want to start today?

Where do I want to start? Why don't we start? Let's start with what? Sneaky best game in the weekend. You go to be able to Georgia too. Washington, Oregon. That was a fun one.

I watched that with Taylor. I'm a big fan actually. Taylor, we had a fun time.

Great time.

He's a great cook. Yeah, Lehman made a pork shoulder. So we had tacos. It was a nice time.

Until Oregon tried to come back, when it was like, Washington not big early, I was reading tweets about Indie and it was a new-coach. I was like, We are a Championship week and I care about Indiana football right now. This is a problem. It ended up being a great game. I felt pretty dumb in the process because I was so like, There's no way Oregon loses to Washington. Oregon is.

Far and away the favorite. Washington came out very strong in this game. Then Oregon, Middle Lake, Lucy, they got some mojo back around the half and in the third quarter, but it wasn't enough.

Bonics couldn't manifest it enough. The whole time they were just with him on the towel there, and Fowler was like, He's envisioning himself on this next drive. That's what.

He's doing. Then he never.

Got the ball. He never got the ball, and some poor camera guy had to sit there and squat and just film, Bonics, for 10 minutes straight.

It was a lot of Bonics. It was a lot of Bonics. I would have liked to see maybe like Washington's players were doing at that time, too. I don't know. I thought that Dylan Johnson, who's the running back for Washington, has had a really strong second half of the season, and he was probably the MVP of the game, but I think Michael Pennex ended up being the Pack-12 championship MVP, but they have done a really good job balancing that huge passing attack with a very solid ground game. He ended up with 28 carries for 152 yards and two touchdowns. And when you come out and when you score four touchdowns or four scores on your first five possessions, it's tough to overcome that, even with a high scoring offense like Oregon. So I thought that it was a really, really great game. I'm glad that the Pack-12 championship, they play that awkward Friday night game, and the teams don't get a full week to prepare. And it's at a neutral site. It's in Las Vegas, which all the games are at a neutral site now, basically. But I was glad that it got a good atmosphere and a good send-off for the Pac-12 conference because, as we know, probably the last time a Pac-12 championship game will ever be played.

I am embarrassed, but when I saw the picture of all the mascot together for the last time, I was like, I'm about to cry. I'm about to cry in this hotel room in Atlanta because of the mascot saying goodbye to each other.

They were all dancing and stuff.

They had their little moments. Oh, my God. I can't believe it's ending.

Except for that fucking tree. But the tree wasn't there.

I don't actually know the tree was there. It was there? Yeah, but it was like camos. It was like in the back. It didn't look like the tree. Definitely like, got on his weird Vegas clothes, leaves, ornamentments.

Well, I hate the tree, but I also don't like Liberty. Just kidding. That was a bad segue.

I thought it was great.

I love that one. Liberty won Conference USA in the championship game. They beat New Mexico State, 49-35, low key another game with an offensive explosion. That one started a little bit before the Pac-12 game, so I caught some of it. But now Liberty undefeated in their first season with Jamie Chadwell. They continue to just randomly have these incredible quarterbacks. Caden Salter finished the season with 2,750 passing yards, 1,064 rushing yards, 31 touchdowns, and five interceptions. That's a pretty solid stat line for them.

I don't want to get too far into the Florida State stuff just because everyone has been talking about it this week, and I know we've talked about it a lot on The Main Show, but I'm not a fan of this Liberty football team. It was very bothersome to me that the argument that applied to or didn't apply to FSU, applied to Liberty because they're playing Oregon and the Fiesible. I think SMU would have been a better choice out of the.

Group of five. They played a way.

Harder schedule. They played at Liberty didn't play one single team this year. Their strength of schedule, I believe, 132 or 133 out of 133. All right. I could win 12 games.

Jamie Chadwell, who came from coastal Carolina, it's his first season at Liberty. He is by all metrics, a very good head coach, and the players at Liberty are very good. My beef with Liberty is more so their administration, which I don't feel like I have to explain. I don't.

Generalize that as well.

They're playing now in the Fiestible against Oregon. I'm very interested to see what Liberty looks like against Oregon. I know that there's going to be so many opt-outs that it's not going to be quite the same Oregon team, but I have to imagine. I don't know what the line is on this game. I have to imagine it's like two or three touchdowns. But yeah, I agree with you. Smu played... They lost their two games against TCU in Oklahoma, which were their two power five teams that they played this season. But they beat Tulane in the championship game in the American, the last SMU American Conference game, because now they're joining the ACC. But they looked very impressive. And Tulane, I think was a... I can't remember, they were a favorite in the game. But now Tulane's head coach, Willy Fritz, we're skipping forward here to the American Conference Championship. But Willy Fritz is going to Houston, which is really sad for Tulane because he was very successful there. They won a New Year's sixth bowl game last year with him. They've been ranked the last two seasons pretty high. They lost their Conference Championship game right as the news was leaking that he had officially accepted the job, which stinks timing-wise.

But I'm with you. I thought that overall, I would have liked to see either of those teams in that New York Six game. I thought that when the committee was like, All Liberty did this season was win. I was like, That's interesting because you know who else won all their games this season?

Florida State.

Florida State did that. Weird, interesting, gasping, and weird.

The one thing we know for sure, Bonagse playing in the game, he's not saying goodbye to college until he absolutely has to until the very end.

So as.

Long as Bonnix playing, I have a lot of faith that Orgas is going to win this game and going to win pretty big. I think.

They're way more talented. Yeah, maybe we should do a little bowl preview next week. We should. I love bowl season. I mean, it's been sad, but bowl season is really the best time of year. It's the best.

It rules so hard, and I don't care. My thing with the the opt-outs, I was actually talking to Jeremy about this earlier in the week, even with the opt-outs, it's a really nice moment to see, hey, here's what you've got coming next year. Yeah, it's.

A good preseason game. I agree. I think it's more of an indication of like, you get to play a second spring game, but it's against another team. It's really nice. The only thing that I think I would change about bowl season, maybe your bowl win or loss shouldn't count towards that year's record. Maybe in the future, we will just not count that at all because it is really tough to feel the team, especially if you have a bunch of guys going into the portal or opting out for the NFL. You have 15 practices, right? And a lot of times, Oregon State is going to be playing with their third-string quarterback in their bowl game against Notre Dame. I don't know if that should count against a head coach. Their new head coach that just got promoted into that position, you don't want to have your coaching record start out on one when you're going into the next season. It just feels a little unfair for the coaches and the players, but also it's one game, so it doesn't really matter that much.

But yeah. How will the Big 12 be able to be like, We beat all these SCC teams and we're the best conference of football. We're not.

Counting the games. Or UCF. Exactly. Well, they're in the Big 12 now, so they're in the Big 12. Speaking of which, Texas beat the crap out of Oklahoma State.

Kind of figured that would happen. That game was just over. I can't talk today. There's construction going on. That's not the reason I can't talk. No, but it doesn't help.

But it doesn't help. There's a good drill, and sometimes... Sometimes you like the drill, it feels like the drill is going into your brain.

Yeah.

Because it just happens, and it's so loud, and it's so deep.

The legs are bright in here. Way too bright. And you know.

It's.

Better now. We watched the Big Ten Championship game this week. I just haven't been doing well for several.

Days now. But this game was over in the first quarter.

Yeah, this.

Game was over pretty.

Much right away. Texas is way more talented. Texas deserves their spot in the playoff. This felt pretty natural. There's also weird stuff with Oklahoma State killing a longhorn before. All the vibes were really off.

For this one. I didn't read that story, but I saw a headline, and I need to look into that because it.

Sounded horrible. I don't think it even had anything to do with the Big 12 Championship game. I think it was frat drama. Oh, God. But I don't know if that's accurate, but the vibes were off for this one. But it pretty much played out exactly how I expected.

It to. Yeah, Texas finished the season blowing out their last two opponents, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, 106 to 28. Do you feel like Texas had to put some style points on in this game? Or do you think they would have been in no matter what? If the game ended up being 49 to 48, do you think they still are in the playoff?

I think if Alabama had won, yes. So going in with the notion that we know Alabama is going to beat Georgia, then yes, I think they would have been in. But had Georgia beat Alabama and it had been a closer game, I wouldn't necessarily say that was the case. But part of the reason the committee said they faulted Florida State is because they played a close game against Louisville and they couldn't score, move the ball.

I thought it was nice that Jonathan Brooks got the final snap of the game. Classy by Sark. Classy. Let your injured running back in there. Do a little knee victory formation. I don't know if you caught any of the Mac Championship.

But.

It was a really good game. Chuck Martin wins his second Mac Championship. He's been at Miami of Ohio a long time happy for him. They've got, I think, the number one special teams in the country, but I don't know, Iowa might be coming for him because of Troy Taylor.

Yeah, we had a rough weekend against Michigan. Not punning-wise, we did so good. Don't worry.

About that.

Yeah, I didn't get a chance to catch a lot of these games. Scc Championship took up most of my time. But I'm glad it did awesome game in Atlanta.

It was awesome. What was it like being there? Because like we mentioned, a lot of these games are at neutral sites. And so the tailgating scene, I've tailgated at Mercedes-Benz a few times for SCC games, and it's weird. It feels like an NFL tailgate. Would you rather this be at Georgia?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the game's in Atlanta. So when you're looking fans-wise, obviously there was a big- Tons of discrepancy. There's a ton of Georgia fans there. Yeah, that game really sucked. I wish, not sucked like in the actual game. The game was great, but just like atmosphere-wise. Oh, my God.

Was that so disappointing? Game Day was like in a indoor convention center.

So it was forecasted to have heavy rain. It ended up not raining at all. So everything got moved inside to the convention center. So Game Day had 16 people there and we're like, Oh, this isn't maybe the best look. It was just not like... It didn't feel like college football. It didn't really feel like college football. I've always been a huge proponent, especially now that we're explaining to playoff that there needs to be a way to get more of these games at home. Whether if you're a higher seed, I know you get a vibe, but why not have a home game as well? It's great for the school. It's great for the sports. It's great for the fans, whatever. But yeah, the vibes were off. Didn't really matter, though. Game was great. It was super fun. So much fun. Oh, my God, was that game electric? By the third quarter, I was like, Alabama is going to win this game. There was not a doubt in my mind. The vibes were off. The vibes were off. I said, Okay, Alabama is going to win this game. Absolutely impressive. This might be nick Saban's most impressive season so far at Bamma, just considering the way they started.

You were tied in half against UCF, and you didn't have an offensive line. You didn't have a quarterback, and your quarterback could have very well ended the year as a Heisman finalist just with the way he finished the season off.

I was surprised he wasn't. I thought he was going to be one, too. I thought he was going to be one, too. Maybe because he got benched and in the third game, and the Heisman voters really favor people that don't get benched.

Heisman voters favor consistency throughout the season. I feel like someone like Millro, who started out and struggled a lot and then improved tremendously by the end of the season, you prefer to favor someone like Jane Daniels who started out the season really strong, or Bow Nicks, or Michael Pennox, start out the season really strong and just have a dominant season. I get that. I'm not a voter, so I don't really totally understand what the mindset is or what the criteria is there, but I'm with you. He has been playing so much better in Alabama just as a whole. They terrify me. I totally get Michigan players reacting to them being put in the playoff and being like, Ah! No! Because I think that would have been my reaction to if Notre Dame had somehow made the playoff this season. I was like, We got to play Alabama again? After we saw them suck at the beginning of the year? I wrote them off in week three. Well, I didn't because I never write off nick Saban. I did.

Don Libertard. All of us who were watching college football elevated everything the weekend was because we missed football in general so very much.

You didn't watch the ending of U-Tep Jacksonville State. It was awesome.

A dizzy.

Boom.

Stugatz. It's such a lane for you. Just everything in college football is awesome. Any single thing that happens, she gets deliriously happy about. Don't you miss viewing sports through that prism, though? I'm envious of Lucy.

I.

Wish that I could still be happy. This is the Don Lebertar Show with the Stugats. Then we.

Went from that to the Big Tech Championship.

It was.

A real what?

I hear that now we were in transition. Here's my take. Here's my take. Committee came out, and they were like, We decided not to let Florida State in, after watching them struggle to get a first down against struggle to score. The score for Michigan game is not necessarily the full picture. Michigan had a real tough time moving the ball against Iowa, which everyone does. They have an elite defense. Half of Michigan's points, more than half Michigan's points for Iowa being like, We don't really know what a football is. Here you go. It was one of those things where I was very impressed with... I was down by ten and a half. I'm so impressed with that. Yeah, it sucked. It always sucks. Iowa's offense is terrible. If we had the best offense in the country, I don't even need top 50. I don't even need top 75. I just need less than a hundred. I believe, Iowa could have won that game. I'm not saying that ironically, because Michigan, if you actually watch, their offense did not look good. They had their worst offensive performance of the year against Iowa.

They have struggled a lot the last three games, but they've also been playing some really tough defenses, including I was. Thank you. As much as we make fun of I was offense, which finished 127th in S&P Plus, which is Bill Connolly's metric for measuring- Better than I thought?

A lot better than I thought? I think that's a jump-up.

Yeah. I mean, they weren't 133. Which is pretty good. But yeah, Blake Corham is only averaging four yards or fewer per carry in six of the last seven games. That's according to ESPN. But you have to consider that they're playing Penn State, Ohio State, and now, Iowa, in three of those games. So maybe they're partially, it's like, okay, they might not see a defense that tough in the playoff, although now we know they will because Alvin has got a very good defense. But they're saving something up. They're not having to do that much on offense to win. So maybe we keep some tricks in the bag. I don't really know if that's a thing that offensive coordinators actually do, but it is something that everyone says.

Every year. Yeah, well, we were waiting for Bryan Farrins to do that for his final game. They're like, He'll be in his bag for this one. Then he was like, Absolutely not. That's the thing. After watching that Iowa game and knowing that, man, if Iowa had an offense, that just wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen, they really could have won that game, it made me lose pretty much all confidence in Michigan, especially saying now that they got that Alabama matchup. Because Alabama's defense is phenomenal. I won't say it's good as I was because who knows? Very good.

But Alabama's defense has been the one thing this season that I don't think people.

Have doubted. Yeah. No, it is said. Iowa doesn't have, Jayla Millrow. Iowa does not have the talent that Alabama has on the offensive side of the ball. I don't know what it is about this Michigan team. There's something in me that doesn't trust them. And maybe it's because they're dirty cheaters. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why you don't trust them.

But that was- I don't trust them either. Yeah. Iowa ended up 109 points short of averaging 25 points per game, which was the threshold if Bryan Perins hadn't already been let go by the.

Athletic director. Well, he wore Iowa stuff-to-many. He won the most game, finally.

He just needed pride. He just needed six more games.

He just needed... It was pretty impressive. Not scoring a single point when our point total at half was like half a point. That's awesome.

I love that people were like, Wow, can you... It was 0.5. I.

Was.

Like, Please. Yeah, have you watched? Because of Lucy, I've been watching so much Iowa all season. Nothing surprised me less.

We need to take a minute because the level of anger I felt in my hotel room, watching College Game Day, watching them all pick Iowa to win. Lee Courtauld have been like, That's my upset pick. Give me Iowa. Theo Van, Pat McAfee, all like, Yeah, Iowa. Get out of here. Oh, God. I was furious. And then everyone was like, They.

Can do it. They can do it. Have they not been listening to lose their truth? Literally. She's the number 24 big game boomer, college football personality.

I was ahead of the list of McAfee.

Well, that's why.

That's why. Yeah, I was furious. That game sucked, but I lost a lot of faith in Michigan because of that game, because Iowa had their way. Iowa had their way defensively. If we wouldn't have turned the ball over inside the 10-yard line 17 times, we probably could have kept it a little bit closer.

Yeah. Alabama has got the eighth ranked defense in college football, according to S&P and US Bill Connolly. You should check out his work on ESPN. Taylor, what is your Iowa stat? If you bet $100 on the Iowa Under and rolled it over every week since the Purdue game, you'd have $23,000 right now. God.

They haven't hired an offensive coordinator yet, but the name I keep seeing on Twitter, which is all Twitter rumors, is Paul Kriss from Wisconsin. We're keeping that undergoing. We're keeping the.

Under a lot.

That's awesome. Oh, man. Okay, ACC Championship Game. We're good. I think we've already talked enough about Florida State this week in general, but I will reiterate their defense looked very good. So good. Both offenses struggled a ton in this game. Nothing wrong with that. Both very good defenses, but both offenses were... Louisville finished in the zero-width percentile in EPA and in yards per play. That's tough. But they ended up having, I think, a really solid season. I wondered all year like, is Louisville really that good? I think they were very solid first year with Jeff Brown. They finished 10 and 3 playing for a Conference Championship game. That's a very good season for Louisville, and I think there's only positive forward steps you can take from here for the program.

Yeah, absolutely. They're hitting the transfer portal market already. I have a lot of faith in Jeff Brahm being at Louisville. It doesn't seem like that much up of a step, like job-wise from Purdue, but I think it actually is. I think you have more access to talent. I think you have more money.

I think, especially when it's like your Alma Mater, it unlocks things that maybe you aren't able to access when you're coming in from the outside.

Yeah, a hundred %.

That really hit a rhythm.

The Louisville team, any team that loses to pit, I have to sit and I have to think about for a little bit. I have to take some time to reflect. That's tough. But you wish Louisville was better because if Louisville was better than Florida State would have won.

Also- Probably, yeah.

One quick thing. I'm doing my best to pronounce Louisville. I'm doing- Louisville.

Louisville. You're doing a.

Good job. I'm doing my very best, okay? I'm trying. I sit in the mirror every day and just go, Loval, Loval, Loval.

We agree what happened to Florida State was unfair.

That sucks. That really sucks. But there's nothing you can do about it. I'm not going to say it was the right call. I'm not going to say it was the wrong call. It was the crappy call to move them out.

As my friend said, it was the wrong moral choice.

Yeah, it was when Florida State is on the right side of morals, you've messed up.

They've made Florida States so sympathetic to the people. No one I know is a Florida State fan, and yet I have felt myself just thinking like, Man, I feel bad for Bud Elliot today. He's having a tough one.

My dad's friend, Keith Daly, man. Get through it, Keith.

-pretty much, Keith. Oh, man. Well, there's been a lot of other stuff going on right now in college football. We've got the playoffs coming up. We've got bowl season starting next weekend, but also there's like 500 quarterbacks in the portal. There's like 1,000 other players in the portal. We've got Riley Leonard deciding where to go. Looks like he might go to Notre Dame, DJ O'Yungle-O'Leigh, Tyler Van Dyk, Will Howard, Dylan Gabriel, Cam Moore, Dante Moore. I think he already agreed to go to Michigan. I think that's confirmed. Kyle McCord, Ohio State's quarterback, is in the portal. Kind of didn't expect that one. Didn't see that one coming. I was.

Not prepared for that one. It seems like there's been a lot of exodus from Ohio State.

Yeah. I saw that.

I thought that you're used to... Ohio State guys don't, or big name Ohio State guys, don't tend to end up in the.

Portal ever. I saw that. You know how everyone was like, me, me, Ryan Dave when he's like, I want to know where Lou Holtz is right now. I saw someone make a meme of that where it's like, I want to know where my players are right now. I don't know, that one tickled me. It's funny. Because he can't find them because they're in the portal. But I don't know, I feel like you're Ohio State. You'll probably be fine. I know Mike Ryan always talks about how their collective has issues.

They're a five-star machine. They just rotate them all through. I'm not worried about it, but I think it's interesting because I don't.

Remember- Something to look at.

Watch the space. I don't remember ever seeing this many Ohio State guys into the portal. I could be wrong there, but it's also a time now where it feels like everyone's in the portal all the time. Most of them will end up staying where they are. That's just how it works.

There's also like, everyone puts their name in within the same three or four days or announcements are going to put their name in. So it feels like there's so much attrition. And then you look at how many players are actually in a roster and how many are coming in from the next recruiting cycle, you're like, okay, some of this is just the normal ebb and flow of making a roster with the correct number of people in it. And some position groups might be heavy and some might be light, so you have to adjust for that. I mean, it's all like the balance that head coaches have to find out. There's also news that Texas and Oklahoma agreed to extend their rivalry at the Cotton Bowl through 2036.

I'm not a huge neutral site location, girly. After this year, it's something I've learned, except for this game. At the Cotton Bowl, Texas to Oklahoma there is one of the coolest football venues, games you'll ever go to in your life. If you guys ever have the chance, if you're in Dallas, go to the State Fair, check out the Cotton and Ball. I also saw that Oregon State and Oregon Civil War is continuing. Thank God. And I believe the Apple Cup is as well. And sometimes I say, and I'm like, College football is dead and nothing's ever going to be the same again. That, oh, man, did I need to hear that? I'm so happy that rivalry is continuing. You see a lot with teams that have rivalries or rivals that aren't in the same conference, Florida, state, Georgia, Georgia Tech. They can continue it, Washington, Oregon, Cannes. I just wish Oklahoma would get off their little high horse, their little high boomer sooner and play Oklahoma State. Just do it. Just do it. You win most of the.

Time, anyways. There was also news that the NAAA has a new plan for the top D1 schools to pay athletes through a trust fund. I feel like we'll talk about that at a later date, because that is all very nebulous right now. But I think the good news is the NCAA is finally like, Okay, maybe we should actually be proactive in some of this. The bad news is I don't trust them to do anything.

Yeah, you lost me to NCAA.

Yeah, well, they normally don't even have that. Normally their plan is like, beg Congress to make bipartisan legislation, which doesn't really happen ever. Mani Diaz, former Miami head coach, accepted the... Or is the favorite to accept the Duke football head coaching job, Texas A&M, hired Kansas States. Very impressive offensive coordinator to go there. They're going to have Mike Alco as our head coach, who's a grade D coordinator, and Colin Klein, who is the offensive coordinator. Kind of scary because those are both good hires, in my opinion.

Something's going on with Kansas State right now. I'm in the Kansas State Twitter sphere for some reason, and things are falling apart. Things are falling apart there. That's a great hire. I was shocked he left. So Texas A&M has to have something cooking because Colin Klein was like, Mr. Football at Kansas State. He was a Heisman finalist. I'm shocked he left.

But, yeah. So we'll be back with our new name for our segment next week. Lucy, as always, this has been fun. Have fun at Army, Navy. Thank you.

I'm so excited. If you're going to be there, let me know where.

And what you're up to. Roll tight.

Don.

Levitard. Amino acid. Stugat. Amino acid. This is the DonTar Show with the Stugats. Amino Acid. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugats. I hope.

You enjoyed Lucy and my segment that will be named next week. Big name reveal coming up. We got you covered on all things college football, but now we are going to- No foot. No foot, Tony. No foot. No. Now we're going to send it over to Charlotte Naimin with oddball. They have an owed to Allen Iverson and a game of Who's lying? Stugats is always lying. But it has quotes from Rasheed, Wallace, Dwayne Wade, and Dirk Nowitzki.

All right, Charlotte Wilde. Last night at a DraftKings event for an exclusive set of clientele, you moderated, I guess, it wasn't even a panel, it was just one on one, you and Allen Iverson, right?

And Dom Chamberoni, who is the surgeon who makes custom sneakers for everyone like Drake, Justin Bieberber, he made those wing shoes. He also made Odell Beckham Jr. 'S cleats for the Super Bowl in 2021, which worked $200,000 because they had real diamonds on them. This guy, he's more of a... It's like sculptures more than shoes. And it was a partnership with Rebook, Allen Iverson, the surgeon, and to put out these shoes they call the day one based on the original, the question shoes that Allen Iverson had. I was talking to both of them about these shoes. And my favorite moment, first of all, Allen Iverson was lovely. He also told me I'm funny, so now he's officially my favorite player ever. That's all that I really took away from the event. But I asked, I said, You obviously have done so much for basketball, for the culture of basketball, for fans and players. And how have you seen that evolve in the past 10-15 years? And instead of answering the question... Well, I guess he did answer the question, but into the mic, he just went, Basketball is love. Basketball is life, basketball is family, and just kept listing the things that basketball is and felt and meant it so deeply.

He was almost emotional saying it. And it was just such a beautiful answer in a way that could have just sounded like platitudes, but also this guy believes it because it's who he is, and it's what he loves and it's what he cares about that there's no way to even answer that question. And so he just said what it is. And I thought that was really cool, actually.

Yeah, it is cool. When I think about Allen Iverson, everything that he was vilified for has become super mainstream. There's a point in time, Charlotte, and for the younger viewers, this might blow your mind, there's a point in time where the concept of having a visible tattoo was, Oh, heaven forbid, how will we sell to the sponsors. Now you go into big, multimillion dollar meetings, and the dude leading the meeting has a neck tattoo. Allen Iverson was villainized and vilified for a lot of these things. Now they're all so mainstream, we hardly bat at an eye at the concept of seeing people do these things, whatever. I always say there's a certain class of human being, I don't only say a class of human being, class of human being where I have great admiration because they have every right to be bitter and to hate everything. They're like, Oh, now it's cool, and it's the opposite. Allen Iverson was like public enemy number one. They made the dress code because of him. They made all of these things because of him. Fast forward, not only is all the things that he does that's mainstream now, but also all of these players who are like, Yeah, I grew up with Allen Iverson, who's my favorite player, and you have a picture of Krishnan Starrizingas with Korn Rose and a headband.

That's not an accident, ladies and gentlemen. That's Allen Iverson. He should be like, You guys are what you are because of me, and there's some BS. Instead, he's always gracious, he's always humble, he's always spreading a message of love and appreciation for the game. Most importantly, unlike many other retired players, he always gives props to the current crop of players. I remember my buddy, Kerry Chow, interviewed him, Shaq, and Yao at the Hall of Fame, and the question came up, How much would you average if you played in today's game? Iverson took a second and he was like, I don't know, maybe the same, maybe a little less. Shaq lost his mind. What are you talking about? Iverson. You'd be averaging 50. Iverson was like, Are you kidding? Everyone is like six, nine, and they move as quick as I do. I was like, this game is so hard now. That's something you never hear from retired players. I'm glad you told that story because it continues to reinforce this idea that this dude is super humble and appreciative to the game of basketball. I think we need to celebrate him every opportunity we get.

Totally. Beyond that, I mean, he said last night how grateful he was to the game. He said, I'm so grateful to everyone who helped me get here. I'm grateful to the people I played with, to my family, to my friends, to the League. The League now makes so much money off of what he pioneered. They lean in with the marketing. He really does not. -the elbow sleep. Yeah, exactly. Like, all of it. He was that, and he was punished for it publicly and privately. And then now to see that, he doesn't have that bitterness. He's just like, This is amazing. I love this. I love what everybody's doing. I think that shows a real sense of strength, too. He's always known who he is. He clearly still knows who he is. He's confident in that, in a way that it doesn't seem like he needs validation. And if you don't need validation in that way, you're probably going to be a happier person. I don't know. It was really cool, though, and he was lovely. I'll just say once again, he told me it was funny.

No, it's dope that they had that event. Shout out to DraftKings. Shout out to everybody who put that together. All right, coming up, Who's lying?

Okay, I mean, it's time for my favorite game, another rousing rendition of Who's lying? Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, we're going to start with Rasheed Wallace, who explained why he would take seven NBA titles over $300 million? Why are you laughing already?

Because Rasheed Wallace's famous quote is, Ball don't lie. Ball don't lie, but we'll see if sheed will.

What will he? Okay, so he said, I can't tell you everything that was said in this conversation with Chauncey Billips. I'm paraphrasing here. But short story, no, for me, I got to get that ring. The bread is going to come with the ring. The bread is going to come with the ring long term. Now, it might not amount to as much. So let's say, as you mentioned, for example, the $300 million contract, right? Okay, I might not be able to make 300 million in that seven, eight, nine years or however long that contract is, again, but I'm immortalized. Is he lying?

I'll never call Rasheed Wallace a liar. He's one of the most honest people that I know. But I will say Rasheed is speaking from a place of extreme privilege, right? Extreme privilege. Because Rasheed made over $150 million in his career. He's not talking about someone who's broke or someone who's on minimum, Hey, here's 300 million or here's a ring. He's talking as someone who's been pretty wealthy. But then the other part of it is he also won a ring. He's not talking as someone who's like, I've never won one of those things. I give up all of my money for just one ring. He's got both. There's a level of privilege there that I believe in when he says that, but he can say that because he knows like, Okay, I wouldn't trade in my ring for another 300 million because I'm already at 150 million in the bank.

Because I had 150?

Yeah, right. But she was a superstar or was a superstar when he played. The ring, the validation, and the money that comes with it applies to him in a way that doesn't really apply to everybody.

Dwayne Wade names Ray Allen and Rick Hamilton as the players he had to guard. I always go with guys like Ray Allen and Rip. They moved. I hated that. I hated guarding those dudes, especially Rip, because he had them nails, too.

So a couple of things here. He's telling a very specific truth. Okay. The hardest players that I had to guard, I didn't have to guard Shaq. I didn't have to guard LeBron. I think he's telling the truth in that regard. He did have to guard Kobe, though. But I understand what he's saying. I think when you have a player who catches the ball from a stationary position and then does stuff, it's hard. You got to be quick, you got to anticipate, you got to do all these things. But as a mental exercise, it's less strenuous than the guy who's moving around without the ball. The guy who's moving around without the ball, you have to worry about where he is at all times and worry about where the ball is, and worry about all these screens and things like that. It's a nonstop mental exercise along with the physical cardio of running. Rip Hamilton, Ray Allen, these are two of some of the best-conditioned players ever. They took pride in the fact that we're going to run miles today. We're doing miles of running around these screens. Also, Rip Hamilton, apparently grew his nails out extra long.

When we're stationary, waiting for the play to start waiting for it, he would grab your arm and dig his nails into your arm. Yes.

That's gross. That's painful and weird, but.

It's also- That's gross and crazy. Also gross. It's also like an infectious disease control violation.

That's what he meant by, okay, so literally he had nails.

Yeah, he's like, I got nails. I'd rather just guard Kobe. I'd rather just have Kobe- I agree.

In't take his life and stuff. I would rather guard one of the greatest players of all time than somebody who had long nails. That's gross. Okay, moving on. Was Dirk Nowitzki lying when he said he doubted Luca's ability to become a superstar? He went on to Lark Media's, all the small podcast, and he said, The end of my career wasn't pretty. We were struggling. There was some talk of tanking. We needed a little spark plug to change things. I didn't think it was going to be this kid. He's talking about Donchic. When he walked in the first time, he looked like a big boy. But I'm like, I'm not sure this is going to work. Is he quick enough? Is he athletic enough to go by guys like he is in Europe? There were plenty of doubts there from everybody on the team. Now, Dirk and Luca overlapped in one season, 2018 to 2019.

There's different scene. I don't know if he's going to be a superstar, and I don't think he's going to be good. What Dirk is espousing there was a common concern from people like, Oh, he's doing all this stuff in Europe, but can you get away with that here? Given that the athleticism is greater in the NBA. That's not the first time I ever heard someone say that. Obviously, now it sounds really foolish. The other thing that's funny is he talks about, yeah, guys try to get into them and get physical with them and practice, try to push them, see where his limits are. I always laugh that NBA players, when European players come over, they say, Oh, we're going to show them how physical it is here. The international game is a million times more physical than the NBA game. Once upon a time, it was the opposite. In the 90s and the 2000s, we were the physical league. There was a lot of holding and grabbing and shoving and chicken-winging and all these things. Over there, they played this fluid game. But over time, as we've legislated all of the shenanigans out of our game, they still do those things, not to the extent that we did in the 2000s, but a great deal more than here.

You can't physically intimidate these guys anymore. You could still be more explosive and faster and all those things. But the idea that I'm going to rough them up, like Dan ain't going to move them. Right? So is Durk lying? I'm going to say no, he's not lying. But I'm going to say he clearly was very poorly disinformed. I think there's a lot of- The kid was the MVP of the Euroleague at 18.

You know what today's episode of Who's Lying is, it's not Who's Lying, it's Who was just wrong. Yeah, they.

Were wrong. That's pretty much.

Everybody- They were just wrong. -and everyone was just wrong. And that's fine. I'm wrong all the time, everybody. All right, well- I've seen it. -i can't wait. Okay, goodbye.

That's it for us on All Ball. Oh, my voice.

Mom, mom, mom, mom.