Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Legendary Coach Bruce Pearl One-on-One: Hoops, NIL & Anti-Semitism in America
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome in his verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
- 0:03Speaker 1: with you, and we've got a fun show for you,
- 0:05Speaker 1: coming from Washington, d C. We're all in the same place, Center,
- 0:08Speaker 1: and we have a friend of the show, a friend
- 0:10Speaker 1: of yours, a guest to talk about two different things,
- 0:13Speaker 1: my favorite sports, your favorite politics, and we get to
- 0:16Speaker 1: talk about Israel.
- 0:17Speaker 2: All of that. That's like bonus.
- 0:19Speaker 3: Look, this is going to be a fun podcast. We
- 0:21Speaker 3: are joined today by the great legendary basketball coach Bruce Pearl,
- 0:26Speaker 3: the former coach of Auburn. He was a national champion,
- 0:31Speaker 3: won in Division two the national championship. With Auburn, he
- 0:34Speaker 3: went not once but twice to the final four, including
- 0:38Speaker 3: a year ago a heartbreaker where Florida barely eked out
- 0:44Speaker 3: a victory. I'm sorry to bring that up. No, that's
- 0:48Speaker 3: you know, to quote my favorite movie, The Princess Bride,
- 0:51Speaker 3: Why don't you give me a nice paper cut and
- 0:52Speaker 3: put lemon juice in it while you're at it. But then,
- 0:56Speaker 3: and then Florida went on to win a national championship,
- 0:58Speaker 3: beating Houston, which was paying for us as well. He
- 1:02Speaker 3: recently retired and is now ambassador for Auburn is now
- 1:07Speaker 3: doing sports broadcasting. He is also someone who cares passionately
- 1:11Speaker 3: about Israel, passionately about America, passionately about sports, passionately about life.
- 1:16Speaker 3: We're going to talk about all of them, Bruce.
- 1:19Speaker 2: Welcome God, Senator Cruz. That's a lot to a love
- 1:21Speaker 2: up to right there. That's a tremendous introduction. It's great
- 1:25Speaker 2: to be with you, guys. Appreciate what you're doing. Grateful.
- 1:28Speaker 1: I want you to meet Maria. In fifteen years, she'll
- 1:32Speaker 1: be a nurse bringing healthcare to her village. Right now,
- 1:36Speaker 1: she's eight and she just needs someone to believe she
- 1:39Speaker 1: can get there, someone to help her stay in school,
- 1:44Speaker 1: someone to tell her she's capable of extraordinary things. I
- 1:48Speaker 1: want you to meet James, a future engineer. He'll design
- 1:52Speaker 1: clean water systems for his community. Today, he's learning multiplication
- 1:58Speaker 1: and dreaming big. But it's more than dreams. He needs nutrition,
- 2:03Speaker 1: he needs mentorship and someone who won't give up on him.
- 2:07Speaker 1: Meet Sophia. She'll become the first in her family to
- 2:10Speaker 1: graduate university. She'll teach dozens of children who remind her
- 2:15Speaker 1: of herself. But right now, at age ten, she's at
- 2:18Speaker 1: a crossroads, and your support could be what tips the balance.
- 2:23Speaker 1: Through Compassion International, you're not helping a child survive poverty.
- 2:28Speaker 1: You're investing in who they'll become. The teacher, the leader,
- 2:32Speaker 1: the parents, who will change their family's story forever, impact
- 2:37Speaker 1: the world, one child at a time. Learn how at
- 2:41Speaker 1: Compassion dot Com. That's Compassion dot Com. I want to
- 2:46Speaker 1: just start with retirement because it doesn't sound like you're
- 2:48Speaker 1: retiring at all.
- 2:49Speaker 4: No, and this is what your retirement's going to look like.
- 2:51Speaker 4: I just want you to know this. There's no way
- 2:53Speaker 4: you're ever going to retire center. I'd probably be the
- 2:55Speaker 4: same way as.
- 2:55Speaker 3: What I believe. Retirement is a moral And by the way,
- 2:58Speaker 3: ask my father who's eighty six about to turn eighty seven,
- 3:01Speaker 3: and he will argue retirement is not a biblical concept.
- 3:04Speaker 3: My dad's a pastor, and he will lay out there's
- 3:06Speaker 3: no concept of retirement anywhere in the Older New Testament.
- 3:09Speaker 2: I like it.
- 3:10Speaker 3: We are here on this planet to make a difference.
- 3:14Speaker 3: And and and retirement is not something. He will never retire.
- 3:18Speaker 3: I will never retire. And Bruce is not retiring, He's
- 3:21Speaker 3: just moving to a different, different arena.
- 3:23Speaker 2: I'm not coaching and not coaching basketball My management style
- 3:27Speaker 2: is I put twenty pounds of potatoes in a ten
- 3:30Speaker 2: pound bag every single day, every day.
- 3:32Speaker 3: My Taylor says, I do the same thing.
- 3:36Speaker 2: Me too. That's a part of my new Year's resolution.
- 3:38Speaker 3: His too.
- 3:39Speaker 2: I want to try to lose half one hundred.
- 3:41Speaker 3: So actually we have a new Year's resolution. We had
- 3:43Speaker 3: to show this at my first resolution.
- 3:45Speaker 2: How you doing? Are you on it? Are you working?
- 3:47Speaker 3: I am on it. It is to drop thirty pounds
- 3:49Speaker 3: this year, and it's I used to be skinny as
- 3:52Speaker 3: a rail. I was a buck thirty five coming out
- 3:54Speaker 3: of college.
- 3:54Speaker 2: I was two fifty two when I started. So I
- 3:57Speaker 2: want to get down about two twenty two. That's my number.
- 3:59Speaker 3: So I'm too thirty six. My objective is to be
- 4:01Speaker 3: at two o six January next year.
- 4:03Speaker 2: All right, good, we can do it.
- 4:05Speaker 3: And you've already dropped much.
- 4:07Speaker 2: So I started.
- 4:08Speaker 3: It's embarrassing.
- 4:09Speaker 1: It's embarrassing. I started a big dude. I'm a big dude,
- 4:11Speaker 1: so I was.
- 4:12Speaker 4: I've always been a big days like you played football,
- 4:14Speaker 4: now I played tennis.
- 4:15Speaker 2: I was.
- 4:15Speaker 4: I went to the doctor August twenty If you.
- 4:17Speaker 3: Can imagine George Foreman with a racket, Yes, I went
- 4:20Speaker 3: to that doctor.
- 4:22Speaker 1: August of two and a half years ago, and I
- 4:24Speaker 1: went and he scared the living sun out of me.
- 4:26Speaker 1: And I was two ninety eight and now I'm two
- 4:28Speaker 1: I think at two o nine. Wow, so I've lost
- 4:31Speaker 1: about ninety good. Yeah, and I felt better. I sleep
- 4:33Speaker 1: better that that's three kids, that's what. Yeah, Mike, I
- 4:36Speaker 1: don't want to have a hard attacker stroke.
- 4:37Speaker 3: All right, So let's start. We're gonna talk sports. We're
- 4:39Speaker 3: also going to talk in IL and college sports, but
- 4:41Speaker 3: let's just start a little bit of history. So I
- 4:44Speaker 3: was reading reading your bio and I discovered a fact
- 4:48Speaker 3: I didn't know, which is I believe you are the
- 4:52Speaker 3: only Division one basketball coach who didn't play basketball and
- 4:56Speaker 3: even like JV basketball. Yeah, like, like, how the heck
- 5:01Speaker 3: did that happen? That's that's pretty wild?
- 5:02Speaker 2: Actually it is wild. All right. So I'm fifteen years
- 5:05Speaker 2: old and I'm the best athlete in town. I'm the
- 5:08Speaker 2: first kid picked for everything. I'm bat fourth, I'm pitching,
- 5:11Speaker 2: I'm playing quarterback. I was doing it all and I
- 5:15Speaker 2: was so can I say that? Yeah, I just wasn't
- 5:19Speaker 2: a great kid, I swear, all right.
- 5:20Speaker 3: One of our very first podcasts, we ever did down
- 5:23Speaker 3: in a basement. This is years ago during the first
- 5:25Speaker 3: Trump impeachment trial. The very first guess on this podcast
- 5:29Speaker 3: was Lindsey Graham. Oh gosh, and Lindsey, who's a dear friend.
- 5:33Speaker 3: Lindsay goes, what in the hell is a podcast? And
- 5:38Speaker 3: he and he also at one point he said, that's bullshit?
- 5:43Speaker 3: Can I say bulls say that? It's like, well, you
- 5:45Speaker 3: just said heavy.
- 5:47Speaker 2: Lindsey Graham and John Kennedy and Bruce Pearl about that.
- 5:50Speaker 2: That's crazy. It's a trifacta. So. So, I just I
- 5:54Speaker 2: was defined by my ability to dominate you in everything.
- 5:58Speaker 2: And I had a career ending knee injury. And as
- 6:02Speaker 2: a high.
- 6:03Speaker 5: School I was a freshman, wow, and and I was
- 6:08Speaker 5: blocking and it was a blindside hit whatever it just
- 6:11Speaker 5: and I didn't have a very successful got.
- 6:13Speaker 2: My knee, helmet on my knee, and I didn't have
- 6:16Speaker 2: a great recover whatever it was. And I honestly believed
- 6:19Speaker 2: that it was God's plan to say, no, this is
- 6:22Speaker 2: not the person that I had you to be, yea
- 6:25Speaker 2: and so, but there was a competitor in me. So
- 6:29Speaker 2: what did I do. I went up for the school play.
- 6:32Speaker 2: I became the class president, and I learned that the
- 6:35Speaker 2: band kids were the coolest kids on campus, the same
- 6:38Speaker 2: kids that I maybe used to make fun of. Yeah,
- 6:39Speaker 2: because they were as fast as I was.
- 6:41Speaker 3: I'm not sure i'd say the coolest kids.
- 6:43Speaker 2: Cool band guys were fun all right?
- 6:45Speaker 3: All right? Now you went out for the play? Yeah,
- 6:47Speaker 3: and I was president of the drama club.
- 6:49Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, how did I not use this against
- 6:51Speaker 1: you for the last So can you say that again
- 6:54Speaker 1: on the show? You were the president of what the
- 6:56Speaker 1: drama club? Okay, the drama I'm glad to have a
- 6:59Speaker 1: witness for this. This is gonna be my favorite podcast we've.
- 7:01Speaker 3: Ever so and look, then played Division one sports at
- 7:05Speaker 3: all Miss. Now, to be fair, it was.
- 7:08Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, you can say, yeah, it's the most successful
- 7:10Speaker 1: I've ever been at ole Miss.
- 7:11Speaker 3: I'm just saying, but okay, So, so you you went
- 7:16Speaker 3: out for the play. Are you a singer? You an actor?
- 7:19Speaker 2: I would sing, I could before I got a coaching
- 7:21Speaker 2: and lost my voice.
- 7:21Speaker 3: All right, what what role? What would you be saying?
- 7:23Speaker 2: We did something in Oklahoma? I actually did something in Oklahoma.
- 7:27Speaker 2: So we sang there and then we did drama competition.
- 7:30Speaker 2: We did we went and did but it just introduced
- 7:33Speaker 2: me to different world.
- 7:34Speaker 3: A different world by the different of my high school
- 7:37Speaker 3: acting career is I cannot carry a tune to save
- 7:41Speaker 3: my life. I wish I have envy over those who can,
- 7:46Speaker 3: who are musical, and and a nightmare story just to
- 7:48Speaker 3: do a digression. So senior year, we're doing Oliver and
- 7:53Speaker 3: and the head.
- 7:53Speaker 2: Of least sir, I want more.
- 7:55Speaker 3: Right, that's it?
- 7:57Speaker 1: And and the all I'm thinking right now is did
- 7:59Speaker 1: I leave? I read the cliff notes of this, but
- 8:01Speaker 1: keep going.
- 8:02Speaker 3: So so the hand of the I'm at Second Baptist
- 8:05Speaker 3: High School in Houston. The head of the music program
- 8:07Speaker 3: there said, Okay, we really want you to play Fagan,
- 8:10Speaker 3: which is the lead. It's a great role, you know,
- 8:12Speaker 3: he's running all the you and and and he said,
- 8:17Speaker 3: we want you to play Fagan if you can sing it.
- 8:20Speaker 3: So I actually hired a voice coach for the entire
- 8:22Speaker 3: summer to practice, and I had worked on it. The
- 8:25Speaker 3: good thing is Fagan's songs are more spoken than than songs,
- 8:30Speaker 3: so you can kind of talk them through. So I'd
- 8:33Speaker 3: worked on a on a Fagan song and I could
- 8:34Speaker 3: do it, and and the tryouts I thought I did
- 8:36Speaker 3: pretty well, and afterwards he said, ted, stick around, and
- 8:39Speaker 3: he sat at the piano and he plays dun't dunt,
- 8:42Speaker 3: dun dun he said, sing. Then I go and he
- 8:45Speaker 3: does it like four times. I miss every note. He goes, yeah, okay.
- 8:49Speaker 3: So I cast as Bill Sykes, which is the second
- 8:51Speaker 3: male lead, and it's the non singing lead. In high school,
- 8:54Speaker 3: you create a non singing role for people like me.
- 8:55Speaker 3: Now it's the villain. I get to beat people up
- 8:57Speaker 3: on total jerk. But but it's still well, it still
- 9:00Speaker 3: pains me. I should have been Fagan. I could have
- 9:03Speaker 3: been a captender. But anyway, so you you're you're.
- 9:08Speaker 2: Are you still a villain or no?
- 9:10Speaker 1: You know a little bit Yeah, that says yes, yeah,
- 9:16Speaker 1: oh yeah, Wikipedia you should be yeah yeah.
- 9:18Speaker 3: Look look doctor evil on me.
- 9:21Speaker 2: I just want to be on your side, don't you.
- 9:23Speaker 2: I don't want to be on your side.
- 9:24Speaker 3: All right, So.
- 9:28Speaker 2: You go from that.
- 9:29Speaker 3: By the way, I recently talking about the villain. I
- 9:33Speaker 3: recently my fifteen year old daughter Catherine, her friend was asked,
- 9:36Speaker 3: we're asking for a good movie to watch, and so
- 9:38Speaker 3: I recommended Coming to America, which had never seen great movie. Yes,
- 9:41Speaker 3: And it starts off early on with James Earl Jones,
- 9:44Speaker 3: and so you know, I was asking them like, what
- 9:48Speaker 3: famous voice did James Earl Jones play? And and it
- 9:51Speaker 3: tells you something that that three fifteen year old has
- 9:55Speaker 3: had no idea. And I start who was, of course
- 9:58Speaker 3: voted the number one villain of the past century in movies.
- 10:01Speaker 3: And none of the fifteen year olds recognized jars Vader's voice.
- 10:04Speaker 2: All right, wow, so we didn't get So here's here's
- 10:08Speaker 2: what happens to me. So how did I? How do
- 10:09Speaker 2: I get into coaching? What happens? So I decided to
- 10:13Speaker 2: go to Boston College. I'm again an athlete. I walked
- 10:17Speaker 2: on the basketball team, got cut because I was still
- 10:20Speaker 2: not a good enough athlete to be able to make it.
- 10:22Speaker 2: But the head coach, doctor Tom Davis, kind of saw
- 10:24Speaker 2: something in me and my intensity and whatever. I became
- 10:26Speaker 2: a manager, and my advice to people is let.
- 10:29Speaker 3: Me quick, Yeah why hoops? I guess not football, because
- 10:32Speaker 3: you're yeah football.
- 10:34Speaker 2: I played baseball. I was a really good baseball player,
- 10:36Speaker 2: had a varsity baseball career at Sharon High School. But
- 10:39Speaker 2: I couldn't play basketball. Couldn't play I was actually was
- 10:42Speaker 2: about that point I had to be a first basement
- 10:44Speaker 2: because I was limited in my movement. We won the
- 10:46Speaker 2: league championship and had good I had a good run.
- 10:49Speaker 2: But the point was I couldn't play basketball Boston College,
- 10:52Speaker 2: but I worked for the program. I just made myself important.
- 10:57Speaker 2: I wasn't planning on being a coach. I just kind
- 10:59Speaker 2: of was having funny. I was selling tickets, I was
- 11:03Speaker 2: I was a practice player, and I was referee, and
- 11:04Speaker 2: I was helping him run his camp. I was doing
- 11:06Speaker 2: all these different things just for poops and giggles. Yeah,
- 11:08Speaker 2: I was going to leave college and going to go
- 11:10Speaker 2: to Israel and join the army for a couple of
- 11:12Speaker 2: years and serve a little bit. That's what I kind
- 11:14Speaker 2: of was gonna do. He got the Stanford job my
- 11:17Speaker 2: senior year, and all of a sudden, he calls me
- 11:19Speaker 2: one day. He calls me over to his house. The
- 11:22Speaker 2: only time he ever called me to his house was
- 11:23Speaker 2: when the Dinas students called me streaking across campus and
- 11:26Speaker 2: I throw me out of school.
- 11:29Speaker 3: And I was always you on campus. So I was
- 11:31Speaker 3: circumcised a terrible confession. You were a steaker to you
- 11:36Speaker 3: and I share that in common.
- 11:37Speaker 2: Well, you know what that was back in the day.
- 11:39Speaker 2: That was popular back then.
- 11:40Speaker 3: So this is a terrible admission. So look, as you know,
- 11:43Speaker 3: I went to Princeton, that's not the terrible admission.
- 11:45Speaker 2: All of the sudden would say that, brag about that.
- 11:49Speaker 3: So for a hundred years, Princeton had a tradition that
- 11:52Speaker 3: was called the neod Olympics, and it occurred on the
- 11:56Speaker 3: night of the first snowfall of the year that sophomores.
- 12:00Speaker 2: Were a little strip little chili, little chili.
- 12:02Speaker 3: Through you know as outside but but and you would
- 12:10Speaker 3: run through the campus and you do jumping Jackson events.
- 12:13Speaker 3: And it was one hundred year old rad.
- 12:16Speaker 2: So that it gave it the pure pressures.
- 12:18Speaker 3: What you're telling I am confident there there's no photographic evidence.
- 12:22Speaker 3: But but I did keep on my boots and a scarf.
- 12:24Speaker 3: That's good, you know fashion, And it was anyway.
- 12:29Speaker 2: So bottom line, no matter what you're doing, make you
- 12:31Speaker 2: solf valuable. So when Tom Davis left Boston College, you
- 12:35Speaker 2: go to Stanford. Yeah, he asked this twenty one year
- 12:37Speaker 2: old manager to come with him and be an assistant coach.
- 12:39Speaker 2: Why because when it came to well who's doing this
- 12:42Speaker 2: or who's.
- 12:42Speaker 4: Doing that, you were doing it.
- 12:44Speaker 2: I was doing it. And I wasn't doing it to
- 12:46Speaker 2: get a job. I wasn't doing for the reward. So
- 12:48Speaker 2: no matter no matter where you are, people want to
- 12:50Speaker 2: know how to be successful. What's do the next thing?
- 12:52Speaker 2: Don't worry about what's next. Be unbelievable where you are
- 12:56Speaker 2: and either God's going to have a plan for you
- 12:57Speaker 2: or just gonna put yourself in a position to be successful.
- 12:59Speaker 3: That's great life.
- 13:00Speaker 2: And that's what I did. When did you know you
- 13:01Speaker 2: want to coach? Like? When did that transition happen? So
- 13:04Speaker 2: my whole, my whole deal was always I made people
- 13:07Speaker 2: better around me. I recognized that there were four other
- 13:09Speaker 2: guys out there in the court and they needed to
- 13:10Speaker 2: do their job. And I love to win. I mean
- 13:12Speaker 2: I love to win at all. Come yes, right, And
- 13:14Speaker 2: so my ability to encourage them, challenge them, know when
- 13:20Speaker 2: to uh, you know, give us some support, but also
- 13:25Speaker 2: hold them accountable. Whatever it was, I was always a
- 13:27Speaker 2: coach on the floor.
- 13:29Speaker 3: Now how do you get started? Look it's one thing
- 13:30Speaker 3: when you're bruce people, but look, you're a twenty one,
- 13:34Speaker 3: twenty two year old assistant coach at Stanford. You're playing
- 13:36Speaker 3: with players who can shoot lights out and they were old.
- 13:40Speaker 2: Some of the kids on the team were older than
- 13:42Speaker 2: I was when I was an assistant coach.
- 13:43Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know they can fly through the air
- 13:45Speaker 3: and they can do things right that you How did
- 13:47Speaker 3: you get the credibility when you're just buying for them
- 13:50Speaker 3: to listen and say, Okay, I want to listen to
- 13:52Speaker 3: what this guy has said.
- 13:53Speaker 2: Sometimes don't talk. Your presence is your gift. I'd be
- 13:57Speaker 2: the first one in the gym I agree bound for them.
- 13:59Speaker 2: You'd think that while I was rebounding for them, i'd
- 14:01Speaker 2: say something about their shot. How about just be there
- 14:03Speaker 2: for now or not say a word and then get
- 14:05Speaker 2: them to go to the next day and the next day.
- 14:07Speaker 2: I don't care. I don't have to teach them anything.
- 14:09Speaker 2: I need to get them in the gym. I need
- 14:11Speaker 2: to be in there. I need to be in there.
- 14:12Speaker 2: I need to be before they get there. I need
- 14:14Speaker 2: to stay after. And then you just choose your words wisely,
- 14:17Speaker 2: I would be a parrot for my head coach. I
- 14:19Speaker 2: listen to what I say. I listen to what he said,
- 14:21Speaker 2: and when I got comfortable enough, I said the same things.
- 14:23Speaker 2: So all I was doing was reinforcing his messages. And
- 14:26Speaker 2: so when I left doctor Tom Davis. After some fourteen
- 14:30Speaker 2: years as his assistant. He gave me two pieces of advice.
- 14:32Speaker 2: He says, Number one, be yourself. That way you could
- 14:35Speaker 2: be authentic. He was a doctor, he was quieter than
- 14:38Speaker 2: I was. I'm passionate, I'm emotionally. He said, Look that way,
- 14:40Speaker 2: you don't have to fake it. But the second thing
- 14:42Speaker 2: is do what we do. You know our system, teach
- 14:46Speaker 2: what like Sometimes coaches they want a big borrow and
- 14:49Speaker 2: steel from Hey, well when I get to be a coach,
- 14:50Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Look, I
- 14:52Speaker 2: know what I know. You know what you know? Okay,
- 14:55Speaker 2: teach that. It's not so much what you do, but
- 14:57Speaker 2: it's how you do it, how you can teach it.
- 14:58Speaker 3: So what was the system?
- 15:00Speaker 2: What are the up tempo fast break? Gary Williams, who
- 15:03Speaker 2: was at Maryland, was also under doctor Tom Davis. Gary
- 15:06Speaker 2: wanted Division one national championship. We were very up tempo.
- 15:09Speaker 2: We trusted our players. Sometimes you sometimes get confused and
- 15:13Speaker 2: thinking great coaches or coaches that are well, those kids
- 15:15Speaker 2: are really patient, they hold the ball. That's because they
- 15:17Speaker 2: don't trust their players. To get the most out of
- 15:20Speaker 2: your players, you've got to empower them a little bit.
- 15:22Speaker 2: My job was to see something and then they didn't
- 15:24Speaker 2: see them themselves. Put them in positions to be successful.
- 15:27Speaker 2: I didn't need five great ball hindles, I needed one.
- 15:30Speaker 2: I needed five great shooters. All that helped that they
- 15:31Speaker 2: could shoot. I just needed a couple. I need a
- 15:33Speaker 2: guy that could readbout. I loved roles. I love dimensions.
- 15:36Speaker 2: So one of the things I tell people is have
- 15:38Speaker 2: a dimension in an organization. Yes, sometimes you need a
- 15:41Speaker 2: glue guy something. It's good at everything, but you need
- 15:43Speaker 2: I'd rather so it's great at this, but can't do that.
- 15:45Speaker 2: I'll hide that. I'll hide what they can't do. But
- 15:47Speaker 2: give me this. And that's what I think maybe one
- 15:50Speaker 2: of the things that may be a good.
- 15:51Speaker 3: Cos Right, So, over your career, how many games you won.
- 15:54Speaker 2: I don't. I think over seven hundred.
- 15:56Speaker 3: But I'm not even I know it's a big, big number,
- 15:58Speaker 3: but it's.
- 15:58Speaker 2: It's a little over seven hundred, exactly, sure.
- 16:01Speaker 3: So what's all right? What's the difference between a bad coach,
- 16:08Speaker 3: a good coach, and a great coach?
- 16:10Speaker 2: Great so so Pat Died, the legendary football coach, said,
- 16:13Speaker 2: you can coach them as hard as you love them.
- 16:15Speaker 2: And one of the challenges right now and and college
- 16:18Speaker 2: sports is the transfer portal and kids only stay in
- 16:20Speaker 2: one year. Yeah, like I tell my And let's be clear,
- 16:24Speaker 2: that's not a year, it's six months, right right. I
- 16:28Speaker 2: can't love my kids in a year. And I think
- 16:30Speaker 2: love is a word that's overused. I love some of
- 16:32Speaker 2: my friends, I love my family, I love my country.
- 16:36Speaker 2: But it doesn't come quickly. It's something you've got to
- 16:39Speaker 2: go through some stuff, trials and tribulation. Yes, and yes,
- 16:43Speaker 2: I needed. I need to be when they call me
- 16:44Speaker 2: when they've got to break it up with a girl
- 16:46Speaker 2: where something happened at home, somebody's sick, and somebody's going
- 16:50Speaker 2: to die. And we go through some stuff and be
- 16:52Speaker 2: there when they're not when they're not successful, but not
- 16:54Speaker 2: give up on them. And then all of a sudden
- 16:55Speaker 2: they become something. And you were there when you believe
- 16:57Speaker 2: when nobody else did. And so coaching was hard. You
- 17:00Speaker 2: love him. Billy Donovan said this, and I agree with him.
- 17:03Speaker 2: He said, we all can coach him to play hard.
- 17:05Speaker 2: We all teach pretty good defense. He said. The great
- 17:07Speaker 2: coaches are the ones that are the great offensive coaches
- 17:10Speaker 2: that can create offense to get guys really good shots
- 17:13Speaker 2: and really good looks. We all can defend, we all
- 17:15Speaker 2: can get our kids to play hard. But the brilliant
- 17:17Speaker 2: coaches are the ones that understand offense. When you look
- 17:21Speaker 2: at the let's get in.
- 17:22Speaker 3: I l no, no, I want to come ask you
- 17:24Speaker 3: were coaching?
- 17:25Speaker 1: Okay, was within it was coaching in il.
- 17:28Speaker 3: But we're going, we're.
- 17:30Speaker 2: Going, all right, we're backing up. I'm ready to go.
- 17:31Speaker 3: All right, So let's say this.
- 17:33Speaker 2: So you know he's a basketball like, he's obsessed.
- 17:35Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 17:36Speaker 1: Yeah, do you know he shoots twice a week, plays
- 17:39Speaker 1: twice a week.
- 17:39Speaker 3: I understand that.
- 17:40Speaker 2: I understand that.
- 17:42Speaker 1: And you know there's two amazing basketball courts within a
- 17:45Speaker 1: driver from where we are.
- 17:46Speaker 2: Yes, there's a Supreme Court.
- 17:47Speaker 1: When I was there today for the like the Supreme
- 17:49Speaker 1: Court has they have a basketball court at the spring court.
- 17:51Speaker 2: Did you know this?
- 17:51Speaker 3: Three times a week? So the Supreme Court court is
- 17:54Speaker 3: above the court room, so the floor of the court
- 17:57Speaker 3: is the room.
- 17:58Speaker 2: This is still a joke. That's crazy. You hear the
- 18:00Speaker 2: balls bounce every now and then.
- 18:01Speaker 3: You cannot you play during oral arguments, you'll hear the
- 18:04Speaker 3: balls bounce. So it's actually a rule no dribbling during
- 18:06Speaker 3: an argument. And do you know the nickname for it,
- 18:09Speaker 3: the highest court in the.
- 18:10Speaker 2: Land, the highest cordon the land. That's good.
- 18:12Speaker 3: And it's a weird court because the roof is kind
- 18:15Speaker 3: of low, so you have to develop this weird ass
- 18:18Speaker 3: jump shot that's almost like a line if you have
- 18:20Speaker 3: a normal by the ceiling. So the folks that are
- 18:25Speaker 3: regulars there have a very strange jump shot.
- 18:27Speaker 2: Don't tell me seven foots have to duck. It's not
- 18:30Speaker 2: quite that bad.
- 18:31Speaker 3: It's not quite that bad. But all right, let's say
- 18:34Speaker 3: so we have a lot of young people that listen
- 18:35Speaker 3: to this show. Let's say we've got a kid who's fifteen, sixteen,
- 18:39Speaker 3: it's a high school athlete and wants to make it
- 18:42Speaker 3: in in college basketball, football, whatever sport. What's the key
- 18:47Speaker 3: for a kid with some skill but doesn't know if
- 18:49Speaker 3: he can make it. What does a kid want to
- 18:51Speaker 3: do to actually have a shot playing in college.
- 18:53Speaker 2: Well, back in the day, we used to play football, basketball,
- 18:55Speaker 2: and baseball. We all played all the sports. You know,
- 18:57Speaker 2: I'm sure as a tennis player you play in the sports, right,
- 19:00Speaker 2: And so kids are beginning to sort of maybe cut
- 19:04Speaker 2: it down to one or two, you know, not just
- 19:05Speaker 2: one specialize, specialization.
- 19:08Speaker 3: Six or seven.
- 19:08Speaker 2: They're telling no, no, don't do it then, but do
- 19:11Speaker 2: it as you get into college. Don't play every sport,
- 19:13Speaker 2: play a couple high school sports, and but but narrow
- 19:15Speaker 2: it down a little bit. Obviously the things that they're
- 19:18Speaker 2: you know, nutrition now was a factor. The kids are
- 19:20Speaker 2: doing a better job take care of the body. They're
- 19:22Speaker 2: they're specialized. Our kids now are way more physically mature
- 19:25Speaker 2: than they were back in the day because the money
- 19:27Speaker 2: is bigger. They they're closer to the money, so they're
- 19:29Speaker 2: they're getting more disciplined, and they're they're working out more.
- 19:33Speaker 2: And uh, I mean again I got I kind of
- 19:36Speaker 2: go back to advice. Have a dimension on the court,
- 19:40Speaker 2: you know, do something really well that a coach can
- 19:43Speaker 2: Obviously you can use.
- 19:45Speaker 4: What is your it's what is your thing?
- 19:46Speaker 2: Is the question? Right? What makes him special? Now?
- 19:49Speaker 1: I mean that's what you're saying, is important for you
- 19:52Speaker 1: to stand out when you're getting recruited.
- 19:53Speaker 3: Ben, what was your game in tennis? Will you serve?
- 19:56Speaker 2: No?
- 19:56Speaker 1: I was I was known as being slow, having a
- 19:58Speaker 1: massive serve, having an unbelievable ad court.
- 20:02Speaker 2: Return for you're a backstop like there's just continue to
- 20:06Speaker 2: get sent it back, send it back, send it back,
- 20:07Speaker 2: and where I'm out. Yeah, I mean it was.
- 20:09Speaker 1: It was He's going to serve through you, and he's
- 20:11Speaker 1: gonna and he and he will always have you in devils.
- 20:13Speaker 2: Then you'll win more points that paper. I mean for me,
- 20:16Speaker 2: tough obviously, toughness, mental and physical toughness wind up wind
- 20:19Speaker 2: up winning. At the end of the day. A physically
- 20:23Speaker 2: and a mentally tough guy is going to win. It's
- 20:25Speaker 2: like when dogs kind of getting a fight, they they
- 20:28Speaker 2: kind of know who the big dog is. And the
- 20:30Speaker 2: big dog may not be the biggest dog out there,
- 20:32Speaker 2: but he's a badass, and so it's it's something Toughness
- 20:36Speaker 2: isn't something that you can really teach, but you sure
- 20:38Speaker 2: can't expose it. It can be exposed, and so soft
- 20:42Speaker 2: kids don't make it all right.
- 20:43Speaker 3: What makes a great shooter?
- 20:46Speaker 2: I think the eye. I think I think guys that
- 20:48Speaker 2: have incredible eyes that are able to focus on that
- 20:52Speaker 2: target and hit that target.
- 20:54Speaker 3: That's two answers you gave. I wouldn't have predicted in
- 20:58Speaker 3: the eye and.
- 20:59Speaker 2: Seeing it like mentally, like if you were as a
- 21:01Speaker 2: tennis player, you had to actually see and mentally see
- 21:05Speaker 2: that serve when you toss it up there and hit
- 21:07Speaker 2: it through. Great baseball players can see that ball.
- 21:09Speaker 3: Ted Williams could see the scenes on the curve ball
- 21:13Speaker 3: like he had just crazy good.
- 21:15Speaker 2: A true story.
- 21:17Speaker 1: My coach said to me, he goes, there will be
- 21:18Speaker 1: a time in your life when you will be able
- 21:20Speaker 1: to have a serve hit at you and you'll be
- 21:22Speaker 1: able to tell me the number and who makes the ball.
- 21:25Speaker 4: And it happened for me for three days and I
- 21:27Speaker 4: never got it back.
- 21:28Speaker 1: But you could hit ball as hard as you want
- 21:29Speaker 1: to serve one hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty miles
- 21:31Speaker 1: an hour, and I could tell you it was a
- 21:33Speaker 1: Wilson was open three or a pin four. And I
- 21:35Speaker 1: don't know what happens in your brain, but it's the
- 21:37Speaker 1: same thing with it now. I never got it back.
- 21:39Speaker 1: But he didn't lie, and that he was like the
- 21:42Speaker 1: guys that are the greats could see that the majority.
- 21:44Speaker 3: Of And I gotta tell you, if you play me
- 21:46Speaker 3: ping pong and you hit the ball at me, I
- 21:48Speaker 3: can tell you what color the ball.
- 21:49Speaker 2: That's good.
- 21:50Speaker 3: Usually it's orange white ball.
- 21:53Speaker 4: I mean it's not good.
- 21:55Speaker 2: It's that good. It's a gift.
- 21:57Speaker 4: Yeah, he should have been recruited and I al would
- 21:59Speaker 4: have loved this guy.
- 22:00Speaker 2: Can you go in to Pink Pond's scholarship? Can you
- 22:02Speaker 2: not in a game in Asia? And Asia that might
- 22:05Speaker 2: be a thing.
- 22:06Speaker 3: I'm not for. All right, let's talk Nil how his
- 22:14Speaker 3: ni l changed college sports.
- 22:18Speaker 2: Do you love it or hate it? Can ask?
- 22:19Speaker 4: First of all.
- 22:20Speaker 2: First of all, the NCAA was arrogant and not recognizing
- 22:24Speaker 2: that they were sitting on our country's biggest anti trust violation.
- 22:28Speaker 2: They were just arrogant, and we had smart people in
- 22:31Speaker 2: the industry and the fact that they wanted to fight
- 22:35Speaker 2: for amateurism when it wasn't realistic when everybody was making
- 22:38Speaker 2: all this money. I was a big believer obviously Scott
- 22:42Speaker 2: college scholarships and what that industry did for our country.
- 22:47Speaker 2: Think about it. Rural Americans that never dreamed of going
- 22:51Speaker 2: to college, all of a sudden, they had the opportunity
- 22:53Speaker 2: through something that they maybe were good at sports, got
- 22:56Speaker 2: them on the campus and.
- 22:59Speaker 3: Kids award it that that had no history of family
- 23:02Speaker 3: going to college.
- 23:03Speaker 2: Weren't ever thinking about it all of a sudden because
- 23:06Speaker 2: because academics may not have been something they were good at.
- 23:09Speaker 2: Nobody likes to do anything they're not good at, but
- 23:11Speaker 2: they like sports. Then they went to college and they
- 23:13Speaker 2: got caught up and figured out they weren't dumb, they
- 23:16Speaker 2: just weren't prepared. Women. There weren't as many women on
- 23:21Speaker 2: college campuses back in the day. Intercollegiate athletics Title nine
- 23:25Speaker 2: exploded women on campus just so, and there is no
- 23:30Speaker 2: other university. Intercollegiate athletics is American. There's no other place
- 23:35Speaker 2: in the world that does what we do. So we've
- 23:37Speaker 2: got a unique system that right now needs fixing because
- 23:41Speaker 2: it's it's it's a disaster. It's chaos off the court,
- 23:46Speaker 2: on the field, and on the court. It's great. The
- 23:48Speaker 2: product that we're putting out is really, really good. But
- 23:52Speaker 2: the problem is what we're paying our top student athletes
- 23:56Speaker 2: because everybody wants to win is ridiculous. Back in the day,
- 24:01Speaker 2: ten years ago, you couldn't give him a hamburger. Now
- 24:03Speaker 2: you can buy them a Hamburger restaurant. It's not against
- 24:05Speaker 2: the rules. Literally, the top college football programs that are
- 24:09Speaker 2: competing right now, their call their rosters are between thirty
- 24:13Speaker 2: five and forty million dollars for that roster right now,
- 24:17Speaker 2: most most schools can't afford it, So most schools aren't there.
- 24:21Speaker 2: But the schools that are playing right now and still
- 24:22Speaker 2: playing right now are there. Why is Indiana and Miami there?
- 24:26Speaker 2: Great coaching, great kids, great support, But Indiana would be
- 24:29Speaker 2: a great example. All of a sudden, Mark Cuban, the
- 24:30Speaker 2: people in Indiana said, you know what, We're going to
- 24:32Speaker 2: be committed. Yep. Now the challenge is are you gonna
- 24:35Speaker 2: do it every year? And it's one thing in your world?
- 24:39Speaker 2: You got to raise twenty million dollars for an election
- 24:41Speaker 2: thirty minute, whatever it is.
- 24:46Speaker 3: My last race was a quarter billion dollars.
- 24:48Speaker 2: Race, and I got I sent a thousand dollars. Very
- 24:50Speaker 2: happy to have supported you, Thank you. Yeah, absolutely, I
- 24:53Speaker 2: would confess I didn't know that.
- 24:54Speaker 3: That's really cool.
- 24:55Speaker 2: Very happy to have supported thank you. But every year,
- 24:59Speaker 2: every year, if you had a camp paint every year
- 25:00Speaker 2: and you had to raise that money every year, that's
- 25:02Speaker 2: what's happening in college sports. College sports is losing an
- 25:05Speaker 2: enormous amount of money. We can't continue to afford it,
- 25:08Speaker 2: and so who's gonna suffer from it? At some point?
- 25:11Speaker 2: Olympic sports are gonna get cut.
- 25:12Speaker 3: Yep.
- 25:13Speaker 2: We're in the Olympics.
- 25:14Speaker 3: Well, see that schools are canceling programs every day. They're
- 25:17Speaker 3: doing it now, and smaller schools are also in trouble.
- 25:19Speaker 2: YEP.
- 25:19Speaker 3: Division two, Division three. Yes, if we don't do something,
- 25:23Speaker 3: I think we're gonna wake up soon and there's gonna
- 25:27Speaker 3: be thirty to fifty programs and the top programs will
- 25:31Speaker 3: survive and have all the money, and I think everyone
- 25:33Speaker 3: else goes under unless we.
- 25:34Speaker 2: Do something correct.
- 25:36Speaker 1: This subject makes me mad because I'm mad at the
- 25:39Speaker 1: NCAA for allowing us to get to this point. And
- 25:41Speaker 1: I'll say it quickly. I watched the corruption when I
- 25:45Speaker 1: was at Ole miss And what does corruption look like?
- 25:48Speaker 1: Roommate of mine had to go get money in cash
- 25:51Speaker 1: so mom could come to the game. Grew up in Arkansas,
- 25:54Speaker 1: literally grew up in a trailer, and it was what
- 25:57Speaker 1: does mom need to get you to come to school?
- 25:58Speaker 2: Here?
- 25:59Speaker 1: We were paying players, it was there. Every athlete knew.
- 26:04Speaker 1: It was the idea that people weren't getting paid.
- 26:06Speaker 3: But I like to say SMU was doing nil before.
- 26:09Speaker 2: That's true.
- 26:09Speaker 1: They were pioneers, but the NCAA knew it. And that's
- 26:13Speaker 1: the part that makes me angry now is like they've
- 26:16Speaker 1: created this chaos.
- 26:17Speaker 4: Well they created it by.
- 26:18Speaker 1: Not policing it and figuring out sooner because they owned us.
- 26:22Speaker 1: And I say, it's an athlete like a modern day slave.
- 26:24Speaker 1: You made all this money off of our work. You
- 26:26Speaker 1: made all this cash off the TV rights everyone was getting.
- 26:30Speaker 1: I told you, I really makes me mad because I
- 26:33Speaker 1: see these kids that are suffering.
- 26:35Speaker 2: The parents.
- 26:35Speaker 1: They just want to show up for the game. Then
- 26:37Speaker 1: they're having to do shady deals where mom gets cash
- 26:40Speaker 1: so you can drive to the game. But they're making
- 26:42Speaker 1: millions and all the seats and all the tickets and
- 26:44Speaker 1: everything else. And we were abused. As an athlete. I
- 26:47Speaker 1: think it is modern day slavery what they did. Now
- 26:49Speaker 1: it's gone the other way, and they're like, well, it's
- 26:51Speaker 1: this is a terrible thing for the athletes.
- 26:53Speaker 2: There has to be in between.
- 26:55Speaker 1: But my point is, don't pull it all the way
- 26:57Speaker 1: back where, let's make it an honest living. I think
- 27:00Speaker 1: guys like Tim Tebow is a great example of this.
- 27:02Speaker 1: Tim Tebow or a TEXTA A and M guy, what's
- 27:05Speaker 1: his name, Johnny Selm, timeon jo The amount of money
- 27:08Speaker 1: they're bringing into these programs, and if you get hurt,
- 27:12Speaker 1: you don't go to the next level. You don't get
- 27:13Speaker 1: to go to the NFL. You deserve to get paid
- 27:16Speaker 1: while you're a pro athlete at a university. That's what
- 27:19Speaker 1: you are. I say that to also say I am concerned.
- 27:22Speaker 1: I played a non sport that made money. I don't
- 27:25Speaker 1: want to see golf disappear, tennis disappear, women swimming, archery,
- 27:30Speaker 1: whatever it may be.
- 27:31Speaker 4: How do we rein it in it's a grand idea,
- 27:34Speaker 4: I say.
- 27:34Speaker 1: I get frustrated because I genuinely still hate the NCAA
- 27:37Speaker 1: right now.
- 27:38Speaker 2: I cannot stand them.
- 27:39Speaker 1: And if you go and poll athletes, if you did
- 27:41Speaker 1: a poll right now of the last twenty years of
- 27:43Speaker 1: college athletes in Division one, they will tell you they
- 27:47Speaker 1: hate the NCAA because they never protected them.
- 27:50Speaker 2: They never took care of us.
- 27:51Speaker 1: And then every time we asked a question, you know what,
- 27:53Speaker 1: they said, shut up and sit down. You're a student athlete.
- 27:56Speaker 1: You're here for free, be quiet. If you ask questions
- 27:59Speaker 1: about expend or anything else, you know what they do.
- 28:01Speaker 1: They would investigate your team and punish you if you
- 28:04Speaker 1: ask questions. So my point is this, if you don't
- 28:08Speaker 1: protect the student athletes moving forward, they're gonna get screwed
- 28:11Speaker 1: again when you do the new deal. And that's where
- 28:14Speaker 1: I ask you as a coach, as a former coach, now,
- 28:17Speaker 1: how do you do both? Because I'm telling you, the
- 28:19Speaker 1: kids will get screwed again because there's too much money
- 28:22Speaker 1: not to screw them if you don't pay attention.
- 28:24Speaker 2: So I'm worried. I'm worried that.
- 28:25Speaker 1: I almost like the Wild West more because at least
- 28:27Speaker 1: it's an honest day's work.
- 28:29Speaker 2: And all the betting that's going on now, it's insane.
- 28:32Speaker 4: The amount of money around college sports insane.
- 28:34Speaker 2: Everyone's getting paid.
- 28:36Speaker 1: So part of me is like, as a kid, I'm like,
- 28:37Speaker 1: if my kid's good enough, I bring me the cash too.
- 28:40Speaker 4: You're making money off of every game of every other way.
- 28:43Speaker 3: When he says if his kid's good enough bringing the cash,
- 28:45Speaker 3: this is not hypothetical because his son's He had one
- 28:50Speaker 3: son who was the number two golfer in the.
- 28:51Speaker 1: World for his age practice so how old he was
- 28:54Speaker 1: He started at six, Now he's nine.
- 28:56Speaker 4: So I have my news. I have a twin at six.
- 28:59Speaker 2: Aubyn went National championshipc golf last year. Yeah, oh yeah,
- 29:02Speaker 2: We've got to the top ten amateurs in the world
- 29:04Speaker 2: on our team right.
- 29:04Speaker 3: Now, Ben's already buying a beach house off.
- 29:07Speaker 1: Yeah, but I worry about this. How many kids are
- 29:11Speaker 1: gonna get screwed if you overcorrect? So I asked that
- 29:14Speaker 1: with passion. As a former athlete, I think what they
- 29:16Speaker 1: did to these kids is wrong. The way they were
- 29:18Speaker 1: treated was wrong. The way the parents have to some
- 29:20Speaker 1: suffer while they're making all this cash off, it's not fair.
- 29:23Speaker 2: Right, Well, you're right about some of the inequalities. I
- 29:26Speaker 2: can remember before NIL we'd make the NCAA tournament and
- 29:32Speaker 2: we travel wherever we're traveling to, and they might send
- 29:34Speaker 2: us to Seattle, they might send us to Utah or whatever.
- 29:37Speaker 2: And I had parents of some of my players that
- 29:40Speaker 2: would take a bus and they travel out there. They'd
- 29:43Speaker 2: stay at a y w c A or YMCA. I
- 29:46Speaker 2: would pray for victory just so they wouldn't have to
- 29:50Speaker 2: watch the game lose and then get back on the
- 29:52Speaker 2: bus and leave. In other words, like before we could
- 29:56Speaker 2: help families get there. It was actually there was a
- 29:59Speaker 2: lot of cost. And I've been trying to support you,
- 30:01Speaker 2: so we were way behind and trying to take the pendulum. Obviously,
- 30:05Speaker 2: I swung so basically in its simplest term, and the
- 30:08Speaker 2: Senator understands this. The courts have ruled that the nc DOUBLEA,
- 30:13Speaker 2: the way it was set up, setting these rules of
- 30:15Speaker 2: eligibility or whether you could transfer, or what your academics
- 30:18Speaker 2: could be, or what scholarship was allowed, and what's an
- 30:20Speaker 2: extra benefit, all those rules were agreed to by the
- 30:25Speaker 2: parties that be without the student athletes being involved. We
- 30:28Speaker 2: were the modern day slaves. And so when somebody took
- 30:31Speaker 2: that to court, they said, wait a second, why can't
- 30:33Speaker 2: I transfer? Uh coach can go from Texas to Texas
- 30:36Speaker 2: A and m if he wants to year, I have
- 30:39Speaker 2: to sit out a year. And of course said, yeah,
- 30:41Speaker 2: you're right.
- 30:42Speaker 3: And look, by the way, no coach would ever go
- 30:44Speaker 3: say I missed LSU.
- 30:46Speaker 1: No, never, never would happened. It's an abusive relationship.
- 30:50Speaker 3: I tell you, I know.
- 30:51Speaker 2: You were relationship missed when I tell him, just because
- 30:55Speaker 2: you wanted to win to Natity, So Lane, we'll be
- 30:58Speaker 2: sitting there in some hotel room watching.
- 31:01Speaker 3: He would have gotten bigger bonus that.
- 31:06Speaker 2: This contract where I got paid.
- 31:07Speaker 4: If they wanted to that issue, I didn't care pay
- 31:09Speaker 4: him the money. I said them before it, and I
- 31:10Speaker 4: said I haven't.
- 31:11Speaker 2: Don't forget coach Kiffin built that team.
- 31:13Speaker 1: Yeah I know, but here's what that team. He also
- 31:15Speaker 1: abandoned that team that he built. He abandoned that team.
- 31:17Speaker 2: And this was the one that said, look you he
- 31:20Speaker 2: he would have stayed in coach, but this day gave
- 31:23Speaker 2: him an ultimatum. That's like that, this is my analogy.
- 31:26Speaker 3: We're going there.
- 31:26Speaker 1: That's like me sleeping saying, hey, honey, we're gonna get divorced.
- 31:29Speaker 1: I slept with the other woman that you call me with.
- 31:31Speaker 1: I'll sleep with you tonight because I still your husband.
- 31:34Speaker 2: You know what. You know what when kids would have
- 31:35Speaker 2: wanted to go to transfer portal on me and they
- 31:37Speaker 2: wanted the opportunity to maybe come back. Yeah, I said,
- 31:39Speaker 2: so you want to go to transfer portal. Yeah, you
- 31:41Speaker 2: want to go get recruited. If things don't work out,
- 31:43Speaker 2: you want to come back. Yeah. They said, okay. Some
- 31:44Speaker 2: people like me saying to Brandy, Brandy, my wife, come
- 31:46Speaker 2: and we said, hey, honey, listen, I love you, but
- 31:49Speaker 2: I want to get the transfer portal and if things
- 31:51Speaker 2: don't work out, I want to come back. Yeah.
- 31:53Speaker 1: No, no, you want to You're dead to be out.
- 31:56Speaker 1: When Lane left and he said, I'm leaving.
- 31:57Speaker 2: You are dead. Okay, so you know what you need
- 31:59Speaker 2: to get over it. I'm finding move on, you're not.
- 32:03Speaker 4: I've got a few Democrats on there, and Lane Kiffin.
- 32:05Speaker 3: It's on the list.
- 32:06Speaker 4: Like if I get a mug shot, you know it's
- 32:07Speaker 4: going to be worth it.
- 32:08Speaker 1: You'll bail me out, right, I'm right behind you, right
- 32:11Speaker 1: behind okay, good, good?
- 32:13Speaker 2: So what where are we right now? Number one, we
- 32:16Speaker 2: need to recognize the urgency. This has to be fixed
- 32:19Speaker 2: because for a lot of different reasons, obviously women sports
- 32:22Speaker 2: being cut, non revenue sports like tennis being cut, they
- 32:26Speaker 2: were losing money. There is so much more revenue to
- 32:30Speaker 2: be gained. The NBA is like the fifth or sixth
- 32:33Speaker 2: most watched sport in America. College football is number two. Yeah,
- 32:38Speaker 2: the NBA makes like twice as much money in their
- 32:40Speaker 2: television contracts in college football. Why, by the way, because
- 32:43Speaker 2: the NBA bargained with the television as a unit as
- 32:47Speaker 2: a National Basketball Association college football. The SEC has got
- 32:49Speaker 2: their contract with ESPN and the ABC twelve got there
- 32:53Speaker 2: or whatever, and we've left a lot of money on
- 32:55Speaker 2: the table. College football needs to become college football and
- 32:59Speaker 2: maximize their revenues which will help pay for everybody else.
- 33:03Speaker 2: But there are no rules right now, and the courts
- 33:06Speaker 2: have said, the way our laws in the land are written,
- 33:09Speaker 2: you can't write these rules and enforce them without infringing
- 33:12Speaker 2: on those student athletes' rights. So therefore, what I'm asking
- 33:18Speaker 2: would be in exchange for some limited anti trust protection,
- 33:22Speaker 2: some limited anti trust per section, Congress would create some
- 33:28Speaker 2: law that would at least get us in the room
- 33:30Speaker 2: and allow us to talk to the student athletes. There's
- 33:34Speaker 2: a special status that's granted two farmers when they co op.
- 33:38Speaker 2: There's a special status that's granted to the screen actors guilt.
- 33:42Speaker 2: We don't want employees. The student athletes don't want to
- 33:44Speaker 2: be employees. The university who want want employees. We don't
- 33:47Speaker 2: want a union. We don't want to have that kind
- 33:48Speaker 2: of collective bargaining negotiate. But we got to be able
- 33:51Speaker 2: to have college athletics, student athletes and people that will
- 33:54Speaker 2: represent them, call them agents, to call them lawyers, get
- 33:57Speaker 2: in the same room with some leaders, providing some antitrust
- 34:01Speaker 2: protection and let them come up with an agreement. We
- 34:04Speaker 2: can do it, but without a little bit of help
- 34:07Speaker 2: from Congress, a little bit of legislation, figuring out a
- 34:09Speaker 2: way to guests in the room. I don't know. I
- 34:12Speaker 2: don't know what the fix is.
- 34:14Speaker 3: And as you know, I think it is urgent that
- 34:16Speaker 3: that that Congress acts. I've spent three years drafting legislation,
- 34:20Speaker 3: working on it. The real question is are we going
- 34:23Speaker 3: to get bipartisan agreement? And I have been I would
- 34:26Speaker 3: say we are very very close. I have been negotiating.
- 34:29Speaker 3: I am hopeful we get it done this year. I
- 34:31Speaker 3: think if Congress doesn't act, we're going to see the
- 34:34Speaker 3: college sports that all three of us grew up with.
- 34:37Speaker 3: We're going to see it decimated and unrecognizable. And so
- 34:41Speaker 3: this shouldn't be a partisan issue. One of the great
- 34:44Speaker 3: things about sports it brings people together. It brings people
- 34:48Speaker 3: together and passionate from totally different walks of life, from
- 34:51Speaker 3: different parties, different races, different ethnicities, different religions. You can
- 34:55Speaker 3: stand and cheer and and and there's something awesome about sports,
- 35:01Speaker 3: About a championship. One of the most fun parts of
- 35:03Speaker 3: being in the Senate is I get to root on
- 35:05Speaker 3: Texas teams, and it is it is a spectacular thing.
- 35:09Speaker 3: By the way, I am a die hard Rockets fan.
- 35:13Speaker 2: You love Jabari Smith a little bit.
- 35:15Speaker 3: I was gonna ask you like coaching, and boy, he's
- 35:18Speaker 3: got his defense is great. His three point shot is
- 35:21Speaker 3: getting better every game. What was he like coaching?
- 35:24Speaker 2: He was? He was a treasure to coach. I think
- 35:26Speaker 2: one of the things that I think when people watch athletes,
- 35:29Speaker 2: they just assume that it's God given that the talentssts there,
- 35:33Speaker 2: and they're just so blessed.
- 35:35Speaker 3: It doesn't hurt to be some feet tall.
- 35:36Speaker 2: It doesn't. But listen, Ted, that kid was in the
- 35:40Speaker 2: gym every morning at six o'clock in the morning at
- 35:44Speaker 2: Sandy Creek High School. He works his tail off, worked
- 35:46Speaker 2: his tail off, so when other kids weight over there.
- 35:50Speaker 3: He got twenty pounds heavy. And it's a totally different
- 35:53Speaker 3: game because last year he get pushed around by big guys.
- 35:56Speaker 3: He's now got enough meat that he's pushing them around.
- 35:59Speaker 2: He is and he's gotten a lot better. But the
- 36:01Speaker 2: discipline that it takes to be a trained athlete, the
- 36:05Speaker 2: things you have to stay away from as a high
- 36:06Speaker 2: school kid or a college kid that maybe other kids
- 36:09Speaker 2: could get away with, and things that they could do,
- 36:11Speaker 2: they can't. And so I admire. I always tell people
- 36:14Speaker 2: you want to hire somebody in your company or for
- 36:16Speaker 2: hire a student athlete. They've tried and they've failed. They
- 36:20Speaker 2: understand what pressure is all about. They've got disciplined in
- 36:23Speaker 2: their economy. They also know how to make sacrifice on
- 36:25Speaker 2: the team. They're not worried about other people's success, which
- 36:28Speaker 2: when you are just on yourself and all of a
- 36:30Speaker 2: sudden you get in the workplace and you have to
- 36:31Speaker 2: sort of fit in it, like the first time you've
- 36:33Speaker 2: been a part of a team, Yeah, part of a family,
- 36:35Speaker 2: so and so forth. So now Jabari is going to
- 36:37Speaker 2: be he'll be an NBA al star, and he's got
- 36:39Speaker 2: a great tutor and being right there, Durant, being right
- 36:43Speaker 2: there with the brought we needed.
- 36:46Speaker 3: So last year we were number two going into the playoffs,
- 36:49Speaker 3: but we didn't have a superstar. We had a lot
- 36:52Speaker 3: of great young you know, twenty twenty one, twenty two
- 36:55Speaker 3: year old talent that I think is awesome, but we
- 36:58Speaker 3: didn't have someone with three minutes to go four you
- 37:02Speaker 3: give the ball to and say, okay, we need to score.
- 37:05Speaker 2: They're gonna get a bucket or they're gonna go to file.
- 37:07Speaker 3: And Katie is so much fun watching him because I mean,
- 37:10Speaker 3: he they'll triple team file the heck out of him,
- 37:13Speaker 3: and he makes that lanky, falling back eighteen footer, then
- 37:16Speaker 3: just how the heck do you stop it? And there's
- 37:19Speaker 3: a reason he's what number six or seven in the
- 37:22Speaker 3: all time scoring like a good team. I love. I
- 37:27Speaker 3: DVR every Rockets game. And by the way, I was
- 37:30Speaker 3: at game seven and ninety four when we beat the
- 37:32Speaker 3: Knicks and won our first championship ever, and it's it's
- 37:35Speaker 3: my favorite sports memory. And we played at the Summit,
- 37:39Speaker 3: and I remember Summits on on Richmond Avenue in Houston's
- 37:43Speaker 3: now Lakewood Church, but it used to be the Summit,
- 37:45Speaker 3: and I remember on the street on Richmond seeing businessmen
- 37:48Speaker 3: in three piece suits crying and hugging homeless men. By
- 37:53Speaker 3: the way, the coolest backstory from that game, So where
- 37:56Speaker 3: I was sitting was right by where Bob coust Is
- 38:00Speaker 3: and Doctor J were broadcast in the game, and I
- 38:02Speaker 3: was close enough I could hear him, and when the
- 38:06Speaker 3: TV cameras were off, Doctor J gave Costa so much
- 38:11Speaker 3: grief and he was saying, man, your nick sucks. And
- 38:17Speaker 3: that was the funniest part of the game. Is Doctor
- 38:19Speaker 3: ja coub talk some.
- 38:21Speaker 4: He is a trash talker, pro he's prodit.
- 38:24Speaker 3: It was the funniest part of the But but there's
- 38:26Speaker 3: there's a all, right, of all the players you've seen,
- 38:29Speaker 3: and let's exclude your own players because I don't want
- 38:31Speaker 3: to put you in awkward but all the players you've
- 38:33Speaker 3: seen coaching, who's the best basketball player you've ever seen?
- 38:38Speaker 3: That you said, Holy cow, that guy's got something.
- 38:40Speaker 2: The player player probably seeing Michael Jordan probably see him.
- 38:45Speaker 2: I saw him when he was at North Carolina. I
- 38:47Speaker 2: was an assistant at Stanford. And the thing about it
- 38:49Speaker 2: him he was tiny then by the way he's But
- 38:52Speaker 2: you know when you go to a thoroughbred racetrack and
- 38:57Speaker 2: you see the legs, it's just the horses just different
- 39:00Speaker 2: on the On those thoroughbreds, he had a different He
- 39:03Speaker 2: had a different body, a different build, The way he
- 39:06Speaker 2: moved way cares just his length. And then what none
- 39:09Speaker 2: of us knew was his ability to impact the team.
- 39:14Speaker 2: That's the difference between him. For me, he's the grace
- 39:17Speaker 2: of all time, unquestionable a time. Yeah, because he could
- 39:21Speaker 2: handle Rodman. He could handle some of us. They weren't
- 39:25Speaker 2: they weren't the most talented teams, but he could handle
- 39:27Speaker 2: those guys, and all he cared about was winning. That's
- 39:30Speaker 2: all he cared about, and he made everybody else on
- 39:33Speaker 2: his team better. I think he made Phil Jackson a
- 39:36Speaker 2: better coach because he listened to not my job Joby
- 39:39Speaker 2: Hall said this, and I heard this at a Claye
- 39:41Speaker 2: one time, and I believe this. Look, it's not my
- 39:43Speaker 2: job as a coach make every right decision. I'm going
- 39:47Speaker 2: to make the best decisions I possibly can based on
- 39:49Speaker 2: my experience and what I know. And you know what,
- 39:51Speaker 2: I'm gonna make a lot of good decisions. Not every
- 39:53Speaker 2: one of them is going to be the best decision,
- 39:55Speaker 2: but it is my player's job to make my decisions work. Shorge,
- 39:59Speaker 2: he need to break buddle and make that work. We're
- 40:02Speaker 2: going to one three. One might have been a bad decision,
- 40:05Speaker 2: but do it well, get out there and make that one.
- 40:07Speaker 2: We wouldn't work in this posision. What's gonna stop.
- 40:09Speaker 3: When Jordan came to the NBA, I was a big
- 40:11Speaker 3: Larry bird fan, and so I used to argue, Oh,
- 40:14Speaker 3: you know, Jordan's fine, but he's not burden. Birden won
- 40:16Speaker 3: three consecutive MVPs, and you know he shoot these crazy
- 40:20Speaker 3: lefty and jump shots and it was Bird was great.
- 40:23Speaker 3: He was one of the greatest ever to play. And
- 40:25Speaker 3: I'd be like, Okay, yeah, Jordan's good, but he's just
- 40:27Speaker 3: an offensive players, one dimensional. And then he comes back
- 40:30Speaker 3: and starts playing incredible defense, and I mean like, okay,
- 40:32Speaker 3: he can drive, but he can't shoot. And he comes
- 40:33Speaker 3: back and I feel like Jordan just like grab me
- 40:37Speaker 3: by the head and starts sladding me into the ground.
- 40:39Speaker 3: And so I'm finally like, I'm making the arguments that
- 40:41Speaker 3: I just stopped, and I'm like, yeah, no, yeah, Jordan's
- 40:43Speaker 3: just like like it, and I am all right. I
- 40:46Speaker 3: defined what what would have been my ultimate dream basketball game,
- 40:51Speaker 3: and it was the following It was Houston Chicago. Okay,
- 40:56Speaker 3: NBA Finals Game seven, I'm with you. Jordan's scores one
- 41:00Speaker 3: hundred and one points and break breaks Wilt's records, and
- 41:03Speaker 3: the Rockets win the championship because Scottie Pippen tips the
- 41:07Speaker 3: ball in our basket. Because I never was that was
- 41:11Speaker 3: my dream. Is a great player.
- 41:17Speaker 2: I wait to hear some of his mannerisms, and.
- 41:21Speaker 3: Yeah, he would, he would throw temper tantrums. He didn't
- 41:25Speaker 3: have the heart. Look what Jordan had was a heart the.
- 41:29Speaker 2: Size of all you guys say, is the.
- 41:32Speaker 3: End of a game, you always knew Jordan would get
- 41:35Speaker 3: the ball, he'd be triple teamed, and it wouldn't matter.
- 41:38Speaker 3: He would score, and it just I'm.
- 41:41Speaker 2: Gonna give you one. You're one of the greatest athletes
- 41:43Speaker 2: to play the game basketball. Who's that Larry Bird? Larry
- 41:47Speaker 2: Bird wasn't fast and Larry Bird didn't jump high. People
- 41:50Speaker 2: confuse athleticism. I know a lot of really bad athletes
- 41:54Speaker 2: could jump out of the gym. They can't catch the ball.
- 41:56Speaker 2: They have no balance, the sense, they have no Larry Bird.
- 42:00Speaker 2: Bird had great athleticism, he just wasn't very fast. He
- 42:03Speaker 2: didn't jump right. Yeah, and sometimes athleticism getting There's some
- 42:08Speaker 2: great athletes that are golfers or tennis or they may
- 42:12Speaker 2: not be as powerful, but the hand eye coordination and
- 42:15Speaker 2: things that I think that's a that's part of being
- 42:17Speaker 2: an athlete.
- 42:17Speaker 3: Xavier McDonald told a story about covering Bird at the
- 42:20Speaker 3: end of the game and the Celtics were, I think
- 42:22Speaker 3: down a point and McDonald said that there was a
- 42:25Speaker 3: timeout with like ten twelve seconds left, and as they're
- 42:28Speaker 3: head of the timeout, Bird said, all right, the end
- 42:30Speaker 3: of the timeout, they're going to pass me the ball.
- 42:32Speaker 3: He said, I'm gonna dribble it right here, and he
- 42:33Speaker 3: points to a spot on the floor. I'm gonna shoot
- 42:35Speaker 3: from here. I'm gonna score, and we're gonna win the game.
- 42:38Speaker 3: And he said, they walked off the timeout, they came
- 42:40Speaker 3: back the pass of all to him. He dribbled to
- 42:41Speaker 3: that spot. Yeah, shot scored and won the game. And
- 42:44Speaker 3: he said, there's nothing I could.
- 42:45Speaker 2: Do about it. Yeah, Bird would do that. That's he
- 42:47Speaker 2: was known. He'd tell him right ahead of time. Right,
- 42:49Speaker 2: you're talking about shit talker the best.
- 42:52Speaker 3: That was his reputation.
- 42:54Speaker 2: Oh, you know, it's true. It was really really true.
- 42:58Speaker 1: I mean the maw man told me. Came alone. Yeah,
- 43:01Speaker 1: we had, We had dinner together and hung out in Vegas.
- 43:04Speaker 3: The humble brag. Yeah it was.
- 43:08Speaker 2: It was a fun day.
- 43:08Speaker 1: But he was talking about on the Dream Team and
- 43:11Speaker 1: he said that the best part about that was watching
- 43:15Speaker 1: the greats.
- 43:16Speaker 2: Talk trash in each other's face, calling shots with the
- 43:20Speaker 2: young guys. Remember the game where the coaches left.
- 43:22Speaker 3: Already you old enough to remember Bruce's and I am.
- 43:25Speaker 3: I don't know if you are. The McDonald's commercial with
- 43:27Speaker 3: Bird and Jordan's.
- 43:28Speaker 1: Yes, I do remember I've seen where there's these crazy
- 43:31Speaker 1: shots raftery on the back.
- 43:35Speaker 3: You know nothing, but it's one of the great for
- 43:38Speaker 3: those of y'all. We have a lot of young listeners.
- 43:40Speaker 2: Go to Google.
- 43:41Speaker 3: Yeah, like like McDonald's classics.
- 43:45Speaker 1: All right, go ahead, but no, he said, the best
- 43:47Speaker 1: part about that game when the coaches left the room
- 43:49Speaker 1: and it was like they were calling shots in each
- 43:51Speaker 1: other's face and there was a lot of betting going on.
- 43:53Speaker 1: Is he said, seeing Charles Barkley trash talk with Larry
- 43:56Speaker 1: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. You look at that row,
- 44:00Speaker 1: the guys that were there trash talking, and he said
- 44:02Speaker 1: it was the ultimate level of trash talking because there
- 44:05Speaker 1: was no audience, so it was just.
- 44:07Speaker 2: In your face.
- 44:08Speaker 4: You weren't worried about anyone recording you. There wasn't cell
- 44:10Speaker 4: phones in.
- 44:11Speaker 2: It was just pure.
- 44:12Speaker 3: He said.
- 44:12Speaker 1: It was the most fans ever had playing a pickup game,
- 44:15Speaker 1: because you're playing a pickup game with the best players
- 44:17Speaker 1: in the world, and that had to be pretty fun.
- 44:18Speaker 2: And he was a partialier.
- 44:20Speaker 3: So we got another topic that you care deeply about,
- 44:22Speaker 3: which is Israel. So tell us a little bit about
- 44:26Speaker 3: number one. Why does Israel Mattery.
- 44:32Speaker 2: I think because I was in sports, and because I was,
- 44:36Speaker 2: you know, obviously in college basketball. Again, we're old enough
- 44:40Speaker 2: to have seen an educational system growing up. Let's take
- 44:45Speaker 2: the state of Indiana or Illinois, different states where you've
- 44:47Speaker 2: got inner cities and you've got rural America. Within the
- 44:50Speaker 2: same cities, you'd see schools that look like college campuses,
- 44:53Speaker 2: and just a few miles down the road they look
- 44:56Speaker 2: like prisons. Like there's more security and more g you know,
- 45:00Speaker 2: used to go to the screens to get through the school.
- 45:03Speaker 2: And and this was our educational system. And I was like, man,
- 45:06Speaker 2: this is wrong, like like these these these kids have
- 45:09Speaker 2: way more of an advantage, and and I just I
- 45:13Speaker 2: felt like there was sort of some of the things
- 45:17Speaker 2: that doctor doctor King talked about. Silence is complicity. Like
- 45:21Speaker 2: just just my my Hebrew name is Mortorcai Morcai. In
- 45:26Speaker 2: the story of u Por and Esther, Hayman was going
- 45:31Speaker 2: to kill all the Jews in Persia and Morcai, Esther's
- 45:36Speaker 2: uncle said, look, if you don't get to the you know,
- 45:39Speaker 2: the king Haman's actually gonna this is going to be
- 45:42Speaker 2: the Holocaust, and so he spoke into her and so
- 45:45Speaker 2: My grandfather told me that he named me Mortorchai because
- 45:49Speaker 2: he wanted me to be somebody that would protect and
- 45:54Speaker 2: stand up for the weaker. And so whether it be
- 45:56Speaker 2: in school, if you want to try to pick on
- 45:58Speaker 2: a kid, you kind of had to go through me.
- 45:59Speaker 2: That's sort of who That's who I was. So I
- 46:02Speaker 2: was always wanting.
- 46:02Speaker 4: To and we were a protector, which meant you're the
- 46:04Speaker 4: perfect coach.
- 46:05Speaker 2: Correct. That's as it worked out. American Jewry should be
- 46:09Speaker 2: the country's greatest patriots. Jews in America should be this
- 46:13Speaker 2: country's greatest patriots. Because where else in the history of
- 46:17Speaker 2: the world have the Jewish people had an opportunity to
- 46:20Speaker 2: work hard, own land, owned business, do thing, But in
- 46:24Speaker 2: this incredible democracy, the United States of America. Nowhere else
- 46:27Speaker 2: except maybe Israel. Right now, Jews should be this country's
- 46:31Speaker 2: greatest patriots. So I this country saved my grandfather's life.
- 46:35Speaker 2: He came from Turnapo in nineteen twenty nine when he
- 46:37Speaker 2: was eleven years old. He was the oldest of three
- 46:40Speaker 2: younger siblings. He brought my auntie Shirley, my uncle, my
- 46:43Speaker 2: uncle Harold was an infant, and my Auntie Claire. And
- 46:45Speaker 2: he told me this country saved our family's life.
- 46:49Speaker 3: Wow. So, and where did they go to?
- 46:52Speaker 2: Went to Boston, was to the Boston area, went with
- 46:54Speaker 2: some family, and much of his family couldn't make the trip,
- 46:58Speaker 2: didn't make the trip, died in the Holocaust. Wow. And
- 47:01Speaker 2: so he loved Israel because he had told me that
- 47:04Speaker 2: if Israel had been a state way back then in
- 47:06Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, even though his Zionism, even the Jews
- 47:08Speaker 2: were returning to the ancestral home run America was the dream,
- 47:12Speaker 2: but it was more expensive to come to America. That
- 47:14Speaker 2: maybe if Israel was a state back in twenty nine,
- 47:16Speaker 2: they'd have gone to Israel, and more of his family,
- 47:19Speaker 2: more of my cousins and my aunts and uncles, would
- 47:21Speaker 2: have survived the Holocaust. And so those things kind of obviously,
- 47:26Speaker 2: you know, sort of you know, stuck with me. And
- 47:29Speaker 2: now now look at where we are today. You know.
- 47:31Speaker 2: One of the things Centator, when when people want to
- 47:33Speaker 2: have some debate about Israel or who our ally is
- 47:37Speaker 2: or how much money were giving, said, I love when
- 47:40Speaker 2: I speak about raising someone else. Safe for the Boys
- 47:43Speaker 2: and Girls Club. Let's pretend the Boys and Girls Club
- 47:46Speaker 2: didn't exist. It's not here. It hasn't been for eighty years,
- 47:48Speaker 2: It hasn't been here. How would the boys and girls
- 47:50Speaker 2: in this community think of the impact it had. Let's
- 47:53Speaker 2: go back to nineteen forty eight. Let's say the Jews lost,
- 47:56Speaker 2: Let's say we defeated. Yeah, let's say the Arabs one.
- 48:00Speaker 4: Yeah, totally different than now, you know, and and it
- 48:06Speaker 4: is extraordinary.
- 48:07Speaker 3: Look, Israel is surrounded by nations that would drive it
- 48:10Speaker 3: into the sea. And the only reason Israel exists is
- 48:13Speaker 3: because it has beaten them over and over and over
- 48:17Speaker 3: again in war after war after war, in many instances,
- 48:21Speaker 3: against all odds. You know, I'm reminded of Ian. This
- 48:27Speaker 3: is kind of a silly analogy, but it's it's one
- 48:29Speaker 3: that resonates with me, at least. When I was a kid,
- 48:32Speaker 3: there was a book series I read called The Great Brain.
- 48:34Speaker 3: I don't know if you ever read it. It's it's
- 48:36Speaker 3: it's a seven book series about a kid growing up
- 48:40Speaker 3: in Utah who's a swindler. They're they're three brothers, Swendy Fitzgerald,
- 48:45Speaker 3: Tom D. Fitzgerald, and John D.
- 48:46Speaker 2: Fitzgerald.
- 48:47Speaker 3: And the book is written by John D. Fitzgerald and
- 48:48Speaker 3: his middle brother, Tom is a con artist and it's
- 48:51Speaker 3: it's sort of like, you know, Tom Sawyer sort of thing.
- 48:53Speaker 3: But he has all these different cons and and they're
- 48:56Speaker 3: growing up the about nineteen hundred in Utah, and he says,
- 49:04Speaker 3: you know, most of the kids there are Mormon, and
- 49:07Speaker 3: he says, we weren't Mormon. And he said, but the
- 49:11Speaker 3: Mormons are very tolerant. And he said it was a
- 49:14Speaker 3: very simple matter of Swen d learning to whip all
- 49:16Speaker 3: the kids his age, and Tom d learning to whip
- 49:18Speaker 3: all the kids his age, and me learning to whip
- 49:20Speaker 3: all the kids my age. And he has a lie,
- 49:22Speaker 3: it's amazing how tolerant kids could be when you can
- 49:24Speaker 3: whip them.
- 49:25Speaker 2: That's right.
- 49:25Speaker 3: And I remember that lot that is probably ten when
- 49:27Speaker 3: I read it, and that phrase, it's amazing how tolerant
- 49:30Speaker 3: people can be when you can whip them. And I
- 49:33Speaker 3: think of that with Israel, like you look at the
- 49:37Speaker 3: Abraham Cords, you look at peace that broke out. I
- 49:40Speaker 3: think under President Trump's leadership, none of that happens except
- 49:44Speaker 3: for the fact that Israel can whip them. And they've
- 49:46Speaker 3: demonstrated it over and over again as recently as this
- 49:50Speaker 3: past year in the Twelve Day War. And by the way,
- 49:53Speaker 3: as the three of us are talking, there are millions
- 49:55Speaker 3: of people on the streets of Iran risking their lives.
- 49:58Speaker 3: And you look at women that are staying end up
- 50:00Speaker 3: there and men they are literally far too many are
- 50:04Speaker 3: being slaughtered the others. If the revolution doesn't succeed, they
- 50:08Speaker 3: can anticipate being rounded up, tortured, murdered, And in many ways,
- 50:15Speaker 3: I think this is the consequence of losing a war
- 50:20Speaker 3: that you know, sometimes in today's political world we think
- 50:24Speaker 3: everything is a comms matter. It's all about communications and messaging.
- 50:27Speaker 3: Now there was a twelve day war and Iran lost.
- 50:30Speaker 3: And if you are the Iyatola commane, you are an
- 50:34Speaker 3: Islamist dictator. Your staying in power is predicated on convincing
- 50:41Speaker 3: your citizenry. You are omnipotent, you are unbeatable. There is
- 50:45Speaker 3: no hope in rising up because I cannot be beaten.
- 50:49Speaker 3: And if there's anything worse for an Islamist dictator than
- 50:52Speaker 3: losing a war, it's losing to Israel. And they didn't
- 50:55Speaker 3: just sort of lose, they didn't just slightly lose. They
- 50:59Speaker 3: got their.
- 50:59Speaker 2: Ask kicked and shut them as being weak.
- 51:01Speaker 3: And we said on this podcast, are the wake of
- 51:03Speaker 3: this I said, I believe the regime will fall because
- 51:08Speaker 3: they've been shown to be a paper tiger. And and
- 51:12Speaker 3: look by prayers are I can think of nothing that
- 51:15Speaker 3: would make the Middle East safer, that would make America
- 51:18Speaker 3: safer than having that theocratic lunatic who chanced death to
- 51:22Speaker 3: America no longer in charge. What what are your thoughts in.
- 51:28Speaker 2: Really, I just agree with that completely. It's about peace
- 51:32Speaker 2: through strength. Sometimes that guy, that tough guy, he didn't
- 51:36Speaker 2: actually have to fight because and so our greatest deterrent
- 51:41Speaker 2: with with China and Russia is our own strength.
- 51:45Speaker 3: They're not the best way to avoid a war.
- 51:47Speaker 2: The best way to avoid a war, which is good
- 51:49Speaker 2: for every Yes, and so you know, I look at
- 51:52Speaker 2: the countries in the Middle East. I think the UAE
- 51:55Speaker 2: figured this out first before anybody else. You know what,
- 52:00Speaker 2: We're better off being in some sort of a normal
- 52:03Speaker 2: relationship with Israel. Yeah, they're strong militarily, they're ethical, they're
- 52:08Speaker 2: they're technologically advanced. They want to have a positive relationship.
- 52:12Speaker 3: And by the way, before the end of the Trump presidency,
- 52:15Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia will enter the Abrahamic courts. I think they
- 52:18Speaker 3: were ready to do so if Trump had served a
- 52:20Speaker 3: second term consecutively, they would have done so during a
- 52:23Speaker 3: second term. I think they're going to now let me
- 52:25Speaker 3: ask it because we're going to wrap up soon. But
- 52:27Speaker 3: let me ask you. You and I have talked a
- 52:29Speaker 3: lot about rising anti semitism in America, and you've been
- 52:33Speaker 3: been very vocal and outspoken. You've shown a lot of
- 52:35Speaker 3: courage on that topic. But just just why do you
- 52:39Speaker 3: think it's it's happening, and and and and and how
- 52:43Speaker 3: does it impact you?
- 52:43Speaker 2: What?
- 52:44Speaker 3: What are your reactions to what's what's happening in this
- 52:46Speaker 3: country right now?
- 52:49Speaker 2: I would like to try to well, it's while it's
- 52:52Speaker 2: on the rise. There were three Jewish basketball coaches that
- 52:57Speaker 2: were in the Final Four this past year. This is
- 52:59Speaker 2: the greatest country in the world. That's pretty cool.
- 53:02Speaker 3: Wow.
- 53:02Speaker 2: In other words, I want to tell my players, look,
- 53:04Speaker 2: and this is what always bothered me about President Obama,
- 53:06Speaker 2: who in so many ways I admired, is credible orator,
- 53:10Speaker 2: and you know, just I was so proud of our
- 53:11Speaker 2: country for electing a black man to be our president twice.
- 53:15Speaker 2: I just I'm sorry. I'm a basketball coach. I've seen,
- 53:18Speaker 2: you know, I've seen, and I was proud of our
- 53:20Speaker 2: historic aspect.
- 53:22Speaker 3: For a century African Americans were slaves. And so it
- 53:25Speaker 3: is you mentioned doctor King, as Ben knows. I have
- 53:29Speaker 3: three bus in my office. I have Ronald Reagan, I
- 53:32Speaker 3: have Winston Churchill, and I have doctor King, and and
- 53:34Speaker 3: and so I agree with doctor King that the arc
- 53:37Speaker 3: of justice is long, but the arc of history is long,
- 53:41Speaker 3: but it bens towards justice. Yes, and I think that
- 53:43Speaker 3: is playing out.
- 53:44Speaker 2: So I'm just grateful. I recognize the anti semetary, so
- 53:48Speaker 2: I recognize my players get profiled driving while black and
- 53:52Speaker 2: certain things. There are certain challenges I reckon, but I don't
- 53:55Speaker 2: want them to use that an excuse for failure. I
- 53:59Speaker 2: don't want. And so, yes, there's theology that sometimes wants
- 54:06Speaker 2: to divide us. You could either look at the Jews
- 54:11Speaker 2: and say, well, you all killed Christ, all killed our God. Okay,
- 54:14Speaker 2: well was it not God's planned to send his son
- 54:18Speaker 2: die so that you would be brought into covenant with him?
- 54:23Speaker 2: Was that his plan? Does it really matter who killed?
- 54:26Speaker 2: For me? I look at say wait a second, like
- 54:28Speaker 2: Jesus was Jewish his whole life. My wife's two favorite
- 54:32Speaker 2: Jews in Alabama are me and Jesus and me and Jesus,
- 54:36Speaker 2: and so for me, that unites me with my Christian brothers.
- 54:39Speaker 2: Twelve Jewish men died horrific deaths bringing Christianity to this world. Absolutely,
- 54:46Speaker 2: and so for me, I say to I don't want
- 54:49Speaker 2: I don't nobody say thank you. But there are so
- 54:54Speaker 2: many Christians that are standing with us, Senator, as you know.
- 54:57Speaker 2: And so while we can talk about the rise of
- 54:59Speaker 2: anti s, we've got to protect us from those that
- 55:02Speaker 2: want to kill us. Anti Semitism is not going anywhere.
- 55:05Speaker 2: It's not there's going to be the haves and have nots.
- 55:11Speaker 2: Is there a disproportionate number of American Jews that have
- 55:14Speaker 2: wealth in this country compared to the population. The answer
- 55:17Speaker 2: is yes, go back eighty years ago and see what
- 55:20Speaker 2: those numbers were. They turned the boats around from Europe
- 55:22Speaker 2: because we came over here poor and uneducated, and we
- 55:26Speaker 2: just took advantage of the American dream. And we should
- 55:30Speaker 2: not apologize the fact that we've worked so hard and
- 55:33Speaker 2: be grateful for the opportunity. So I kind of turn
- 55:36Speaker 2: that around a little bit. Okay, I get it, it's
- 55:38Speaker 2: on the rise, but you can still be anything you
- 55:40Speaker 2: want to be in this country.
- 55:41Speaker 3: Well, and I'll say two things. We'll wrap up on
- 55:43Speaker 3: this one. One of the things I admire most about
- 55:47Speaker 3: about the Jewish people in the United States and more broadly,
- 55:51Speaker 3: is the incredible success they've achieved. And you're right that
- 55:54Speaker 3: virtually all of them in the United States at least
- 55:57Speaker 3: started with nothing. And you look at in Judaism, the
- 56:01Speaker 3: culture of hard work and discipline and family and education,
- 56:05Speaker 3: and that has led to extraordinary financial success.
- 56:09Speaker 2: Extraordinary.
- 56:10Speaker 3: The number of Nobel Prizes, one by Israel, one by
- 56:15Speaker 3: Jews in America is extraordinary. And I actually view it
- 56:19Speaker 3: sort of in the intellectual and the free enterprise capitalist world,
- 56:23Speaker 3: sort of like the principle I said before about it's
- 56:25Speaker 3: amazing how tolerant people could be when you can whip
- 56:27Speaker 3: them like that's great success. And I think all of
- 56:30Speaker 3: us should emulate the attributes of discipline and excellence that
- 56:37Speaker 3: lead to that success. A second point, I didn't know
- 56:41Speaker 3: what you're going to say when I asked about anti Semitism,
- 56:43Speaker 3: but I started chuckling because the week before Christmas, and
- 56:48Speaker 3: Ben will remember this, I sent out a tweet and
- 56:51Speaker 3: I said two thoughts to drive the anti Semits crazy
- 56:55Speaker 3: in this Christmas season. Number One, our savior Jesus was
- 56:59Speaker 3: Jewish in the line of David. And number two, Jews
- 57:04Speaker 3: didn't killed Jesus. I did you did? He died for
- 57:09Speaker 3: our sins. That's what the New Testament said, It is
- 57:13Speaker 3: that he willingly took the cross to die for our sins.
- 57:17Speaker 3: And so the the sort of anti semis to say
- 57:20Speaker 3: Jews killed Jesus, well, actually it was Romans who drove
- 57:23Speaker 3: the nails in. Is anyone mad at the Italians, like,
- 57:25Speaker 3: that's just stupid, it's bad theology, it's it's big a tree.
- 57:31Speaker 3: And I will admit I was kind of happy with
- 57:33Speaker 3: that tweet because it really did drive.
- 57:36Speaker 2: One of the biggest things concerned. I know, we got
- 57:38Speaker 2: to wrap up young Christians today, the podcasters, the people
- 57:45Speaker 2: that are preaching this replacement theology butter garbage the love
- 57:49Speaker 2: of country and the love of Christ only you're driving
- 57:53Speaker 2: those two things hard at young people. And my point
- 57:57Speaker 2: would be this God does not break come it. He's
- 58:00Speaker 2: not going to break covenant with the Christians. He did
- 58:02Speaker 2: not break covenant with the Jews. He just doesn't go
- 58:05Speaker 2: against what he says he will do. He's not a liar.
- 58:10Speaker 2: And so the people that want to believe that well, Jews,
- 58:12Speaker 2: you didn't accept Jesus and musay, look, we'll figure out
- 58:15Speaker 2: when we get there. But for the grace of God. Okay,
- 58:18Speaker 2: but for his grace, who knows you know exactly what
- 58:21Speaker 2: is going to happen. So I'm confident. As a coach,
- 58:25Speaker 2: I'm always trying to bring people together and bring teams
- 58:28Speaker 2: together so I can see all the things that separate us.
- 58:30Speaker 2: But instead I look to the things that united said.
- 58:32Speaker 2: It's amazing the things that we can do together. If
- 58:35Speaker 2: you think of your life's great accomplishments, you accomplish it
- 58:39Speaker 2: with the people that you cared most about. And that's
- 58:41Speaker 2: who That's who the Jewish people are. And I would
- 58:44Speaker 2: hope that if you needed something, there's there's there's a
- 58:49Speaker 2: hospital someplace in Dallas that's going under, and but for
- 58:53Speaker 2: a gift from somebody, there'd be somebody that you might
- 58:56Speaker 2: call that might be Jewish. Knowing that there are people
- 58:59Speaker 2: that are willing to give and willing to share, and
- 59:01Speaker 2: we just got to keep it. I told my Jewish
- 59:03Speaker 2: fet look, we got to you know, I don't know
- 59:05Speaker 2: why Gods said we're the chosen people, because my grandma
- 59:07Speaker 2: said to chosen people. Maybe you should have chosen somebody else.
- 59:10Speaker 2: It's not so easy, so easy, but but there's a responsibility,
- 59:14Speaker 2: the responsibility being a Christian responsibility and jew I gotta
- 59:18Speaker 2: walk it every single day. And I'm okay with him.
- 59:20Speaker 2: I'm okay about to do the best I possibly can.
- 59:22Speaker 3: All right, final question on a lighter note, and loop
- 59:25Speaker 3: back Sports. Got the National Championship football game coming up here?
- 59:30Speaker 3: You picking who's gonna win and what's the final score
- 59:32Speaker 3: going to be?
- 59:32Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna go with Indiana. I gotta go. I'm
- 59:35Speaker 2: gonna go with Nia.
- 59:36Speaker 3: So good.
- 59:37Speaker 2: I'm gonna go with the Hoosiers. I coached in Evansville,
- 59:39Speaker 2: Indiana for nine years. It's just an amazing story. I
- 59:45Speaker 2: like Crystal Ball a lot, though. I like what he's
- 59:47Speaker 2: done for Miami. I got more friends in Miami than
- 59:49Speaker 2: I do in Indiana. But I'm going to.
- 59:53Speaker 3: Make you pick.
- 59:53Speaker 2: You know yet, twenty eight twenty four Indiana twenty eight close.
- 59:58Speaker 2: I think we'll be close.
- 59:58Speaker 3: Guiding.
- 59:59Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going thirty eight to ten. Wow. Yeah, I
- 1:00:03Speaker 2: think it's gonna be a blowout. I think I think
- 1:00:05Speaker 2: Miami's just gonna get smoked.
- 1:00:06Speaker 3: But by the way, I want to make a request
- 1:00:09Speaker 3: to all our Verdict listeners. So I had a wager
- 1:00:13Speaker 3: yesterday on the Texan Steelers game. Yeah, I had a
- 1:00:17Speaker 3: wager with John Fetterman and Dave McCormick. I proposed the
- 1:00:23Speaker 3: wager I proposed, and this is a sports wager I
- 1:00:27Speaker 3: make with some frequency, which is the loser presents. Like
- 1:00:31Speaker 3: what I offered up was Texas barbecue, Bluebell ice cream
- 1:00:33Speaker 3: and Shiner Bock beer, and you present it in the
- 1:00:36Speaker 3: Winter's jersey and Fetterman and Dave's a really good friend
- 1:00:40Speaker 3: and John's become a good friend. Fetterman wanted to ratchet
- 1:00:43Speaker 3: it up.
- 1:00:44Speaker 2: What do you say?
- 1:00:44Speaker 3: So he said, no, no, no, I want worse, he said.
- 1:00:47Speaker 3: He said, when you lose.
- 1:00:49Speaker 2: I like it right there.
- 1:00:52Speaker 3: He said, you will walk onto the Senate floor And
- 1:00:55Speaker 3: he went and bought wearing a Steeler's beanie and this
- 1:01:00Speaker 3: giant piece of bling that says Steelers that's I don't
- 1:01:03Speaker 3: know about. Yeah, ten inches wide, this giant like an
- 1:01:06Speaker 3: old chain. Walk onto the Senate floor and cast a boat. Yeah,
- 1:01:09Speaker 3: you can bring the barbecue stuff if you gotta walk on. Yeah,
- 1:01:12Speaker 3: And he tweeted out a picture of the horrible beanie
- 1:01:15Speaker 3: and the Steelers bling, and and and so I will
- 1:01:18Speaker 3: say we won thirty to six.
- 1:01:21Speaker 2: Yes, it was a beat down.
- 1:01:22Speaker 3: It was. And by the way, I grew up as
- 1:01:24Speaker 3: a Houston fan. There's no team on Earth like the
- 1:01:27Speaker 3: Steelers that caused Houston fans to twitch because in the
- 1:01:31Speaker 3: seventies we had the greatest team we ever had, the Oilers.
- 1:01:33Speaker 3: We had Earl Campbell, and we ran in to one
- 1:01:37Speaker 3: of the greatest teams to ever play in this seventy
- 1:01:39Speaker 3: nine and eighty ASC Championship rushing and so last night
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: was revenge.
- 1:01:46Speaker 4: So does he have to wear like a Houston beanie?
- 1:01:49Speaker 3: So my question, and this is this is actually a
- 1:01:51Speaker 3: request to all our social media followers.
- 1:01:54Speaker 2: Your vote matters.
- 1:01:55Speaker 3: Folks post on on X what horribly tacky Texans bling
- 1:02:03Speaker 3: do we have? I should make Fetterman and McCormick wear
- 1:02:06Speaker 3: they've already said they're gonna wear it. But but.
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: Rapper, I just want him to look like a rapper
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: because he's kind of you know, he can get free.
- 1:02:15Speaker 3: F given what they picked, I gotta be be a
- 1:02:19Speaker 3: little over the top.
- 1:02:20Speaker 2: I'd make Feeder wmen wear a suit because put him
- 1:02:22Speaker 2: with a hoodie something different.
- 1:02:26Speaker 3: I gave them both grief today and they both said, yeah,
- 1:02:29Speaker 3: we'll wear it. We'll wear it, Will Will Pennsylvania, will
- 1:02:32Speaker 3: otter it and and so so I'm looking forward to collecting.
- 1:02:36Speaker 2: We need more senators like John Fetterman. You need more America.
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: He's courageous and the biggest surprise and sent his party
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: hates him for it, they do. Thanks for coming on.
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: That's fun, don't forget. You can grab the show Monday,
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: Wednesday Friday the subscribe auto download button as well and
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: on YouTube. You can watch this video as well if
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: you're there, if you want to watch it on Facebook
- 1:03:01Speaker 1: and the Sena and I will see you back here
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: in a couple of days.